I just remembered an exercise at the forum that might interest some people. It's how Landmark officially draws the line between 'pressure' and 'enrolment'.

On the second day, and the leader was intructing us about how to approach people about Landmark and get them to come along to our graduation night.

She got a male voulenteer up on stage and had him be a potential 'guest.' Asking him to hold his arm up over his head, she asked him to say 'no' to every thing she said and to push down his arm as he did so. She braced his arm as he held it up and began to ask him "will you come along to an introduction?" He responded "no" and pushed down his arm, but the leader pushed back and say "why not?" "Oh come on, please go" "please? PLEASE?" The leader mock struggled and crumbled as the arm came down.

"This is the wrong way to go about it." She told us. "All you will do is strengthen his 'no.' It's a common mistake people make when they're new to enrolling." Then she repeated the exercise. Once again she asked: "will you come along to an introduction?" This time when the man said "no" she let go of his arm, letting it fall and said "go."

Then she asked us: "Did you see the difference? There was no resistance there."

This exercise left me very confused. Is one way they attempt to instill passive-agressive behaviour in their graduates?

I follow the practical example but I am not following how the 2nd part of the exercise translates into a Landmark prescribed successful "enrolment conversation"?

Can you elaborate please?

Thanks,
Oz

Okay forget about enrolment part. :D The point of the exercise was to learn to extend invitations to introductions without applying pressure. What I meant by the enrolment part was that the official line is that you can't enrol someone when you are pressuring them.

I remember my ex-girlfriend telling me the more pressure you put on people, the more they resist, like you say. The point here is to let go so there is no more resistance (since the pressure is gone) and to let the time go by just to come back stronger and more subtily at a later time. Like she use to tell me "I will not ask you to do the Landmark Forum ... for 3 months" !!! That was her biggest mistake.

After I resisted even more, she said "Ok, I will never ask you again to do the landmark Forum ... I promise". Weeks later, after some intimate moments, she came back very subtily by saying "Landmark is the best thing that could ever happen to your life. You just don't know it yet"!!! That was her second biggest mistake.

She tried very hard the go/no-go technique with me, but it didn't work. But I must admit it was hard to resist, because when used in conjunction with other manipulation techniques (like guilt), it can be very destabilizing.

While the information on this thread confirms what I already know about how despicably manipulative Landmark is to unsuspecting people, it makes me wonder how anyone with any moral standards at all can stomach an organization like this.

It’s all about money. Those in organized crime use violence, threats of violence and intimidation to achieve their goals; Landmark uses a variety of brainwashing techniques, manipulation and unrelenting pressure to reach theirs. But Landmark’s moral depravity reaches new lows by getting trusted people in your life to do their dirty work for them - note how Midonov described that it was not a LM recruiter but his girlfriend who was applying this manipulation to him.

I just find it the height of moral wantonness for a money-hungry, for-profit corporation to crack into and shamelessly exploit the trust of spouses, girl/boyfriends, other family members and friends to achieve their financial wealth. I wonder how many people end up thinking they can’t trust [i:c3ffde394e]anyone[/i:c3ffde394e] in their lives - even their own spouses, parents and siblings - after such experiences.

Violence, threats of violence and intimidation. Manipulation, brainwashing and exploitation of trust of loved ones and friends. Is one more morally reprehensible than the other? That’s a matter of opinion but to be sure, they’re both down there in the moral gutter.