Werner Erhard Leading a seminar

Conservative Thinkers Think Again

Conservative Thinkers Think Again
by Patricia Cohen, Sunday, 20 July 2008 NewYork Times,Week in Review

Almost anything can happen in an election year, but among conservatives, almost everyone seems to agree that no matter who captures the White House in November ‘08, the movement that has ruled the Republican Party since the 1960’s and mostly dominated American politics since 1980 has lost its way. Across the spectrum of the right, writers and thinkers have turned their relentless analysis inward, a kind of political EST seminar aimed at self-transformation.

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.”

New Conversations That Lead to New Possibilities

Werner Erhard is a teacher, consultant, and the creator of one of the most influential technologies of the last 30 years, the technology of transformation. This technology has been the basis for two widely popular and effective educational programs, The est Training and The Landmark Forum, as well as a successful corporate consulting business and several other enterprises and organizations. In 1983, Werner accepted the request of the newly formed Mastery Foundation to consult in the creation of a transformational program for those who minister and serve others. Since then, he has continued to donate his expertise and services to the Mastery Foundation, at times developing new program material and leading courses.

See: http://www.masteryfoundation.org/peace/ireland/blockanderhard/

Werner Erhard Quote

“Heroes are ordinary men and women who dare to see and meet the call of a possibility bigger than themselves. Breakthroughs are created by such heroes, by men and women who will stand for the result while it is only a possibility—people who will act to make possibility real.”

Werner Erhard

Want results? Have clear benchmarks for your workplace goals

by Linnda Durre, Orlando Business Journal, April 2008

Many years ago I took EST — Erhard Seminar Training — a personal growth workshop held on two consecutive weekends. It was intense, challenging and confrontive, but produced amazing results.

When a business person is ready, willing and able to accept and integrate feedback and to change, this process is poetry in motion, leading them to become successful, stronger, happier and more powerful with the skillful assistance, guidance and support from a qualified adviser.

One adage I remember clearly from EST was, “You either have reasons or results.” Reasons were excuses, whereas results meant you accomplished your goals and what you set out to do. How are you and your employees doing on this front — do you and they have “reasons” or results?

Let’s face it: The “reasons” can go on and on sometimes.

Werner Erhard on est

The real point to the est Training was to go down through layer after layer after layer after layer, until you got to the last layer and peeled it off, where the recognition was that it’s really all meaningless and empty. That’s Existentialism’s endpoint.
Est went a step further in that people began to recognize that it was not only meaningless and empty, but it was empty and meaningless that it was empty and meaningless. And in that there’s an enormous freedom. All the constrictions, all of the rules you’ve placed on yourself are gone, and what you’re left with is nothing. And nothing is an extraordinarily powerful place to stand, because it is only from nothing that you can create. And from this nothing people were able to invent a life allowing them to create themselves.

-Werner Erhard

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.