I was wondering if any ex-FLs or ex-staffers (or anyone who's overcome these) could help with dispelling the Should/Have-To "conversation" in the forum and the Need/Want "conversation" in the IFLP.

Those two notions definitely created stumbling blocks for me. Some of the hardest behavior to get rid of was caused by those two "conservations." (I'm sure there's more, but these are the most pronounced for me.)

Any help would be appreciated. Apologist need not post.

a great technique for reclaiming "locus of control", the confident sense that you are directing your own thought processes, is a phrase borrowed from the intelligence community, "walk the cat backwards".

Write out your best literal understanding of what these terms mean. Explain what the disctinctions are so that a non-participant could easily understand what about them makes them distinct. Why is this distinction necessary ? What function does it serve ? Where do you apply it ? In what was does using the distinction change things ?

If you cannot come up with a very good, compelling explanation for the NEED to make that distinction, you can bet your pants that it is either thought-looping jargon, or a philosophically trivial distinction (sounds important, but isn't), or it was used as part of a hypnotic trance induction ( to get your conscious mind wrapped up in a dizzying abstract maze while a number of hypnotic suggestion were being installed ).

Think hard, what was the totality of the discussion, what other things we being suggested, implied, or alluded to while this distinction was being talked about ? What state of mind were you in ? Euphoric, threatened, bored, under psychic seige, jumping from one idea to another ? What happened right before, what happened right after ? In NLP terms, what emotional states and though processes were covertly anchored (!!!) to these distinctions ? Whan you consider these distinctions, what movies play out in your mind, what images do you see, what internal dialog, or monolog do you hear, what bodily feelings, and what emotional/psychic feeling do you experience ? Tingling, shortness of breath, spinning or imbalanced sensations, floating upwards, sinking downwards, or whatever.

The more specifically you can describe EVERY association on as many psychic levels as possible that are associated with this thought process, the better you will understand the full "neuro associative structure" that only consciously appears to be an intellectual exercise.

Plato here. Long time no see Socrates. It looks like your up to your old tricks. Answering Alexis's question with more questions.

It's been a long time since I did the Forum. I don't recall that conversation.

What behavior are/were you trying to get rid of that is associated with this conversation?

See, there I go again. It's hard to escape the teachings of Socrates with the questions, questions, questions........

Plato:

Please help to further enlighten members of this discussion board.

Was your Forum experience generally positive or negative?

Did you take additional courses through Landmark Education?

Would you recommend Landmark or the Forum to others under certain circumstances?

The answers to your questions.

1)It was a generally positive experience. No great miracles or epiphanies for me.

2)I took no additional courses at Landmark. Too may people walking around with that "bullshit enlightenment" smile on their face. Not everyone, just the ones trying to bullshit you.

3)I wouldn't recommend it to anyone at this time. 12 years have passed and I really don't know much about what is going on there now. I have a few acquaintances that go to their followup seminars. But we don't talk about it.

Thanks for asking. I was browsing your website looking for info on something I think is called the Pacillo. It is a Catholic "born-again" weekend retreat. My brother just took it and found Jesus. I didn't even know he was lost! It sounded something like a Catholic "LGAT", as you call them here. And now he's walking around with that same "bullshit enlightenment" look that some of my old Landmark friends had pasted on their kissers!

I saw a quote from "Socrates" and I couldn't help myself. No offense intended.

which means 'a short course' in Spanish.

The Cursillo movement is NOT a Catholic LGAT. It is not done for profit. And you have to be committed Catholic in good standing at your parish in order to participate--totally different from the way LGATS try to get everyone to participate.

The Cursillo movement is an integral part of the Catholic church. It started in Spanish-speaking parishes, hence the name. It is an intensive retreat, orginally for men only, but women soon began to participate. A cursillo group is all male or all-female, unless things have changed in the past few years.

I was a Catholic for awhile and a number of people at my parish loved Cursillo. Our parish priest who was always on excellent terms with the archdiocese, was a retreat master for Cursillo. This movement is not marginal within the Catholic Church and some mainline Protestant denominations have begun to employ the Cursillo format in designing their own weekend retreats.

Retreats of various kinds are a well accepted way to deepen one's prayer life, and an intensive weekend retreat format was a helpful resource for persons with families who could not afford to take a week off to do a more traditional retreat at a Catholic monastery or retreat center. Thus English speaking parishes soon took notice and came to appreciate Cursillo.

Cursillo is an intensive weekend retreat with prayer, Bible study, group discussion, Sacrament of Reconciliation, Mass. They are led by a priest and by senior members who have done previous retreats. It is meant to 1) intensify your prayer life and 2) help you integrate your spirituality into your day to day life. People will emerge happy, and high as kites.

I do not recall anyone at our parish having a bad reaction to Cursillo, or coming out of it as different than when they went in. People generally had a very fulfilling time and would, encourage friends to do it.

However, Cursillo is not enough, by itself to heal very deep seated psychological problems, and some persons may try to use the 'high' of Cursillo to avoid and deny deep seated personal problems. My impression was that retreat priests were aware of this and took care to screen people who applied to take Cursillo. You cant just 'walk off the street' and take a Cursillo.

I did not participate in a Cursillo only because I dislike being cooped up in a group indoors. For others, this setting is ideal.

Participating in a Cursillo should increase your commitment to love God and your nieghbor, not make you dependant on hits of charisma from a priest or retreat group. And there should never, ever be a split in a parish between those who have done Cursillo and those who have not. Any kind of 'us-vs-them' is a sign that Cursillo is taking a distorted form at that parish.

Properly done, Cursillo should not have people acting like junkies. Usually the afterglow fades in a few weeks.

If Cursillistas are behaving eccentrically long term this should be investigated--either people are not being screened prior to participation in Cursillos in their area, or there might have been a distortion in how the retreat was conducted, or a failure to provide proper after care to participants.

All this said, Cursillo is not a Catholic LGAT.

I don't think I stated my original post well. I don't want to analyze the "conversations" as landmark wants us to think about them, but rather as how landmark uses them to control people. My interest is not in describing any behavior I have now as a cause of being involved with landmark.

I realize that lec is anally organized. Even though I know the room setup has more to do with what happens than what is actually said, I know that they are so anal that they must choose the words they say to elicit an anticipated response. I wanted to know how these "conversations" are suppose to bind participants to landmark.

I know they want participants to leave with an expected interpretation, but in reality that interpretation is just a ruse. I know they put people in a hypnotic trance to recruit them further, but whilst we're in the trance they are saying stuff for a reason, an ulterior reason, that must be said to hook us in or cause confusion.

I was put into a room that was setup to put participants into a hypnotic trance. Looking back now, that is painfully clear. I remember being so keenly aware of the FL that I barely noticed the people next to me and completely forgot about the volunteers in the back. The more involved I become with landmark, the more I noticed the "on" personality. What I felt to be a "second personality" was me but in a trance. It makes perfect sense to me now.

I suppose what I really want are these particular "conversations" dissected to expose landmark's ulterior motives. I mean the damn guy (sorry, Guy, no pun intended) talked for almost three and half days. The FLs say what they say to appeal to a wide variety of concerns all people have in their lives. I figure they try different "conversations" to hook as many people in while they're in a trance. It may be that no one who is really privy to what is going on has left landmark to expose them on that level.

Who trained the FLs in the first place? I figured the FLs were purely following a script. So someone must have laid it all out, how everything was to unfold. Was it solely Warner's master plan?

the key to the lock is specificity. Try and describe one, just one, hypnotic sugestion they used, in detail.

the EST trainer pulled this one on us. He got all worked up as we were zoning out in a light trance, and then he bellowed "if you keep doing things the way you've been doing things you WILL get CANCER :twisted: !!!!!!!!!"

Besides being absolute horsecrap on a factual level (not that that would slow them down, facts ? facts ? oh, don't confuse me with the facts... :roll: ) it was a powerful and insidious piece of hypnotic suggestion, because it was designed to instill a powerful aversion to your "former thinking".... so you get this subtle link building in your mind between logical/critical and the horror of cancer, so if you find yourself reverting to your doubting, critical mindset later in the training, you get this big premonition of CANCER and presto ! You've been given a Pavlovian association, you try and go logical/critical... and you brain kicks out some fears about CANCER".... how to break this..... ?... easy and fun.... I replayed the scene in my mind about 25 times, but instead I imagined the trainer saying "if you keep doing things the way you've been doing things you WLL have an ORGASM!!!!!!!"..... Buh Bye Mr. Mind Lock :lol:

GC,

Any chance you still have the old manuals? What type of information was in the manuals? I've read some things on here from you and Guy about the different things that were worked on to manipulate people.

As a former staffer/employee I'm sure your insight is greater than mine or most. I'm sure you've identified many of the manipulative techniques used. Would you mind giving us examples of specific "Mind f***s" that were scripted into the training.

As I understand it a FL has to be trained 3-7 years. I remember wanting to be a trainer myself. My "trainer" singled me out as having the potential to be a great leader(I ruined the red/black game, we won, and he had to improvise). Don't know what would have happened to me if I had gone back for more trainings, most likely would be living in Utah now. As about half a dozen of my friends have done(didn't notice the exodus until a few days ago).

Just curious what other things/techniques/tricks you can remember from your days as a staffer. I remember more and more little things they did, and how that affected me/us. I'm compiling a list of the things I can remember to add to the manipulation of the environment post.

Marcos

how long did you lead the forum, gc4062?