by Adelaide Bry
I'm a happy guy and I still have some things that bother me.
I don't think I ever noticed before what communication was all about. I mean, really paying attention to someone else. I listen now.
I know I am the center of my universe. When I operate from stuff in the past, I'm not seeing what's happening right now. Sure, I can still choose to react the way I used to. Or I can be different.
Recently my Dad and I were together in the car and I was driving. He began his stuff. "Listen, Dennis, you're driving too fast, turn here, do this, don't do that!" Throwing his shit at me. It used to make me furious, but I either didn't say anything or I let it go.
This time I took a look at what was happening. I saw that this was my father's way of saying he loves me. He can't come out and say that but he can tell me how to drive and how to run my life. I can deal with it now. Maybe I'll talk to him about it soon.
When you go through est, you learn that getting stuck on something just keeps it from working. When you let go, it can work.
I let go last week of wanting to travel, which was the reason I wanted a job in a travel agency. I said to myself, "OK, I won't travel." On Monday, my boss called me in and told me that I was going to Italy to lead a group.
I've been in the job eight months and all this time I've been stuck on traveling. When I got off it, it happened.
What I'm getting to look at now that's really important for me is the way I relate to female bosses. 1 get furious at the women I work for at the slightest provocation.
The woman I'm working with now blew up at me the other day because I didn't leave a phone message on her desk. Usually I would freak out at something like that.
I saw that it wasn't the message she was especially angry at. She was just upset that day. But, still, I became nervous. I could feel my face start to twitch, my heart was pounding, my head was spinning. And I had a silly smile on my face. It is only since est that I get in touch with my body feelings when I'm upset.
My boss looked at me peculiarly and asked what I was laughing at. "I'm not laughing," I said. "I'm just smiling." She told me she thought I had a warped sense of humor. That was what really made me aware of my nervous smile and the silly contortions on my face.
I took responsibility for her reaction to me. Before est, I would have been stuck on that incident for days, running it through my mind over and over and letting it take over my life. Now I acknowledge to myself that it happened and that I might bring it up again. After the first day of looking at it from every possible angle, you know, rerunning every aspect of what happened, it simply disappeared.
Another thing. I had never, ever told my mother that I loved her. On Mother's Day, I called her and told her just that. I just said, "Mom, I love you." It felt terrific.
Shorthand: A Glossary
"I am willing for you to have space to share the way you got how you run your racket and I have considerations. . . ." -- An est volunteer
Werner is deeply concerned with communication. The training gives considerable space to it -- what it is, what it isn't, the way to do it, the way not to do it, plus a lot of opportunities to actually communicate. The Communication Workshops were created to transform peopie's consciousness regarding communication. And the language of est was created as a tool to facilitate true communication.
Werner says, "Anything you can communicate about, you can be with -- at choice." He explains est talk as "incredibly useful and actually important when you are describing something that can't be contained in a person's belief system. What it does is allow people to know that you're not describing what they think you're describing." Considering there's a lot that's new (to the West, if not to the East) in est, it's not surprising that Werner is reportedly working on a new dictionary because he feels the existing ones are inadequate.
What follows is a compilation of words and phrases -- the est shorthand -- used in the training and by graduates. They're in two categories -- words you can use and words you can use but which get you in trouble.
I should note that Werner looked these definitions over and stated that they were inaccurate if understood as the definitions he intended.
I totally respect Werner's desire for perfection and at the same time I want to give the reader some sense of est's special use of words, as I experienced getting them and as I have used them in this manuscript.
So these definitions are mine, with a little help from my est graduate friends and colleagues.
A. Words you can use and what they mean: acknowledge: A recognition of one person by another. act: As in "getting your 'act' together"; your front to the world. agreement: A mutual understanding or arrangement about which it's understood that you're going to do what you say you're going to do. est places importance on choosing to be responsible for keeping agreements. If you break an agreement with est, you are expected to look at what is in the space between you and fulfilling your agreement. An est maxim is "Your life works to the degree to which you keep your agreements." Also, agreement is that by which you know, for example, that it is dangerous to walk in front of a bus; the way you know the physical universe. and: Used in est to avoid invidious contrast; replaces the word "but," which is hardly ever used in est (see but, section B). asshole: What everyone is before he or she knows what is real and what isn't. assist: Aid to another person, coming from the assumption that the other person is responsible and at cause. Contrasted in est to "help," which put the recipient at effect (see help, section B). barrier: What's between you and experiencing your own perfection; the something inside you that prevents you from seeing what's going on both inside and outside you. belief: A nonexperiential way of knowing, which often prevents you from experiencing and thereby accepting what's so; a preconception, usually a misconception, that you once learned and which keeps you from seeing what's going on right now; used in the expression "belief system," which is a whole bunch of beliefs on a particular subject, such as "love," "success," "Mother." buttons: As in "pushing your buttons," triggering automatic behavior; reacting in a predictable way to certain stimuli and, especially, to things that relate to deep feelings such as love, anger, happiness, sadness. (Think, for example, of when and why you smile.) An unwitting response, accompanied by "reasons" that are actually rationalizations. cause: Being "at the cause" of your experience is the direct opposite of being at its effect"; to create your life, to make it happen consciously by commission rather than omission: if we are the cause of our lives, then we create our own reality and cannot be at its effect (victimized, powerless). A concept which, once experienced, gives people incredible power over their own lives. chatter: As in "the ceaseless chatter of your mind"; means the voices that direct your life from such nonexperiential knowledge as beliefs, which impose judgments and decisions -- "considerations" -- on things and which distort or put up barriers to experience. clear: As in getting clear, clarifying an issue; removing the debris that prevents you from seeing something cleanly and sharply; to free from doubt, restriction, and obstruction; cloudless. Closely related to "belief systems," which are what often prevent people from getting clear. considerations: A person's value system; judgments, decisions, reasons, opinions; barriers to truth because they get in the way of seeing what's really happening; a part of one's experience, which is to be acknowledged before one chooses but which is not why one chooses; things people use to be right or to justify their behavior. effect: As in "at the effect of"; the consequences or outcome of cause; when one is at the effect of life, one cannot cause it and therefore feels powerless and victimized. One can move from being at the effect to being at the cause by choosing to choose one's experience. experience: What est is all about; the source of reality. fabulous: An est acknowledgment of communication (est synonyms are: great, thank you, marvelous, for sure, very nice); has no relationship to quality of communication. get, got: Means that someone realizes the meaning or significance of a communication or experience; a revelation; to Heinlein fans: "grok." intention: Directly relate
d to getting what you want; you achieve your goals to the extent that you're clear about your intention; the essence of communication. love: A willingness for the other to be as he or she is and as he or she is not; in est, bears little relationship to the American concept (as portrayed in the likes of Love Story); a function of communication; (contrary to popular notion, love is strangled by need). mind: "A linear arrangement of multisensory total records of successive moments of now"; what we consider ourselves to be -- the purpose of which is survival. observation: The only way to know, besides "natural knowing"; opposed to belief. on purpose: Going about your business (job, life, etc.) with intention and with your eye on the goal. point of view: The stuff that makes you you; your thoughts, ideas, beliefs, concepts; in order to be able to choose you must come "off your point of view." process: What everyone thinks is the secret magical ingredient of est but which is actually one of several; according to the brochure, "a method by which a person experiences and looks at, in an expanded state of consciousness and without judgment, what is actually so with regard to specific areas in his or her life, and one's fixed or unconscious attitudes about those areas. The intended results of doing a training process is a release to greater spontaneity." (In the training, you begin a process by closing your eyes and getting into your space, assisted by suggestions from the trainer. In life, a process is a learning experience.) racket: As in running your racket, doing your same old "number"; the behavior that you always thought got you what you wanted before you noticed that it didn't; your old, and probably useless, patterns. reality: est says that a test for reality is physicalness, i.e., dimension, form, and existence in time. That established, est then says that what we consider reality is illusion and the only thing that's really real is experience. running your life: Whatever is controlling or dominating your life; used to describe events or behavior that you're feeling victimized by; for instance, "his fear of sex is running his life." share: To communicate insights, realizations, or experiences. source: Where it all comes from, which boils down to you; thus, you, me, he, she are all God by being God of each of our universes, which is really one universe. space: According to Werner, "'From here' is not space, it is distance. From here to the very edge of the universe is not space; it is distance. And what the physicists call space is actually distance. Space is that medium in which distance exists, actually where everything exists. Space is not measurable, it is only experienceable." To allow somebody space is to let the other person be, do, say what he wants freely and without imposing your own judgments. truth: That which you experience. Werner says, "If you put the truth into the system in which you cradled the lie, the truth becomes a lie. A very simple way of saying the truth believed is a lie. If you go around telling the truth you are lying. The horrible part about it is that the truth is so darn believable, people believe it a lot." unconscious: What we are most of the time, oblivious, "out to lunch," unaware; est gives people the "space" to wake up so they can look at their Lives -- and thus live them. yama yama: Synonym for chatter, which is the automatic stuff going on in your brain most of the time. B. Words you can use but which get you into trouble (no-no's) and what they mean: believe: A lousy way to know something; a justification for what you're doing and thus irrelevant if not useless (see belief, section A). Trainees are exhorted not to "believe" est. but: An archaic concept rarely, if ever, expressed in est circles and generally replaced by and. change: An alteration of something in the physical universe; an alteration in form -- as opposed to transubstantiation (which is what est is really all about). help: To aid someone coming from the assumption that he or she is at effect, i.e., that he or she needs your aid (see assist, section A). how: There's no way you can know how to do something; you can only know the way to do something (all of which is too complex to diagram here). no: If it's used, I've never heard it. (It's incredible to me that sentences can be flawlessly and easily constructed to appear to say "yes" but actually say "no.") reason: All the stuff we use to justify why we do things, which keeps us from feeling alive. try: We avoid doing things in our lives by trying to do them instead of doing them, or leaving them alone. understanding: The booby prize (the prize, of course, goes to experience -- or getting it). (John Denver dedicated this song to Werner Erhard and everyone in est) "Looking for Space" * by John Denver On the road of experience I'm trying to find my own way Sometimes I wish that I could fly away When I think that I'm moving Suddenly things stand still I'm afraid 'cause I think they always will And I'm looking for space And to find out who I am And I'm looking to know and understand It's a sweet sweet dream Sometimes I'm almost there Sometimes I fly like an eagle and Sometimes I'm deep in despair All alone in the universe Sometimes that's how it seems I get lost in the sadness and the screams Then I look in the center Suddenly everything's clear I find myself in the sunshine and my dreams And I'm looking for space And to find out who I am And I'm looking to know and understand It's a sweet sweet dream Sometimes I'm almost there Sometimes I fly like an eagle and Sometimes I'm deep in despair On the road of experience Join in the living day If there's an answer It's just that it's just that way When you're looking for space And to find out who you are When you're looking to try and reach the stars It's a sweet sweet dream Sometimes I'm almost there Sometimes I fly like an eagle and Sometimes I'm deep in despair * Copyright 1975 Cherry Lane Music Co. (ASCAP). Used by permission. All rights reserved.
NOTE
For further information about est, write to Erhard
Seminars Training, 1750 Union Street, San Francisco,
California 94123.