Making A Difference

“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

Love

“Love is granting another the space to be the way they are and the way they are not.”

“Love is the experience that someone’s all right the way they are. It’s not all the garbage. This thing about songs and all that survival stuff. All the stuff you talk about. What love actually is, is the experience that someone else is all right exactly the way they are. To love somebody you have to choose for them to be the way they are. Exactly.”

Read a talk given by Werner Erhard on the Experience of Love in 1973

Celebrate Life

Here is where it is

Now is when it is

You are what it is

Celebrate

love,

Werner

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

Responsibility

“Happiness is a function of accepting what is. Love is a function of communication. Health is a function of participation.  Self expression is a function of responsibility.”

-Werner Erhard

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On Love

“When you’ve said all of the
bad things and all of the good things
you haven’t been saying,
you will find that what you’ve really
been withholding is, “I love you.”
You don’t have to go looking for love
when it is where you come from.”

-Werner Erhard

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Love

“Love is granting another the space to be the way they are and the way they are not.”

– Werner Erhard

Werner Erhard on Celebrating Your Relationships

Photograph on the cover “Celelebrating Your Relationships” an audio tape by Werner Erhard.  A commenter at Amazon.com had this to say about this cassette:

The inside cover of this truly remarkable cassette tape says this about its content: “You have the ability to create conditions in your life for miraculous relationships, relationships that are brilliantly alive, magical expressions of love”. I bought my copy of the tape at a seminar run by the London, England office of Werner Erhard & Associates in the late 1980s. I love this tape and love sharing it with my family and friends.Recorded at a large live event given by Werner Erhard, it perfectly captures for me the spirit and power of this man as he assists people in grappling with the issues of what it is to be alive. On the tape Werner talks, reads poems, and interacts with individual participants. (I had part of one of the poems he reads, ‘I carry your heart with me’ by e.e. cummings, read out at my wedding). Listening to the tape is an empowering, alive, challenging ‘on the court’ experience. There is a real magic here and plenty of ‘juice’. People who have done the est training, the Forum (like I did in 1989), the Landmark Forum or programs related to these will have a special listening for this, but maybe you don’t need to have participated in those courses to ‘get’ this.     Celebrating Your Relationships/Cassette