We, the est pests

Back to what was counterproductive (in my opinion) about the est and Werner Erhard and Associates culture of 1980-84, the period in which I was active.

The est training was where I first discovered many of my patterns and realized that I could take responsibility for the crap in my life and that I had the opportunity to be the source of my own sense of being loved and loving. And it was in experiences designed by Werner Erhard that I had these discoveries.

And they were all things that had been around for a long time. Werner Erhard did not invent unconditional love, self love, self-esteem, non-attachment to emotions, meditation and meditation-like experiences, etc. Many of us ran around talking about these things, though, as if Werner Erhard had somehow invented them. And as if they were only discoverable through Werner Erhard programs.

Werner has a unique ability, I would say a genius, for designing and leading experiential-learning programs. He is a great teacher and coach and facilitator. And we made it too much about the personality Werner Erhard (and by "we" I include everyone, including the personality Werner Erhard), to the point that the personality Werner Erhard became the greatest hindrance to the cause of personal, organizational, and social transformation.

I don't want to deny in any way the extraordinary and unique effectiveness of the est training and all the programs which followed it! But I also don't want to deny the unique obnoxiousness of many of the people who took the est training, were encouraged to share their experience with others, and didn't realize they had adopted a belief that these people "should" take the training and would be "better" for having done so.

The source of love and approval

As I noted in an earlier entry, I started this particular blog--and went back into therapy--in large measure to deal with a recurring pattern: I start a project with great promise (i.e., I have a great idea), I get a great deal of preliminary work done, make some great plans, and then when it comes to executing them, bringing them to fruition, I get paralyzed.

That's a pattern, that's not me. What I'm doing now is to let go of my resistance to the pattern and be OK that it is there, so I can look at what's underneath it, recreate it, and dissappear it. Ah, that's a nice, old-jargon way of describing what I'm doing. Let's try putting it another way.

I have a problem. In the past, I've dealt with the problem by abandoning the old project, feeling bad, and then after a while taking up a new project. What I've decided to do now is to love myself and accept myself as is, and, rather than avoiding the problem, stay in the midst of it.

Thus particular pattern is not uncommon among people who grew up in an alcoholic or other home environment that did not offer consisten, unconditional love. In my case, there were several dynamics:

• My father could blow up and say horrible, damaging things at any time, with the least provocation. My sister and I both tend to feel horrible about ourselves, to internally treat ourselves the way our father did.
• My mother rarely expressed anger. When she did, it was usually at my father. With me, anyway, she lavished huge amounts of praise on various accomplishments, praise that could be hyperbolic. At this point in my life, I know my mother loved me. Growing up, I felt that I was loved for all the incredible, wonderful things I was doing.

So I developed almost a split personality. On one hand, the worthless person who deserved these hugely hurtful emotional outbursts from my father, the person whose existence caused him misery because, as he told us so often, he had this huge financial burdens because of the family and so could not do what he wanted with his life.

This was also combined with and impacted my feelings of physical inadequacy.

Come to think of it, this effusive praise stuff from my mother also had a lot to do with my feelings of physical inadequacy. I developed a sense, made some sort of decision, that if I wasn't fantastic at something I was worthless.

I'm worthless except when I do something that gets lots and lots of praise. If I do something wrong, my father will hate me and my peers will laugh at and reject me. Unless I know it is something I will do fantastically well, it's best to hide.

Now what I learned from, discovered through, however you put it, Werner Erhard is that I don't have to be a victim. I have the opportunity to recognize that these are decisions I made as a child, to take responsibility for having made them, and to release them and/or be aware that they are thoughts/beliefs (accompanied by body sensations and emotions) that get triggered and that I can observe and be aware of and experience them and choose not to act out of them.

I went through a period of relaxed awareness this morning (i.e., meditation) and what came to me is that the root of my block is feeling unloved and that what I create, the object I create, must be perfect and unassailable and be impressive and adulation-inducing; if it can be criticized, it means I am horrible. And I will be revealed to be horrible, the horrible person my father saw me as.

And I remembered that I just need to love myself. My validation needs to be internal. As long as it is about doing something that will win me external love, my emotional life will be a roller coaster.

Ah ha! And what I discovered in Werner Erhard programs was that I can choose at any moment to love myself to be the source of my own acceptance and approval. And I will at times forget that, and then can remember it all over again.