thanks jaguar, it gave me a shot in the arm to write it... i love remembering how i really have created a new life i really hadn't imagined before, with landmark as a major catalyst. one of those woo-hoo moments ;^)

Justin:

None of that is the truth, LandMark doesnt have the truth either or statistics or anything.

Lifespring uses the agressive techniques that had some similarities to EST, but thats why they created LandMark and removed the drill seargent approach to breaking down ego.

LandMark doesnt need to take away your individuality.

LandMark whole purpose is to give you the gift of "nothing", then they will complicate your life with from the space of nothing, or the clearing made available from the restraints of your past, then will challenge you to live an extra ordinary life.

You dont need landmark to do that, you can study yourself, you can spend years at Zen centers and in therapy accomplishing the same thing. In fact, it might be more powerful for you in some ways to take 10 years to let go of your ego and past.

LandMark is some ways is spoon feeding it, and thats why they have many follow up classes because the job is never done.

As you know, there is no end to the delussion of perception, even if you resolve every assumption that is negative that has been running you into bad habits and a bad life, you still have all the present assumption that you continue to create to get through your present moment.

All I can say, is I have taken many course, many seminars, studied for years, done therapy. And I know that this was a great experience for me to take the landmark courses. I even did EST back when I was a teenager, was annoyed by the confrontational approach, but got a lot out of that seminar too, and it helped me when I was in the military during the first gulf war when they were attempting to break down my ego in the Army.

Bottom line, is you dont need LandMark, they have literally "nothing" to teach you. If you have studies Buddism, then you know what I mean.

justin, you are saying that you are aware that you are trying to find fault with landmark because you have decided that landmark is like you, power and ego hungry and manipulative? and that someone "wise" once told you something about est?

excuse my directness, but that makes no sense at all. landmark is not those things. it's just some classes that talk about how we act in the world, ways we behave without even realizing it. if you haven't done a landmark course, what do you know about what happens there? again, i ask you, is it your usual way of understanding things to believe what other people tell you, without having the confidence to experience something for yourself?

and as far as giving up individuality... nah. i'm about as individual as they come, and in fact, what i declared in an early course is i am **the possibility of joyful individuality and creative self-expression**... that is indeed who i am in the world, and has continued to move and inspire me for years, and is a basis of my own business now. so whatever individuality you think landmark removes, nope. landmark has no agenda like that. sure, there are guidelines for how classes are run, and they want their leaders to follow certain specific structures, but their stated goal is that you have a life you love. that's it.

and i don't know what you mean about spoonfeeding spiritual truth... as opposed to what? the way other spiritual practices give you the whole thing in one big freaky kaboom mind-meld and you're enlightened in an instant? sorry, being a bit flip there, because obviously they don't -- all spiritual learning (not that landmark would remotely call themselves spiritual) comes in steps, all learning comes in stages, and all classes are presented one concept at a time. it's like math. think how would it be if you went to arithmetic 101 and were expected to converse about calculus. you can't... first you learn the basics and the vocabulary, and then you add new concepts. learning is a process, and believe me, the very simple and basic concepts i explored in landmark classrooms were well worthy of as much time as it took to consider them. i'm still considering many of them years later.

here's the deal: you can get from it whatever you choose to get. it's like life in general in that way. and you can see in it whatever you want, so if you choose to see it as manipulative and psychologically dangerous, well, then there you go, you can be right about that. i didn't go in looking for that, and never found it at all. i did find some confronting ideas and wow-did-i-really-do-that moments, but i don't see those as psychologically dangerous. more like psychologically liberating.

btw, landmark calls an assumption like that that an "already always way of listening" when you think you know how something is, and therefore you listen through a filter of what you already think about it, and so there's not much chance of it being anything else -- these are the kinds of concepts that you talk about in the landmark forum, ways that we develop habits that we get locked into, and lose our freedom to do it any other way... and when you have your mind already made up about something, you have indeed lost your freedom. once i started seeing that stuff at work in my thought processes, i was blown away.

i briefly checked out your link. i've read plenty of anti-landmark stuff already, did all sorts of research before i did it, and since. i know what people say. they say "they wear nametags" (i say bravo, i can't remember names for shit, i wish everyone wore nametags all the time, lol), and they say "they don't want you to go to the bathroom" (i confess that the no-bathroom rule was one of the reasons i never checked out est years ago, but you can go to the bathroom at landmark, but you really might miss that one thought or moment that might be huge for you). and they say "they want us to tell people about it" (like that's the most evil thing in the world).

and "it's so expensive, someone is getting rich" (which confuses me, since i often pay three times the price for a two-day business seminar and don't get all warped wondering about the motivations of the presenters. it depends on how important the information in the seminar is to me.)

my favorite is "they're all smiling, it's creepy" which would be funny if it weren't so tragic that we've lowered our expectations so much that we find it suspicious when people around us are happy.

a lot of these complaints are about insecurity, i think, a concern that we are so weak that some crafty organization, or company, or boss, or wherever it shows up, is going to brainwash us and we won't be able to resist . but unless you're psychologically unstable (and landmark is not meant for unstable people), that's not going to happen. you will still have a working brain... you'll just also have a new way of observing how your own way of seeing the world actually stops you from doing what you want.

it took me a while, but once i gave up worrying someone was going to put something over on me, i learned that no one can put anything over on me. so then i gave up my defenses... and to answer your question... no, those defenses were not keeping me safe. they were actually keeping me trapped, because they had become a barrier. with them gone, i was actually much easier to be around, and enjoyed the people i encountered more.

i have my own complaints about the organizational structure, and think their word-of-mouth marketing approach has done them damage, and i have an issue with some of their corporate policies. but that's about the company, not the trainings, and none of my concerns are remotely about ethics or intention. landmark was where i learned to separate the messenger from the message, and that was another huge breakthrough for me.

i'm left curious about which path of enlightenment you chose that leaves you feeling unable to look for insights and information in other places. i hear scientology has a rule that you can't attend a landmark course or you'll be kicked out. landmark has no such limitations. they dont' want you to do what they want... they want you to do what *you* want.