A lot of the work in Landmark education has to do with inventing new possibilities for your life. This essentially comes down to speculating about a new way of being and then living into it rather than believing your future will be just like your past and acting accordingly.

I don’t remember the specific context, but during the Advanced Course, we turned to the person we were sitting next to and told them about the possibility we had just created. I said something like the “possibility of being loved.” My friend thought there was something more to it than that and she asked me to try saying it again. Then my heart just broke open and I said “The possibility of being safe.”

Because I had never been safe. I had lived in a world where I had to guard myself on every side, from an array of possible attacks. I was threatened by heartache, betrayal, deception, people getting too close, people not getting close enough, varying breeds of rejection, and on and on.

And here I was, doing things that were inherently unsafe. The Forum was not safe. The Advanced Course was not safe. Being a group leader in both the weekly seminar and the course (I was both) was not safe. Being open about my past and current life was not safe. Trying to repair disconnected relationships in my life was not safe.

I learned that the key to safety lay in all these bold, unsafe moves. My own safety and security was my own responsibility, but it had nothing to do with keeping life at a distance.

The way out is through.