The EST In Me

On a mother’s embrace of the teachings of 1970s self-help guru Warner Erhard.

Perhaps because Jill, a little older, was less susceptible, it was I whom my mother saw as the subject on which to apply her own alchemies. Erhard’s techniques involved trust games, and she taught me several. We enacted the stare-down, in which we peered into each others’ faces until we learned to think about seeing and not being seen. We lay on the ground and visualized feelings of anger and feelings of love and then exhaled them in screams and shouts. There was a “truth process,” a “danger process,” a “headache cure.” For this one, we lay on the ground and imagined the ache as a floating object, drifting away from us. We also fixed our concentration at a point on the wall and led each other into trance-like journeys on which we met wise beings in caves. Who is the wise being? What is the wise being telling you? we asked.

I was my mother’s pupil, but we participated in these exercises as equals. Often, our mystical probings revealed me as my mother’s mentor. One time the cave-bound oracle told my mother to follow any guidance she might receive from me; I’d been her teacher in a past life, the oracle told her.

Published: Nov 15, 2011
Length: 21 minutes (5,482 words)