What is Landmark Forum?

[icecube]

Originally Posted by pylon

And at one point in time, all the rage was 'The Secret' even Oprah was pimping it. The someone asked if starving orphans in Africa weren't doing enough magical thinking, and that is why they were in such a bad situation.

Once on a first date, some girl who's name I can no longer remember plugged that piece of crap in. And the last she ever saw of me was my back as I laughed my way out the door.

Cool story bro

[Locke]

I didnt know anything about this so I tried reading up on it.

And I just cant. Two separate articles and I cant get past the first paragraph.

[Sr. Mints]

Originally Posted by troutman

I don't like organizations that encourage members to recruit friends and family. So awkward for everyone.

Well let me ask you something, then: do you believe in Jesus Christ?

[saillias]

Maybe these people should somehow merge with WFG. It would be easier to track all the culty people you know, and avoid them accordingly. To clarify, when someone buys in to one of these companies I find my relationship/friendship becomes dependent on joining as well

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by troutman

I don't like organizations that encourage members to recruit friends and family. So awkward for everyone.

That's the thing in the end. It is always awkward. Always.

Do whatever you gotta do, believe what you want to believe in, but as soon as you start pestering your friends or family to join up or buy or believe in whatever it is you are shilling, you are being annoying. Guaranteed, you are annoying people. You may not know it, and you might even think you are doing them a favor, but nope, you are just being annoying.

Your friends and family will start having conversations about you that start with something like "We can't invite him, because he'll just bug everyone with that ______________...".

I've had this happen to me a couple times and I've never looked at those people the same again. Your secrets, your pyramid schemes, your "motivational" materials, leave 'em at home.

[Peanut]

I liked basically everything about it, except for the recruiting part.

I think that's why people who do it through their companies like it more. They take the recruiting of friends and family out of it for corporations.

[Mattington]

Sounds like the Landmark people infiltrated the AHS. Reading the article, it doesn't sound like companies should be forcing their employees to attend these seminars either.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmont...nars-1.2798835

A controversial personal development company criticized for employing high-pressure recruitment tactics, intense psychological methods and conformist ideology operated within an Alberta Health Services department for more than a year, despite several serious employee complaints.

“They are manipulative, they are controlling, they involve coercive persuasion,” said Steve Kent, a University of Alberta sociology professor. Kent is an internationally recognized expert in deviant ideological and religious groups who has studied Landmark and similar organizations for decades.

[psyang]

Originally Posted by Mattington

Sounds like the Landmark people infiltrated the AHS. Reading the article, it doesn't sound like companies should be forcing their employees to attend these seminars either.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmont...nars-1.2798835

Something like this happened about 20 years ago at TransAlta Utilities when I worked there as a co-op student. Only full-time employees attended the sessions so I didn't go, but I remember hushed whispers from my coworkers on what happened - mostly high pressure tactics used to "break" stubborn employees. One very talented coworker left the company soon after. I wish I knew the name of the group now.

Hah, Google turned up this posting of an Alberta Report article describing what happened. The person referred to as "George" was my coworker. Happy to say he is doing well now. The article said he was laid off - that surprises me a bit, but I didn't know the full story.

[Flamenspiel]

^^Ok that's a bit a extreme. Landmark is not like Solar Temple.

These threads always seem to encourage extreme viewpoints. My wife attended Landmark at the funding of her employer and i was invited to "the closing ceremony". Certainly she had fun with it and in the short term I suppose it had some impact on her. I had a chat with a leader of the session and certainly he tried to sell me on it, i found it interesting but it was not for me.

I would classify Landmark as sort of a sales seminar on steroids, nothing more then that. It is not certainly not a cult nor is it even cult like.

A Cult is: "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object"

[SeeGeeWhy]

I did landmark forum and advanced forum. I've since worked with life coaches, therapists, performance coaches, meditation and mental strength coaches... and the like. But it hit me when I recently picked up Tony Robbins' classic "personal power II". Tony talks a bit about his experience with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), notably how he didn't like the "religious like culture" and "disregard for other therapy methods"... And so went on to build his own products. This recording was from 1992, so it predates my experience with landmark by 15 years. A LOT of the material is similar if not exactly the same as many of the programs I am referring to and especially landmark.

I haven't dug that deeply into it, but it sure seems like Tony learned everything he could from that original organization, broke free to do his own thing (quite successfully I might add) and I wouldn't be surprised to learn if there was a common a genesis with a similar epoch with the Landmark forum and several other competing systems/programs.

My opinion is that the material at landmark did help me, but I needed more than they could provide and it ended up being kind of "dangerous knowledge" in the sense that I wasn't in a good place to self assess my ability to go through it. I wish I ran into Tony's version sooner because it really has not contained any of the pressure to recruit others (practicing your ability to enroll and act powerfully, etc) that landmark did.

At any rate I think it deals with some pretty powerful psychology, done in a very high intensity group setting.

[La Flames Fan]

Sounds a lot like Scientology 2.0

[NuclearPizzaMan]

Scientology Lite. Less aliens, less Tom Cruise.

[bubbsy]

my best friend got pulled into this and it's got its own gravity. he paid a bunch to get into more and more sessions and grow in the foodchain, and we were all quite bothered by it. I view it as a cult and happy when he slowly started cutting ties to it. I went to one session to appease him and i just didn't like it or their approach.

i would super scared if employers forced this on employees, that's absolutely brutal and a lawsuit waiting to happen.

[combustiblefuel]

.


Seriously sounds like a frickin cult meets pyramid scheme.