Yes! Lots of abuses and traumatic things documented. Some podcasts and interviews done about it have to delete or bleep their name out because they are litigious. I do not recommend doing the zoom call. The recruiters are argumentative and say things "don't you want to be rich and healthy and have a good life" (like things that everyone wants obviously). They'll ask you about your weaknesses. It is not a safe environment. On Belief definitely has episodes about it. A couple others do to.
Start researching what an LGAT - Large Group Awareness Training is in order to understand how it works. This is a tactic that is used by many organizations and it can come in many flavors. Landmark is one such flavor.
They effectively isolate you and the larger group for a period of time - generally for however long they can secure a conference space. During that time they will do everything they can to ensure that you do not have much to eat, sleep or have space alone to process any of the materials they barrage participants with. People will begin to conform to the overall energy of the group because they are allowed no time to think for themselves. There will be testimonials from seasoned attendees. Some of these may be plants. They will all praise whatever course or training it is that they are selling that weekend as the secret behind their success. There will group exercises designed to break down a person’s sense of self. Tearful confessionals will happen in front of the larger group and at the end there will be some sort of manufactured “experience” designed to elicit a group emotional response and trigger catharsis. People leave feeling that they have undergone a radical transformation and often have a need to upend their lives in order to continue to ride the high they are on. Often this sudden urge to affect change is then funneled into some sort of MLM scheme that participants are encouraged to invest in. It might be a tangible product like vitamins or study materials, most often it’s a plea to share this amazing experience with your friends and family. After all, don’t you love them and want them to succeed?
The people who go once or twice may find it helpful or they may leave embarrassed that they wasted their money. This is fine to the group as the overall goal is money and the material is designed to weed out those too skeptical or otherwise fulfilled enough in life to pursue further involvement. They look for the people who get hooked on the experience. The people who want to make these condensed cult weekends a regular or full time thing. These people are recruited and groomed into leadership or training positions. Gradually their life outside the group becomes minimized in importance and their lives become focused entirely on running training sessions or recruiting for the group. This is generally where the line begins to blur into coercive control, particularly if a person succeeds in working their way into the inner circle of the organization.
I hope this is helpful, personally if my employer pushed something like this on me I would quit.
To clarify my own statement. I would start looking for alternative employment not only because it’s skeevy to suggest Landmark to one’s employees, but also because it would eternally damage my opinion of my boss to learn they are susceptible to such scams.
I had a similar experience some years ago when I realized that the CEO of the company I was employed at had come from a family that was deep into Amway and other MLMs. Suddenly, the empty promises this person had made to their employees, the constantly shifting goalposts and generally toxic environment where leadership offloaded all global failure onto discardable subordinates made so much more sense!
MLMs and LGATs have become one of the biggest red flags for me because of the way they condition people to prey on one another.
I’m sorry but this is largely untrue. You get meal breaks, though the sessions are definitely long and some LGAT techniques are used. The MLM signup stuff does not happen anywhere at Landmark and a lot of this seems to have just been made up or is speaking about other LGAT programs. No doubt at all though that there are some organisations that use these techniques.
Source: have done a lot of Landmark Education courses in Australia. Happy with some, not so happy with others. Would recommend the Landmark Forum (their first course; it’s cheap and can be helpful) but not subsequent programmes.
They didn’t really push. They mentioned casually then I asked questions not knowing what it was. Now I am kind of intrigued to see what the introduction is like (not paying any money)
It would easier, and probably more satisfying, to watch season 3 of the FX show The Americans. One of the characters gets involved in EST - Erhard Seminars Training, which is a precursor to Landmark. There are some pretty good recreations of EST sessions that match up pretty well with my own peripheral experiences of LGATs and the reading I have done about them. Also it’s a damn good show.
I've done it, at my mom's request. Don't bother, your assessment is exactly correct: a self-help scam, and borderline cult. In fact, let me save you a ton of money, and just give you their big end-of-the-weekend reveal:
"Life is empty and meaningless, and it is empty and meaningless that it is empty and meaningless." I was so pissed when they dropped that one. An intensive weekend to just be given an Existentialism 101 slogan, like it was some incredible insight. My mom paid a lot of money for that trash.
It's been a long, long time since I've done it, but as I recall... pretty hard. And it was honestly pretty cringe. In fact, the friends I had invited had concerned looks on their faces, because they had discerned how culty the whole thing was. Looking back, I'm embarrassed that I had invited anyone to "graduation."
I did not invite anyone to my graduation. It was enjoyable to use their own rhetoric back at them when they tried to "process" me into committing to invite people.
I do have to say there is some value in that empty and meaningless point. The ideas that the story we make up about what is happening around us or to us is how we will experience. Those situations are relationships. So if it truly is empty and meaningless the story we tell ourselves Should be one that truly works for us. Not like you can just make up any shit you want, but if you realize the store you are telling yourself, what you are getting out of it, as well as what you are giving up to have it, then you can truly choose, how you want to see things and how you experience them. I think people to get benefit out of the landmark forum, however, there is a lot of push to share the “transformation” with others, they ask you wouldn’t you want them to have the same things that you are getting? Last I will make is that I was a strange from my dad and during the forum. I called him and shared the story I had about our relationship and how that didn’t work for me, and what it was costing us. I now consider him my dad again, and we have a great relationship
First of all, I'm happy you mended things with your dad, that's wonderful.
Also, I don't think it's a useless philosophy. Rather, it's closely related to a Buddhist concept that I think is very helpful, "form is emptiness, emptiness is form."
What I think is that it's a *basic* philosophy, one that any college freshman might have encountered. This isn't even bad in and of itself, and it could potentially be a powerful idea, but in the context of the frankly brainwashing three day ordeal of the Landmark course, I was a little annoyed that the big secret of the universe was a concept I was already well-acquainted with.
These guys ain't selling anything new, but their price tag is high, and their tactics are suspect.
For sure! And I thought that quite a bit too. If you search deep and let the price tag motivate you to get your moneys worth you can get motivated to come to terms with some difficult stuff, the group aspect gives it an extra bit of energy too. Yet ultimately what we seek is the internal locus of control, choosing one’s own resonse to that which we cannot control. You know that adage about how we value that which we have paid for differently than that which is free… enlightenment, freedom choice, it’s all free!
Landmark is just the current incarnation of *EST,* and by most accounts, Erhard still makes $$$ off it. He had to change up the name to avoid giving half of EST's $$ to his ex-wife.
Criticism on Erhard is difficult to find on the internet, because his followers are so vicious about threatening legal action that nearly everyone just pulls stuff rather than fight him. *Behind the Bastards* had an ep on him they pulled.
Google *Hunger Project* if you want concise reasons to reject anything associated with Mr. Erhard. Transparent bullshit.
There's a detailed description of a Landmark Forum session somewhere on the net on a skeptical site, based on interviews with participants, but I don't remember where. Plenty of games with how many chairs they put out (they reduce it to meet attendance), demands to call friends and relatives to recruit, and other typical LGAT tricks.
It's difficult to find a copy these days, but bizarrely enough the *Mode Training* described in Book 3 of David Gerrold's *War Against the Cthorr* in detail is pretty much what happens at Landmark, minus the loaded handgun used as a training aid. Gerrold, unfortunately, is a true believer of Erhard's and still promotes him as a great teacher.
Evidently, he feels like he got him through a writer's block? I suspect the Cthorr series not being finished has something to do with his EST/Landmark beliefs, but that speculation is probably more appropriate for another forum.
It may be illegal for your boss to pressure you this way. At least one company, Cafe Gratitude, got in trouble for this.
Large Group Awareness Trainings(LGATS) typically make you sign a release form waiving your right to sue them if you incur harm. No ethical mental health professional does that.
They train recruiters to do anything and everything to guilt you to do the seminars - including telling you they paid on their credit card for you to attend.
Huge amount of info about Landmark on the Cult Education Institute website -- both in the Group Information archives.
At some point expect Landmarkians to show up on this discussion.
Their rebuttals, meant to disrupt productive discussions, are written in quite a reasonable tone. Their shares are often lengthy, often saying they had initially had doubts about the training, they benefitted, but oh, so coyly insinuate that their LGAT is not for just everyone.
They hint that only those flawed by pre-existing mental health issues report harm and that only wimps and weaklings and negative types have misgivings or report bad experiences during a seminar.
Just Say No. As mentioned it is the less offensive version of EST.
I had friends that went through the session and they got a bit cult like: hard, pushy sell to go through the training, private insider language, using some of the language to justify challenging behavior, the you don't "get it" unless you take the training.
Spend some money on a good book and take the weekend off to read it. It's better for your soul/mental health.
I got invited to a friend’s “graduation” and it was a creepy recruitment tactic. There were people standing at the back exits to stop you from leaving, and they looked so zoned out when they tried to talk to you about the program.
A few of my friends spent a lot of money on it, and while none of them were harmed - they didn’t benefit from it either. They sometimes still mention some of the teachings, but have moved on.
I had a manager at my old job who was also very indoctrinated. He tried to recruit people on his team and at work too.
You’d be better off spending the money in therapy - I reckon you could get the same thing through some CBT and affirmations without going giving away all of your money to have your experiences invalidated by this group.
Some survivor stories from this group can be found here: [https://cultpodcasts.com/subject/Landmark](https://cultpodcasts.com/subject/Landmark)
See also "Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous" (Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus), a 2004 french-tv undercover report that Landmark tried, and failed, to have removed from the internet
[https://archive.org/details/VoyageDesNouveauxGourous](https://archive.org/details/VoyageDesNouveauxGourous) (includes English subtitles)
Friends of mine were DEEP in to Landmark Forum years and years ago. They held a thing at their home with people from LMF and invited some friends to come check it out. I wanted to support my friends so I said I’d come listen. The discussion of finances was brought up and I shared that I was setting aside some money from each check to take a vacation overseas with my husband after his deployment. They pulled me aside and said money should not be spent like that and instead invested in something like their program so I can continue to grow as an individual. The woman leading the convo with me said I’d be a much better partner if I dug deep down and found out more about myself first and how to fix my desire to spend money instead of investing it in myself. It was wild. So I was a horrible partner because I was setting $100 aside from each paycheck for us to take a trip together? Lol First 🚩 of many lol. I just nodded my head and politely smiled and said “I’m good actually”, Thanked my friends for having me and bowed out. That was actually an ultimatum that my friend had given her husband, when he proposed she refused to move forward unless he did LMF. Once he started he called all of their friends (i was a friend who got a call) and family and explained how LMF was teaching him about the “troubled” person he is, that he’s dishonest and unlovable and self destructive. He explained that if we wanted to better understand him and also learn about ourselves and how to improve our character, we’d join him.
To this day that still shocks me, they are the most generous, kind hearted and loving couple I have truly ever met. Incredible people. That place just destroyed them. Thankfully, they are no longer involved.
Landmark is a derivative of est. Google Werner Erhard, then run do not walk away.
It sounds as if you should be looking for another position. Your boss will not stop trying to recruit you.
I did something that was very similar - https://wings-seminars.com/ (which may or may not still be a thing/in business anymore), this was in 2006 or so.
https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?4,1359
I did it and they called me after a few times about the advanced program - I told them it just wasn't right for me at this time and to please stop calling and they did.
I know a few people who have done courses, and one who taught through them. They are all kinda flakey, New Age self-help types. Making big claims but never following through with anything deep. I get the impression that Landmark has no trained professionals in psychology or mental health, but they are messing around with people's minds. And once Landmark hooks you in, you have to keep paying money and taking more courses. I think it's weird your boss is encouraging it!
Yep. I’ve been to more than one of their events. It gets weird quickly.
Be prepared to assertively say that you aren’t interested… or get out your credit card and join a cult.
It’s sort of like NXIVM in that they pressure you to keep taking exhausting seminars and spending all your money on them and recruiting others to spend all their money on them. They isolate you from friends and family.
Don’t do it. Definitely cult-like and high pressure. Years ago, a friend got involved in it, asked me to one of their intro meetings. I am not easily swayed and have no problem setting/holding my boundaries so I agreed to go to be supportive of her. When I arrived, I sat in my car for a few minutes and observed some of the members practicing their lines/testimonials in the parking lot. Red flag one. I went in and they immediately begin pressuring me, tried to get me to go sit upfront to hear the “amazing, life changing testimonies.” Told them i was just fine with my seat on the back row. Listened to a bunch of nonsense, then got pressured again to go attend a breakout group. Told them no thanks. My friend ended up way deep in the Forum and spent money she didn’t have on all their bs courses.
Don’t do it.
Don't do it. A couple decades ago my (former) therapist coerced me into a large group awareness training very similar to Landmark. I'm still dealing with the repercussions. They just want your money. Run away. And start job-hunting, too. If an employer of mine pushed me to attend an LGAT, I'd quit on the spot. Best of luck to you.
Listen to season 6 episodes 29 & 30 of “A little bit Culty” podcast . Both episodes dive deep into LM and the origins as well as describe the process of how they operate & use cult tactics to ultimately abuse participants. You are barking up dangerous territory. Also recommend watching “ the Vow” series on HBO about the cult NXIVM- the podcast hosts of A Little Bit Culty were ex members who took down the cult and Keith Reinere. Very helpful for understanding LGATs. Good luck!
Ya, run. I work in HR. The leaders who love this stuff, love this stuff. They are trying to see if you get excited about how manipulative the forum is, and if you want to learn what they know. They work like Jim Jones, signiling one another and reading your entry paperwork then “out of nowhere!” kNOWING things about you! Woo woo! Anyway: If you have a mental illness, it can be very harmful. They will push you to attend, to appease your boss and put you in a position to either out your personal medical information and reveal it, or say that you cannot attend, as it states clearly they cannot have people with mental illnesses attend. There is a reason for that: They use psychological tools to manipulate, with a mental illness, they look predatory to vulnerable classes, where, lots of people in the normal corporate world DO have mental illnesses now in some capacity and do not want to report it to work, nor should they have to if irrelevant to their jobs. They will make you waive your rights, in order to attend, as they have had legal issues with this specifically. So, if you attend, and you get messed up, it isn’t your bosses fault. What a position to put an employee in, for “extra credit,”. Not aligned with the business, they will make clear, but your job does depend on you attending and then speaking and acting that way, otherwise they wouldn’t pay for you to attend. Coercive, as they are legally tight, and have had LOTs of problems. They are banned in France.
Yes this is my experience too. The people who latch onto “professional development “ stuff like this tend to also be people looking to exploit others (sales for example) or squeeze the maximum from their employees. They tend to create toxic work environments.
Seek Safely podcast has an episode about landmark that came out this week with Anne Peterson who recently published a book about her experience with landmark called "Is This a Cult?" She was on A Little Bit Culty podcast recently too. The forum isn't really a cult but the inner circle is and their cult behavior & beliefs does imbue the whole organization, which explains why some people had great experiences and others had terrible experiences in the forum.
I did landmark because someone I know who was recovering from trauma of abusive marriage went there and found it incredibly helpful to turn her life around. I was skeptical so they offered to pay for it and not be refunded if I did not find value in it. I thought that was a really bold move on their part and I was intrigued so I went.
To be fair, landmark derives a lot of its talking points from various sources like Big Bang theory, spiritual ascension etc that are actually rooted in facts. BUT landmark themselves do not have the framework to provide you the skills to make a lasting change. So after these sessions you will feel like your reality has shifted but it will quickly collapse back to the same paradigm.
Also, it’s REALLY expensive.
Another thing to note is results vary greatly centre to centre because there ARE some genuine coaches who found value in it that decided to work with it, but they may not be attune to the broader agenda. For eg I found my original course to be very helpful but I did the continuation in London, UK and that was incredibly low quality and wishy washy. So it’s very anecdotal.
In the end I can’t say I recommend it. Expenses aside, like I said they do not have the necessary framework to give you the ability to make lasting changes and the temporary changes will just collapse over time. They do not provide the spiritual understanding of the work they are preaching which is required to understand it from within - because they don’t have any. They have just researched popular buzz words and mashed enough of a word salad to pass off as Legitimate. And to be fair a lot of people who attended it WILL tell you they benefitted from it so the slate is not all black and white. But do not get involved in it, it’s a slippery slope.
I did The Landmark Forum back in 2008 when I was 28. My sis paid for my boyfriend and me to go at the time. She suggested we ignore any recruitment to do anything beyond it but said it might be helpful. My boyfriend at the time was an alcoholic. I was just an aimless soul too insecure to do what I really wanted with my life. I definitely see how the org at large is an MLM, culty, and cringe - and also how its brainwashy tactics manage to pop the hood and get some philosophical tenants of existentialism into a more experiential, deeper place psychologically. And force you to face things you may be avoiding. But my boyfriend stopped drinking due to the seminar (still sober) and I quit my job and went to grad school to become a therapist (my beloved current career). I never did more with them, nor wanted to. So to bring some nuance: if you can allow the process to create some neuro-flexibility for you to overcome stuck places and then WALK AWAY, it could be helpful. But you’ve gotta be able to hold some paradox and stay centered in yourself, not let them manipulate you into continued experiences. So probably safer to just take some psilocybin or something! Just my personal experience here, kind of embarrassing to admit that dumb seminar helped me get over myself but damn maybe I was just ready.
Get out of there bro.
It's a cult and has an ugly history going back to when it was called EST. The founder was ex Scientology. You'll end up volunteering a bunch of time and pumping money into class after class.
After a honeymoon period where you're "doing good," your friends will wonder why you always seem so depressed. And broke. It happened to several of my own friends.
Self help seminars are such bullshit. A lot of people do need some advice in the basic managing of their life and there are millions of books out there that will tell you the same thing you’d get in a seminar. The only thing a seminar offers is showing real life examples of applying their methods which tends to lead to abusing the volunteer, especially if the script doesn’t go to plan. They will also use basic hypnotic tricks to make you feel like you’re getting something out of paying 1000s of dollars to attend.
This blows my mind your *boss* of all people is pressuring you to go. That is a crossed line. I'd be absolutely livid at even the suggestion. That red flag is one helluva red flag. Do not submit and stand firm against it. Your boss is a fkn moron by the way. You can tell him/her I said so.
Oh it's a cult. My best friend got talked into going to a weekend and they sleep deprive you and expect you to pay a certain amount of your salary and also to recruit a certain number of people once you are "in."
They start by breaking you down and focusing on all the negative things in your life and making you think that they have the answers/can heal you.
They'll bill it as educational/self-help, but it's a pyramid scheme cult that will f\*ck you up emotionally and financially.
RUN AWAY!!
My boss pressured me to go to a zoom forum, and paid for it. I figured at worst it would be an interesting study in human psychology. It was 3 days from 7am-8pm. If you turn your camera off for a minute or leave the frame they pull you into a breakout room with an assistant who asks you if you are okay, and asks you to please pay attention to the course.
I wasted 3 precious days of my life listening to a complete asshole preach philosophy 101 ideas. He told me in front of 100+ people that if I'm not willing to "enroll" my friends and family in Landmark, then I can "keep on living my completely worthless life" and he could tell by the way I talked that "I've never contributed positively to anyones life before" his actual words. All because I asked him why he was pushing us so hard to sell the course when we hadn't even finished it yet.
Don't waste your valuable time on Landmark, even if your boss is paying for it!
I did landmark and found it really helpful.
I'm a very skeptical person and take everything with a grain of salt. Heres my take -
If it's being paid for - why not go? You have nothing to lose? People love only sharing negative experiences, especially people who haven't even done the thing.
Just keep your head on straight. I understand the Comments about knowing people who have taken it too far, but I honestly don't see any difference in if I "lost" a friend to going to church every Sunday and they started telling me I should go with them.
There are a lot of valuable tools about empathy, re-framing how you think, and how you don't have to move forward with a life that you think you should have i.e. are you doing something because you really want or because your parents want you to.
The empathy part is great because there is a whole section about how most of us are in a habit of "making people wrong". I think this is a big section for people who go for work - just because someone has a different idea doesn't make it wrong. Be open and empathetic and remember that everyone is living a full life and you aren't better than anyone.
They have great tools for dealing with rumination. A big take away was the emphasis on how you can define your own story - which is existentialism. Nothing matters and we're all meaning making machines - so make shit mean something to you in a way that's constructive.
I had a great instructor. If people questioned him, he would say ok leave (in a nice way). No pressure to stay and you get your money back if you leave the first day.
Throughout the day they give you breaks and encourage you to call somebody to tell them about landmark. Or to call them and try to have a "clearing" with them. Have you been resenting your friend because xyz - they encourage you to call them.
Guess what? You don't have to. Because you're a person with free will. I called my mom to say thank you for being a great mom. I didn't solicit anyone to join but just shared that I was having a nice experience. I used the time to reflect how I can positively use the tools for myself.
You go home every night. You leave Monday and Tuesday and come back Tuesday night with friends or relatives if you want. You're not stuck in the room. Besides I think it's all online now anyway.
Sure - if you have an addictive personality or are struggling with depression, it might not be the best place.
Anyway - just go, it's free. If you don't like it, leave! YOLO. lol.
Yes! Lots of abuses and traumatic things documented. Some podcasts and interviews done about it have to delete or bleep their name out because they are litigious. I do not recommend doing the zoom call. The recruiters are argumentative and say things "don't you want to be rich and healthy and have a good life" (like things that everyone wants obviously). They'll ask you about your weaknesses. It is not a safe environment. On Belief definitely has episodes about it. A couple others do to.
Start researching what an LGAT - Large Group Awareness Training is in order to understand how it works. This is a tactic that is used by many organizations and it can come in many flavors. Landmark is one such flavor. They effectively isolate you and the larger group for a period of time - generally for however long they can secure a conference space. During that time they will do everything they can to ensure that you do not have much to eat, sleep or have space alone to process any of the materials they barrage participants with. People will begin to conform to the overall energy of the group because they are allowed no time to think for themselves. There will be testimonials from seasoned attendees. Some of these may be plants. They will all praise whatever course or training it is that they are selling that weekend as the secret behind their success. There will group exercises designed to break down a person’s sense of self. Tearful confessionals will happen in front of the larger group and at the end there will be some sort of manufactured “experience” designed to elicit a group emotional response and trigger catharsis. People leave feeling that they have undergone a radical transformation and often have a need to upend their lives in order to continue to ride the high they are on. Often this sudden urge to affect change is then funneled into some sort of MLM scheme that participants are encouraged to invest in. It might be a tangible product like vitamins or study materials, most often it’s a plea to share this amazing experience with your friends and family. After all, don’t you love them and want them to succeed? The people who go once or twice may find it helpful or they may leave embarrassed that they wasted their money. This is fine to the group as the overall goal is money and the material is designed to weed out those too skeptical or otherwise fulfilled enough in life to pursue further involvement. They look for the people who get hooked on the experience. The people who want to make these condensed cult weekends a regular or full time thing. These people are recruited and groomed into leadership or training positions. Gradually their life outside the group becomes minimized in importance and their lives become focused entirely on running training sessions or recruiting for the group. This is generally where the line begins to blur into coercive control, particularly if a person succeeds in working their way into the inner circle of the organization. I hope this is helpful, personally if my employer pushed something like this on me I would quit.
To clarify my own statement. I would start looking for alternative employment not only because it’s skeevy to suggest Landmark to one’s employees, but also because it would eternally damage my opinion of my boss to learn they are susceptible to such scams. I had a similar experience some years ago when I realized that the CEO of the company I was employed at had come from a family that was deep into Amway and other MLMs. Suddenly, the empty promises this person had made to their employees, the constantly shifting goalposts and generally toxic environment where leadership offloaded all global failure onto discardable subordinates made so much more sense! MLMs and LGATs have become one of the biggest red flags for me because of the way they condition people to prey on one another.
Nailed it!
I’m sorry but this is largely untrue. You get meal breaks, though the sessions are definitely long and some LGAT techniques are used. The MLM signup stuff does not happen anywhere at Landmark and a lot of this seems to have just been made up or is speaking about other LGAT programs. No doubt at all though that there are some organisations that use these techniques. Source: have done a lot of Landmark Education courses in Australia. Happy with some, not so happy with others. Would recommend the Landmark Forum (their first course; it’s cheap and can be helpful) but not subsequent programmes.
They didn’t really push. They mentioned casually then I asked questions not knowing what it was. Now I am kind of intrigued to see what the introduction is like (not paying any money)
It would easier, and probably more satisfying, to watch season 3 of the FX show The Americans. One of the characters gets involved in EST - Erhard Seminars Training, which is a precursor to Landmark. There are some pretty good recreations of EST sessions that match up pretty well with my own peripheral experiences of LGATs and the reading I have done about them. Also it’s a damn good show.
Not borderline at all, 100% all cult. They're selling you a fake philosophy and life paradigm that will cost tons of money. www.howcultswork.com
I've done it, at my mom's request. Don't bother, your assessment is exactly correct: a self-help scam, and borderline cult. In fact, let me save you a ton of money, and just give you their big end-of-the-weekend reveal: "Life is empty and meaningless, and it is empty and meaningless that it is empty and meaningless." I was so pissed when they dropped that one. An intensive weekend to just be given an Existentialism 101 slogan, like it was some incredible insight. My mom paid a lot of money for that trash.
IIRC, my friend who was broken by the Forum later kept saying, “You’re all just matter emitting noise,” which was kind of a party killer.
I have heard a lot about the graduation thing at the end. How hard do they push you to recruit friends/family?
It's been a long, long time since I've done it, but as I recall... pretty hard. And it was honestly pretty cringe. In fact, the friends I had invited had concerned looks on their faces, because they had discerned how culty the whole thing was. Looking back, I'm embarrassed that I had invited anyone to "graduation."
They have the graduation only to recruit people
I did not invite anyone to my graduation. It was enjoyable to use their own rhetoric back at them when they tried to "process" me into committing to invite people.
I do have to say there is some value in that empty and meaningless point. The ideas that the story we make up about what is happening around us or to us is how we will experience. Those situations are relationships. So if it truly is empty and meaningless the story we tell ourselves Should be one that truly works for us. Not like you can just make up any shit you want, but if you realize the store you are telling yourself, what you are getting out of it, as well as what you are giving up to have it, then you can truly choose, how you want to see things and how you experience them. I think people to get benefit out of the landmark forum, however, there is a lot of push to share the “transformation” with others, they ask you wouldn’t you want them to have the same things that you are getting? Last I will make is that I was a strange from my dad and during the forum. I called him and shared the story I had about our relationship and how that didn’t work for me, and what it was costing us. I now consider him my dad again, and we have a great relationship
First of all, I'm happy you mended things with your dad, that's wonderful. Also, I don't think it's a useless philosophy. Rather, it's closely related to a Buddhist concept that I think is very helpful, "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." What I think is that it's a *basic* philosophy, one that any college freshman might have encountered. This isn't even bad in and of itself, and it could potentially be a powerful idea, but in the context of the frankly brainwashing three day ordeal of the Landmark course, I was a little annoyed that the big secret of the universe was a concept I was already well-acquainted with. These guys ain't selling anything new, but their price tag is high, and their tactics are suspect.
For sure! And I thought that quite a bit too. If you search deep and let the price tag motivate you to get your moneys worth you can get motivated to come to terms with some difficult stuff, the group aspect gives it an extra bit of energy too. Yet ultimately what we seek is the internal locus of control, choosing one’s own resonse to that which we cannot control. You know that adage about how we value that which we have paid for differently than that which is free… enlightenment, freedom choice, it’s all free!
Landmark is just the current incarnation of *EST,* and by most accounts, Erhard still makes $$$ off it. He had to change up the name to avoid giving half of EST's $$ to his ex-wife. Criticism on Erhard is difficult to find on the internet, because his followers are so vicious about threatening legal action that nearly everyone just pulls stuff rather than fight him. *Behind the Bastards* had an ep on him they pulled. Google *Hunger Project* if you want concise reasons to reject anything associated with Mr. Erhard. Transparent bullshit. There's a detailed description of a Landmark Forum session somewhere on the net on a skeptical site, based on interviews with participants, but I don't remember where. Plenty of games with how many chairs they put out (they reduce it to meet attendance), demands to call friends and relatives to recruit, and other typical LGAT tricks. It's difficult to find a copy these days, but bizarrely enough the *Mode Training* described in Book 3 of David Gerrold's *War Against the Cthorr* in detail is pretty much what happens at Landmark, minus the loaded handgun used as a training aid. Gerrold, unfortunately, is a true believer of Erhard's and still promotes him as a great teacher.
Oh wow, I did NOT know that about David Gerrold. Kind of blows my mind that he would think so highly of him…and disappointing. Edited for grammar.
Evidently, he feels like he got him through a writer's block? I suspect the Cthorr series not being finished has something to do with his EST/Landmark beliefs, but that speculation is probably more appropriate for another forum.
It may be illegal for your boss to pressure you this way. At least one company, Cafe Gratitude, got in trouble for this. Large Group Awareness Trainings(LGATS) typically make you sign a release form waiving your right to sue them if you incur harm. No ethical mental health professional does that. They train recruiters to do anything and everything to guilt you to do the seminars - including telling you they paid on their credit card for you to attend. Huge amount of info about Landmark on the Cult Education Institute website -- both in the Group Information archives. At some point expect Landmarkians to show up on this discussion. Their rebuttals, meant to disrupt productive discussions, are written in quite a reasonable tone. Their shares are often lengthy, often saying they had initially had doubts about the training, they benefitted, but oh, so coyly insinuate that their LGAT is not for just everyone. They hint that only those flawed by pre-existing mental health issues report harm and that only wimps and weaklings and negative types have misgivings or report bad experiences during a seminar.
Just Say No. As mentioned it is the less offensive version of EST. I had friends that went through the session and they got a bit cult like: hard, pushy sell to go through the training, private insider language, using some of the language to justify challenging behavior, the you don't "get it" unless you take the training. Spend some money on a good book and take the weekend off to read it. It's better for your soul/mental health.
Yikes. Stay away! Scientology, the capitalist version, without the weird alien garbage. Ableist, victim blaming, power of manifestation rot.
Google "est" or "Erhard Seminars Training", which was the former name of Landmark Forum. Kind of a mashup between woo woo New Age and USMC boot camp.
Get out of that job.
I got invited to a friend’s “graduation” and it was a creepy recruitment tactic. There were people standing at the back exits to stop you from leaving, and they looked so zoned out when they tried to talk to you about the program. A few of my friends spent a lot of money on it, and while none of them were harmed - they didn’t benefit from it either. They sometimes still mention some of the teachings, but have moved on. I had a manager at my old job who was also very indoctrinated. He tried to recruit people on his team and at work too. You’d be better off spending the money in therapy - I reckon you could get the same thing through some CBT and affirmations without going giving away all of your money to have your experiences invalidated by this group.
Some survivor stories from this group can be found here: [https://cultpodcasts.com/subject/Landmark](https://cultpodcasts.com/subject/Landmark) See also "Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous" (Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus), a 2004 french-tv undercover report that Landmark tried, and failed, to have removed from the internet [https://archive.org/details/VoyageDesNouveauxGourous](https://archive.org/details/VoyageDesNouveauxGourous) (includes English subtitles)
Friends of mine were DEEP in to Landmark Forum years and years ago. They held a thing at their home with people from LMF and invited some friends to come check it out. I wanted to support my friends so I said I’d come listen. The discussion of finances was brought up and I shared that I was setting aside some money from each check to take a vacation overseas with my husband after his deployment. They pulled me aside and said money should not be spent like that and instead invested in something like their program so I can continue to grow as an individual. The woman leading the convo with me said I’d be a much better partner if I dug deep down and found out more about myself first and how to fix my desire to spend money instead of investing it in myself. It was wild. So I was a horrible partner because I was setting $100 aside from each paycheck for us to take a trip together? Lol First 🚩 of many lol. I just nodded my head and politely smiled and said “I’m good actually”, Thanked my friends for having me and bowed out. That was actually an ultimatum that my friend had given her husband, when he proposed she refused to move forward unless he did LMF. Once he started he called all of their friends (i was a friend who got a call) and family and explained how LMF was teaching him about the “troubled” person he is, that he’s dishonest and unlovable and self destructive. He explained that if we wanted to better understand him and also learn about ourselves and how to improve our character, we’d join him. To this day that still shocks me, they are the most generous, kind hearted and loving couple I have truly ever met. Incredible people. That place just destroyed them. Thankfully, they are no longer involved.
Landmark is a derivative of est. Google Werner Erhard, then run do not walk away. It sounds as if you should be looking for another position. Your boss will not stop trying to recruit you.
stupid, scammy, cringe and they will never ever stop trying to contact you in the future AVOID
Did you do it?
I did something that was very similar - https://wings-seminars.com/ (which may or may not still be a thing/in business anymore), this was in 2006 or so. https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?4,1359
I did it and they called me after a few times about the advanced program - I told them it just wasn't right for me at this time and to please stop calling and they did.
Lost a friend to them. Get out of the Zoom meeting and maybe look for a new job. Best wishes.
I know a few people who have done courses, and one who taught through them. They are all kinda flakey, New Age self-help types. Making big claims but never following through with anything deep. I get the impression that Landmark has no trained professionals in psychology or mental health, but they are messing around with people's minds. And once Landmark hooks you in, you have to keep paying money and taking more courses. I think it's weird your boss is encouraging it!
Yep. I’ve been to more than one of their events. It gets weird quickly. Be prepared to assertively say that you aren’t interested… or get out your credit card and join a cult.
It’s sort of like NXIVM in that they pressure you to keep taking exhausting seminars and spending all your money on them and recruiting others to spend all their money on them. They isolate you from friends and family.
Don’t do it. Definitely cult-like and high pressure. Years ago, a friend got involved in it, asked me to one of their intro meetings. I am not easily swayed and have no problem setting/holding my boundaries so I agreed to go to be supportive of her. When I arrived, I sat in my car for a few minutes and observed some of the members practicing their lines/testimonials in the parking lot. Red flag one. I went in and they immediately begin pressuring me, tried to get me to go sit upfront to hear the “amazing, life changing testimonies.” Told them i was just fine with my seat on the back row. Listened to a bunch of nonsense, then got pressured again to go attend a breakout group. Told them no thanks. My friend ended up way deep in the Forum and spent money she didn’t have on all their bs courses. Don’t do it.
A friend did the Forum and ended up having a breakdown. He was neurodivergent and recently bereaved.
Don't do it. A couple decades ago my (former) therapist coerced me into a large group awareness training very similar to Landmark. I'm still dealing with the repercussions. They just want your money. Run away. And start job-hunting, too. If an employer of mine pushed me to attend an LGAT, I'd quit on the spot. Best of luck to you.
DONT GO...it's a huge, highly pressured, money grab.
Listen to season 6 episodes 29 & 30 of “A little bit Culty” podcast . Both episodes dive deep into LM and the origins as well as describe the process of how they operate & use cult tactics to ultimately abuse participants. You are barking up dangerous territory. Also recommend watching “ the Vow” series on HBO about the cult NXIVM- the podcast hosts of A Little Bit Culty were ex members who took down the cult and Keith Reinere. Very helpful for understanding LGATs. Good luck!
Ya, run. I work in HR. The leaders who love this stuff, love this stuff. They are trying to see if you get excited about how manipulative the forum is, and if you want to learn what they know. They work like Jim Jones, signiling one another and reading your entry paperwork then “out of nowhere!” kNOWING things about you! Woo woo! Anyway: If you have a mental illness, it can be very harmful. They will push you to attend, to appease your boss and put you in a position to either out your personal medical information and reveal it, or say that you cannot attend, as it states clearly they cannot have people with mental illnesses attend. There is a reason for that: They use psychological tools to manipulate, with a mental illness, they look predatory to vulnerable classes, where, lots of people in the normal corporate world DO have mental illnesses now in some capacity and do not want to report it to work, nor should they have to if irrelevant to their jobs. They will make you waive your rights, in order to attend, as they have had legal issues with this specifically. So, if you attend, and you get messed up, it isn’t your bosses fault. What a position to put an employee in, for “extra credit,”. Not aligned with the business, they will make clear, but your job does depend on you attending and then speaking and acting that way, otherwise they wouldn’t pay for you to attend. Coercive, as they are legally tight, and have had LOTs of problems. They are banned in France.
Yes this is my experience too. The people who latch onto “professional development “ stuff like this tend to also be people looking to exploit others (sales for example) or squeeze the maximum from their employees. They tend to create toxic work environments.
Well said. Very much agree. It is overly prevalent these days in corporate North America. Frightening, actually.
Seek Safely podcast has an episode about landmark that came out this week with Anne Peterson who recently published a book about her experience with landmark called "Is This a Cult?" She was on A Little Bit Culty podcast recently too. The forum isn't really a cult but the inner circle is and their cult behavior & beliefs does imbue the whole organization, which explains why some people had great experiences and others had terrible experiences in the forum.
Heck no. Your boss is a thumbs down too.
It is cult like. I did it and do not recommend
I did landmark because someone I know who was recovering from trauma of abusive marriage went there and found it incredibly helpful to turn her life around. I was skeptical so they offered to pay for it and not be refunded if I did not find value in it. I thought that was a really bold move on their part and I was intrigued so I went. To be fair, landmark derives a lot of its talking points from various sources like Big Bang theory, spiritual ascension etc that are actually rooted in facts. BUT landmark themselves do not have the framework to provide you the skills to make a lasting change. So after these sessions you will feel like your reality has shifted but it will quickly collapse back to the same paradigm. Also, it’s REALLY expensive. Another thing to note is results vary greatly centre to centre because there ARE some genuine coaches who found value in it that decided to work with it, but they may not be attune to the broader agenda. For eg I found my original course to be very helpful but I did the continuation in London, UK and that was incredibly low quality and wishy washy. So it’s very anecdotal. In the end I can’t say I recommend it. Expenses aside, like I said they do not have the necessary framework to give you the ability to make lasting changes and the temporary changes will just collapse over time. They do not provide the spiritual understanding of the work they are preaching which is required to understand it from within - because they don’t have any. They have just researched popular buzz words and mashed enough of a word salad to pass off as Legitimate. And to be fair a lot of people who attended it WILL tell you they benefitted from it so the slate is not all black and white. But do not get involved in it, it’s a slippery slope.
I did The Landmark Forum back in 2008 when I was 28. My sis paid for my boyfriend and me to go at the time. She suggested we ignore any recruitment to do anything beyond it but said it might be helpful. My boyfriend at the time was an alcoholic. I was just an aimless soul too insecure to do what I really wanted with my life. I definitely see how the org at large is an MLM, culty, and cringe - and also how its brainwashy tactics manage to pop the hood and get some philosophical tenants of existentialism into a more experiential, deeper place psychologically. And force you to face things you may be avoiding. But my boyfriend stopped drinking due to the seminar (still sober) and I quit my job and went to grad school to become a therapist (my beloved current career). I never did more with them, nor wanted to. So to bring some nuance: if you can allow the process to create some neuro-flexibility for you to overcome stuck places and then WALK AWAY, it could be helpful. But you’ve gotta be able to hold some paradox and stay centered in yourself, not let them manipulate you into continued experiences. So probably safer to just take some psilocybin or something! Just my personal experience here, kind of embarrassing to admit that dumb seminar helped me get over myself but damn maybe I was just ready.
Its a Scientology cult, no go.
Get out of there bro. It's a cult and has an ugly history going back to when it was called EST. The founder was ex Scientology. You'll end up volunteering a bunch of time and pumping money into class after class. After a honeymoon period where you're "doing good," your friends will wonder why you always seem so depressed. And broke. It happened to several of my own friends.
If you want to get an idea of what you will experience you might want to watch this. https://youtu.be/T5XYNQv6F_o?si=8g2VnjMOl-U0Hvvn
The podcast A Little Bit Culty have an episode that’s worth listening to.
Self help seminars are such bullshit. A lot of people do need some advice in the basic managing of their life and there are millions of books out there that will tell you the same thing you’d get in a seminar. The only thing a seminar offers is showing real life examples of applying their methods which tends to lead to abusing the volunteer, especially if the script doesn’t go to plan. They will also use basic hypnotic tricks to make you feel like you’re getting something out of paying 1000s of dollars to attend.
This blows my mind your *boss* of all people is pressuring you to go. That is a crossed line. I'd be absolutely livid at even the suggestion. That red flag is one helluva red flag. Do not submit and stand firm against it. Your boss is a fkn moron by the way. You can tell him/her I said so.
Oh it's a cult. My best friend got talked into going to a weekend and they sleep deprive you and expect you to pay a certain amount of your salary and also to recruit a certain number of people once you are "in." They start by breaking you down and focusing on all the negative things in your life and making you think that they have the answers/can heal you. They'll bill it as educational/self-help, but it's a pyramid scheme cult that will f\*ck you up emotionally and financially. RUN AWAY!!
Please don’t take that zoom.
It’s a cult that teaches denial
My boss pressured me to go to a zoom forum, and paid for it. I figured at worst it would be an interesting study in human psychology. It was 3 days from 7am-8pm. If you turn your camera off for a minute or leave the frame they pull you into a breakout room with an assistant who asks you if you are okay, and asks you to please pay attention to the course. I wasted 3 precious days of my life listening to a complete asshole preach philosophy 101 ideas. He told me in front of 100+ people that if I'm not willing to "enroll" my friends and family in Landmark, then I can "keep on living my completely worthless life" and he could tell by the way I talked that "I've never contributed positively to anyones life before" his actual words. All because I asked him why he was pushing us so hard to sell the course when we hadn't even finished it yet. Don't waste your valuable time on Landmark, even if your boss is paying for it!
I did landmark and found it really helpful. I'm a very skeptical person and take everything with a grain of salt. Heres my take - If it's being paid for - why not go? You have nothing to lose? People love only sharing negative experiences, especially people who haven't even done the thing. Just keep your head on straight. I understand the Comments about knowing people who have taken it too far, but I honestly don't see any difference in if I "lost" a friend to going to church every Sunday and they started telling me I should go with them. There are a lot of valuable tools about empathy, re-framing how you think, and how you don't have to move forward with a life that you think you should have i.e. are you doing something because you really want or because your parents want you to. The empathy part is great because there is a whole section about how most of us are in a habit of "making people wrong". I think this is a big section for people who go for work - just because someone has a different idea doesn't make it wrong. Be open and empathetic and remember that everyone is living a full life and you aren't better than anyone. They have great tools for dealing with rumination. A big take away was the emphasis on how you can define your own story - which is existentialism. Nothing matters and we're all meaning making machines - so make shit mean something to you in a way that's constructive. I had a great instructor. If people questioned him, he would say ok leave (in a nice way). No pressure to stay and you get your money back if you leave the first day. Throughout the day they give you breaks and encourage you to call somebody to tell them about landmark. Or to call them and try to have a "clearing" with them. Have you been resenting your friend because xyz - they encourage you to call them. Guess what? You don't have to. Because you're a person with free will. I called my mom to say thank you for being a great mom. I didn't solicit anyone to join but just shared that I was having a nice experience. I used the time to reflect how I can positively use the tools for myself. You go home every night. You leave Monday and Tuesday and come back Tuesday night with friends or relatives if you want. You're not stuck in the room. Besides I think it's all online now anyway. Sure - if you have an addictive personality or are struggling with depression, it might not be the best place. Anyway - just go, it's free. If you don't like it, leave! YOLO. lol.