So a couple of friends of mine just did the Landmark Forum thing, and have nothing but good to say about it. I went along to the last night to listen to people talk about how it affected them for the better, and then got led into a small room where I got the hard sell for two hours.
I don’t know what I think about it. I’m your average cynical sort, so I can’t really see how it would impact on me. It’s a month’s rent, so it’s really not an option for me, but I want to hear from other Dopers - what the hell IS it?
I’ve heard that it impacts across your whole life, improving the way you see yourself and the way you communicate with others. I’ve also heard that it’s a cult that destroys marriages and mental stability.
So, any Dopers ever been involved in Landmark? Or know anyone that has been? Is this something I should invest all that money in?
It’s a derivative of Werner Erhard’s EST effort of the 1980s. Search for Landmark and EST and you’ll find lots.
A good friend of mine did it in the mid-90s. He also tried to get his drifting teenage daughter to participate. She bailed.
He spoke well of it, but left it behind long ago. You must appreciate what sort of guy my friend is. He has in the past hawked his own “book” and series of cassette tapes describing your road to success in real estate development, with NO MONEY DOWN!
We go back a long way (H.S., and we’re both 50 now), and he knows better than to throw one of his pitches at me. I think he’s the sort who is immune to the pitch, but appreciated it as a learning experience for pitching to the leadable. I think that’s what he wanted his daughter to get out of it.
So, how much money do they want for what (tangible) product?
I did the Forum in 1990, when I was 19 and rather adrift myself. My father did EST in the 70s and got a lot of valuable insights from it, and decided that it would help me out. Dad’s still involved in some of the ongoing seminars as a tech-help kind of guy (projectors, microphones, etc.).
Short version: It’s not a cult. There’s nothing supernatural or mystical or religious about it whatsoever, and in fact it takes a very hardnosed, no-nonsense attitude toward life. In general it’s about learning to recognize patterns of behavior in your life and learning how to deal with those patterns, the good ones and the bad ones. There are numerous other courses for people who’ve already done the Forum and want to keep going, but the Forum is the basic one.
It’s hard to say if it was really helpful to me. Much of the course deals with people’s long-standing, deeply ingrained habits of how they treat relationships and communication and so on, and since I was 19 when I did it, I just didn’t have as much shit to wade through as most other participants seemed to. It certainly wasn’t harmful to me, though I don’t have the desire to do it again (many people repeat the Forum, reporting great results more than once). I’d say I learned quite a bit about human behavior, including my own; nothing I wouldn’t have figured out on my own in time, but it gave me a bit of a head start on that road.
On preview, rackensack has made a better statement in his/her linked post than I could have. Read that.
$465 NZD for three 15 hour days, and one followup evening. And thanks for the link rackensack, it was interesting, and more balanced than a lot of other stuff I’d read.
It’s not a cult: I think it’s a sort of on-going self realisation whatsit. Though I’m pretty sure someone must be making money out of it.
I have a good friend who started with the forum and has continued to do loads of other courses (or whatever they call 'em) and now ‘assists’* in some seminars. She seems to think it’s done her good, it certainly keeps her busy. She however is not short of money and thinks nothing of breezing off to Ireland or LA for a course.
I went along for an introduction and was a bit freaked by it. A bunch of English people expressing their inner feelings to a roomfull of people - WTF :eek: