Esalen - Now More Than Ever
Esalen President Gordon Wheeler's Blog
May, 2011
I'm just back from Germany and Italy - two more of about 20 countries I've visited, I think it is, over the past several years, making presentations for Esalen at conferences and other venues, and also for my own teaching. And here's what I've learned in the course of these travels: first of all, it's absolutely astonishing the number of people who met their life partners at Esalen - at least judging from the fact that somebody comes up spontaneously to tell me about this wonderful fact, almost without fail, no matter where I may be in the world. And of course it's always a special pleasure for me to hear about this, since I'm a member of this group myself!
Equally important - or even more so, depending on your point of view - is the number of people who report that they found their life's purpose at Esalen, or unblocked a key obstacle, or got the particular learning that set them on this path, or in some other way had a life-changing experience that has stayed with them and had an empowering effect ever since.
All over the world there are organizations, networks, NGO's, businesses and schools and centers and practices whose leaders got an initial spark or inspiration at Esalen, some in recent years and others years or decades ago, and continue to ripple out in their own settings now, changing our shared world. Here at Esalen we haven't been very good at logging and collecting these important stories, intent as we've mostly been on the next edge, the next creative elaboration (often something that is brought back to us by these same inspiring leaders, who may return as teachers, or as part of another course or conference). To be sure, that work of archiving and sharing stories and learnings was all much harder years ago, back in pre-internet days. Today at Esalen we're just at the beginning of launching our new website design project, and that kind of archive will definitely be an important part of it.
And here's another thing people come up and ask, everywhere I go: What's happening these days at Esalen, what the new edge of learning, the new practice that they continue to look to Esalen to showcase, midwife, and spread? And then the question behind that question, often asked more urgently, as if fearing the answer: How is Esalen doing these days, how is the Institute weathering these challenging, turbulent times?
To the first part, I answer that Esalen is staying true to its deepest mission, doing what it's always done: seeking and leading the integration of the new thing into the culture, listening for what's left out at the edges of today's troubled world scene, finding the shadow, lifting out what's excluded or neglected and bringing it into the light. The larger purpose continues in the same integral ideal: the evolving integration of our ever-evolving human personality and capacities, always reaching to bring in the last exclusion, the next capacity, into a new and ever-more complex whole.
Mind and body, politics and spirit, emotions and the intellect, the individual and the social, always working on that most fundamental relationship: the integration of personal and social transformation. The two things - personal healing and growth, and social and societal evolution and service - can never be separated. Neither can achieve fruition till it is integrated with its polar twin, the world in the self and the self in the world: that's the enduring signature and message of Esalen.
And then what are these themes today, they ask? What forms do the explorations take, where is our culture today avoiding or neglecting some crucial question or challenge, just as we used to avoid or deny the necessary integration of mind and body, held spiritual seeking far apart from mainstream secular and political life, or denied the crucial role of emotions and values in problem-solving and science forty and fifty years ago, back in the days of Esalen's founding and early revolutionary impact?
Here I'll probably talk to them about all the edgy and essential explorations Esalen is focused on today, all still centering on Esalen's timeless theme of "the integral" itself. Today's most urgent challenge in our emergent world culture is to learn to see everything relationally, giving up the old mirage of the isolated individual, cut off from support and impact on an ecological whole. In science and social policy this means the search for sustainability, the complex quest to understand whole social and physical systems, and the reciprocal effects between them. Permaculture, peak resources, seeing whole systems in their whole-world context, and then applying this not just to the physical environment, but to the integral whole of environment-plus-people, the whole human world in its whole energetic context.
In organizations and leadership this means "integral leadership training," our emergent understanding that citizens of the world and those in leadership positions alike, to be sustainable and successful, have to lead in an entirely different way today, emphasizing whole new skill areas of decentralized empowerment and a creative commitment to feeling and seeing sources and consequences beyond immediate short-term thinking. In all these areas the common themes are relationship, creativity, dialogue, and the capacity to evolve whole new levels of complexity of thinking/feeling/sensing and judging/caring/committing in an integral way. Here too the accent has to be on seeing the other person's (or other culture's) worldview from the inside - yet without collapsing into the "post-modern" default of utter relativity of values. And here too it is our commitment to evolution and to the quest for "the integral" in every area that is our touchstone and our guide.
As for the second question, how is Esalen weathering these stormy times, I tell them that the answer is complex. The stresses and new challenges of today's world mean that demand for Esalen's programs and Esalen's gifts remains high. People's lives continue to be changed here, literally every day; new thoughts and experiences continue to be formed and experienced, new projects and methods and networks continue to be sparked and spread.
At the same time, the challenges and the expenses of operating in this ever-more regulated, ever-more costly, ever-more skills-dependent world only continue to go sharply up. This pushes program costs, and makes it ever more challenging to reach young and underserved populations. How do we meet those challenges and those costs - without caving in to the pressures and patterns of the dysfunctional world around us (60 and 80-hour workweeks, the abandonment of key personal development experiences as "frills," the stress and neglect of the body, of spiritual practice, energy hygiene, and relationship commitments)? And all of it while meeting our key commitment to reduce our environmental footprint here on campus, each and every year.
The solutions in the world of business and government all around us are plainly for the most part only aggravating and avoiding the deep systemic problems. Models are few and far between. Clearly increased donor funds are part of the answer; - but shared, empowered creativity and participation have to go along with increased donor support, hand in hand.
All of this I tell them, as best I can. And then they thank me - just because I'm the one there, standing for scores and hundreds of others - for tending and sustaining Esalen, keeping the doors open and the programs vital. Last week in Europe, as always, I met people from a dozen countries who are regular Esalen attenders, coming back every few years, some of them for a couple of decades. I also met some who have been here once, or a few times, maybe years or decades ago, and are still reaping the fruits of that path-setting insight or inspiration. One told me she was definitely planning a trip to Esalen: "I've been planning it for 27 years now," she laughed ruefully. I told her I thought maybe now it was time to pull the trigger!
Best of all, in a way, was the man who told me how much Esalen meant to him, how concerned he was for our future, and how heartened he was by the report that Esalen was vibrant, thriving, contributing at full throttle, if ever more challenged to keep going in the face of all the contrary trends around us.
"Thank you for Esalen," he said, it's been so important to me. You know" - he added - "I've never actually been to Esalen. But just having it there is like a beacon, in dark times. I think there are people like me all over the world. Maybe someday I'll get there. Meanwhile, you're part of what keeps me going."
I promised him I'd pass that heartening message on. Here it is - to all of you, who follow and support and contribute your ideas, your resources, most of all your participation to this remarkable place. Thank you - from more voices than we even know, from all around the world.
Gordon Wheeler, Big Sur, Spring 2011