est Read Free Page B

lower-back pain go

to est . if you want to hold on to it, you can do that too." It

might just ruin his business.

MARCIA: After Gerry took it, I felt out of it. Everyone bugged me to take

the training. I'm an optimist. I didn't think I needed it. I finally did

the training and found it really good.

Gerry's and my main hang-up was whether or not we should have children.

I didn't want them -- not yet, anyway. Otherwise our relationship had been

pretty good.

Now we feel we want to have children eventually. And it is all right not

to have them now; we don't have to have kids because our friends do.

Now I feel more confident about taking care of a child.

Some mornings when I feel that I want to leave my job, or just not bother

to show up, Gerry and I talk and I see that I have a choice. And I get

there.

We both see, now, how a lot of people cover up what goes on with them. We

also see our needs and desires. Having a house and kids is no longer "it."

I'm more involved and aware of myself. That's what life is all about.

2

In the Beginning
QUESTION: Has est changed your life?
    ANSWER: Yes. Now I carry all my troubles
    around with me instead of just some of
    them.

Around New York the est training is called the "no piss training."

At the time I was considering taking it, bathroom breaks were up to seven

hours apart.*
* They're now down to about four hours.

I very much wanted to take the training -- I had heard strange and

wonderful things about it -- but I was hung up on the bathroom thing. The

more curious I became, the more I feared I wouldn't be able to maintain

control for such a long time.

I blamed this fear on a childhood incident which still haunted me. In

the second grade, during a spelling test, my teacher chose to ignore my

raised hand signaling that I needed to go to the bathroom. The inevitable

happened; I wet my pants. I was so ashamed of this incident that I had

never mentioned it to anyone. Now, decades later, I was afraid it would

be repeated.

I finally decided to take the training anyway. The decision made,

I embarked on the est adventure, a trip that a year later isn't

yet over and probably never will be. It now appears to be one of the most

valuable experiences I've ever had.

It wasn't until I was well into the training, incidentally, that I got what my fear had really been about. I had always avoided

situations in which I felt my freedom would be circumscribed; I cherished

my independence too much to allow anyone to tell me what to do. A dozen

years . earlier I had walked out on a fabulous job as the only woman

account executive in a large advertising agency just because, regardless

of how long, hard, and creatively I worked, all account executives had

to sign in every morning at 9:00. It wasn't until I went through the

training that I really experienced this as a pattern of my life.

est has two meanings. It is the Latin word for "it is." It is also an

acronym whose initials stand for Erhard Seminars Training, named, after

its creator, Werner Erhard. It is always written in the modest lower

case, simple and unostentatious, in quiet good taste. In contrast to

its typographical style, est is an ebullient, dynamic, expanding

operation.

I heard that the people who were taking the training were not

the type of seekers I was used to meeting in the various

therapy/encounter/mind-expansion experiences I had had over the past

dozen years. A good proportion had never been in therapy and/or been

involved in a growth group.

They were young and old, confused and confident, divorced, married,

professionals, housewives, students, rich, not-so-rich (but rarely

poor). The reason they were all flocking to est ? Because,

even though most of them were doing well, their lives weren't really

satisfying; in est talk, trying to make their lives

satisfying wasn't satisfying either.

Almost without exception, they had come to est because someone

they knew had been through it, had