Being of Service

My notion about service is that service is actually that kind of relationship in which you have a commitment to the person.

Service is about knowing who the other person is, and being able to tolerate giving space to their garbage.

What most people do is to give space to people’s quality and deal with their garbage.

Actually, you should do it the other way around.

Deal with who they are and give space to their garbage.

Keep interacting with them as if they were perfect.

And every time you get garbage from them, give space to the garbage and go back and interact with them as if they were perfect.

~Werner Erhard

Power is a function of velocity

Your power is a function of velocity, that is to say, your power is a function of the rate at which you translate intention into reality.  Most of us disempower ourselves by finding a way to slow, impede, or make more complex than necessary the process of translating intention into reality.

There are two factors worth examining in our impairing velocity, in our disempowering ourselves.

The first is the domain of reasonableness. When we deal with our intentions or act to realize our intentions from reasonableness, we are in the realm of slow, impede and complicate. When we are oriented around the story or the narrative, the explanations, the justifications, we are oriented around that in which there is no velocity, no power.

Results are black and white. In life, one either has results (one’s intentions realized) or one has the reason, story, explanations, and justifications. The person of power does not deal in explanations. This way of being might be termed management by results (not management for results but management by results). The person of power manages him or herself by results and creates a space or mood of results in which to interact with others.

The other factor to be addressed is time. Now never seems to be the right time to act. The right time is always in the future. Usually this appears in the guise of “after I (or we) do so and so, then it will be the right time to act”; or “after so and so occurs, then it will be the right time to act”; or “when so and so occurs, then it will be the right time to act.” The guise includes “gathering all the facts,”  “getting the plan down,” “figuring out ‘X’,” “getting ready,” etc.

Since now is the only time you have in reality and now will never seem to be the right time to act, one may as well act now. Even though “it isn’t the right time,” given that the “right time” will never come, acting now is, at the least, powerful (even if you don’t get to be right). Most people wait for the decisive moment, whereas people of power are decisive in the moment. – Werner Erhard

The est Training

“The way est happened was very simple.  I had this transformational experience.  I had a transformation.  Whoever I had been up until that point, I no longer was.  And it was on my way to work, and I happened to be – not anything significant about being on the Golden Gate Bridge – but I happened to be there, and that’s when I had the realization that what my life was about was really meaningless.  It was empty.  And this realization that the things that I thought were so significant, like looking good and winning – just the normal things that I guess most people think are important – that they really had no importance, that it was all empty and meaningless.  When I broke through the sadness, broke through the sense of despair at having wasted my life, I all of a sudden realized, “My God, I’m free.”  What – free – what does that mean to be free?   Free to choose, free to create a life that was worth living.  So I took a day with my staff – shared with them the best I could something that would allow them to create for themselves the kind of transformational experience that I had had.  And we all decided, okay, we’ll do this.  Instead of selling books, we’ll do this.” –Werner Erhard, 2005, from Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard

A World That Works

“We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family.  We can choose to make our love for the world what our lives are really about. Each of us has the opportunity, the privilege, to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us.  It will require courage, audacity and heart.  It is much more radical than a revolution – it is the beginning of a transformation in the quality of life on our planet.  What we create together is a relationship in which our work can show up as making a difference in people’s lives. I welcome the unprecedented opportunity for us to work globally on that which concerns us all as human beings.

If not you, who?
If not now, when?
If not here, where?”

Werner Erhard, 1977

Create Your Future

Gonneke Spits

Gonneke Spits, one of the founding staff members of est discusses the original est Training in this video on the Werner Erhard Video site.

Assessment of the Philosophical Significance of The est Training

by Hubert Dreyfus

“In the course of the training it became progressively clear to me that the experience underlying the training and the conceptualization of this experience have deep affinities with the phenomena presented and analyzed in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time.”

“…It is directly manifest in the training that est embodies a powerful and coherent truth which transforms the quality of the lives of those who experience it. Moreover, this truth contains radically new insights into the nature of human beings.”

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Top 10 CPL Videos of 2010: Harvard University Kennedy School of Leadership

Top 10 CPL Videos of 2010: Harvard University Kennedy School of Leadership

The Harvard University Center for Public Leadership announced their top ten videos of  2010.  With 21,763 views, Werner Erhard speaks to Kennedy School students was their second most viewed video of the year.  The Center for Public Leadership posts their videos, including archived footage from a decade of leadership events, speeches, and interviews—on their YouTube channel.

The Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership is committed to advancing the frontiers of knowledge about leadership through teaching and research and deepening the pool of leaders for the common good through cocurricular activities that include skill-building workshops, fellowships, and classes in leadership for social change.

Being Creative

In an article in The Graduate Review (July 1976), John Curry, the 1976 men’s Olympic and world figure skating champion, said that in winning those titles there wasn’t any separation between himself, the ice, the skates, the music. It was one thing flowing, a thing he was creating each moment – creating it, creating it, creating it, creating it – as if there was nothing to do. He was skating when he was skating. The skating wasn’t about trying not to fall down, or trying to overcome something, or trying to move something out of the way. Every moment was completely whole and completely satisfying.

Creativity is the art of creating each moment being perfect. You have a direct experience of being the one who creates your experience of your life, of being the one who creates satisfaction in your life. You are in fact the space or context out of which your life is generated, and when you can begin to come out of the experience of creating your life moment to moment, of “this is it,” that is really what creativity is.

From an article by Hal Isen in the November 1977 Graduate Review.  You can read the entire article at  erhardseminarstraining.com Werner Erhard and est

Operating Principles for a You and Me World

From the March 1980 Graduate Review report on ‘A World That Works For Everyone’

Werner shared his own perceptions of some of the new rules, or operating principles, for the you and me context.

• Respect the other person’s point of view, whether or not you agree with it. Recognize that if you had their history, their circumstances, and the forces that play on them, you would likely have their point of view.
• Consider life a privilege – all of it, even the parts that are difficult or seem a waste of time.
• Give up the islands that reinforce mediocrity, the safe places where we gossip and complain to one another, where we are petty.
• Take a chance. Be willing to put your reputation on the line; have something at stake.
• Work for satisfaction rather than for credit
• Honor your word. There will be times when the circumstances of life will make you forget who you are and what you’re about. That is when you need to be committed to honoring your word, making what you say count.

From The est Training website