Would I recommend it? Yes, to some people, No to others.

Am I a devotee? No, I haven’t been involved for years.

Has it made a positive difference in my life? Yes, when I used what I learned and experienced.

And like the “satisfied landmark graduate” above, learning the 3 causes of an upset has enabled me to resolve many, many, many upsets for myself and others, has made my life more enjoyable (shorter lived upsets) and has allowed me to gift others with this knowledge.

Upsets are a part of life. Learning to resolve them in a way that is a win for myself and others has allowed me to live a blessed life.

Another of the many great lessons I got from Landmark (and also from other transformational teachers) is:
1. Enrollment is bringing another to choice to RESPONSIBLY say, Yes or No.

Notice that it is OK for them to say No. It just has to be a RESPONSIBLE No.

Sometimes someone practicing enrollment loses sight of, that a RESPONSIBLE No is OK. That’s another reason for participants to PRACTICE enrollment. By doing it and noticing if the person you are enrolling leaves the conversation feeling better, whether they said Yes or a RESPONSIBLE No, one learns how to ask for anything, effectively.

Here are some No’s that aren’t RESPONSIBLE.
I’d like to do it but (fill in the reason)
I have to think about it
I have to ask my (fill in the person)

Here are some No’s that are RESPONSIBLE.
I am choosing to say No.
I am choosing to say No, for now.
No, Thank you. Period.

So for those of you for whom Landmark is a YES, I say you are right, you will likely get great benefit from it.

For those of you for whom it is neither a Yes nor a No, I say, “you are right to be undecided, so, try it, you’ll like it or you won’t, but you’ll know what you are talking about.”

For those of you for whom it is a RESPONSIBLE NO!, I say, you are right, it’s not for you.

And one last thing I learned was, when the going gets tough, stay in the conversation.

Thank you to all of the people in this thread. This lively conversation was a lot like being in The Forum again.

Landmark says, “The Forum starts for you when you enroll.”

And remember, you are enrolled whether you are a YES or a RESPONSIBLE NO. Welcome to The Forum.

I can tell you that Landmark is a highly sophisticated, dangerous (and should be illegal) organization, based on a pyramid scheme structure which utilizes human being’s minds as their business and human being’s relationships and desire to do good in life as their business model. Basically, it’s exploitative.

Landmark gets people in and sells them a little bit of common sense heaped in with a lot of emotional manipulation. In fact, the high that people feel after the landmark forum or any of the other courses (what someone above referred to as ‘enlightenment’ has virtually nothing to do with what they have been taught but is a function of the psychological and emotional rollercoaster they have been on which ultimately culminates in the leader bringing you up after having spent 3 days breaking you down. The environments are also highly controlled so that your focus is almost entirely on the leader – which after 2 or 3 days is almost like hypnotism – and there’s massive repetition of ideas and concepts. There are exercises designed to break resistance and encourage the disintegration of personal boundaries. All of these things lead to highs – the problem is that they are all manipulated highs, not real natural ones. It feels great, but the problem is that most people have no idea what it is that actually has happened to have them have that experience. Unfortunately people also link the good feelings they get from landmark to it being something that’s good for them – but both drugs and alcohol induce the same kinds of feelings (in fact, neurologically landmark creates the same kind of brain behaviour as being high or drunk), yet this does not mean they are good for your health or well being.

Landmark subtley destroying one’s sense of self (notice that all landmark courses focus on what’s wrong, what’s not working, where something is missing, what’s an issue etc which is designed to have your mind search for problems and issues, including making things that were previously not an issue into issues which of course landmark will help you deal with) and substitutes their own language (which they call distinctions, and it isn’t, it is literally changing your entire life paradigm) for normal language, all of which is designed to have you move further through the landmark funnel, have you be isolated from your normal life and to get you to bring your people to landmark.

Landmark makes people believe that their life is terrible, they are terrible, and that they need landmark to be better and have this extraordinary life. The thing is, as someone who already had a pretty extraordinary life by anyone’s standards Landmark had my life go totally downhill. I have lost income, work opportunities and more frighteningly, nearly my mind. I experienced very strange altered states of being that I have never experienced before in my entire life and never wish to experience again.

I have also noticed that all of the people in landmark who have been in it for years have many problems that normal people simply do not have. A LOT of people who stay in landmark have big issues with money, with holding down jobs and relationships, with their weight and so on. And these issues seem to get worse as they do more courses. They believe that they must be “out of integrity” but never stop to think that maybe the doctor they are seeing (i.e landmark) is the same one poisoning them??

What they are doing in their is pure and utter drivel. It does not stand up to any questioning or rigorous analysis, hence why questions and analysis are discouraged and written off as a “racket” or an “act”. Good way to deflect questions. Landmark makes such extremely bold statements on its website such as that the forum causes “permanent positive shifts in the quality of your life” but how on earth can it measure that? has it done longitudinal surveys over time to measure that? Also, how can they prove that those shifts would not have happened anyway and that such shifts are in fact attributable to landmark? For example, when good things happened to me during my time in landmark, they wanted me to give them all the credit. However, I was already a successful person BEFORE Landmark and actually, those things were just as a result of previous work and opportunities and contacts. Furthermore, the so-called “independent” studies that landmark refers to in its site were produced by people and/or companies affiliated with landmark (in some instances paid for by them) so they may have been conducted independently but they certainly were not unbiased. And going further, they only interview people who actually have a positive view of landmark hence they are not getting an accurate account of how everyone fares after being involved with landmark, only those who will say nice things, who no doubt are those who really do not understand how this organization works.

landmark simply aims to destroy a person’s sense of self so that they can become a Landmark self which will then either take more courses, join landmark leadership but ultimately in the end “all roads lead to enrollment” (as they actually tell you in the advanced course!).

In some ways, what werner erhard and landmark has done (cos let’s face it, it’s just a softer version of EST and Erhard’s family are still at the helm of landmark and most of the top leaders were original EST devotees) is pure genius. It’s shockingly, tragically amazing. Created a circular closed system where people pay to get “educated” on a system that takes money, time, energy and effort out of them that they believe is helping their lives, while each further courses pushes them deeper into landmark where they become more interested in doing more courses, assisting and bringing guests and ultimately putting more money in landmark’s pocket for it. All apparently in the name of “transformation”. Amazing.

If you ready any books on network marketing or MLM, what landmark is doing is the same as any other of these organizations except that the volunteers do not get paid (instead they promise that you will get 10x more than what you put in for your life) for their time, effort, energy and people that they bring, and the product is a total dud. I really feel sorry for anyone who gets sucked in. This place should be closed down.

What I believe the unspoken context here – and forgive me if I’m wrong – is that you’re placing all of the responsibility on the individual (me), and therefore absolving Landmark of any responsibility. Which can be a really handy way of dealing with complaints – by convincing the complainant that the complaint is their problem. This attitude seems to resonate among a lot of Landmark advocates “You take responsibility, so we don’t have to.” I hope you can see the fallacy here.

The greatest problem with the communication in this interaction, was that the Landmark representative was trying to use psychological techniques to bully me into signing up to the course. It is difficult to have a discussion person to person when one person is treating the other as an object. The precise problem with communication that is discussed in the Landmark Forum was occurring in this instance – she wasn’t listening to me, she had prejudices about who I was, and she was speaking to those prejudices instead of speaking to me.

Your final paragraph hides another key premise, a fallacy which is propagated in a lot of institutions which rely on brainwashing to continue their membership: “There is no salvation except through us.” And therefore, if I don’t sign up, it is my issue – not that I have respectfully declined. Not that I have considered my options and opined that it wasn’t the best thing for me at this point in my life, but instead that there is something wrong with me for not continuing my involvement in your organisation. I heard this same attitude when I was involved in the Cobra Group – “if you fail in the Cobra Group, you fail at life.” It’s not true. As any student of life knows, there are many ways to salvation, perhaps as many ways as there are people. I follow those who seek the truth, and run from those who claim to have found it.

To rebutt your point about Landmark not being after money – just because an institution is not after money, doesn’t mean it is not after power.

The final thing is, I would love it if just one of you Landmark advocates would acknowledge that something strange has happened here, in my conversation with a Landmark representative. Until you can do that, I’m not sure if we’re really communicating.

1. Thwarted intention
2. Undelivered communication
3. Unfulfilled expectation

Wondering if any of these are at the base of all these complaints above?

also, someone here misrepresented the Landmark definition of “enrolling” – in Landmark speak it’s not signing someone up – “enrolling” means you are touching, moving and inspiring someone with what you have seen or experienced as part of progress made as a result of doing a course, or getting an insight.

it’s all about your own progress and nothing to do with signing people up. (if someone is inspired to do the course as a result of seeing what you got, then that’s great, but not a necessity).

What did I get out of Landmark?
* I moved home to be closer to my family (I had lived on the other side of the world from them for 13 years and no longer had any need to do that)
* I made a heap of money (after doing the Finance seminar)
* I forgave my Dad for killing himself and got that he actually really loved me – this made me a much less angry person than I’d been for years, and healed a number of friendships (the majority of those that had been going wrong)
* I got that my problems with bosses had been something to do with a problem with a teacher when I was six. Once I got that, since then I’ve had no problems with bosses.

noting also, that while Landmark isn’t a non profit, nobody has ever made money from their stake in it – all the money goes into providing new courses. So is a non-profit in everything but name.

Usually the thing that makes you want to NOT sign up is the thing that is stopping you from doing a number of other things in your life. When you find something that is confronting, what is it in you that makes that thing confronting?

just sayin