Has anyone had any contact with these guys? or are there any members out there? Why are they so shrouded in their printed materials? It's a bit spooky.
I had a girlfriend who took the course a couple of years ago. she came home with a list of things she wanted to tell me, a la Stuart Smalley, then we couldn't really find middle ground, we broke up! don't trust Landmark!
I had a guy I called on a business matter, call me back and invite me to one of their weekend seminars for... $500 as I recall.
I have a couple good friends that attend these. The prices for them seem outrageous to me, but both of them claim to get a lot out of it. Personally, I don't see any difference in the way either acts since they started attending, but that's just me. I don't think I would ever go, even though both have invited me before.
There are a number of similar things to "the forum." In the 70's, they had EST. In the early 90's, they had "One" and things like that. They are basically the same thing. I worked at a small business once and my boss offered to send to me one of these retreats if I paid half. I decided not to go and his buddy called me on the phone and fired off a bunch of questions at me almost grilling me for info. I told him to lay off and that was the end of it. My mom went to the forum once and then tried to get me to go. It's really just a group of people who make a crapload of money off of the same pre-packaged formulaic self-help stuff they've been using since the 60's. It's nothing you can't get from individual study if you really want to.
There have been some who have investigated it as such, but I don't really think it is in the traditional sense of the word. They do encourage you to bring people in to spend their money, but they participants don't make any cash so that isn't really a pyramid scheme. It's more like using former participants as recruiters and there isn't anything illegal about that.
Not that I plan on attending anyway, someone I've recently met is really intense about getting me to do this thing. If it cost $8 it would be to much money. I should say "OK" then when they tell me to cough up $500 or $1000 I should just pull the $1.23 in nickels, dimes, pennies, and lint out of my 12 year old pair of Levi's and ask if they will take me for $1.23. Because this person is a new friend I didn't know if I should "intervene" and save them from the 'cult' of the Landmark Forum.
