A Way to Transformation

The subject of this article is transformation – a deep, profound and committed choice about the way we live our lives.  Transformation is the possibility for a breakthrough in our living, a clearing for aliveness to show up in our everyday activities, self-expression and commitments.

Talking about transformation is no more than a representation, an image of the real thing.  It’s like eating the menu instead of the steak – neither nurturing nor profound.  It is in being transformed – in being authentically true to oneself – that one lives passionately free, unencumbered, fearless, committed.  It is in living life in a transformed way that the steak and its sizzle show up.

We invite you to be here for the actual benefits of transformation, for the meal – not the menu. Read more…

From The Heart of the Matter, by Werner Erhard, 1984

Werner Erhard – Curriculum Vitae

Werner H. Erhard is recognized world-wide as a business, management, and humanitarian leader, with an esteemed record of accomplishment and achievement at the highest levels of U.S. national policy, international peace, reconciliation and development efforts, and leadership and management theory and practice. His creation of innovative ideas and models of individual, organizational and social transformation have impacted such diverse fields as business, education, philosophy, medicine, psychotherapy, developing countries, conflict resolution, and community building. For more, see Werner Erhard‘s Curriculum Vitae.

The est Graduate Participation Program

“est didn’t come out of the world. est originated out of an experience – it continues solely on experience – and it ought to be evaluated on experience.

“It is true that est is coming more and more into the world which is great because that’s where the game is. If you have something to contribute, and every person does, the place you can contribute it is into the world.

“To participate means to share your experience with other beings and for other people to share their experience with you. And experience is about having space and room and some sense of mastery and power in the world; not some sense of fun or good times, but a sense of it being fun and a sense of your own well-being.

“The real purpose of est is to create space for people to participate in life – to experience true space and freedom in life. The most important on-going programs in est are programs of participation.”

- Werner Erhard – 1981

A Shot Heard ‘Round the World: A World that Works for Everyone

From the back cover of the brochure: “A Shot Heard ‘Round the World: A World that Works for Everyone” Feb 18, 1980

“While no one wants to be the first to say it, who each of us is and the fundamental choices each of us makes in life seem to matter very little.

“Even acts of great courage and intelligence, while admirable and even inspiring, exist in sharp contrast to the apparent unworkability of the world at large. Our greatest technical achievement, walking on the moon, while galvanizing the world for a moment, did not fundamentally alter people’s experience of their ability to make a difference in their lives and in the world.

“Sometime around now – it may have happened five years ago or 50 years ago – but sometime around now, the rules for living successfully on earth shifted, and an opportunity, unseen before, began to reveal itself.

“This opportunity is a context – a particular space or paradigm, a way of being – which unexpectedly creates the possibility for a person’s life to truly make a difference.

“In this context, the way each of us answers the question, “What is my life really going to be about?” can literally alter the course of humanity.

“The possibility to create the context in which people’s lives really matter is undoubtedly the most profound opportunity available to anyone, ever.”

- Werner Erhard

In 2008, est’s Influence Lives On

Article from The Herald Sun

by Ray Beatty

March 01, 2008

TWENTY-FOUR years ago this month a new phenomenon arrived in Melbourne that revolutionized the manner of business teaching. It was a personal development training from California called “est”.Although it worked on the individual, its effects were so startling that businesses quickly picked it up as a method for motivating their staff. Started in 1971 in the US, by the time it reached Australia it had gained millions of adherents world-wide – and some notoriety. Its confrontational and soul-stripping methods were often hard to take and turned its founder, Werner Erhard, into a media target. Its first Melbourne seminar was watched with suspicion by the Australian press, and reporters and photographers waited outside the venue to catch the participants as they left. Unfortunately for them this was not until two on a freezing morning, so the reporters wrote their notes with very chilly fingers. Erhard sold out in 1984 to his staff and what became Landmark Education is now one of the biggest training companies in the world with programs in 125 cities. But what is fascinating is the way that the philosophy has traveled so much further. Phrases and words devised by Erhard to distinguish ideas have become part of the educational language: when you stand and speak you are “sharing”; your actions can be “at the effect of” or “rackets” or “winning formulas”. The actual teaching is called “the technology of transformation”, stressing the value of integrity. You’ll hear this language at every business school from Harvard and Yale to London and Melbourne. The genius of Erhard was not that he invented a new philosophy, rather it was the way that he took the gung-ho American business methods from the likes of Dale Carnegie (“How to make friends and influence people”), Napoleon Hill (“Think and grow rich”) and Norman Vincent Peale (“The power of positive thinking”) and mixed them with Zen Buddhism, Platonic debate and even some hypnotism. Out the other end came a whole new way of thinking that combines meditation, goal-setting, desire for success or wealth, and driving energy. All this produced from several hundred — even thousands — of people sitting in a big arena reacting with gospel-thumping fervor.

          

The est Experience

From KHJ TV, May 24, 1976, with Werner Erhard and Anthony Zerbe:

There’s a Sufi story about a man who’s in the street on his hands and knees looking for something.  It’s at night.  Another man comes along, and he said “What happened?” and he said, “Well, I dropped my keys, and I’m down here looking for them.”  And the other guy says, “Well, I’ll help you.”  And he gets down on his hands and knees and they’re both looking, and finally the man that came along – the stranger – said, “Well, exactly where were you standing when you dropped your keys?”  The man says, “Well, I was down the block about a half a block, but there was no light down there, so I looked up here.”  And I think a lot of what people talk about regarding the training is about what can be talked about, rather than what there really is there.  Because what there really is, you can only get by experiencing…You can’t be told about it.  You can’t be given the facts of it. We should then talk about what we can talk about.

What happens in the four days of the training?…The first half of the first day is spent explaining to people in really great detail—in fact, minute detail—exactly what’s going to happen, exactly what they can expect and exactly what notions est has put together.  And the second half of that first day is spent presenting material which allows people to take a look at the difference between what is actually so and what they thought was so.

Quote from Werner Erhard about est

If you don’t take it out into the world, you didn’t get it in the first place. What I got clear about was that it would require an organization – and a particular kind of organization – to take the experience of transformation out into society.

Werner Erhard