Family Member Pressuring Me to Take Landmark Forum

Analogy: Michael Byers

Afterward Virtually 40 HOURS inside the basement of Landmark Education'south world headquarters, I have not Transformed. Nor accept I "popped" like microwave popcorn, as the Forum Leader striding dorsum and forth at the front of the windowless gray room has promised. In fact, by the time he starts yelling and stabbing the lath with a piece of chalk around hour 36, it'southward become clear that I'll be the hard kernel left at the bottom of this three-and-a-half-twenty-four hours Landmark Forum. I have, notwithstanding, Invented the Possibility of a Futurity in which I get a large, fat raise, a Future I'll Choose to Powerfully Enroll my bosses in, now that I am open to Miracles Around Money.

My reluctance to achieve Breakthrough Results is clearly not shared by many of my fellow Forum attendees. Fifty-fifty on day ane, virtually seem positively elated to have plunked downwardly 500 bucks for a more efficient, passionate, powerful life. "Hey, it'south cheaper than therapy," a therapist-turned-real manor agent tells me. He ponders how to persuade i of his employees to pony upward for the Forum. She'due south going through a rough patch, he explains—the recession, her matrimony.

Not that being broke or crestfallen would make her a minority in this room; several attendees talk about existence betwixt jobs, and one adult female says she's on welfare. In the scribbled shorthand of my furtive notes, PW stands for "incidents of public weeping." I lose track after the PW count hits 65.

Landmark Educational activity, a for-profit "employee-owned" private company, took in $89 million last yr offering leadership and development seminars (and cruises, and dating services, and courses for kids and teens). Information technology claims that more than 1 1000000 seekers take sat through its basic training, which is offered in seven languages in twenty countries. Its consulting firm, the Vanto Group, has coached employees from Apple, ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Hunt, and the Pentagon.

Though it'southward hardly a secret, Landmark does non advertise that information technology is the buttoned-downward reincarnation of the ultimate '70s self-actualization philosophy, est. Erhard Seminars Preparation was founded past Werner Erhard, a former used automobile salesman who'd changed his proper noun from Jack Rosenberg, moved to Northern California, and dabbled in Dale Carnegie, Zen, and Scientology before seizing upon the thought that you, and simply y'all, are responsible for your own happiness or unhappiness, success or failure. Est's marathon Transformation sessions were legendary for their confrontational tactics (Erhard calling his students "assholes"), inscrutable platitudes ("What is, is, and what ain't, ain't"), and the pressure put on participants to bring in new recruits for the next cycle of seminars.

In 1985, Erhard changed est'southward proper name to the innocuous-sounding The Forum. Amid controversy over his convoluted tax records, he left the country in 1991 and slid into obscurity. Merely before he did, he sold the visitor's "technology" to his quondam employees, who used it to create The Landmark Forum. Erhard's brother, Harry Rosenberg, is Landmark's CEO.

Like a successful grad of its own plan, Landmark has shed its past hang-ups and realized Quantum Results. "We are on the listing of offerings in the homo-resources departments in hundreds of companies and organizations around the earth," boasts PR director Deborah Beroset. The company's linguistic communication of personal productivity, confidence, and communication (much of it trademarked) has become white noise in corporate America—and possibly in your personal circle, too. "Authentic life," anyone?

Landmark's corporate clients bring not simply respectability but more warm bodies bearing checks. (Landmark relies entirely on word-of-mouth advertising.) The yoga apparel chain Lululemon pays for its employees to enroll in Landmark. Other firms have been sued by employees claiming they were pressured to nourish the Forum: In 2007, a Virginia man accused his onetime employer of firing him for his "refusal to embrace Landmark religious beliefs." Not that Landmark itself condones such arm twisting. At the get-go of my session, we were asked to affirm that we were attention of our own free will. A couple of people who confessed otherwise were asked to leave. Nevertheless, I talked with several who'd been sent by their employers.

The profitable field Landmark helped pioneer is now crowded with life coaches, fourth dimension-direction gurus, and productivity bloggers. Similar David Allen's Getting Things Washed or Stephen Covey'south The 7 Habits of Highly Constructive People, Landmark is just i of dozens of quasi-philosophies that promise to empty your inbox and fulfill your personal goals. And maybe survive the recession. Since the Peachy Depression, when Dale Carnegie'due south seminars on how to win friends and influence people became popular, the personal development industry has bloomed under concealment economic skies. Forget piece of work/life balance; that's and so 2008. How to do more than in less time is today's hot productivity trend. (Landmark's website touts a survey in which i-third of Forum grads reported that their incomes rose at least 25 percent afterwards participating; 94 percent of those attributed it to the program.) Yet if Landmark is simply another outpost in lifehacking state, why does information technology seem then insidious?

Part of it is the in-your-face, hard-sell ethos embedded in the corporate Dna information technology inherited from est. Forum grads are urged to stay involved and "invite" friends and family. After finishing the Forum, I received calls asking me to volunteer at the Landmark call center and come in for 1-on-1 coaching. The company too vigorously guards its reputation from critics. After I told Beroset I'd exist writing an commodity on my mixed feelings nearly the Forum, she called several times and sent me an e-mail that might be described every bit threatening—but in the most beneficial, centered kind of fashion.

I beginning heard about Landmark while working every bit a Peace Corps recruiter. Every now and again I'd see information technology listed at the finish of someone'southward resume, occupying the same spot equally, say, a Kiwanis leadership award, or a pastime like water polo. Applicants described it as a professional development seminar—most had been signed up by employers—and gave glowing reports. "You should endeavour it," they invariably added. I forgot about the whole thing until a generally sane, well-meaning friend called me i weekend with a frog in his throat. He was at some time-management seminar, he'd really gotten a lot out of this thing, and would I want to come up by and learn more adjacent Tuesday night? It was hard to say no. But and then I googled Landmark.

Eventually, as part of an ongoing try to hack my own overscheduled life, I did sign upward for the Landmark Forum. I vowed to go in with an open up listen and to follow the rules, no matter how restrictive. That meant taking but ane meal break per 13-hour session, no Advil or other over-the-counter drugs, no speaking out unless called to the microphone by the Leader, and wearing my proper noun tag at all times. I signed a half dozen-page disclaimer in which I declared that I understood that later on attending the Forum, people with no history of mental or emotional problems had experienced "brief, temporary episodes of emotional upset ranging from heightened activeness…to mild psychotic-like behavior."

At ix a.m. on a Friday I find myself sardined into a basement room with 129 other people, listening to David Cunningham, a boomer in a dark suit and bright royal shirt, whose showtime linguistic communication seems to exist Tent-Revival Baptist Preacher. (I later acquire that he was raised a fundamentalist in Florida.) He informs united states that he has personally led more than than 50,000 people to Transformation. He's here to tell us that "anything you want for yourself and your life is available from being here this weekend." He starts by taking a few questions from the floor. A querulous man observes that the phrases carefully ruler-lined on the chalkboard seem like poor English. ("In The Landmark Forum you will bring along the presence of a New Realm of Possibility for yourself and your life.") David agrees. "Information technology's very poor English. You lot know why? Because the usual confines of language would non allow your Transformation this weekend."

Another human being is called to the mic. He wants to know how Landmark is unlike from est. David sighs. "If I had to sum it up, here'southward what I'd say: They're both about Transformation, just est was very experiential. It was the '70s, okay? Your access was an experience. Your access this weekend is going to be only through chat. We realized we could do information technology just through chat." And that'south the last we hear of that.

A slight, blond woman sitting next to me confides that she's here only because her fellow paid her way—with the subtext that this was an offer she couldn't refuse. She shows me a packet of notes tied with a bow. They're from a friend who attended a Forum and thought it was brainwashing. In the corner of the top canvas is written, "To exist opened on 'breaks.'" Why "breaks" in quotes, I wonder?

I before long discover out. "Break" is a misleading term at an all-day workshop that offers no snacks, no drinks other than Dixie cups of water, a single mealtime, and simply loosely scheduled pauses to utilise the bath. Also, every pause has a respective assignment. The first one: Call someone who'd like to hear from y'all and tell them where you are. I call my brother. "So, it's like the Hare Krishnas of time management," he says slowly. On the side by side break, I hide in a bathroom stall and read a Landmark flyer seemingly translated from Martian: "What would it be like if the San Francisco eye was your centre of existence, and reflected in this, you were being your center?…What if your way of being in the center gives the center its beingness and you are given your being from the space created in the center?"

By ten o'clock Fri night, thirteen hours in, David is curing headaches with visualization techniques (an old Erhard fox) and redefining basic math. "How many items am I holding upwards?" he asks, property up a Kleenex box and a chalkboard eraser. "Two," we say in unison. He puts the eraser downward. "At present how many am I property upwards?" he asks. One? "2," he says. "The box and everything else." We repeat this until it makes sense—kind of. David promises that tomorrow, people will start to pop.

Indeed, some attendees have popped even before they return to the basement at nine the next morning. Others pop while tearfully offer "shares" about being molested or abandoned, about illnesses and divorces, their suicidal parents. There is applause for stories of calling loved ones and offer forgiveness, and David gently prods the storytellers to invite their family members to attend a Forum—or even pay for them to attend. A woman re-creates a beautiful chat she had with her female parent this morning and ends by singing "Current of air Below My Wings."

Next, David calls upward a adult female—I'll telephone call her Rose—who is estranged from her siblings. She reports that when she called her sister this morning time, it did not go well. "I'm going to get a little intense now," David warns usa with a grin, which he drops as before long every bit he turns to Rose. "You lot know the mood of commemoration after the last share?" She nods. "What'south in the room now?" David shakes his head ruefully. "You were 'screamed at' by your sis? There'south no such affair as screaming." People outset fidgeting and making for the door; there hasn't been a bath break in three hours. "Y'all see, people are leaving," David says. "This is why people don't desire to exist around you, why your siblings don't desire to be around you. You're besides dead to feel," he says.

By at present, tears are streaming down Rose's face up. She asks to sit downwardly; he says nothing. Finally, she thanks David, and he gives her a long hug earlier she takes a seat. Subsequently, I walk over to tell her that I didn't like how David treated her. To my surprise, she disagrees. Afterwards being publicly humiliated, she phoned her sister over again, and this fourth dimension her sis listened. "I approximate this is what I needed to hear," Rose tells me, grin.

By Lord's day, I'm in open rebellion. I come bearing contraband—a paper, java, snacks, and Advil. "How are y'all?" I ask the minder at the door equally I slap on my proper name tag. "I'm truthful," he says, giving me the stink-eye. I Invent the Possibility of staying far away from Landmark seminars in the hereafter.

We get Mon off. When I take a hard seat in the basement for Tuesday's final Special Evening, I'1000 surprised to find I most—almost—start crying. It's like seeing a room of love camp friends later on a twelvemonth apart. The air is festive and buzzing with churr about our twenty-four hours and a half away from each other. I recall, This is great! No wonder people have brought along dozens of friends to sign upward.

David quiets the crowd and sends the friends away with a grouping of minders. Turning to the rest of us, he says, "You know how I wished yous large Problems on Sunday? Well, now I wish y'all large Breakdowns. Because a Breakdown is nothing more than the gap betwixt your life now and the life you're committed to living. Your chore is to step into that gap." He smiles. "When you came in hither Friday morning time, you were so certain virtually who y'all were, weren't you? Y'all walked in certain, and this night yous're walking out uncertain. Information technology could take years to go certain almost who yous are again. That's what the rest of the Landmark Curriculum for Living is for: to help you resolve that dubiety."

Of a sudden, I desire him to honey me as his student, to make him smile, to hear him tell me I'm doing a practiced task in my life. There are more "shares"; David tears up for the third fourth dimension in two hours. "I love you forever," he tells us. "If you always wonder if someone loves you, the answer is yes. David loves you."

So, without warning, he launches into the difficult, hard sell. "I am committed to having every 1 of yous register for the Avant-garde Course this night," he says. He'due south no longer smiling. We tin can demonstrate our delivery to ourselves, to David, to Landmark—all for $650, a $200 discount—but just if we act at present.

Earlier I get up and leave for good, I spot Rose. She's sitting in the front row, gazing expectantly at David, ready to take the next footstep toward Transformation, Possibility, and Enrollment™.

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Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/08/landmark-42-hours-500-65-breakdowns/