Werner Erhard Foundation

The support of the Werner Erhard Foundation made possible groundbreaking conversations between leaders, scholars and officials from virtually all parts of the world in the fields of human achievement and transformation. As a result of this support exchange programs were launched that provided new ground for international cooperation.

One such program was the US/USSR Project, launched by Werner Erhard and the Werner Erhard Foundation in 1979 and designed as an educational exchange to explore the principles of communication, management, and creative thinking with the people of what was then the Soviet Union.

-http://www.wernererhardfoundation.org

Werner Erhard and The Dalai Lama

 

At all times and under all circumstances, we have the power to transform the quality of our lives.

-Werner Erhard

A You and Me World

It takes enormous courage to approach living from a you and me context.  It is audacious to create your life making a difference in a world that says that you don’t.  It takes a lot of heart – openness to your own magnanimity, compassion for yourself, for your own pettiness when it shows itself.  Even in the face of failure, Werner noted, “you need to be willing to accept yourself as an evolving master in the issue of making the world work for everyone, and to hold the failures, doubts, fears, and uncertainties within the context that you are evolving in mastery.”

Sometime around now – it may have happened five years ago or fifty years ago – but sometime around now the rules for living successfully on ths planet shifted.  We can no longer hope to live meaningful, purposeful lives using the rules of a you or me world. It’s becoming clearer and clearer to those who will look that in order to live successfully on this planet, we must discover and live by the rules of you and me.”

We are not speaking of altruism.  In a you and me world, when you are successful, whole, validated, and fulfilled, I win.  What is the meaning of concepts such as selfishness and altruism when you experience the Self as all things – as the space in which all things occur?”

In the past, we have maintained a you or me world by sharing our surplus rather than by sharing the ability to produce surplus.  That kind of altruism, those “gestures of goodwill” have only served to strengthen the status quo and perpetuate a world of “haves” and “have-nots.”  In a you and me world, true generosity means empowering people to produce for themselves.

Werner Erhard – A Shot Heard Round The World

 

The Power of Context

A context is literally created by creating it.  You just need to recognize that you have the power of context, and then you simply need to be willing to be responsible for creating it yourself, without reason, without the props of evidence – to simply say ‘this shall be. I have the power of my word in my own universe. I have the power to determine the context of my own life.  I give meaning to my life.  The meaning doesn’t come from outside.’

-Werner Erhard

Context is the freedom to be

Context is the freedom to be.  Context is space.  It has no form, no place in time; it allows form and time.  In the absence of a consciously-created context, our lives are controlled by content – the forces and circumstances of the condition in which we live.  Once you create a context, that context then generates a process in which the content – the forces and circumstances – reorder and align themselves with the context.  For example, if you choose to shift the context of your life from ‘I don’t matter’ to ‘I make a difference,’ the circumstances in your life, while they may not have changed, take on an entirely new meaning.  This new meaning, then, begins to reflect that you do make a difference.”

- Werner Erhard

Happiness

“One of the things I am really sure about is nothing will make you happy. Very few things I am really sure about. That is one of things I am really sure about. Nothing will make you happy. It may give you you a jolt. It may make you gleeful but it isn’t going to make you happy. What does that mean nothing will make you happy?

It means what it says: there is no thing that’s going to make a person happy. Most people think “gee, when I graduate then life will be great.” No. You graduate and that’s wonderful but life still ain’t great. “When I get married then life will be great.” Not true. “Well when I get divorced then it will be ok.”  Or when I get promoted, whatever it is, when I get a new car. When I get a chance to go on this new vacation… All you have to do is to watch people on vacation and you can see very clearly vacations do not make people happy. No, no, no.

Most people live their lives working towards something, working for something, that they think is going to make them happy. And it’s really the Peggy Lee song “Is that all there is?”. No matter what it is you get that you think is going to make you happy I can promise you that in a very short time after you get it you’re gonna be well “Is that all there is? Is that all there is to that? You mean it’s not filling my life with joy?” Yes, that’s right it, it isn’t.

You have to bring happiness to life. You don’t get happiness out of life. What is there to be happy about? Nothing. When you can be happy about nothing. Just be happy. You know “I am happy” – those words are sacred. It’s like a declaration, it’s like a place from which I come, it’s like a stand I take upon myself. Its not I am pretending to be happy, it’s not I am acting happy.  No. I am happy!” – Werner Erhard

 

Forgiveness

“People often don’t understand what is involved in forgiving.  They think that if somebody does something wrong, and you forgive them, that is like saying that it was alright to do it that time – but don’t dare do it again.  But life doesn’t work that way; and it’s stupid or hypocritical to forgive someone on that basis.  If somebody does something,  you can be sure that he or she will do it again.

“That is why I prefer to talk about ‘making space’ and ‘completion.’  To the extent that forgiveness is involved,  it is more like self-forgiving and self-acceptance.  When you forgive yourself for something, you have to create the space for that thing to exist.  For whatever you resist, and fail to make space for, will indeed manifest itself in you.

“Self-forgiving, and self- accepting, is an essential part of being complete in relationships.  If there is something about your past that you are ashamed of, or guilty about – if there is something in it that you are hanging on to – if there is something there that you are using to burden another person – that will prevent you from being complete in your relationships.

“In order to transcend having to be any particular type of person, you have to make it all right with yourself to be that type of person.  The moment when you really experience that you have created yourself being whatever way you are, at the same moment you will never have to be that way again.

“This self-forgiving, self-acceptance, goes hand in hand with forgiving others, making space for others, completing your relationships with others.  You cannot be complete in a relationship with any person whom you do not admire and respect as he or she is, and as he or she is not – rather than the way you think she is or would like her to be.  Love for a person is is acceptance of him or her the way he is and the way he is not.

“So long as you do not know who you really are, this will be difficult.  You may have to give up a lot of things to which you may be attached.  You may have to give up your resentments, your anger, your upset, your annoyance, your desire to punish.”

-Werner Erhard, from Werner Erhard, The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est, by William Warren Bartley  III

Satisfaction

“To be satisfied, to expand, you must first be where you are, and do what you are doing – no matter where you are and what you are doing.”

- Werner Erhard, from Werner Erhard, The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est, by William Warren Bartley III

Past

“By taking responsibility for the past,  I no longer am my past; now I have my past, and it does not have me.  My past is now my past.  It isn’t sticking into my present and my future.  Now I have the space to come from the Self, to generate my own experience, here and now.”

-Werner Erhard, from The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est, by W.W. Bartley III.

Being

“The moment when you really experience that you have created yourself being whatever way you are, at that same moment you will never have to be that way again.”

-Werner Erhard, from The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est, by W.W. Bartley III.

Future

“The only way to deal with the future is to put yourself in a space where you are functioning effectively now.”

-Werner Erhard, from The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est, by W.W. Bartley III.

Purpose and Aliveness

The only two things in our lives are aliveness and patterns that block our aliveness. As patterns are experienced out, our lives become clearer. Things begin to make more sense. What we do makes more sense.

It’s funny, but when the alive you emerges from behind the smokescreen of all those patterns and begins to participate in life directly, life really does have purpose. It all somehow makes sense, in a fantastic way.

When you get rid of the blocks, what you have is aliveness, and when the blocks are gone, purpose emerges. There is no use searching externally for purpose, or trying to “pull it in.” It is already there. Just focus on clearing out what is between you and aliveness, so every time we create greater aliveness, the purpose is being served.Aliveness and purpose are practically the same thing. The purpose is greater aliveness, so every time we create greater aliveness, the purpose is being served.

As more and more of us get to see that the purpose is greater aliveness, it happens that all of us start to do the same thing – we start serving the purpose. Life comes on to us in our own terms, and so does the opportunity to serve.

That everyone is serving the purpose in a different way does not mean that everyone is doing something different. That’s the illusion. We do the same thing in different ways. As each of us makes our part of the whole really work, the purpose is being served.

The purpose is life and that it be, completely.
The commitment is: aliveness

- By Werner Erhard

Heroes

“Heroes are ordinary men and women who dare to see and meet the call of a possibility bigger than themselves. Breakthroughs are created by such heroes, by men and women who will stand for the result while it is only a possibility – people who will act to make possibility real.”

-Werner Erhard

What There Is To Do Today

The only thing there is to do today is: what you actually do today! There is nothing else to do today! You get it? There isn’t anything to do today except what you actually do. That’s all there is to do today.

Four Ways of Being that Create the Foundations of A Great Personal Life, Great Leadership and A Great Organization

“We argue here that the four factors we identify as constituting the foundation for being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership can also be seen as the foundations not only for great leadership, but also for a high quality personal life and an extraordinary organization. One can see this as a “value free” approach to values because, 1) integrity as we define it (being whole and complete) is a purely positive proposition, 2) authenticity is also a purely positive proposition (being and acting consistent with who you hold yourself out to be for others and who you hold yourself to be for yourself), 3) being committed to something bigger than oneself is also a purely positive proposition (that says nothing about what that commitment should be other than it be bigger than oneself), and 4) being cause in the matter as a declaration of the stand you take for yourself regarding everything in your life is also a purely positive proposition”

- Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen

 

Satisfaction

“Individuals transform when there is a shift in the principle which orients their life from one of gaining satisfaction to one of expressing the satisfaction they’ve already got.”

- Werner Erhard

 

Transformation

Transformation is not an event. It doesn’t have the properties of things or experiences. It has no position, no location in time, no beginning, no middle, and no end. It doesn’t look like anything or feel like anything. You could say it’s a shift in the basis of experience from self as point of view or from self as direct experience to self as self, or self as simply being.

- Werner Erhard -  Epistemological And Contextual Contributions of est to General Systems Theory – 1976

Aliveness

“What I have discovered is that people know things that they do not know that they know, the knowing of which can nurture them and satisfy them and allow them to experience an expanded sense of aliveness in their lives.”

-Werner Erhard

Satisfaction

When the context of your life shifts from becoming satisfied to being satisfied, an essential shift has occurred. You no longer seek satisfaction – you are satisfied. You no longer seek completion – you are complete. You shift from chasing satisfaction and completeness to expressing or manifesting satisfaction and completeness.

-Werner Erhard