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“Happiness is almost not worth talking about because the instant you turn happiness into a goal it isn’t attainable any more. In other words, happiness isn’t something you can work towards. It isn’t something you can put someplace and overcome barriers to get to and so it makes a kind of difficult subject to talk about.
The thing which I think needs to be talked about is at the other end of the spectrum, the barriers to realizing happiness. The barriers to realizing happiness are a lot of very unhappy things. And they are the things which almost nobody talks about because very few of us are willing to confront those things…
People get the idea that enlightened beings never have bad days. If you’ve got that idea, you’ve got a false standard against which to measure the quality of your life. One of the things that can keep you from happiness, very assuredly, is false standards. If you’ve built up a set of notions about someplace that you ought to be, that it isn’t possible to be, simply because it isn’t real, then you can only be there by concept. That’s a way of making sure that you’re unhappy.” ~ Werner Erhard
“Every human being’s deepest, most natural expression is the desire to make a difference in life, of wanting to matter. We can choose to make the success of all humanity our personal business. We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family, to make our love for each other and for the world what our lives are really about.” ~Werner Erhard
Here’s one of the things that helps me lot – it’s all made up anyhow. It’s interpretation all the way down. So, I’ve got to own what’s there, as belonging to me, and then I don’t have to be at the effect of it, because it belongs to me, I’m the guy that made it up. I created that conversation for me to live, if I own it, make it my own, I can let it be. Now here’s the big secret; anything you can let be, let’s you be. So if I can let my own stupidity, and ignorance and smallness – if I can let it be, it let’s be me, and leaves me free to be and free to act.
~ Werner Erhard, Conversations on Compassion
Since now is the only time you have in reality and now will never seem to be the right time to act, one may as well act now. Even though “it isn’t the right time,” given that the “right time” will never come, acting now is, at the least, powerful (even if you don’t get to be right). Most people wait for the decisive moment, whereas people of power are decisive in the moment. – Werner Erhard
“Let’s take a look at the nature of now. What I’ve noticed with the people I’ve interacted with is that everyone who truly experiences right here, right now, actually sees that it’s all perfect exactly the way it is. When I am being myself, nothing more and nothing less – when I am doing exactly what I am doing – when I am allowing what is so around me to be exactly like it is – when I am being right here instead of where I am going – when I am observing it all just as it is without adding any judgments or evaluations or comparing it, then I observe that it is perfect. (For right now, – not that it should stay that way.) A thing is perfect when it is the way it is – when it is itself. To take away or add to that would produce a flaw. Therefore it is all perfect because, in terms of experiencing, that is to say, living, what is so right now is what is so right now. Truly, that is the whole realization. There is nothing startling about that. What is, is and what isn’t, isn’t. So what! – That’s precisely what people say when they find out. Enthusiastically – So What! There’s an enormous freedom in experiencing that. When you can really observe and experience that, it transforms your ability to experience living.”
Living is really pretty simple. Living happens right now; it doesn’t happen back then, and it doesn’t happen out there. Living is not the story of your life. Living is the process of experiencing right now.
Thinking about right now, figuring it out, perceiving it, arguing, reading about or believing anything about right now – none of these produce any certainty about living.
When you get beyond the symbols and beliefs about now, beyond thinking about it, beyond efforting or working at it, when you get even beyond merely feeling it, when you get all the way up to observing it, being with it, and finally up to totally experiencing it, the uncertainty about living goes away, because you know the truth in the only way in which a being ever knows the truth – by direct experience.
Actually, it is possible to open up the space for people to transcend life, to transcend these things that get in the way of being here now, so that they can experience being here now for themselves.
“My notion about service is that service is actually that kind of relationship in which you have a commitment to the person.
Service is about knowing who the other person is, and being able to tolerate giving space to their garbage.
What most people do is to give space to people’s quality and deal with their garbage.
Actually, you should do it the other way around. Deal with who they are and give space to their garbage. Keep interacting with them as if they were perfect.
And every time you get garbage from them, give space to the garbage and go back and interact with them as if they were perfect.”
“If you choose to be a person of integrity, you have no choice when it comes time to honor your word. To be in integrity you must apply cost/benefit analysis to giving your word and you must never apply cost/benefit analysis to honoring your word.”
~Werner Erhard
Simply put, when I give my word to another, that act creates various conditions of “counting on” or “reliance on”, in the relationship between me and the other. Given that one’s word creates the relationship, it follows that when one’s word is whole and complete, the aspect of the relationship it creates is whole and complete. In a critical sense, who I am for another is my word, i.e., my expression of my self. For a relationship to have integrity (to be whole and complete), one’s word must be whole and complete. As Shakespeare said, “This above all: to thine own self be true, it must follow, as the night the day, Thou cans’t not be false to any man.” When one is true to one’s word (which is being true to one’s self), one cannot be but true to any man.
http://ow.ly/MQcm30lwhFL
The following is from the January 1977 Graduate Review:
GONNEKE SPITS: “A few months ago, Elaine Cronin, who manages the Chicago Center, was in town and Werner took Elaine, Laurel and me to dinner. We’d all been there when est started, and here we were together again. [The full staff in October, 1971, consisted of Phyllis Allen, Elaine Cronin, Sheila Pearson, Jack Rafferty, Laurel Scheaf, Gonneke Spits, and Barbara Wilson.] Werner said something at that dinner meeting that was really incredible for us. He said to us that where est really came from was not just from him as an individual, but out of the relationship that the four of us had. You know, we’d never looked at it that way. To tell you the truth, I always realized Werner was the source of est and thought we just came along with the furniture, you know.
“We got to look at what we all brought with us that was actually a part of the integrity of est. You see, without the part that Laurel represents, and without the part the Elaine represents, it’s not complete, and without the part that I represent, it’s not complete either. As est developed, some things were added that seemed to be necessary for putting it out into the world. Things like what Jack brought in, what Rich brought in, and what other people brought in, too. It isn’t that anyone was personally necessary, but whatever it was that we presented was and certainly is part of what est is.
- Decide on a project for which you are willing to take complete responsibility.
- Complete the project successfully.
- Relate this achievement to others as an inspiration for them.
- Your willingness to express yourself may be just the trigger needed by someone else to do something for themselves.
- From now on, don’t wait for something to happen to you. Actually take responsibility for making something happen. Keep at it until you make it a successful experience for everyone.
- You can make the difference.
~Werner Erhard
“Your power is a function of velocity, that is to say, your power is a function of the rate at which you translate intention into reality.”
“Sometime around now – it may have happened five years ago or fifty years ago – but sometime around now the rules for living successfully on this 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 much discover and live by the rules of you and me.
-Werner Erhard
Sometimes you will give up your possessions, your children, your husband or wife, you will give up everything, except for the one thing that you need to give up in order to experience something that you want. And what you need to give up in order to get that experience is the notion that you haven’t got that experience.
~ Werner Erhard
What I have is a place to stand. Not the right place, for I do not pretend to know what is right even for myself, let alone others, but a place I am willing to try out to see if it leaves me as a clearing where the truth can more powerfully go to work.
~ Werner Erhard
My notion about service is that service is actually that kind of relationship in which you have a commitment to the person. Service is about knowing who the other person is, and being able to tolerate giving space to their garbage. What most people do is to give space to people’s quality and deal with their garbage.
Actually, you should do it the other way around. Deal with who they are and give space to their garbage.
Keep interacting with them as if they were perfect. And every time you get garbage from them, give space to the garbage and go back and interact with them as if they were prefect. ~ Werner Erhard
Werner Erhard Quotes 