I know when I got "out" of my cult experience, I took about three days, and wrote a 20 page document on my experience and what it meant to me. What happened. What I have problems with etc.

It's been a year now. The funny thing is right after I was done the whole course was kind of fuzzy, I couldn't remember everything I did. A year later, it's really fuzzy.

I think at least for yourself it is very healing to write out your story. You don't have to tell anyone about it. Get it out on paper. Compare it to what others have done.

And like many of us here on this board(even though I haven't posted much), it's not just enough to say it was crap and I'm over it. It was crap and I will stop anyone I can from going through what I did.

If I had said what I know just a little louder maybe you wouldn't have had to go through with your experience. Maybe you could have the same effect on someone else.

Has anyone had an op-ed/article published. I'd like to get one published on my experience, but I'm not sure how to proceed.

Marcos

Online journals might be easier to break into than print journals.

Unfortunately, most people are apallingly lazy when it comes to using their minds. LGATs work very hard at A. moving you into a highly suggestible state, and then B. forming new unconscious associations while you're there, then C. installing "thought locks" that make it difficult to think in ways that defeat their new associations formed in step B.

Those who have been through bad LGAT experiences may find that they now have to work hard to pick the locks and crack the new associative links they've been programmed with.

Many cannot be bothered. They don't value their autonomy enough or appreciate deeply enough what's been done to their heads to do what needs to be done. The LGAT leaders and owners know this. They know that a high percentage of their customer base simple lacks the willpower to contend with their programming. But then, many people are also fully content with mediocrity and nonsensical lives that never ask too much of them.

If you go into your LGAT with the hidden attitude that THEY will somehow, magically compensate for YOUR character flaws, your spiritual squalor, your inertia, your lack of curiosity, your need to be entertained, that's where they got you. They got you because they feed on your weakness.

I would submit this uncomfortable thought. If you want to move beyond this game, more is required than cussing THEM out and blowing them off. You've got to get to a place where you are stronger than they are. Then you can blow them off.

Quote
socrates
If you go into your LGAT with the hidden attitude that THEY will somehow, magically compensate for YOUR character flaws, your spiritual squalor, your inertia, your lack of curiosity, your need to be entertained, that's where they got you. They got you because they feed on your weakness.

Weakness??? Please, we need to stop talking about people being trapped by their weaknesses. I didn't do the forum to improve anything; I did the forum because I was interested in self-actualization. Maybe I had a severe misunderstanding of what self-actualization was suppose to be. I was only 19 at the time and only knew what I was taught in school. I didn't attend the ordinary introduction. I actually sat in on one of the other "classes," and since I was the only guest that night, they let me stay in the room. It's not my fault I was totally lied to about everything that night. There was no internet for me to look up info an them. The local library didn't have squat either. I had never even heard of Warner. I didn't have a TV when I was college, so I missed the 60 Minutes story. It's not my fault they sat me so close to other people that I had only one option - to concentrate on the FL in order to ignore the strangers sitting way to close to me.

Wanting to be a better person doesn't make anyone weak. If there is a weakness, it's that society shuns mental health professionals. Maybe if people were more comfortable seeking help for problems they think they have, then LGATs wouldn't exist.

OK that was an overgeneralization. When I did EST I had the feeling that a high percentage of the participants wanted to get "it" without doing long term work, therapy, real growth experiences. The selling point was that EST had a technology that could move you to that place without the long study, struggles, dealing with real life over time.

A good example is my neighbors. The have a beautiful daughter who is prime LGAT fodder. She wants a kindly but firm authority figure to take her by the hand and lead her through all of life's mysteries. I lent her a copy of Michael Sugrue's excellent audio couse Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogs.

You want the original anti cult guy, it was Plato. Athens had a historical figure who was not unlike Werner Erhard, he was known as Alcibiades. I tole her she should really try to understand what Plato was trying to say, it would help her immeasurably in grappling with life.

She later gave me the tapes back and said thanks but she didn't have any interest. All she wants is that nice leader to show her what to do.

The truth is that it takes hard thinking and a great amount of work, reading major literature, seeing great film (as oppposed to special effects orgies that may be good fun but you could fit their idea quotient into a shot glass), knowing foreign cultures, the life of the mind, all of that requires some personal grit.

you cannot 'think your way out' of authoritarian situations that refuse to be examined objectively by someone standing outside their mental boundaries.

Others have tried to get us to believe that we can 'crack the code' by analyzing LGAT word games. This will not work. If you try to do it, you' risk just get more confused.

LGAT semantics appear designed to disable your rational intellect.

Quote
socrates
Unfortunately, most people are apallingly lazy when it comes to using their minds. LGATs work very hard at A. moving you into a highly suggestible state, and then B. forming new unconscious associations while you're there, then C. installing "thought locks" that make it difficult to think in ways that defeat their new associations formed in step B.

Those who have been through bad LGAT experiences may find that they now have to work hard to pick the locks and crack the new associative links they've been programmed with'.

Thing is, Drew Kopp has written a paper suggesting that a key ingredient to Landmark is its room set up. You can read Plato from now til doomsday, and read him in the original Greek, but this will not help you get out of an LGAT that, according to Kopp functions by using a room set up designed to tire the body. This was a form of influence Plato probalby knew nothing about.

'lack of transparency'--Kopp's term

Sleep deficit

Room set up that scrunches people close together which wears them out and the resultant fatigue de-stabilize thier minds.

[board.culteducation.com]

Read about the room set up on this thread. I especially invite readers to study the article by Drew Kopp

[www.u.arizona.edu]

That article describes forms of mental and physical influence that are beyond anything Plato had in mind.

Just pay attention to this and dont try to think your way out of LGAT word games.

These two threads will introduce you to a concept that other persons recovering from LGATs have found useful—meme theory--that is, that ideas can function as viruses of the mind.

[board.culteducation.com]

[board.culteducation.com]

If you combine mimetics with awareness of how certain problematic LGATs reportedly engineer their room set ups and in some cases, strategically use embarrassment, you’ll have a potent cocktail of information to assist you in recovery.

If you have not read Drew Kopp’s paper and are unfamiliar with mimetics, it will take you at least a day to make sense of this new information and apply it.

[i:8980b2d0d5]No matter how intelligent you are, you cannot accurately assess a situation if you are sleep deficient and not given full information about what you are in for.[/i:8980b2d0d5]

Elena said on thread

[board.culteducation.com]

‘You guys are very, very close to the live wire, the third rail, the most dangerous and deadly part of Landmarky-type or covert abusive manipulation, or, conversely, the most beneficial part of something like Cognitive Therapy or Logotherapy.

It is the examination of the malleability of perception or meaning people ascribe to events that can be useful in the hands of an ethical practitioner or deadly in the hands of an exploiter.

Reminds me of that saying about the most dangerous lie being only the slightest shade away from the truth. What Werner Erhard said to the lady who had been in a concentration camp was very, very close to what Victor Frankl says.’

Stages of Recovery

Recovery from a bad group or problematic LGAT takes place in several stages.

You cannot get a sense of existential meaning from your suffering until after you've fully traced the extent to which you were

1) manipulated

and 2) suffered -- and continue to suffer

only after completing steps 1 and 2 do we have sufficient foundation to go on to

3) seek a sense of meaning in the suffering and (where appropriate)

4) identify blind spots that enabled the cult meisters to hook us in.

***Recovery can be hampered if we prematurely seek to impose a sense of existential meaning on our suffering [i:8980b2d0d5]before [/i:8980b2d0d5]we have become fully conscious in relation to our suffering and have fully purged the meme viruses from our minds and emotions.

So, we have to do what Cosmo and Guy recommend, while remembering that these steps are done at different stages of recovery.

Whats 'right' at one stage of recovery will hamper you at another stage of recovery.

Again, both Guy and Cosmo are right

First identify your suffering & how you were manipulated and meme-infected/indoctrinated.

Purge yourself of the memes

Then, and only then, after purging yourself of the memes, look for existential meaning.

***Perhaps the more powerful an idea/meme is at freeing our minds, the more it can be used as a potent co-factor to a parasitic meme that puts us to sleep.

Carrying this speculation further, the 'meme buster' when it is used BY ITSELF, by a person with altruistic intentions, will help us wake up.

That same meme buster, when used as a cofactor for a parasitic meme, by a person with a bad agenda, will arouse our trust and interest, opening the gates for the parasitic meme to come in and infect us.

When you encounter an intellectully exciting set of memes, always, always ask if they're linked to something not in your best interests.

Corboy

Thanks for this information as it leads me in a direction that I was not concidering. I will get back to you on my thoughts. I will deal with this. Actually the first thought that comes into my head...I don't want to deal with this....I just want to forget it....

Jim

>>Thanks for this information as it leads me in a direction that I was not concidering. I will get back to you on my thoughts. I will deal with this. Actually the first thought that comes into my head...I don't want to deal with this....I just want to forget it....

Jim>>>

Just remember Jim,

The flip-side of the Landmark lure of "possibilties" and "breakthroughs" and enlightened awareness or whatever it is they are selling these days is the intimidation, paranoia, and humiliation that comes with the package. Most people who realize they have been psychologically snookered are too embarrassed to say anything. If you weren't happy or saw through the Landmark scam, most of all they want your silence.


Ellen

Alexis,

Thank you. I went to my forum on the recommendation of a doctor. At that time, I did a search and found so much pro LE on the internet, and the negative info seemingly intelligently refuted, that I went into it just open to suggestions for improving possibly an emotional aspect to a physical health imbalance. I spent a great deal of time on the phone with LE reps, asked many, many questions, most of which were answered, in hindsight, with lies. I also went to a special introduction night, which was NOTHING like any part of the Forum. It was fun and light-hearted, and over in less than 2 hours. It was also all staged.

Most of the people I talked with at the end did not attend because of a weakness, but because of their strengths.