Being is not self

Achieving transformation, according to est training is to be able to make distinctions, to be able to observe in the proper way what is required in that specific experience.  In this way, the action undertaken is appropriate to the situation. Therefore one achieves’ ‘being’. For example the phrase, ‘never do we consider that what makes a great manager is NOT the school, books, or education, but simply BEING a great manager’. This is one of the more difficult passages to understand if one is not familiar with the terms used, a danger that Erhard has mentioned himself, mainly due to the reason that the phenomena being mentioned may not be expressed accurately in words. To illustrate, he cites Einstein as an example as his theory of relativity could not be explained in the framework or vocabulary of Newtonian physics of that period. Hence, one needs to understand a new framework before one can have the words to describe an experience unknown previously.

In other words, transformation requires a change in paradigm. Mainly that ‘self’ as described by ‘thinking’ or ‘mind’ or ‘point of view’ is not ‘being’ in the way that involves transformation.

• ‘Transformation is a discipline which explores the nature of Being. A discipline devoted to possibility and to accomplishment, in the sense of the source of accomplishment.’

• ‘All the learning, apprenticing, practicing, and thinking are still necessary. But none of those practices is the source of it. They provide the conditions for it, but none are the source of the greatness itself. The source is, very simply, Being great.’

‘Just be’ maybe the best way to say it but does not mean that one has the conditions required ‘to be’. One cannot become someone out of ignorance. There is a mental cultivation that is needed but not in the way of changing one’s point of view or one’s mental models or one’s mind but moving out of the conceptions of thinking itself.

• ‘What blocks our ability to appreciate the phenomenon of Being is that we do not ordinarily distinguish the action of "thinking" from that of "Being."’

• ‘The source of the experience is his creation of it at the instant that he has the experience. Experience is creative in nature; it is not induced by circumstances.’

• ‘We now know that the "ah-haa" is a product of bringing forth a domain of distinction, literally creating it.’

Therefore the journey of self-development requires a cultivation of the mind, perhaps via study, self-reflections, academic learning, meditation, Toastmaster, reading, etc. but will not achieve the final step of transformation because the result maybe a cultivation of ‘mind’ or ‘thinking’ or ‘self’ and not of ‘being’.

• 'This technology of breakthrough is distinction-creating, or paradigm-creating, or context-creating.'

Hamlet’s famous question ‘to be or not to be’ contains more meaning than just trying to be a king or planning to kill his father’s murderer, but a longing to achieve a breakthrough in his growth as an individual. Is ‘being’ then some sort of mindless evolution? I think it simply means a state of becoming without the confusion of thinking and self-delusion. It is the mind that is pulling you back from becoming or from the transformation that is open to everyone. Oftentimes the ‘mind’ seeks to survive after all that learning, which ultimately prevents individual growth.