Doing Due Diligence

When considering taking a course with a group or someone, a person is considering taking a look at life and making a change in how they are approaching it. This is an important decision. It is about your life and how you live it.

If you feel the need to make a change, make sure you are heading in the right direction.

When you buy a house, you need to do due diligence. When you buy a car, the same applies. Considering changing the way you do life is every bit as important and it too should be given due diligence, maybe even more so than in the case of a house or car. After all, a house and a car are inanimate objects, but your life, the way you move through the world, is something you are in contact with every second of every day.

So, here are some suggestions if you are considering taking a course:

- First up, do an Internet search on the group and any individuals involved. The Internet is a wonderful, relatively new source of invaluable information on these groups.

Probably the best source of information available is the Rick Ross Website.

Take a look at the Group Information Database.

Then visit the Rick Ross Message Boards where you will find a section titled Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential" Seminars. On the message boards you will find many first person accounts of people who have gone through these courses.

There are many other useful links on this blog to other sources apart from Rick Ross under Resources to the right.

Obviously, I come from a skeptic’s viewpoint, but this is necessary when one is considering such an important decision.

- Secondly, if you can, talk to people who have done courses with the group or individual that you are considering taking a course with.

- Look into the background of the facilitator/s. Don’t blindly accept their qualifications to be true.

There are many con artists exploiting people today, and they often make false claims, so check their qualifications out properly.

The LGAT industry is unregulated and thus people are at great risk of being exploited. Don't be one of them.

- Consider what the program you are interested in is promising. Read critically what it claims to offer. Then use your critical thinking to assess whether what they promise can be delivered or not.

Consider the following well-known saying and apply it critically: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

- One of the warning signs, I would suggest, is the idea that the prospective attendee is told to get out of his/her head and trust the process.

This is, in many ways, a suggestion to bypass critical thinking. Reasonable questions you have deserve reasonable answers, not vague-sounding generalities.

Be wary of being asked to place too much trust in someone or some group too fast.

- Steve Hassan’s Freedom of Mind website provides a list of questions to ask when you are making an assessment of a group or an individual.

- Another self quiz can be found from the Psychotherapy Cults & Isms website.

- It’s a satire, and it has been mentioned previously, but take a look at this short video from YouTube about Mind Control. Many of these groups and individuals have introductory sessions, see if you hear some or many of these ideas.

- Also look up what mind control is all about. Too many groups use methods of mind control on course participants and the attendees are unaware of what is going on. Robert Jay Lifton defined the criteria for mind control/thought reform in his book "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism".

- Finally, consider that, if you are dealing with serious life issues, it might be a better option to consult a trained, licensed professional.

Many LGATs use psychotherapeutic methods, and many of them have no one qualified in working with psychotherapy. The potential for damage is great.

Many of them use a one-size-fits-all approach. But they don't know you at all. You need to be molded by them in a certain way before they apply their simplistic, one-size-fits-all approach.

Beware. It is your life, and by extension the lives of your family and friends, we are talking about.

Family and friends are so important. Any teacher/guru/course leader that attempts to turn you away from family and friends, saying he/she has the answer is waving a massive red flag in front of your eyes.

Blood is thicker than water. Most of us are lucky enough to know love from family and friends. Many teachers/gurus/course leaders know money from us.