QuoteI truly believe that TI and TII, along with the cheerleading encouragement from staff and trainers before, during, and after the program, had an incredibly strong influence on the foolish and disastrous choices I made at this post training, vulnerable period. I asked my coach several times if she thought I was moving too fast -- she was certain that I was instead opening up to my emotions a
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Quote Landmark tells you to "unblock" your thinking and open up to what you don't know what you don't know. The financial people say you can unblock what is stopping you, and the alt med people tell say you can be well if you just unblock your chakras or energy centers. And the Freudians ? What would they make of this preoccupation with "blockages", intestinal par
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Hmmmm... alternative physics meets alternative medicine.... explained by an alternative philosophy that uses an alternative vocabulary... This reminds me of Frank Zappa's definition of rock journalism: written for people who can't think about people who can't talk by people who can't write. If you want to go drilling down into the lower strata of their belief system(s) y
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Since you'll be mucking around in this domain you'll be hearing a good deal of their neo-speak... in fact you might want to look up George Orwell's newspeak word "Crimestop"... how to supress even the first inkling of doubt of dissent within yourself, the ultimate in self censorship... EST/LEC/FORUM loves the word "distinction"... more truthfully, they love t
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteDynamixLandmark forum leaders are the perfect example that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They are victims of living and working inside of an impoverished model. Werner Erhard's style of thinking, at least what we were able to see of his thinking as "recreated" by his staff, seems to me to be strikingly uneducated. Erhard had a high school education, and eve
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Truthiness Voted 2005 Word of the Year: In its 16th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted truthiness as the word of the year. Recently popularized on the Colbert Report, a satirical mock news show on the Comedy Central television channel, truthiness refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

And Now We Get Down To Brass Tacks dep't: also found on the net: "He attributed the founding of the est training only to his transformational experience on a freeway in California. According to Erhard, "it did not happen in time and space . . .I realized I knew nothing -- I realized I knew everything . . .I realized I was not my emotions or thoughts, my ideas, my intellect, m
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

In Case You Were Wondering How They Come Up With This Stuff Dep't: found on the net: "Some of the most interesting people I know of have suffered a severe head injury of one sort or another. Ellen G. White, foundress of the Second Day Adventists was struck in the face with a rock as a child and remained unconscious for days. Werner Erhard fell from a second story fire escape o
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteThis is how they tried to snare us: the forum leader put up a Venn-type diagram on the chalkboard and told us that the key to most of our problems was the blurry line between "what actually happened" and our "interpretation/story about what happened." Welcome to the wonderous wacky world of Crap Logic. Now think about the glaring inconsistency in their presentation. The
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteThis was a major victory for cults in America, and the situation remains unchanged today. Another major blow was the declaration of Dr. Fowler about Landmark not being a cult. I cannot understand this nonsense. Was the APA infiltrated?! We know what happend to the Cult Awareness Network, don't we? The usage of the word "cult" is a semantic glue trap, and cults, or whatev
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteReality doesn't exist, there are only interpretations. That's bargain basement Neitzche for you.... if that were correct, if the universe were denuded of all sentient beings, it would cease to exist. It goes back to this private reality versus public reality issue. The brain generates a "thick" interpretive layer over what some philosophers call "brute reality"
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteAccording to some physicists like Henry Stapp, what we call the "quantum collapse" is caused by an act consciousness. This determines the "present now" that we are experiencing. If there were no consciousness, there would be no collapse and everything would be fixed in space and time... for whatever that means. The key point here is that consciousness creates reality a
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Quote This new philosophy gives participants a sense of infantile omnipotence where everything becomes possible, and where you become fully responsible for your own choices (being rich, poor, sick, healthy, or being hit by a truck!”. No consideration is given to the wholesale incoherence of such a belief. Do all minds go about creating their reality ? Then do monkeys create reality too ?, do th
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it- Santayana Maybe it's time for out collective mind to remember the Zimbardo Experiment... which was terminated after 6 days because of the psychological effects on the participants... and in zimbardo, the participants knew from the beginning that they would be playing "prisoners and guards", so the cards wer
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteThe idea about generating a list is a good one. I asked her to do so during one of her more lucid/engaged moments. She balked about not having the time right that moment, so I clarified that she could work on it throughout the week. That was acceptable at first, but as the night wore on, she fell back on her tried and true excuse of above - I should simply accept her word. Put a twist o
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteI spent some time with my friend this weekend and heard this same thing as I brought up some of the dangers I see in the New Age activies her Landmark experience led her into. I should just "trust" her and "honor her discernment." Damn this is sad. I'm sorry to hear they got to your wife again. From an NLP perspective (as if that should have any special qualifi
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Quote She's experienced "something" very positive in her life and she wants to share it with me. By this logic she goes on to say that if I'm not willing to share such a powerful and meaningful part of her life, then I don't love her. I concur. EST and its' spawn, LEC absolutely thrives on generalizations... big, grandiose, hard to pin down, "you just had t
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteSome insiders refer to him in reverent whispers as "the Founder" or "the ~Source.~" I don't think there is any doubt he is still considered the "spiritual" chief or is still pulling the strings from the Cayman Islands. Oh I remember the Acknowledgement Of Source ritual quite clearly... the trainer positively glowed with saintly understanding as we, the g
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

It's pretty clear that both Scientology and EST have strong connections with occultism. LEC appears to have toned down the most overtly preposterous aspects of their occultic thinking while retaining the core philosophy... each being is "at cause" of the totality of his or her experience, which brings us to their imbecile war chant "So What"... werner used to drive a blac
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteA few years ago on alt.fan.landmark there was talk about "sex night" during the "6-Day," which was precursor to the "Advanced Course." Sadly, most of the old timers have quit posting (at least to afl), for which I wouldn't blame them. Also, this was a different time - before the swing back towards a more proscriptive cultural environment. The 1970s were
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteIf memory serves, that "Model of the Mind" stuff was a direct lift from L. Ron Hubbard. Thanks for posting. Any more comments? What impact did the est stuff have on you, if any? Ellen EST was a freakshow. The most distressing aspect of the EST traing was observing the ease wth which seemingly rational people could be pulled into their line of "reasoning",
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

That's sort of my experience too. When i went through the EST training and the follow up couses, the six day and others, they were outrageously cavalier about serious problems that participants had. Their model is anything that doesn't fit their worldview is either a racket, a drop out, a withold, all not getting "it" was interpreted as a naegative act of will, people chose no
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"