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Re: Werner Erhard on Integrity, Morality, Ethics, Legality (not a joke!)
Posted by: ellenaaa ()
Date: October 04, 2012 12:09AM

newfuture
Date Added: 08/25/2011
Posts: 19

"...In the advanced course, there was a lot I didn't understand, but what got me was having to tell our 'stories' over and over again. They call this the "disappearing suffering"part but for the life of me I do not know in what world people suffer less by telling their sad incidents over and over again."


This is a direct lift by Werner Erhard from scientology and the "window-dressing" ~promise~ of relief or release of suffering, (~disappearing the past~), all the while bringing long-ago suffering and old wounds into the present and sharp focus for purposes of manipulation and control ($$$). People wander in with some inchoate desire to forget the hurtful, unpleasant, and tragic events that shadow them. Remember "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?" Who wouldn't pay money for a "cure" for heartbreak? Nice if it were so easy to dispel these painful memories as a taking a simple ~course~ at Landmark. No, and of course, not the "stated" aim of ~disappearing suffering,~ but a mechanism to amplify suffering so that you need Landmark (scientology) more than ever.

Their "logic" is that since you ~create~ the thoughts in your mind, you can "uncreate" them (or ~disappear~ them). At scientology they utilise something they call "time tracks." They ask you to remember a similar incident and then a similar incidenct before that, even going back to infancy and imaginary past lives. They propose that if you can find that "original" injury and root it out by repeating it over and over again, the entire "chain" will evaporate. Nice, huh? So if you can't come up with enough material, you can "imagine" past horrors in the attempt and thus expand your suffering into ever greater and greater generations. Can you imagine a pharmaceutical company inflicting diseases for which they "offer" an expensive cure? Landmark is like that. And apparently they are still separating people from their money and not in jail as the pharmaceutical executives might be.


Ellen

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Re: Werner Erhard on Integrity, Morality, Ethics, Legality (not a joke!)
Posted by: newfuture ()
Date: October 04, 2012 05:00AM

@ellenaaa - thank you for letting me know that. The problem was that my past was already firmly in the past, to use landmark language. I have never been someone to dwell on things and one of my mottos in life is 'no use crying over spilled milk'.

So to have all of this stuff - some of it traumatic and sad stuff that I'd dealt with by just moving on and not thinking about - raked up and then, even worse, to have my memory manipulated by being told that none of it happened (how could they know since they were not there), that I was making up a 'story' (which by definition means that I'm a liar and cannot tell fact from fiction, nor reality from la la land) and that I needed to "take it out of my future" and put it in my past was very confusing.

None of this mental confusion/the past or anything else was there until landmark brought it up. furthermore, they actually *tell* you what incidents happened to you by saying that at age 5 you said "I'm on my own", aged 12 you said "I don't belong", aged 17 you said "there's something wrong here" and then making you go and find incidents in your life where that may have happened, while all the while telling you to leave the past alone and create a new future was just confusing and overwhelming for my brain. They literally implant memories in your head that way. I know that I had never said any of those things to myself ever. Yet, my mind was searching to see if it had. When I took the forum, I was in my late twenties - how would I even remember if I had said something to myself at the age of 5? And that's coming from someone with photographic memory.

The time tracking is also very weird. That threw me off balance. My sense of time only returned 9 months after leaving landmark.

Now I look back I think 'How could I have allowed people to make those suggestions and put things in my head like that?" but what I realize is that I had to do the mental work to see if any of it was true/false because of their insistence that this was the way and this was what had happened and this is how human beings work and I listened because they came highly recommended and I didn't know at the time that they talk out of their asses. The only other alternative would have been to never have gone to the forum or to have walked out, but I didn't do that because I didn't know what it even was and had no reason to be suspicious.

You are right - landmark is like a person who puts on a white coat, pretends to be a doctor, then diagnoses everyone they see with a terminal disease, including completely healthy people. They give you their 'cure' and treat you for a disease even if you have never had it or don't have it. And when you get sick from being pumped full of intense drugs that you have no need for, and question them, they say they are experts, have done this for years and it must be all in your head because they are treating you. Meanwhile you get worse and worse, sicker and sicker until one day you wake up and realize that your problems started when you started seeing the quack "doctor". But by that point, you really are sick and now need to undo the damage that wasn't there in the first place.

F**K landmark. I cannot say it in any other way. They are evil scum and werner erhard and his cronies should all rot in hell.

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Re: Werner Erhard on Integrity, Morality, Ethics, Legality (not a joke!)
Posted by: ellenaaa ()
Date: October 06, 2012 12:54AM

Quote
newfuture
@ellenaaa - thank you for letting me know that. The problem was that my past was already firmly in the past, to use landmark language. I have never been someone to dwell on things and one of my mottos in life is 'no use crying over spilled milk'.

So to have all of this stuff - some of it traumatic and sad stuff that I'd dealt with by just moving on and not thinking about - raked up and then, even worse, to have my memory manipulated by being told that none of it happened (how could they know since they were not there), that I was making up a 'story' (which by definition means that I'm a liar and cannot tell fact from fiction, nor reality from la la land)

-----
The separation of fact from fiction and ensuing confusion and disorientation is what puts people into a state of "cognitive dissonance." It's a trick to get you to suspend judgment and accept what they tell you. It's a way to soften you up for the new messages they want to insert or instill. It is so unnerving for some to accept this schizophrenic state of confusion ( or ~nothingness~) that they will leap or cling to anything that will give them some (illusionary) footing in the real world. Landmarkers substitute their own version of reality into the empty space. It's some weird amalgam of Ayn Rand-type self-centeredness mixed with a paradoxical exhortion to join the group and loose yourself in a cookie-cutter mass of robots. Sad, confused, frightened people are easier to lead. Remember, they cull for those they can control and direct. They target the vulnerable and use the hell out of them. Weird, weird dynamic of (probably for the most part) well-meaning people willing to go along with the scam, lie, manipulate, and take advantage because they have been lead to believe they are helping people. It's a co-option of the best intentions and turning them into a predation.-----


and that I needed to "take it out of my future" and put it in my past was very confusing.

None of this mental confusion/the past or anything else was there until landmark brought it up. furthermore, they actually *tell* you what incidents happened to you by saying that at age 5 you said "I'm on my own", aged 12 you said "I don't belong", aged 17 you said "there's something wrong here" and then making you go and find incidents in your life where that may have happened, while all the while telling you to leave the past alone and create a new future was just confusing and overwhelming for my brain. They literally implant memories in your head that way. I know that I had never said any of those things to myself ever. Yet, my mind was searching to see if it had. When I took the forum, I was in my late twenties - how would I even remember if I had said something to myself at the age of 5? And that's coming from someone with photographic memory.

The time tracking is also very weird. That threw me off balance. My sense of time only returned 9 months after leaving landmark.


-----
So they're still doing this? In earlier year, Werner Erhard used the "past lives" bit but someone whispered in his ear that that particular practice would make him look foolish in the educated class he intended to target.-----




Now I look back I think 'How could I have allowed people to make those suggestions and put things in my head like that?"




------They have had thirty years + to work on their manipulative bullshit. They've been turning it over and fine tuning it for decades. Don't beat yourself up over this. It's another of their tricks to try to keep you silent and ashamed so you don't tell people about your experience.-----


but what I realize is that I had to do the mental work to see if any of it was true/false because of their insistence that this was the way and this was what had happened and this is how human beings work and I listened because they came highly recommended and I didn't know at the time that they talk out of their asses. The only other alternative would have been to never have gone to the forum or to have walked out, but I didn't do that because I didn't know what it even was and had no reason to be suspicious.

You are right - landmark is like a person who puts on a white coat, pretends to be a doctor, then diagnoses everyone they see with a terminal disease, including completely healthy people. They give you their 'cure' and treat you for a disease even if you have never had it or don't have it. And when you get sick from being pumped full of intense drugs that you have no need for, and question them, they say they are experts, have done this for years and it must be all in your head because they are treating you. Meanwhile you get worse and worse, sicker and sicker until one day you wake up and realize that your problems started when you started seeing the quack "doctor". But by that point, you really are sick and now need to undo the damage that wasn't there in the first place.


-----Exactly. You nailed it.

Corboy wrote a while back:

"Its just like a pickpocket smootching/snogging you, getting you all horny and, while you are unaware of it, slipping your wallet out of your back pocket."

...To which I'd add "and leaving you with a case of genital herpes on her way out the door."
-----

F**K landmark. I cannot say it in any other way. They are evil scum and werner erhard and his cronies should all rot in hell.

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Re: Werner Erhard on Integrity, Morality, Ethics, Legality (not a joke!)
Posted by: ajinajan ()
Date: February 14, 2016 08:30AM

A bit more background information on Steven Zaffron aka Stephen Robert Zaffron :

STEVEN ZAFFRON WAS CONVICTED OF MAIL FRAUD PER WERNER ERHARD BIOGRAPHY OUTRAGEOUS BETRAYAL:

Steven Zaffron = convicted of Mail Fraud in 1982.

Steven Zaffron = served Werner Erhard as an Est Trainer in Erhard Seminars Training EST.

Steven Zaffron = current CEO of Vanto Group formerly known as Landmark Education Business Development (LEBD).

Steven Zaffron = current Landmark Forum Leader = highest level rank in Landmark Forum aka Landmark Education aka Landmark Worldwide.

Steven Zaffron = given “lifetime” designation to perform “transformation” work for Werner Erhard forever.

Steven Zaffron = member of the Board of Directors of Landmark and senior executive at Landmark Education aka Landmark Forum aka Landmark Worldwide = helped design the Landmark Forum course itself.

Steven Zaffron = continues to work with Werner Erhard while working at Landmark Education aka Landmark Forum aka Landmark Worldwide and while working as CEO of Vanto Group formerly known as Landmark Education Business Development.

From the book Outrageous Betrayal as quoted at:

“[...] Another one of Erhard's new executives was an est trainer named Steven Zaffron […] Three years after first joining Erhard's staff in 1979, Zaffron had been indicted on mail fraud charges for participating in a scam to collect phony unemployment checks. Zaffron was placed on three years' probation [...] Zaffron [...] agreed to a plea bargain [...] shortly before Erhard conferred on him the coveted 'lifetime' designation to do Werner's transformational work [...]”

Pressman, Steven, Outrageous Betrayal: The dark journey of Werner Erhard from est to exile. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09296-2 , pg. 217.

CONFIRMED ACCURATE INFORMATION PER 1982 ASSOCIATED PRESS ARTICLE:

“San Francisco (AP) – A man whom prosecutors say masterminded scheme that bilked 13 states out of more than $400,000 in unemployment benefits was sentenced Monday to four years in federal prison for mail fraud.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson imposed the sentence on David Adams Muncaster, 50, of Fairfax, who pleaded guilty June 7 to two of 41 counts against him. Three other people also were sentenced after having pleaded guilty to one count each.

Rosalyn Linda Bonas, 40, who lived with Muncaster, was sentenced to 179 days in jail, with the rest of her three-year sentence suspended. Muncaster's former wife, Joan Loretta Sontag, 39, of South Lake Tahoe, drew a three-month term with the rest of her two-year sentence suspended.

Stephen Robert Zaffron, 38, was given a one-year suspended sentence with three years probation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Burch said the fraud allowed the four to “take extended vacations and live in luxurious surroundings.”

The complaint, covering activities in 13 states and a period of time from November 1975 to November 1981, said Muncaster set up tax accounts for at least 10 fictitious employers in the various states, using private mail drops throughout the San Francisco Bay area.

Then, the government said, he and the others, using false names, applied for Social Security numbers and used them in filing fraudulent interstate unemployment insurance benefits claims at 19 California Employment Development Department offices in the San Francisco area.

Muncaster and the others would appear at these offices saying they were former out-of-state employees of the fictitious companies who had moved to California to look for work.

California would process the claims and forward them to the states where wages were supposedly earned. These states would verify claims by writing to the fictitious employers' Bay area offices.

Muncaster and the others would verify their own claims and states sent out more than 2,000 checks to the various addresses.

B. M. McClanahan, postal inspector in charge, said the defendants rented 22 post office boxes at various places, established mail receiving service at 37 Bay area mail drops, obtained more than 90 fraudulent Social Security cards and opened about 60 bank accounts for benefits paid on 130 unemployment claims.

The states involved were New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Hawaii plus the District of Columbia.

California has filed a civil suit on behalf of the other states seeking to recover some of the lost funds.”

Associated Press. San Francisco. Four-year sentence given in 13-state mail fraud case. September 16, 1982. Nashua Telegraph. Page 15.

[news.google.com]

“Mr Zaffron is described in the book's executive summary as "a senior executive and board member with Landmark Education, where he spear-headed the design of the Landmark Forum".”

Baker, Richard; and Nick McKenzie. (August 30, 2011) Department chops $80,000 'charisma' seminar Landmark Education and its offshoots have attracted global controversy for their group training programs. The Age, Australia.

STEPHEN ROBERT ZAFFRON AKA STEVEN ZAFFRON MAINTAINED HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH WERNER ERHARD FOR DECADES, AUTHORING A PAPER WITH HIM AND MICHAEL C. JENSEN ON “INTEGRITY” IN 2009:

Erhard, Werner and Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve, Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality (March 23, 2009). Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 06-11; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 06-03; Simon School Working Paper No. FR 08-05. Available at SSRN: [ssrn.com] or [dx.doi.org]

NOTE THAT AT THIS TIME, STEVEN ZAFRON WAS ASSOCIATED WITH WERNER ERHARD RELATED COMPANIES LANDMARK EDUCATION AKA LANDMARK WORLDWIDE AND ALSO VANTO GROUP, FORMER KNOWN AS LANDMARK EDUCATION BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (LEBD), FORMERLY KNOWN AS TRANSFORMATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES.

Landmark Education Business Development aka LEBD aka Vanto Group has as its CEO Steven Zaffron.

Zaffron first became an executive for Werner Erhard and was an “est trainer” in Erhard’s company “Erhard Seminars Training” (Outrageous Betrayal by Steven Pressman, St. Martin’s Press: 1993, page 217).

Currently, Zaffron serves the Landmark Education corporation as CEO of “Vanto Group”, formerly known as “Landmark Education Business Development”, and in addition, Zaffron has the highest-ranking “trainer” title in Landmark Education called “Landmark Forum Leader”.

Interestingly, in a publication by Steven Zaffron as its author, “The Promise of Philosophy and the Landmark Forum”, Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. XXIII, No. 1 & 2, Jan/Feb & Mar/Apr 2001 Barbados Group Working Paper No. 01-01. -- Steven Zaffron acknowledges Landmark Education is a form of " Large Group Awareness Training " or LGAT. In this paper co-authored by Zaffron, the phrase “Large Group Awareness Training” is used multiple times in reference to Landmark Education. Example on page 52: “Dennison’s dissertation,7 which categorizes the Landmark Forum as a “large group awareness training” is a qualitative study based on interviews with Forum graduates. He also reports predominantly positive outcomes and in addition, briefly summarizes philosophical components of the Forum. The extensive research literature on “large group awareness training” published in the 1970s and 80s (summarized in Finkelstein, Wenegrat, and Yalom8) is framed in psychological more than philosophical terms, albeit there is some reference to the training as existential psychotherapy.” Two different academic treatises are cited as references in the paper co-authored by Zaffron (see page 59, endnotes 7 and 8, Dennison 1994 and Finkelstein 1982) – and both have the phrase “Large Group Awareness Training” in their titles.

RADARIS INFO ON STEVEN ZAFFRON CONFIRMS HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH TWO WERNER ERHARD RELATED COMPANIES – TEKNIKO LICENSING CORPORATION AND LANDMARK FORUM AKA LANDMARK EDUCATION AKA LANDMARK WORLDWIDE:

Radaris
[radaris.com]

ORGANIZATIONS

Name / Title
Company / Classification
Phones & Addresses

Steven Zaffron
Director
Tekniko Licensing Corporation
1945 N Carson St, Carson City, NV 89701
353 Sacramento St, San Francisco, CA 94111

Steven Zaffron
Manager
LANDMARK WORLDWIDE, LLC
2390 E Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85016
1209 Orange St, Wilmington, DE 19801
353 Sacramento St #200, San Francisco, CA 94111

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