lets dont forget, and even landmark makes
mention that landmark is partially based
on heidegger's teaching. heidegger was a
nazi and people can see semblences of nazi
think in landmark grads. its amazing. usually
landmarkians will mention that everyone in
germany at the time of the reich was a nazi.
what they dont seem to understand that
heidegger was one of the few that sat
down at the table with hitler.

and i thought i would mention that landmark
is partially based on scientology and also
on the religion jinn.

scienientology and jinn are both religions
that are very very secretive. their need for
secrecy is base for their success.

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It's a pity though that the pre forum attendees weren't exposed to the many plagiarized yet perfectly helpful psychological techniques used by landmark but without all the bs and manipulation landmark mixes in with them.

This was a problem for me because the naturopath I went to, while secretly using Landmark technologies, had introduced me to many of the psychological techniques, as well as a mish-mash of eastern philosophies that Landmark used. In other words, he plagiarized Landmark's plagiarized material. So, there would be times during the Forum that I felt totally depressed because I would recognize some of these ancient and some sacred philosophies and teachings and feel very stupid for not feeling better. Knowing a little bit about these philosophies actually let me think Landmark was credible and that I was just stupid. But then I would try to apply Landmark technology to my situation and all I could come up with was that it is not wrong for another person who claims to be a doctor to lie about his experience, his training, his relationship with me, etc. And when I realized that his lack of knowledge of a particular supplement he gave me prevented him from seeing the trouble I was getting into as a result, I started blaming myself, ala Landmark, for taking it and not being responsible.

I've been corresponding with someone on Craigslist who says she's very depressed and has tried all there is to try (meaning drugs and therapy). I told her about other solutions and a bit about my experience of how a metabolic disorder was misdiagnosed as depression. I also told her how Landmark "diagnosed" my adverse reaction to the above supplement as attention-getting behavior, and I told her about Landmark. That email prevented her from going to a Landmark meeting by an LEC participant who also saw her initial email - a real ambulance chaser - and invited her to a meeting. They love to prey on the most vulnerable, yet criticize therapy throughout the Forum.

H

landmark preys on its victims.
many people attend landmark when they
have a death in the family. of course they
feel down.

when they lose a good job. of course they
feel down.

when they have maritial problem, again
they feel down.

and there are many other things that can
happen in peoples lives that make them
feel down or in need.

this is how the people of the united states
make it easy for the cults.

we have nothing in place to help each other
when we are in need.

in the u s if u are a man and u dont have
a wonderful job, drive a big suv, date the
most gorgous women in your city and
have millions in the bank u are in a sense
not a man.

then when something happens if u are a man
u have no place to turn.

the cults are right there for these people.
they make them feel good about themselves
hypnotise them, take away their belief system,
turn them into recruiters and give them a false
sense of security and family.

what else could u expect ?

practically everybody denies it that takes the
forum but almost all had some kind of problem
that was nagging at them.

3 days later no more problem and presto
a new way of being. unfortunately there is
nothing new about landmark, its just old
stuff repackaged and to be honest werner
the founder of est now landmark has done
a remarkable job of mind control. it works
we cant deny that landmark works.

one of the tools that landmark uses to pull
of their control techniques is to convince
people that their past has no meaning.

instead of dealing with their issues these
people are just in a sense putting them away
while they go around with this new sense
of being. its very dangerous long term.

there are many landmark grads that dont realize
that some day in their future something may
happen that brings up the memories of their
past and if landmark is not around to be their
crutch they could end up with a mental
breakdown and i am not referring to what
landmark call a breakdown, but a real mental
breakdown that harms them. but because
they good now they dont seem to think of
it or to care.

I'm bumping this thread up for new member Zroot. $375Lighter's "manual" is not as tongue-in-cheek as he says. I found my experience and his narrative to be pretty much identical.

I dont' doubt that the Landmark training makes you feel incredible... but so does heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, alcohol, etc.

Thrilling and life-altering initially. Then habit-forming. Ultimately devastating.

For you who have done Landmark courses ( or if anyone else know) I have a couple of question. What are typical Landmark words? I know "rackets" and "breakthrough" but are there others? It's intressting when talking to folks and to get a hint on where the speaches come from.

The other thing I wonder is what is exactly Landmark technique? The tools (like Glenn soemthing talked about) do they differ from what therapist say? I know about not holding on to stuff that bothers you (rackets?) but I, with no Landmark experience, have never done that, so that can't be very unique. I just wonder what you mean when you say Landmark tool and technigues.

Thanks.

Well, NL, even after doing Landmark, I wonder about a lot of things.

They have borrowed and modified, as well as over-simplified techniques and ideas from Scientology via est, a little bit of Buddhism, and as another poster pointed out, rational emotive therapy. The difference between what LE does and what a therapist does is vast. Whereas a therapist, one-on-one, would guide you with compassion to look at your past and present, while looking out for your best interests, LE forces a crisis in front of a crowd and then drops you. There is also watered down eastern philosophy of the Self - you are not the event, the event is not happening now so why are you still responding to the event. LE believes that messages that have been internalized from, for instance, trauma, are a story. For instance, a man stated his father beat him with a chair. The leader sounded empathetic and compassionate as the man told about his childhood, and then the leader turned it into blame, saying something like "So you've been going through life, not doing well, no respect for authority, blah, blah, blah, because the story you made about your father puts the blame on him and makes you look good." When the man, after recovering from the shock, started questioning this, he was cut off and told he was running a racket.

The solution of not getting it is to take more courses. A racket is considered any behavior or situation that one uses to look good and avoid taking responsibility. Health problems are a racket. Disappearing headaches and other illnesses is taken straight from Scientology. (In the book, Outrageous Behavior, by Steve Pressman, the chronological history of borrowing and modifying is laid out clearly. )

Other terminology:
Enroll - According to LE, this DOES NOT MEAN recruiting others into LE, but to include them in your intentions to create possibilities. However, with the hard-sell that takes up a great deal of a Forum weekend, many attendees end up getting pissed off at the blatant sales and begin to question "enrolling others" early on. It's crazy-making. The language is set up to confuse.

More to follow....

landmark has also borrowed from
another old religion. if u do some
research on the religion jinn u will
find the forum and the techniques
used in this old religion to be
practically identical.

its fascinating reading if u can
find the information.

...I thought the same thing about Tolle's book.

On the vocabulary point, I did eventually find Scientology's glossary which is pretty scary, but also humorous because the leader of the cult I was in said the EXACT SAME STUFF. "We are superior people." "If you leave you will die." "We are the only place in the world that does this kind of work." I'm sure that Landmark is pretty much the same:

Here are some of Scientology's funnier terms, I think:
(I'm sure if I survived it, I wouldn't think it was so funny.)

[u:85aabbce4e]auditor[/u:85aabbce4e]: a minister or minister-in-training of the Church of Scientology. Auditor means one who listens, from the Latin audire meaning “to hear or listen.” An auditor is a person trained and qualified in applying auditing [b:85aabbce4e]to individuals for their betterment[/b:85aabbce4e]. An auditor does not do anything to a preclear, he works together with the preclear to help the preclear defeat his reactive mind.

[u:85aabbce4e]Clear[/u:85aabbce4e]: a highly desirable state for the individual, achieved through auditing, which was [b:85aabbce4e]never attainable before Dianetics[/b:85aabbce4e]. A Clear is a person who no longer has his own reactive mind and therefore suffers none of the ill effects that the reactive mind can cause. The Clear has no engrams which, when restimulated, throw out the correctness of his computations by entering hidden and false data.

My emphasis. This is the exact same thing that I was told in the cult I was in. "This higher level of living is [i:85aabbce4e]only available here to our special group[/i:85aabbce4e]. Such bs.

[u:85aabbce4e]E-Meter[/u:85aabbce4e]: short for Electropsychometer, a specially designed instrument which helps the auditor and preclear locate areas of spiritual distress or travail. The E-Meter is a religious artifact and can only be used by Scientology ministers or ministers-in-training. It does not diagnose or cure anything. It measures the mental state or change of state of a person and thus is of benefit to the auditor in helping the preclear locate areas to be handled.

[u:85aabbce4e]thetan[/u:85aabbce4e]: an immortal spiritual being; the human soul. [b:85aabbce4e]The term soul is not used because it has developed so many other meanings from use in other religions and practices[/b:85aabbce4e] that it doesn’t describe precisely what was discovered in Scientology. We use the term thetan instead, from the Greek letter theta (), the traditional symbol for thought or life. One does not have a thetan, something one keeps somewhere apart from oneself; one is a thetan. The thetan is the person himself, not his body or his name or the physical universe, his mind or anything else. It is that which is aware of being aware; the identity which IS the individual.

I LOVE how these people understand the human soul better than any other religion or philosophy!!

My point is: The vocabulary was different but the ideas are exactly the same as the group I belonged to. I imagine Landmark is very similar.

I have a feeling I'm preaching to the crowd, typing all this for my own edification really... thanks for letting me go on...

Corboy

Quote

The state of mind investigated in Buddhism requires alertness, but you dont value one state of mind over another. If you're grieving or in pain, you're aware of it, but you let the feeling pass when its ready to pass. It is the same state of mind cultivated by the best martial artists and practitioners of traditional japanese Zen art forms.

Very interesting to me when I remember just how much time my naturopath spent studying and taking classes in Tai Chi, Nei Kung, and taoist meditation. Then he spent a lot of time at the Sufi Ctr. At both centers, he would pick up newbies and take them to dinner so that he could evangelize. A real addiction, both the practice and the preaching. His practices were escape with a feeling of self-righteousness and arrogance, not unlike Jim Bakkers and all the other fakes.

You described his version of being present perfectly - a combo of denial and dissociation. Problem is, that when that facade began to crumble, depression and anxiety set in, and health deteriorated. With that, he told me I wasn't being present and asked what it was I was resisting (Landmark's similar accusation of the attendee not taking responsibility and running rackets). This was when MDMA was suggested, as a means of spiritual journey. Very crazy-making.