I experienced the same hard-sell to “spread the word” and to register for Landmark. I am choosing to ignore the pushy selling techniques and to give this a go for what it’s worth, just to give myself an opportunity of being able to see what I have not been able to see in my life before. Ultimately I think that nobody can push you to do anything unless you allow yourself to be pushed…

One other thought I had was that if this is a positive kind of brainwashing/re-programming of your self that allows you to move forward in life, without harming anybody else, then I am all for it.

Regards R Iyer

Andy

I subscribe to the Krishnamurti line of thought that “Truth is a pathless land”. Having the confidence and courage to navigate only with the compass of our own heart, requires by far the greatest level of integrity and learning there is. Enjoy Landmark then for what it is, a vehicle of insight. But can we take what is offered without developing attachment for the vehicle? If not, we are inadvertently enslaving ourselves, even as we are seeking to become free.

Many blessings to all.

Damon.

I am 66 now and feel about 36 apart from some loss of physical strength. I attended the Landmark Forum in Auckland where I live in November 1990, and went on in the next 2 years or so to do all the programmes that Landmark offered including the ILP training (then called IFLP) which was a rigorous 6 month training. Total cost btw was approximately NZ$3000 and imo that was incredible value for money for the time alone even leaving aside the huge benefits which have flowed since. At the time I was a practising lawyer (barrister) with the deep seated feelings (1) that there had to be more to life than I was getting and (2) that I was in a rut

About 3 months before I enrolled, my wife had attended an introduction as the guest of one of her friends whom I regarded as “flakey”. I remember saying to her that it was “an American get rich quick scheme taking money from mugs and you’re the mug if you sign up, but by all means go”. I already “knew” that although I had never even heard of the Forum before, let alone done any research into it (my wife did not enrol). Then a friend of mine whom I was supporting to start a health business invited me to attend the final evening of her Forum and I did. At the event, a man stood up and said “the first thing I did after I had finished was to go round to my ex-wife and thank her for divorcing me.” That got my attention, because it was not what people in my world ever did – they usually spent a few years at war with ex-spouses and recruited (I use that word intentionally!) their family and friends to join the cause.

Before leaving the evening, I knew I wanted to do the Forum, but I didn’t sign up on the evening because of the derision I knew I would face when I got home (“Dad’s a salesman’s dream” is something my wife had told our sons not long before, and that voice was in my head at the time). I told the person in the room I would make and communicate my decision within 48 hours (a lie, because I’d already made it) and I did formally enrol within that time.

I will not dwell on the event itself as others have already given accounts of it, but would like to summarise the aftermath from a long distance perspective of 18 years.

As Te Rangihau says above “once your eyes have been opened you can never shut them again” (someone else said “you can’t unring a bell”). That is the risk anyone takes who enters the Landmark Forum (they will give you your money back if you insist that you got nothing out of it).

Within 2 weeks of the event, my wife was telling friends that Bruce was much easier to live with and soon after my son said to her “how come Dad used to be such an arsehole and now he thinks he’s [a certain holy figure]?”. Btw, he did the Forum too when he was old enough.

I realised that our marriage was not as good as I thought it was, and sought to use the insights gained from work at Landmark to improve the situation. My wife eventually left despite (or because of?) the undoubted improvement which she acknowledged in our communication. I was devastated for about 3 months, when one of my colleagues in a programme said gently to me “Bruce, isn’t it time to move on?”

His timing was perfect. To condense the rest of the story, I became a mediator and later a relationship counsellor, both roles which, unlike that of barrister, I thoroughly enjoy. They were creative rather than destructive. I did some extensive NLP training which I have found invaluable, and would not have done without the changes in outlook which resulted from my Landmark participation. I’m about to embark on a new enterprise as a business consultant (possibly similar to what PhilC describes) where I can utilise the training gained in ILP all those years ago and communication skills from both Landmark and NLP training plus the hands on experience from mediation and counselling.

I formed a new relationship with a woman in her forties who wanted a first child, and became a willing father again at 54 of a daughter (pre-Forum, I would have considered my parenting days were over) and have done a great job of parenting, something my two sons missed out on. The relationship did not survive my daughter’s 5th birthday (my choice to end it) but her mother and I have managed to co-parent without harm to our daughter whom we both love dearly. She is a gifted (high IQ) yet well rounded child, although there was a 10% statistical chance when mother was 46 that she would be born with Downs’syndrome. (Ironically, I have a Downs grandson born to a 26 year old mother – that should tell you something about statistics, and how we shouldn’t let them run our lives.)

Both parents have re-partnered and our daughter has a great relationship with both partners as well as her parents.

I have finally found my soul mate, who incidentally had done the Forum and some assisting before I met her. She struggles still with the “hard sell” approach, so it comes as no surprise to me that most of your respondents above have reacted to this aspect of what Landmark does, so let’s move on to that in a moment. I’ll round off by saying that I plan to live another 35 years, or die in the attempt, and if I died sooner rather than later I would still say that I have lived a full and satisfying existence. Each decade since 20 has been better than the one before.

_Enrolment_. “Recruitment” is a loaded word because of its military overtones. “Hard sell” and “pressure” are perceptions not realities. Landmark use the word “enrol” not only in the context of people committing to enter a programme, but also (for example) enrolling people into visions or ideas, or into how a person is being. Try this for meaning: “generating possibility in the listening of others such that they step into that possibility committedly, and act.” Getting someone interested is not enrolling them. (Interesting aside here – I have sometimes had people say to me after I’ve had an enrolment conversation with them: “sounds like it’s really good and it works; I don’t need it, so I’m not interested, but I’ll send my husband along because he does”. Actually, no-one needs the Forum and people all over the world survive not doing it. It offers only the possibility of a richer life. It is sometimes said that the Forum does not work. I agree. It does not work – the participant does, and the work she or he does may be much more effectively directed as a result of participation in the Forum. It depends what the participants takes out of it and above what ACTION they take. End of digression.)

Most if not all of us have a resistance to change, because change involves leaving our comfort zone and taking risks. It is easier to stay in familiar discontent than to step out into the unknown. If we didn’t have resistance, we would be vulnerable to all sorts of unscrupulous people. The problem we all face in the modern world (I suspect in the ancient world as well) is to distinguish the valuable from the worthless before we get hooked in.

Mark, you’ve said it all and yet come up with a (to me) puzzling conclusion. May I quote you here?

“Despite my overall positive experience of Landmark, there was one part that really bothered me; and that is the huge amount of emphasis on recruiting other people to enrol in Landmark courses; while I can appreciate their view point – If you are getting benefits from something, why shouldn’t you share it with others? – I found there was too way much emphasis on this aspect and the unceasing pressure to recruit was incredibly invasive and annoying.”

Everyone else on the page who has actually participated has positive results to report and I can confirm that is the norm in my whole experience. Most of the knockers are those that haven’t participated. The point then is that if someone hadn’t persisted sufficiently with each one of us (some harder to convince than others) none of us would have had the opportunity and hence benefit. I shudder to think how my life would have turned out if I had not passed through that pivotal event.

I haven’t so far mentioned the other resistance which mysteriously sits inside most of us: resistance not to being “sold” to, but resistance to “selling” to others. I’m not going into the psychology of it here but you will know what I mean. That is what Landmark Education or rather its Forum Leaders, staff and assistants face. If there is a better way of doing it, you might think they would have discovered it by now (or you could be generous and tell them if you know a better way). What I know for certain is that what they do does work because the events are still being run all over the world, and Landmark has not died from lack of participants and is thriving. This is crucial because if Landmark were to go out of business, the Forum would not then be available for others to derive benefit from.

Advertising does not work except possibly to get people into a room where they would still have to go through what some see as “the hard sell”, and the cost of advertising would have to be added to the course costs (which are not high by current standards). Similarly, the large number of volunteers (who are volunteers not conscripts whatever anyone says) who assist on programmes enable the cost of them to be kept to an affordable level.

The other inherent challenge faced by all those who seek to enrol others is that it is hard anyway to describe a personal experience in words and it gets harder when one realises that each person has had or will have their own unique experience of a process that is itself quite complex, and whose outcome cannot be known precisely in advance. A lot of trust and credibility is involved, and that derives mainly from the person who introduces a relative, friend or colleague to Landmark – from you, someone they know. “Selling” something you can’t adequately explain is indeed a challenge, and being too “nice” may not achieve the “sale”.

So, the “hard sell” and the unpleasant reactions to it are, I suspect, related to overcoming our natural and healthy resistance to people trying to sell us something, and, in the case of those of us who have already participated, to our less logical resistance to passing on to those we love or like or value something we know to be good for most humans.

In simplistic terms, it seems to go like this.

1. [Conversation] “I have been given the secret to a happy life. Would you like to know it too?” “I wish I could be happy too. No thanks”

2. [Internal conversation] “My life is so much better since the Forum. It certainly worked for me and seemed to work for most of the other people there too. I’m sure ….. would get heaps of benefit from it. But I don’t want to lose my friendship with …. or for him/her to think

I’ve lost the plot /
been conned /
been brainwashed /
am a needy character /
wasn’t coping
been …. /
am a …. /
couldn’t ….

so I’ll just casually mention the Forum in passing and get their reaction and if it’s positive I’ll tell them a little more about it …. .”

Anything else that’s good we’d happily share with our loved ones, and if they said we were being too generous, we’d insist that they took the gift.

If anyone thought I lost the plot in 1990, that was their thought. Mine is that I started to find the plot in 1990 and have been discovering more of it ever since.

For anyone in or from New Zealand I’m happy to be contacted at 09 629 3255 (I hope it is ok for me to put that on your site Mark) as I value feedback or enquiry. Email address is mediate@ihug.co.nz

I’ll end with my favourite quote (which I was alerted to by a Forum leader when I was assisting and which profoundly affected me at the time) “The greatest tragedy for humans is what dies inside us while we are still living.” Albert Schweitzer (as far as I can ascertain). It still affects me.

Te Rangihau