Is Landmark a Cult?

[Lozen]

Just wondering if anybody here knows anything about it. One of my friends is "hooked" and obsessed with getting me to a workshop. He sounds like an evangelist all of a sudden, and of course will not reveal details of their secret training methods. I was hoping someone who has experienced could share their opinions--good, bad and other.

[Cameron]

No experience but it's interesting you bring it up as some friends from the Adyashanti gatheirngs were telling me about this.

 

My initital reaction from the little they told me is Ime not interested..and from what they said sounds cultish. But I don't have any idea what it's about.

[Trunk]

Landmark used to be the "est" training, way back when, and they've gone through changes over the years. I did two short seminars in the 80's (never got into their longer term programs), and I have a friend (and friends-of-friends) who has done stuff with them more recently, regularly. There's good news and bad news.

 

Good news: They really have some insights, and their seminars often produce change for people. Increase in energy, productivity, utilization of group dynamics, personal breakthroughs. The purpose of their stuff is not exotic-consciousness-altering, but they focus group dynamics so well that often the energy produces that spontaneously. Their purposes tend to be more towards the practical: productivity, interpersonal relations.

 

Bad news: At least way back when, their sales system was high pressure and very very smart, easily the most savvy clever sales system I've ever seen. And the newbies who've taken it tend to be as annoyingly enthusiastic as a born-again anything.

 

 

My more recent friend is older, has been in various things over the years, and was very cool about it, easy to talk to & be around. When I took the est training I was in my early 20's and it was the first thing I'd ever done: I made a fool of my self to friends and family.

[karen]

What is your sense of "hooked, obsessed, evangelical..." - does that sound like a healthy state of mind? The truth has no hook, doesn't require anyone to follow or defend anything. But when people identify with beliefs, they're compelled to constantly defend them.

 

There are many systems that claim to be liberating but are actually controlling. I know a spiritual advisor who advertises that he will replace your false beliefs with his true beliefs

 

At another level, there's always a reason why people are attracted to these things. Often there's a need to go through certain experiences in order to learn something about attachment and freedom, that can only be learned from actual personal involvement.

 

So if I had a good/bad moral judgment about it, it would be an opportunity for me to look at myself, rather than focus on what I think about the other person. In other words, what buttons does it push in me - my need to rescue them, my fear of losing someone close to me, etc., whatever issue it brings up.

 

-Karen

[Lozen]

I guess the buttons it pushes for me is this idea that someone outside of myself knows what is the best path for me and everybody else in the world. And I don't like being preached to or sold something.

[cloud recluse]

The mother of a close freind of mine was heavily involved with them for a while,& taked my freind into attending one of their courses.

 

Quite frankly,I do consider them a cult in that they undermine critical faculties & use hypnotic techniques not acknowledged to be such.

 

What their intentions are is another matter. But what they offer is a hotchpotch of ill-understood trance techniques clumsily applied, without full understanding of what they are doing. No matter how sincere they may be, their erratic hit & miss approach has been known to set of psychotic episodes in the past,which the 'trainers ' then refuse to take any responsibility for, "You created this experince yourself" blah blah blah.

 

They are BIG on money,& selling "advanced' courses that are just more trance sessions. People get sort of addicted ,for want of a better word, to a "Weekend Workshop " high. They are not actually advancing in any real way,just becoming more responsive to hypnotic triggers.

 

All the good that they can sell to you, you can get yourself more reliably & cheaply by practicing self-hypnosis,though you mightnt get the potent group reinforcement they offer.

 

I cant remember the author, but check out OUTRAGEOUS BETRAYAL, its about the founder Werner Erhard.

 

Regards,Cloud

[Lozen]

Just found this: http://www.rickross.com/groups/landmark.ht...0and%20Articles

[Dirtgrain]

Check out ex-cult.org, and scroll down to the section on "Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs) including The Forum / est Landmark." A couple of the links: est and Werner Erhard, and The Awareness Page.