I took the Forum and Advanced courses about 5 years ago. I have not been involved in Landmark since I finished the Advanced course due to the parasitic relationship that I started to have with it, i.e. incessant calls from volunteers to get me to sign up for the next course, nagging me to enroll family and friends. I recall reading a passage from the Tao te Ching that was along the lines of, “If you grasp for something, it ends up slipping out of your hands”. This paradox seemed to me to hold a fundamental truth, and I started to realize that Landmark has not really integrated this into their material, or if they do actually acknowledge this then they do so hypocritically whenever it is convenient for them. In other words, harassing your family and friends to join Landmark may work at times, but it is also very likely to backfire and result in some resentment from those whom you harassed, which was the case with some people in my life.
The only method that worked as a line of defense against the manipulative rhetoric that Landmark uses in order to get you to participate and continue funneling money into the organization is to say, “I’m not doing this because I’m not doing this”. This method is literally using their own rhetoric against them, especially in regard to the concept of “choices” instead of “decisions”. I do not know what other people experienced in their Landmark Forum seminar, but we were given the ice cream example to hammer in this concept. If you are presented with chocolate or vanilla ice cream, “choosing” the vanilla ice cream simply because, “I choose it” grants me more power in life. If I were to “decide” to have vanilla because for example, “I think it is better than chocolate”, then I am actually limiting myself because my decision to have vanilla is reliant on “considerations”, which are founded on perception, or subjectivity. In situations where Landmark pawns are trying to enroll you into another course and you simply do not want to join, all you have to do is say, “no because no because no because no because no”. You have now created a closed logical loophole that they cannot weasle their way into and use in order to manipulate you into joining the organization again.
I took the Forum and Advanced courses about 5 years ago. I have not been involved in Landmark since I finished the Advanced course due to the parasitic relationship that I started to have with it, i.e. incessant calls from volunteers to get me to sign up for the next course, nagging me to enroll family and friends. I recall reading a passage from the Tao te Ching that was along the lines of, “If you grasp for something, it ends up slipping out of your hands”. This paradox seemed to me to hold a fundamental truth, and I started to realize that Landmark has not really integrated this into their material, or if they do actually acknowledge this then they do so hypocritically whenever it is convenient for them. In other words, harassing your family and friends to join Landmark may work at times, but it is also very likely to backfire and result in some resentment from those whom you harassed, which was the case with some people in my life.
The only method that worked as a line of defense against the manipulative rhetoric that Landmark uses in order to get you to participate and continue funneling money into the organization is to say, “I’m not doing this because I’m not doing this”. This method is literally using their own rhetoric against them, especially in regard to the concept of “choices” instead of “decisions”. I do not know what other people experienced in their Landmark Forum seminar, but we were given the ice cream example to hammer in this concept. If you are presented with chocolate or vanilla ice cream, “choosing” the vanilla ice cream simply because, “I choose it” grants me more power in life. If I were to “decide” to have vanilla because for example, “I think it is better than chocolate”, then I am actually limiting myself because my decision to have vanilla is reliant on “considerations”, which are founded on perception, or subjectivity. In situations where Landmark pawns are trying to enroll you into another course and you simply do not want to join, all you have to do is say, “no because no because no because no because no”. You have now created a closed logical loophole that they cannot weasle their way into and use in order to manipulate you into joining the organization again.