A Guest of Landmark
by Jay Bushman
Previously: My Experiences with Landmark Education
I’ve known D. forever, and we’ve each helped each other through lots of shit over the years. When his wife K. took the forum and was bowled over by it, he decided to attend. I was intrigued, because I like learning about ways people hack their personalities. But not so much so that I was ready to throw down $450 to go with him. He called me from a break to tell me that the Forum was really rocking his world, and that he’d love it if I would be his guest on Tuesday night for his “cult graduation.” I agreed to go with him to check it out.
A few days later, I saw my friend J. for lunch. When I told her that I was going to go to this thing with D. she exclaimed, “Oh no! Not the Forum!” She told me she’d been to those Tuesday night things three or four times, because friends of hers cajoled, wheedled and pleaded with her to do so. And each time she went, she was subjected to a hard sell to sign up for the Forum. When she refused, she said that some of her friends got very angry with her, and she’d even lost a couple of friendships over it.
Technorati Tags: cult, est, Landmark, transformation
C., my girlfriend, was skeptical about the Forum when she first heard about it. As a child, she was sent to “God Camp,” (her term) where they taught her classes on how to identify cults. J’s story was enough to set her eyebrows a-raising. For my part, I decided that I would go anyway. No harm in just listening to some new ideas.
Tuesday night came, and D. picked me up at my office to drive us there. (This was not nefarious. I have a history of being late. Or as I like to see it, a more continental take on timeliness.) Landmark’s L.A. offices are near LAX. Burbank to LAX during a rush hour is not really the road you want to be driving on to head towards enlightenment, is it? Along the way, many cult-related jokes were made, and D. informed me that yes, I was going to be subjected to a hard sales pitch, but that I should do whatever I felt was best for me.
We arrived, and I was given a stick on name tags to wear. I noticed that everyone else was wearing nametags, the Forum participants having printed badges with their first names in large font. So no need to remember everyone’s name. I gave a small thank you for that one.
I quickly got used to giving and getting the Tag Glance – I’d be in a deep conversation with someone, and then we’d each flick our eyes to each other’s name tags to see just who we we’re talking to. Or as you’d approach someone, my eyes would defocus, to try and catch a glimpse of their nametag without actually breaking eye contact.
We sat in rows of black chairs. I tried to imagine sitting in one of them for three whole days and winced. The Forum leader asked some of the people who had just taken the Forum to share with the group stories of the breakthrough’s they’d achieved over the weekend. A litany of stories followed from teary, overjoyed people who looked like kids who had just woken up on their birthday morning. It was all a bit much. D. applauded each of the speakers enthusiastically. Then, the Forum leader gave each participant a chance to share with their guests what breakthrough’s they achieved during the weekend. D. told me that he had become aware of just how responsible he had been for the problems in his marriage, and it had recontextualized everything that he thought about how he related to his wife, and with the rest of the world. He didn’t think everything was magically “fixed” by any means, but he saw a whole new way forward of dealing with his relationships, one where he didn’t have to feel at the mercy of other people. Knowing him as long as I have, I knew that this was a big deal for him.
Then the Forum leader told each of the participants to share with their guests what they though we could get out of the Forum, and that help them to register for the Forum themselves. Towards that end, there were tables set up at the back and it was only a $100 deposit. D., who knows all my bullshit, especially when it comes to money, said that he thought I would get a tremendous amount from the Forum, and that even though some of the trappings are a bit coercive, he felt that it didn’t invalidate the value of the experience. (This will become a running theme.) Then a made a flip comment. It was something like, “Do you think that enough to pay for the deposit?” It wasn’t a serious question. So when D’ replied, “Yes,” I was floored. This was the same guy who I’d seen argue over 50 cents when splitting a check. That reached me more than anything else I saw that night. D. was really putting his money where his mouth was. And I trusted him. So I said OK. I registered. He put down the $100. I scheduled myself for a weekend in mid-December.
I’m glad I registered when I did. After this, the guests were all split into groups, and led to our own mini–seminars, where we were given the opportunity to define for ourselves some change we wanted to make in our lives, that we could get out of attending the Forum. Since I knew I was going to attend, I used this time to doodle about what I might want to focus on. Probably something on writing more productively, or to stop being late to everything. One woman in our group was irate. She had been lured to the evening under false pretenses, being told that she was going to a friends school graduation. Another young kid was subjected to a non-stop, Glengarry-style sales pitch, with the Landmark guy literally badgering him into agreeing to attend the forum. The poor kid put up a good fight, just repeating that he didn’t have any money. The guy kept trying to convince him that there must be something he was spending money on that he could cut in order to go to Landmark. After all, isn’t transforming his life worth it? I veered back and forth between anger at this guy junior-level Dave Moss impression, amazement at his gall for not backing down, and relief that by already registering I didn’t have to deal with it myself.
When all the salesmanship was done, we were allowed to reunite with our friends. On the way home, I told D. about the heavy manners that people were subjected to, and he agreed that it was one of the more unpleasant things about the operation, but to not let it get in the way of what I could get out of it.
I went home and told C. that I signed up. She was not amused.
Next time: The Forum begins
****Invitation: I'm currently enrolled in a seminar that meets on Thursday nights. This week, they are doing a special introduction for seminar member's guests. By special, it means that instead of peeling you off to a separate room, they'll let the guests stay with their hosts for the entire time. They will offer the opportunity to register for the Forum. I hope that the hard sell won't be as hard as what I've described above. I'd like to invite anyone in the Daily Mantra readership who is interested in checking it out to be my guest for this Thursday night. If you're interested, lave a comment and I'll send you the information. No kool-aid will be served. You may go to the bathroom as often as you like. You are free to get into arguments with the seminar leader.
| 03/14/07
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Beliefs
