Advanced Course Notes
2-28-2000
When I as Self is Transformed, it is first seen at the level of Relationship, then at the level of Groups and Communities, followed by Organizations, Cultures, Societies and then the World.
One’s life is a network of communities, Work, Landmark, Commuters, Special Interests, etc.
The Advanced Course is an Artificial-Temporary Community
Future as Possibility:
Who Are You
Future
Reality
Enrollment
What is now in my Future – past keeps repeating, expectations and hopes, more disappointments, dreams-wishes-plans, resignation-anticipation, cynicism, failure and success waiting to ‘happen’
We can see that now we have a Predictable, Already-Happening, Probable, Almost-Certain Future
Consider that I don’t know what a Possibility is
Purpose of the Advanced Course: To Create a Future that Lights Me Up Right Now
(and not a future that will light me up someday)
Richard Rorty – Contingency, Irony and Solidarity
Our relationship to Language
The World is our creation
Where there are no sentences, there are no truths
Truth only occurs in Language
Truth cannot exist without the human mind
The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not ‘out there’
The world simply is.
To say that the world is out there as is described by a Creator whose language we don’t understand
Old Idea: God Created The World
New Idea: We each create the world
We have created several conversational domains
Insert Graph depiction here showing scopes of Form and the Advanced Course
Generate – I am the source of someone else getting a distinction
The Intention of the Inquiry is to Engage in the Question
Training is very specific – do this now
Coaching is leading someone to a self-generated insight
How do I get on the court when I’m being uncoachable?
Promise:
To be coachable for 6 days
To give up opinions for 6 days
To give up having to Understand, because
it’s futile
it’s your winning formula
it gets in the way
Distinction – Have The Opinions but Don’t Be The Opinions
I am Here Because I Am Here
The Real Meaning of Life
Who Am I?
What Is My Life For?
Who Am I That Enrollment Is for me already?
You get a bigger sense of Self/Identity when you are powerfully engaged in Groups
Currently, My Life is waiting for someone else to do something
Dealing Powerfully with what’s so
You covertly kill off community by not sharing negative thoughts
The Landmark Forum Leader generated the Landmark Forum
In the Advanced Course, we generate the course
Some of you have an Already-Listening To Leadership
Whatever isn’t Leader is being chipped away (just as Michelangelo chipped away whatever wasn’t David)
What’s Powerful is to be here for No-Reason
Okay usually means, “no, I don’t agree, but I’ll go along with you on this one”
Opinions aren’t bad, but Opinions aren’t Truth
Value Judgments are distinct from Opinions
These are what are there when Enrollment is missing– there’s an ulterior motive – what’s in it for me – lack of trust – seduce/con/cajole
Note: Human Beings have little toleration for results that aren’t immediate
Intended Outcome for the Landmark Forum = Possibility
We turned it into Expectations, which led to disappointment and upset
An Authentic Possibility is always Unfulfillable
The Four Cornerstone Distinctions of the Landmark Forum:
Rackets
Winning Formula
Empty and Meaningless
Possibility
Reproduce is to say it exactly with Intention
Generate From is the direct application of the distinction in my life
The test for Generate From is – I have an insight consistent with what that distinction makes available in my life
Generate – create the distinction in another’s listening
The test is – they have an insight consistent with what the distinction makes available in their life
The hardest listening to Generate Possibility is with someone who already knows
Racket – A Fixed Way of Being plus A Persistent Complaint
What keeps the Racket in place are the Payoffs:
1. Being Right/ Making other’s wrong (someone is always running a racket when they are being self-righteous
2. Dominating/ Avoiding Domination – someone is always running a racket when they are being a bully or hiding
3. Justifying Self/ Invalidating Others
The most important complaints to distinguish are “That’s just the way it is”
Costs
1. Love/Affinity (someone is always running a racket when they are lonely, isolated, feeling cut-off)
2. Vitality (someone is always running a racket when they are sick, tired, exhausted)
3. self-expression (someone is always running a racket when they are not expressing themselves or not expressing themselves well)
4. Satisfaction (someone is always running a racket when they are unhappy, unfulfilled, unsatisfied)
You are killing off your own aliveness when you are running Rackets
The ultimate payoff of every Racket is you don’t have to take Responsibility
When you give up being Right, you have access to Peace
Any place you’re stopped is always a Racket
Racket = I can’t
= It’s impossible
To get into a person’s listening say, “Would you consider….”?
Examples of Fixed Ways of Being: Self-Righteous, Angry?
Persistent complaint – e.g. My mother doesn’t understand me
Distinguish – When I’ve been enrolled
What is the experience of presence of Enrollment?
To Generate Rackets say, “Have you ever noticed a persistent complaint in your life?” For example, and then give an example from my life that they might relate to.
Already ways of being/listening
I see Scott-or-Tonita’s face in every face I see. I let myself get blocked by others just as I let Scott-Tonita block me. The racket with my Dad is 360 degrees – it’s my fish tank
A Fixed Way of Being is not a feeling – it’s on the court – it’s how others see you
Enrollment – possibilities – trust – excitement – Authenticity – extraordinary – bold – opportunities – enthusiasm – make a difference – earning/sharing – present – aliveness
What is the distinction of Enrollment – Generating Possibility
Where will this Possibility be generated – In Another’s Listening such that they will step into that Possibility committedly and then act.
It all happens in a Conversation that includes
1. Background of Relatedness
2. Conversation for Possibility
3. Conversation for Opportunity
4. Conversation for Action, including invitations and requests
5. Completion
The above are not necessarily ordered in a linear fashion.
Possibility breeds Possibility
Background of Relatedness – remember when you worked on X, and I know you’re committed to Y…
If you are ineffective enrolling someone there is probably a problem with Background of Relatedness
Exercise:
The Central Theme of my life is: My Racket with my Dad
Who I am is Trying to get acknowledgement for my work as an artist
We as humans are all committed to the same thing – how can I have my life make a difference
Fantasies about what is the Perfect Woman, the Perfect Man, the Perfect Relationship
Exercise:The Perfect Woman: Thick, red, curly hair, 5’4”, 130 lbs, singer, musician but not full time, runner with a slim and strong figure, good humored/good natured, multiple interests – intelligent, easygoing, likes pets and animals
The Perfect Man – accomplished musician, Artist & Writer, 6’ 180 lbs, in great physical shape, strong and healthy, several degrees, makes a lot of $ easily, wife and family
The Perfect Relationship -
You make yourself and the people in your life wrong because they don’t match your fantasy
Disempowering – “Someone else will come into my life and fulfill me”
It’s not an accident who shows up in my life – who I’ve invited into my life has everything to do with what I want to do or ‘not do’
Another fantasy – in the end my life is going to work out
Exercise:
In my life – How does it all turn out?
I’ll have written several books, done some large outdoor sculptures, wife – family – 2-3 children, nice big house with some land, lots of friends and money, lived to 90-100 with good health, grandchildren
Where do I make my life wrong by failing to distinguish fantasies from reality?
My insight is that I’ve been an: Unavailable, self-absorbed pretender
If I’d had this insight a year ago, how would my past have been different?
What Specific Measurable Result can I produce by 10 a.m. Friday from this insight?
Ask – does my telling you this make you happy? Do you feel loved?
Apologize to Sharon – I haven’t felt worthy of your love. SMR – ask, Are you empowered? I was really committed that out of this conversation you would feel empowered.
Insight – Bad News – it doesn’t make you happy to hear it – a mystery gets solved in some way – it opens up a Possibility
Insights: I check out when I get bored
- I don’t jump up for leadership
- I hate being uncomfortable
- I pretend to be X, but actually I am Y
- I con people with my charm
- I give up on people who resist me
- I let people get away with running rackets on me
- Tonita still haunts me – I can get paralyzed/freaked-out by angry hostile women
- My fantasies about what I should be, what a perfect woman should be, what a perfect relationship is – really limit me and keep me small
- I am distant, unreliable and inconstant with women
- Lazy, uncommitted sideliner
- Unavailable, self-absorbed pretender
- I’m obsessed with looking good
- I’ve killed many people in my life because of my stories
- I’ve kept myself financially strapped because of my stories
- I haven’t stood for Joy to be excellent
- I skim the instructions and don’t pay enough attention to details
- I get stopped by “there’s too much to do – I don’t have time”
Friday 2-25-2000
Who I am is My Word
As an individual, what I do impacts everyone and everything
Powerful relationships = I am 100% committed
Much communication is not effective because you are just expressing yourself without getting into the other person’s listening
Possibility has nothing to do with skill or ability. It’s about giving up being Right about what you’ve been right about
Possibility is Attractive – Righteousness is ugly
There is no Righteousness in Possibility
You have the power to change the world through your Listening
How you listen is the whole thing.
Human Beings are more afraid of being Powerful than of being small
The machine doesn’t want to be powerful. The machine is concerned with survival only.
Where do I tolerate unworkability?
Workability is tolerating what works and getting rid of what doesn’t work.
Stop this environment of keeping people small
You don’t have permission to call each other on Rackets – it’s a fear of being Right
Training in being Powerful – How is what I’m going to say going to impact this person over here?
To be a leader in this course means Causing the Course. It means My Speaking moves the course forward. It means I am coachable.
Being a Leader means enrolling in others in being a Leader
There’s no suffering in reality – there’s only suffering in the story
Are you interested in your Share making a difference?
Get committed and get to work and life turns out
The machine doesn’t like ‘Love’
Love is a threat to the machine
Rick’s insight – his style of leadership has been to make others small
She’s just your mother doing what mothers do. Give up your righteousness – do you see what kind of environment you have created for your mother?
Righteousness kills of self-expression
How am I relating to my father that predetermines his response to me?
Make the commitment that my dad be happy
People in my life are only Who They Are out of my Listening
Being right/making others wrong/righteousness kills off self-expression in others
The difference between Having Opinions and Being Opinions
Training – This Shall Be then Create/Generate/Cause it
Some people think your actions are your results
It’s all about me = I want you to forgive me
Being irresponsible = I want you to call me on it when I’m not being loving with you
It’s all about how I look, how I feel, so I can feel better
The Insight you want to have is Bad News. I’ve been Bad News to these other people – it’s not about me ‘getting better’, ‘getting fixed’ or ‘feeling better’. It’s about generating a Specific Measurable Result in someone else’s life
Completion is just Completion – it’s not ‘in order to’
We can’t get who you really are until you’ve taken responsibility for how you’ve been pretending to be
Powerful relationships are about something other than relationships
Have your relationship with her be about Her being completely fulfilled and satisfied
Insight: I am a self-absorbed, manipulative sham
Don’t explain Rackets to non-Forum people because you’re saying, “You’re stupid and you need to know this.”
Okay = no, I don’t agree with you but I won’t dispute that with you
Get out and transform the people in your life
Who can I call re: My Art Marketing Project? Who can I enroll in this project? How will it improve their lives?
I want to have a positive impact in your lives. I want to be an important person in your community and I want you to be important people in my life.
I am deficient in not supplying you with the catalog I promised to have to you in January. I don’t know how to do one – can you give me some guidance with it?
I will show you how I sell paintings if you will give me that opportunity
There are three choices:
Outrunning the tiger
Avoiding the tiger
Facing the tiger
We don’t care what you want – what does matter is what you are committed to
No change = Disappearance
You can’t change who you are but you can acknowledge who you are, commit to a result and …
Principles of the Landmark Forum:
You are Whole and Complete
Change Causes Persistence
No Change Causes Transformation
What is displacing Transformation is our addiction to stories, is our not listening
Winning Formula
I don’t make a difference
Being Right (which is Rackets)
Complacency – Mediocrity
Resignation
Rackets are productive – give up being Right and you have access to Joy, Vitality, Love & Health
Winning Formula – Productive (but unfulfilling)
You aren’t born with Winning Formula – you start out as being-being-being – get up in the morning – enjoy – do your thing – go to bed
Then there is some experience with being insufficient, not enough, and you decide that you will never be enough and then you develop a compensatory mechanism
Fall from grace – life was perfect, until
As a child – issue is not being something
As a teenager – issue is not belonging
As an adult – on your own – it’s up to me and I’ve got to make it
But, with Winning Formula, no matter how much success you have, it’s never enough, because all the effort is always a compensation mechanism. It’s a lie, a sham
If you’re not loved enough as a child, you won’t feel loved enough at 47
If I’m not my Winning Formula, who am I?
Winning Formula
- A fixed way of being you rely on in order to produce results
- A decision from the past that tells you how to be in the future
- A compensation for a failure in being that leaves you unsatisfied and unfulfilled
It’s inauthentic to pretend that there’s something wrong with me because there isn’t
Note what times I’m driven
Winning Formula is never going away
Identifying Winning Formula enables me to cause it.
I’m driven about working to meet deadlines.
Make it – Mechanical response = Winning Formula
Threatened – machine = Rackets
We are Meaning Making Machines
Empty and Meaningless
All the suffering is from your saying it is so
I am a meaning making machine. Life is Empty and Meaningless and it is Empty and Meaningless that it’s empty and meaningless. This is it.
From Nothing, you can declare the Possibility of Possibility
Possibility is a now phenomenon that impacts who you are being in the present
Possibility only exists in Declaration.
Inquiry is a questioning for the question
Who you are stopped in Inquiry, what stops you?
- Expectations and How It is Supposed To Be
How do you know what’s Real?
As Human Beings, we live in this Unreal World – story, fantasy, should/shouldn’t, romance-drama, interpretations
The inquiry begins with: How Do You Know What’s Real?
Two demons guard the door to the temple of knowledge: Confusion and Paradox
Three Tests of Reality:
1. The Personal Test
2. the Interim Test
3. the Ultimate Test
Personal Test
- if I experience it, it must be real – not reliable (e.g. Flight Simulator, dreams, etc.)
- trial and error – not always reliable
- Intuition
- Feelings
- ‘understanding’
- senses
you’ve been trained by your Personal Test but at best it gives you a favorable coincidence
Interim Test = All Agreement
- If Authorities say it’s Real, then it is
- Consensus, the majority opinion
- Predictable, reproducible
- Reliable, believable,
- Normal, tradition
- Reasonable, reproducible
- Logical, consistent
All of life is what we have agreed upon – money, love, art, music, religion, morality and morays, culture, what to eat, etc.
It’s always changing – no one voted – but everyone agreed
Disagreement is a form of agreement
Third Party Agreement is so powerful that it will override personal experience
By getting Agreement for my story, I make it real
Where in my life and to what degree is Agreement running my life? (Look where I am the most suppressed)
Mastering Agreement gives you in edge in Getting Results
What is the Agreement About Me that I’ve enrolled other people in
Where in my life am I not managing agreement – look where you’re not Being Effective
Enrollment is the process of Managing Agreement
Find an Issue, Problem or Condition where there’s suffering, struggle or effort in your life. Look at resentments, regrets, recurring unwanted yet persistent behaviors.
And be willing for it to disappear.
All suffering is in story. Physical pain is the fact. Suffering is the story.
You inspire people whenever you ‘get off it’
The communities you live in, work in and play in make up your life
What distinguishes the Advanced Course from the Forum
The Forum is about the transformation of the individual. The Advanced Course trains you to make a difference at the level of community.
The Forum takes you to Empty and Meaningless and the Advanced Course is about creating a new possibility for your future
The Forum is like a beginner’s driver’s license. The Advanced Course is like a full driver’s permit.
If I were not my Winning Formula and Rackets, who would I be?
Who I am is…….
Candace – I’ve been a self-absorbed, self-righteous, withholder
2-26-2000 Saturday
Attached means it has to be that way
Committed means whatever is in that clearing will be okay
Attachment is not Commitment
When you start hearing the words coming out of your mouth – that means you are starting to think
Everything is really only what you say it is
Every time you collapse the story into ‘what happened’ you find Freedom
Ask – what meaning am I adding? What story have I made up?
Most conversations are about whose story is the best
So get creative and make up a story in advance.
You disempower yourself when you say, “I’m tired and need to rest first’
Story is the water that humans swim in
I am responsible for who I am and how my community is involved with me
In the Domain of my own Integrity as a Human Being…
Real Integrity is Who Are You Being when no one is watching, when it looks like no one cares
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
Give up the Mediocrity – Wake up and Be Alive!
There is something calling you – Are you going to step into it?
That’s what is holding me back – not engaging my community
You are a leader at the World Level
You only find yourself powerfully in group
If you are talking to me, you are ready for Possibility
Insight: I hold back and let other’s take the spot-light and I cheat myself by not being fully challenged and engaged
Enrollment – the bottom line – Causing Another to Be Cause
There’s no resistance – there’s only the absence of one of the Enrollment Conversations
Everyone is interested in Possibility – no kidding!
Never assume the Background of Relatedness – you have to create it every time!
The quickest way to create a Background of Relatedness is to Acknowledge Someone for Something
But don’t acknowledge them ‘in order to’ or they’ll feel conned
Two Assignments:
1. How do you test for Reality ultimately?
2. What stops you from enrolling others?
Enrolling – if you are Cause, there is only ‘what’s missing’
Enroll people in what I’m standing for
Be responsible for who you are being for people
Be responsible for who I am for others
More afraid of my power than of my smallness
Ask, “Do you really want to keep on living like this?”
Key Question - What are you going to stand for?
Enroll other people in my project
With Attachment, Identity is tied up with the outcome
Commitment is Cause without Identity
What is the difference between Opportunity and Possibility?
I just discovered this great freedom for self-expression
I just discovered how to wake up every day full of excitement and enthusiasm
Opportunity = what’s in it for them
Possibility is bigger than everything and interrupts anything
The Ultimate Test of Reality – it’s real if it has Physicalness – distance/place, time, form
What is the substance of Physicalness – it’s Measurable
Reality is a subset of existence
Some things are concepts (e.g. numbers) – they exist without form
There is no Cause and Effect in Reality. In Reality there is only Effect.
The illusion of Cause and Effect is created by our limited frame of perception
Cause and Effect is a story
Cause and Effect is a perception of Parts – not of the Whole
Where is Cause?
Reality arises in Language
There is a Real ‘What Happens’ and a Real ‘Story’ – however, the Story may not be Real
For Human Beings, we think there is a Reality independent from Language and a Reality that arises in Language
Human Beings never get a What Happens independent of Language
What gives Measurability?
Measurability is a form of Total Agreement.
What gives Total Agreement to Physicalness? Language does.
There is no Reality independent of Language
A Language dweller cannot confront that which is independent of language
Who you are is Always Involved
The Language That You Are Creates This World
The World Arises in Language Always
You need to keep your Conversational Domains distinct
How we live is that there is Reality out there and our job is to understand it – but it’s Language all the way down
Novice Umpire – “I call them as I see them”
Apprentice Umpire – “I call them as they are”
Master Umpire – “It ain’t nothing till I say it!”
Albert Einstein – Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
Human Beings only have access to the world through Language
Language and the World arise together
Ontological decision – this is how I have to be
What humans take as real is this past-based conversation
Something will appear and then it has to be cultivated in Distance-Time-Form
You are not your thoughts
Prepare first – then practice
Be Awake to What You Say
Any communication completes anything
How do I do Possibility everywhere?
All that’s happening in life is in your listening
Our listening has even more power than our words
Your wife/husband is a function of your listening to her/him
You can create people however you choose to listen to them
Who in my life do I not have a listening for?
If my listening is that ________ is rigid and closed and unreachable, then ________ will be that way for me
Katy – I kill her off by not acknowledging her. Uncle Tom and Tom Dus – ditto
Going Forward From The Future
You are not a product of your past
Who you are in the present is given only by the Future you have to live into
When you put your Past in your Future, then your Past is your predictable, almost-certain Future.
Resolving to avoid repeating the past is another way of putting the past in the future.
When you put the Past in the Past, we experience Future as Possibility right now, Transforming the Present
If you are working on fixing the past, you are wasting time – there is no way to fix the past
Creating a clearing for Future as Possibility
The Future is Now – no in-order-to
When I constitute myself as Future as Possibility, listen for what empowers me, inspires me, thrills me, turns me on right now in the Present
Goals – Purposes – Values
A Goal is defined as measurable in Time and Space and Distance – you will know when it happens.
A Purpose is the Direction of the Journey – it’s on-going – it has an unfulfillable quality – it never ends. You can always be said to be fulfilled if you’re On Purpose
Values – what is important to me
Goals – Purposes – Values give the Self of a Person. There is no right G-P-V. There is only What Inspires You
What is the Future that is giving those Goals-Purposes and Values?
If you have Purpose but no goals, you have no game
If you have goals, but no Purpose, you have no Direction
All Humans everywhere are committed to making a difference
Whenever you are making something wrong, whenever you are against something, you’re taking a Position, not a Stand, and then you lose your effectiveness.
Future as Possibility doesn’t fix anything
Insight: for Dad – I’ve been a self-centered, unappreciative jerk
You can have sickness and not be sickness
2-27-2000 Sunday
Your life is at stake
Your life doesn’t work and it doesn’t work out of how you are Being
Look inside – you’re choking it down – it’s something ugly you don’t want to admit
“I’m willing to let the whole world go to hell while I sit in my house fat & happy”
Take a stand for David and Edith
You guys still think there’s Someday – there isn’t – There is only Now
I’m still acting like I think there’s a tomorrow – there’s no tomorrow – just Now
No try – you either do it or you don’t
Commit yourself, Act powerfully, then figure out the details as you go along
Insight: I never let my mother love me
I am the Possibility of the Celebration of the Human Spirit
I commit myself to giving up Self-Righteousness, Attachment to Looking Good and being stopped by Fear. And that is Who I Am.
To live Future as Possibility every single day of your life.
Don’t turn Possibilities into Expectations
Expectations turn into disappointments
Avoid losing your vote – don’t use the Landmark jargon with the public
Enrollment precedes Agreement
Never invalidate yourself for Possibility
Where is Cause?
Cause is outside Reality in Future as Possibility
Causes gives Reality
Q: What is going to use your life?
Living from Possibility and acting from it.
2-29-2000 Tuesday – Making a Problem Disappear
Problem – Money, the persistent lack of it
I want X, but Y
I want financial freedom and security, but I haven’t figured out how to do it.
The statement of the problem is a function of ‘it shouldn’t be’
In the past, there is something this problem reminds you of
Go back, as far as I can – Well, again it goes back to not getting an allowance when I was 5 or 6
What decision did I make to compensate for what was wrong?
I decided I’d have to get by without having what the other kids were enjoying
What is an alternate interpretation?
My Dad realized that we’d just spend our money on candy and soda pop and he was protecting us from all that sugar
Make up a paranoid interpretation – He was maliciously depriving us
Make up an absurd, silly interpretation – He ran out of money – The Tooth Fairy stopped supplying us
Make up a Righteous Interpretation – I deserved the money and he was wrong to deprive me
Make up a Tragic Interpretation – mother died, all the money went to the hospital bills, nothing left over
If this problem were someone else’s what would the interpretation be?
Get real buddy – figure it out – get a life
What’s the Real Interpretation?
None of these – they are all stories
Problems arise from this ‘Shouldn’t Be’.
What Specific Measurable Result will I generate from this insight?
Who I am is the Possibility of Financial Abundance and Freedom
What will your life look like next week with that problem gone?
Write down schedule for next week, next month, next year, 5 years
Schedule it and Act
What do I commit to give up, in order to generate my Possibility?
What are my Specific Measurable Results?
Never invalidate yourself
Be Possibility in the Face of No Possibility
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