It would appear you are quite young. Some of us are old enough to remember the beginning of the LGATS, Large Group Awareness Trainings, and have watched the disaster from the beginning, more than 30 years ago. You are basing your assumptions on recent, partial, and distorted or contrived information and experience. Landmark is in the business of tricking and fooling people. No matter how
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

No one has said it better than "corboy" in her follwing posts which I've reprinted. (Also sent them over to afl to give those folks a laugh.) Ellen (From the thread "Considering the Forum??? June 2002) ____________________________________________________ You cannot empower people by covertly manipulating them through use of trance. Treating people as obj
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

It's a bit premature to make any judgments. Don't jump to any conclusions. She's only just started, if she has indeed started, to come to terms with what has happened. Go easy. A Landmark involvement can be the emotional equivalent of a drug addiction, bad marriage, or traumatic injury. It takes time, sometimes a long, long time, to recover from this stuff. Landmark targets
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Werner Erhard and his clones are no different from any of the other megalomaniacal cult leaders who have gone before in their recognition of the value of using women to lure men into the "fold." Most religions use this to their advantage, like the proverbial dogcatcher using a female in heat. Mormons teach their women it is their "job" to keep their men corralled. L. Ron Hu
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Just my opinion, but if she is, what they call "in thrall," you won't be able to have a normal conversation with her, have a normal relationship with her, or trust her in any implicit way. If she took the training to heart, and to get as far as the "Advanced" course, she must have, to some degree, she probably won't be much of a companion unless you do the courses
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Are you aware of the recent news about the large defection from scientology in Holland? Though it's a different sect, (cult), they may cut a path or provide an example of how to fight this type of abuse. Here's a link. Scroll down to the news. Ellen
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Jack, I find it astonishing that you spent six, count 'em, six years involved somehow in est and you didn't figure out the relatively minor and prosaic legitimate or common-sense portion of the program "from which almost anyone could benefit," as some wag pointed out. Perhaps that is why you ask the question at the top of this thread? Is it possible that you, or anyone fo
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

First you say: >>I told everyone about it, and let them know that I would be happy to take them to a guest seminar if they liked, but I didn't push it any further than that. It was a golden rule thing--I knew I wouldn't want to be treated that way and if I was, it would only push me away from est, so I played it much more low-key than the full-blown syndrome recommended
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

A fine and very touching post, SS. An especially melancholy one this time of year, for the same reasons we all think of friends and family and the closeness that is something to cherish, something sacrosanct, or at least should be. Not "territory" for the mining of profits and bodies to fill seats. Not "business possibilities" for predatory organisations. Not just so ma
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

JackSF ponders: >>I came to this group because I was excited by Guy's and gc's posts in particular and some of the others. However, except for gc, I don't notice much room for dissent in this group either.>> Who's stopping you? Or hindering your dissent? What IS your point, anyway? "Cult," "cult-like," "sort
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Doesn't seem to matter to some people how many times the evidence has been recounted, how many testimonies given, how many personal horror stories come out, how high the mountain of information is, how many bodies have piled up, or how many scholarly and forensic studies are published, there are always people willing to shut their eyes and cover their ears. Like you, for instance. Landmark
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

| 1/14/78 | EST Graduates claim myriad benefits - researchers find psychological dangers | Science News p27(2) | Joel Greenberg | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 1/1/78 | Werner Erhard The Transformation of a Man: The Founding of est 158 E67zbar c1978 | Book-Werner Erhard| William Warren Bartley, III| --------------------------------------
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

| 1/26/90 | Ex-Employee Sues est for $2 Million | San Francisco Chronicle| Don Lattin | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 1/7/90 | Heidegger for Fun and Profit | NY Times| | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 5/28/89 | Erhard went from encyclopedia sales to marketing 'it' | Palm Be
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

| Here is one reading list that covers about a 20 year period. I don't know who compiled it. The earlier articles are the most interesting IMO. Some recognized it as a cult long before the whole truth came out about its origins and the man who founded it. It is from Linda's site. Ellen 4/18/96 | True Believers| Westword (Denver) | Steve Jackson | -----------------
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Hope you looked at his "Visitors Comments" page I posted earlier. Ellen
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Ellen (Werner rates a "bogus.")
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Pick up any reference, book, study, magazine article, interview, or anything else printed in the last 30 years about cults and/or cult mind control and there will be some mention of est, Werner Erhard, or Landmark and all the other mutations and weird spawn of scientology and Mind Dynamics.* Pull up anything written about Landmark and there will be mention of cults or the cult issue somewhere.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Old news Jack..... It's a combo/hybrid/mixed bag cult, pyramid scheme, multi-level marketing scam, New Age self-improvement bizcult, scientology "squirrel" group, charismatic leader centered/slave-labor/mind control organisation. (D'I miss anything?) For purposes of discussion and because Landmarkers are a litigious bunch, they're referred to as an "LGAT,&quo
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Asking what's good about Landmark is sort of like asking what's good about fascism. There will always be lots of people willing to find good things to say about fascism. They have their own press, audience, closed, controlled environment, and no one is stopping them from enumerating all the good things they can come up with. And yes, the trains ran on time. So what? If there were
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Some more enlightened courts allow the victims of a criminal to participate in his sentencing and incarceration. Traditionally, victims were excluded from the public exercise of adjudication and parole as somehow "contaminating" the proceedings or drawing them into a prejudicial stance unfair to the criminal. But some in the criminal justice system recognized that this exclusion did
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Not forgotten, eh, gc? So all the talk about the "kinder, gentler Landmark," (as opposed to est), is just another PR manoeuver and Werner's ghost or spirit-of-Werner with the screaming, profanity-laced temper tantrums is directing things yet? (Sounds like the newer, "kinder and gentler" torture and interrogation techniques that have evolved and leave no marks or vi
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Being the "anti-religion," of course scientology admits to no "God" as that would imply a being greater than one's self which no megalimaniac would accept or "submit" to. What cracks me up is the idea of all these minor "dieties" (junior Forum leaders) all running around thinking *THEY* are in charge and wondering why all the rest of their ~creati
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

To expand on this a little..... The whole or core of all of Landmark and similar groups that are weird mutations of the even weirder scientololy is based on this "conception" from the megalomaniacal mind of L. Ron Hubbard that he coded as "responsibility" and was/is stated or chanted or repeated in a trance or heightened state of suggestibility as something like: "You
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

One of the worst memes, or, what I would call an implanted idea that is locked in or gripped or held in place like a conviction or a belief once the person adopts it, is the "You create your own reality" one which, while true in many important regards, is also false in some more important ones and can also be used to lie, cheat. steal, and manipulate people with impunity. It's so
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

You are pissing on the wrong hydrant. It's old news. Factor it in or out as you please. It's been hashed and rehashed. It's a dead issue. Do your research or piss off. Ellen
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

You're right on the money, Patrick. >>now landmark of course would not want to admit to this but they of course are empowering themselves over the peoples. dont u get it ?>>> And Jack, The fact that this was done to people with very traumatic memories by amateurs with no psychological experience or back up caused all kinds of problems, some
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Hi Jack. What Patrick said is right. Snakeoil "works" for lots of people. That's why their are so many snakeoil salesmen. Cults/snakeoil salesmen tell people what they want to hear: "There is a cure for what ails/is troubling/piques you. " Most of us are creeped out by the jargon. I predict that when you realize how duplicitous it is; i.e., a way
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

You said: >>The most obvious hypnotic technique I notice being used at Landmark is the vague, confusing language that causes the mind to slip its clutch and spin freely for several seconds, leaving the listener in a mild trance state. My all-time favorite example is from a Werner tape in which he talked about "taking a stand that you are the stand you take" or "
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

You might find interesting the pages in Stephen Pressman's book, "Outrageous Betrayal," where he talks about Werner Erhard's days of trying different methods to motivate his squad of door-to-door salesmen and women (mostly women). (That was how his whole enterprise started, you know.) There was an expose recently on one of those news "magazine" shows in which someo
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

You said: >>I'm not sure that anyone here is genuinely interested in hearing what I have to say.>> What you've posted here sounds like it came directly from the Landmark "textbook." We've heard it all before. In exactly the same words and phrases you've used. If we were interested in hearing that, we could
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"