User:Abd/Landmark Education/Abd/Criticism of Landmark/Abd bliki

This is a bliki (wiki blog) on the criticism of Landmark. I have seen people interested in Landmark, from seeing the results with people, then turn away because "it's a cult." And how do they "know" that? Well, they read it on the internet! There is a huge volume of material out there, readily findable, that proclaims this conclusion, loudly. Yet nearly everyone who knows Landmark from personal experience or by academic study knows that "cult" is, a best, a misleading term for Landmark. Here I will comment on web pages I find, as to what is there, what might be, in some way or other, legitimate, and what is sheer nonsense, and everything in between. It's all out there. Welcome to the internet.

Opinions expressed on this page are those of Abd, who is responsible for the accuracy of any evidence presented. Comments may be made on the attached Talk page. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 05:10, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Andy Testa
I first found this in a search for material on Landmark and responsibility and "blaming the victim," a common charge. Maybe it shouldn't matter, but who is "Andy Testa"? The claim is made that Landmark will sue your pants off if you criticize them. The actual history shows a record of both success and failure. I.e., Landmark has won suits and has lost them. But does that mean that people should avoid responsibility for what they write? There are plenty of sites out there with the "cult" and other claims that Landmark asserts are false, and some of them have even defiantly posted take-down demands from Landmark, and they still seem to be breathing. In any case, my link is to a German web page, and at first I thought that the English page was a translation from the German. It is apparently the other way around. So where is the English original?

It's got to be old, quotes it and is dated 2000. Some copies out there quote additional material that indicates Andy Testa is a dedicated enemy of Scientology. I have an old friend who did jail time for challenging Scientology. If one wants a possible cult to criticize, they are a clearer target, and definitely more dangerous. I'll be examining the Testa material, and he clearly connects Landmark with Scientology, which has a smidgen of truth and a vast dollop of "misleading." One of the copies has an email address for Testa. Testa is mentioned in the Skeptic's Dictionary,
 * Andy Testa, on the other hand, posted an account of his experience with Landmark Forum, in which he claims that he was hounded by recruiters who insisted that his resistance was proof he needed their help.

What is cited is the page cited above, on the German web site. It is likely that he actually was a participant, so it will be interesting to look at what he presents.

Okay, this is a reference to the source: culthelp.info. It was a post on the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, From: testa@starbase.neosoft.com (Andrew J. Testa), Subject: Re: Landmark Corp., Date: 21 Jul 1995 22:29:33 GMT. Looking for the post, I find this which could give some idea of the, ah, character. In any case, a search for that subject came up empty. There is a very good chance that the thread was deleted. Andy Testa did regularly post to that forum (as a dedicated enemy of Scientology.) So, to the content, and, remember, this is widely quoted as a source:


 *  The entity known as Doug Shelton (dshelton@nps.navy.mil) posted:
 *  Please give any info on landmark "forum" program. Is this similar to scientology.   Was this previously called EST?  Why did they have to restructure their entire program?  Thanks in advance

Notice, the question. The person is concerned with how it the Landmark Forum might resemble Scientology. As I'm familiar with both, though with Scientology only through the participation of friends and by reading such source materials as are available, there is very little resemblance. If one concludes that they are both cults, if one concludes that they are both frauds, etc., then there could be that resemblance. There were really four questions:


 * 1) Any info on the Landmark Forum? This could take a tome.
 * 2) Is this similar to Scientology? The short answer, No. Are there connections? Yes. A few. Indeed, Werner Erhard talks about Scientology in his authorized biography, and from what I know about Scientology (a little, though a lot more than your average bear) and Landmark (a lot), he's quite accurate. But who cares what Erhard actually said? Not many. Most want to know the point, get to the conclusion, man? Is it a cult or not? And most people, frankly, are not ready for the training, and, fortunately, most people don't end up in the room. Andy Testa, below, doesn't answer this question!
 * 3) Was this previously called EST? Yes, in a previous life. It is also different, as the inquirer knew, see the next program.
 * 4) Why did they have to restructure their entire program? It's not clear what that means. The business was restructured, and it is not at all clear that they "had to." Erhard was under a great deal of pressure, now fairly well-known to have been generated or fomented by the Scientologists, but not only by them. He apparently decided to make a radical move: he dropped his direct involvement. The fact is that he had created something that was no longer Werner Erhard, the identity. The old saying is "die before you die." So he did. And the result demonstrated that whatever Landmark is, it is not a "cult of personality." Most participants now have never heard of Werner Erhard. He is normally not mentioned in the Forum, at all. There are quotations from famous people given prominence. None from him. What is commonly quoted on critic pages as being "what they teach" (based on quotes from Erhard) is completely missing. There is no Little Red Book by Chairman Erhard. He disappeared, effectively. There is a myth that he was a fugitive from justice. Apparently not. He ... just ... disappeared. He stepped out of the spotlight. Funny, Pressman calls his life a "Dark Journey." Dark to us, perhaps, not to him!

The basic program did remain roughly the same. But the formats are under revision, by the Leader body. My understanding is that the Forum I'd see today, if I showed up (which I could, easily, and for free), is very much changed, as to how it's presented, from my Forum in 2009. I'm sure, though, that it will be the same "distinctions." That work is very solid. Now, to

Andy's reply

 * STAY AWAY.

Not an answer to the question, but unrequested advice. Stay away from what? It's worth asking that. There are a number of possible answers here:
 * 1) Stay away from the Landmark Forum
 * 2) Stay away from any Introductions to the Landmark Forum.
 * 3) Stay away from graduates.

In fact, if we look at Andy's comment, he's really recommending the third, because graduates can be so persuasive. And that takes me to a point: we often become what we hate. Andy hates Scientology, and one of the highly cultish aspects of Scientology is the idea of "suppressive person." Someone to stay away from entirely. These are people who will wreck your life if you merely associate with them, and, rumor has it, if you are a Scientologist and you associate with a "suppressive person," you will yourself be shunned.


 * An intense course

Is the Forum "intense"? In what way? One of the cool things about being a Landmark critic is that you can have it coming and going, you can make entirely contradictory assertions and nobody even notices.

One of the criticisms of Landmark is that it's just common-sense advice. And, in a way, it is. If you already understand the distinctions, which many do -- they are not the exclusive property of Landmark, nor of Erhard before it -- will it be "intense"?

Actually, yes, because, while it may be common sense, it is rare to see so much common sense, concentrated in one space and time, with so many people getting it. To someone who knows the ontology behind Landmark, who is at least roughly familiar with it and with practical applications, it is still exciting to see it in operation.

To someone who has never really considered the basic, fundamental issues of life, it can be a strong challenge, dramatic, people get up and walk out, most of them come back, but some don't. I saw a man walk out of the Advanced Course. He was actually a professor of linguistics, and he believed that the language being used was "wrong." I was face-palm, and decided I'd talk with him. Had he forgotten about Whorf? I was studying Whorf on my own, right out of high school. Words do not have fixed meanings, they are communication tools, and meaning depends entirely on context. But I never went up to him. Today, I wouldn't put it off. I knew his language, maybe I could have reached him.

His wife was in tears, she was personally thrilled by the Course, and upset by her husband's upset. The Leader decided he could come back, though he had missed some hours. He came back and apparently couldn't stand it, he left again. It's actually rare, few walk out of the Advanced Course like that.

My sense of it was that this professor had never applied what he surely knew to his own identity, because that identity was on full and undistinguished display. He wanted to teach the Forum Leader the 'right way,' when the Forum Leader had been leading this course (and its predecessor), with high effectiveness, for over thirty years. I had trouble in that Advanced Course myself, I was thinking of walking out, and it was my own identity, my belief about myself, formed as a child, kicking and screaming. Just what they said would happen, by the way, that my "act" would come up, and it had stopped me for fifty years.


 * that deconstructs personality

"Deconstruct" definition. All of the meanings apply in some sense, but this is simple: ": the analytic examination of something (as a theory) often in order to reveal its inadequacy. What is examined is not "personality," but identity, which is an invented story, created through experience and choices made, generally when young, it's largely complete by early adulthood, though the stories that make it up continue to expand and elaborate and become, if undistinguished, more and more restrictive.

Identity is, in fact, a theory, if we claim it is real. And it's an "inadequate theory," it has been known to be an illusion for well over two millennia. It is a "pile of reactions," to take it from Buddhist psychology.

But we sure do believe it's real! Now, what my identity is, is 'what it is,' regardless of what we say about it. If we say it is unreal, it remains what it is (real or unreal).

However, something happens when we recognize or declare the possibility of unreality: it becomes plastic, amenable to change. It was created out of experience, but the Erhard discovery (or recognition) is that much of this takes place in Word. I.e., we said things that we then believed. We made decisions and choices, and we often made them as a frightened child.... so the first thing the Forum does is to expose how we think, and how our past experience colors the stream of consciousness, the flow of constant assessments and judgments called "Already Always Listening."

It's called that because it almost never shuts up! If we are accustomed to thinking of this chatter as our identity, it's me thinking all this, and if we believe it's true, we become unable to experience directly. When people experience a release from that, even momentarily, yes, it can be "intense."

Now, with years of experience with other modalities, I was really fascinated to see how they pulled this off. It can take twenty years in a Zen monastery to get to this state, and they do it in three days? Really? Surely this must be fraudulent, ersatz, an imitation!


 * and rebuilds it around continued participation in the group.

That was his personal conclusion, it is not a description of his experience, if we look at it closely, as we will. The Forum is a single course, it is stand-alone, and it delivers what is promised, and people take just that, and years later, it's quite visible the impact that it had, even if they never participate again.

Who rebuilds the identity? (Again, it is not personality that is challenged, as such, though we often have confusion between personality and identity, as we do between self-expression and Self-expression.) It is very obvious: the Forum does not supply identity; what it supplies is freedom from the constraints of an artificial, invented identity made up many years before. In his view, what is constructed is an identity is what I would call a Landmartian. Someone whose new identity is all wrapped up with Landmark. And people do this, no question, for a time, some for a long time. It looks like he did it, and he then blamed Landmark for what he did.

Not at all unusual, in fact, Graduates, from one weekend, don't generally understand the full implications of what just happened to them. They can be surprisingly sophisticated, sometimes, at least it was surprising to me. But, still, for example, they may think that if we are "out of integrity," it's Bad. They may think that Landmark says we are "supposed to" do this or that. Basically, they apply their old habits of thinking to Landmark, it is simply not surprising; it's normal. If they do continue the training, they have an opportunity to be disabused of all that. And some of the continued training is, yes, I'll say, intense. It is definitely not for everyone, though it's open to everyone.


 * The Anal-retentive

Pure polemic. Erhard wrote about the allegations of rigidity. Here, though, Andy means some sort of idea that one must always be enrolled in some course or activity, or else ... or else ... the sky will fall, one will slide back down the hill, all will be for nothing and I just wasted everything I've invested in this. Or, more to Andy's eventual point, you will slide back, unless you Register Now!

It's a story. Is this pushed by Landmark? To answer that I'll need to back up. There is no "Landmark" that pushes this idea. I know the leadership materials. It's not there, the opposite is there, in fact. We are actually trained to not believe that anyone must take some course. It's explicit in the definition of "registration conversation," which is a generic concept that applies to all kinds of suggestions or requests. The goal is never to "get someone to do something." The training is that if we have an "enrollment conversation," which is a conversation that inspires, and we are doing this to "get somebody to register," we are being "slimy." That was the actual word used by a Leader.

The goal of a registration conversation is that a person makes a choice, and is satisfied with their choice. Landmark, or, more accurately, the Leadership of the Introduction Leader Program, in a training video, declared that "the business of Landmark is not registering people into courses." And then he stated what the business is: "listening for and reliably delivering that which makes a real difference in the lives of people as to what they are dealing with and actually care about."

Not what we say they should care about.

And we know that Landmark is imperfect. We don't meet our own standards, we fail, we are out of integrity! Yet we continue to stand for those standards and goals, and that stand generates transformation.


 * non-stop participation in seminars and advanced courses is sold HARD.

What is "HARD"? In the Introduction Leader Program, there is a standard conspiracy that "pressure" is a story, an "occurring." It is. However, there is also an understanding that we are responsible for how we occur to others, and if we occur to them as pressuring them, and if we do not intend that, we are out of integrity.

This is the problem. I was totally against "pressuring" anyone. But that was correlated with a weak stand for people. I knew that many people, including many of my friends, could enormously benefit from the work. There is a balance here, it's not just one side, i.e., "Pressure is bad." There is another side, "Weak stand for friends is bad." (In fact, the entire conversation gets dumped, as we dump "bad.")

I remember the day that a friend of mine told me he felt pressured. Yes! Fantastic! It meant to me that I'd erred on the other side of the target. That friend, by the way, ended up registering and really going for it (not from that phone call, which didn't contemplate that he would register, what I was confronting was his continual story, repeated all through his life, of "I can't").


 * Read on for details.

Warped history

 * Landmark Forum is the current incarnation of est, begun by Werner Erhard in the 60s after he was declared Supressive by scientology.

Radically incorrect. Werner Erhard studied Scientology for a time in the 60s. He was not declared suppressive then, apparently. He describes his understanding of Scientology and how it radically differs from what he did, in his authorized biography. Basically, Scientology was about the realm of survival, and his work about the realm of "enrollment," those realms are distinguished in the Advanced Course. The realm of survival is about competition, good/bad, right/wrong, win/lose, etc. The realm of enrollment is about connection, love, inspiration, and the board fills up with words in the Advanced Course, from the audience, as it did previously with the Realm of Survival. People do get this, it's transmitted very effectively and efficiently.

The Forum, under that name, began in the 1980s. Erhard Seminars Training, later called est, started in 1971. I'm not going to assert this as reliable, but it's more reliable than what Andy asserts: alleged 1992 Suppressives list, includes EST and EST offices, and Werner Erhard. [ this Answers.com document] claims the declaration was made in 1973, which would be two years after the trainings began. Andy clearly thinks that Erhard was a disgruntled employee of Scientology.


 * I'm not sure of the dates.

Indeed, but the problem is not just the dates, it is the whole story he constructed.


 * Werner was a staffer in Co$ who squirreled: he changed the tech and thought he had a better way to "clear" people.

Erhard developed the training out of many influences, but the strongest may have been Mind Dynamics, which is a fascinating subject of it's own. Erhard actually became a trainer for Mind Dynamics, something which I think never happened with Scientology. And then he made a decision to go out on his own; he then completed his commitment to Mind Dynamics, and started up his own training, and it essentially exploded. He was really skilled at what he did. The technology's origins are easily seen in various streams of thought that are credited in his biography, but one factor really stands out for me: He was a master salesman and trainer of salespeople. A sales manager must inspire the sales staff, or they are dead in the water. And so ... Landmark Education most strongly bears a resemblance to sales training, and that will take us into what I consider a truly interesting conversation, because we have a social conspiracy that sales is "bad." But every company and human activity need it. Nonprofits need it. If you can't sell yourself, your chances of getting a decent job fall. So this entire story about sales is suspect.


 * After his SP declare (mentioned in Captain Bill's letter) he started est.

I tried to find "Captain Bill's letter." this is a "debriefing" by Captain Bill, a former Scientologist. It does not mention Erhard. This is an affidavit dated November 1, 1991 from an investigator hired by the Church of Scientology (COS) to investigate Erhard. The last statement does establish some timing:
 * 26. Scientology has five (5) full filing cabinets of information on Erhard and EST and the material goes back to 1943. It includes in it their actions and activity against Erhard going back to approximately the last 20 years. Apparently Scientology had some problem with Erhard and have been attempting to put him out of business for some time. From the material in these cabinets it was evident Scientology was compiling a media blitz against Erhard and that Scientology was behind the 60 Minutes program and a national disinformation campaign to get Erhard.

"Approximately the last 20 years would be back to the founding of EST in 1971. (There are many other interesting assertions there, the reliability of which could be questioned, that is, he did have some level of inside knowledge, but how much of what he stated was actual knowledge and how much was inference could be unclear.)

Very unlikely that "suppressive person" preceded EST, since until EST, Erhard was no threat to the COS.


 * Est was pretty abusive, relying on incredibly strict discipline, insults and shouting to break down the resistance of the "student". The effect is to break down the personality and rebuild it around the group.

That is the classic "brainwashing" accusation. He was not there, he's relying on reports and conclusions of others. Since those reports and conclusions have continued with the Landmark Forum, and since the basic policies are unlikely to have changed, I know it's not true for the Forum, since I've been there myself and know hundreds of people who have been there, and I can infer that it was never true for est. The "incredibly strict discipline" is vastly exaggerated. The Forum is clear about what is expected of participants, in advance. It takes some patience to sit in a room for the time involved, and, definitely, the original work was more difficult than what is done how. And, remember, the original question was about the Landmark Forum, not est. What about "insults"? The classic claim is that Erhard called people "assholes." In fact what he said, and he's been very clear about that is "we are all assholes." So, if a Christian church teaches "we are all sinners," are they insulting church-goers? Surely that depends on how that message is conveyed. I think I recall Erhard calling a participant an asshole. And my impression from that memory is that the participant "got it." I.e, this actually led to a transformation. Suppose it did that. Was it abuse, or did the participant realize what was being transmitted? We actually do things that are contrary to our own ideals. We actually lie about it. We pretend to like people we don't like. We lose our love for someone and betray them. And someone comes along and calls us an "asshole" for doing this? Is this abusive or is it frank honesty, and, in the end, that question hinges on intention and skill. If the person is harmed, I'd submit, it was abusive even if the intention was noble. And if the person benefited, it was not abusive. Who decides if it's abusive or not? Definitely not someone sitting outside that conversation and judging it!


 * Through the years, Werner refined the techniques so that the abuse was no longer needed. The result was the Forum.

This is quite interesting, eh? Andy is ascribing the shift, which definitely happened (they stopped using "asshole") to "no longer needed." I.e., he found more effective ways and incorporated them into the design of the est Forum.


 * NOTE: Since est was and is a squirrel group, you are an SP for participating in it or belonging to it.  Since I participated in it, I have used squirrel processes and am officially an SP, not just a self-declared!

Put it this way. If he's correct (in fact, just because someone participates in est probably wasn't enough to get put on a suppressive persons list, though that could depend on how it worked), he is describing a true cult. There is nothing like that in Landmark, and Landmark is famous for healing families. No graduate is ever encouraged to abandon or leave or reject a family member because they don't like Landmark or think it's a cult or whatever. Graduates are urged to respect the choices of others. However, graduates are also trained to be assertive, and it's always a balance, as I mention above.

His account assumes that Landmark is a "squirrel group," i.e, steals the Scientology approach. He knows it isn't. Something is very strange here.

===Andy did the Forum in 1986


 * I did the Forum around 1986. At that time, it cost $500 and took 4 1/2 days (two weekends, then a friday night).


 * Calling that Friday night a half-day was probably an exaggeration. Today's forum is three days (Friday-Sunday), 13 hours per day from start to close, but there are three breaks, totalling 2.5 hours. So the sessions are between 2.5 and 3 hours. Then there is the Tuesday closing session, which is really an Introduction to the Landmark Forum, guests are invited. It's a bit over three hours, and it is not "obligatory" to attend it. I.e., if one misses that session, one is still considered a Graduate, one gets the free seminar and many other rights and eligibilities. However, it is enormous fun, because that is where people talk about what it was like on Monday and Tuesday, going back into Normal Life with a transformed perspective.

I was 67 years old and had absolutely no difficulties with the schedule. I do have a friend who is 50, he was fine. He had some problems with his back so they gave him a cushion. The difficulty is greatly exaggerated.


 * I got involved through a roommate. He was very enthusiastic about how it could transform my life, so I went with him to one of his weekly meetings.

That would be a seminar. It was probably then as it is now: the seminars are 10 sessions, spread out over three months. They are about 3 hours each. At every seminar session, guests are invited, but normally guests are only in the main room for about a half-hour. Then they are conducted to a separate room for an Introduction, which is lead by a graduate with special training, the training to be an Introduction Leader is really the same training as to be a Seminar Leader, but extended for the latter. I.e., all Seminar Leaders and other program leaders, start out as Introduction Leaders. It is the first "Leader" distinction.


 * I was treated to a room full of very white people in nice clothes, all very positive and testifying as to how their lives had been changed by the Forum and their current involvement.

The ethnic composition varies greatly with location, of course. In cities with diverse populations, the participants are astonishingly diverse, not just racially, but economically. Contrary to what one might think about a course that costs (now), over $500, there were, in my Forum, "hoodies" with baggy pants, Asian grad students, etc. And a high-level bank exectutive, and an insurance company executive, actually a mathematician of high skill, and a highly self-expressed Hispanic woman who confronted the "Anglo bias" in expecting us to be on time, and ... it all worked.

The first few minutes of a Seminar there may be some of those "testimonials," though, now, more often, it's just sharing about how the seminar is going. People are aware there are guests there and will toss in what the Forum meant to them.

Andy as victim of a mob

 * I was then taken to a separate room and subjected to HEAVY sales pitches by about 5 staffers and volunteers.

They don't do that any more. In fact, I've been asked to leave an Introduction because they only wanted people there with guests, their guests, plus the leader and one person assisting to handle registrations. They have realized that being surrounded by people telling you what a great thing it will be if you register comes off as "pressure." Was it a "heavy sales pitch?" I'll say it certainly can occur that way. I'm surprised to see there being 5 staffers and volunteers. First of all, "staffers" don't handle introductions at all. It is entirely volunteer. Was it that way in 1986? Maybe there was one staffer. They wear recognizable badges. There would be the Introduction Leader (in 1986, it was called the Guest Seminar Leader, and I know one former GSL well.) They are not staff, for sure. And then there might be someone there to handle registration. That would be two or three. Five? Something was strange. How many guests were there? If there are a dozen guests, maybe. They would want there to be one person for each guest to talk with. He doesn't tell enough detail to get a clear picture of what happened.

But this is totally clear: many people experienced "pressure" in introductions, and Landmark went through a reform process, still under way, they call it "upgrading an airplane while it is in flight." I.e, there is a vast program, involving thousands of people making it happen, and that has tremendous inertia. Landmark is not highly centralized. The Centers and programs are not micro-managed.

This is what really happens: people do become very enthusiastic about the programs. Andy's roomate got no benefit from Andy going to an Introduction, other than the possible satisfaction of seeing a friend's life open up. As they become enthusiastic, they become attached to outcomes. We do that with all things! And when we think we know better, that someone should do the Forum, we have fallen into the same trap we have been trained to avoid. And this is routine, I've watched more than one generation of Introduction Leader Program participants fall into it. The training addresses is, but this kind of attachment is deep, almost instinctive. It's very well known and understood among experienced leaders and long-term participants. I was lucky when I took the Self-Expression and Leadership Program, my coach was a grizzled veteran, a retired formal hospital administrator, black, and matter-of fact. And we had a conversation about this, and he explained it very well to me: Landmark is a human organization, and everyone is in training. He had been an Introduction Leader, he had been an SELP coach for countless sessions, he loved working with the small group, and ... that's the kind of people that really make Landmark hum.

Andy's story was busted

 * My roommate was there, and offered to loan me the money, and I agreed as I was a pretty wishy-washy sot back then. So of to the Forum I went.

Indeed. It wasn't a gift, it was a loan. Did he pay it back, by the way? I've been offered partial subsidies by people, since my income is quite restricted, I'm on social security. The people who handle these things are very clear: participants should have "skin in the game." The dropout rate for participants who are just doing it because someone offered to pay the registration for them is pretty high.

A woman I was involved with offered to pay $100 of my registration fee. (I think she thought I was intolerable without this training.) I refused to register at my first introduction, I lied. "I have a policy against deciding things like this without thinking about it." Why was that a lie? I got married, more than once, in the first conversation I had with a woman. I risked my entire life on a hunch. (Never regretted it, by the way.) No, I just didn't want to be dominated. Very common.

A lot of people will say, "No, I'd like to, thanks, but I can't. I don't have the money." And they are a total sitting duck for someone like Andy's roomie to say "I'll loan you the money." Assholes, liars, basically. "I can't" was obviously false, but we make up these stories to avoid telling the real truth. "I don't want to register tonight because I think you are giving me a hard sell and I don't like that. Go suck eggs."

I later got to know that Introduction Leader. Nice guy. Not actually skillful with me. How did I end up registering? Well, I visited my wife in Albuquerque and she took me as a guest to a seminar there. When it came time to go off to an Introduction, I stood up and said, "I've already done an Introduction, I'll just leave and someone can drive my wife home (that was available), or, I'd be happy to have a regular conversation with someone."

And a woman volunteered. Basically, I won the lottery. A long-time graduate, I think she was actually a Seminar Leader, and we sat and chatted for the 2.5 hours. Mostly she listened, and she was a spectacular listener. (That's part of the training.) And she said quite enough about her life. I wanted what she had. So when I went back to Massachusetts, I registered.


 * The Forum attempts to deconstruct personal attachments in a non-abusive manner by focusing your attention inward:

Notice that he has now switched to present tense, though his experience was years before, and the technology had changed. He was writing this in 1995. It's changed much more since then.

There are lots of theories as to how Large Group Awareness Trainings work. Landmark officially denies that the Forum is an LGAT. It's not hard to understand why. LGAT was invented to describe Erhard Seminars Training. But it came to be a code for "abusive brainwashing technique that depends on hypnosis, blah, blah." Nevertheless, the Forum is a Large (over 100 people, sometimes substantially more than that) Group Awareness (there is a focus of attention that is not individual, it's a group) Training. Yes, it's a training. It is not a class or "teaching." What is transmitted uses language and "distinctions," but those are just tools. Something else happens. It's been called by people who know what the words mean, a "Mystery School." In my earlier work, this kind of thing is called "esoteric." It's not the words, it is something else. You have to be there. There is a reason why there isn't a Forum book. There is a book by a Forum Leader, the Three Laws of Performance. Now, we get to see Already Always Listening in action:

I was about to tell a story about how the Book is boring and useless. But, hey, I've never read it! What is this? It's obvious: Already Always Listening. A friend of mine has the book, and I've glanced at it, and I have an Idea that a book could not possibly transmit the work. But, even if that is so, that doesn't make the book boring. So, damn it! I need to take another look. That's what the training does, suggest that we take another look. Everywhere in our life. So, let me google it. What is his name. Remember, I'm 70! Damn! I don't remember the name! Well, just start typing. Get into action. So I type: Seven Laws of Happiness. Not it. And so as I'm typing: Steve. And then Zaffron. It's the Three Laws of Performance. Figures. Form Leaders become business consultants, it's totally routine, because they are really good at it. In fact, there have been 50 Forum Leaders and they want more, the existing ones are overworked. They are constantly training new leaders. So why are there only 50? Well, they leave. Because they can make three times as much money consulting. Center staff leave because they get far better paying jobs. The entire organization is training.

Sometimes people think it's a travesty how little Staff is paid. However, Landmark essentially runs at low profit. That means that if they paid more, revenue would need to go up. So tuition would go up. And we are already concerned that tuition is too high, one of the corporate goals is that it be "affordable." ''The organization is built in the foundation that everyone involved is in training. Seminar Leaders are constantly being reviewed, there is occasionally a video camera there, so they can go over performance with their coach. Everyone has a coach. Everyone. If they don't, they are in danger of sliding back down the hill. I've been assigned many coaches. I can still call any of them, and do, on occasion. "They do not tell me what to do." Mostly, they listen, and tell me what inspires them. "It's a technique, we are trained in it." It leaves me completely free.''

That link to Zaffron's essay in Landmark Insights, is to a brilliant piece about the technlogy, by a highly experienced and trained Forum Leader. But, I suspect, nobody will "get" the technology by reading the piece. If one already knows it, every sentence reads like a clear expression of something totally obvious, and, my guess, without that experience, and for most, it's psychobabble, even though, in fact, he lays out the logic. He does use some Landmartian, but always with enough definition, I'd say. If not, we could discuss it here in this educational resource.

(Breakthrough Performance, Correlate, Constituted in Language, Conversations, Access, Create, Stand, Space of Possibility)

Yes, the Forum "deconstructs personal attachments." If you think you need them, you are my definition of crazy. Attachments are useful as tools, but when they dominate us, when they become our masters, they are oppressive, it's an ancient understanding.

So, is the attention focused inward in the Forum? How would I know? My attention was not, largely, focused inward. We all are encouraged to notice to our process, i.e, what is coming up internally. Most of us do not share this. Something that is completely missed by all the conversation about abuse and tearing people down and all that is that people do not share in the Forum, at the mike, unless they volunteer, and most participants never do that. They are not singled out. In later trainings, such as the SELP, where there is personal coaching and a kind of accountability, where participants are not allowed to "slip through the cracks," yes, the Leader might call on you. It doesn't happen in the Forum unless you stick up your hand.

Most of the Forum, for me, was listening to other people talk, and just listening is what is actually encouraged, where possible. It is not easy!

There is "paired sharing," which is, by the way, why the seats are meticulously arranged as they are, in rows with an even number of seats. So everyone has a partner, immediately, no fuss, and the Course Supervisor can see if anyone is missing (the seat count is exact, and, no, it is not to make it look like the room is full, that would be stupid) and send a member of the assisting team to an empty seat so the participant will have someone to share with. Those sharings are intended to be non-judgmental, they are not back-and-forth, though there is no rigid control over what non-assistants do. If an assistant started arguing with a participant, telling them they were wrong, they might get an earful!

Sleep deprivation doesn't make you transform, it inhibits it

 * The basis is being kept in a hotel ballroom for 10 hour days with little sleep, listening to the same thing over and over and over.

Total baloney. I got plenty of sleep. It's not the same thing over and over. The basic concepts are stated more than once, but not "over and over." And the sharing or coaching at the mike is individual and unpredictable. The excitement of the Forum -- Andy doesn't mention that -- is somewhat like that of a baseball game. Most of it is waiting, just watching, paying attention if possible. And discovering what stops us from paying attention: it's all that internal chatter! That we believe is True.

There was one time, it was a New York Session of the Introduction Leader Program, and my travel into New York was poorly planned and I ended up getting about four or five hours sleep before the Saturday workday. I was useless. The session seemed interminable. Boring, please get to something interesting! That's what sleep deprivation does, not generate some magic insight.


 * Most of it consists of having people look at their childhood, and find the events that caused them to make decisions about other people, especially their parents.

He's talking about the Genesis of Identity, which is that, roughly, except that there is no requirement to look at it for oneself. The encouragement is to listen, just be present, hear what is being said. People will describe what occurs to them around the issue, and some of it will ring a bell. No effort is required for that! The best way to stop it, though, is to judge the participant. Make them an object, and a deficient one, to boot. Nothing like me, of course. And that's pointed out, that we are doing that. Maybe half the room pops at that point. OMG! That is exactly what I'm doing.

A Forum Leader will cover some topic then will ask people with something to say about that topic, or wanting coaching on it, to come to the mikes. And people do come up with stuff. And the rest of the Forum recognizes themselves in what is being said. That's how it works. It's not "especially about their parents," and that, in fact, would be discouraged, it might be called a "racket." Rather, it is decisions that we made about ourselves and our life that matter. I'm suspecting that Andy simply missed this, if he thought it was about parents. Some do miss it. In the Forum, it's all pretty individual. But some may have changed since 1986.


 * Unlike Co$, this usually results in a CLOSER relationship with the parents.

Good for him. He noticed. It is certainly not about blaming parents. People do talk about major abuse, on occasion. Always, the focus is on "What did you make that mean?" (And then these conversations are judged, externally, as "blaming the victim." Of course, it is not about blame, at all. It's just about cause and effect. What happened, and what was created and sustained, the goal being empowerment, because what we created once, we can create again, differently. We have choice.)


 * Once everyone has been reduced to tears through the constant confessions of the participants,

Weird. I never saw everyone reduced to tears. I saw people cry, but it's not "reduced to tears," it is more like "elevated to tears of joy." But all kinds of people take the Forum, and there are many variations in how people respond. Basically, the Leaders have seen it all. I am very unusual, in some ways, one in a thousand. However, I was aware that my Forum Leader (Roger Smith) had led the Forum to over 100,000 people. He'd seen a hundred people like me, and I pretty much expected he could see right through me. I wasn't disappointed. Mostly that came out later, I had other opportunities to work with Roger Smith. In the Forum, for me, at the mike, it was one word: "Racket." That's all he said and all he needed to say. No blame, no shame, no make-wrong, just what he saw. Everyone has rackets, everyone. I knew he was telling me what I needed to hear and recognize. There was no blame in it. Yes, people do get emotional. I had tears in my eyes many times. But that is not the breakdown we imagine with "reduced to tears." Andy has some kind of dramatic story about life.


 * the Forum leader builds everyone back up by directing their attention on using the Forum philosophy (still called a technology!) to better their relationships and self esteem.

He really didn't get it. At all. He is remembering his own fantasy. One of the amazing things about the Forum technology is that very little is "taught." That is, what the Forum does is get certain obstacles out of the way, and, when that is done, we already know what to do. It is as if we have this really great computer, programmed to do many things, knowing much, but ... it's infected with a virus that bogs it down, so it's running at 10% efficiency. There is no way that Landmark could "program" us to "better our relationships" in three days. If that's not already there, it would be useless.


 * Sounds good, eh? well, the strict discipline is still there.

What "strict discipline?"


 * You can't go to the bathroom when you want,

You can. You are encouraged to take care of this in breaks. Participants actually agree to do that. But what if they don't or they have some emergency or health condition? Do they have to suffer? Of course not! It's crazy. They do not lock people in the rooms. I've been on the door. Someone comes to the door, what do you do? Ask them why they are leaving? Remind them of their promise to be in the room? Of course not! You open the door! The assistant is on the door so that it doesn't make noise as might happen often if people walk out unassisted. The last thing the Course Supervisor would want is someone having a conversation at the door, distracting the session.

I've also been distracted during a break and didn't take care of that business. And as soon as it became a distraction in the session, and I wanted to minimize what I missed, I got up and walked out. Nobody gave me even a questioning glance. And I came back as soon as possible, recommitting to paying attention to time in the breaks and what I needed to do. I didn't talk with anyone about it, in the Forum, because it would be a distraction, unnecessary. That particular integrity failure, I don't recall ever being discussed, by anyone. There is no "pee" conversation. It just doesn't happen. Nobody is shamed, it's a total myth, at least as to today's Forum. [But see the Sarah Fazely story below. This is a recent report (2012)] In the agreements, at the beginning, they tell you to take care of any personal necessities during the breaks, and that's the end of that conversation. They know that participants are lousy at doing this! Most of them, anyway. That's why they are taking the Forum! So there is no blame, it's just normal. And people learn.

But making an agreement is "rigid discipline" to Andy. He created his experience, and blames Landmark for it.


 * you take meals in groups,

Who pays? Seriously, while something may have been done differently in 1986, now, there are the half-hour breaks, where people can eat something they brought, in the break room, mostly there isn't time to go out, and there is the dinner break, 1.5 hours. People can again eat in the break room, food they brought, or what most people do is to go out. Do they go out alone? Usually not! Groups form, spontaneously. So what is the "strict discipline" involved here? Andy already says he was a wimp. Apparently he had a story that he was forced to eat with other people, OMG, terrible, eh?

By the way, sometimes someone wants to go out and doesn't have the money. I have never see it be "Tough!" Someone pays for them. It's predictable. In the Advanced Course, on the other hand, certain of the meal breaks are "meet with your course group,' those groups are assigned. That is where there is an assigned group meal. But, again, it's ad hoc, people choose where to go, if someone can't afford a nice restaurant and someone else wants to go to a nice restaurant, the people with the money will offer to pay. In the Advanced Course, the course game actually requires that the group take care of its members, all of them. In the Forum, though, it's all ad hoc.

From a recent participant's report, in the Forum, the group at lunch sits around and complains. I remember some of that. This is where people say what they don't like. Most of it is stuff, that, if we knew better, we'd understand was necessary. We are like teenagers, complaining about life and our parents. Very much like that. A Forum Leader story, we were sitting in the ILP classroom on a Friday night, and after the Forum, the Leader came over and sat down with us, maybe a dozen of us were there, and said, "Any questions?" Opportunities like this are part of what makes the ILP spectacular....

He was asked, "What's it like in there?" He said, "well, Day 1, half the room is there to prove that I'm wrong, and this is all BS, and the other half is daydreaming."

It was hyperbole, to be sure, dramatic speech. But with some substance. If nothing else, there are graduates in the room, people reviewing the Forum (half price), Leaders who are required to take the Forum at least once every (two?) years (free). And there are people who have, some way or other, gotten that this is actually valuable work, and eager to experience it. I don't know how many. Those people, however, experience spectacular success, and wouldn't that be what we would expect. The miracle is that the Leader gets through to almost all the participants in spite of the mindset and distraction and all the rest. Over 90% walk out with a life-changing experience.

And some don't, and then eventually write something like what Andy wrote. There are others, there is one critic out there who was an Introduction Leader. And, my guess, he turned a lot of guests off, with massive pushiness that he probably had to know how to wield with enough effect and energy that he made his measures to be candidated. That is the kind of "sales" that gives sales a very Bad Name. Then he leaves and tells everyone to Stay Away, because They ... and he describes what he did. Happens.

Strict rules

 * there are strict rules about talking and conduct,

There are rules, for sure. Erhard was very clear about this. Suppose you were having brain surgery. Would you want the surgeon to follow rules ("training" as informed by experience), or would you want the surgeon to be laissez faire with the nurses and assistants and the patient and procedures?

The Forum is not actually expensive as the training industry goes, but it's a lot of money for many people. Do we want it reduced in value because someone doesn't follow what is known to work?

Possible the biggest "rigidity," and people simply are not accustomed to it, is the agreement to be in your seat, ready to participate, at the scheduled time for the session to begin.

People go crazy about that. But does the Leader shame people into compliance? Is it "shaming" to be reminded that you made an agreement? This is a whole conversation, it's called the "conversation over integrity," and until people understand what it's really about, it's probably the least popular conversation in Landmark. "Integrity again? Can't we just get down to the Real Work?"

But Integrity is the real work. I'm not going to give away this part of the Advanced Course, but what people think is the boring stuff that we really want to get out of the way, please, ASAP!, is the core of the Advanced Course. Once one knows this, it's hilarious to watch.

In the Advanced Course, the Leaders turn the program over to the participants. And all kinds of things happen, and one thing I'll give away. I've seen more than one Leader say, "You are the worst I've ever seen at this. This is appalling." I suspect it's in the format. And is that lying? Is it shaming? Maybe. It's collective, not individual, the failure is collective, it can't be pinned on any person. As an individual technique, shaming is heavily dysfunctional, it fails. For a group, however, it's a challenge. The function is quite different.

The real question is, "Does it work?" Those large programs are performance art, with a designed purpose. This is what I have also seen: By the end, the community is united, it is successful. It does what seemed impossible at first. And it does it by waking up as a community. We simply are not accustomed to that, we have massive habits that prevent it from happening ordinarily. Some of us have never experienced it, or, at least, the experience was not distinguished.

It doesn't happen through shame. At all. That flat out doesn't work, except with a few people who are particularly vulnerable to shame. Most of us resist shame, strongly. Try to shame me because I'm late, next time I'm later! F you! However, let me know that my being late caused a problem, just what happened, and, even more, caused me a problem, and let me consider what led to my being late, and what I can supply that's missing, no shame, no make-wrong, next time I'll be on time. Or, more to the point and closer to what really works, early.

Because what makes me late for appointments is trying to shave it close, so I don't waste any time by being there early. How boring! I'm a busy man! Blah, blah!

Shaming

 * and the leader won't hesitate to shame you into compliance.

Basically, they don't do that. [But see below, The Sarah Fazeli story]. They expect integrity. Shouldn't they? After all, you paid to be there, and they are delivering what they promised to deliver. If you don't like it, you can walk out at any time, and they won't try to stop you. If you walk out noisily, someone may walk out with you, from the crew, and see if they can help. I've been on the door outside, I have a fantastic story about a woman who walked out and came back.... one of my peak Landmark experiences. Basically, I'll remember it for the rest of my life, and she might, as well. About one second, three words and presence, and a life transformed, the impossible became possible, real, and present.


 * Much of it is psychology parlor tricks, like making a headache go away by imagining it as a physical void in your head, and imagining it being filled.

Yeah, they demonstrated that kind of device. I already knew similar stuff (and it wasn't done the exact way he says, so this may have been ad hoc). It may not work as one imagines. I don't recall when I heard the headache trick, I don't think it's in the Forum any more, if it ever was.

There are some other "tricks" that are truly spectacular, the Colors exercise comes to mind. These are things that represent a rare understanding of human psychology, where what actually happens is not what we would expect. There is a purpose to all this, the Colors exercise demonstrates that humans communicate in ways that we do not understand, beyond words, even though the exercise is just about four or five words, repeated.

I saw this one in a Communications Course introduction, I walked over after completing a coaching session in the SELP (I was a coach) and sat down, and a beautiful young woman, on the team, did the exercise with me. There we are face to face, intense! Now, I wasn't surprised, because, again, I knew this stuff already. "Presence" becomes intense in Colors. Then she asked me if I wanted to register. I was offended, actually. We had just demonstrated practically a mind meld, and here she is trying to get me to register. It did not land well. But so what? She actually was beautiful, and she was simply in training, and she knew that I'd love the Communications course. It became a game, over the next two years or so, she would invite me to register at some place or other, and I'd tell her no, but acknowledge her, and I mean Acknowledge, for taking such a stand for me. She'd light up. And it is totally fun to light up a beautiful woman! (Actually, to light up anyone, and "beautiful" is a story, and really about relationship and interaction.)

I had an SELP Leader "pressure" me into registering for, again, the Communications Course. It really was an opportunity, and he was right about that. But I thought about it, I checked my calendar, I was that close. Choose, chocolate or vanilla? No. Not workable for me at this time. When I told him, he started whining, how great it would be if I did it, now is the opportunity (ILP participants get a discount), etc.

He had a great whine, he was famous for it. I once did an imitation of him, during that SELP where he was my Leader, and everyone was ROTFL. It was easy. Just whine about something great. Landmark does not suppress personality. People are still very much individuals. The Self is not some robot. The individual personality is much more a robot, but we love our robots. ''There is nothing wrong with them. We use them.''

I called him up and objected to his pressuring me. He said, "Oh, I'm sorry!" and that was that. Done. Complete. There was actually no whine in the "I'm sorry." Highly trained Leader.

Basically, wimps hate it when people pressure them, because they do not trust themselves. The training gives them an opportunity to move entirely beyond that; it's one of the promises of the Forum, to be able to make choices, and stand for your choices, without worrying about them.

I hate to break the news, but sometimes some of these promises take time to realize! They may require work. Sometimes years of work. It's generally true that people make more money after they do the Forum, but -- is this the Bad News? -- they might have to actually go out and Do Something. Sitting and thinking Transformed Thoughts isn't transformation, it is just a fancy variation on Already Always Listening, only now with some content in Landmartian.

Goes on forever

 * This goes on for four full days. The last 1/2 day is sales night.

He is, again, a decade obsolete by the time he is writing this. This was the 1986 EST Forum, he's writing in 1995, when it was the Landmark Forum, three days and an evening. He does acknowledge this, at the end, but he lost context, and went right back into his old, rehearsed story. We do that.

I find that when I explain one of my rackets to somebody, I go right back into it. I start out, this was the past, this is what I thought, and within less than a minute, it becomes present tense. My voice takes on a whine, a tone of complaint, or whatever affect is associated, and there I am. In it, and just as disempowered. It's how the brain works -- at least for me! But I've seen this with others as well.

I know someone who has been doing this work for twenty years. And she has certain rackets she has never handled. But she does set them aside for substantial periods of time (which is why she continued the work!) And she may start out explaining why she felt a certain way or did a certain thing, and, it takes only a few seconds, she's back in it, it's all real for her, and if she were to say anything else, it would be "inauthentic," because that's the way she is. Emphasis on present tense. "If I pretended I was free, I'd be lying. I refuse to do that." And it's her word that makes it so. It's a choice, and it's obvious, she is not willing to give it up, to let it go, it's her trump card, and who wants to give up their trump card? Except it has predictable effects.... even tragic effects.

Landmark transformed her life, but not entirely. We hold on to things. Those brain patterns are persistent. There are ways to deprogram the brain, but it's mostly by setting up alternate pathways and responses that dominate, they do not actually remove the old programming. Nor should they. This is not brainwashing. One might call it "brain organization." I've seen reprogramming, though, eliminate pain, apparently it vanishes. The headache exercise could be a part of that. The way Andy described it was defective, he made it into a specific trick. The general approach is powerful. I've seen severe pain, intractable, chronic, gone, quickly. There are mysteries, we actually know very little about how the brain works.


 * This night, all the participants are told to bring friends and relatives.

He is using the language of power and control, common with wimps who blame others for their lack of choice. Participants are indeed invited to bring guests. Not "told." It is not a command. If you don't bring guests, the only penalty is that you don't have any guests, and you don't get the result of seeing someone you invited register. Which can be a peak experience. Not only the registration itself, but the rest of your life.

That is how Landmark is marketed, there is no advertising (though, more than a year ago, they did sponsor the Olympics and there was a name-recognition ad, no promotional content other than the name and an inspirational message about achievement.) Many people wonder why it's done this way. Lots of people don't like the "sales." Yet, there are reasons for it. For one thing, if the work is ineffective, it will fail. That keeps it honest. For another, our collective story about "sales" is massively disempowering. It really trashes our lives.

(Do you know what happens to companies that become pure sales? That don't make decent products, that essentially cheat their customers? They fail. They are swimming against the stream, they might see this or that "success" but it's misleading. Every sales ends up as a defeat, a shrinking pool of customers, and customers do talk to each other. There are always "wimps" out there, vulnerable to manipulative salespeople. But burn a wimp, he will then avoid you, and he may tell his friends. "Wimps" is not the big market that leads to genuine success. Imagine the sign on the marketing department wall: Find your Wimp Today! Keep Calling, Eventually You Will Find One! What is wrong with this picture? Answer: that sales department would be full of people looking for a better job somewhere else!)


 * The focus of the evening is on sales: signing up your relatives for the Forum, and signing YOU up for advanced classes.

Usually the push for Advanced Course signup is on Sunday night. But you can still register on Tuesday. Landmark generally offers three levels of Advanced Course discount. First of all, from the fact that Landmark has never declared a dividend, and profits have always been plowed back into operations, I derive an inference that the Forum is a bit of a loss leader. That is, they don't make quite enough money from the Forum to pay for the expenses of operation. The Advanced Course is the same schedule, there is no increased production cost. So ... they make a profit on the Advanced Course. It makes up for the Forum.

The discounts that I recall from my time, three years ago, is regular price, $850, $650 if a $200 deposit is paid before the end of the Forum, and $550 if the fee is paid in full with registration. So, if paid immediately, it was only slightly more than the Forum (in 2009). It's an obvious encouragement to get it going, to commit to the AC right then and there.

Is that "pressure"? Basically, it is what we make of it. I saw it as an opportunity. My friend, later, my "personal registration" when I was in the Introduction Leader Program, was on the fence, couldn't decide, didn't register, but talked with me about it. He was still worried about money, but immediately after taking the Forum, he started to work, he'd overcome what was stopping him. No big surprise, it happens all the time.

He told me he did want to do the Advanced Course, but now, of course, he "couldn't." Too much money. He'd missed the boat, dithering. I told him to get off his ass and call the Registration Manager and have a conversation. He did. The Reg Manager agreed to take a $200 deposit, to be put on a credit card, and he'd get the $650 price.

I told him if he was still worried about money, to put off the actual course time as long as possible, to the furthest date in the future they were accepting registrations for, because he can always move it up, whereas moving a registration back requires a $35 fee. I had done that. I had no idea how I'd come up with the rest of the tuition, but put down $200 to save $200? No brainer, and I did have $200. Once I was registered, the money showed up, like it dropped from the sky. So I moved up the course and paid the rest. I was not about to waste more time flopping around with what could be handled in a weekend!

Then time passed and they hadn't charged his card. He worried about it, that was what he always did. Maybe he wasn't supposed to do this? Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe he couldn't really afford it. Maybe the sky would fall. Story of his life.

I again asked him to choose, what did he choose to do? The course.

So again I told him to get off his ass and call the Registration Manager, and make sure he was registered. It had simply fallen through the cracks. So he did take the Advanced Course, on a credit card.

And when the course completed, he went for a job interview, next day. What do you think happened? I've seen this again and again.

He got the job, paying more money than he'd ever made, perhaps double.

He paid off the card quickly, and the rest of his debts. And he took the SELP. His project didn't happen. He didn't have the skills in place. Basically, all kinds of things don't happen, but he kept moving.

He is now in the Introduction Leader Program, which is completely ridiculous. It's impossible. And that's what we learn to do: the impossible. Sometimes. Sometimes not, but always we learn that what stops us is right here behind our eyes, not the conditions outside. So we keep going. We become coachable.

They didn't tell me!

 * Oops! What advanced classes?  nobody said anything about advanced classes!

What they did in 1986 I don't know, but in the Forum, there is a huge sign that shows the Curriculum for Living, three squares with arrows going across the poster: Forum -> Advanced Course -> Self-Expression and Leadership Program. And below there is a side-arrow, the Seminar Program. The story that he had (The Forum Will Fix You Forever!) is pretty common. I've listened. This isn't said, anywhere. People assume it. Basically, it's wishful thinking, some sort of collective idea -- it's very common! -- that some sort of magic wand will be waved and, presto! Love Is Never Having To Say We Are Sorry. We'll be Done!

Yes, that day will come. And then, as Roger Smith used to say, they will shovel dirt in your face. spshhh... spshhh... spshhh, he makes the sound of sandy soil being shoveled.

Bob Dylan: He not busy being born is busy dying.

The Seminar Program is how most graduates keep up the training. It's almost as much a social affair as training, but ... I learned how to do seminars, I was initially lousy at it. By my last seminar, what I was getting from each seminar was adequate to lead the seminar, in some ways, at least. Long story. Basically, the training happens when the participant "makes it happen." The Leaders can only do so much.

There is only one Advanced Course. It leads into the SELP, which is run by volunteers, and which is effectively putting the Advanced Course into action. (And the SELP, though it is about 60 hours of training, plus over six hours of personal coaching (by phone, generally) is way cheap, because it is entirely run by volunteers. I saw a roughly equivalent training offered by a nonprofit, for over $1000. The SELP was $220.

I've coached the SELP, twice now. To really "get" the SELP, take it, then coach it. It's substantially more work to coach it, but the training is superior. TANSTAAFL. (Coaching is "free," but one has to get there and be there!) Participants in the SELP realize the "promises," coaching it takes one to further dimensions. To learn, teach, is an old truism. And learning to coach in the SELP requires identifying all the things we do to make our communication ineffective, and dropping them. As a participant, one might escape if the coach is not really attentive. As a coach, no. It's a small, intense environment in that coach's meeting, maybe ten coaches two head coaches, and the Leader. And the coach does the entire program, all the homework, has a project, etc.

Crushed by staff leaning on me

 * Yes, you are again leaned on heavily by the staff to sign up for seminars.

It's actually nonsense. Nobody leans on anyone. He's not careful about how he uses "staff." In the Forum, typically, there is only one Staff member there, the Leader. In a Center, the Center Manager and other staff members, there are only a few, may wander in. At the Forum, there may be, on the Tuesday Night session, some Introduction Leaders wandering around as well, talking with people. If they "lean on" anyone, they are ignoring the training. But they are very likely to encourage participants, especially in the Forum, to sign up for their free seminar! It's included in the Forum registration fee. If they don't sign up within a year, that perk routinely drops. But Landmark is actually a human organization. You can negotiate, counter-offer, etc. And that's part of the training!

In the seminar, when it ends, there is a conversation about the next seminar, there will be some information about the topic, who is going to lead it, etc. And there is an invitation to sign up. And sometimes I've signed up and sometimes I haven't. In fact, for seminars, I've never signed up in advance. I go to the first session, and sign up. Sometimes I wait until the beginning of session two to sign up. Nobody effing cares! Landmartians are not in it for the money. The last time I said No, I wasn't going to register for some time, possibly years. Nobody harassed me. The fact is I'd prefer to be there, but I'm involved caring for my daughter at home now, she's living with me, and wasn't living with me when I did all that work in Boston and Connecticut and New York. And she doesn't like to be alone, and at this point, she needs the support. She's being trained to handle being alone, she can do it when it's needed. She doesn't die. However, with what she went through to need to come live with me -- it was not optional, or, more accurately, the alternative was foster care -- she needed to recover her childhood sense of safety, and that's what I've been doing. It's working. Why not? I had an entire team of people rooting for us! Social workers and Landmark!

I just got a call today from a Staff member in Boston inviting me to coach in the SELP starting up. No, I declined, thanking her. It was a great conversation, no pressure. Andy, it's obvious, has a story about "pressure," it dominates his life, he imagines a world that is "pressuring" him. I'm sure it's totally annoying. What he doesn't realize is that he is creating this. We can get into abstract philosphical discussions about causation and free will and all that, but this one I'll stand with, from reading this and what else we have about Andy, this experience, this way of interpreting reality, he is creating. I have no idea why, that's up to him. But it's completely obvious to anyone who has seen people deconstruct their identity. There is always the possibility of genuine brain damage. I doubt it. He's smart enough. (Very simple people often do very well in the Forum, they don't have a big complicated story to disentangle.)

What is different about my experience? Basically, I already knew how to say No, and, with the Forum and the succeeding training, I learned how to say it -- and Yes! -- clearly and with power. I'm choosing my life, no excuses. I'm responsible. If I face some condition I don't like, I'm responsible. (And for what I like, too!) And that includes everything with Landmark, and people inviting me to do things that I'm not ready to do. And so what? Is there a problem with being offered an opportunity?

Yes, if you don't know how to choose, a Big Problem. It makes you uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable, why that's Horrible! And we wonder why we become couch potatoes.

Andy mind-reads the entire Landmark community

 * Their goal is to have you ALWAYS enrolled in a class. ALWAYS.

The nature of this report is obvious. It's the language of story, of interpretation, with hyperbole. There is an undefined "they." I'm one of those people, effectively, and I know many. That is not our goal. Period. I don't care if Andy is enrolled in a class. In fact, they way he was being, I'd prefer he not be there. Nevertheless, people like him do show up, and are offered the opportunity of transformation, and some go for it and some don't. We are trained to have compassion --Andy is suffering in his life, people who are truly happy don't spend their life doing what he was doing, the way he was doing it -- but not attachment and arrogance.

I know a lot of people, people I love to spend time with, who are, indeed, always present in a local seminar. They assist. They don't pay. They are simply there, handing out pencils or whatever, smiling, creating the space in which the seminar happens. These are often highly experienced graduates. They love being around transformation. I'd do it if not for the travel logistics and my daughter. That will change, in some time.

Once one realizes who these people are, that they are not low-life flunkies, as AAL might assume, but an opportunity to experience joy, right there, in a single glance, the whole experience of Landmark programs shifts. If you are a graduate, try it! Connect with these people! Smile! Acknowledge them! It comes back, a hundred-fold. And then do this all through life, do it with the store clerk, do it with the salesman who comes to the door. My daughter and I do it with Taco Bell employees, and we have a blast! And they are always giving her free treats.

I do it with "Jehovah's Witnesses." Sorry to say, they are completely unprepared for that, they run away as fast as they can, so far. I imagine conversations, "Stay away from that house! He's crazy! And he's not going to join us. Waste of time!" Of course, one of these days, an actual Witness instead of a wanna-be-pretend-Witness, will come to my door. There must be at least a few! We'll see what happens then! (I have a pretty good idea, but I don't want to limit the Self.)

I found this: I got more out of programs when I was there assisting than when I was registered as a paying participant. The only down side: assisting usually requires being there longer hours, and that's an issue for me from where I live (two hours drive from the Center in Boston if there is no traffic. Sometimes it is over three hours.) If not for that, I'd be there for every Advanced Course. Sitting, smiling, thoroughly enjoying the people. Watching them come in, Friday, morning, almost everyone enclosed in their bubble (it's amazing people don't walk into each other, but that's autopilot), and walking out, Sunday night, engaged, lit up, beaming, and aware of everyone around them.

The most benefit I got was from assisting as a coach in the SELP, and, then, in seminars, the last two I took, being a communicator. For that, I was actually a paying participant, but it's only $125 for almost three months. What a communicator does is to "recreate" the seminar for someone who misses it. I began this in the Excellence Seminar, and I volunteered because I had such a good time with another communicator when he called me... But I was lousy at taking notes, and I usually didn't do the homework, blah, blah, and, ask me what the content was, I was .... flopping around, couldn't remember. Okay, the excellence seminar, here I am, committed to being a communicator. What to do. How about doing it excellently, taking a hint from the name of the seminar? We don't get answers to questions like that unless we ask them!

I knew immediately what to do, it was "duh!." There was a regular recreation call with a seminar leader, two days after the seminar. So I did not take notes in the seminar, my goal was to be as present as possible, to "get it." (note-taking is allowed in the Seminars, usually, it's not like the Forum and Advanced Course.) ("Getting it" does not equate to getting how to transmit it.) Then I got on the leader recreation call, and took thorough notes, almost verbatim, including process notes. (Ask if participant did homework. Acknowledge for sharing. Etc.) Essentially, I then had the format. *Then* I recreated it on the phone for a participant who accepted the offer. OMG. It is simply not surprising. I was putting triple work into the seminar, so what did I get out of it? Everything.

It isn't permanent

 * They claim to transform you in the Forum, but the transformation only lasts as long as you stay involved in the group.

No, that's a misunderstanding. This is something that has been known for thousands of years. It is possible to experience a transformation, and, if not maintained in some way, it gradually fades. Kensho can become a pleasant memory. One is still never the same again, but progress halts, and there is some backsliding. It is not about "staying involved in the group," i.e., Landmark. It is staying in the conversation, which is much broader than Landmark. Landmark, however, is quite accessible. I don't know anywhere else I can go and find the "conversation" so reliably. I have, now, a "Family Partner" who comes our apartment because of certain situations with my daughter. She has training in the Course in Miracles. She generally knows exactly what I'm talking about. Landmark owns a particular set of scripts and has trademarks on certain words. It does not own the distinctions themselves, and it does not own transformation. But it's available there.

Essentially, Andy made up a story about the Forum, and applied it, then, to Landmark. It probably wasn't actually what happened even then. Notice his language: He doesn't report his specific experience, he reports his generalizations from it. That is exactly what the Forum says we do, untransformed. So if he ever got it, he lost it.


 * Now, when you've just finished the Forum, you're feeling on top of the world, so you sign up and testify for your family real hard.

Sure. But "real hard"? What is that about? Sounds desperate to me, someone who was only partially cooked, who really didn't understand what had happened, but was fired up with belief. I.e., didn't actually get it.


 * As well as participating in the seminars and Forum, they also rely on volunteers.

His grammar sucks, too.

Landmark depends almost entirely on volunteers to run the programs. However, officially, they are not called volunteers, and it's called the "Assisting Progrom," and it is a *training.* And it actually functions that way. People assist because they get far more out of it than they put in. I certainly did.

They twist your arm if you don't volunteer
Landmark's phalanx of lawyers is busy settling lawsuits for broken arms, bailing out Center staff charged with kidnapping and extortion, and moving offices out of France. Your tuition dollars at work.


 * Part of your involvement is to volunteer to help put on the seminars and Forum. In fact, most of the work is done by volunteers.  There are very few paid staff.

That's true. In a Forum, as I mentioned, there may be only one actual Staff member, the Leader. In a Seminar, often, none at all. Seminar Leaders, like Introduction Leaders and Self-Expression and Leadership Program Leaders, are volunteers. I don't think any of these even get expenses. Seminar Leaders, in particular, are often business consultants, making quite a lot of money doing that, but I've never seen them solicit clients from among participants, and it's formally forbidden. They do it because it keeps them sharp, honed, practiced, and because they love to see people transform. I've come to know some of these people fairly well. Just, basically, spectacular people, with spectacular lives.

But still human. Not gods. Ah, I remember my last Seminar Leader. I had actually been to my first Introduction in a Seminar where she was the Leader. So I sat in the Seminar, I hadn't registered yet, and listened. And what she said was Wrong. She was screwing up. And I realized what I was doing and that I had a choice. Don't register, because if I was going to sit there like that and criticize her, it didn't matter if I was right or wrong, I was going to get nothing, and I'd be better off staying home. I chose, instead, to drop it and register. She was amazing, she was one of the most powerful Leaders I experienced, and beautiful besides. She had used some language that I considered unskillful. It might actually have come from the format. And so what? I had learned, by this time, that what I got out of participation was what I created. I was responsible. So I created her, we could say, as the best damned seminar leader around. In fact, she was a long-time leader. She had trained almost everyone in the area. And her life was to die for. Again, long story!


 * I participated in several seminars and volunteered at seminars and a Forum.

Did he do the Curriculum? Probably not. He'd have said so.


 * I took part in a sales barrage on friends and family during a Forum sales night. The approach is to not let people equivocate, not let them leave without signing up.

He was never trained to do this work. He is describing what he did, or what he thought he was supposed to do. Where did that come from? I'll tell you: people make this stuff up, they make assumptions, and we are seeing what he assumed. I've done the Introduction Leader Training, where we were also trained in conversations with guests. It's basically very little like what he says. He probably saw somebody doing some of what is actually trained, well or otherwise, and then believed that was the program.

Again, this was 1986. At the Forum closing session, regular assisting team does not circulate among the guests. They aren't trained for that, generally. But Andy, here, is probably describing his own Forum, when he was wet behind the ears, and convinced that he had to get friends and family to register. He made this up. Yes, it's easy, what he made up, and I see that Landmark will eventually do more thorough training, in the Forum itself, at least the basics of what not to do in sharing the opportunity with others. Andy was pushy and probably abusive.

Introduction Leaders show up on Special Evenings, and so do some ILP participants, who, when not needed on tables, may be asked to circulate. These are trained. And still make mistakes, to be sure. A common one is forming a group around a single guest. In spite of knowing not to do it, it still happens. We are wandering around the room, and there is some animated conversation, and we go over to see what's happening. And, without thinking, we jump in with some comment. Bad Idea. It drives people away. Unskillful. The goal is to be a "clearing," an opening, something that people can see through, that creates a path, that people can take or not. When we try to control that, we are no longer a clearing, we are attempting to be a controller, and in the Invented Life seminar, it's made very clear that "IT" will take transformation and attempt to own it. "IT" is the survival self. Why it will do this is obvious. It is what IT does, attaining control is the raison d'etre of that self. It normally takes training to recognize this and detach from it.

There are two kinds of conversations, this are Self-Expression and Leadership Program distinctions. There is an Enrollment conversation, where to "enroll" means to "move, touch or inspire." It has nothing to do with "enrolling in courses." Then there is a Registration conversation, which is established on a certain foundation which may include an enrollment conversation, but sometimes not. A registration conversation presents a choice, it involves some suggestion or invitation. And the goal is that the person makes a choice, and is satisfied with their choice. Explicitly, the goal is not that the person makes one choice or the other. A controlled "choice" is not a choice.

Now, this much is accurate. People trained in this will often not be content with "equivocation." The training in the SELP is for community projects and for life, not just for inviting people to register in the Forum. That is simply an application. We have learned to inquire more deeply, and it often pays off. We find what is stopping someone and it resolves.

But some are actually being inauthentic. They have made a choice, but they won't say what it is. They are trying to decline without saying No. They think that's polite. That's a way of looking at it, but ... it's also heavily disempowering. It's making a choice without acknowledging responsibility for it. So this arouses some complex responses! Do we have a story about people who do this? Yeah, it's Bad! <-- Already Always Listening Alarm!

Definitely, Andy has a story about people who seek clarity like this. It's Bad.


 * "How much is the rest of your life worth?" is a common throw-away line.

Yes. Now, what's the answer?


 * This group is really into the hard sell, and they are EXTREMELY anal-retentive and leader-oriented.


 * Well, there is a structure, there are what are called "accountabilities." However, Landmark people develop high levels of Self-expression, and are hardly leader-dominated. I remember one woman coaching with me the first time I coached the SELP. In the coaches meeting, she had an objection to the "sales," i.e, to working with participants on inviting guests to our weekend, Saturday, guest events (there are two in that program). Yes, this is a big conversation in Landmark! We talk about it all the time! And some people don't like that. But Landmark is not button-down anal retentive. Some individuals might be, as I've mentioned, it's a human organization.


 * So this woman confronted the Leader. She said, "You are making me wrong." And the Leader stopped in her tracks, took a deep breath, and said, "You're right. I apologize. I've been afraid you are going to screw up my participants." And then they talked and worked out what was going to happen. And that woman, by the way, immediately after that SELP completed, enrolled in the Introduction Leader Program. As did I, same time. And I had a *big conversation about pressure,* in the ILP I had an Introduction Leader say that she would not lead any Introduction if I was there. And so what? In the end, management sustained me on every point I made. Again, long story. No, not "leader-oriented," but some people are.


 * Everything is ordered in excruciating detail, down to the separation between rows of chairs at seminars ( no shit, I had to use a ruler to measure).

Yes. By the way, this is what is now called Old Landmark. The rigid separation applies to the Forum and Advanced Course, it is much more relaxed in the other programs. My guess is that it was more universally controlled back when Andy was active. We may think this crazy. But that level of attention being paid to a space does something. Landmark is based on what works, not what is supposed to work. Does that chair spacing make a difference? I already know that, in some ways, it does. But the real point is not the spacing, it is the consciousness, the state of being, involved in setting up a space for transformation. Does Andy know how to do that?

In some cases, it's later found that some aspect or other of what worked was not actually necessary. But, meanwhile, there is some caution about changing things. I'm quite aware of some situations where, my opinion, traditions were set up as a reaction to some transient situation, and they became stuck. All this boils down to: Landmark is a human organization, it is not perfect, and nobody in it is perfect. Okay, okay, if you know Landmark, you'll know I need to add: "Unless we say so." (Perfection is a story, we make it up, so if perfection inspires us, we can create it with the words. From another perspective, everything is perfect. And, in fact, that is a form of the distinction, "There is nothing wrong here." Story. Not truth, but an empowering stand.)

Werner said

 * Any question about WHY something was done was met with a terse "because Werner said to do it that way".

Yes. 1986, when Werner was the Source. Now, is there something wrong with that? Why? Basically, Werner invented this thing, an LGAT, the very model of it, a brilliant invention, fantastically successful. Sure, people can experiment with it, but how and where? With his program? Nobody was forced to take it, nobody was forced to assist.


 * I decided to stop participating after they began pressuring me to take the Six Day course.

To my understanding, that was the equivalent of today's Advanced Course.


 * Six Days at a camp for intense further scrubbing of your cranium.

What, did he have lice? Look, I'm told that the Six-Day was quite an adventure. Andy had an idea of the training that he invented, and which he tells as "truth." Now, maybe something happened to him, someone was obnoxious, it happens. I've encountered it, but I don't translate that into "everybody does this," or even to that person being Bad. They simply did something unskillful, if I feel pressured, it is, by definition, unskillful. So? It's all a bunch of volunteers, as my grizzled coach said. In the ILP, they told us that if they wanted salespeople, they wouldn't hire us, we were lousy at it. And we were! But we were there to be trained, and we were trained, those who stayed with it. Quite a few dropped out. It's a lot of work, the ILP. And every aspect of one's life, every integrity failure, every unexamined story, is fair game, because all of that stops us.


 * At this time, I was a student working two jobs. This course cost over $1000 and I had none, so I had no intention of taking it, but they insisted. They told me to get a job that would pay for it.

Pretty damned unskillful, for sure! Now, how many people told him that? He has developed a whole story, probably has rehearsed it many times. What happened once or twice, with one or two people, became "they told me...." It's pretty unlikely that more than one person told him to "get a job." I'd have told the person, "Go eff yourself, I already have two jobs, now go do something useful like lining up the chairs or the pencils."

What did he tell them? If he said, I'd like to do it, polite wimp that he was, lying, "but I can't, I can't afford it," they might then try to "problem-solve." Unskillful, actually but it's normal behavior, especially for men.

This is the secret: there has been a common story among the assisting community that those who say "I can't" are lying. I confronted it, when I was in the ILP, and my position was sustained by management, but that's another story.

What is true, and obvious to anyone who has done the training, is that "can't" is an invented story, we cannot possibly know it for a fact. Fact could be something like, "I don't have the money in my bank account, I have nothing I could sell, I have no credit, I have no clue whom I could ask for the money, and I don't believe it will drop from the sky." And then the money drops from the sky, so to speak. What do we do? That's why my own practice, faced with "I can't," was to get that story completely out of the way. "That's not the issue, the issue is what you choose to do. If you don't choose to do this work, the money is irrelevant. If you do choose it, there is then an issue of logistics. Do you choose to do this work?

Pushy, definitely. That could be called "Hard sell." I wasn't allowing any "polite" refusal. I was asking for a choice. The Introduction Leaders didn't like this. Their story was that if the person does say they want to do it, but doesn't specifically commit, that night, it will slide into the muck, disappear into the landslide of life, it won't happen. So, subtext, we have to convince them to write the check or turn over the credit card, right now. Clever guests deliberately avoid bringing any form of payment.

Hence I didn't stop there. But I had Introduction Leaders yelling at me for a while! Until it worked. Then they were congratulating me on being such an effective stand for my guest!

What I did was then ask, if they chose to do the work, if they wanted support. And if the answer was Yes, I followed up, kept the conversation alive. Not about "registration," as such, but about their life and their possibilities and what was stopping them. One guest, the money effectively dropped from the sky, totally unexpected, a miracle. Except we had caused this miracle, if not for the conversation and stand and continued connection, it would not have happened. The causal chain was visible, not for the money itself, but for the money dropping into his registration.

Another guest said Yes to both, and after I called him once (to offer him an opportunity to get a ride to Boston to go to a Special Evening with a Forum Leader), he asked me to stop calling. "I'll call you." Fine. I erased his number from my phone. I just saw him again, and, after a great conversation, he gave me his number again. Fine if I call and tell him about opportunities.... Basically, everyone has their own process, people sometimes forget what they have said, etc. It's all "empty and meaningless," the good news.

Honestly, I wouldn't toss something that had inspired me as Landmark did into the trash because some idiot was unskillful and rude. But that's quite what Andy did. He was young, still. But he's older now, and he still believes what he made up almost ten years earlier.

I have no doubt that conversations like what Andy reports actually took place, at least on some occasions. I've encountered them, I have a son who won't go near the Forum because, more than ten years ago, some idiot unskilled volunteer told him that "if you care about your life, you will register." (He was invited to the Introduction by some really great people, I knew them well. They never invited me. I called one of them up, once I'd done this work and found out from my son that they were Landmark graduates, and yelled at him. "Why the hell....?" I could have had a more effective ten years! Or maybe my head was too strongly wedged. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. We don't know.)

I refused to change my life plans to take this course, so I became a target for constant recruitment.


 * That is at this point illegal. I don't know what they did then, but I do know the present policies, because I've been on the phones. Because I've never asked for no-call, I get called for the Communications Course, maybe twice a year. I always have a great conversation. I say No, so far. Nobody gets upset, there is no pressure, just a repeated opportunity. So ... what, exactly is the problem? Andy had a different experience, but I'm going to guess that something about him caused this to happen. He should not have been harassed, regardless, but was he? How many times was he invited? He gives us no real details. His account is long on story (his mindreading of others, for example), and short on testimony.)


 * The same happened when I refused to sign up for a further seminar.

That couldn't possibly be "constant." How many calls did he get, and from whom? Or did they knock on his door, stalk him? Again, what happened in 1986, I can't be sure, but somebody probably screwed up, somewhere, I don't see why he'd completely lie about this. I can just say that this would be nearly impossible now, as to anything coordinated through the Center. A friend of his, some graduate who had, say, been going to seminars with him, might have called him up and wanted him to register. Landmark cannot control all that.

But as to Center calls, there are strict limits. I was given the Western Massachusetts database at one point, not for course invitation calls (that would not be allowed to be done out of the Center), but for setting up a local graduate social group. There were records marked DNC. It means Do Not Call. If anyone asks not to be called, they are immediately flagged. After eighteen months, it's less accessible. (Participant information is kept forever, that is, if you took EST or the est Forum or the Landmark Forum, and any other course, they can find that. But this isn't used for marketing. It would be, among other problems, illegal, and Landmark is very sensitive about the FTC regulations.)

Guest card calls are, also, strictly regulated. There is never more than one actual conversation with a guest from a guest card, unless the person asks for a call back. If there is no answer, there is a message left, once. there are then two more calls where no message is left -- but they want these calls to be made from the Center, for sure, because then Landmark shows in caller ID -- and then, if no returned call or answer, a final message that thanks them for being a guest and there will be no more calls, but they are always welcome to call the Center. Done. The cards are shredded. Yet I see, all the time, in these critical sites, "They will never stop calling you." Where does that come from?

It comes from reports like Andy's. Somebody, somewhere, got a call -- or some calls, Landmark is huge and all kinds of things happen -- he didn't like and turned it into a story of incessant harassment.

Mind reading redux

 * You see, to these people, when you stop participating it means you are allowing all those negative thoughts you purged to influence you again.

That's not exactly it. And any graduate who believes that has, himself or herself, lost the way. Really, this is not how we think about people who are not participating. But ... this is what I notice. Andy certainly is holding a lot of highly negative thoughts. I've read some of his posts on Scientology. While Scientology is an abusive cult, Andy was at the time he was writing this comment about Landmark, obsessed with it, defining his own identity as a Scientology-killer, viciously uncivil in his conversations. His description of his experience is heavily story-laden, and that's one thing we learn to recognize in the Forum. it's not vague. Story is story and what happened is what happened, and they are easily distinguished. There is some what happened in Andy's account, but most of it is story, interpretation, heavily so. And it's obvious.


 * You need them to keep you on the path to transformation.

No. What is needed is human company. That's part of the message of the Advanced Course, which apparently Andy never took. You can actually get that message without taking the Advanced Course, people can assist at it. And, of course, there are many, many ways to find the "conversation." There are mediation groups, twelve-step programs (which are free, by design), churches or other religious organizations, there are groups for atheists that, my opinion, are still engaged in the conversation, but ... here he was, he found a group, and it, in fact, worked for him to a degree. What turned him off, on the surface, was the "sales." Maybe. Maybe that was a cover, an excuse. $1000 is not all that much money, and he had a story that it was impossible. I recognize that one. It is not that he should have spent it, but there is the smell of disempowering story about it. I learned, and transmitted, that money was never the issue. The issue was choice. Did I choose to do this work? If the answer is No, the money is irrelevant, and if it is Yes, then money is like any other logistical question, i.e., when and where and how. But this is actually taking responsibility for choices, instead of ascribing them to incapacity. Which is what Andy did, and was still doing, explaining his work situation. As if it was the cause. What I get, first of all, is that he was angry. Didn't they understand him?


 * wanting out, you PROVE you need their help.

He really thinks they are crazy idiots.

Landmark issued an alert: Everyone call Andy.

 * Well, they called me every single day for weeks. They would not even get off the phone, but would just tell me about the breakthroughs waiting, and how they would help me if they could, but they wouldn't accept no.  They wouldn't get off the phone.

That is utterly contradictory to the training. But it's today's training. Was anyone ever this crazy? I'll ask my GLSP friend. Today, if I found out this happened, I'd be on the phone to the Center Manager, and if that didn't resolve it, I'd call Corporate. That's radically illegal now.

The way he tells the story, more than one person did this. Now, I wonder. What did he actually tell them? He isn't reporting actual text, he's synthesized this from what would be more than one conversation. Did he ever say "Do not call my any more! Take me off the list!" I just know that nobody is called like that nowadays, unless it is some crazy participant in the ILP, calling his friends because he hasn't realized yet how abusive that can be if maintained, and unwilling to get the coaching to do something lese. And that would never happen with calls to graduates, that is done by more experience people. There is really very little of it. I get a couple of calls a year, certainly no more than one a month. And I always welcome the calls. I know that now, if a graduate says do not call me, it gets put into the database, they absolutely don't want to be calling anyone where it is unwelcome.

I can imagine a situation where someone got a bug that he was supposed to not give up, to not take no for an answer. To repeat, this is directly contrary to the training, it's attachment and lack of respect for the freedom of the graduate. (It's the same with guests.)


 * I had to hang up on them. They don't see social politeness as anything but equivocation, which is seen as a desire for help.  So if you don't like being rude, they'll never leave you alone.

It is not rude to be clear. I get a hint of what might have happened here. The entire training in Landmark sets aside what we might call "social politeness," which can be a prison that prevents people from being authentic with each other. It could be that he was unwilling to be straight with a caller, and allowed his response to be vague, so as not to be "rude." And his response led the caller to think that he might say Yes, and the caller was more than unusually dense. Or Andy presented something that Andy was not aware he was presenting, an actual hook, to get the person to call again.


 * Now this was in 1986, recall. Is it still the same?  Yes.  A friend of mine did the Landmark Forum this year, before I could talk to her about it. She confirmed that the personality deconstruction  is still used, although it only takes 3 1/2 days now (friday-sunday, plus tuesday night).

As I noted above, it's "identity deconstruction," but what he is referring to has not changed, up to today. The goal of the Forum is liberation from the past. And that requires deconstructing our identity. Not killing it, not destroying it, not crushing it, not humiliating or shaming it, just *distinguishing it.*

But he has collapsed this with "it's still the same," and he told a whole story about it that was not just "personality deconstruction." Again, this is how Already Always Listening works: it constructs or maintains a story out of thin evidence, particularly stories that maintain stasis.


 * My step-son attended one of the meetings at the request of a friend this year, and he was disgusted by the shameless hard-sell.

I remember my SELP leader saying she was "shameless" about her stand that the Forum was well worth inviting people to, that everyone should take it. Knowing her, that "should" is just a stand, not a fact, something to be considered. Still, I know that "hard-sell" is a common reaction, and this is a Landmark integrity failure. It is not what Landmark is committed to, so again, what this means is that Landmark isn't perfect, sometimes far from it. But as Ashley Brilliant used to say about himself, parts of it are really excellent.

Ask for donations? Are you crazy?

 * One of his friends was actually told to take up a collection from the strangers in the room so he could afford to sign up for the Forum.

Mmmm. Never heard that one. I.e., being "told to do that." What happens is that people sometimes do take up collections. It's especially common with SELP registration, which is $225 in most locations. People often pay it for others. Now, exactly what is wrong with this suggestion?

I can imagine it being said in an abusive way, but why should I imagine it that way? Is there something wrong with accepting money from "strangers"? Had this person declared an intention to take the Forum, but they said, "I can't because I don't have the money." And then someone directly confronted that: you don't know that you don't have the money, how about asking the people here? Basically, part of the training is to overcome the artificial limitations we create on what is possible.

What if Andy had announced, at a seminar where he was being asked, say, to register for the 6-day, and needed $1000, "I've been invited to do the 6-day, and I'd love to do it, but I don't have the money, Will anyone here help me out?

In fact, I suspect, *Andy did not want to do the 6-day.* It scared the hell out of him. He was already sure that the Forum was abusive because of long hours. 6 days? You have to be kidding!

But Andy didn't know how to make choices, he really had not gotten that. My guess is that something between 5 and 10 percent of Forum participants don't get it. Andy, with his lack of clarity, continued participation for a while. He had indeed gotten something. But not enough. It happens. I'd bet he could do the Forum again, for free, but he would probably have to be somebody different. I.e, walk into a Center and talk to the Registration Manager, "I did the Forum in 1986, and I really didn't get it, the whole thing looked like a scam to me, and I was harassed when I tried to stop doing seminars, but now I realize that I might have missed something. I want to take the Forum again and find out. Will you register me into it for free?"

Most people, frankly, think the sky will fall if they make a request like that. A part of the training is making "unreasonable requests."

He could actually do the Forum again, routinely, no special conversation, for, I think, half price. But he's kind of talked himself into a hole. The hole is an illusion, he could uncreate it any time.


 * A bit rambling, but hopefully it answers you question. As this question seems to keep cropping up, I'll save this post for future reposts.

He answered the question, incorrectly, as to the history. And added a lot of story that was undigested story from a decade earlier, about a different program in a different context.

And he's still being quoted as some kind of authority.

There are some among the two million people who have done the Forum who think it is Evil, it's run by Space Aliens, it's a Con, Worthless, Intense, Boring, Sleep Deprivation, Hypnosis, Cult, and They Don't Let You Pee!

Two million is a lot of people! Are there any other opinions out there?

Most of the "cult" conversation out there is


 * People who never did the Forum, don't know anyone who did, but who are certain it is a cult.
 * People whose boyfriend or girlfriend left them because this "cult" brainwashed them, ruining a Perfectly Good Relationship. (Landmark never advises people to end relationships, it advises identifying what stories the participant is holding that prevent relationships from working and dropping them, and remaining present to possibility. Healed relationships are the common, but not universal result.)
 * A few who did the Forum, and even participated in assisting, and who decided this was Evil. Andy, here, is an example. There is one who went much further.

Sarah Fazeli
. This one is not going to be so easy! Here is a woman who apparently had a horrible time. I commented on the blog that she must have been hit with a Perfect Storm. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Once again, 2 million people take the Forum. There are fifty Forum leaders and every single one of them, last I looked, is human. Forum Leaders are highly trained, but the training isn't perfect, merely highly effective. Which means "usually effective." And everyone can have a Bad Day. So in this commentary, when I write it, I'll be reading the Riot Act to Landmark staff. I don't yet have the facts, I'm just responding to appearances. It looks really, really bad to me.

It's trivial to look at Sarah and say, "She has this story, this racket, she should have blah blah." And it would all be denial. From the comments on her blog, Houston, There Is A Problem. I get the concern. It is a shame if someone doesn't take the Forum out of fear from what Sarah reports. What she reports should never happen, and in many courses and seminars, I never saw anything like it. So if we hear a report that it happened, what do we do? Shoot the messenger? Because Landmark is Good and therefore could never do this? What? --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:51, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * This is not a massively cited story, unlike that of Andy Testa, but it's much newer.


 * See commentary on the Talk page, The Sarah Fazeli story.


 * Sarah Fazeli web site. Sarah is mentioned in the New York Times (not related to Landmark).

references to Fazeli and Landmark

 * Waiter, There’s Woo in My Food, Part 4: Landmark Forum & Cafe Gratitude, The Skeptical Vegan, August 31, 2013, links to xojane.com.
 * post apparently by Sarah Fazeli, August 21, 2013, on Zetaboards.com, and some commentary. (I saw no supporting evidence that this post was actually by Sarah Fazeli, it was a copy of the xojane article, but xojane is not credited. Sarah Fazeli allegedly has 2 posts to the board, I could not find the other.)
 * michaelbluejay.com, a page about an alleged cult (not Landmark), describing cult behavior, cites the Sarah Fazeli article on xojane.com

/Wikipediocracy
Wikipediocracy is an internet forum devoted to criticism of Wikipedia. There was an Arbitration Committee case in 2014 over Landmark Education, and that triggered commentary on Wikipediocracy. The subpage examines that. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:15, 18 April 2015 (UTC)