Hi Everybody,

I've been reading up on relevant topics here, and have found some really great information, validations of some thoughts I had but felt alone in, and some new perspectives about Landmark's techniques that I hadn't considered. However, I find myself severely crippled, psychologically, even now as some 11 months have passed since I last had contact with anyone from Landmark.

Within the course of not even a single year I'd done their entire "Curriculum for Living", starting with the Forum, and then the Advanced Course, the SELP, and along with all that a "free" seminar course for which I somehow ended up being a group leader, or whatever they call the person saddled with arranging and running hour long phone calls weekly for smaller groups, as well as attending hour-long phone calls with the seminar leader and other group leaders on a weekly basis. Everyone in my group was a longtime alumnus of est/Landmark, said they had done it before, and declined while strongly advising me as a newer person to do it as I would "get so much more" out of the course. I had no idea how much work was involved, and it was pure insanity for me to do it on top of the excessive work schedule I was maintaining, 6 days a week with people on 5 continents (all hours, and lots of them). But because I'd already learned that pressure point where if the whole group was out of integrity, everyone in it also was, there was a point at which I panicked and volunteered, to "save us all". Then I started SELP while I was still group-leadering the seminar course, and while working my very intensive 70-hour a week high stress Fortune 500 job. I don't know if I experienced a single millisecond of mental peace during those months.

It's only recently, in these last couple of months since I lost my job of 5 years, due to complete and utter mental exhaustion and a total decline in my ability to make effective decisions on behalf of myself, that I've had the chance to look more deeply into the more significant bases for Landmark's techniques, and to realize that even though I felt keenly aware and resistant to the more apparent demands of the organization, such as volunteering and drawing other people to their events, which I never would, that their methods were still impacting me, in extremely negative and powerful ways.

What I am experiencing now, mentally, is completely unique to my life i.e. I have never been in anywhere near this condition, to this extent, before. It boils down to a fearfulness that is overwhelming to me at a level I can neither quantify nor address. When I wake up in the morning, my heart breaks within 30 seconds of my awareness, and it gets no better over the course of a day. It doesn't feel like depression, which I've experienced; it's more of a feeling of paralysis, formed of this massive amount of fear like I've never experienced. I just feel like I'm dying. Like everything is just stopped, and one day my heart will too.

All of the above paragraph is very surreal to write. I have never been this person. Despite a complicated upbringing, I have always been strong, the strong one, a scrapper, self reliant, and even always consistently optimistic against any odds. And now I seem to be *none* of those things.

I found very interesting something I read here that was posted by a former Landmark instructor named Lars, in detailing their techniques, which was this:

"They instill fear in you using the fear exercise - a group hypnosis. Here they implant a lie into your mind that everyone on this earth is fearing everyone else. This is simply not true. We fear some people but not everyone."

That was an insight for me (thank you Lars), in terms of the direct association they make. It makes perfect sense to me now, how simply that works. I didn't like the exercise, which involved their guiding us through re-experiencing whatever our absolute worst fears of other people were, and with our eyes shut many eventually were crying and wailing during this process. Who knows how many, as in a large room of hundreds of people and a great echo, those cries simply sound omnipresent. It sounds like "everybody."

At the end of it, they ask everyone repeatedly if they "got the joke" yet, and then everyone begins to join in laughter. I wonder how many really did get the joke (perhaps only volunteers and people re-taking the course), and how many just didn't want to be the ones who didn't, and laughed anyway, confirming through that very act how absolutely afraid of other's peoples disapproval they really are. Eventually the instructor states out loud what the big joke is: that since everyone in the room is afraid too, therefore who is it that you're afraid of. This supposed revelation did not seem to me to be a particularly worthwhile end to the experience (especially as delivered), which was just creepy.

But between what insights I did have from the outset (which, sadly, only gave me a false sense of security of about being inoculated from that which I didn't want to receive), having since done some reading on how NLP really works (neuro linguistic programming), having read some of the more specific insights given by Dr. Singer's work to which I've just recently navigated... and along with insights I've found right here:

I realize that I allowed them, however inadvertently, to implant ideas that have been having a negative effect on me ever since. Outside of the funds they collected from me for the specific courses I've taken, I've not allowed them to further benefit/feed off me, and I once thought that put me ahead of the game, that I could "get" whatever there was to be "gotten" (that nebulous reference to whatever realization you might personally have being creditable to them) and remain unscathed from what I believed I was to. But preventing them from further benefiting off me did not prevent them from being able to hurt me, and I just didn't realize the nature of a person's natural vulnerability to what they do. If I hadn't been working so hard maybe I would have had a chance to read more, to see how it matches to Margaret Singer's listed conditions (which are mind blowingly accurate and revealing), and to better understand what hypnosis and thought reform really are. It would certainly have been better if I'd never entered their premises, but a really sane (honest to goodness) and successful friend of mine that I've known 30 years recommended it to me. I still haven't called him up to ask him why, now that I have this perspective, and I'm not sure that it matters.

But I can't point to a single benefit that I've experienced, and even if I could it could not have any sufficient weight against the negative effects I'm experiencing, which are completely mystifying to me in terms of how easily it happened, and how severe and negatively life-changing it's been.

And I don't know how to shake it.

Their whole integrity rap really messed me up, as well. It's one of the things that didn't make sense to me, as the greater apologies they wanted me to effort to make to people in my life, and greater responsibility they wanted me to take for what was happening in my life, made no mathematical sense for me. None.

But regardless of how reconciled I already was in my relationships, and how over-responsible I already was in my actions, the idea they work you over with, that you can't possibly be: that sticks. I feel so over-responsible for everything that happens in my life now, that I'm afraid to try anything. With every move that I make having the consequences of the world over-attached to it, and not to mention the new uninvited sense of pre-destiny that I was born an a-hole without the ability to create my own integrity.

It's as if all the integrity I created before I met them (and not to mention my own once perfectly valid variety of self-esteem), all 40+ years worth, has been rendered meaningless. I don't know how to get it back. The things I've read help me to understand the ways it can happen, but I can't figure out how to undo it. I feel like I may really be one of the more extreme cases in terms of what effect they managed to have, perhaps specifically because I wrongly thought I was too smart for them and had some kind of immunity. While I let them destroy me.

If you have read this far, many thanks for following along. I am most open to your kind suggestions.

Welcome to the message board.

If anyone asks you questions, either on the message board or by private message, that you do not want to answer, you dont have to.

If any PM makes seems impertinent or intrusive, please send a copy of that message to Rick Ross, the moderator.

He can be reached here

[forum.culteducation.com]

This is *not* being weak, to report abuses of the private message is a service to all of us. The only way to keep the private area of the message board a good safe place is to 'out' anyone who acts in a bullying or manipulative manner.

If you get PMs (private messages) check and see how long the person has been
registered on the message board. If they only recently registered, and especially after you have begun posting, be cautious.


One way to take care of yourself is to take care and do background
checks for any event, life coach or workshop recommended to you.

Google the person or group and check for mention of Werner Erhard or Landmark.

If any list Landmark (or Landmark derived groups) in their backgrounds, you can decide if it's worth your time and money getting involved with them.

The March 2014 issue of Harpers magazine has an article 50,000 Life Coaches Cant
be Wrong, and mentions how Bandler, Grinder and est were influential.

50000 Life Coaches Can't Be Wrong - Harper's MagazineNot too long ago, there was a consensus about life coaches: the people who
sought them out were suckers, and the coaches themselves were no better than ...
harpers.org/archive/2014/05/50000-life-coaches-cant-be-wrong/ - 56k - Cached - Similar pages


More Advice


1) If you want to search the message board, be aware that it has been up for
11 years. So, do all searches by selecting the 'all dates' option.

All posts by "Guy"

[forum.culteducation.com]

Another thread to read.

[forum.culteducation.com]

One page of the room set up thread

[forum.culteducation.com]

But the entire thread is worth reading in its entirety.

Another page from the room thread

[forum.culteducation.com]

A common method of creating mental confusion is to 'nominalization'.

It is done by violating grammatical usage. A concept (such as integrity) is used in language or jargon as though it is a physical object.

Examine a term that has become very common in the New Age scene.

"Being in integrity"

This can function as a thought stopper.

Conversational trance induction is full of phrases that violate the rules of logic that are encoded in basic grammar.

'Integrity' is commonly defined as a concept or quality of consistency
or honesty. One can be said to possess or have integrity.

But--integrity because it is a concept, is not a physical space or object.

And integrity is not a conceptual space or object.

By the logic of grammar, one *cannot* be in or inside a quality or a concept.

So "in integrity" is a violation of logic -- it is like creating a coding error for a computer operating system.

Neurolinguistic programming creates these 'bugs' in our minds that disrupt the smooth flow of thought.



[www.google.com]

The word 'in' is used to define inclusion within a space or a place.

[www.google.com]

"In" is a preposition -- Prepositions - Guide to Grammar and WritingA preposition describes a relationship between other words in a sentence. In
itself, a word like "in" or "after" is rather meaningless and hard to define in mere ...
grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/prepositions.htm - 24k - Cached - Similar pages


What are prepositions? - Grammar MonsterThe following are all examples of prepositions: in, on, at, around, above, near,
underneath, alongside, of, and for. A preposition sits before a noun (or a pronoun
) ...
www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/prepositions.htm - 18k - Cached - Similar pages


But the word "integrity" is not a space or place.

Citations for nominalizing here

[forum.culteducation.com]

Thank you so much for compiling these links, along with what I have no doubt is wise and valuable guidance with regard to messages I could potentially receive while trying to get myself through this process.

I'd never attended an LGAT before being introduced to Landmark, and with as much certainty as I know to exist for myself I can honestly say that I would never consider what any such organization might claim to be able to deliver in benefit as being incentive enough for me to brave such waters again. I consider all the "benefits" offered and positive experiences that are reported by varying degrees of devotees to be only ancillary to the negative power of their real agenda. However many charitable projects they may incentivize people to create, and whatever money or services they may provide (I've heard them go on about it ad nauseum, but how it can possibly make up for all their ills I don't know), all they really are about is obscene profits, and a blind eye turned to all the anguish they manufacture in the process. I don't see how entrusting mercenaries with that kind of access to one's psyche can ever be a reasonable means to an end.

I've already read up on some topics courtesy of your kind references that I've found very revealing. I'm entirely new to the message board experience (or at least, and dating myself to say it, haven't used them in decades), but will hopefully manage to be a good contributor while I also benefit from what's here. , I will try to address any specifically germane questions and comments at their most relevant locations. I've already read with much interest and new understanding about what's really going on with the room set-up. Wow.

I'll keep working towards deconstructing what happened; I can see there is much more I can yet come to understand about it, these message boards being a far more valuable resource than I could have fully anticipated. Hopefully it will soon prove to be a real/live empowering experience for me! Having been coming from a place of depletion for some time now.

Many many thanks, corboy. Literally everything that I have read, above and at other topic locations, has been valuable to me, in terms of better understanding what they pulled off, and how it affected me.

Just as an example (and so I can learn how to quote!):

Quote
corboy

'Integrity' is commonly defined as a concept or quality of consistency
or honesty. One can be said to possess or have integrity.

But--integrity because it is a concept, is not a physical space or object.

And integrity is not a conceptual space or object.

By the logic of grammar, one *cannot* be in or inside a quality or a concept.

So "in integrity" is a violation of logic -- it is like creating a coding error for a computer operating system.

Neurolinguistic programming creates these 'bugs' in our minds that disrupt the smooth flow of thought.

I'd managed to recently enlighten myself *somewhat* about NLP, its origins, how it generally works, but these specifics as to how words already bearing their own deep meaning for people, are then systematically repossessed by Landmark through every available means of redefinition, are deconstruction gems. Thank you.

There are two other persons whose posts can be very helpful.

Do a search, all dates, and look up as author, the anticult

And, do another search, all dates, and look up Walter1963 or walter1962

Many of us who grow up speaking and writing fluent English, often do not pay
attention in grammar classes -- I plead guilty on that one. When we are kids, we think, 'But I already know the language, why bother with grammar classes?"

But...just as learning C and java and the other computer languages make it possible to both read and write code for computer operating systems, knowing how to write these codes makes it possible to write codes that produce bugs and viruses that disrupt computer function to varying degrees.

The persons who create and teach NLP methods do something that many of us do not do -- they study grammar. That way it becomes possible to mess with the language and confuse people.

Except for persons who are sensitive to nuances of language and care when the rules are disrupted.

Now, if you put people (even people well versed in grammar0 into a set up where chairs are set close together, you're kept awake past your normal bedtime, and are subjected to heavy sensory bombardment -- your body and your mind are being given a double whammy.

The room set up and late bedtime -- that hits your body and tires your mind.

And the violations of grammar and logic hit at your mind.

Add to this the confrontational methods and it is a potent mix.

And if you go to this page, you will find quotations from an essay from someone who said she'd done the est training...and then helped out at Erhard's house in San Francisco, back in the 1970s.

[forum.culteducation.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2017 10:35PM by corboy.

Quick note: If a discussion is full of revealing information, that is when trolls and disruptors show up.

Quote
corboy
Quick note: If a discussion is full of revealing information, that is when trolls and disruptors show up.

I'm starting to see just how directly that correlates. :)

At least it's entertaining some of the time.. and a great reminder of why it's so lucky I didn't become more entangled. Even though I'm still dealing with some shrapnel, and open wounds; at least I'm out without having developed any strain of loyalty to them. Apparently, my only immunity! But at least there's that.