Intro
I took the Landmark Forum on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The Landmark Forum has been called a lot of things, from a new and powerful way to live your life, a waste of money, group therapy, a cult, and an MLM. People love it. People hate it. The forum itself is purposely difficult to describe, and one thing that I think we can all agree on is that it affects everyone differently. If Landmark thought I was about to write out what Landmark really means to everybody, they would have a serious problem with this post. Luckily for them, all I can do is translate what it was to me, and that's this: Not much more or less than a bit of philosophy.
Everything is taught through a forum setting, in which you learn from volunteers who ask questions, acquire coaching, and create discussions from sharing their experiences. You start by learning Landmark's concepts as well as their terminology, and then you're bullied into confronting the things you secretly probably want to confront. To be very clear, I am not upset for being bullied into that, because I purposely signed up for it, the same way any person who goes to a magic show pays to be lied to.
So if it's just a bit of philosophy, why not just read a pamphlet? Or this post?
Because living a life where you have adapted a new philosophy, which means it can potentially impact every moment and every decision you ever make, is different than reading about it. And one way to jumpstart that life is by doing nothing but that for three days. That's why this post is guaranteed to not improve your life even if it's evidence of improving mine.
So before I get into my own account of what I personally learned, let's define a few things.
Nihilism - philosophical views that reject concepts such as knowledge, morality, and meaning
Existential Nihilism - the idea that life has no intrinsic value, meaning, or purpose
Passive Nihilism - the idea of separating oneself from will/desire to reduce suffering
Active Nihilism - the willful destruction of old values to construct new meaning
In my own words, Landmark asks you to dream big and deal with your past in a permanent way, and then introduces you to existential nihilism, so that you discover active nihilism on your own in a blaze of furious inspiration.
Do I have a new perspective on life?
Yes.
Is it valuable?
Yes.
Am I glad I took it?
Yes, I am of course invested in anything that has the potential to improve my life.
Was it worth it?
I believe it's too early to say.
Is Landmark group therapy?
Only in the fact that it involves a lot of sharing and tears, and many people go on to lead better lives. Realistically, no, the forum leader is not a professional psychologist. Therefore if somebody needs a psychologist and instead chooses Landmark, that's simply a mistake.
Landmark asks you to be coachable and do all the assignments no matter what. That means that temporarily, you agree to stop thinking for yourself and try everything they say. That's a bit cultish, but that's what I paid for, so I didn't have any trouble with that request. They also don't give you much free time, so that part can feel a bit cultish too. Ultimately, it's definitely not a cult because there's nothing to worship. On the contrary, you discover that there are endless possibilities. So you can choose to worship golden calves, which in most cults would be frowned upon.
It's so close and yet so far away. They relentlessly push their product in a way that only MLMs do. That part of the forum is an annoying, exhausting waste of time. While their marketing schemes are sleazy, they are definitely not an MLM. I know this first hand because I wouldn't make a penny by getting you to go.
Chapter 1
There are a few Landmark buzzwords.
I didn't use them much before the forum, and I won't use them much after, but I'll still take the time to identify them. These definitions are my own translations on how I personally understand the terms. If you talk to a Landmark graduate about Landmark, be prepared to hear these.
Transformation - as in acquiring a new perspective with access to new possibilities
Breakthrough - an exciting new thought or possibility
Power - effectiveness
Empower - to encourage or allow
Disempower - to discourage or impede
Integrity - unbroken and thoroughly functional
Workable/unworkable - binary descriptions of something in life
Inauthentic - describing something that has a loss of effectiveness, freedom, or expression
Authentic - true (not the opposite of inauthentic)
Complete - having no further lingering thoughts
The forum promises transformation, which is access to new unlimited freedom with no burdens.
To do this, you must first:
Identify what you want in your life, whether or not it seems impossible.
Identify the obstacles or constraints to your wishes.
Visualize a new life with anything and everything you want.
Okay, now that we've set the stage, you're ready for the first insult!
There are lots of these, which is as religious as we get.
Here it is: every person is inauthentic.
Go ahead and disagree - the forum leaders love the drama.
One point that's made very clearly is that communication must be authentic.
Language is powerful and we need to be straight about what we say.
Anything less is us showing up as "inauthentic."
The way to invent possibilities is to own up to some inauthenticity.
Here's an example using the structure of inventing possibilities.
I have been pretending (inauthentic!) that I am an impatient person.
In reality, however, I am just a regular person.
The impact of pretending to be impatient is to suffer being impatient.
By being impatient, I have been missing out on having lower blood pressure.
The possibility I'm inventing is that I am actually very patient person.
With excellent blood pressure.
(That's how the structure of inventing possibilities always ends, "with excellent blood pressure.")
Chapter 2
One of the first steps in the forum is to break down our pasts.Any memory of an event, whether it is traumatic or not, has a personal narrative.
The facts are called "what's so."
Everything else is called "your story."
For example, "I'm currently enrolled in Landmark, so now I have to attend Tuesday night's class."
"What's so" is that I'm enrolled in the Landmark Forum.
The idea that I have to attend Tuesday night's class is my story about it.
When we fail to make these distinctions, this is called "collapsing" what's so with our stories.
When we collapse these things, we take our meanings and interpretations as fact.
That lesson is much harder to see when the events are traumatic, so there can be a lot of tears.
For example:
My parents were substance abusers so I had to take my siblings to school.
That sounds like somebody's fact, right?
But "what's so" is:
The parents were substance abusers.
The person took their siblings to school.
In other words, there was no "had to."
Uncollapsing that one is a lot trickier.
Taking this concept a step further, disconnecting your stories with what's so sets you free.
Constraints tied to the past aren't real, and they're only dependent on your stories being true.
The great news is that your stories aren't true, and you therefore have no constraints!
Your stories aren't false either - it's more like they're not real things.
Chapter 3
Time for the next insult.
Just as we pretend our stories are reality, this disconnect doesn't stop with memories.
In fact, none of us ever listen to each other.
This is what Landmark calls "already always listening."
What it means is that as we process information, we impose a lot of stuff on what we're hearing.
So for example, if you say, "I ate an elephant for breakfast," I would not simply hear that.
I would judge you on how you acquired the elephant.
I would compare the size of your stomach to an average human's.
I would likely make my way over to ivory key tops in absolutely no time.
The Landmark theory is that we are "already always listening" because we want to look good.
I don't think me thinking about ivory key tops makes me look good, but that's okay.
After all, I'm free to create a world of possibilities, like one in which I disagree with Landmark.
But in case Landmark is right, I'll end with trying to look good.
Please treat elephants kindly and don't support poaching.
Chapter 4
We're inauthentic. We remember nonsense as fact. We don't listen.
Insult number four is that we see things through fictional lenses or complaints.
In the forum, these complaints are called "rackets."
Racket - a lens including a judgement that is unpleasant and yet persists.
Here are some examples of rackets.
My children don't listen to me because they don't respect me.
My dad likes George and he doesn't like me.
Those are silly, right? But sometimes rackets are tricky.
My uncle, who stole from my grandmother, is untrustworthy and immoral.
Trump is a racist.
Not so silly now - those definitely feel like truths.
But actually, the facts are these:
My children don't listen to me and they respect me.
My dad likes George and my dad likes me.
My uncle stole from my grandmother.
Racists tend to support Trump.
Rackets include pros and cons, and that's a really tough pill to swallow.
The idea that we benefit from rackets is pretty offensive at first glance, but this is how:
we get to be right, we are absolved of responsibility, and we self-justify.
Then we have to think of what the racket costs us, which can be:
closeness, well-being, and self-fulfillment.
In order to repair relationships worth repairing, we are told to "get off our rackets."
Or "stop being a racketeer."
That also means, "give up on being right (whether or not you are) and make up."
This is really messed up when you shouldn't be in contact with this person from the past!
But like I said, forum leaders and not psychologists.
Good luck out there.
Chapter 5
Next insult - we believe in the superstitions!We believe in the superstition of "some day."
There's no "some day;" there is only the "right now" of today.
Furthermore, that's all there ever is.
In life, you can "play on the court" or "be in the stands."
"Being in the stands" is being a spectator of your own life without participating in it.
It's what I'm doing right now - just thinking about things, not doing them.
We also believe in the superstition of the verb, "to be."
Regarding the verb "to be," there's no "I am impatient."
I already talked to you about that - in fact, there's no real "I am patient" either.
Right now I am a person who is typing this post, and that's all there is.
There's no imaginary impatient or patient person behind this typist.
(I choose to assume there is an imaginary patient person from my endless possibilities.)
"I am scared" is a very specific superstition worth discussing.
It's entirely possible to acknowledge this as a feeling, and then act in the face of it.
"I am scared of harvesting ivory" is not a real constraint.
I could simply be scared of that and go around killing elephants anyway.
The superstition of "I" is a bit more complicated.
Here's the biggest insult of all: we are all machinery with no free will!
Landmark cannot have any opinion on this write-up; I'm simply following my machinery.
Look at all my other posts! They're all a result of the same machinery.
(If you don't want people writing about your forum, don't accept people with writing machinery.)
Chapter 6
There's a discussion on the "genesis of identity."
You can choose to believe in this as fact or not, and either way it doesn't matter.
The theory they present is that you have three distinct periods in your life:
Childhood, in which something wasn't right
Adolescence, in which you didn't belong
Adulthood, in which you were all alone
This on its own is impossible to dispute; everybody can identify with that extremely vague story.
Now, Landmark's theory is that in compensating, we developed "winning formulas."
My best guesses for mine, choosing to play this game, is something like:
In my childhood, I was somewhat socially outcast.
My winning formula could be putting on the act that I don't care what other people think.
In my adolescence, I wasn't smart or pretty enough.
My winning formula was to go into the arts where I didn't have to be smart or pretty.
As an adult, it was difficult to make money (because I went into the arts).
My winning formula was to become organized and hard working.
Winning formulas are supposed to remind us of who we could never be.
In my case, I think that would mean:
I do not believe I could be effortlessly liked by the masses
I do not believe I could be smart and pretty enough to be... um, Nicole Roth from high school?
I do not believe I could make enough money to ... be rich on my own
Like I said, it doesn't matter if that's right, or if there is a right answer.
The point is that through thinking about my identity, I can discover aspects of my machinery.
And whatever machinery I discover, I can choose to believe that it's fixed.
And because that machinery is fixed, I'm living in a prison.
(I think the prison thing was a needless insult with no point whatsoever.)
Here's something important, though.
Winning formulas are not constructed to make you happy!
They're only constructed to make you win!
So you should keep them, but not necessarily use them to find happiness.
You may have to create new possibilities to do that.
Finding happiness is so elusive that Bruce Lee came up next.
Bruce Lee was incredible because he mastered so many martial arts techniques.
He was unstoppable because he was never reliant upon one technique alone.
Living your best life is similar to this; it's best to be free to discover anything.
In other words, there's no one answer on how to best live your life.
And because of that, it's best not to be constrained to the limits of any single technique.
Now we can all wonder about how happy monks really are.
And because we were already always listening, we can imagine them on elephants for no reason.
(Also, this means Landmark isn't the answer to everything either.)
Chapter 7
Time to conclude with how we started.
Life is inherently empty and meaningless.
This is all there is.
Our lives are utterly absurd, as we mechanically move from one mechanism to another.
We treat ideas and meanings as if they are facts.
We don't listen to one another.
We're never happy and we complain about everything.
Even the ways we ended up how we did were absolutely ridiculous.
(I can't make money because Nicole Roth is pretty?)
If there's no inherent meaning to life, then all there is is what we make life mean.
And amazingly, we get to choose that.
Humans are story-making and meaning-making machines.
Meanings are whatever we say they are.
Something can mean something, and then later change meanings, because meanings aren't real.
We can say sunsets are beautiful, but that's just not true.
That's just how we see them.
Conclusion
Some of the advice I understand from the forum is:
Search for inauthenticities to find and create new endless possibilities
Give up your rackets; being happy/close is more important than being right
Acknowledge your fears and act in the face of them
Be true to yourself, communicate clearly, and communicate completely
Share with other people in a deep and inspiring way
Be unreasonable with the ideas of what you and others can achieve
Ignore previous constraints, which are ideas that don't matter
Take things less personally by uncollapsing your stories from what happened
Accept each present moment as your life
They gave us some quotes, the most familiar of which was Shakespeare's "Tomorrow and tomorrow..." scene from Macbeth, and the most interesting of which was the opening of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s book Deadeye Dick.
But my favorite quote abut anything the whole time was from Mill-Mill. On Saturday night, she said, "Mama, if I had known therapy would be so long, I would have said 'no.' I love you just the way you are."
And that's just as important as everything else.
