'Landmark Education/Forum' - anyone have any experiences ?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A few friends of mine recently attended something called a Landmark Forum . They seem to be profoundly impacted by the forum, and have since made significant improvements in their relationships with their families.

One of them, who hadn’t been speaking to his dad for years, went out for dinner with him and had this to say:

“My Dad n me havent been speaking to each other for years. we havent listened to each other. always nagging and trying to show the other one is wrong. I realized that bec i detested/disliked him and cud never have a talk with him. my negative feelings came out. thru the forum i realised that by being with my dad like that was only hurting me and causing me distress/discomfort/stress etc… and bec of this it was affecting other parts of life, friends, relationships. yesterday i took my dad for dinner and shared with him what i was feeling and that i was sorry. i dropped my ego. i cant even explain how i felt. last nite was the best dinner of my life.”

The other spoke with his parents, with whom he otherwise had a healthy relationship, and his mom said that she’s always loved him and now she loves him even more, and his dad said, “i love you, but i hate you for all the time that we have lost, anyway we’ll make it up now.”

I’m sure all this was accompanied by a fair deal of tears and hugging and other such emotions.

As much as I am touched by the changes brought about by the forum that they attended, I find it strange that it took a forum to bring about these changes.

So my questions are:

Has anybody else had any experiences with this forum ?

Can someone tell me more about them ?

Why does it take a forum to bring about changes such as these in a human being ?

Is this kind of forum in any way similar to all the ministries we see on TV, minus the God factor ?

Do you see yourself attending such a forum ? If so, why ? If not, why not ?

additional questions may follow as i think them up…

I’d really like to hear from the Teeming Millions…

Thank you for your time…

2

Put a search in the web. Most of the links of commentaries will tell you to…RUNAWAY FAST.

They are the continuation of what was once called EST. Put that in the web and you will get even more interesting information. About 10 years ago, I was pressured into a very similar program called Lifespring. They will basically bounce between serious feelgood and verbal hazing. Essentially brainwashing. What you are seeing is people freshly coming out of the session, which is not cheap.

Guess what they do with you on the last day? You are exhausted. Your brain feels like mush from all the hollering, verbal hazing, and insanity. You are about as vulnerable as one can get. They get you alone, with a few volunteers, and they pressure you into going to an advanced class.

That is what it is about. Call it Multi-level self-actualization, an Amway without any chance of monetary gain, because the only one who gets paid is Mr. Earhard (and a very few others). Earhard believes L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology is after him because they feel he stole their idea. You know what? He could very well be right. Earhard has his smiling robots doing his work AND giving his money.

With Lifespring, it was a 5 day seminar. Wed-Fri, 6p.m. to midnite (actually they held us until about 12:45). Saturday was 8 a.m. to midnight. Sunday…actually, I got pissed off enough by about 3p.m. to walk out. I then spent the next 3 months arguing with them to get a full refund.

These people who have reunited with their parents are likely pressuring them into doing just the same thing. Pay for a seminar.

About 4 years after Lifespring, I was being pressured by another person about Landmark. I went to her house and get the degree again, but this time I was able to put her on the defensive by asking “Didn’t they used to be EST.”

You must be pretty vulnerable right now to trust the sincerity of people with big “shit eating” grins acting just sooooo nice:

We love you Xash,
oh yes we do.
We love you Xash,
oh yes we do.
We love you Xash,
we do.
Xash we love you.

Please research this, with a clear head. The web is the best start. Landmark folk know mind messing techniques.

3

Two friends of mine have recently completed Landmark Forum courses. When they first mentioned the courses, I did a lot of research as one of theose friends has a long history of involvement in destructive, cultish, large group awareness programmes.

While Landmark does derive from est, the programme in its current form seems to have abandoned the intimidatory aspects of est.

While Landmark is relatively low-cost compared to other similar programmes, I can see that a certain % of attendees would probably become “seminar junkies” - feeling good about themselves only if they are continually attending more courses.

Both on the web and IRL, I’ve come across far more positive reports by attendees about Landmark than negative ones. Those people I know personally who’ve attended are well-versed in the techniques of est, Mind Dynamics™, Learning Dynamics™, Scientology etc and they not only report that Landmark does not use those techniques, they can also articulate very clearly the difference in the techniques used by Landmark and those used by the other “technologies”.

At worst, Landmark seems to conduct 'fix up your life" seminars which will leave the participants financially poorer (something which can be said of ALL large group awareness programmes).

It’s possible that their entry level courses are deliberately designed to be seductive and non-threatening, so I’d be very interested in hearing about the experiences of those people who’ve gone beyond the Advanced Course.

Landmark doesn’t seem to have attracted the same kind of hostility from “cult awareness” type organisations as have groups like Scientology; perhaps because its seminars have more in common with the ones conducted by Louise Hay, Anthony Robbins and Dr Phil than they do with the “secret” technologies revealed by cults behind closed doors.

While I’m sceptical about whether money spent on Landmark courses provides any more benefit than reading a self-help book, it doesn’t seem to be in the same kind of “malignant” class as it fore-runner.