the rest of the world seems to have caught up with them, too, though. all that corporatespeak.

it sounds to me like they enjoy using esoteric language to make themselves feel special, as tend to happen in subcultures, and Landmark has one.

as for the subject of this thread, I now feel a little guilty for posting a link to the reform group in a Landmark online community that I had joined. I had tended to make a nuisance of myself there.

I had posted the link to try to subtly introduce the idea that perhaps some participants in LEC think that the corporation could use some changes and to make myself seem less one-sided so that perhaps my criticisms might seem more balanced the next time I posted.

There no conflict between discussing their stuff over here and engaging them over there... when you think about it the most genuinely powerful conversation you could have with them is the conversation that assists them in making core level changes... they are no exception to the rule of senior managment anxiety about the unruly upstarts, they people at the top have a great deal more invested (in many meanings of the word [i:969079800a]invested[/i:969079800a]) in the staus quo... their prestige, their power, their identities are at stake, and new thought percolating up from below does threaten to steal their fire, to delibidinize their mystique, to take them down a peg... somewhere in there I think they're rigid, fearful, and as odd as it sounds, [i:969079800a]superstitious[/i:969079800a] people, their relationship to language does have the neurotic incantory obsessiveness of someone who is compelled to play out the ritual just so, [i:969079800a] or else [/i:969079800a].... the "core of the core" of landmark [i:969079800a] is [/i:969079800a] the use of language patterns and hypnotic structures that the NLP people and the Eriksonian hypnotists have already mapped out quite elegantly... what the Landmark people have mastered, within a rigidly defined context, is covert belief installation, e.g. "I must compulsively do (or think) THIS in order to prevent THAT" ... but the IF-THEN associations are installed below the threshold of waking consciousness and kept "in play" by a verbal gumbo of mumbo-jumbo ( Possibility! Authenticity ! Rackets! Payoffs ! Sharing ! ) that keep the mind in a state of mildy destabilized inner dialog loops.... tha basic trick is to get the mind to circle its thinking back on itself in loops, hence the absolute necessity for using circularized speech paterns and circularized logic... it makes thinking highly obsessional and repetitive, damn near stacatto... of course, to the advanced NLP practitioners this is all good fun because they have enough sophistication to understand what's going on and they've been taught how to use "cognitive crowbars" to bust loop installations or complicate them into novel and interesting shapes... speaking to THAT audience the Landmarkers sound hilariously primitive and painfully earnest... while the unprepared listener doesn't have the necessary skill set to play with it before he or she is overwhelmed BY it... so, We Shall See if Landmark has the Integrtity, or the Guts, or the Brains to take a good long look at its own language pattern rackets and errr... Get Complete... right. Anyboby care to place a side bet on the odds of that happening ?

I don't and never did, consider it a conflict to post both there and on the board, I only like to function as an apologist of sorts to LEC and their policies. it doubtless suits their purpose to present themselves as paying attention to the criticisms leveled at them.

on that online community, BTW, some informal coaching has gone on as to the best way to not appear too off-puttingly enthuastic. I think that they know that the hard sell often has the opposite effect.

the concept of rackets, as I have mentioned before, originates out of Transactional Analysis, not est, even if est picked up upon it. TA, has, IMHO, a lot to offer, even if I don't completely buy all its assumptions.

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Cruisader
What do you guys think of their petition?

Less emphasis on bringing guests? That's funny. I suspect that Landmark will make sure to crush the revolt (i.e., in Landmark-speak, to not allow a clearing for the possibility of that conversation).

The revolt is not crushable. If they considered it, they decided they couldn't or decided not to do so. Landmark wrote supportive words to the group.

I think they're have finally, at long last, awoken to the fact that they must either make significant improvements, which won't be easy, considering how deeply addicited they are to their collective identity, or they are inevitably going to be blown off the map by the rising tide of NLP... the reason I say this is because NLP is [i:4a8f629d17] rapidly [/i:4a8f629d17] generalizing into the culture at large, and radically unlike Landmark/EST/Erhardianism it is an "open source" technology like Linux is to the computing world, where Landmark has, regrettably, modelled itself on a near archaic "closed source" model that only a massive organization like Microsoft can successfully manage. But, Landmark isn't Microsoft by about a dozen light years, intellectually that's like triyng to compare a flashlight to a 12K HMI movie light.... open source technology has dozens or hundreds of creative nodes all constantly evolving and experimenting with local questions, problems, solution sets, then folding these back into the "mainstream" as fast as they can be diffused and absorbed.... compare this with a rigid, arrogant, pretentious, unselfquestioning organization that is an artifact of the "best practices" of maybe 1985 at the latest... weird thing, I'm in a work group that has a guy who is Landmark exposed and a guy who is NLP exposed... the Landmark guy is spouting the same stuff I heard a generation ago... the exact same formulaic wisdom kibbles, the cliched philosophic pet food... and he manifests the same middling ambitious steely eyed go getter EST/Landmark attitude that has [i:4a8f629d17] maybe [/i:4a8f629d17] Division Vice President by the time you're 45 written all over it... the NLP guy has a much more supple, adaptive, cogent style... the question is whether Landmark is destined to populate itself with the middling go getters who want to power their way up a couple of organizational levels and NLP naturally attracts flexible personalities or what... however this plays out, it is painfully clear that Landmark either figures out how to get up to speed in a new cognitive environment or go the way of the Rosicrucian Order or the Freemasons... does anyone out there even remeber the Masons, once a large social force in American life, long before there was a L Ron or a Werner ? Get off it fast, Landmarkians, or you will soon join their ranks in the hallowed halls of irrelevance.

Landmark can best be compared to a virus of the mind (very similar to a computer virus or biological virus):

Step 1 (Landmark Forum): The virus reprograms its victim into believing that with the help of Landmark the victim's life is infininately better than before. All the victim needs to do is create possibilities and believe in them. He begins to believe all his fantsasies will become reality which feels great!

Step 2 (Advanced Course): The virus reprograms the victim into believing that sharing Landmark is THE way to make a difference and to practise *enrollment* skills at the same time. Why not share this wonderful technology with your friends and family?

Step 3 (SELP): The victim is programmed to get used to getting strangers involved in Landmark. The home introduction is introduced into the victim's system.

Step 4 (ILP): Program the victim to become extremely fanatical pushers for Landmark. Persuasion techniques are taught making the victim more and more effective at infecting new victims.

Etc...

As soon as this virus becomes too big in numbers they begin to attract lots of negative attention of prospective victims with whom the programming failed. Newspaper articles etc. Totally whiping this virus out of existance is extremely difficult though since this kind of programming people is a rare and unknown thing and people rather believe an enthusiastic friend than a negative newspaper article...

The tricky thing is that focussing on the future, believing a lot more is possible than you believed before, being open and honest about everything and taking commitments more seriously can also actually produce some good results. Losing touch with reality however can be disastrous!

[groups.yahoo.com]

In this message the poster ML try to tell Harry Rosenberg that their need for transformation is coming from possibility and not from something is wrong. To come from "something is wrong" is a definite no-no in landmark world so you have to rephrase it into something like what this guy is writing. Which is a lot of words and a cover-up of the truth.
The truth being that a lot of people are turned off by landmark become there is something very wrong there. But you cannot say that if you are a believer.

As someone who has been there it is very interesting to see how the wording of the text while discussing what's wrong with landmark becomes long essays of jargon.

This quote from his post is "kinda" fun;
"The intention of using your text in the flyers was not to imply endorsement per se, but rather to facilitate a context of openness for this
conversation."

Harry was not altogether pleased with how they danced with the way the listening was spoken ?

What have we here ? The semanitc equivalent of Chinse water torture ?

Not to fear. Harry and the gang are busy working on the new product lineup:

"We can see through your writings that each proposed reform
has come out of actual negative experiences. While we continually strive to deliver excellent customer service, we make mistakes and are not always in the listening of our customers. We are fully aligned with your commitment to elevate Landmark Education and are at work transforming many of the areas you pointed out." ...


[b:b6f221b384] "not always in the listening of our customers" [/b:b6f221b384] = running off at the mouth like a bunch of robotized jackasses.

If only Google had an ESTmark to English translator function.

that might just result in messages like this:

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