I'm familiar with the phone calls. They have different names and different purposes.

One set of phone calls is for group leaders where they have "coaching" calls with the class instructor. These are conference calls. The purpose of these calls is to get instruction and assistance on maintianing motivation within the work group that the group leader is leading and getting people to participate within the group as well as getting the homework assignements completed. I was a group leader many times.

The second set of phone calls is where the group leader has a conference call with the people in their group. During these calls they "get complete" on different things, discuss each individuals progress on the home work, etc.

The third category of phone calls are the types that people do on their own. Sometimes it's just between two individuals who are motivating each other. Sometimes it can be a group of people who have decided to get together on their own for what ever reason or purpose.

Your friends "what can we create" phone calls is most likely the third type. It is probably some group of Lekkies that have decided to get together to keep each other motivated.

i would tell her to come to rickross and do some reading. if she refuses to do
so then u have at least tried to help her.

keep us posted as to what happens. not knowing when her forum will
be and her being so submissive.. well just be on the look out and
let us know how she is .

sometimes u have to step back from friends that insist on taking cult
programs and be there for them later.,

the people I knew who got into the Landmark Forum, went from being decent people..
to aggressive, negative, arrogant, pushy, etc, trying to ENROLL you in Landmark, and just being real jerks.

They lost most of their friends, jobs and started to hang-out only with Landmark people.
But in two cases, after several years of pissing all their money into the Landmark Forum and GOING BROKE, they quit Landmark, came back to reality, went back to work, and have calmed down again, and never talk about Landmark.

They are still in the confused stage.
maybe a couple more years, after they figure out what Werner Erhard did to their brain with his "technology" they might start making YouTube videos about the evils of Landmark!
;-)

Landmark exists to exploit people and take your money to pay for Werner Erhard's boats and sundry expenses.

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The Anticult
the people I knew who got into the Landmark Forum, went from being decent people..
to aggressive, negative, arrogant, pushy, etc, trying to ENROLL you in Landmark, and just being real jerks.

They lost most of their friends, jobs and started to hang-out only with Landmark people.
But in two cases, after several years of pissing all their money into the Landmark Forum and GOING BROKE, they quit Landmark, came back to reality, went back to work, and have calmed down again, and never talk about Landmark.

They are still in the confused stage.
maybe a couple more years, after they figure out what Werner Erhard did to their brain with his "technology" they might start making YouTube videos about the evils of Landmark!
;-)

Landmark exists to exploit people and take your money to pay for Werner Erhard's boats and sundry expenses.

Amen to that. My friend who is landmark said something very nasty to me a month after my Grandmother died. He was holding a "meeting" at his house, code word for landmark introduction. I started to drive to his house and lost it. I was crying thinking about my Grandma and i really did not wanna go. I called him and told him i was not feeling up to it. Guess what he told me? "Stop being a victim, keep your word, and get to the meeting so landmark can set you free. I few weeks later he told me he told the landmark people in the room that night, that it was hard being my friend cause i "don't get it". Pretty sick stuff huh?

Very typical. I have seen that those who "get it" and buy into the Landmark Forum brainwashing, and have a certain type of aggressive personality, start to get very nasty and start "Landmarking" everyone, especially those they know best, and who they are trying to convert.

They find a sensitive spot, and then they start to attack that. (they seem to think they are "helping" you, even though what they are doing is anti-social and cruel).

What they don't realize is that is simply a technique from Scientology to start to hammer down on the person and put them off-balance, so the mind-control system can start to achieve Dominance over them, and control.

Its about Power.

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jp27
Amen to that. My friend who is landmark said something very nasty to me a month after my Grandmother died. He was holding a "meeting" at his house, code word for landmark introduction. I started to drive to his house and lost it. I was crying thinking about my Grandma and i really did not wanna go. I called him and told him i was not feeling up to it. Guess what he told me? "Stop being a victim, keep your word, and get to the meeting so landmark can set you free. I few weeks later he told me he told the landmark people in the room that night, that it was hard being my friend cause i "don't get it". Pretty sick stuff huh?

by the way, personally the only way I have ever found of dealing with people who get pushy and abusive from Landmark and other groups, is to be very strongly Assertive with them.
When they start to trip-out and get nasty, to just identify in the moment what they are doing, and tell them to stop behaving so disrespectfully.
What else can you do...just take their abuse?

In a normal social circumstance, you would just walk away and write the toxic person off.
But if its a close friend, then what are you to do?
So being assertive and telling them to stop seems to be the only thing to do.

Does it work?
Not really, they will usually just keep right at it, and keep blindly hammering away at you.
So then its up to each person to decide how much abuse they are going to take from their supposed "friend".
Personally, no friendship is worth getting attacked, hammered at, abused, insulted, "Landmarked", etc.
That is not a friendship, by definition.

The people who I have known who have gotten into Landmark, have literally lost ALL their friends,and just disappear into the Landmark void, and hammer away at eachother all week, I guess.
Personally, I would say, don't put up with the Landmark or Scientology abuse for even 10 seconds.

Amen to that, Anticult.

I say if it's too personal or too close to home just walk away. Self preservation is more important than attempting to preserve a connection that may never be anything but frustrating if the person has really gotten the Landmark bug up his a**.

As an aside, and if they ever do drop the Landmark persona and deprogram themselves, they won't remember you as being one of the ones who fought with them. They might not feel so humiliated trying to pick up the pieces with you.


Ellen

I hate to read about your friend and bot being able to help more than writing here.

If you want: pm me and I will give you my phone number. We could talk and maybe you can have your friend call me after we have talked.

I would (when talking to your friend) be totally understanding - I would use all my knowledge of landmark to try to lure him into getting a second viewpoint on landmark. It will probably fail but it would be interesting and worth a try.

Just stay friends with him and come back telling your story here. It helps other people in the same situation. People that are too scared to write here. Landmark uses scare tactics to silence people. With bogus legal documents that say that you "will never blame landmark" - something like that. Those documents will never stand up in a court of law. They are just part of landmark's intimidation scheme.

As for the phone calls. Landmarkers loose their ability to think for themselves. They need constant coaching. After a while some people cannot make any decisison without checking in with their coach. It is really strange. Landmark says they free people up - that people know how to make choices. But then people become so afraid of making the wrong choice that they freeze up. They get more and more entrapped into the cultish thinking and workings of landmark. Even the forum leaders are constantly coached by other forum leaders.

I think nettie is giving some good advice here. Of course its better to remain friends with someone, if possible.
But also, my view is if a person becomes abusive verbally due to the "Landmarking" and never stopping trying to recruit, then a line has to be drawn.
The other danger is the "rescuer" can get drawn into Landmark very easily. The Landmark person will most likely say..."hey, sure what you say is interesting, come down on Tues night so we can explain what's its all about...".
Then that person could get sucked in.
The 2 main people I knew who got into Landmark, became so toxic they lost most of their friends.
But of course, staying their friend is great, IF they are still a friend that is.


Illusion of Choices:
I find the idea that Landmarkers LOSING their ability to make free choices while being told they are getting more choices, to make perfect sense.
That is what Werner Erhard always has done.
He enjoys creating things that are the opposite to what they appear to be, as an in-joke, I think. He finds it funny.

Like "The Hunger Project". Werner Erhard finds it hilarious that no money went to the hungry, and was instead pissed away on limos and fancy dinners. He loves that kind of thing.
Or "Landmark is employee-owned". That is more comedy by Werner Erhard.
Or that Landmark and EST end up being about how nothing means anything, etc.
One could give countless examples of this.

There was a fake academic paper released a while back, with Werner Erhard as a co-author I believe, about what "Integrity" in business was. It was like comedy, as they reframed the word Integrity to mean the opposite of actual Integrity, with fancy words. That is Werner Erhard in spades.
I can't find the post on this forum about it, but its here. Maybe someone else remembers the title?

If you look at Werner Erhard carefully, he deliberately designs things that make people think one thing, while he is usually doing the opposite, with some in-jokes thrown in. It must make him feel intellectually superior, like a puppet-master. Guys like Werner Erhard actually get-off on the POWER of controlling other people's minds, all the while telling them the opposite. Sicko stuff.
Which is why they end their lives in hiding, living on a boat like a cowardly common crook.

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nettie
...
Just stay friends with him and come back telling your story here. It helps other people in the same situation. People that are too scared to write here. Landmark uses scare tactics to silence people. With bogus legal documents that say that you "will never blame landmark" - something like that. Those documents will never stand up in a court of law. They are just part of landmark's intimidation scheme.

As for the phone calls. Landmarkers loose their ability to think for themselves. They need constant coaching. After a while some people cannot make any decisison without checking in with their coach. It is really strange. Landmark says they free people up - that people know how to make choices. But then people become so afraid of making the wrong choice that they freeze up. They get more and more entrapped into the cultish thinking and workings of landmark. Even the forum leaders are constantly coached by other forum leaders.

I for one would be interested in eyeballing that academic paper. Anyone got a copy or know details of what its name is?

John