my flashing meme alert warning light is signaling something :idea: Nobody here will describe specific inductions, specific language, specific routines. I don't believe that's accidental. I strongly suspect that "the technology" has implanted, much more deeply and efficiently than you consciously realize, prohibitions against being fully conscious of what transpired. A good psychologist will tell you that if you've internalized a rule (and then been made amnesiac to that rule) you will later be able to invent any number of good rationalizations for why you operate according to that rule, without even knowing where, when, and how it actually got in to your mind. Please self-observe closely. If you find yourself suddenly confused, foggy, or a hard to explain barrier of reasons, or an inexplicable loss of energy arises WHEN you try to explicate what happened, there is a high probability that specific hypnotic techniques were used to prevent you from being fully conscious of the suggestions.

FOR INSTANCE..... ahem.... in the EST training they had a fantastic piece of stupidity (on the intellectual level, but an awesome piece of hypnotic trance work) called the Model Of The Mind where the trainer took a blackboard and started drawing all the conncections between thoughts (it actually looked like he was making some bad abstract art) until he had scribbled a box fully white with chalk. His brilliant conclusion ? All thoughts are so scrambled up with other thoughts that your thought processes were noting more than this great undifferentiated mass of whited out cross connection. One's head would spin at the intellectual fraudulence, not to mention the appeal to the thinking of a six year old, which is where he wanted to regress us to..... REMEMBER at all times..... the object of these techniques are to REGRESS :!: you to an early emotional stage of dependency, uncritical acceptance, like an easily programmed young child, OK... you WILL REMEMBER that, as you're sitting there reading this, thinking about the things that it is appropriate to REMEMBER.... then the Trainerboob roars to the assembled sheep before him.... "as you see, UNDERSTANDING is the booby prize" and that sublime thought slips in past all the conscious defenses..... DUH, YEAH !!!! Understanding is the booby prize ! Just like you say, boss !

No. Understanding is the PRIZE. Analyse the emotional associations here. People have already been softened up, as with papaya enzyme tenderizer, to feel that humiliation is the worst thing that could happen to them in this setting, and the training is designed, ground up, to make you intensely sensitive to looking foolish. You will do anything in this setting to gain the trainer's approval and not look foolish. That precondition has already been well established.

a Booby Prize is connected with looking foolish, ridiculous. When the trainer fires this anchor hard :shock: around the concept of UNDERSTANDING, you have another layer of connecting clear headed rational thinking with strong aversive feeling. Got it ? Good.

Now go back and repattern. Imagine yourself sitting before Mr. Trainerboob. This time he bellows out "UNDERSTANDING is the PRIZE". Now repeat this movie in your head about 20 times. :lol:

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gc4062
While I never led the forum itself (Guy is your resident expert on that topic), I led a number of other programs that follow it, as well as training introduction leaders, and other program leaders.

As a sort of unwritten code amongst former staff and program leaders, we never discuss the actual techniques used to mess with your head, as it could easily be picked up and used by other less than honest types.

Much of the trickery/techniques used have been discussed in other threads, and just recently some of our newer members online have discussed some of the manipulation of language and other items that are used to mess with your head.

The more successful staffers and course leaders could twist any situation back to the point that you believe it is all your own fault. You'll never win an argument with them, there are too many lines available that will shut you down rapidly (the one I used to hear used most often was "you really ought to look at who you are being right now").

Much of the material you might find interesting is contained in other threads in this forum. Sometimes a little difficult to follow when some go off on a tangent in the middle of a topic, but you'll find a great deal of useful information. It's the grab a coffee and smoke 'em if ya got 'em time :) Then once you've worked through all the material here, go up to www.culteducation.com and have a read through the volumes of material on landmark there.

The environment is just one part of it, the language another, the behavior of the leader another. Work it all in together, and you'll get an idea of how the walking, talking, jargon-spewing robots have played with you.

I have been reading on here for about a year as a lurker(wasn't ready to get really vocal yet). I have seen it in bits and pieces I just don't know if there's one single place I could point to where the manipulations are in place.

GC, forgive me for saying this as I truly value your posts immensely. I think it's a copout not to disclose the techniques and manipulations they use. If people know how they are being manipulated it makes it much easier to fight that manipulation. Could unethical people take that information and use it to their advantage? Surely. But Landmark's techniques are not unique, they are not original. They have borrowed from many other fields(NLP, Erickson hypnosis, etc) If someone wants these techniques, they are freely available in any number of books, tape sets, web sites.

I think it would be instrumental to see exactly how each part of the "training" is scripted. The document from Kopp on the room setup is awesome. A little hard to read at first but very interesting none the less.

It makes it easier for those of us who are willing to be vocal against the LGAT's to support ourselves. ie my conversation/debate on the awareness page guestbook.
[pub.alxnet.com]

The LGAT's can always claim that they don't psychologically manipulate people until those who were a party to that manipulation expose exactly how it was done and why. I have a good idea of how it was done, but I wasn't a part of it, so my testimony wouldn't be as strong as someone on the other side of the stage.

Just an observation, I am willing to respect your decision even if I don't entirely agree.

Marcos

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gc4062
Socrates, to pick up on something you mentioned in another thread... yes, for some reason, the MTV generation has become intellectually lazy.

But I'm part of the original MTV generation. I remember the summer when MTV started and watching it religiously. I think it's far more than just MTV. Generation X is the first generation whose parents were introduced to est. If I remember correctly, it started in '72, the year I was born. I wonder how much of est/forum lingo has infiltrated society through my generations' ears from infancy to adulthood. I don't think we can deny that it is trying to change our language.

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Macros
GC, forgive me for saying this as I truly value your posts immensely. I think it's a copout not to disclose the techniques and manipulations they use. If people know how they are being manipulated it makes it much easier to fight that manipulation. Could unethical people take that information and use it to their advantage? Surely. But Landmark's techniques are not unique, they are not original. They have borrowed from many other fields(NLP, Erickson hypnosis, etc) If someone wants these techniques, they are freely available in any number of books, tape sets, web sites.

I agree with Marcos. If I didn't say it earlier, I don't want to debate their jargon. But I believe they must have a framework that they use allowing them to tweak the jargon but still get the effects they're after. I think it is something that can be discussed without using their jargon excessively, and hopefully, without educating the world on how to make their own little landmark.

on balance, it is vastly more important to open the doors, windows, ventilation shafts, and let people know what IS happening. The more the public consciously understands HOW they are manipulated, be it by LGATs, advertising campaigns, public relations companies, political spin doctors, then the more they are liberated to think for themselves. The risk of another Werner Erhard coming along ? Fear not. If such a being were to ummmm..... "show up"... he, she, or it would figure this method out very quickly, without needing to visit this particular obscure website. All the previous jokers didn't need the cult education forum to concoct their nasty swill. That's why I'm a stickler for SPECIFICITY. The consumer needs to know each SPECIFIC move in advance, what is the purpose behind it, what effect will it produce in the audience, how will it be mentally countered ? Remember this.... once you know how it works, stage magic, card tricks, the best David Copperfield illusions ever seen, no longer function in the domain of "magic", they are seen as pure technique. You may still admire the technical expertise of the technique, but you won't be in awe on an imaginative level. Once you "get" what's going on with trance states and hypnotic induction, it loses its manipulative power. The requirement is that you know what's happening backstage. :!: :!: :!:

****Plus by the time people enter an LGAT room they will already have paid a couple hundred bucks--or whatever the going rate will be. Just paying or charging a sizeable sum of money pressures most of us to convince ourselves that the expenditure is, or will be 'worth it.' (In social psychology this is explained through the research done on cognitive dissonance. In cognitive dissonance you are consciously aware that your beliefs conflict with your actions. Most people experience this as painful, so they re-configure their beliefs to justify the behavior. Eg its painful to know that smoking increases your chances of lung cancer, and continue to smoke. So its tempting to rationalize that the evidence is flawed or you;re going to beat the odds even if you continue to smoke.

([i:d2bb0c4d17]I knew a doctor who was a pathologist, did autopsies on people with cancer and heart disease. The guy smoked like a chimney and insisted the statistics on smoking and lung cancer were inconclusive--this was in 1978. This brilliant man had once worked at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology--the top group in his profession. Yet he was a walking example of cognitive dissonance)[/i:d2bb0c4d17]

The most radical thing is alerting people that problematic LGATs are unwinnable games so they'll stay out of the indoctrination room, dont pay hard earned money and not get exposed in the first place.

Beliving you can win word games against a problematic LGAT is like believing you can be a good enough card player to win a game against someone who has a marked deck and with a spy behind your back telegraphing which cards you have in your deck.

In a game of marked cards, skill is irrelevant.

Your intellect cant help you because in many LGATs there's some intriguing evidence that the physical set up is designed to tire your body, and fatigue your mind, making it harder to apply critical thinking skills.

The finest computer will malfunction if it overheats. Albert Einstein could not have functioned if sleep deprived.

No. Let the LGATs of the future learn their stuff from other sources than RR.com.

Never mind trying to figure out the word games. Its a pointless intellectual cock-tease.

The eagerness to believe that one single person can out-think an entire room set up, an entire well-trained team of people, whose techniques are based on over 20 years of experience (in the case of some LGATs)--

it is tempting (and immensely seductive) to believe you're smart enough to out think all this, just by 'cracking the code'

The smartest and easiest form of protection is stay out of the room.

Corboy,

I'm beginning to think we are talking about two different things.

I have no intension of ever going back into one of landmark's or whatever-future-name-they-might-change-it-to's center.

I have no desire to discuss landmark's jargon. I've stated that several times.

I know that what they say is crap meant to cause confusion.

I am capable of discussing landmark without spewing jargon.

I also think I have the right to discuss what they said to me in their words and mine.

I understand what you are saying Corboy. And can definitely appreciate your points.

For me, it's not so much about out thinking the FL's. From experience obviously that is an impossibility. You can't out talk them. Out argue them. They are experts at verbal judo. I realize from their extensive training that they are experts at dealing with any "troublemakers". As you state that is a zero-sum game.

I think as each technique that is used to mentally manipulate is exposed it becomes easier to decimate the experience, the room setup paper from Kopp was killer. There are so many who don't believe that any manipulation occurs. That it truly is a training for life. That it truly prepared them for a better life. But, most people who drop out of the experience just leave quietly which is what LM and others are counting on. However, if those of us who have experienced it say hey this is F'ed up, and this is why. This is what I saw, this is what I did, and this is why it is wrong. Then maybe that next person is a little easier to stop from going. Then maybe even one person can be "saved" who otherwise would have been lost. If I say HEY I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS LYING DOWN, in my loudest voice, then I get a chance to help others.

I don't really care if LM changes their tactics, or name. It's just another nail in their coffin. If one FL or one trainer from any LGAT just came forward and was vocal about what they did, the horrors they have seen, the chaos they have created, the complete manipulation that they have done, it would be much easier to dissuade people from what they are choosing to do. If one FL chose to bear the wrath of LM and went public what could they accomplish? We don't have enough Margeret Singers in the world.

We need more revelations like the "killer shares", and other things we have learned about through this board. How was the killer share set up. How much of it was true, how much false. When did they deliver it, etc. It's more things like that I believe that are crucial to dealing a blow to the legitimacy of the process.

For many people it's so hard to believe what these things really are, that they are mind control, brainwashing, a cult. I remember I couldn't accept it for a long time. Hey look at me, I'm smart, intelligent, succesful, how is it possible that I could be brainwashed? Look at all these people, they seem normal, how could it be a cult? It took a long while for me to "wake up", and it wasn't gradual, it was very sudden, one day I denied everything, the next I realized exactly what I had done. It was absolutely amazing to me how my usually sharp and logical mind would discount any information on LGATs if it didn't precisely match up to what I had experienced. And the hardest was I felt like I had good results, and I didn't realize that it was the process that was the issue. I couldn't see how wrong it was to give up the keys to your mental and emotional well being. After all based on results it was working.

For me, I think we need as much information as we can get. We need manuals if they are available. We need more scientific studies. More scientific papers on the effects of these things. We need those who have been involved to step up and tell what they know. Every voice in the community is a blow against these "viruses of the mind". Until we use every tool at our disposal to combat these institutions then we are hampered in our efforts, we know that they will not be.

So, I guess we can agree to disagree.

Marcos

Your attitude is fatalistic and your position is incorrect. I nicely fucked up a Six Day training and I knew exactly what I was doing. I out thought them and broke their trances. Well and thoroughly. The trainers themselves didn't even know what was going on until the last minute, and by then it was too late. The key point is NOT that you possess raw intelligence or not. The key is that you understand Eriksonian hypnosis on a fairly high level AND you know how to bounce yourself out of trance. Most people don't, but then, as I said, most people are apallingly lazy when it comes to consciousness issues. No, they are not impervious beings. No, they can't update or modify their work that quickly. They may change some specific ornamentation, but they MUST, repeat MUST adhere to the form of trance consciousness dynamics. If you really know trance dynamics, surface presentation can be changed all you want, and you can still navigate trances. Yes, you MUST have direct, personal training with real masters before you can do this. That means you must be willing to invest the time and energy in finding these people and working with them or studying under them. Amateurs need not apply.

My reasons to support disclosure are these:

People often don't remember, or don't understand what has transpired in the training room, and cannot connect new behaviours and beliefs back to the training. Even after one is back functioning in the real world there are still "hooks and levers" (to use Guy's phrase) implanted in your consciousness that affect your life everyday. How are you ever going to fully recover and remove those hooks and levers if you can't find them? Unless you can be fully aware of each and every phrase and method that has affected your mind, you cannot be rid of it. These programs count on people not being able to undo these levers. The ones that keep them silent, that keep them doubting themselves, and believing that their problems are their fault.

People will continue to act in ways that are contrary to their true personality and not understand why, and be left without the tools to heal. Not to say that eventually, it may work out itself, or it may come to them spontaneously, but for some it won't, and for others it will come too late to undo the damage that has resulted.

If this process were broken down clearly, then the victims of it would be able to more clearly understand what has happened to them, and work directly on those processes to heal themselves. They deserve that opportunity.

I don't mean this as a personal affront. I do think we need to look at how this intial question got dissapeared in the present discussion. Notice that Alexis raised what appears to be a fascinating question:

"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.) "

And then seems to become promtly amnesiac to ever having asked that question. Is that just another "dropout" ("dropout" is another of ESTs nominalizations, for some reason I always thought of sour lemon drops when they talked about dropouts, but you could also think about nose drops, dropping out of your former life, drop out, turn on, tune in ?)

So, lets crack this nut once and for all.

What exactly do you mean by "dispelling the Should/Have-To "conversation" ???

What IS this conversation ? When do you have this conversation ? Who do you have it with ? Where does it guide you ? Whats a good Should/Have To conversation as opposed to a bad Should/Have To conversation.

Should we be examining this right now, or do we Have To examine this right now ?

Should you answer this post, or do you Have To answer this post ?

Need/Want ? What the problem here. Weeds ? Nants ? Do I Weed you to answer this post, or do I Want you answer this post ? Should I Want ? Need I have To ?