Landmark, Wachowski Brothers and The Matrix
Date: May 07, 2004 11:51PM
Thanks, Corboy and Oz, for your insights.
It is puzzling, my reaction to my LE experience. Here is my theory about it:
Friday night, before we broke for dinner, one of the assistants announced that the final evening session would start at 7:35 PM. It was 6:05 PM when she made this announcement. OK, so we knew we had 90 minutes to grab a bite. I agreed to drive with another attendee to a local resaurant. But first, this gal had to visit a friend in the front office. Now food is very important to me, and the opportunity to get the heck outa there was, too. But I digress...
We arrived back at the LE meeting room at 7:33. I checked. A few people trickled in behind us, but none of them arrived later than 7:35. Scott, the FL, tore the group a collective new a**hole for being "late". I was infuriated, but recognized this was a manipulation to control us. My dinner partner stood up to challenge Scott. I mumbled, "don't bother, it's a set-up." She replied, "I know".
The funny thing was, several people sitting around me also stated they heard 7:35 as our start time, not 7:25, as Scott now claimed.
By the next day I was still steamed about the manipulation, but the same people who the night before had sworn they heard 7:35, were now telling me, "No, they told us to be back by 7:25. Really. That's what they said." They had become Pod People!
I couldn't believe anything Scott said after that. I took the exercises for what they were worth, found some value in dropping persistent complaints (rackets), that sort of thing. But I took everything I heard the rest of the weekend with a grain of salt.
The Saturday Night Fear exercise convinced me I just wasn't "getting it". I sat there with my eyes closed, dutifully trying to conjure up morbid fear of everyone in the room. Many in the room were sobbing and wailing. Me? Nothing. Nothing at all. I kept thinking how stupid this was. The joke, of course, is everybody is afraid of everybody else. Except me, I guess.
I noticed that most of the attendees became pretty grim and humorless. I can usually get anybody to laugh or smile, but this was a tough crowd. And I don't think it was exhaustion, either. Some seemed to resent my joking around. I wouldn't want to party with unreconstructed LE grads!
One of the benefits I have derived from landmark is, I haven't watched more than three hours' worth of TV since attending LE. Now I spend my spare time at this Forum.:D