Some preliminary thoughts on attending a Landmark Forum "guest night"

Well, I went to the Intro Evening

which with diabolically clever packaging,

was the last 3 hours of a weekend training

people were all whoopie do about their 

training

and for some good reasons

and their last night assignment:

bring in the newbies

and it clearly had 

"worked"

(recall a statement I annoying make now and then,

our three choices as humans:

low grade robots, high grade robots, awake--

worked meant, it appeared to me, radically upgraded robots)

And yet,

and yet,

this work is obvously hugely effective

for those

not having done anything like the work of Byron Katie

or encountered, apparently,

the difference between attachment and non attachment

or story vs not believing the story

or identification with programming vs not identifying

a huge gob of people

had woken up to their pre-judging

and had made phone calls to parents

ex-mates

and so on

apologizing for narrow mindedness

needless to say,

lots of breakthrough

but back to the diabolical

because the "sharing" some of these breakthroughs,

plus the clever pitch that this was an invitation not a demand

and then throwing in some hints about the power of

realizing we are run by our "view" of reality

and the frenzy built

and by the end

the pressure was on:

if you came,

as a guest and didn't sign,

your life was forever lost, you'd blown it,

you really were making a mistake

huge pressure

after the promise of no pressure

I'll talk some in tomorrow's slow sonoma essay

on the difference between trying to push (hard)

someone to give up their story (done in the example time

at the end by Mr Trainer, an ex-Marine with all the 

suitable breakthrouggs)

and Byron Katie's loving the person with and without their

story

and having no attachment to them "getting it"

or 

even 

doing her work

But, if you've come this far,

the thing,

and the way it's set up for a lifetime of associates

and friends who all "get it"

in the way of Landmark speak/ understand/ breakthrough

(dating services, huge crowds, endless keep up with it courses)

reminds me of Moshe in Potent Self

 talking of "great men" in history,

studied in books in school

in exact circumstances to stiffle the originality

and thinking for themselves that made the "great men"

(or women, of course)

the wild weird contraction:

wanting to bring freedom

to a herd

and not giving them the internal experiences

that say

a movement lesson

could give

leaves people in a weird bind

almost a double bind

 a cult devoted to deprogramming you from the ongoing

cult

I'll have to mull it over

because it's fun seeing how useful and effective their 

work is

and how

convoluted the pressure to bring in everyone you know

OR ELSE

is compared to / distinct from the thrust for freedom

and if you are still reading

good,

here's a

story from Denis Leri on Moshe at an EST

thing

and Werner up front ranting about "all you assholes don't

even know how to walk"

and Moshe standing up and walking across the floor

so

Werner

modified:

"All you assholes except one don't know how to walk."