Landmark Education vs The Cult of Landmark Education

For people who have friends, co-workers, or family members who have taken the Landmark Forum and who have not take the course itself, a common question one will ask is “Is Landmark a Cult”.

The short answer is no it’s not. (There are plenty of reports of organizations who investigate cults as their main purpose as an organization  who have not only said it wasn’t a cult but said how great of an education it was)

The vast majority of graduates have seen tangible results and those results get larger and larger over time.    There are some people who take the Forum get what they wanted to get out of it and then continue to see anymore results because all they wanted was what they came in for.  That’s just as valid and nothing wrong with that.  Then there are a minority of people who get some things, don’t fully “get it”, and either never get it.  If these graduates take the Advanced Course which is about creating a future as opposed to the Forum clearing out your past, then those graduates always get it during the Advanced Course.

Statistically that works out to 95% of graduates having it be incredibly effective for them in regards to what they wanted for themselves.

A Quick Comparison of General Results between Landmark and Cults

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#1
- Landmark brings you closer to family and friends
- Cults isolate you from society and loved ones

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#2
- Landmark doesn’t tell you to believe in anything, follow anything, practice anything, or how you should or shouldn’t live your life.  They come up with different frameworks to see things in different ways that give one some choice in        things they may have thought they had no choice about, allowing them to create breakthroughs in any areas their life that’s important to them in very short periods of time
- Cults have something they believe in, practice, or have a way of living their life.  Cults contain dogma or a system of how to live life.

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#3
- Landmark employees are not allowed to own more than a certain % of the company.  This allows nobody to take full control of the organization and make it about them instead of the people who take their education
- Cults exploit the people who come to them to benefit some cause or individual

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#4
- Landmark puts all profits after the meager salaries made by employees back into the company to grow it and allow it to be offered to more people.  They charge as little as possible and even give free and partial scholarships to people who can’t afford it.  If you took all courses through Landmark you wouldn’t be able to spend more than a few thousand annually.  Landmark could make much more in profit yet they choose not to so more people can afford it.  If you aren’t completely satisfied after day one of the Forum they give you a full refund.
- Cults often times try to take all your money or as much as they can possibly take from you

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$5
- Landmark empowers you to live powerfully after taking the Forum or any other course they offer so you don’t have to keep coming back for more.  Once you do the Forum, that’s it.  You get what you are supposed to get and never need to come back to get the same thing over and over again.  They push you back into the world and tell you to not come back.  They “teach a man to fish”.
- Cults want you to become reliant on them for your satisfaction and make you addicted to them to validate your life.  Consider what Scientologists would do without their church and reading materials.  Consider what the Westboro Baptist Church would do without their church.  Consider what a cult with a leader would do if they didn’t have a leader anymore.

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So if Landmark isn’t a cult, then what do you mean by the cult of Landmark Education?

Now there are some graduates who I have noticed (just my perception, not necessarily true) who start “believing” in Landmark and stay around Landmark as a way to give them meaning and validation in their lives.  They become “dogmatic” about Landmark and use it to feel they are somewhat more better or that their “beliefs in Landmark are the right beliefs and everyone else has the wrong beliefs” which in turn leads them to feeling negative about people who haven’t done the Landmark Forum and then hang around only with Landmark Graduates and “isolate themselves from people who haven’t done it, often times with loved ones and people they care about”.  They become “fanatics” yet nothing in their life shifts.  They base their whole life on an initial shift in their life and then use having gone through the Forum as a validation process for their future.  Essentially they fall into the trap of being stuck in their past.  When in reality they still have not many tangible results to speak of and expect their life to be just the way they want it and rationalize to themselves that it is.

Here’s reality:  Doing the Landmark Forum doesn’t take work.  But life out of the Landmark Forum begins AFTER taking the Forum.  It takes work, it takes effort, and while it is intrinsically instilled, there’s a clear distinction between having “gotten it” and then “living it having gotten it”.

If Nelson Mandela had a clear stand for the removal of  apartheid government and then decided to stop being a stand for it and instead of sourcing it consistently until he got the results just wrote about it, preached it, and nothing changed.  Well that’s the distinction.

Yes having the Forum and having the Advance Course under your belt are incredibly powerful.  Whether you use it in your life and develop those muscles is really up to you.  Sitting there and expecting things around you to shift is really fooling yourself  and having the experience keeps the validation into persistence.  Essentially one resists the fact that Transformation doesn’t create the results and instead won’t accept that having a Transformation allows results to come out of that.

The people who resist that and rationalize Landmark in this way is what I mean by the cult of Landmark as often times these people have less education, money, fruitful relationships, because they rationalize everything philosophically.

They turn Landmark into a philosophy or a way of living which then makes it inauthentic because it becomes a system.  As soon as it becomes a system or a method it undermines Landmark which doesn’t have a system or method.  It becomes just as fake as “power of positive thinking” or “the secret” or “being charming to get laid”.

I think it’s only natural at times, atleast it has been for me to become “dogmatic” and “isolating” about Landmark.  When that happens I’m literally being inauthentic about Landmark and what I’m doing undermines what Landmark is all about in the first place.  I know I am someone who naturally becomes passionate about things I love and when I’m not careful I turn my passion into dogmatism.  When I notice I’m doing that I call myself out on it as it’s very limiting upon myself, often times me being the last person who gets that.

The intention of this post is to clean up how I’ve been inauthentic about Landmark in the past.  Because sometimes I can come off as cultish about it, but that’s not Landmark that’s me.  Whenever anyone notices I’m doing that I invite you to call me out on that.  Through that, I stop becoming annoying to you and then by you calling me out on it, I don’t limit myself to a “system”.

So it Landmark a cult?

It’s as much of a cult as:

People who love Warren Buffett so much they nod their heads at everything they say, his company is certainly not a cult.
Famous researchers who become their research and anything different they take as an insult, the research in itself is just research and it is not a cult.
A Christian saying Christianity is the only way to find God.  Christianity in itself isn’t a cult and as a Jew I have found some wonderful insights from that religion.
Someone practicing Zen who believes that “clearing your mind” is the only way to being grounded, and living in NYC becomes hard and living in a monastery is the only way to be happy.  When that happens, Zen is a constraint.

So no Landmark isn’t a cult.  It can come off to people as being one, very true! It has.  There’s a difference between “being a stand for someone else” and “pressuring someone to do something”.  When someone whose never done the work stops feeling empowered around a graduate and instead feels they have no space and are pressured then the experience becomes uncomfortable and cult-like.  Even me as a graduate, I experience that from time to time and I’ll let the other person to simply knock it off.

So that’s the difference.  Landmark Education is in my mind a wonderful program and out of the thousands of programs that are offered around the world that give people a personal transformation in their lives and create breakthrough results, Landmark has a track record of it happening in the fastest amount of time.  That’s what’s so.  It works for everyone, that’s what so.  When it doesn’t work, they did it their own way.  That’s what’s so.  Everyone’s experience is different but share the same results of getting what they wanted out of it, that’s what so.

Whether one rationalizes their transformation or lives it is up to the individual.

Just because I have eyes doesn’t mean I have to open them.  I could simply keep them closed and write a novel about eyesight, what it is, and how it works.

–The views and opinions expressed here are mine solely and not the views of Landmark Education.  In no way are any of my remarks necessarily true or a representation of the company.  If anyone would like to question a legal issue in the context of Libel,  Malice towards Landmark Education, or anything else, please contact Eric Schleien, my cell phone number is in the company’s database.