I can remember when I first began to go to Alanon for families and friends of alcoholics. It was shocking to realize just how truly warped my own thinking was.

First of all I began to see that I had an enemy- a very real, true, and vicious one. And he was living perilously close to me. In fact this enemy was inhabiting the very sacred space called “My brain.” This enemy, who knew my every weakness and sore spot and was not afraid to use it, used to taunt me mercilessly. He had choice phrases such as “You’re lousy as a mother. You shouldn’t even have kids. You’re a terrible wife. You’re hurting Dave. You’re hurting your mom, your dad, your family. You really should just give it up. You’re useless. You’re hopeless. You’re rotten. You’re terrible.” This enemy said things to me that I never would have said to any human being on the face of the earth.

Now I had lived with this enemy all my life, so I didn’t know of anything different. And as far as I was concerned, what he said was true and real. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that this was all learned, and to some extent automatic thinking. Brains have a habit of disempowering their owners. They are the toughest of task masters- believing like some warped and driven drill Sargent of pain, that they are actually helping matters. And our brains are generally not a true judge of our heart soul and spirit. So I learned through Alanon that I could actually impact the very thoughts in my brain. And later in The Landmark Forum I learned that my brain is not me. It is an more like an automatic thinking machine, much like a computer. And this computer does not reflect our inner essence, our spirit, our soul, or our greatness. It reflects our past experiences, and mostly the bad ones.

The Landmark Forum, by the way, is a course I highly recommend for everyone on the planet. It is a place where you get tools for creating anything you want for your life. Which is amazing, and actually true, by the way. I attribute a huge amount of my success in becoming a powerful spokesperson to the technologies of Landmark Education. But even more to the point, The Landmark Forum is a place where you get to see, smack up in your face, your own beauty as a human being. You also get to see the beauty of others. This is not a common sight in our world, and not a sight to be missed, in my opinion. My first experience of The Landmark Forum was such that it warmed my heart. I felt the ice melting and my brain said something good for a change. It said ‘So underneath all that nasty stuff, human beings truly are good… I always suspected it.’ Later in some other courses I finally got another message: I am one of those good human beings.”