Practice of the Week

This week's practice is being courageous. Being courageous is distinguished by recognizing your fear and taking action anyway. So, I asked my younger brother to read what I have written about growing up in our family.

He replied that he wants to read my writing that is ready for publication in the family writing collection. He doesn't want to read anything but that. Which of course, I don't think I can write until somebody in my family validates me by reading the gritty and painful story of what growing up was like for me. I think if somebody in my family will just get present to what it was like for me growing up, the validation will give me a measure of freedom...freedom to write about something else besides the horrible stuff that happened.

It was courageous to ask him. Since he did not say yes, the next practice that comes up to be applied here is the practice of being peaceful...and taking what you get.

I'm protecting my family, by moving the posts about my painful childhood to a different blog.

But overall, my experience for today is disappointment.

Don't Push Me and You Can't Make Me

Don't Push Me and You Can't Make Me. A perfect match. But not made in heaven, oh no. Made in the world of rackets (complaints/upsets) and winning formulas (strong suits). They say in Landmark that "an act marries an act." Well Don't Push Me is my husband's act. When he goes there, everybody is clear it is time to leave him alone. I mean, the guy is scary. You Can't Make Me is my act.

When we met, neither one of us had done the Landmark Forum, so we had no idea our acts were compatible. We didn't know we had an "act." We thought it was other things, like the magic of chemistry, similar values and interests, being attractive to each other, being soul mates, mutual regard. How does it burst your bubble when you realize that you married your own act?

Responsibility is a two-way street

In a strict sense our every reaction is altogether our personal responsibility. It is never about "them" and it is always about "us." But, and I hate to say but...but we are also responsible for what we send out into the world, and to some extent it is irresponsible not to be accountable for how our words and actions are received, how they land on the other side.

But that is exactly how Landmark deals with criticism of their programs. They point out that your reaction is about you. They are clear that your reaction is not about them. But by making it all about you, they aren't accountable. This way, they never get criticized. Your criticisms are always invalidated, in so far as having anything to do with Landmark and how their programs are run. They consistently and skillfully turn it back on you. There is no way to criticize them without being told you are in a racket, or you are in an upset, and when there is a racket or an upset, it is always your own creation.

Of course you are expressing displeasure and unhappiness, so you are disempowered. You are invited to become powerful by being responsible for your reaction and your complaint. The focus is now squarely on you and your deficient mental mechanisms. I sometimes wonder if they deliberately annoy the shit out of people as part of the program. If they can't get you to react, there is no program. There's nothing for them to do.

A Gut Feeling: Is there any such thing?

I've lived my whole life trusting my gut feelings. My intuition about things and people and situations. I've always had the impression that it served me well, like an early warning system, alerting me to something wrong. Guiding me to steer clear. It's a tried and true survival system. Ignore it at your peril.

So now I go to this Landmark seminar, and they're urging us to invite our friends and family to a session, so they too can share in this empowering education, and an alarm goes off in my gut the size of the state of Kentucky. I immediately feel manipulated and used. Pushed and put upon and angry. I mean here is this company that doesn't advertise. They get all of their business through word of mouth. They sell training in empowerment, self-expression and freedom in life. And I even like the product. But there is this constant pressure to share it and bring people to an introduction, so they can become customers too.

Over the last several years, I've taken several of their courses and I find value in the strategies they teach. And though I've never liked the pressure to invite people to the programs, I haven't had a reaction of this magnitude. But last week, something primal, visceral and compelling rose up in me, and the internal resistance to being pushed to invite people initiated a fight or flight reaction. My chest tightened and I wanted to scream. It turned into an overpowering aversion to being there at all.

The notion that there is something going on that is not good for me arose in my thoughts, and I found myself examining the program for additional flaws. I did online searches and watched a French TV program that claimed to expose the program as a cult that uses brainwashing to seduce its clientele. I watched and I listened and I wondered where all that is coming from. In my experience, which is substantial, Landmark is definitely not a cult, and there is no brainwashing going on. On the contrary, the program taxes you to think past your assumptions, manage your mental filters and take responsibility for being the cause of your own life.

The technique involves suspending your disbelief long enough to consider other possibilities for how you view life and make choices. Alternatives to your accepted reality present themselves and opportunities open up. There is room for creativity where before there was resignation. An example is my relationship to being a polio survivor. Most people would agree that I had no choice about having polio. It just happened. I can resist or accept. Doesn't that seem obvious? But in Landmark, there is another possibility. I can actually choose polio. This has nothing at all to do with what's true. But choice is a more powerful place to stand, or come from with respect to my circumstances, i.e. having polio. In the moment that I suspend my disbelief and choose polio, I gain a sense of power and freedom, out of which I then see possibilities for thinking and action beyond what was previously available to me. I am now, as they say in Landmark "at choice." True or not, it feels and works better.

Is this living in a lie? Is it playing a game? Maybe so, but how much of what we think we know is really created anyway? If we are story tellers, why not tell a story that empowers you? Why not tell the story that makes you feel good about yourself and your life? That's what Landmark is selling.

Now suddenly I have this reaction, this powerful emotional opposition. I can see myself at age five, being held down on a hospital bed while an angry and frustrated nurse shoves a suppository into my butt. I'm screaming, and she hurts me. To this day, I wonder if she was out of control too. Beside herself with this hysterical five year old who wouldn't cooperate with being in an isolation room for three weeks with a high fever and limbs that were no longer working, and no access to her Mommy. They were forcing me, making me do things against my will, and I was fighting back.

The next memory that comes up is being molested by my brother, being made to do things I didn't want to do, allow him to touch me in ways I didn't want to be touched, holding in my outrage, tolerating the intolerable. For years. The next memory that comes up for me is of being raped. I think I was 19. He held me down. He made a point of hurting me and told me if I fought back he would hurt me more. I controlled myself, made myself allow it, disgust roiling inside me like poison.

All these memories came percolating up inside my mind and body. Is it any wonder I don't want to go back to the seminar? Nobody in their right mind wants to feel those feelings, relive those memories. But wait! All they did was tell us to bring guests. And I've already said I like the training. So what's the deal?

I'm open to suggestions.

The Landmark Shuffle

It's a new dance. In this dance, you enroll your partner. They are touched, moved and inspired by your moves. You literally transform before their eyes. They are mesmerized. They want to know how you did it, so they can try it for themselves. Who wouldn't want to be transformed? Well okay, maybe the Dalai Lama. Follow me, you say. Watch my moves. Too fast for you? Okay. Then in just three days, you too could be dancing with the stars. Sign up here. It's guaranteed to boggle your mind, silence your noisy little brain, upset your rotten apple cart and show you the way. Oh, no it's not magic. But it is a trick. It's not slight of hand, it's slight of mind.

Can you think your way out of it?

"Your present is given by the future you're living into." Shuffle to the left.
"The problem is that your past is in your future." Shuffle to the right.
"This isn't the truth, but it is a place to stand." Doh See Doh.