Word: esteli
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...screwed up my marriage, all my love affairs, all my jobs, just to prove that my mother was right. It's all bullshit and I'm not going to do it any more." One of the men says he can't get over the feeling that est is a gigantic fraud. A dapper fellow with a mustache says coolly that nothing in the proceedings has touched...
...change of pace, everyone is marched up to the stage, row by row, to confront the crowd, est workers eyeball each trainee from a few feet away, while Ron screams to "get rid of that phony smile, drop that face!" Legs buckle. Four people faint; one throws up. Then two more processes. One on danger: as we lie there for hours, eyes closed, listening to Ron conjure up images of danger, est attendants clump ominously around our bodies. More agonized screaming. Last, a "reverse danger" process. We are told everyone around us-in fact millions of people -are afraid...
According to interviews with trainees, the second weekend features more est metaphysics and more difficult exercises. "Being" is far more important than "doing" or "having." We are all "perfect" and only our "barriers" keep us from experiencing our perfection. In one exercise, trainees imagine or "build" a perfect house in their minds, install perfect furniture, then conjure up a file cabinet with complete folders on everyone they know or ever wanted to know...
...beneath their chairs a daisy, a cherry tomato and a strawberry, and do an exercise to put themselves inside each object. "You're part of every atom in the world and every atom is part of you." We are all gods who create our own worlds. The central est message appears around 6 p.m. on the last day: What you do has no effect on anything else. You are a machine, and if you accept that fact you will have a rich life, because you will know that it doesn't matter. Choose to let the world...
Much of the thought is borrowed from Zen Buddhism: the need to "stop thinking and let go" (the "slaying of the mind" in Buddhism), the invitation to live a life of pure experience and alert passivity. But in est "you get what you get," and Erhard stirs an activist message into his intellectual pudding for those who want it. The urging to "be the cause, not the effect of your life" seems to work well with est trainees who are blamers or professional victims. In est it is very important to change the world or very important to give...