"I got so focused on doing the work that my career suffered... to the point that I eventually the only option open to me was to go on staff..."

Read that again...

"I got so focused on doing the work that my career suffered... to the point that I eventually the only option open to me was to go on staff..."

Again...

"I got so focused on doing the work that my career suffered... to the point that I eventually the only option open to me was to go on staff..."

This is no joke.
You might think that GC4062 had some choice there.

You would be mistaken.

Everyone I knew on staff was there because of this.

Everyone.

When you get "squeezed through the funnel", what we called it, you are pared down to "who you are as possibility". This usually comes to some high falooting statement about the "possibility of mankind" or if you are really "clean" just "possibility".
You are wide open for deep programming at this point.
You should see the faces of those that fail the "funnel". The look of someone that will never be able to experience the "integrity" of living their lives from "possibility". Everything else is a shallow replacement.

"Being is Source"
"Doing arises from Being"
"Having arises from Doing"

If we were going to have any "integrity" with our being, doing, and having, it gets very narrow.
This leaves you with only one "real" option: staff.
Nowhere else would bring "completion" to your "existence".
Where else could you "have" from what you "do" because of "who you are".
Everything else "rings" hollow.

The "Holy Mission" to bring "possibility to mankind".
It's funny now to remember the conversations about getting rid of that thought that were really meant to implant it more deeply. The old NLP trick.

Most of staff never knows what hit them. Even most of the FL's.
The duped of the duped.
Eliciting culpability from anyone below "source" may be a waste of time.
Jack sources Harry, Joan, Steve, Nancy, Mark, Randy, Jinnendra, Laurel, etc...

Like the common Nazi defence: "we were just following orders", we were twisted through the "funnel".

Unfortunately, our own little "Adolf" is basking in the sunshine laughing his ass off, rolling in piles of cash.

When you find out it's a ponzi sham, it rapes you. You are never the same afterwards.

Ellen,

I understand what you're saying, but what I'm experiencing is quite different from that.

The meme of "responsibilty" is used to get you to "acountable"/at fault for your illness. That's why he used the "common denominator" theme. The dissonance comes in when he states that "people have very little control over their lives".
"No control/yet responsible".
ZORK!!!!
Only "sourcing" gives control.
Source is Jack/Werner.

Quote
Hope
Both my doctor 's and LE's consistent reference to "responsibility" is the most deeply embedded meme for me. After the "love-bomb" phase of my visits with the doctor, he started slipping in the suggestion that I was the "common denominator" in any and all problems, but at the same time, and I didn't put 2 + 2 together at the time, he would say that people have very little control over their lives. He really stressed his perception of me being a control freak when I first declined an invitation to go to an Intro night at LE and when I declined the use of Ecstasy to uncover suppressed emotions.

Quote
gc4062
Corboy,

In your research, did you find any mention of how to remove an implanted meme?

Here's the thing I want to know... if I have any residual affects of my time in landmark, how do I get it outta there?

(Guy, maybe you have some insights into this as well?)

To use your computer analogy, maybe I need a memory defrag :)

Thanks!

Hi gc4062:

Your question got me thinking.

In cognitive behavior therapy the whole basis of its method is the theory that the way we FEEL is directily related to the types of thoughts that we tell ourselves.

Many of these thoughts are often automatic and go almost unnoticed.

Regardless we engineer these voices ourselves or pick them up from others and then repeat them over and over--for example from LEC trainers and similar voices.

Now there's even science that suggests that as infants we me even pick up the attitudes and reactions to certain stimuli of those with whome we spent our formative years--even before we could talk.

And from that theory the whole CBT method was developed that taught people how to expose these harmful thoughts and then counter them with more realistic ones.

What's amazing is that there is a huge body of evidence to show that when people do change those thoughts that most did feel better. Nearly all actually.

I cannot emphasize enough just how powerful these methods are.

That said, since CBT is so good at exposing and neurtralizing those kind of "voices," I wonder if perhaps CBT might not be useful to neutralize other kinds of voices--like past LEC trainers' voices for example?

I simply offer it as a possible avenue to pursue and test for yourself. I do not represent it as THE only answer nor do I guarantee that it will work.

IF anyone is interested for whatever reason, you can find both"Feeling Good" and "Intimate Connections" at Amazon.com, Read the professional kudos there and elsewhere as well as the many testimonials and make up your own mind if you think they might be helpful to you.

If money is an issue I know that both books are available at the library and/or inter library loan.

And best of all nobody will call and/or try to shame you into doing what they think you "should."

Good luck and good health!

SS

Quote
gc4062
Hi SS,

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm going to get a copy and give them a read through. It would be interesting to see if this could counter or remove the implanted programming.

Of course, the one thing I was told over and over growing up "what goes around comes around" ... I just hope I'm around when the stuff that landmark has been doing to people comes back on them. I always thought that statement was just so much hot air, but have seen it come true so many times.

I think my other relief SS has been a wicked sense of humour :D
A number of times when something landmark related creeps up, there is usually something funny that can be done to dispel it. And there is some really wicked humour that goes on in private.

I also pass along tips and ideas from the folks here to people in our local survivors group (former staff, program leaders, and other recovering participants)... I'll let you know what they find has worked for them.

Hello:

You're welcome. I too would like to believe that the good that we sow will someday come back to us in ways that will help us. Time will tell. Good luck and best wishes.

SS

I just got back from a 7 day Zen retreat, and am rather punchy from lack of sleep. It was great.

Your posts look fascinating. I want to read them after I get some sleep so I can give it my quality attention.

Guy, you said my posts can be difficult to read because your old memes get re-triggered and it affects your ability to read and remember certain information. You said my posts were difficult to read for that reason.

Would you advise me to change my writing style? Greater use of simple declarative sentences?

The way you are all describing your struggles to free yourselves from this conditioning are impressive. Thank you.

This was part of the vow we used to begin our meme busting day at the Zen retreat. It is the same thing Guy, Hope, Elena, Sunsetserene and Guy Fawkes are doing here:

Excerpts from the Boddhisattva Vow:

Beings are numberless, I vow to wake up with them

Delusions (memes?) are inexhaustible, I vow to extinguish them

Dharma gates (life experiences) are innumerable--I vow to enter them.


Good night, till tomorrow, fellow meme busters. You're doing something very compelling--this thread has been getting an astounding number of views!

Welcome back.

Your posts are chock full of information and questions also.
Too much for my attention span. After the second paragraph it gets blurry to me.
My mind wanders and loses interest.:confused:
I have to reread everthing at least 3 or 4 times.

Which is drag for me because you write worthwile material and I can't get everything you're posting and there's too much for me too respond to.
Simpler is better for me. Everything does not need to be said or asked at one posting. We have time.

Thank you for the consideration.:)

I understand about writing from stream of consciousness. That's how mine start out. I have to do a lot of editing. My stream looks like "Turet's Syndrome".:p


"Guy, you said my posts can be difficult to read because your old memes get re-triggered and it affects your ability to read and remember certain information. You said my posts were difficult to read for that reason.

Would you advise me to change my writing style? Greater use of simple declarative sentences?

Did not realize the extent to which gc and Guy are still burdened by the conditioning received in LEC."

I have not been thru LGATs, GC and Hope. So I needed the reminder that many survivors have meme trigger problems that can disrupt concentration.

The meme posts were long partly because I was quoting large sections from articles by other people (Blackmore and Dawkins.)

Will see about doing the following when I write future posts:

1) Use simple declarative sentences more frequently instead of long sentences with lots of subordinate clauses.

2) Shorter paragraphs

3) Subject headings


A professor at seminary taught an ethics course. She taught us how to analyze the use of logic in the texts assigned to us. To learn this we had to concentrate intently on what we read. We had to learn to identify the authors 'central argument' then trace the author's line of reasoning, how he or she used evidence and see if that line of reasoning followed rules of logic.

This was tough stuff. It was literally 'brain gym'. Our professor was teaching us how to think like athletes--and how to concentrate on a line of reasoning for long periods of time.

One of my classmates moaned and said, 'God, Karen's like Professor Kingsfield (the formidable law professor in Paper Chase')--its like she's training us to be lawyers!'

Our teacher told us that if we found this difficult, to go to her for help. She told us that over the years, she'd discovered that many of her students had trouble concentrating on the texts and could not identify the author's central argument. They come to her at office hours, panicking, terrified they were stupid.

It was not about lack of intelligence. All the distressed students were bright people. Karen discovered they had problems applying their intelligence, and that the problem came from a history of trauma.

They could concentrate in short 'sprints' but they could not concentrate long term on a 'marathon' basis--and to do logic and ethical analysis, they had to become marathoners.

Professor Karen learned that all these came from abusive families. As tiny children, they'd learned to dissociate ('zone out') in order to survive.

As children they dared not activate their reasoning power in relation to their families. If they had 'put two and two together' they would have been faced with with knowledge about their families that was beyond their inner resources.

To preserve their sanity, they had learned to concentrate, but sporadically, in a scattershot fashion. They dared not learn to concentrate in a powerful, sustained manner and they dared not activate their full reasoning powers, because that would have caused them to see the truth of their families with unbearable clarity.

Result: These 'adult children' had difficulty with academic subjects (math, logic, law, philosophy) that required sustained, intense concentration.

These same students did very well in subjects where one could improvise (music, visual arts, creative writing) use intuition, or where one could get by concentrating for brief moments--eg, history, humanities.

These students had difficulty concentrating, and they'd grown up in 'ordinary' crazy families. They had not been through the sophisticated meme implantation perpetrated by Landmark.

A Direction for the Future?

They used to think diabetes mellitus (abnormally high levels of sugar in the blood) was a single disease. By the 1950s-1960s they discovered there were two major types of diabetes mellitus. Both produced high blood sugar, but they need different treatment and different prevention strategies.

Someday we may find out that there are different kinds of post-cult concentration/memory trouble.

It will be an important advance in cult recovery when we can distinguish between

Concentration/Memory problems produced by implanted parasitic memes (LGAT Syndrome, Post-Indoctrination Syndrome)

Concentration/Memory problems produced by dissociation caused by exposure to terrifying human reationships, rather than formal indoctrination based on a standardized script and covert trance induction.

Maybe, some day we may find out that LGAT survivors need different kinds of recovery tools than persons like me who have been warped by crazy families and relationships resembling crazy families.

Corboy,

" As children they dared not activate their reasoning power in relation to their families. If they had 'put two and two together' they would have been faced with with knowledge about their families that was beyond their inner resources.

To preserve their sanity, they had learned to concentrate, but sporadically, in a scattershot fashion. They dared not learn to concentrate in a powerful, sustained manner and they dared not activate their full reasoning powers, because that would have caused them to see the truth of their families with unbearable clarity."

You said a mouthful there.
Whacked me over the head.
That describes my experience with LEC to a tee.

I think "crazy families" could also include what I've seen here as termed the "cultic relationship".

I've realized that abusive relationships fit the pattern of undue influence perfectly. Many survivors tell of how the abuse started slowly, with little things that in themselves didn't seem like much, then built and built until they had become virtual prisoners before they realized what had happened to them. Victims come to believe all the ugly things their abusers say to them about themselves, which keeps them stuck in the relationship and unable to gather the strength to leave. Disassociation and regression are coping mechanisms in these situations as well as in the LGAT experience.

As the abuser is intentionally inflicting damage much in the same way LGATS do, perhaps they are more closely related. I wonder what research has been done to help people who are victims of abuse restore cognitive strength. Perhaps it could be applied to the LGAT survivor.