Not too long ago I was exiting the main terminal at Dulles Airport when I spotted a familiar face:
“Randy MacNamara?” I exclaimed. He had been one of my original est trainers. “November ’75, Boston,” I told him, by way of identifying myself. After a few remarks back and forth, I said, “Well, it was a great weekend, twenty years ago.” And in true trainer form, he instantly got to the point:
“Does it still impact your life?”
“Well…sure, yes,” I replied. And then he hit me with what I thought to be an amazing question:
“Daily?” he asked.
I remember well Randy MacNamara’s dramatic explanation of what we were to expect when we left the est training: the possibility of believing we’d lost it and that things were worse than ever and everything was falling apart and the training hadn’t worked. Then, after allowing us to contemplate that in silence for a moment, his deep, booming voice filled the room:
“YOU FORGOT TO CHOOSE!”
Choose what?
“What you got! Choose what you got, choose what you got, choose what you got,” he explained, and eventually you’d be out of the water. Or not even eventually, which implies that time is required for transformation: the est training was in the spirit of “sudden Zen,” for the possibility of “choosing what you got” exists now and always. And in the very moment you really make that choice, you come unstuck, for you had merely been resisting the isness of the moment you were given.