Do We Really Create Our Own Reality?
I once heard Werner Erhard, the controversial founder of the "est training" in the early 70s, speaking at Swami Muktananda's ashram in South Fallsburg, New York. Knowing he was addressing a "spiritual" crowd, he said, "I know you all know that you're not your bodies, right?" General assent. "Well, I bet if I took you over to the door and slammed it on your thumb, you would think that you were your body pretty damn quickly." What I took from that -- and I don't pretend to know what he meant -- was that even if something could very well be ultimately true (that we are not our bodies), what's actually important is what's real to us, where we are actually living. And from where most of us reside most of the time, we are our bodies; when the idea that we're not is held merely as a belief system, it leaves us prey to something else Werner used to say: "The truth believed is a lie."
With that in mind, one of the central truths his training put forth was concerning one's responsibility for...well, for everything. It is perhaps easier to grasp that one is responsible for one's experience of everything -- how one reacts, responds to, and interprets events. Two children growing up with the same abusive, alcoholic father will often draw vastly different conclusions from the same situation, and thus will have radically different experiences for which they are, in fact, responsible for creating, albeit perhaps unconsciously. Erhard was suggesting we could bring awareness to the fact that we are not merely helpless victims of the buffeting winds of circumstance, but that our own personal stance in relation to circumstances literally alters our experience of those same circumstances, such that it can be said we create our own reality. What you see is what you get. And how you see determines what you see.
For example, if I walk down the street with an urgent need to pee, I will filter out nearly everything else in front of me as I scan for the nearest restroom. Were I craving sweets, I'd primarily notice the bakeries and candy stores and miss a lot of other sensory input. In a similar vein, when the six blind men touch the elephant in the well-known parable, the one touching the trunk "sees" it as a long, narrow tube while the one stroking its flank "knows" it is a wall. Both are pieces of the truth, determined by their limited points of view, but neither sees the whole picture. So in that sense, our unique way of seeing life, determined by our needs and desires and where we're standing, so to speak -- our stance -- creates what we see.
Thus we have choice and power not over what's actually out there or what happens to us, but rather, how we see and interpret what's out there and what happens. Since the tendency with ideas like this is to test them at their extremes, an example would be those very rare Holocaust victims who consciously, even joyfully in a few cases, entered the gas chambers still praising God (as recounted in Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust by Yaffa Eliach.) Despite the obviously unthinkable conditions of the Nazi camps, there was still, for some at least, an element of choice in how they responded. Viktor Frankl's landmark work, Man's Search for Meaning, makes the same point.
But this idea of "creating your reality" can be one of those truths which, when believed, becomes a lie. That is, both within the est world as well as when the idea began to leak into the New Age culture at large, it was adopted in such a way as to sometimes imply that not only, for example, did the Jews create their own way of experiencing or responding to the Holocaust, but since we're responsible for everything, they created the Holocaust itself. And that's the philosophical leap that got many critics of est rightfully upset. Responsibility, Erhard said, "begins with the acknowledgment that one is at cause in the matter, whether one experiences that as true or not." That is where we can get into trouble, because such an idea, even if ultimately and philosophically true, can be turned into a lie when used to essentially blame the victims and let oneself off the hook for everyone else's suffering, since they are responsible for creating it.
The idea can then further devolve to what former est trainer Stewart Emery (who eventually defected) called the Super-Source Syndrome, in which people would complete the training and run up to him afterward shouting with glee, "I am God! I am God!" and he would respond by saying, "Great! Here's a fish and a bottle of wine, now go feed the hungry masses." Before very long, it became acceptable in New Age circles to say things like, "I created a thunderstorm today," or, "I created having cancer," or when the responsibility got transferred over to a guru instead, it became, "Baba gave me dysentery."
For many of us, the very real evolution of our awareness does in fact move, over time, from the unexamined assumption of a victim mentality that blames others, life itself or God for everything that happens to us and around us, to the astounding and liberating insight that we are responsible for our experience of reality. That recognition puts us back in the driver's seat, piloting our own craft and no longer at the mercy of circumstance. That we had been constantly crashing into things was simply because we weren't steering; what was steering was our automatic, unexamined, interpretive stance in relationship to reality, and we kept hitting the wall, clueless. So it is an empowering and transformational shift to take responsibility in that way.
But as even Erhard and est were clear about, one doesn't get transformed once and breath a sigh of relief because it's finally over and done with. Rather, one gets transformed and recognizes that the rest of one's life will be a process of continuous transformation, breaking through the confines of one box, feeling a newfound freedom, but eventually discovering one has simply entered a much roomier box. In fact, consciousness itself can be seen as an infinite game of Chinese boxes, each new level containing all that came before, as well as contained in the one that remains unknown and unseen, lying in wait for us to bump up against its edges. Therefore, one doesn't "reach enlightenment," like a final state or resting place; rather, one recognizes that our beings are engaged in an ongoing process of enlighten-ing. (As in the title of one of Buckminster Fuller's books, I Seem to Be A Verb.) How boring and unimaginative reality would be if there weren't always vaster unknown vistas to explore.
"I create my reality" is a truth that can take someone out of the stifling prison of helplessness and victim-hood, but when it is adopted as a belief system, it becomes a lie, simply a new box to eventually break out of, into...what might the next box be? Werner sometimes referred to it as "what we don't know that we don't know." We can't know that "the earth is flat" is a limited view until we find ourselves one step further out, looking back at the globe. But from within the obvious "truth" of the flat-Earth worldview, no such greater context could possibly exist, for we don't even know that we don't know about it. It doesn't even exist as a possibility for us, and hence Werner often spoke of his work as "creating the possibility of possibility."
But if I were to speculate about what might await us should we discover that "I create my reality" is really just another box to move through, it would have something to do with the Buddhist notion of interdependent arising. Thich Nat Hanh has a well-known teaching about this he calls "interbeing":
"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. "Interbeing" is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix "inter-" with the verb "to be," we have a new verb, inter-be.
"If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. The logger's father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist." (From Peace is in Every Step.)
If all phenomena arise together in a mutually interdependent web of cause and effect, then we are not Super Source after all. You may be, as Werner said, "God in your universe," and so am I. But who's creating my reality when I share it with countless sentient beings who are likewise God in our shared universe? From this standpoint, reality is seen as a co-creation of everyone, everything, everywhere, since beginningless time, interdependently co-creating the Great Mystery in which we all find ourselves.
When people have the epiphany that "I am God! I created it all!" it stems from a glimpse of one's true nature, one's primordial identity as undifferentiated Awareness itself, in which it's not so much that one created it all, but that one is identical to it all. But there is a confusion of levels when the "I," which is the name we have given to our separate, egoic self, tries to sneak in the backdoor of undifferentiated Awareness and join the party, for there is no party as long as that "I" is there! So again, "I am God" is rooted in a glimpse or experience of a great truth that has been converted into a lie through the wily ambitions of the personal self not wanting to be left behind when the unified field takes over! Werner once asked, "Have you ever noticed that whenever you have a problem, you're around?" Similarly, whenever we have a moment of true flow, of being "in the zone," we're never there! Because the two cannot coexist. Logically, "I" cannot be present for the direct experience of "no-I." The Dalai Lama titled one of his books, A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night, pointing to that moment we've all known when the mind suddenly drops without effort and there remains only one's direct experience of what's occurring. Similarly, as we zip down a steep, snowy slope on our skis, there is only room in consciousness for the experience itself; as soon as "I" separates itself out in order to comment on what's happening, we fall, both from our skis and from Grace.
May we all conspire to co-create a reality that allows each of us to know who we are as mutually interdependent beings, arising within the great beauty and harmony of this mysterious backdrop of the unified field, the zone of Grace.
Image by Shermeee, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
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- 3-11-09
- Eliezer Sobel's blog
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A Reality That Ceates ..."co-creators"
Every aspect of reality is in a "co-creational" relationship with every other aspect.
There is no creation outside of infinite interaction ... creative moments of "plateau" rising and falling ... "as if out of chaos" ...
What creates 50,000 people at a stadium to all rise to their feet simultaneously ... without pre-conception ... no one is creating ... everyone co-creating ...
What makes a school of fish a school of fish ... the fact that they all swim together.
At a party one will find several larger and smaller "groupings of revelation" ... here and there ... among factioned interests
A few people can click ... out of the blue ... and find their own collective moment ... others may or may not be able to relate ...
Ones participation does not create the moment alone ... yet without this co-creational partcipation there is no such moment created
perfect symmetry
'interbeing'. I like it, it's novel, yet with a feel like remembering.
The fact that by visually observing a physical system (an atom), I am simultaneously effecting that atoms electron shell through the interplay of waves of light/photons and electrons. The visual never fails to stir a tasty head trip whenever I try to invision it. This may be too literal an analogy for some's taste's.
(que objective reality)
I'm glad to remember that while these interdancing subatomic systems may at first appear to be two entities, this is in fact not the case. In reality there is only one system, one siv that tries to grossly hold the proportions of it all into place. This siv holding back the full resolution of consciousness, like a pair of cosmic sunglasses, adding predictable form(s) to sensory data. This may be to abstract an analogy for some's taste's.
(que psychedlic reel)
Perhaps, its all a fraud. Maybe god made no choices at all, the universe being the way it is, because it is the only way that it can be. What is 'it' ? Who cares! If that is the case, consciousness finds itself waking up into a madhouse. To be a material being, with no hope, trapped on this rock, all alone. It's Hell!!!
(que flames)
http://www.myspace.com/danski2012
Some intra-web-site correlates
I'm not sure if Sobel was aware of Pinchbeck's piece "An Extravagant Hypothesis", but think this and that piece do correlate.
Hope my comment isn't 'flagged' for being off topic.
'Personal reality' and working at cross-purposes with some such summation, it seems, asks maybe just too much of us to figure out alone.
I think it not sin to lay out, all of us, our 'personal religion' into the clear light of day.
I prefer to think in speaking what we think: what we say or think is provisional, and that we should be willing to adjust our thinking to bring forth the most toward effects.
When everybody or 'ones' have so many different stakes in this, one wonders what a 'pull altogether' might entail?
What would any 'all' have to be willing to sacrifice while still being happy in some sum result or 'end game'?
Sacrificing ego is a commplace of all the collected wisdom traditions.
Sacrificing pride of race is another piece of 'advice'.
All of which seems to revolve around the term 'renunciation'.
Yet we are also advised about 'action' as preferable to inaction.
In one tradition 'tapas' is taught as very key.
Tapas refers to undergoing self-denial or rite of a kind of fasting for the sake of some desire. How odd.
Give up to get?
Yet we're told that in that case: Brahma's commission to 'create' the universes, he didn't know how to begin.
And the ever-wise Commissioner/s(?), in typical terseness said only one word: tapas.
I don't recall any advice about 'winning'.
And even some advice about it being okay to cheat so as to 'win' . . . so long as the 'cheating' is subservient to ultimately good end.
As things are today popularly being named 'desperate', it seems the very popularity of that term is bringing forth each and every possible new suggestion as to what, in some single-thing, will be the 'fix'.
Desperate times evidently call upon us to try and fix things rather desparately, in other words.
Well, with regard to the way the National Socialists attempted this self-same stance: they reasoned it all out, right? Excuse me if I think that that kind of 'reasoning' merely a form of insanity writ large.
And then, perhaps, we range about and try and find some tool in the lexicon of 'philosophical' ways and means and hope this one or that one can be some 'ultimate' way to accept wrongs. To deal.
In terms of dealing? We do have definite well known options. One of which might be termed a 'bee-hive' platform. This is that where we take something unpleasant and just 'walling' it off. With every such reaction to any perceived or actual injury, we might end up painting ourselves into a corner with just, even, one brain cell left to try and figure things out.
Yes I know that that is laughable.
Someone once said that the universe itself is part of everyone's brain, so that we don't have to take on the entire burden of the world upon our own personal, tiny and individual shoulders. We may want to, just because we relate to such a magnificent and internally referencing whole.
This idea, this so-called 'metaphysic' idea of how to deal by thinking or saying 'I am god', to be probative, it seems to me cannot be the magnification of any particular collection of limitations, but the inner voice as collected from a grander summation: this can be fixed.
As such reverbration obviously must be based on actual experiences and what has worked heretofore, it automatically means: little pea: not alone.
And just my own private interpretation. Since the word 'God' seems to be so important but variously interpreted.
I can only think of Raoul Wallenberg in the context of what Sobel wrote: how in the face of the potential personal things he would have to undergo in trying to help: might be killed and maybe even worse: left alive with the promise of torture for years and years. Cut off from all whom he loved and who loved him.
Yet he did undergo that. He stepped forth and by his actions proved, I think, he had to be just like God.
Not for his own sake. Not for 'him' to win. If God loves everyone, for us little units to love at all, we have to mimic that by trying to love just one, or two, or as many as we can. And not sit back and think someone else is going to do this or that: to help.
If that is what is meant by 'I am God'. I'm all for it.
My research tells me that such is a kind of historic editing of actual information. The original is not: "I am god", but "I AM (consciousness) IS good".
That's what we refuse to deal with. And when we put some one or another up in place of this first hand and only thing we actually know for certain, I think we make that mad. I really do think, this, that THAT is jealous. Then we also have an enemy, then, to deal with like no other.
And like all the prophets have said, with I think a 'wink': Good luck with that. We can't outrun ourselves.
======================
Art is the pinnacle of science. Science the pinnacle of knowledge. Knowledge the pinnacle of experiment. Experiment the perogative of self-awareness. Self awareness: the basis of art. <
You create your reality in it's entirety??
A brilliant piece, thank
A brilliant piece, thank you Eliezer, I really enjoyed reading it and the sensation of it striking a chord within me was wonderful.
Rob Dickins
Journeyman in the psychedelic 21st
Naga Raja
I found parts of this article interesting. However I can't really take any spiritual advice from Werner Erhard. He beat his wife, his son, and raped his daughter. A great teacher should be a better example for us all not worse one. You can find a transcript of the 60 minutes episode here:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/est/est20.html
You can find information about Landmark Education which carries on his seminar under a different name here:
http://www.rickross.com/groups/landmark.html#Reports%20and%20
Articles For anyone looking for a good map to steer clear of this kind of new age trap read On Becoming an Alchemist by Catherine Maccoun. The most accesible book on Alchemy and the Occult I have read.
We really do create our own reality
I would stay away from Werner Erhard, EST, and the Landmark Forum group.
However, we do create our own reality; and what happens in your life is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
You can't blame anyone or anything for your current reality. All you can do is take responsibility for it.
responsibility
No blame-glame
I don't know anything about 'est' except that one of my childhood girlfriends became very upset with me for being reticent in engaging in it with her.
She seemed to think I didn't really love her because I held back.
I never did know what that was all about.
Talking about needing to 'pee'. My dad once told me about a dream about me, that he saw me pee-ing on statues.
Later, with more study of my parent's favorite dictionary: the seventh edition of Websters, I came across the word: iconoclastic.
'A long pull, a strong pull and a pull altogether'.
This is the 'secret' of those people who move the 'juggernaut' . . . and maybe the massive stones of the very pyramids.
I visualize someone on the ropes who suddenly thinks: 'where're building this massive structure, why?'
And removes his or her hands, and if possible, walks away.
It might be possible, that the meaningful 'walking away' bit, hasn't been reached.
Then we have to ask, dropping the popular 'reality' creation, what other and better activity is there or are there?
So popular involvement and awareness is, it seems, in and of itself a self-accessioned/publically accessioned participation in a very problem.
More like a 'tug-o-war'.
Politicians are content with the latter conclusion and happy with a kind of 'static' or 'stasis'.
Or what? 'Winners' seem to tend to really tuck it to the losers and then rewrite the history so as to put the posterity into bad 'lights'.
Yes, I can see how we all 'create' or maybe just manage our 'reality' (note the singular that references individualism! The Greeks were the first to complain about the 'wildness' of their youth . . . and most Western philosophy takes pride in inheriting the 'perfection' of all that . . . as if 'it' were just one . . blah blah).
The point made above being: there may never be any 'one long, strong and altogether' pull.
Maybe, even cosmically, rebellion or non-cooperation will be seen as abberant or the 'minor' exceptions.
How do we deal with that? 'Extermination'? Prisons, punishments, and all the variety of defensive repulsive methods.
'All one' as a motto, at least can inform anyone who feels left out, that they still have a piece of the action. And if we don't give that kind of room for all to feel unexcluded. Seems likely there can be a build-up of resentment and potentially a lashing forth.
So in every circumstance, diplomacy is going to be the hardest of jobs.
Like someone one said: 'we do this, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.' The challenge is before us in plain sight. It draws upon all to use every atom and every cell to apply ourselves to these problems. And so: be engaged.
======================
Don't know. Don't care I don't know. glad to be learning. <
And the pyramids may
have been a cooperative, non-commercial, public-works project! That seems to be several people's thesis.
So maybe the pyramids are 'then up-to-the-minute' wisdom.
Perhaps knowing how ephemeral life can be, and how fragile it is, and that bad things can happen to good people, they thought it might be a good idea to preserve some information like a 'time-capsule'.
And maybe we extrapolate some hints this is very so. And yet, there still can be many edificies to merely popular ignorance or limited knowledge and limited understanding.
Well, they did the best they could do maybe. And what're we going to do? Why can't we build an edifice in the form of a question-mark? A shrugging figure? Maybe even a smiling shrugging figure?
Who knows? Who does really, really know: worthy of honor and respect. So long as that can be demonstrated in incontrovertible ways. That such is not forthcoming may indicate that espousing 'absolutes' disregards something very important: what you said: personal private realities and willingness that all should grow. Maybe some day: a meeting of minds and then, even maybe: a slice of heaven.
At any rate, I don't think any one will do anything feeling they must do so under external compulsion.
======================
60 Minutes Controversy
While I am not an apologist for Erhard's behaviors, I do have to mention that a little research into that 60 Minutes presentation will reveal that Scientology was behind it, manipulating CBS to assist them in their goal of destroying Erhard's reputation. (See Jane Self's book, "60 Minutes and the Assassination of Werner Erhard" here: http://www.amazon.com/Minutes-Assassination-Werner-Erhard-Television/dp/...
The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, a true madman in his own right, apparently had a gripe against Erhard for "borrowing" some of Hubbard's principles and incorporating them into the est training. When the FBI raided Scientology's office in D.C. many years ago, they discovered a file on Erhard, labeling him as "fair game" on their enemies list. They also got to Erhard's daughter, who later recanted the accusations she made on 60 Minutes, saying she was on drugs and had been taken in by Scientology as well.
Bottom line is, I don't think we'll ever know the full truth about Erhard, what he did or didn't do, because you'll hear diametrically opposed accounts depending on who's telling the story. I DO know that taking his training, at age 23, was a powerful spiritual experience that altered the direction of my life, and it is now nearly 35 years later and I can still point to est as the place of my first true awakening on the path. (And I am not involved with Landmark.)
But all of this is beside the central point of my article, which was to challenge the glib, largely unexamined belief system many New Age people held/hold called "I create my own reality."
Yes, but...
There was the classic exercise I introduced to some of my est friends way back when, to pierce through their too-easy use of words like "intention" after the fact: I'd hold a glass of water in one hand, tell my friend to "intend to stay dry," and once he had fully formulated that intention with 100% commitment, I'd completely douse him with the water. Now according to you, in retrospect, he "intended to get wet" but I don't see much value in that sort of Monday-morning quarterbacking, seems like just a way of staying on the responsibility bandwagon to explain away whatever already happened.
In other words, there was real power in appropriate application of Werner's approach, and there was also the tendency to glom onto lingo and buzz phrases that not only turned other people off and caused the anti-cult crowd to stand up and pay attention, but didn't serve the people themselves.
Can Intention Change the World? by Christian de Quincey
This is one of the best pieces about the topic I have found..I think it's worth the long quote:
"By itself, consciousness—as awareness and choice—is not sufficient to cause anything to happen in the physical world. Actual events also need energy. So, creating an intention (in consciousness) is not enough to make things happen.
However (according to the philosophy of panpsychism), energy and consciousness always go together. Consciousness is intrinsic to energy—i.e., energy always possesses some degree of internal awareness plus an innate ability to choose between possibilities.
In my books, I have described consciousness as “the innate ability of matter/energy to know, feel, and purposefully direct itself.” Consciousness, therefore, gives purposeful direction to the flow of energy. You could say that action is energy moving itself from within. This ability for self-directed motion (involving awareness and choice) is the consciousness “within” (intrinsic to) matter/energy.
In Consciousness from Zombies to Angels, I distinguish between consciousness per se (as merely awareness and choice) and consciousness embodied in energy. I am saying that consciousness alone cannot make things happen in the physical world.However, when embodied in energy (which, in actual fact, it always is) consciousness (intentionality) can and does cause action and changes the physical world.
That’s what I had in mind in Radical Knowing. When I described intention as “consciousness thrown out from the self . . . to cause some change” I was thinking of “consciousness as the intrinsic ability of matter/energy to know and direct itself from within.” Intention, then, moves energy from within by purposefully directing it toward the realization of some possibility.
By itself, however, intention/consciousness could not cause any change. It needs to act from “within” energy. In the actual world, there is no free-floating, disembodied intention or consciousness (energy and consciousness always go together). Therefore, every intention is always the expression of purpose through some change in energy.
That’s why intentions have causal potency. It’s why intention can cause changes in water. In those experiments, human intentions were expressed and shared by the consciousness in the water molecules, which then responded by redirecting the energy of the water, changing its pH or acidity level.
Bottom line: Intention is consciousness focused and directed with purpose. But for action to happen—for anything to manifest—something else besides conscious intention is required. And that “something else” is energy—which comes with consciousness “built-in.” That’s how intention-within-energy causes change and action in the physical world. Mind moves matter from within.
I hope this helps clear up the confusion."
Christian De Quincey
Source:
http://thewisdomblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/can-intention-change-the-w...
"Wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking". Antonio Machado
Pasito a pasito,Todo quiere ser querido.
Re: Can Intention Change the World? by Christian de Quincey
I hope that referring to topic versus to 'sub-contributor' doesn't convey some idea that I don't respect the 'reactors' to Sobel's excellent piece.
I'm taking the position of putting response to responses at the end of the thread. In doing so as a habit elsewhere I've learned that some other responders seem to have been over-looked. I add to the 'end' for the sake of having immediate reference to only two points: the original article on one hand, the immediately above or relatively near-by response. Since I can't tell what's going on while I'm writing, I refer to the topic or sub-topic and not to the author or the particular responder who may have written many other responses.
And, sigh, I can't respond to books referred to by responders that I haven't read. And I can't really feel it relevant to my personal ideation to take at face-value what is said by a book reviewer, even when the responder is the author of said book.
In short, even if reference to one's own book is intended to save time: adverstisement.
I'll probably read the book. Maybe even buy a copy.
Still. Not going to 'flag' anyone. I didn't HAVE to respond to this one.
Could have ignored it.
At all rates: what does 'energy' mean?
According to 'pure' physics: ambiguous.
What is the temperature of consciousness?
What is the range of temperature of some 'consciousness'?
The function of 'biological function' has lately altered. Some bugs live in radioactive pools, some at pressures of enormous measure. Some worms live in freezing cold, and NASA is beginning to admit: where life can be: unknown.
As for 'consciousness'?
Like what you and i and maybe even some 'gods' know?
Take one or another or another: speak from one or upon the other or the other.
From first hand experience alone, I'd say "energy" isn't about 'heat'. Nor even 'vibration'.
Not even about action pure and simple.
Sometimes I get up and do with glee and simple grace.
How did I do that?
Other times, like every step: I stub my toe and bring only disgrace or embarrassment upon me.
Evidently there is some way to differentiate between 'one engergy' and 'another energy' . . . just by first hand experiences.
I look forward to that being fully explicated. Talk about presumption. Yet scientific-method CAN AIM towards such.
It is even the very basis of the very principle of the idea of 'evolution'.
If impetus to grow and favor perfection of any body is inherant in such a concept, then, if, 'thought' or 'concept' can impinge on growth in any way: thought, word and deed emanating from these prior two things ultimately proves that thought and word are very forces of nature for at least man.
Then maybe man by selection makes good things 'gooder' or good things 'badder' or bad things badder or even everything 'extinct'? Or imposes on otherwise good or even neautral nature very bad for just 'him' alone?
That being posited: 'abandoment' of thought and word or personal will? What is that?
======================
Don't know. Care I don't know. Glad to be learning. Am I learning? or holding grudges?
Advertisement?
What are you talking about, man?
I just quoted a excellent clarification, by a brilliant philosopher, about one of the worst (and potentially dangerous) new age cliches, period.
My one and only agenda is to share high quality information with my fellow travellers, the transformational community.
Just that.
"Wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking". Antonio Machado
Pasito a pasito,Todo quiere ser querido.
Ideas about creating our reality
Choice?
Comes down to the free will discussion: I agree that even our thoughts are a lawful unfolding of all that came before, therefore out of our conscious control, or as Einstein said, even if it appears that we can do what we want, we can't "will what we want." Given that machine-like, automaticity of our own brains, we CAN awaken from the sleep of that mechanistic, determined life and be aware of it, and that distance, the observer, impacts that which is observed...
Spambots
I liked Sobel's article because it discusses elements of the EST training while using very little of the nonsensical jargon I usually hear from EST and Landmark graduates.
However, I stil see Erhard as little more than a con man (like most conmen he has many aliases). Perhaps he "created his own reality" and did not see himself as such. However, a great spiritual leader does not raise children who attack him on national TV, whether they are speaking the truth, or not. In fact a decent human being does not have such toxic relationships that their children would do that, let alone someone I would look to for advice.
I really take offense to Howard61's comment calling him one of the great minds of the 20th century. You make a contrast with Depok Chopra and say that Erhard could have been content to simlpy write and lecture. I don't think Erhard could have become so popular in such an honest format. Whatever someone thinks of Chopra (I have not read any of his books myself), one can read his books for free at the library (or buy one for a reasonable price) and make up their mind on the content without unneccesary coercion. If I want to know about Erhard's ideas I must attend one of his seminars, which are expensive and use standard textbook brainwashing techniques used by organizations like the military. So, his teaching is not so much something you learn, as it is something you buy into. I don't know anyone who has not attended a EST or Landmark seminar who would call him one of the great minds of the 20th century. If he wanted to benefit people with his teaching he would write something all have a better chance of getting free access to. As a librarian I think information should be free.
The only results I see from taking the EST training, or the Landmark Forum: people who tell me it changed their life without telling me in any concrete way how. It essentially turns people into spambots, having them mindlessly sell something they have been convinced is true via nonsensical jargon at best, and brainwashing at worst.
So, do we create our own reality? I would say we can alter our attitude and our perception which can have profound effects on how we interact with the world. But I don't think you need a conman like Erhard to show you that.
just to play devil's advocate...
Well, I took est, like I said, 34 years ago, and despite all the unfortunate/obnoxious aspects that people often fell into regarding getting others to come along for the ride, the main way it changed my life is that it provided me with my first experiential glimpse of the awakened state--a mini-satori, in the Zen sense--which is to say, I tapped into the recognition of my essential identity as conscious awareness, as distinct from the chattering voice in my head, which, until that point, had passed itself off as "me." This fundamental insight became the originating force behind the next three decades of my spiritual path, so I remain indebted to Erhard's training for launching my journey.
On a more "mundane" but perhaps equally or even more important level, it helped restore and resolve my relationship with my parents, and I saw other families and relationships all around me find healing as well. Werner himself was indeed incredibly charismatic, brilliant, and powerful in person, and masterful in his way of working with people, so it's far too easy to simply write him off as a con man, when so many people reported being genuinely touched by him in a positive way, and for the most part, those reports have stood the test of time for most people, decades later. And not to say that you can't also find many detractors out there who would vehemently disagree with this assessment.
I also agree that something is very questionable and worthy of criticism about the fact that his family relations were so problematic, or, as you say, toxic, and I'm also aware of the many other questionable behaviors he has been accused of over the years. Whether they were true or not, he was nevertheless able to create a program that profoundly benefited many people. And I recently saw a video clip of his two daughters tearfully accepting a humanitarian award on their father's behalf, and their acknowledgment of him was very genuine and heartfelt, so it's hard to know what goes on inside a family.
As for written work, many spiritual leaders--Adi Da comes to mind--wrote voluminous texts that were highly sophisticated theological tomes, respected and praised by people like Alan Watts and Ken Wilber and Alex Grey, yet could easily be pegged as psychopaths in their personal lives from a certain perspective. So simply having access to a teacher's written work doesn't really solve the problem.
An Aussie Aborigine's view to creating reality
If you did it, then you'd have to know it, so therefore, we have done(ie created), nothing but which is known to us as irrefutable.
Every fact about any perception of all the world, that is not substantiating your own analysis of that world, is evidence that you did not cause that world to be your reality.
Surely none of us caused the reality in which our perception of it being real is challengable. And in fact, whenever even a mere mortal has significantly acheived a real deed, their comprehension of that acheivment is impossible to falsify.
Bidet
Eliezer, you seem to have misunderstood me on a point. I did not suggest that Erhard having his teachings available in print would shed much light on the disconnect between what he claimed to teach and his own personal life. Having his teachings in print would eliminate the need for someone to spend $450 dollars for a weekend seminar that many people find degrading. This and many other things about Erhard make me believe he was only in it for the money. If someone has a good idea it should seem like one without having to have it drilled into your head using textbook brainwashing techniques.
It is great that people have had positive experiences from his training. Henry Miller had one of his greatest epiphanies (one might describe it as satori) looking at two pieces of feces someone had mistakenly dropped in a bidet. That does not mean I will line up with a fist full of dollars to look at a bidet full of excrement.
reading about....
Again, you miss the point
well it comes downs to...
I'm not missing your point, but I guess since you don't know me, you're missing or unwilling to get my point, or take me at my word--fair enough! But I have met the man, interviewed him, experienced his work directly, found it beneficial, profound at times, eye-opening, challenging and useful--and actually astounding in it's ability to awaken people to a dimension of themselves that they/we were hitherto aware of only in theory or not at all-- and this was 34 years ago and I still stand by those conclusions. Prior to taking the est training, I had just spent 6 months doing nothing bur reading and studying the great spiritual writings, historical and contemporary, of everyone I could get my hands on, and thought I 'understood' what I was reading, but not until the training did all my readings suddenly click into place on a direct, experiential level--as in, "Oh, THAT'S what all those books were pointing to!"
And unlike "true believers," and what makes my voice in this matter a bit unique, perhaps, is that I also recognized and found extremely distasteful all the pitfalls and cultish fall-out that he was also responsible for creating around his scene; however, even given that, I nevertheless personally never had the remotest sense of him being in it for the money, and given the value I felt I was receiving, I didn't in any way feel the cost was excessive, so didn't begrudge them the fee, which always seemed like a very reasonable charge for services rendered. You pay more for a session or three with a shrink than they were charging for two long weekends, totalling 60 hours. Which is unlike what I've heard about Scientology, for one example, which apparently charges people progressively more and more money to get to "the next level" and Hubbard himself is rumored to have once stated, at the beginning, "I want to start a religion--that's where the money is!" If you had seen the intense and sincere and tireless, loving commitment of the people leading Erhard's training, and the way they relentlessly supported people's best selves and highest possibilities, and stay at it for hours and hours, it was clear they all could have easily gotten top-level corporate management positions for far more money and far less work...in fact, most if not all of his trainers had already been highly-paid executives and physicans before becoming trainers, and took salary cuts to do something that had greater meaning for them. It just seems as if you've completely bought into, without any room for questioning, the typically negative, biased 2nd-hand reports, often stemming from other people who also hadn't experienced the work, and I was only attempting to let you know that there was more to it than simply someone out to con people out of their cash. The people who participated were highly intelligent, skeptical, and well-educated, and included physicians, attorneys, artists, physicists, and were not just a bunch of gullible and vulnerable sad sacks looking for easy answers, but people engaged and challenged at the very highest level of intellectual and philosophical understanding. You don't have to take my word for it, obviously, but it was obvious to me that no simple con man would be capable of delivering that kind of program to such a varied, high-functioning and thoughtful group of thousands of people, the vast majority of which enjoyed and valued what they received for their modest investment.
But I suspect we are both rather locked into our positions about this and unlikely to see the other's point of view, so I am ready to leave it at that. Thanks for the dialogue, though!
Yes, I don't think either of
Thanks for the dialogue. I appreciate your responses and apologize if I was at all offensive. A friend of mine recently participated in landmark and in my opinion he does not seemed to have changed for the better. After speaking with him for a while I had the impression that they had hijacked his brain to sell their product, because he was speaking a lot of jargon that did not translate well into English. He told me it had helped his relationships (only three days after taking the seminar mind you), but when I asked him how it had helped them and for some objective examples he became rather defensive, almost hostile, the opposite of his character. This and reading accounts by Rick Ross has led me to believe it only gives the impression of helping (Landmark encourages you to get in touch with a list of people after the course). And since Landmark is the only place I know of where Erhard's teaching is still widely available, it may or may not be fair to base my opinion of Erhard on Landmark. However, since you made a point of mentioning transmission from teacher to student, I feel it is a sensible conclusion to reach. Otherwise he has not left much behind except a bunch of individuals who most rational people can't help but question given Erhard's reputation and all the information/rumors circulating about him and his teaching. That being said, as a fan of psychedelic plants I'm sure others could level similar criticism at my experiences, which are also often maligned and surely sound irrational to the uninitiated.
One thing actually sounds appealing to me about Erhard's training. From what I have heard he seemed to have used people's desire for a guru to try and break that conditioning. I like it whenever somebody can puree some vegetables in the gravy so they eat something they don't know they need. As I stated before, the seeming contradictions in his character disturb me, but I guess this is just human nature.
I surely took some of my frustration with my estranged friend out via my comments. For this I apologize.
Thanks again for the dialogue.
No worries...
It's a controversial subject, with some very strong opinions on either side, and I think you and I have been able to arrive at a somewhat saner and more moderate consideration of it, and I appreciate your side of that.
Yes, even in my day, there were plenty of people around who were justifiably described as being "estholes"--seemingly more into browbeating others into a program that had presumably changed their lives, than simply embodying their changed life. I remember thinking, however, that it was similar to seeing a great movie and then wanting to tell your best friends, "You HAVE to see this! You'll love it." That is, the fundamental urge, even for the browbeaters, was initially simply the desire to share something cool with people they loved. Unfortunately, this well-intentioned desire escalated in some cases to an off-putting, cultish obsession to recruit.)
But there were plenty others who quietly took what they had gained and created some remarkable results, such as healing long-estranged family relationships, revamping their livelihoods and businesses, not merely in terms of profit, but in ways that would contribute more to the world, or embarking on new ventures that had previously been relegated to the dungheap of forgotten dreams. Or, as I've indicated in my case, set out on the spiritual journey fueled by an experiential taste of what I had previously only read about.
As a long-time experimenter with psychedelics, I would also add that the place in consciousness I found myself awake to at the end of the est training was one of only a handful of times in my life I experienced that sort of "place" and opening without the help of plant agents. (I recall Yippie founder Jerry Rubin, with whom I was acquainted, excitedly telling his friends once, "Don't you see? Werner is describing what it means to be stoned!")
Sorry, I wasn't trying to have the last word....! :)
Werner Erhard
"I noticed only a very few
"I noticed only a very few responses that indicated that the poster had actually done his homework to get the available information to make a sound, intelligent choice. I was on Werner Erhard’s personal staff at Franklin House in San Francisco for three and a half years. Personally, I’m always a little skeptical when people offer up information about Werner. If they can’t tell me what painting hung in his bedroom, I’m probably wasting my time."
This makes you sound very arrogant and is also a very convenient stance for you to take which which prevents you from challenging your own opinions. By your logic if I never knew the man (I can't tell you what was in his bedroom) I can't make any comment on him. That is absurd.
I know more than enough about him and what he peddled to know I don't want to take spiritual advice from someone with such toxic family relationships. I would rather take advice from someone whose family has good things to say about them. I see that as a very sound and well-informed decision.
I also think his legacy (Landmark) turns people into spambots. Gurus (I think of martial arts teachers in particular) are often judged not merely by their own accomplishments, but how well they pass them down. Landmark seems like nothing more than a system that turns people into spambots, not a proud legacy.
I hardly know where to
I hardly know where to begin.
Number one: What is it exactly that is so bad about arrogance when it’s well-founded? I think Gandhi was extraordinarily and delightfully arrogant in telling the British that they should leave India. But I have no issue with that arrogance.
Number two: Actually, by my logic, anyone is free to say anything as long as they have taken the time to thoroughly investigate what it is they’re saying so that they are capable of saying it with a bit more confidence than that which is provided by “I know.”
Number three: My reference to the painting in Werner’s bedroom (It was a painting of Houdini in chains emerging from a mist, by the way, that I personally always found fascinating, which is probably more than anything else why I referenced it.) was simply to provide my credentials for what I was saying; never to challenge anyone else’s right to speak.
Number four: For several of the incidents that have landed under the rubric of “toxic family relationships” I was an eye witness. I know what I saw. My first manager at Franklin House was a woman named Pat Campbell. She also happened to be Werner’s first wife. It was probably the best example I’ve ever seen of a relationship between an ex-wife, an ex-husband, and a current wife. God grant that we should all be able to pull that one off someday. I could give you more about the kids but that’s not the point.
Number five: You seem to fancy me a champion of Werner Erhard. I am not. There are several areas in which I feel quite certain that Werner screwed things up. I have told him those things. I applauded the man for a single thing: “For me Werner expanded the conversation dramatically at a time when the conversation desperately needed to be expanded. For that alone I say, thank you.” I stand by that.
Number six: When I think of gurus I go to the martial arts as well. I studied White Crane gung-fu under Master George Long for several years. It was a superb and humbling experience. Apart from gung-fu and acupuncture, Master Long’s primary concerns in life seemed to be blonde women, taller than him and French brandy. Did that make him something less as a master? I don’t know, probably, ultimately, in some way, yes it did. But the comfort zone was so wide that it would take me a lifetime to close that gap to a point at which I might be tempted to confront him about those things.
Number seven: I don’t know what a spambot is and I could give a rat’s butt about Werner Erhard’s legacy and as for Landmark, Werner always said about est “If it can’t survive without me, then it shouldn’t survive.” Landmark will go wherever it does. Let’s just wish them well. Why not?
Number eight: You say I am prevented from challenging my own opinions. I have done so. Each step of the way. I may be new to this particular neighborhood but the terrain overall is extremely familiar. I invite you to challenge the seemingly very solid opinions you have formed about Erhard. C’mon, you wouldn’t have to spend more than ten to fifteen minutes on the internet to effectively dispel those opinions. The daughter recanted, Don Lattin had an axe to grind…, look around. See what’s on the ground.
Number nine: My criteria for accepting spiritual advice consists of two questions: Is it valid? And does it work? I have much less concern or interest in the source of that advice. Some of my most enlightening moments have occurred in conversation with my dog, who has been with me a very long time. It is from him that I learned the true power of listening. The ability to listen to what is actually said—as opposed to listening to what I think I might have heard.
Number ten: If this sounds nasty at all, I apologize. That is not my intention. I just seem to have reached a point in my life where I find myself totally unable to tolerate indignation righteously expressed.
And finally, lighten up and include the world because it will most certainly include you.
Buy a dictionary
1. I think you confuse arrogance with confidence, a common mistake. I have not found one dictionary which gives a definition with a positive connotation for the word arrogance. If we can't agree on basic definitions in the English language I doubt we can communicate.
I have already addressed many of your points in earlier comments. The rest I don't have the patience to discuss with someone who would describe Ghandi as arrogant.
We do create our own reality, but we don't do it alone. We do it in union with the rest of existence. Failure to realize this (like when you assign your own meaning to words) results in solipsism, egotism, and arrogance. It basically makes you come off as a jerk. Perhaps you should follow your own advice.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I have no patience for arrogant sophists that type things without thinking.
You want the floor unchallenged?
You got it.
Enjoy it.
Only learn from those morally superior to us?
Some comments seem to indicate that we can/should only try to learn from those who are our moral superiors, or at least equals. If Werner were a mere human who had at some points in his life made mistakes, could we not learn from him? Can we only learn from such as Ghandi?
I submit that this would separate us forever from learning some of life's most important lessons. One need not worship (or even like) Erhard to learn a great deal from him and his program. In the training, they often said to folks caught up in moral judgments: "Get off your high horse". In other words, accept that humans are indeed human and have a tendency to fall somewhere short of perfect. Didn't Jesus convey roughly the same message when the crowd assembled to stone the whore to death? If you need to attach that message to Werner in order to find a reason to avoid living by it, well.... welcome to imperfection!