Word: ests
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...est Or Not To est...
John Leo's article on est [June 7] moves me to write. I am a real estate broker in Los Angeles and since I took the est training a year and a half ago my income has nearly doubled, my relationship with my wife, which was O.K., has flowered into a beautiful thing and, most dramatically, my father and I, after 43 years of not communicating, have become fast friends...
...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...
...Yorker who took est a year ago got the Zen message and plunged into depression. "I was in a black hole for weeks. Nothing mattered, nothing would change." Others report increased capacity for work and euphoria ("like a drug high," said one) that gradually fades. A few say their lives are permanently changed and free of neuroses...