Dreaming Esalen
Esalen President & CEO Gordon Wheeler's Blog
December 2009
These days at Esalen for me are much taken up with the duties of transition. In just a few more weeks, at the turn of the New Year, I'll be moving out of the dual President/CEO role I've held at Esalen for the past six years, and back into the role of President full time. That means the active, strategic management of the Institute will pass into the creative, enormously dedicated hands of Tricia McEntee. Tricia brings a unique combination, in my experience, of financial and management experience and expertise, together with clear-eyed, heartful dedication to the mission, the programs, the students, the community, and the wide cultural impact of Esalen. My own part, in the President's chair, will be to support and promote the Esalen mission through public communications, writing, publications, conferencing, CTR (Center for Theory and Research), and media work.
This role took me last month to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where I met with a group planning a series of conferences at Esalen and LA, on the exciting topic of our New Human Story—the way hard science, education and psychology, spiritual practices, and the near and far reaches of Consciousness Studies are combining today to create a new vision of our shared human nature—with implications for research, leadership, education, child-rearing, spiritual practice, clinical work, politics, and more. Can you think of anything more "integral" than that —in other words, more Esalen?!
Cape Cod, a sand spit curving out below Boston into the North Atlantic Ocean, is made up of the residue deposited by the great melting ice shelf as recently as some 15,000 years ago, right around the traditional dating of some of the oldest human settlements in North America. Dotting the sand dunes of the Cape today are hundreds of "kettle hole" lakes, places where an enormous block of glacial ice was stranded in a depression as the whole sheet retreated—each one now a crystal-clear, fresh-water basin, many of them only some hundreds of yards across the sand from the salt ocean itself. (The bubble of the fresh-water aquifer under Cape Cod meets the ocean water underneath the beach, with only the difference in pH/acidity of the water keeping them from mixing—which would be the end of fresh water on the Cape).
The planning meetings took place in a gracious old farmhouse perched above one of these magic lakes, the water sparkling and autumn-colorful in the New England fall sun. There on that different sand bluff overlooking a different body of water, rimmed by a different ocean, I woke up one morning with the following Esalen dream:
I was in the lodge at Esalen when a stir spread through the crowd, followed by great bells ringing. We don't have fire alarm bells at Esalen—still, I shouted to clear the lodge, and all streamed out onto the deck.
Below us, a large ship was steaming by heading north, quite close in to shore, lights ablaze (though it wasn't dark out). Several attendant yachts sped alongside it, making a sort of flotilla. Behind the ship, towed along by an enormous cable, there came a large, multi-tiered open-frame sort of structure, very elaborate yet with crisp clean lines—floating high in the water, and looking to be made of a luminous bone or white plastic material. Very spare, very sculptural, sinuously curved, about as tall as a two-story house. Whatever it was, it exerted a strange fascination. I felt mysteriously drawn to it, while an expectant hush fell over the crowd.
Most curiously of all, in the water flanking the structure, was a full mounted horse-guard on parade: four handsome sorrel-colored steeds, burly like war-horses yet not overly large, with men in uniform or livery astride them. The horses pranced and tossed in the water, easily keeping pace with the flotilla in a plunging, loping gait. At the proper time, I knew, these noble creatures would be taken back up on board, their positions relieved by others from inside the ship.
As we stared, transfixed, the towed structure, apparently equipped with its own rudder, veered toward shore, clearly attempting a landing. A very dangerous maneuver, as there is no natural harbor here, and the rocks and currents are treacherous. However, the sea was unnaturally calm, with the sun and the moon shining together somehow, each of them glinting off the water.
As we watched, a small woman lit in the shallows from one of the boats, waded with difficulty to shore, and began making her way up the hill.
I looked around for someone to receive her; then thought, Wait, I'm still the Director here, I have to step forward to greet this emissary, on behalf of Esalen. I moved forward, lifting my hand for silence (but there was no need, everyone felt the solemnity of the occasion). She was plainly from some other, seemingly indigenous culture, small in build, somewhat Asian or Amerindian looking, with little English. At her breast she was carrying an infant in a pouch, still sleeping peacefully through the waves and the commotion.
I bade her welcome, asking her to tell us what she and her party needed, and how we might serve her. Using gestures, she gave me to understand that they must deliver "this" to us, motioning to the mysterious floating structure— if we would accept it. It was unclear to me whether the "this" referred to the entire structure, or some chest or crated package carried within the mysteriously glowing frame—or both. I had the feeling it was both; or rather, that it was the packet, but the structure was only for delivering the packet, they had no further need of it, and would be pleased if we would take that as well.
I knew we must take the entire object—that we were the ones this whole wandering delivery was meant for— if we stepped up to receive it fully. (Who knows how long they had wandered, I was thinking, in search of the ones whose destiny it was to receive it. We were plainly in the realm of magic here: it could have been years, even centuries).
I called for a radio, to alert the Gate, Maintenance, Grounds, Farm & Garden, others—everyone who could help. We would need planking, ropes, bearers—perhaps more. There was simply no procedure for landing something of that enormity, straight up these impassible cliffs. Yet I knew we were up to it; knew, too, that all of Esalen would turn out creatively, to craft some unique new way, whatever the challenge.
Again I held up a hand for silence, trying to hear her words more closely. A few voices kept talking, then they too fell silent. The baby was awake now, but still quiet.
I asked again what exactly this thing was she was that she was wanting to deliver. She gestured again, and gave the name in some language I didn't understand. To my ear it sounded like "nintenijo," But I knew too that that was just me imposing a familiar-sounding name on what was clearly some incredibly advanced virtual reality device, something for visualizing new scenarios, perhaps a device from the future but at the same time as ancient and immaterial as imagination itself. She peered at me intently, unable to tell me any more, yet making it clear that something about the gift was so radical, so transformational she expected we might well be hesitant, even intimidated. It crossed my mind to wonder whether others had been offered the gift before, and had turned it down.
Yet I felt no fear, and in the eyes of those around me I could see only excitement and anticipation. Down below, people were already swarming into the water, passing a sort of great studded treasure chest, heavy as lead, from hand to hand toward shore. The floating structure itself actually looked much lighter than the chest, higher in the water now with the heavy chest off board, the whole of it a kind of buoyant, luminescent polymer unknown to us; still, I knew it would be much harder to handle. Looking up, I could see our crews already in the trees, stringing pulleys and rigging cranes, inventing whole new technologies of rigging and hauling as they went along. I moved toward the ropes that would brace and anchor the trees themselves: it would take all of us, some to haul, and some to keep the trees from being uprooted by the torque of the weight from below. Still, I knew we could do it. It was our destiny to embrace this moment. I knew we were up to it, together.
And that was the end of the dream. Waking, I stayed in state of heightened excitement, looking out on the glittering surface of the lake, itself no more than about 500 human generations old—a number smaller, say, than the number of people at Esalen at an average Labor Day celebration. What a journey our human family has been embarked on, across that brief span of generations—what soaring heights, what tragic depths, what arcs of creative flight, what a ride. And all of it leading to this present moment, to us, to the unimaginable challenges, the boundless opportunities lying before us now to live as one family again, at last, each separate individual in her glory, yet each his own unique part of one living whole.
Like all dreams, this one might speak differently to different people, vividly to some, not at all to others, and differently again at different times. To me as I write this now it speaks of this moment we are living through, here and now, in our shared and threatened world—and to Esalen's place and potential in that world. As the Hopi Elders remind us: We are the ones we've been waiting for. And as Marianne Williamson and Nelson Mandela both inspire us to remember: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. I believe I can speak for all of us here at Esalen in saying that among our deepest beliefs is that we cannot know in advance the farthest reaches of our own creativity, our own potential to organize our lives and our world differently, with plenty for all of everything that matters. And that together, it is still possible for us to move toward those far reaches of creativity, somewhere beyond our deepest dreams. We know too that Esalen has a unique part to play in this great drama: that's why we're here.
See you soon at Esalen!
Gordon Wheeler, President, Esalen Institute—& CEO (but only till January 1, 2010!)