Hah, found it!
I suspected the link was posted by ajinajan, and that is correct.
I suggest we comment on that article in that thread, or make a new thread about the article?

Werner Erhard EST Landmark connections ?
[forum.culteducation.com]

Quote
nettie
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.

My friend is going down the tubes fast this last month. He was trying to get funding to start building condos. He has been turned down by bank you can think of. He keeps running back to landmark this month to find answers on why this is happening. They tell him to be happy and it will come true. What a crock of BS. My best friend of 15 years has been feed lies and has been told that landmark will make all this dreams come true, and his dreams are on hold and he wonders why, cause landmark said anything is possible if you use there method of thinking.

I will pm you soon Nettie and we will talk more. It's getting out of hand for my friend. Landmark promised him the world and they are not living up to their end of the bargin.

You can see a copy of the paper here ....

[papers.ssrn.com]

Better still, at the bottom they've got a link for an email address for Werner Erhard. What could possibly go wrong? (grin)

John

I first did the Landmark Forum in August 2006, it was a pretty interesting course. After about a year and a half, more and more concepts that I learned in Landmark became apparent to me. February of this year, 2008, I wanted my girlfriend to take the Forum, and I repeated it with her as a reviewer.

I would have rated our relationship as a 15 out of 10 before, the girl of my dreams, and if you can believe it, our relationship got even better after that. Last weekend we attended the Landmark advanced course, and we both got some invaluable information out of it.

For example, I had to take a hard look at myself and realize that I was thinking my friends were all jerks whenever they showed up late, or did something that I wasn't expecting them to. To use some landmark words, I figured out what my 'act' is. That is 'you're trying to pull one over on me'. [...] The impact of that of course was that I would be frustrated, pissed off, or annoyed at them, when I could have been using those very precious moments to be happy and in the moment. This week I've noticed myself doing that, and learned to snap out of it. I guess in some way I thought they were disrespecting me, because they didn't respect my time, and couldn't make the effort to be there when they said. That was silly in many ways.

My girlfriend really enjoyed the forum, and now the advanced course. She figured out her 'act' as well, which is that 'you don't take me seriously'. In fact, I could have easily told her she had this act, just from knowing how she is around males with authority, and her father. This 'act' has paralyzed her in many ways because she thought men were dominating her, when in reality she is such an awesome human being most people that meet her have a lot of respect for her. This 'act' stopped her from pursuing a singing career, and she has an absolutely amazing voice. Anyway, now that she got the 'act' on her own, without anyone trying to cram this down her throat, I mean getting it at the very core level, she has been singing every day this week. She bought 20 instrumental tracks, and sings along to them. She's super smart and majoring in business school for finance, so I'm not sure that she will decide to be a singer as a profession, but I'm really happy that she's singing because she really comes to life when she sings -- it's like magic. I can just watch her sing all day.

Anyway, the point is that I believe Landmark to be an awesome little exercise and served as a great tool for the both of us.

[...]

I was great before landmark, and I'm great after landmark. I just got some new tools to play with in my arsenal. Also, I have not experienced any of these negative things mentioned in this thread from Landmark forum members. I also haven't personally pressured people to join. Surely I've told my friends about Landmark but my parents and closest group of say 10 friends (with the exception of my girlfriend and one of my best friends) have not attended the Landmark courses. That's excellent, I respect their decision, and they're really awesome people and I love them just the same.

Also, I did not write this forum post to insult anyone, start a heated debate, or down play what your beliefs are. I guess the point of this message was to give some piece of mind, and to say that you shouldn't be so scared, and in my very own personal opinion it's not so bad.

If you have any questions or feedback, I subscribed to this thread, and will be happy to respond.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2008 09:12PM by rrmoderator.

Hi Alex,

And welcome to the forum! (no pun intended) Just had a quick squizz at your video too.

John

AlexShalman:

Please do not violate the rules regarding promotional links regarding Web sites or other Internet locations.

Also, communicate publicly here on the board.

Whatever you have to say can be said openly on the board.

Why hide it through emails?

Read the rules again.

be nice to Alex - he is a newbie landmark robot :-)

Quote
AlexShalman
I would have rated our relationship as a 15 out of 10 before, the girl of my dreams, and if you can believe it, our relationship got even better after that.

Better than 15 out of 10? Careful both of you don't explode! But seriously, do you listen to yourself? This kind of hyperbole doesn't even do Hollywood any favours. Yeah, I know you want to tell the world how happy you feel. Wait a little while and see what you rate your relationship when you come down from the Lekkie pills. It's really not a good 'look' when you're starry-eyed and so very high trying to convince a sober group like this.

This is a great point, which makes a good reality test.
15 out of 10?

Any proper psychological test, has some type of scale for rating.
For example, 10/10 = 100% and would be the maximum anything has ever been.

So by saying something is 15/10, or 150% is meaningless.
Its like saying 2+2= 19

If they can get a person to believe that, then they can get them to believe anything.
They want to disable any type of reasonable thinking.

Quote
Jack Oskar Larm

Quote
AlexShalman
I would have rated our relationship as a 15 out of 10 before, the girl of my dreams, and if you can believe it, our relationship got even better after that.

Better than 15 out of 10? Careful both of you don't explode! But seriously, do you listen to yourself? This kind of hyperbole doesn't even do Hollywood any favours. Yeah, I know you want to tell the world how happy you feel. Wait a little while and see what you rate your relationship when you come down from the Lekkie pills. It's really not a good 'look' when you're starry-eyed and so very high trying to convince a sober group like this.

Even before we did the landmark forum I fell more and more in love with her on a nearly daily basis. I always find out something new, see more into what a great human being she is, and just commit to loving her more over and over.

15/10 is a silly thing to pick at. Haven't you heard of the expression giving your 110%? It was only an expression. It's not to say that we never argue, or have disagreements either. Sure that happens, but we have a great way to deal with that, and I love how we can communicate so openly.

I have been studying and learning about self-improvement way before Landmark. For me Landmark is not a life style, nor is it a way of being. I do not claim to love everything about Landmark either. However, I do think Landmark is pretty awesome, and I take, use, and apply the tools that I like, and skip over the ones I do not. Landmark provides one paradigm, or one lens from which to look at life with. For me these paradigms and lenses are interchangeable. I'll tell you what I mean. I am Jewish, definitely not super religious or anything, I am learning more and more about it now. I like the paradigm of Judaism, and the Jewish culture. I like the way the Torah and Talmud provides some very practical guidelines for life. Now the Landmark lens does not see God. It believes that life is empty and meaningless until you give meaning to what you experience. Judaism believes in a ultimate truth, which is that God exists, and things go according to God's plan. It takes picking up one lens or the other, in order to experience life from different perspectives. I like choosing to be open minded. I like learning about other religions, cultures, and nationalities. I like having different lenses to look through, it makes life more colorful.

I was speaking to a friend who has done more research into 'cult' stuff, and who rick ross is, and I will just relay what I heard. This is not based on my research, and I am not saying it to discredit anyone. In fact, if I am wrong, and you want to link me up to an article, I would be very happy to learn from you.

-The whole Landmark and France situation is not as the article linked above on cultnews describes. There is valid independent research from Harvard University, and a Dr. in Munich, Germany, research done by cult experts, that states that landmark is not a cult. This information was sent to the French Parliament when they were doing their cult and sect investigations, but it went ignored. Landmark chose to leave France in order to avoid the unfair treatment. That's point one.

-Also, my friend tells me that rick ross is not a cult expert. Now, I do not want to discredit rick ross, I have done zero reading up on who the man is, other than seeing that he is in the same state as me from the about page. I will quote my friend who said "Rick Ross is a convicted felon. When he got out of jail, it was hard to find a job as a convicted felon, so he created a website and decided to monetize on anticult related advice. He does not have a college degree, nor any experience in the field" - Can anyone comment more on this and elaborate? Thanks!