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hossgal

.....The Tuesday night graduation and the following weekly seminars were nothing more than recruitment pep rallies. The longer I stuck with Landmark (which wasn't long, in the grand scheme...) the smarmier it got. I did the Forum in March, and can't recall exactly when I found this site, but it wasn't long after the staring match with the seminar leader. I was so angry after that, I started digging around on the 'net.

And here I am.

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hossgal
To Patrick-Darcy:

No, the "fear" exercise we were subjected to had no references to excrement.

thank God for that.


I felt no fear, no apprehensions about my neighbors or anything else. I thought it was a stupid exercise and the people who reacted so "over the top" were either "plants' or needed more (and better) help than any LGAT could provide.

the people that were so over the top were completey
under the controll of the forum leader. this was classic
hypnosis. one of the reasons and there may be others
that u didnt react by wailing and screaming and crying
is because u were taking or had taken medication.

there seems to be a connection between people taking
some medication and them not falling under the
influence of landmark.




If the exercise was meant to "empower" me, well, I guess I'm empowered enough, 'cuz I walked into that Forum feeling like THEY should fear ME!

thats interesting, most people go to get their problems fixed, even
though most will deny it. i do believe your statement




The description of your experience doesn't mean a thing to me. What, if any, was your point?

it should mean something to u. when i attened the forum
jinnendrah had young women who had cancer and was
looking for a psycological edge to combat it up front
and center. he would ask her questions and when she gave
the wrong answers he would cut off her way of thinking
and corral her till she came up with landamark answers.

he had the gall to tell this women that if she had joined
up with landmark sooner in her life then she wouldnt
have gotten cancer in the first place. this man to me
is a dispicable creep.

what he told this women didnt have an effect on my life
other than to make me feel that something there was
terriblly amiss.

also to most people that have taken the forum, when
i mention to them does it mean anything to them, they
answer no. they tell me that it wasnt their experience
so it wasnt true for them.

it should make a difference.

yes it should matter to u.







To Ellen:

My psychiatrist (he's probably in his mid-40's) seemed most interested in whatever positives I may have derived from the experience. Maybe he was afraid I'd come after him for malpractice or something. It's obvious he knew little or nothing about LE prior to this. I told him about the "breakdown" incident and the rest, and how dangerous this could be. I wanted to impress on him that he shouldn't be so casual about signing releases for LE. He did see the horrid manipulations that happen when "leaders" try to convince a participant that what they know to be true is in fact NOT true. (As in, "You told us to return by 7:35" "No I didn't". "You are using hard-sell tactics". "No we're not".) Another one of the "good" things I got out of the LE Forum is, my BS detection system is much better now!

As soon as I heard it was an extension of EST, I became apprehensive. I was certain it was all a big Multi-Level Marketing scheme by Sunday, only in a real MLM, there's at least the idea that the more folks you enroll, the more money you make. LE hooks people on some silly idea of altruism -- that by enrolling people in Landmark you're going to save humanity or something. What a load! Didn't work for me, because I'm not that motivated to save the world. It survives or it doesn't. I caught flack for that attitude, too, from the LE's. My shrink laughed!

The Tuesday night graduation and the following weekly seminars were nothing more than recruitment pep rallies. The longer I stuck with Landmark (which wasn't long, in the grand scheme...) the smarmier it got. I did the Forum in March, and can't recall exactly when I found this site, but it wasn't long after the staring match with the seminar leader. I was so angry after that, I started digging around on the 'net.

And here I am.

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elena
Sounds like Patrick's referring to some "excercise" taken from Mind Dynamics or Leadership Dynamics, (Sadism, Inc.), in which if a person made a remark such as, "I feel like sh*t," he was made to roll around in a pile of it produced by the other members.

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LEC! look at this naughty LiveJournal entry of mine. please, sue me!

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hossgal
For the tip regarding "Without Conscience". I just recently finished "Outrageous Betrayal", "Cults in Our Midst", and "Crazy Therapies", so I'm sorta on a roll with this reading material.

To Patrick-Darcy:

How long ago did you do the Landmark Forum?

i did the forum in 1996 , january i think.

I do know LE has made changes over the years to try to seem "kinder and gentler", but I think all that's really changed is the "packaging". It's still nasty, manipulative and destructive.

i would agree

In answer to your comment about certain medications blocking LE's hypnotic influences, what medications and what dosages would do this?

if u look further down the list of the page this is posted u will
find a hypnosis article. its quite interest. it also states that the
brain shows signs of change when people are hypnotised and if
u continue to read it , be sure and make notice of what the parts
of the brain that seem to be changed do.

landmark informs people that if they are taking medication
of any kind to let them know in advance so that they can
decided if u should take the forum or if they will reject u. they
actually on rare occasion reject someone to take the forum.

why would they do this if there wasnt a reason. i have spoken
to people that have taken antidepressents because they were
stopping smoking and they seem to not be taken up by landmarks
high pressure tactics of taking course after course.

it seems its now possible to prove they manipulate the way people
think. if someone wants to do the forum and before they were
tested they could be tested again after they take the course and
their brain scans would be different.



I was not the only person who "resisted" trance induction, and others here have posted on these threads regarding their own resistance/failure to "trance out". Some people are better hypnotic subjects than others.

that is true but many people take lots of courses before they see landmark for what it actually is.



I agree that the seminar leaders can and do say horrible things to people who are in distress -- such things were done and said during my own forum experience. Some I suspect (in retrospect) were "set-ups", others were participants who were blind-sided by the leader.


oh yes, this is manipulation at its best. could i ask what was said
in particular to the people at your forum.



I failed to see how these tactics were supposed to help anyone.

but the people that they used as examples see they were being
used. they , in some instances were relieved of their burden whatever
it was.

the women in my forum came away feeling much better about herself
eventually. she just didnt understand that what she was feeling
was meaningless and empty.
.



And the "sports coach" model that they supposedly use in the Forums doesn't work either as far as I'm concerned. I've been coached for athletic competitions for years and have never been abused in such a fashion.

one of the reasons the abuse works so well is that so many people
in our sorciety have been abused before landmark ever got a hold
of them.

heres an example of landmarks abuse.

they get in your face and sometimes holler at u and tell u that u are
running a racket if u dont let yourself take in what they have to offer.
of course with people paying their money they want to get something
from landmark so they lend themselves to abuse by landmark.

if people have been abused in their pasts they are easy prey to more
abuse from and especially businesses that state they want to help them.

its like women who have been abused by their partners have a tendency
to fall into other abusive relationships over and over again.

now landmark will rid their victim of any guilty or pain or suffering in
some instances from a prior abuse even as they use abuse to do it.

take a child for instance, a child can be abused and abused and when
its over that child feels good about themselves because their abuser
designs it to be that way.




It's definitely the product of a sociopathic mind. But what, as individuals, can we do to combat it?

this is a sickness on the people. because of past abuses that in
so many instances that are covered up by people , this allows
companies to come in and further abuse people without them
being aware of it.

educating people with groups like this is one way.



People have been sued or hounded half to death who even thought about fighting/exposing Landmark.

yes and landmark being a sect of scientology this is one of their
tactics. it works pretty well, especially with people that money
that landamark could conceivable get their hands on.






Beyond warning those who are contemplating it, and confronting (with love and understanding) those who've gone through it and taken the bait, what can we do? :(

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landmark informs people that if they are taking medication
of any kind to let them know in advance so that they can
decided if u should take the forum or if they will reject u. they
actually on rare occasion reject someone to take the forum.

why would they do this if there wasnt a reason. i have spoken
to people that have taken antidepressents because they were
stopping smoking and they seem to not be taken up by landmarks
high pressure tactics of taking course after course.

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I think the just mean to screen out applicants who have psychiatric histories in order to protect themselves from lawsuits and the people from getting hurt.