there is a part of the landmark forum
i wish to discuss and would like comments from everyone but especially landmark grads.

the part of landmark i wish to hear
about is called the empowerment process, used to be the danger process.

it goes like this.

people are instructed to put their
hands to their sides, not to cross
their legs and to close their eyes.

now it begins.

there are so many people in the room and u are terrified of them, a few
people begin to wimper, some to cry a little,

then there are so many people in the
city in which u live and u are terrified of them, more people begin
to cry and wimper.

then there are so many people in the
metropolitian area and u are terrified
of all them also, at this point people
begin to wail and scream and cry, but
the creshendo has not been reached.

then u are told that there are so many
people in the state and u are terrified of them and the people begin
pick up the volume with thier wailing
and screaming and crying.

then there are so many people in the
country and u are terrified of them
and the people begin to go wild. some
fall out of their chairs and roll on
the carpet, some begin to scream at the top of their lungs. people are really fired up now and yet the ceiling has not been made.

then there are so many people on the
continent and then in the world and
people are going ballistic with their
fear.

of course after being left in this state for awhile they then tell u that
u are the one doing the terrifying and
that the people are terrified of u.

they repeat the process till the all
the people are no longer wailing and
screaming and crying but are now giggling and laughing.

landmark grads tell me that this
gets them in touch with their fear.

this is group hyphosis. and when people are hypnotised they can be
made to have such fear.

my question is how does this empower
someone. how does making someone under
hypnosis more powerful ?

thank u

Some people get really terrified with that exercise and others see the point of it right away. Some find it terrifying, others find it funny.

It is supposed to be empowering because the goal is to make a participant realize that everyone is terrified. What the leader is saying to the group applies to each individual - that if you are terrified of the person next to you, then it also means the person next to you is terrified of you. Since apparently you couldn't possibly do any harm to the person sitting next to you, it's probably not appropriate to believe the person next to you could potentially harm you.

I took the exercise as an opportunity to sit with my eyes closed, however I found the moaning and crying unnerving as it progressed. I wondered if these people were acting or really freaking out. No one from the Forum moved to reassure two of the people who were still pretty shaken after everyone else had "gotten it." They continued that way for the rest of the evening.

i did the forum, and at the part in question, i thought it as a bit strange but i would go on with it.
people did cry around me, i thought what are they crying about,
and should i be crying to. as from my past experiences no one in the room made me scared or the world.


then the forum leader said can you see the funny side to it,
i am like no i can not, then the penny dropped.

and i got it.

thank u for posting back to me.



lets back into the forum for a moment.
some of u say that people were screaming and crying and some say
that people thought it was funny.
its actually got two parts, the
part where the participant is terrified and then the part where
the participant does the terrifying.

lets go over the first part. many
people i have spoken to deny that
they ever wailed and screamed and
cried. this is to be accepted. it
does seem a little strange to admit
to people that landmark had u going
out of your minds for a little while.

the first part i completely understand. u are made to feel terrified, not just a little scared
but real scared. real scared is terriefied. and even though u wont
admit it most if not all of u did scream and cry. u are in denial. this
is acceptable. when i took the forum
in 1996 i did not cry but i did open
my eyes and look around me a little.
i know i wasnt supposed to do this and
u might say that because i did not
follow their lead that i didnt get it.

well, i would disagree, i did get it.
i got an understanding of what this
process does.

and heres a question. if it wasnt hypnosis, how was it possible for everybody , practically everybody to have become so involed with it. i am
supposing that when i started this
thread that u didnt start crying and
screaming. the reason people cried and
wailed and screamed was because they
were hypnotised. if people were not
hypnotised then explain the success
the forum leader had. give me an explaation as to how most if not all the people in the forum at that moment
were able to automatically become very
very terrified.

that takes care of the first part.
now the second.

what is it about humans that terrifying
other humans seems funny.

some of u say that your leader asked
u if u got the funny part. well , sorry, the funny part came after the
terrifying part. of couse the landmark
leader will tell u that this was just
an exercise to get u in touch with your fear. there is another purpose.
if u attend a large group awareness
training and u are not getting enough
of it to suit them this is a way for
them to know. maybe some in the crowd
didnt scream or cry, in that case the
y stuck out from the crowd.

would u agree.

also, just the suggestion that u are
terrified made u that way. landmark
induced terror into many people at
the mere suggestion of terror. think of that.

now what would have happened if they
had left the people in this state.
it is possible that people would have
eventually died of fright. this is
a possibiliy and probably a fact.
if someone could induce u to terror and left u there, u might be dead now.

but of course they could not do that.
they had to bring u out of the state
of being terror and into the state
of being terrible.

just a study of their simple language
gives u a hint. some say that they thought it was funny. no. u did not
think it was funny when u were terrified, u thought i was funny when
U did the terrifying. get it. after
being terrified instead of saying that
u are being wonderful for whatever reasons, they told u that u were terrifying others and u thought it was
funny.

isnt that interesing. right after them
making u terrified and so many people
were actually quite scared u thought that doing the same to others was funny. do u get it now ?

of course landmark would never admit this. they would say that it is just
my interpretation and i am only human
and cant possibly get it right.

and then on the other hand landmark
preches they dont have any .

some say the empowerment process made
them feel uncomfortable. it should have. they made your state of being
terrified and then u liked to terrify
others. do u think there is a message
here ? there sure is. do u know what
it is?

P-D:




"my question is how does this empower
someone. how does making someone under
hypnosis more powerful ?"

I assume you meant to include the word(s) "feel fearful" or "fearful" between the words "someone" and "under"

What I got out of the exercise was the following:

1. Each individual can create an emotional and physical response within themselves by imagining a series of thoughts. In this case, fear (and perhaps associated with quickeing pulse or sweating or an overall feeling of anxiety). Thus, if you can create fear through your thinking, you can create other emotional and physical responses through thinking (positive or negative).

2. Every human being experiences "fear" or "terror" as it relates to being with or talking to other human beings (I don't want to talk to my girlfriend about breaking up or getting married because I am afraid of what she will say or what she will do or what she will think about me or what she will say to other people or whatever - i.e., I am afraid). My fear is a product of my thoughts. Everyone (according to LEC) has thoughts that produce "fear" (or anxiety or concern or whatever). The fact that we all have "fear" is a common thread among all human beings.

3. No one has reason to fear me ('cause I'm not that scary) and if the same principles apply to all human beings, it is nonsensical to fear others.

So that's my interpretation of the exercise - my recent Forum also had people weeping and wailing and then laughing and giggling. I believe it is acting and in Forum speak, trying to "look good." Look at me! I am weeping! I am so deeply emotional! Now I am laughing! Look at me! I got the point of the exercise! Look at me!

Whatever. Back to something Hope had said on another thread, the idea that you can create emotion through your own thoughts is nothing new and is a fundamental building block of cognitive behavioral therapy.

The realization that one can create a physical and emotional response because of what they think is great. Making this connection can help people with ulcers, irritable bowl syndrome and high blood pressure (among other things) manage their symptoms (through biofeedback - a discipline widely accepted by traditional and non-traditional practioners). The realization can also help with depression as - trust me - a significant part of the depressive emotional response is directly relaed to the thoughts running around in your head. Check out The Feeling Good Handbook if you are interested in learning more about cognitive distortions and cognitive behavioral therapy.

People in my Forum also went to sleep and snored.

What did you make of the ice cream - chocolate or vanilla exercise?


Regards -

Patrick-Darcy,
I'm not following you, and some of the statements you made about the exercise certainly were not the case in my experience. Out of 180 people in the room, perhaps 10 were very frightened and crying. I don't think it's a matter of the other 170 being in denial. Perhaps the real reason is the fact that this exercise is explained on the internet on several sites, and it's an idea that's been used in public speaking classes for a very long time. I thought my leader was rather tonge-in-cheek about this particular exercise (and he caught me looking, too ;)

There was not one part where we were terrified and a second part where we did the terrifying and thought it was funny.

The serious matter lies in having participants "share" their life stories (like physical and emotional abuse, etc) and having the the Forum leader do a three minute psych session with them in front of the audience. That truly is criminal. Even the RET web page called three-minute-therapy (or something like that) doesn't make claims to fixing people that quickly.

The other exercise that merits discussion is the "disappearing" the headache. Landmark's approach to physical problems seems to be to treat them all as psychosomatic - even conditions like IBS which is really a wastebasket term for many conditions. IBS is generally given as an example of a psychosomatic condition when in fact there is a lot of research coming out that it is not. There are many conditions that are misdiagnosed as depression, merely because standard medicine and even alternative medicine doesn't dig a little bit deeper to find the true causes. To assume then that people who are depressed, have "IBS" and high blood pressure can "think" away or disappear their conditions with Landmark technology is both absurd and dangerous.

u assumed right. your already thinking
was working perfectly :)

to address your response #1

people are not creating an emotional
response in the forum. the emotional
response in this instance is created
for u. it has been thought out in
advance, that is part of the forum.

do u believe that that hypnosis that
is used at landmark is done for the
benefit of the participants or for
the benefit of landmark, or maybe
for some of both.

#2

to expierience fear as u say is to be
human. but to lead people to fear as
in the forum is to be dominate. fear
is a human way of being at times. we have all experienced fear.
were u aware in the forum that a fear
exercise was about to happen. from my
discussion with other landmark grads
it seems that sometimes the audience
is told that a fear exercise is about
to begin, and at times in other forums
they are not told.

i have been a photographer for years and
i in a sense create emotion through
my photography. i can sense and feel
emotion and maybe in some ways feel
it more than some, maybe less than others.but lets back up for a moment
and understand that landmarks danger
or empowerment process can have more
than one result.

i must be honest and say that by being
under hypnosis , in a hypnotic state
induced by the forum leaders , in my
opinon is not a place for education.

landmark grads understand landmarks
direction empower the forum leaders
over themselves. this is part of the
result of the danger process and other
processes.

u say it made u see that your fear
is unfounded. it also shows how rather
simple it is to bring people in a crowd to a certain way of thinking.

i have read that landmark teaches their program leaders in the mannerisms of werner. do u understand
what is being done here. werner is in
every forum done on the plant . he is
still there. even though they say he
is no longer a part of landmark other
than getting 50 percent of the gross,
the license fees i assume to continue
his work if u will.

but u have not addressed my question.

do u feel it is appropriate to hypnotise people without their permission in order to do what landmark percieves is in their best
interests ?

creating your emotin though your own thoughts is one thing, creating emotion from the thoughts of others
is a completely different one.

and then how is your way of being
now changed. before u dealth with
fear in a human way, the way u had
before, now how do u deal with fear now ?

do u say to yourself it doesnt mean
anything ?

my roommate at the time fell asleep
at my forum.

i dont remember the ice cream exercise. can u explain it ?

later

you got that bit katy
i don't think darcy has yet

i like vanilla the best.
and i wanted vanilla
because i like vanilla
it is nice vanilla
vanilla is yummy
because someone else said it was nice vanilla
my mum has vanilla
vanilla is white
no no no!

i chose vanilla

patrick and hope,
in all due respects,
have you done the advanced course?

did you get it?
on the last night of the forum, and the leader asked has anyone not got it.
if you did not get it did you get up?

did you get up and question the not getting it?

Glenn,

Yes I "got it".