Change
From Esalen President & CEO Gordon Wheeler's Blog
September 2009
Here we are in another season of change at Esalen—is there any other kind? The humpbacks and blues are feeding daily out in the Marine Sanctuary (it's all ocean to them of course, but at least here they're protected from factory boats), but soon they'll turn and head south again to their winter grounds off the coast of Baja and beyond. The gardens are a summer riot of color and produce, and in the air the occasional whiff of smoke—another sign of summer in California—reminds us suddenly of a year ago at this time, when we were still scrubbing and rigging pumps in the creek from the generational Basin Complex Fires. That cataclysm, as you know, closed Esalen for some weeks, reached onto the property just up the canyon, destroyed our waterline, and took with it a number of homes and jobs in the Big Sur area. This reminder of all that comes to us now from blazes as far away as Nacimiento to the south or the rural town of Bonnie Doon, almost a hundred miles to the north. Down here on the South Coast of Big Sur, we don't feel in danger of a repetition on that same scale anytime soon, because last year's cleansing firestorms cleared out a full generation of underbrush for miles around in the hill country immediately above us. But we get a visceral shock all the same, and most of all our hearts are with those whose lives and homes and livelihoods are threatened this year in their turn.
Here on the ground we have organizational change as well, as we welcome Tricia McEntee as the new CEO of Esalen, officially effective at the end of this year. Tricia brings, as I've written here before, a unique combination of deep management and financial experience for these difficult times, deep familiarity with the Esalen organization and culture, and most important of all, a boundless commitment to Esalen's programs, vision, and unique mission of marrying personal and social transformation in the world.
For me, as I turn over the office of CEO, much enriched in my own growth and learning after six years of service, and go back to my prior role as Esalen's President, the change is both thrilling and poignant. Thrilling to see and be a part of everything we will be dealing with and stepping up to at Esalen, with new energy and greater capacity and depth of management experience. And poignant in knowing that rich relationships will change, some teams I've been part of for years will go on to new projects in new directions. Deep personal ties will last, I know, but still the energy of active, shared projects will shift in some cases. On the plus side, for me this means going from eight or more days a week (!) to (hopefully) just four or five—and those spent doing some of the things that I enjoy most in life—writing, speaking, publishing, and especially about Esalen.
But there is no change, no growth or gain even, without some element of loss—something that we in our over-busy, progress-minded culture often don't want to pause over and deal with.
Think about it: even long-sought changes—the thrill of a new committed relationship, the joy of the birth of a child, a new job in a new place—still involve losses of freedoms and attachments, sometimes ones we weren't even aware of before the shift. This year a good friend swung into a heavy midlife crisis after realizing a long-cherished dream (the publication of a best-selling novel, no less): What direction to go in next, what to do with the next 50 or 60 years of his life? Once he was free to have this question, he lost a freedom he'd had before, of being so focused on his goal that he couldn't even think about all this. A stunning gain— and a perplexing sense of loss.
In my own case, when I had cancer some seven years ago (or rather, when I found out I had cancer), I had a number of new challenges to be sure, but at the same time I was aware of feeling oddly, unexpectedly liberated from the whole business of long-term planning, financially or professionally or otherwise (something which as the father of five, I'd always put a fair amount of energy into). The weight of that concern simply went away; for good or ill or both, it just wasn't my concern. And then over the years since, as the docs began speaking not of remission but of cure, that particular freedom from planning, that present-centered lightness, began to fade somewhat, as I came up against the need to give some attention to long-term finances again (just in time for the cratering of everybody's 401Ks).
Now for sure, I come back to those concerns with a different perspective, post-illness—that's all part of the well-known "gifts of cancer," which any survivor can tell you about. Still, along with it there's that certain loss of certain kinds of freedom, even here, even as I gain so many others. If I can pause and really take this all in, and feel it, then the payoff is a deeper, more grounded, more evolved kind of joy: the joy of needing to plan again for the future—and with it, balancing it, the knowledge of the joy of not needing to plan any more for the future. Both are real; both are present now—at least fleetingly, at certain still moments!
In the end, what matters is the practice of gratefulness. Gratefulness holds the loss and the gain, puts them in perspective, finds energy and creativity in grieving and celebrating alike.
Personally, I find it easy to be grateful for life, for this amazing world, for all the people here and elsewhere I love so deeply, for Esalen, for all of you who make and sustain Esalen, for these rich years and those to come. Harder is to be grateful too for the challenges we face together in our shared world, all the looming and heartbreaking difficulties of people's lives all around our world, all the exciting and daunting opportunities we have to come together, reach deep into our best selves, and transform our situation. Hardest of all sometimes, for me: being grateful for those who seem driven mostly by narrowness of spirit, defensiveness, and greed—remembering that those people too are activated mostly not by ill will per se, but by fear. Thus they offer us another opportunity to reach deeper together into our most generous, most creative selves, and make contact from that place.
Frankly, that kind of gratefulness mostly—not always—eludes me. Judgments come up, and with them the defenses of superiority and contempt. Luckily for us, we have teachers here at Esalen, teachers like Brother David Steindl-Rast and Mariah Fenton-Gladdis and so many others, who inspire us and reground us and bring us back to the way.
Life has to contain change and stability, in about the right balance, or it isn't life. And change has to contain loss and gain—also in about the right balance—in order to move us to a new place. When we can grow enough to hold all that, then a new way can open, for ourselves and for our shared world. That in turn means personal and social transformation—that's part of our special hallmark here at Esalen: we believe deeply that neither is complete, neither is real or completely effective, without the other.
These years together as your CEO have changed and inspired me as well. Thank you here and now to the scores of colleagues at Esalen, staff and interns and trustees and others, who have supported me in this role over the past six years. And thank you to the hundreds and more of you who have sent or given messages of support, counsel, admonition, and love on your visits here, or from around the world. I take that support as a sign of your deep love and gratefulness for Esalen, and take it in as well on behalf of the entire boundlessly dedicated and talented team here and elsewhere, devoting themselves to keeping Esalen alive and at the growing edge of so much that is needed to sustain and transform our world. I'm grateful to be a part of all that, grateful to take up (and go back to) my former role now in speaking, writing, and publishing on Esalen's behalf, taking our message out into the world.
See you soon at Esalen!