BEING ON THE COURT OR SITTING IN THE STANDS: pretty clear what that means - either you take an active part in life or your sitting in the stands having OPINIONS about what is going on.

STORY: what you have made your life mean to you from all your past experiences.

BREAKDOWN: the opposite of BREAKTHROUGH. To have BRAKETHROUGHS you hade to successfully manage all your BREAKDOWNS. While assisting at the landmark office it was a sure thing to have multiple BREAKDOWNS. Nothing wrong with them -you could learn from them - so the more the better.

SAYING WHAT THERE IS TO SAY: From one of the communcation courses.
It meant that you should say the obvious. But when I once said the obvious at an introduction to the Forum pointing out that the FL Randy McNamara had made en error in his presentation I was ousted.
It didn't apply there.

Since the Forum teachings are so black and white it becomes impossible to be a thinking person. Thinking is part of the human machinery and is to be avoided.

So you are either commited / not commited to something.
You are either on the court / in the stands
You have integrity / are out of integrity
Stingy / generous

etc etc.

So it becomes a black or white thinking that makes it very hard to decide things that are coming from yourself. At every turn you are questioned about where you stand and if you would see that you are out of integrity
you will be coached as to how improve your integrity.

There is never any middle ground.

Hope this explains why people become so robot like. You'r either a landmark drone or you are your machiny. Avoid being the machine at all costs whenever there is a landmark coach around. They will make you comply or drop out. Usually you get coached back into the fold.

Circular thinking comes from this - its just to question where you are at a given time and use all distinctions to get you back to where you started.

nettie

I just started a selfhelp program that uses cognitive behavioural therapy.

It started me thinking about how to make decisions in life. I could see how
impared my decision capability has become. In the landmark way you just made decisions based on nothing. In normal life you are better off if you think and ponder the stuff going on in your life before you jump to a conclusion/decision. You "think" (listen to your ALREADY ALWAYS LISTENING)

Oh this has really messed thing up for me... :cry:

nettie

Quote
nettie
I just started a selfhelp program that uses cognitive behavioural therapy.

It started me thinking about how to make decisions in life. I could see how
impared my decision capability has become. In the landmark way you just made decisions based on nothing. In normal life you are better off if you think and ponder the stuff going on in your life before you jump to a conclusion/decision. You "think" (listen to your ALREADY ALWAYS LISTENING)

Oh this has really messed thing up for me... :cry:

nettie

Hi Nettie,

One truly awful development in the "self-improvement-cult" business was their seizing of some of the material from CBT or the cognitive therapy movement. Of course they pretended to be adopting it, when they even admitted to using it, for the benefit of their clients, but of course they twisted it into some bizarre second-rate counterfeit, as they had any legitimate "human-potential," motivational, therapeutic, psychological, spiritual, influence, or even sales material they co-opted. This is a shame because anyone who might have benefitted from the development of the newer psychotherapeutic practices was side-tracked into the cult-version if they were involved in one of these groups.

I encourage you to read David Burns' book, "Feeling Good," which you've probably already had recommended.


Ellen

Quote
elena
As adults, we are mostly operating from these early inchoate impressions, even as we imagine ourselves to be mature, rational, and considerate. Because this part of the mind is formed before language skills mature, it's almost unreachable exept through things like the very deep, regressive, and manipulative suggestive "processes" they do at Landmark. They "rearrange things" at the deepest level of people's minds and personalities. It's shocking that they are able to call what they do "education." At one time they called it "entertainment" (participatory theater). They talk about "putting the past in the past" but they continuously dig around in people's troubled pasts for material to use against them, all in the guise of ~completing~ it. Hah!

Landmark is clever, no doubt about it, but it's the kind of intelligence focused primarily on one thing: making money. I think much of their 'strategic planning' is similar, if not identical, to that used by the advertising industry. The 'creative leadership' of Landmark will employ almost any tactic to get you to buy their product. They create the need and then supply it; and once you have supply, they make sure you're hooked. Their smart enough to tap into that primal, often unsatisfied, area of our being - the need to belong; the need for total freedom.

Quote

"If you really want to enslave people, tell them that you're going to give them total freedom." -- L. Ron Hubbard

I just love that quote! You could apply it advertising, too. I'm thinking one of those Coke or Macca ads - beautiful people, positive music, perfect scenery ... smiles all round. Gee, I can sleep in and bum around and have my perfect breakfast, lunch and dinner cooked by ...

Robert Burns Feeling good. It is very good and I hope that I will piece it all together now. I just saw quite clearly how the black or white thinking
is part of what cognitive theory is a thought trap :oops:

Oh how easy it was to be in the cult but hard to be outside... :)

nettie

During the ILP you get really indoctrinated into the Landmark thinking so
it is the course to stay away from.

The commitment regarding hours is huge since there is always a lot of unexpected things arising ie when a teammember has not kept his or hers commitment. Then the group becomes responsible for that persons
re-commitment.

Very few persons leave this course. It is simply not allowed. The pressure to conform is enourmous. You start becoming a landmark drone (drone = imitator ) during this course since the way that landmark leaders train is by imitation. Thus you become streamlined into the landmark fold.

So stay away is the only thing I can tell anybody considering this course.
My real troubles (almost all free time spent doing landmark stuff) started after doing the ILP and becoming an introduction leader. I was determined not to become an introduction leader but that changed over time. The leader for the ILP is pressured to examine a certain number of introleaders.

Quote

One truly awful development in the "self-improvement-cult" business was their seizing of some of the material from CBT or the cognitive therapy movement. Of course they pretended to be adopting it, when they even admitted to using it, for the benefit of their clients, but of course they twisted it into some bizarre second-rate counterfeit, as they had any legitimate "human-potential," motivational, therapeutic, psychological, spiritual, influence, or even sales material they co-opted. This is a shame because anyone who might have benefitted from the development of the newer psychotherapeutic practices was side-tracked into the cult-version if they were involved in one of these groups.

I posted here a long time ago about this, but my former psychotherapist (who practiced CBT) was a Landmark introduction leader. I imagine that they probably snared her with the superficial trappings of CBT that they promote to lend credibility to the fluff upon which their ideological foundation is composed. As I learned the hard way, it seems that educated people tend to be [i:c6d7745282]more[/i:c6d7745282] susceptible to these groups, who manipulate their junk science, junk philosophy, and junk psychology to present an attractive, pseudo-intellectual product that appeals in particular to white collar professionals looking for meaning and answers in their busy lives.

My therapist encouraged me periodically to go to Landmark seminars and knew my boss, another Landmark introduction leader (she gave me her number when we spent a session discussing my unsuccessful job hunt). It was my boss who convinced me to attend one of the introduction meetings on a Wednesday night, and when I sniffed out the pervasive ideological rat that is Landmark education/"est", I began to recognize the Landmarkian jargon that had slipped into my CBT sessions. The more research I did (and the more posts I read here), the more appalled I was by how many doctors, therapists, surgeons, etc. are trying to peddle their skeevy LGAT wares on unsuspecting patients.

I finally left my therapist when my husband and I relocated, but the last thing she said to me was that I should continue my journey with Landmark. I smiled politely and left, knowing full well that I would never do any such thing. I would never say that my experience with her was an entirely negative one, because she certainly did employ genuine CBT that helped me to overcome some pretty debilitating panic attacks. However, it was a long time before I sifted out the filler from the actual meat.

Luckily, I have resolved the anxiety-related issues that first propelled me to pursue psychotherapy. After that whole experience, it would be very hard for me to trust another therapist entirely.

I never heard of Landmark until a marriage counselor suggested it--in fact, she harped on it for almost a year before my husband and I agreed to try The Forum (not together). He became totally enchanted with it and is just about to finish ILP. I left after 2 days.
But what shocked me was how much Landmark jargon and ideas permeated this therapist's practice. I'm surprised Landmark doesn't sue her for infringing on their "technology".

On another forum, one for people who have been abused by their significant other, someone posted about creating your own reality. One of the abusees had been dismissed by an elitist who wanted to know why she created her reality of being abused. Many of the posters on that forum agree that we create our own reality, but don't believe that this actually means we create suffering, and many felt that the elite one just had not experienced abuse so she couldn't possibly know what it was like.

They like the light and positive side but not the dark side of having to incorporate evil. The discussion went on a bit about new age beliefs until finally someone, in giving up, stated that we should be more discerning about gurus and pseudo-gurus - that there are false teachers even in eastern philosophy. The last two posts here show just how difficult it is to discern who is a pseudo-guru and who is not. Popular "new age" stuff has become so mainstream that it is infiltrating professional offices and industry. It is not as if anyone is knowingly joining a cult - the cult seems to be joining us.