One thing I'd really encourage you to do is to get all of your accumulated head knowledge down on paper .... or rather available in a web site. These forums are an excellent way to do this.

Particulay valuable is your own story, as well as the experiences of others. Nobody can discount or take that away from you. Just start a new thread and away you go!

John

John, just go peek into the Bayard Hora/Gavin Barnes thread in this very same LGAT forum, and you'll see what I've been doing. I think you'll be satisfied with my storytelling. :-)

Last year I digitized the great bulk of my cult- and Direct Centering- related archives, which included a decent-sized collection of papers, articles, documents, etc. related to est, Erhard, LGATS in general etc. dating from the late 1970s thru mid 1980s. They are now all high resolution PDF files. If someone here is hardcore enough about this subject matter and can get others here to vouch for them, I'd be happy to share. I don't know how unique, rare or useful much of this is except to a LGAT history geek, but it's sitting around backed up onto my web host storage space waiting to prove useful.

Sounds fantastic!

John

laarree:

Please remember that this thread is about Landmark Education not Direct Centering.

Another thread about Direct Centering would be a more appropriate place to comment about that group.

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rrmoderator
laarree:

Please remember that this thread is about Landmark Education not Direct Centering.

Another thread about Direct Centering would be a more appropriate place to comment about that group.

There already IS an active thread about Direct Centering, from which you've just banned a valuable partcipant. I'll go back next door. *sigh*

(quote)I have to interject here to say that I'm disappointed that amhebera has been banned because of the very recent contributions he's made to the thread about Bayard Hora/Gavin Barnes right next door to this thread. (unquote)

Someone can make valuable contributions concerning Group A, and yet have a disruptive/trollish pattern of behavior in a discussion concerning Group B.

In fact, this might even be part of a sophisticated strategy. A person who has made prior and valuable contributions about one harmful group may earn crediblity on a board and then be permitted to get away with disruptive behavior that a moderator would not permit from a newly arrived member had not previously contributed useful information.

In this case, we have to consider whether a person may bribe RR.com by giving useful information about group A, establish trust and crediblity, get enough published posts to earn auto approve status and access to the PM system, and then once that is accomplished, go on to their actual strategy--trolling productive discussion of group B--this this case, Landmark Education.

If this was indeed A's program, it is an example of highly sophisticated trolling.

another common pattern, is one that is similar to Guru-Hopping, which is LGAT-hopping, or being a Seminar-junkie.
For a Guru, a person might get to the point where they are opposed to their past Guru, and various other Guru's, but of course, none of that applies to the CURRENT Guru, as they are different.

Its similar with many LGAT's and groups. A person gets burned by a bunch of them, yet they still fall into new LGAT's which may seem different, but are really doing the same thing.

I bet if one took a poll, you'd find that every Landmark person who is taking the seminars, has taken a string of other seminars over the years. The lingo used by those who run the LGAT's is Seminar-junkie.

But you almost never see the damaging aspects of the LGAT you are in at the moment.
Until you get out of all of them.

Probably next, the LGAT seminars salespeople will try to sell expensive LGAT seminars on how to avoid attending expensive LGAT seminars.

Yeah. There is a certain type of person who hops either from guru to guru, or in Anticult terms, is a seminar junkie.

We had someone disrupting LEC discussions years back. The person was very suave, seemed a wise but slightly condescending sophisticate of the Human Potential scene.

This person seemed to have taken just about every LGAT that existed, including certain ones very much more expensive than LEC. I once termed such persons Konsciousness Klubbers.

You can have a whole circuit of LGAT options much the way certain parts of town have lots of different clubs and rave scenes.

A person may go from club to club, convinced that which ever club he or she currently parties at, is the best club of all. Then when that person gets bored or loses free drinks or gets kicked out of their club, they will go on to the new hot club and the former club that they praised will then be written off by them as trite and tired.

The entire club scene itself--they never question it. The clubber may suddenly defend the very club he or she disliked if someone new to the scene ventures to critique it.

Now at least a dance club does not pretend to be something that it is not. It is a social scene, but nothing more than that.

An LGAT is more than a social scene. Unlike the club, it has no closing hours. The LGAT gives you the illusion of freedom but wants to take over your social life and tap your finances. YOu are not told the full history of the LGAT when you go to its first event.

Taking this analogy further:

It may be that some people cannot comfortably socialize except within the particular, structured 'insta intimacy' scene of the LGAT jamboree circuit.

I call this the Konsciousness Klub.

And like serial love affairs, whatever one they are in at the moment is best.

The former 'flames' whether former LGATs or former partners, will be critiqued, but the entire pattern of the relationship is never analysed.

But...if someone comes in from the non LGAT world and attempts a meta critiqiue of the entire Ponzi scheme LGAT scene itself, a Konsciousness Klubber will instantly defend all the LGATS he or she has ever been in, but only when dealing with someone who distrusts the entire LGAT circuit.

Then, when the annoyed outsider is gone, the Konsciousness Klubber may revert to critiquing previous LGATs, while being loyal to which ever one the Klubber favors at that moment.

Note:

Go to the search button, top right corner of this window.

Open the search window.

Put Amebhara into the author slot and do all dates.

Then run the search.

Read all of A's posts.

The first one

[forum.culteducation.com]

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I also think it's important to discuss something and not just attack it. If somebody had a good experience, it's OK to say that. I think it's way to easy to just trash things, and it's much better to discuss things. Discuss the good as well as the bad. I don't think "cults" like BHA or Landmark or others would sell if they didn't have good moments in them.

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I could write pages and pages just on my experience with DC/BHA.


Also, I just want to add one thing. On Annonimity. It's a very reasonable request, but sometimes, to have discussions about real experiences, maybe a first name is appropriate? If somebody just says "Tim", that's not very revealing and only those who took the course and stuck around a bit will know who that is.

(Answer: people's well being or that of their families depends on anonymity)

From the beginning even on other threads, A indicated an Landmark.

Two, in this next discussion, A started a little brush fire war suggesting Rick Ross was actually going easy on Scientology.

[forum.culteducation.com]

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, by the way, pleaded no contest to charges of being a party to placing a rattlesnake
in the mailbox of a lawyer who had recently sued and won a case against Dederich. Dederich's philosophy you say, is what?


That is a nice response. I approve.


Onto my question:

I've only been on this board a short while. My "cult" experience was very real, but 10 years removed, so I have a much more objective viewpoint of it now, but I have memories and experiences of being what some might call brainwashed.

I like the Rick Ross site a lot, but it does seem to invite a good bit of favorable reviews of scientology, while the reviews of other "cults" is much more universally harsh.

am I wrong about that or is Scientology more warming regarded by Mr. Ross than most of the others?

I'm curious about scientology, but at the same time very wary of it. I did the Landmark training recently and I had a good experience with it, though I fully understand why many view it negatively. I think it has both positive and negative aspects to it. As a rule, I'm open to the good as well as the bad in these so called "trainings". I think, if they didn't have any attractive elements to them, they wouldn't sell and they'd go out of business.

Rick promptly corrected this misunderstanding that RR.com is in any way giving a pass to scientology

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Amhebera:

See [www.culteducation.com]

The Ross Institute maintains one of the largest archives of critical information about Scientology available through the Internet.

Please be advised that this thread is not about Landmark, it's about Scientology.

If you want to discuss Landmark go to one of the many threads about that company within the message board.

A replied

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Ouch.


OK, then. I'll remember to stick to one question at a time.

But, that link that you provided was the very link that formulated my observation that RickRoss seems somewhat scientology friendly.


(Trying to shift the blame onto Rick Ross)

Overall, that page is quite fair, with scientology's website being the first link, and then 2 somewhat charitable scientology related organizations, then a box below, with celebreties, and then criminal investigations, followed by history and background.

Maybe I got the wrong idea and there is a lot there to read. It could just be an accidental representation via search engine. I was just wondering if this website is more friendly towards scientology than other organizations.

and I'm associated with no groups and I'm really quite open to answers both critical and favorable.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Turns out that A not only did the LEC seminar, but also did the advanced course.

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I'd be interested to discuss landmark with you / your experiences, etc. I took the course recently and I didn't find it as bad as I expected. I also took the advanced course. While I certainly don't believe that Landmark has all the answers (not even close), I found both courses interesting and more fun and more emotionally involved than I expected. I also found that the "Do not use the bathroom except on breaks" was highly overstated.

Doing the advanced course means that you get very thoroughly cooked

A also got into a spat on a thread discussing Native American spirituality

[forum.culteducation.com]

So...learn to audit people's threads by doing the author search. You will learn a lot.

Especially about the Konsciousness Klubbers.

one other thing about the term Seminar Junkies..it does actually smack of victim-blaming...in that almost all people who attend these LGAT's have almost ZERO idea of what is being done to them.
There are websites about Seminar Junkies, that seem to advocate a 12-Step approach, I think that's a mistake. What's needed is knowledge and education about how LGAT's work.

In a sense it is like being a junkie...drug dealers also hand out freebies, to get people started.
The "free" Landmark Intro nights, or any other "freebies" are really no different than a pusher.

Almost all people who attend an LGAT have no concept of what is being done to them, and how they are being engineered into wanting to keep coming back.

Its like an analogy of being invited to an event...then it turns out the event is a martial art, where you have no experience, like TaeKwonDo, and you are put into the ring with a blackbelt. You'll be beaten in seconds.

Its the same with these LGAT's. People go, and they don't know what's going on, and they have no training at all.
Meanwhile, the Landmark Leaders are highly trained and paid professionals in how to manipulate and sell.

But once a person learns as much as they can about these LGAT's, they no longer work on you. Once you know their techniques, its like seeing the same boring movie you saw 10x already.
For an experienced and trained person, watching one of these Landmark LGAT seminar leaders, is like getting a root canal. Many of them are really awful, and just so transparent, to the trained-eye.
Once you know what they are doing, and EXACTLY how they do it, then you just sit there, while others are getting caught up in it.

So instead of seminar-junkie, perhaps Seminar-Pushers, would be a better term, for the Landmark people. Landmark-Pushers.

But once you know their methods, they just don't work on you. If there was more public knowledge about the LGAT's, they would go out of business. This is why they try to keep everything secret, and shrouded in mystery.
Its not a mystery.
Its extremely sophisticated sales methods, and all of the standard LGAT techniques.

That is why the cowardly Landmark tried to suppress the France 3 documentary: "Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus".
[www.culteducation.com]

And the Landmark people are often just really bad watered-down carbon-copies of Werner Erhard.
Knowledge and education are the key. Someone has to figure out a way to explain it to the mass public.