The Age of Miracles

from “The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife”
Marianne Williamson, Hay House Inc. Publishers, January 31, 2008

“According to Werner Erhard, founder of the est organization, we can live our lives either acting out of circumstances or acting out of a vision. And when it comes to midlife, we can forge a new vision, a new conversation, to take us beyond the limited thought-forms that have defined its parameters for generations. The circumstances are fixed, but our experience of them is not. Every situation is experienced within the context of the conversation surrounding it, both in our heads and in our culture.”

est in the Media

In a current piece titled, “The Quest for Non – Adversarial Politics” journalist Howard Schumann addresses the criticism that Barack Obama has received from the media. He uses est as an example of how the media can twist something positive into something negative and focus only on bits of what they hear rather than looking at the results. Schumann says, “In the 1970s, a self-help program called est (Erhard Seminars Training) assisted hundreds of thousands of people to gain control of their lives. The media however could only focus on snippets of what they heard about the methods of the program and completely ignored the results.  What was driving the media in those days is similar to what is going on today, the fear of being conned. We are so used to being conned every day by television advertising, unscrupulous promotions, and deceptive politicians that when something authentic comes along, we are afraid to take the risk that it might be real. That is a prescription for being stuck, not for making the changes in our society that are required.”  Read his article here.