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Your insight touches on one of the points that kills relationships with someone in an LGAT. Their language makes no sense to us, and I think ours makes no sense to them. I have learned you can never really trust what they say in conversation. They may say they "get" what you say, or "acknowlege" your point. You might think you've made some headway. You haven't. You will find out that they "get" nothing, and their promises mean nothing. As long as the jargon is there, they still belong to the LGAT matrix. It's all emptiness.

I don't have enough time to reply right now to all the great information you guys are pouring out, but I'll be back later tonight. But this paragraph--it really hit home. I can't even count how many times she's said "I get that" and whatever it is she's "getting" has been completely off-base. I think more arguments have started between her and me from whatever she "gets" because it's such an off-base twisted form of whatever I was trying to say. I've sadly learned that trying to correct her gets me nowhere. All I get is a vapid stare while she tunes me out.

Luckily, she hasn't fallen into the promiscuity thing. I read in a post from a long time ago that one of the tell-tale signs of being a Landmarkian was attaching too much emotion too quickly. She falls prey to that far too deeply to have casual sex to help Landmark. Although her recent breakup (largely due to the aforementioned reason) and her acceptance to the ILP might change that. Only time will tell, I suppose.

I have been involved in the Landmark forum conversation for nearly three years. I left it for a while though and have recently gone back to attend an integrity seminar. It was good to be back. I saw huge ammounts of possibility for me and my life, my partner and our future. I took it all on, but when I told my boy friend about the course, and he looked up on line and found all you guys and your experiences he got crazy worried and concerned. i told him not to worry and he told me to look at this sight which I have now and registered so I can chat.

I think there is something great about the work, the insights, the breakthroughs that people have, it is very moving, BUT on the other hand it is dominating, and there are queries that I never had answered.
I was concerned about the money thing too seeing as so many people volunteer their time.

I need some advice from people who have done it thought it had good points as well as bad.

Pls help,
Cheers :roll: :?

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I think there is something great about the work, the insights, the breakthroughs that people have, it is very moving, BUT on the other hand it is dominating, and there are queries that I never had answered.
I was concerned about the money thing too seeing as so many people volunteer their time.

I think there is a spectrum of possible responses. If you are blessed with a stable personality, strong critical thinking skills, a good social network of friends and aquaintances, a free and flexible imagination, a sense of humor, a clear sense of boundaries, much of the unhealthy "possibility" should roll off your back like water off of a duck.

From my experience, this is true of a reasonable percentage of those who attend. They come, they experience, they learn what they learn, they leave and move on with their lives.

But, as I said, it is a spectum, and many who are attracted to purported transformational technologies are not so well equipped, their personalities are mutable, their critical thinking skills aren't as well developed, they are more socially isolated or their social relations are two dimensional, they may have rigid or arid imaginative lives, lack the fluidity that humor requires, not appreciate or respect boundaries between self and other.

It is this category of mind that runs afoul of the LGAT method. For them it can be a poisoned chalice.

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fleur
it is very moving

There's one of the hooks fleur.

It is moving -- and who can resist the temptation to get swept away in the movement? It is very enticing.

But I think it is a distraction to keep you from watching as the other hand manipulates. You're aware enough that part of your mind has caught the behind-the-curtain movements, as expressed by the domination, lack of answers, and submission to their ways.

Are there kernels of truth in what they teach? Sure. It would be foolish to argue against that. But it is bait. And once you bite they take it much further than common sense. The question you need to ask yourself is: Am I open to the possibility I have been manipulated?

-lightwolf

Being ~open to possibilities~ at Landmark usually means being open to the possibility of recruiting your friends into Landmark, taking more Landmark "courses," and "volunteering" your labor to a profit-driven corporation. Or it might be getting involved in some other community-service-type "project" designed as bait or good PR for Landmark.


And why is it that so many people are fooled by partial truths? Where is it written that if part of what a person says is true then the rest of what he says is also true? How many times being conned does it take for someone to learn that partial truths are the currency of con artists?


Ellen

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fleur
I have been involved in the Landmark forum conversation for nearly three years. I left it for a while though and have recently gone back to attend an integrity seminar. It was good to be back. I saw huge ammounts of possibility for me and my life, my partner and our future. I took it all on, but when I told my boy friend about the course, and he looked up on line and found all you guys and your experiences he got crazy worried and concerned. i told him not to worry and he told me to look at this sight which I have now and registered so I can chat.

It's not a "conversation," fleur, just because they call it that. They want you to think it's an open dialog but it's really a one-way, scripted presentation with pre-planned responses. It's canned, formulaic, and rehearsed to manipulate you into an optimistic mind-set so you'll think good things about Landmark and about your future (with Landmark). If you are "seduced" by their program, you have self-selected in some ways as a victim or as being vulnerable to their manipulation. Of course it looks good and feels good initially. Who would get involved otherwise?


Ellen

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Are there kernels of truth in what they teach? Sure. It would be foolish to argue against that. But it is bait. And once you bite they take it much further than common sense. The question you need to ask yourself is: Am I open to the possibility I have been manipulated?

As long as you maintain a set of healthy filters you can be dragged through almost any form of brainwashing and survive with your mind intact. Look at Senator John McCain... he was isolated and torutured as a prisoner of war for years before his relese was secured, and his thought processes are as solid as a rock.

Out of morbid curiosity, I suppose, I visited and engaged with the Scientologists, the Unification Church, did a lot of NLP and Eriksonian Hypnosis, travelled to southeast asia and did things with their local preists and learned about trance processes in traditional cultures that way... each one had a different truth:bullshit ratio.... and I also concede that some "cults" provide unstable people with the only semblance of an ordered life they will ever know... a friend of mine, a decent and troubled man, found peace by joining the Nicheren Daishonen buddhist organization, they chant to a calligraphic scroll they call the Gohonzon, OK, to my way of thinking that is pure absurdity, they chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo for long stretches of time, they have arranged marriages within the group, and as an invited guest, I observed many obviously damaged people who were sincerely putting their lives together in ways they could not possibly have if left to their own devices. So, yes, there was a great contradiction there, a rigid, authoritarian organization that seemed also to have a deep moral core. I met one of their most senior priests, he struck me as a man of great decency and compassion without a shred of ego, a Reverend Shina... one of the signal differences is that Shina appeared to be the product of a deep Buddhist and Shinto tradtion that had roots in the antiquity of asian culture... clearly this was in no way an organization that I could associate myself with, but I saw its' value to those who needed that structure.
Where I greatly differ with Erhard/EST/LEC/Landmark is that is sorely lacks this ancient wisdom culture (and all that entails) as its' foundational bedrock... where the Asians, within their cultural contexts, had millenia of experience to evolve their practices and mindsets, Erhard had the ludicrous arrogance to think he not only had discovered the wheel, but he'd transcended the limitations of the wheel...

There are writings about this that suggest it is far easier to maintain a defense of one's ego and one's mind against overt, brutal, dictatorial coercion that it is against the more subtle Landmarkian variety. I'm thinking of Singer and Ofshe's "Peripheral versus Central Elements of Self."


Ellen

Your boy friend was right to be concerned. There are few things more frightening then watching someone you love being seduced by clear manipulative tactics. It's like living in a horor movie.

Clearly, the design of the mileu is a blatant attempt to manipulate people for the sole purpose of bringing more money to the Rosenberg Family. Those who get sucked in have been duped and conned. It's sick and twisted.

Nutrino...Yes, I would be very interested in what happens during "sex night" and the six day seminar in general.