My husband of 23 years did the Sterling weekend in Nov. 2001. I had a bad feeling about this from the begining. We are very close, and talked in length about him doing the weekend. I searched the web for info on Sterling before his weekend, but could not find anything. The weekend came, and my husband went. On that Saturday, I sat down at the computer again and started searching. I finally found Rick Ross. I read everything he had on Sterling. I was so scared for my husband. I stayed up all night calling him an his cell phone. I also called the hotel he and some other men were staying at. I finally reached him around 4:00 a.m. I told him about everything I found and how scared I was for him. He told me he was doing fine and not to worry. When I went to pick him up on Monday morning, I had to wait for 2 to 3 hours for his graduation. I was approached by serveral women who were also waiting. They told me how great the weekend is, and I should do the women's weekend. I told them that I thought Sterling is a cult and I would never do it. When I went into the room for the graduation, I never felt anything like I was feeling. It felt evil!! My husband took one look at me and knew he needed to get me out of there before I said anything. We talked all the way home about everything he went threw. He did not hold anything back. I told him in lenght about everyting I read. He said he just wanted to try it out for awhile and I agreed. He also did the point program after.

He knew from the begining I wanted nothing to do with the men or family of women. He knew exactly how I felt. After a few months of meeting in the middle of the night for 3 hours to 5 hours at a time, I was getting sick of not getting a full night sleep and missing my best friend and husband. The hardest part for us was when he would get up in the middle of the night for his secert meetings. He did not get alot of phone calls at home, because I would tell those men not to call my house.

We would fight about his meetings & weekends away. Having 2 girls, there wasn't alot we could do toghter as a family. Before Sterling we would always be toghter on the weekends doing family stuff. After 5 months I was sick of this cult crap in my life. I told him it was either me or them. He picked me under one condition, that we would get some therapy. (His idea) One question I asked him during all of this was "Would you want your daughters to marry a Sterling Man?" He answered "NO." That's when we both agreed to the therapy.

I could not understand how this group of men would disguise themselves and help groups like Weave. I've always wondered if Weave know who they really are. (MDI)

He received a phone call a few weeks ago about helping out for the men's weekend in October in Oakland. He told them no, but it brought back alot of those feelings again. I still think about that time in our life. I learned a lot about myself and our marriage.

Sterling preaches women are responsible for the relationship but how can you have a relationship with someone who is gone all the time. How can a man be a good father if they are never home? How can a man be a good father to daughters, if they can't be involved in their dad's life.

I hope my experience will help other wives out there. Be strong and be true to yourself.

i am very grateful for you and your husband. you are fortunate but i firmly believe that God has the power and i agree to stay strong and believe. never let sterling win. stay in faith and glad to hear the testimony...your simplicity of the description is absolutely on the money. i also think God led you to the website and that was very very much a divine intervention. i took was at the graduation and i felt no love from any of the people and i am very extroverted and no one even wanted to talk to me. it was strange. one woman did finally as i had to wait over 3 hours. she said " wait until you see how your husband looks at you" as if it would be good..what a joke..and how they worship justin..so sad that so many people are under his brainwashing and he absolutely knows exactly what he is doing. don't worry God will get him it's only a matter of time for whoa to the one who willfully plots to harm knowingly..let's all pray for sterling to fall..and to be exposed for all the evil he has done...he is anti christ and told a man who stood up and said "jesus christ is my lord and savior" and justin sterling said " put him on the shelf and listen to me as i have the answers and you can go back to him later" knowing if the brainwashing kicks even if they go to church they are gone until God breaks it off..evil..called false prophets and in the bible..in graphic detail..exactly what he does..stay strong and let's pray for his fall and the exposure...time to go down mr sterling..

Landmark is such a corrupt and manipulative organisation it is unbelivable.

It is almost like You pay to become their salesman.

Everybody involved seems to loose their heads completely and just hysterically run around using Landmark vocabulary trying to enroll evrybody. What a stupid phenonomen.

we have to pray for this organization Landmark Education to go down because it has accrediation for education. If you notice on the Forum entry there are almost 5000 hits. Landmark, Forum very bad and it's everywhere. Employers will pay for their employees to go there..bad news..i had a friend who went and she called from there and i told her to get the heck out of there it's a cult. she came to my house but still went back and even knowing they had planted a seed in her that she was still pulled for awhile..and finally i had to send her the proof over and over..this mind control is very deep i studied hypnosis and i never liked it nor would do it. i know if used properly it can help people but the risk of being manipulated are too high so i don't like hypnosis for that reason. these cults are mass hypnosis. people need to be educated so everyone don't be ashamed to speak up and educate people to what is going on. we are the fortunate ones who have the experience to speak to prevent as many as we can from falling for their bait...:)

I want to tell you my story. I want to share this with everyone I know.

On August 21st 2006, my husband was put in jail for domestic violence and I moved out of our house. I was very torn by this, but really hoped that someday we could make it work. He was released later that week and a guy from church quickly befriended him. He began to see him or talk to him everyday. Mark, the friend, asked Troy, my husband, to attend a Men’s meeting with him. My husband called late in the evening, around 11:30 to tell me that the meeting was ok, but kind of “weird”. He said he couldn’t go into great detail. This meeting was a part of the Sterling Men’s Division.

This past weekend my husband attended the Sterling Men’s Weekend in LA. To “graduate” into and be a part of the leadership team of the Sterling Men’s Division, you have to attend this weekend. My husband left on Friday night, I was not allowed to take him, and only Mark could. I was not told where they were taking him or what hotel he was staying in.

On Sat. night I woke up really worried and began to research this event. What I found horrified me. The leader, Justin Sterling, has been in prison and has had his name changed several times due to legal issues. He has molested children and his family has disowned him. I also found out that the men, about 500, have to strip naked and do Indian chants. This is called their “rite of passage”. Then they have to explain in descriptive detail their sexual history. The “recruiters”, Mark, prey on men who are vulnerable and have an emotional or physically abusive past.

I was very upset so I began praying and drove to LA to get my husband back. When I got there they threatened to put me in jail for trespassing, this was public property. I proceeded to go further and was told that they had guns, and that the meetings were designed because of women like me. I called my pastors and family and started a prayer chain then drove home to Oceanside. I called Mark and asked why he did what he did. Why would a “Christian” man send another brother to something like this? He stated I just needed to be more trusting and that it was like a Promise Keepers Event, I knew he was lying. All Mark told my husband before leaving was that this weekend would heal our marriage and change Troy forever. Troy went, thinking that he was doing the right thing.

On Mon. as my husband was leaving LA, I called him and asked why he didn’t call and if he took his clothes off for men. He stated he signed a privacy statement and would not tell me anything. His voice sounded like he was in a trance and I could hear men in the background telling him things to tell me. I began crying asking him why he would do such a thing. He began to make excuses saying he was dancing like David did in the Bible, or that Jesus had 12 men around him at all times, so what Troy did was ok and completely biblical. These are supposed Christian men recruiting other men into this organization!

At this event the men are taught that women are 100% responsible for relationships, that women only want money and power, and all men want is love. The men are convinced that keeping things from your wife will help her and that women should NEVER share their emotions with their husbands. Men are told that all women are bitches and should be treated as such.

After the event, then men are “inducted” into manhood by stripping naked for the leader. After this the men are expected to pay Justin Sterling monthly dues, and their meetings run into the wee hours of the night. They are very private and if you question any member of this group, he will either lie or say he can’t talk about it. They are all bound by the privacy agreement they signed.

How can I help end this? How can I help save other marriages? How can I bring this to the light? I am only 26 and have been married for less than a year! Please tell this to every woman/man you know.

They have a division for women also. The women are taught that they are bitches, should be submissive, never question their husband, stroke his ego everyday, love him, serve him, where pink, pumps and pearls. They are taught that they are to never intimidate a man. They are to never question a man’s authority.

Jami777

Thank you for sharing your story.

You have taken the first step to helping others by posting it. The more resources on the Internet detailing what this group does, the greater the chance is that you will help others.

For the sake of educating yourself, you might find some interesting information on the Mankind Project thread, which is very similar to Sterling, at [board.culteducation.com]

Included on the thread is an outline of the programme used during the weekend.

Another thread called ManKind Project? - at [board.culteducation.com] - mentions the similarity between Sterling and the Mankind Project.

Learning more about Sterling and LGATs in general is a good place to start, to help yourself and others.

The Rick Ross website is probably the best resource on the Internet.

All the best,
Brad

Hello, my name is Morgan.

I was moved to post here by reading the concerns of 'Sterling Institute Wives', about the effect of their husbands' participation in Sterling Institute Men's Weekends, and in particular the associated men's groups.

I know whereof I speak, as I attended the very first men's weekend seminar, and I was the first male paid staff member at Sterling Institute, starting in 1981. I was responsible for almost every facet of the institute's operations, for almost two years, until I had enough of Justin Sterling and resigned.

I attended every seminar, for both men and women, during that time, and I was instrumental in the creation of the work that has now decayed into what you describe.

I was very close to Justin, both professionally and socially. He had almost no friends, was estranged from his parents, and I and the other two to three staff members (all women), served both as his family and his servants.

I was privy to his most private thoughts about men and women during that time. Toward the end, I was a co-facilitator with Justin in the seminars. I probably know more about him and his organization than anyone else you will ever meet.

Let's start by straightening something out. The institute and its work were not an 'offshoot' of EST. Justin, all of the staff members, and most of the participants at that time were, however, EST graduates. I came to the institute with a background of producing large enrollment events for EST, and I was very familiar with the underlying dynamics of such seminars.

The basic processes for physical management of the seminar participants were based upon EST practice, and worked quite well to ensure that people could go through the administrative precedures of the first day, and take bathroom and meal breaks in a way that was both expeditious, and protective.

The personal nature of the subjects dealt with in both the EST training and Sterling's work required that people experience a sense of safety as they allowed themselves to give voice to the most delicate and vulnerable aspects of their lives. That meant that people couldn't be milling about during the seminar, coming and going as they pleased.

Bathroom and meal breaks were scheduled at set times, and everyone understood what those times were. People who required access to bathrooms more than once every four hours were required to bring a note with them, from their doctor. Special provision was then made for their needs. They could sit toward the back of the room, and come and go as needed.

None of this had anything to do with 'mind control', though attendance at a lengthy and intense event such as the seminars were would, of course, produce a so-called 'altered state' of awareness There is nothing fundamentally wrong, or 'evil' about this, as it is literally no different, dynamically, than sitting through a long movie or play. Of course, much depends upon what information is being received by the participants while in that altered state.

The seminars as I knew them were very different from what they have become over the years. Back then, the male and female graduates appreciated and celebrated each other, and they worked together very well, for example when volunteering as seminar assistants.

Some of what we taught was very similar to what is offered now, if not identical. The tone, however, was entirely different. In the beginning women were told that, in the area of relationship, men were basically jerks.

The secret formula for success, then, was for the woman to find a man that she was willing to take on as a 'project', make sure that he got what he wanted, and manage him so that he only wanted what she wanted him to want.

On the other side, men were told to find a woman who would take them on as a project, surrender to her management, and make sure that he got what he wanted. Because men were held to be so incapable about relationship, the woman was to be totally responsible for the relationship, in the eyes of both herself and her man.

At the time, that information was delivered as an acknowledgement of womens' power and wisdom, and most of the participants took it that way.

I know, I know, it sounds, now, like a recipe for disaster. Back then, however, it made sense to a lot of people. Don't ask me why.

There were support groups organized for men and women separately, made up of people from the same seminar, who lived in the same general area. These groups were supposedly set up to help people integrate what they had learned into their lives. The real, unacknowledged purpose was to produce new enrollments in the seminars.

You must understand that organizations that do this kind of work survive solely on the basis of continuing enrollments. As with any other business, without new customers, the business soon dies. That's just plain business sense.

So, how do you get people who have just undergone a powerful, life-changing experience to enroll other people? This is how EST did it: "If you don't go out and share your experience of the EST training with others, then the experience that you had wasn't real." Mind-boggliong, isn't it? But it worked.

EST offered a whole array of Graduate Seminars, offered as a weekly series of evening seminars on various subjects, where graduates could expand upon their initial experience. Graduates were encouraged to bring guests, who would be taken aside to other rooms while the seminar was in progress. These guests were given a brief enrollment presentation, and invited - more like pressured - to enroll.

A part of every evening workshop was the infamous 'Guest Talk', where the graduates as a group would be haranged to bring guests, if they hadn't, or to bring more guests, if they had.

After I went on staff at Sterling, I went back to EST for a Graduate Seminar, as a means of spreading the word about the Sterling seminars. During that seminar series, nobody brought guests. Week after week, the EST staff member who was leading the seminar would give his Guest Talk, to no avail.

'Important people' from the EST headquarters began sitting at the back of the room, to assess tha leader's skill in this area. Still, no guests showed up. Finally, in desperation, he said, "I've tried everything else, so now I'm going to tell you the truth. The Graduate Seminars exist to produce new enrollments, period, end of sentence".

The Graduate Seminars, then had no other official purpose. They used people's desire to further themselves as a means of ensuring the organization's survival.

Justin used that model in setting up those early support groups, but of course, he never said so to the graduates, until 1985, some two and a half years after I resigned from the institute. The groups were constantly encourage to hold enrollment 'open houses' in thier members' homes, but no one was pressured to do so.

In 85' I heard, through a business associate who was still involved in assisting at the institute, that Justin had put out the word that any support group that would not commit to producing one open house each month would be expelled from affiliation with the institute, and could no longer refer to themselves as a Sterling Institute Support Group.

As if that weren't enough, Justin went on to demand that every graduate acknowledge him as 'source' in their life, of suffer being shunned by the organization. As bizarre as it sounds, I'm not making this up.

I had always considered Justin to be unbalanced, but my presence as the only other man close to him - and a very different kind of man than he - seemed to serve aa a kind of counterbalance to his 'peculiarities'. I had the concern that, after I resigned, he would begin to 'lose it', and that is evidently what happened.

I could go on, but the point of all of this is that Justin Sterling never invested his energy, attention or money in anything that wasn't designed to produce more emrollments. In Justin's mind, I assure you, the sole purpose of the men's groups is to enable him to go on making money from the seminars, no matter what he asserts to the contrary.

The groups are very cleverly set up. Through their experience of the weekend, men feel a powerful bond with other men. In fact, it may be more powerful than any bond they have experienced before. Justin uses that bond as a tool.

The central focus of group activity is producing enrollments. There will, of course be a lot of talk about 'being men together' and so on, which is a perfectly natural outcome of the kinds of experiences that the men share in the seminars.

The kinds of problems that you are experiencing arise when the men make enrollment the central focus of their lives, as Justin actively encourages them to do. When they resist, they are shamed into compliance, as 'traitors to men', 'wusses', and much, much worse.

Men - and women - who go into the seminars with a weak sense of who they are are particularly suceptable to that kind of manipulation. Sadly, many who are drawn to participate have little sense of personal value other than what they can get from other people.

Justin is a master at using such people to serve his own ends. All he has to do is to tell the men that "men keep their word", and put them into groups that are set up to require them to produce enrollments 'at any cost', and he has them right where he wants them.

The men, particularly those who aren't secure in their manhood, are in the position of constantly having to prove their worth to other men, and the beat goes on, and on , and on.

No one stops to consider the fact that a man who is secure in his manh0ood has no need whatsoever to prove anything to anyone. You would think that would be obvious, but it isn't.

Justin uses shame and intimidation to bully men into being 'manly' by his definition. That's extremely ironic, because one of the things that I knew from the beginning about Justin was this: by his own admission to myself and other staff members, Justin had - and I believe still has - a profound distrust of men. Further, in observing Justin in social situations where he had no permission to assert control, he feared men as well. Watching him squirm to avoid men, say at a party, was an education.

Another thing that became clear to me toward the end of my stay at the intitute was even more insidious. It was evident in the way he treated female staff members, all the way up to and including sexual abuse, as well as the way he treated the women he was in relationship with. We staff members used to discuss it at length. Simply put, Justin hates women.

He has created the perfect venue for himself. He gets to - 'officially' - put women 'in their place', and he gets to turn men loose to run roughshod over them. None of this has anything to do with manhood, of course, because that is something of which he has no personal experience.

At bottom, Justin is an 'adult boy', whose sole aim is the accumulation of both wealth and power over others. That he can achieve that aim by means of manipulating those who seek to better themselves is sad, but perhaps inevitable. Who else, after all, would be willing to give their power away to him?

There are good, sound organizations out there that do wonderful work. Some of them are listed here, as 'cults' or whatever. That label, even if accurate, doesn't automatically make them malicious of 'evil', though you may believe otherwise.

There are incredibly positve and powerful experiences available to people, in both the men's and women's seminars and, for that reason, I am reluctant to tell people not to enroll. I am immensely proud of the work I did with Justin, and equally proud that I have no part in it now.

So, while I don't tell people not to participate with Sterling institute, I absolutely cannot recommend it.

As to this business about real men 'keeping their word', you wives might want to remind them that they first gave their word to you.

Regards, Morgan (that's one name only, no last name) C. P. C. C., C. C. H. T.

let me tell you something......"They're letting it out again
When it comes, it comes abrupt
When it feels, it feels like trading brains with an imbecile
For real
Yes I feel emphatic about not being static
And not buying philosophies that are sold to me, no, at a steal
Just when you thought, it was safe to think
In comes mental piracy, and no
What I'm looking for (for)
Can not be sold to me
I wish they all would stop trying
Cuz what I want, and what I need, is and will always be free " if you could understand what that means, then you shouldn't be in sterling, landmark, sciencrapology or any of those types of self help organizations, wake up and realize who you really are, you just got into a deeper whole than what you previously were in. the way people like you procclaim yourself, you sound like you're in your own fuckin little world and everyone else outside is not invited unless they pledge, like an allegiance to an army. you say that a man has to be committed to things like making a phone call at 10 pm how about just making the damn call that's commitment, everything that places like you belong to is shrued and constructed in a way to embody a whole new way of thinking that people say "ooooohhhh awwwww, cool" why should anyone have to pay to feel good, to feel like their life means something, people like that have no one to blame but themselves yes we all deserve happiness but you have to go and jump in the water, and i read your first comment reply and you kind of made it clear that you weren't going to continue to respond and you responded fuckin 3 times, why? cause you got mad at the fact that people have their opinions if you didn't care and it doesn't bother you, then you wouldn't respond back, you people are what you are, and slander? what now you're hinting lawsuit please....come and get it
my ex wife is part of landmark, and before she went there she was a good mom, she and i could talk about anything regarding our daughters, and now if i ask her a small favor to see them on a day that it's not really my visitation she says "ohhh it's not really your day, i'm taking them to the babysitter so i can go to my advance class to landmark" but the importance of them seeing their father is less important when before she would've been cool with it, my daughters are afraid, they don't want to be with their mom when she talks about landmark, and trying to infiltrate that sick way of thinking to their minds but you know what they're strong and fierce, i show them yes me, the self help hater that they are beautiful and the world is a sick place, but just as there's bad, there's good. see that's why people like you go to these types of places cause of a misguided upbringing and no one helped ease the pain but just as well as i can see that point of view, the founders of these so called help groups exploit that as well and get you all for suckers.....i know you must have been pissing in your pants with angst and pissed off to see all these types of blogs, well guess what me and this good crowd of people are coming with a vengeance cause i stand up for my daughters and no one not no one is going to rape their minds.....cause what i want and what i need is and will always be free.

p.s. i know i fuckin know you're going to respond to this, and that will just prove my point. so thank you for strengthening the fight!!!!

Thank you so much for your post Morgan. I guess I would consider myself a sterling wife or a MDI wife. I hope that I can get my husband to read your post and see the light. I am currently trying very hard to get him out of MDI, which he keeps telling me is different than the Sterling Institute(Is that correct?) His 8 weeks is almost done and so far he has said that he will not continue but I am deathly afraid that these men will bully him in to staying. What is your thought on that matter. He has to go to one more 24 hour camp out with these men, what do they do on that campout? I have not found any posts on that one only the initial weekend. Any and all information would be greatly appreciated.

And as for all this gender stuff - its also based on the EST trainings, and propaged around the world in every copycat program. It goes something like this:

"men must be men and women must be women" - how profound.
Women are more powerful than men; women hold all the power. Powerful people empower others. Women must empower men by making themselves vulnerable and allowing men to be men. And if you want to know what it means for a man to be a man, just go back to the Victorian ages.

What this really means is that I as a man must accept that my wife is more powerful than me, but that she must 'act' vulnerable and allow me to protect and support her so that I can feel my manhood. In other words, she must manipulate me so that I can feel like a man. I'm no hercules but I don't want or need my wife to put up an act just so that I can be fooled into thinking I'm stronger than I really am. Oh, and she shouldn't work and earn more money than me because that castrates me. Uh... no - it helps pay the bills and it gives her a meaningful life, far more meaningful than running after me with a vacuum cleaner and a lunch box, pandering to my ego.

And the thinking is the usual absolutist thought-stopping BS. In society as a whole men are more powerful, because on average we have more money. That's a historical reality. Person to person, some women are more powerful than men, some men more powerful than women. These LGATs and all their offshoots try to make a universal law and rulebook for everything, instead of respecting the complex diversity of natural human life.

End of rant.