Seminar No. 3, 1989, The Psychology of Torture, by Shirley Spitz\
[www.csvr.org.za]


"Pain cannot be shared. It is difficult to verbalize. In addition, acute pain destroys language. To witness the moment when pain causes a reversion to the pre-language of cries and whispers, is to witness the destruction of language. To be present when a person moves up out of the pre-verbal state to project the facts of the contents of her consciousness into speech is almost to be present at the birth of language itself. The torturer not only witnesses the death of language but is its murderer. "

I was reading this article on torture and thought of the exercise at the Forum where the leader "disappears" a headache, and proves that pain is a "all in one's head" or, in their words, a racket.

The leader, with fake concern, asked the audience after a very long day how everyone was feeling. Several people admitted to being tired, and one or two said they had a headache. The woman who ended up on the stage was asked about the severity and location of her head pain and couldn't really define it. This went on for about half an hour when she finally admitted she was going to use the headache as an excuse to not really give 100% and realized she was running a racket. Now, I have no doubt that this woman was a plant as she said things that I later found quoted on a pro-LEC website.

However, I have heard this type of conversation and seen it in the advertising of alternative health practitioners - if you can't verbalize and use language to describe your pain, it is likely that it really doesn't exist and you are using it as an excuse to avoid something.

The entire article is a great read.

Some things never change. They did that same crap in the EST training 25 years ago.... so much for their highly touted "state of the art technology"......

Now, I invite you to see what happens is you have the temerity to ask the trainer HOW one distinguishes between a "real symptom" and a "racket"...[/size:70bf5531e1]

I can tell you right now, with 100% certainty, that the trainer will NOT answer the question. He or she WILL deflect the question, and they are real experts at deflecting tough questions, they'll never "handle" a tough question dead on.... and believe me, I've tried, even got a trainer into a logical corner he couldn't squirm out of once, ever so gently, and they will ALWAYS turn the question or the issue into something else.... as in, "we get to that later"...., and after two or three passes through their washing machine, you see what slick evasive bullshitters and mental mediocrities they are..... THEIR racket is avoiding the all to obvious fact of how ridiculous, linited, and absurd much of their thinking is..... that's the primary reason that they True Believers in that organization tend to keep to themselves.... You won't find them in Sub Saharan Africa, BTW, telling dirt poor Africans that their malaria is a racket, or in the Amazon basin, telling the folks there that dengue fever or chagas disease is a racket, much less chatting up Russian prisons.... "Hello Comrades ! I have wonderful news ! Your multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis is only a RACKET ! Now, Get Off It !"...... Nooooooooo..... [/color:70bf5531e1]

Werner Erhard didn't come up with the "headache cure." I think it was spotted as the "Filipino" headache cure in Adam Smith's book, "Powers of Mind," and it or something similar has been used for hundreds if not thousands of years. If it works, great. If it doesn't, try an aspirin.

Erhard didn't "invent" the alarm-clock thingie either. My mom taught me that one when I was seven or eight years old and I presume she learned it from her mother.



Ellen

Quote
nutrino
Some things never change. They did that same crap in the EST training 25 years ago.... so much for their highly touted "state of the art technology"......

Now, I invite you to see what happens is you have the temerity to ask the trainer HOW one distinguishes between a "real symptom" and a "racket"...[/size:777ef3a065]

I can tell you right now, with 100% certainty, that the trainer will NOT answer the question. He or she WILL deflect the question, and they are real experts at deflecting tough questions, they'll never "handle" a tough question dead on.... and believe me, I've tried, even got a trainer into a logical corner he couldn't squirm out of once, ever so gently, and they will ALWAYS turn the question or the issue into something else.... as in, "we get to that later"...., and after two or three passes through their washing machine, you see what slick evasive bullshitters and mental mediocrities they are..... THEIR racket is avoiding the all to obvious fact of how ridiculous, linited, and absurd much of their thinking is..... that's the primary reason that they True Believers in that organization tend to keep to themselves.... You won't find them in Sub Saharan Africa, BTW, telling dirt poor Africans that their malaria is a racket, or in the Amazon basin, telling the folks there that dengue fever or chagas disease is a racket, much less chatting up Russian prisons.... "Hello Comrades ! I have wonderful news ! Your multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis is only a RACKET ! Now, Get Off It !"...... Nooooooooo..... [/color:777ef3a065]

The film SEMI-TOUGH from 1977 really shows just how similar the "trainings" are from EST and Landmark, and how they have not changed very much in 30 years.

Quote

"Hello Comrades ! I have wonderful news ! Your multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis is only a RACKET ! Now, Get Off It !"...... Nooooooooo..... [/color:479e435eab]

yes, you don't get cancer if you do the Landmark Forum :twisted: I've heard that one many times