Est Playing the Game: The New Way

Rating:
Summary: Ignore Transformation Buster
Review: I was introduced to this book by someone I respect. I purchased it and read it several times. The ideas and principles are timeless.

Contrary to Transformation Buster's review (note that he does not specifically address, in any meaningful way, the technology behind est and Landmark Education's programs; rather, he engages in ad hominem attacks against specific individuals, as if this has ANYTHING to do with whether this stuff works or not). And he does this while hiding behind the Transformation Buster name.

It is sad that 3 out 6 people found his review helpful.

My advice: ignore it and make up your own mind.

Rating:
Summary: Ignore Transformation Buster
Review: I was introduced to this book by someone I respect. I purchased it and read it several times. The ideas and principles are timeless.

Contrary to Transformation Buster's review (note that he does not specifically address, in any meaningful way, the technology behind est and Landmark Education's programs; rather, he engages in ad hominem attacks against specific individuals, as if this has ANYTHING to do with whether this stuff works or not). And he does this while hiding behind the Transformation Buster name.

It is sad that 3 out 6 people found his review helpful.

My advice: ignore it and make up your own mind.

Rating:
Summary: Why pay others for what you can GIVE to yourself?
Review: If you'd like to help yourself for free, with no strings attached and without having to spill your guts in front of a bunch of strangers then I highly recommnend the book "Feeling Good," by Dr. David Burns instead. No blind faith or mindless belief required. You can test and verify the methods yourself, in the the privacy of your own home with no one pressuring you to buy any more books, attend more seminars or to sign up all your friends, coworkers and relatives.

Check out its Amazon reviews, for they're far more eloquent than anything I've written about it. While it's true that many sing the praises of those est/forum/landmark things many others have a far different story to tell and are at least as passionate about it.

See:

"Outrageous Betrayal," by Stephan Pressman

"Cults in Our Midst," 1995 edition by, Dr. Margaret Singer

Rickross.com

Rating:
Summary: Ridiculous
Review: In the retrospective, even the author admits that this pseudo-philosophy is confused and silly. The most enraging and inhumane part of it is its megalomaniac concept of responsibility, which says that you cause *everything* in your life. If this is not insulting to the minds and hearts the the victims of force and fraud I don't know what is! I think today Landmark Education streamlined this stuff somewhat, but a little improvement doesn't make it more real then the original ideas.

Rating:
Summary: But Why Would You Want To?
Review: Sad but true, after thirty years this embarrassing group is still in business, renamed the Landmark Forum, and continues to rake in more fools with the pseudo-promise of something they call "breakthroughs," which is another of their can-mean-anything-to-anybody tricks. Watch for the other "weasel" words if you do any more research. For a group who purport to concern themselves with semantics, this particular group displays the most appalling lack of regard for the English language. If the creepy jargon and trick word usage weren't enough to turn you off, as Mr. Frederick points out, you might emerge with the conviction that life is some kind of game and rendered as "empty and meaningless" as the supposed content of this self-help "awareness" training patterned after another bogus self-help organization that calls itself a church. I presume its new-found success, as older memories have faded, warrants the reissue of Mr. Frederick's bit of jump-on-the-bandwagon nonsense. Reading it is almost as unpleasant as sitting through one of the programs. And that old sensation of the contents of your stomach rising into you throat may recur for the same reasons. I find it hilarious that the man who plagerized other groups to found "est" had the nerve to attempt to suppress the publication of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Very powerful book
Review: The human potential movement of the `70s was alive with excitement because of the possibilities in seeing a different world, and breaking free of the same view that everyone else had. est was a part of the human potential movement, and was a salesman's grabbing and packaging the best of everything he had experienced, and creating seminars to give attendee's life changing experiences.

Of all the books that came out of that period, Ram Dass's "Be Here Now" and this book, "est: Playing the Game the New Way" are still in my personal library. "Be Here Now" is more spiritual, whereas the est book is more practical. I found both to be excellent.

One of the concepts in the est book is personal responsibility for where we are and what happens to us. I don't believe that a useful view of what is being said is that we choose everything that happens to us. But a whole lot of what the uninitiated might think "happens" to them is in fact a result of their choices. Someone who is chronically late is not late today because something out of their control happened. It is because they chose to be late. What the book does is give the reader to try on that concept that they have chosen where they are and what is happening to them. Sort of like, you are the First Cause. What is happening is because you chose one thing and not the other. Or you didn't choose something. Rather than not accepting responsibility for our choices, we can simply acknowledge that we made choices that resulted in something we would prefer not to be associated with. In short, this concept can allow those who intuitive blame others and events for what have happened and are happening in their lives, to switch modes. To look at what role they are playing in their lives and in what happens to them. This gives a person infinite power, relative to continuing a model that says the blame should go elsewhere for why they have the problems they have. Now, I am describing the effect of one of the concepts that the book gives. The book does not lay it out as I have done. But instead brings you experiences that cause the appropriate change, if you are willing.

Another concept of the book is that we should acknowledge people. In est-talk this means that we accept them where they are and don't make them wrong. Have you ever seen two people argue, with each having their own view and trying to make the other wrong? This acknowledging action is one where you essentially let the other know that you get what they are saying, and you are okay that. That you are not making the other person wrong.

Those are two of the things the book works to transmit.

This is a very powerful and life-changing book. When it came out, est was hot. 700,000 people took the est seminars. The book sold itself based on the reputation of the est seminars. That is why I bought it many years ago. And I found a more powerful approach to life, and to other people, as a result.


Rating:
Summary: Suffering from Identity Crisis
Review: This is an odd little book that seems to be suffering from an identity crisis that is never resolved. Ostensibly a re-creation of the "est" training, the book is actually more like a virtual simulation, in which the book becomes the training itself. It is written from the voice of someone conducting a training while still self-consciously acknowledging that it's actually a book. The flippant foreword and introduction shed no light on what the author was actually intending. If you attended "est" and you need a stroll down memory lane, this may be a fun book for you to read. For the rest of us, not all that helpful.