My mother did Landmark Forum, years ago. So did my sister. Now the daughter of a friend is recruiting me to take the "education".

I'm conflicted, but most of the time I land on "no thanks."

If you haven't heard of Landmark, it is the offshoot of est from the 1970s. Werner Erhard, creator of est, sold his intellectual property to these folks, and now est is back, albeit in a better-packaged and streamlined form.

The hallmarks of the Forum, as the first course is called, are intense scrutiny of what is not working in your life (your "rackets", or the self-limiting things you tell yourself are true), the doctrine of personal responsibility for your own life success (your "possibility"), and an evangelical zeal for recruiting new participants.

Online research provides two perspectives.

First is that Landmark is cultish, if not an out-and-out cult. Detractors liken it to Amway, or The Family, and some countries officially designate it as a cult. Cult aspects include the aforementioned zeal, closed-door sessions, and the use of proprietary jargon to describe the program, its tenets, methods and key points. (I have to say that the website is full of bold and vague promises of improvement, and full of superlatives, but short on meaning. It's hard, from reading the literature, to imagine what you will actually hear about, experience, or take away from the Forum.)


The second perspective is that the Forum provides unprecedented, cathartic self-awareness. I talked to my sister today, and she said that it was indeed intense, but that sometimes when you're in a rut you need someone to kick some sense into you (metaphorically, of course; there is no physical punishment in the Forum). My mother said it allowed her to realize that she had a voice; she had spent a lot of years thinking my father was the conduit to the outside world, and that her opinions wouldn't be interesting to anyone. She summed it up by saying, "I realized that in order to having anything I wanted in my life, I had to speak up."

I am keenly aware that I am the one responsible for changing my existence. I own my shit, and I own that sometimes I ignore dealing with it because I think I'm not ready, or I'm too tired, or too wrapped up in spinning my wheels elsewhere. I also know that intense, cathartic experiences can be either life changing or bogus invented drama.

It sounds like I've already smelled whatever it is the Forum is cooking. It's my job to kick my ass, and by all reports, until I'm the one doing it, all the drama in the world won't make me receptive to outside "assistance".

I guess I'm not buying it. I mean, who has an extra $500 lying around anyway?

I'm off to explore my leisure potential. And poke a badger or two with a spoon.