Copyright © 1997 All Rights Reserved by Author
Why volunteer?
[I use the word "assist" because that is how the phenomenon occurs for me and how it always was spoken before LEC decided that it was important to them to use the more "politically correct" and culturally acceptable term "volunteer".]
It's a good question and worthy of an honest inquiry in my opinion.
I'm very familiar with the LEC/WE&A/est party-line dialogue. ‘We do it because it gives us the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of other people by contributing to them something that we see is worthwhile.’ ‘We do it because if we didn't, the cost of providing the programs to people would be prohibitive.’ ‘We promise to get more out of it than we put into it.’ Etcetera. I'm not saying that this isn't valid. I believe that the people who assist believe these things for the most part. Yet, these reasons...these answers, in my opinion, lack any semblance of rigorous thinking or looking for the most part. They are an ungenerous response.
Then there's the other side of this which is less familiar to me. It's what I would characterize as the cynical side...the 'Why work for free when the people you are working for are making money off of your efforts?' side. It's the 'There's no excuse for it...you're being exploited...no possible ethical justification for it' side of the coin that dismisses it as merely a clever ploy on the organization's part to get something for nothing from people who are too brainwashed or too stupid or too gullible to know any better. I'm not saying that this isn't valid either. I believe that the people who take this "side" are expressing feelings and opinions that are as real for them as the party line is for the people who espouse it. As real and as unthought and as ungenerous, in my opinion.
As I sit here writing this, I don't have the answers or reasons already figured out waiting to be typed. I wish it were that easy! I know I'm going to have to sit here and think about it...reflect back on it. My responses must be from my own experience only because I couldn't possibly crawl inside another person's motives for doing what they do and I wouldn't attempt to speculate about those motives anyway.
I don't consider my experiences with assisting to be in any way typical or average. I don't think you can or should draw any across-the-board conclusions about the nature of assisting from anything I might say. But I can tell you that I speak about the past...that my experiences were vast and varied and occurred over a very long period of time...that I can speak about assisting from having done the most "menial" kinds of tasks to the most "high level" assisting that was possible at the time...and that my days of assisting are over.
Let me first say that I'm not pro or con regarding the matter of assisting or volunteering. I did it. I loved it. I hated it. My reasons for doing it are as extensive and varied as the many different assisting assignments or jobs that I took on over the years. I wouldn't recommend it and I wouldn't discourage it. And I would recommend it. And I would discourage it. (I'm not trying to be clever when I say that...just looking at what is the truth for me in this moment.)
It never bothered me that I was giving my time to an organization that was making money off of it. It never even occurred to me. No. Actually that's not true. I remember that someone raised the issue about Werner's lifestyle to me once in an accusatory manner. It seems to me that the flavor of the issue was that this person somehow felt that it was not okay for Werner to be living well or affluently...that his doing so somehow diminished his credibility. The issues surrounding "the work" in those days included 'if it's so transformational...so incredibly valuable, why doesn't Werner just do it for free...give it away?' In fact we did give it away many times back in those days. There were numerous trainings that were 'donated'...something I suspect never could have happened if they had to 'pay the help', so to speak.
What was true for me at that time (and remains as true for me to this day) is that the est training was the most extraordinary, valuable, transformational, enlightening experience of my life. Like it or not, I put no experience above it...not even the birth of my children. There is nothing anyone can say to diminish that for me. That grueling, confronting, profane, slick, expensive, barf-infested, bladder-challenging, sleep-depriving collection of days and nights of pure, unadulterated humanity gave me my whole life...a life that, in the language of LEC, was not going to happen [anyway]. And I didn't and don't give a rat's ass if generations to come prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was a pure scam, an absolute con designed to do nothing more than fill Werner's pockets. For the life it gave me, for the life it gives me now...I would have gone door to door to collect money to fill his pockets, to give him an even richer lifestyle - but - in lieu of that, I assisted. That is the source of it all...The Original Motivation.
Second to that was the fact that I profoundly wanted everyone in my life to have the kind of life that I knew was possible by doing the training. At first it was easy...husband did it, friends did it...no problem. And the power that it had for them just fueled the passion for having everyone I love do it. My parents were the real challenge.
Having had some real success in my ability to talk to friends about the training coupled with an awareness that there was something missing in my ability to do it effectively with my parents, the people I most wanted to have this experience, led me into the programs of assisting that would train and develop me to be able to do that more effectively. The "lofty" motive of contributing something to other people, people I did not know, was really, for me, only a byproduct of these programs of assisting (namely the Guest Seminar Leaders' Program).
It ‘felt good’ to be successful (which meant to have people sign up to do the training) and it ‘felt good’ to be appreciated by the staff for doing it effectively. And, along the way, I was getting better and better at sharing it with my parents who finally succumbed to a magnificent life after years of struggling to hang on to the miserable one they had.
The one thing that I ‘got’ early on, an insight no doubt heightened by my almost unparalleled enthusiasm for the training, was the realization that the more I spoke to others about the training and about the results ("miracles" in est jargon) that I was experiencing after having done it...the more miraculous my life became. Like a real no-shit exponential blast of power, awe, peace and effectiveness every time I opened my mouth to talk about it. This is the secret "goodie" of enrollment, by the way. For those of us who have tasted it...all the talk about what people think enrollment is about is blatantly hilarious.
[As a big aside: Unfortunately, too many graduates confuse talking about the Forum with sharing it. They preach. They try to do it on people. They intellectualize about it. They formulate it. They go to what has worked for them in the past and try to resurrect it. They perform it. They "share" it. It's all dead meat. And when people don't respond the way they would respond if what was happening was really enrollment, they make LEC etc. etc. wrong and invalidate it and close the door to it.
People will do ANYTHING to avoid being vulnerable and intimate in order to keep themselves away from the possibility of looking like a fool. I know this intimately because it happened with me.
The "higher" I got in the hierarchy of assisting and, in particular, as a person who was leading seminars, my investment in not looking like a fool (among other things) became HUGE and the whole possibility of enrollment died in me. The unfortunate thing, in my opinion, was that I was able to keep it a secret.
There was nothing happening in the Seminar Leaders' Program that even resembled "sharing". In the old days you had to get up in front of all of the Seminar Leaders (without warning) and share the work. If you weren't being real, if you weren't being honest, if you weren't being (period) everyone knew it. It was clear as crystal.
When my "soul" died, there was nothing in existence in the leadership program(s) to reveal it (nevermind resurrect it!). And I didn't have the courage to demand it. So I continued leading seminars for a time, trying to train people to share and trying to enroll them into the power of it, having lost any and all access to it myself. My one real leftover regret.
I think my problem was a virus at Landmark...a virus that was growing in all the volunteer leadership programs in the organization. I also think that it was possibly overlooked because of a real lack of qualified, trained volunteers available to lead their programs. The lack of "soul" or the death of the "soul" of the volunteer leadership programs, the participants (including myself), and their leaders became a matter of integrity with me and was one of the main reasons I left the organization.
I hope for LEC's sake that they have seen and taken action to kill this virus. I have my doubts though from hearing some of the newer graduates who post here (on alt.fan.landmark). They sound like they have been trained by people who are as dead as I was.]
Okay. More reasons for assisting. Wanting more. More and more. More miracles, more results, more insights, more goodies. Identifying being in the environment of the work (hanging around the courses and leaders) as the place where these miracles and results, etc., originate. This is both true and not true.
It is a quite different thing being in a course room as a participant and being there as someone who is helping in one way or another to produce and/or deliver the course. Lots and lots of different places to stand and hear all sorts of different things depending on your particular role. It also is just nothing less than amazing to see people change so dramatically right in front of you. When you're a participant you are pretty focused on yourself. Being able to watch people's faces open and soften, their eyes clear and sparkle, their posture and the way they walk change...not to mention the things they share...there's just nothing like it. It alters you. It carves your cynicism up into little pieces.
From a logistical point of view, assisting gave me many opportunities to do things I never would have done in ways I never would have done them. Assisting taught me to be impeccable. I was able to see, through direct experience and time and time again, how the condition of my environment affects my ability to think and be creative. I have been able to pass that lesson along to my kids who have taken it from me, believed it, made me right about it and have excelled scholastically as a result of utilizing it.
(You'll probably never know how impactful impeccability or a lack of it can be in a course room unless you've experienced it as a course leader...but, next time you have a project where you have to do some heavy duty creative thinking...if you're having a struggle with it...go clean up your room! <w> The thing is that when you have experienced what a difference that can make to a course leader, then your piddly little job of straightening the pens under the chairs takes on a whole new meaning.)
Then, of course, there's a whole mega domain of results that I could offer you that came directly as a result of the fact that, unlike almost every environment I've ever been in, the environment of assisting is one in which I had the opportunity to live as my word. To make promises...to be held to account for those promises...to hear promises and to hold others to account for them...what can I say? I can't think of one area of my life that didn't benefit as a result of living my life as a person whose word means something.
Of course, making and keeping promises is just one small aspect of living life as one's word; but it's the aspect that was most directly accessible (like a working laboratory) from the assistants' program. Killer reason to assist. Very very uncomfortable at times. People did stupid things with it at times. Sure did leave me with an extraordinary ability to "point over the fence" and promise outrageous production figures in the businesses I've been involved with though. I won't even talk about the stock market...too magical and "airy fairy" for most of ya.
Assisting also taught me to speak economically (all evidence to the contrary) and clearly as well as to be able to really listen and follow instructions and do precisely what I have been asked to do as well as to be able to ask for precisely what I want. It showed me that I can accomplish things that I would have thought impossible.
Assisting trained me to train and develop others which I was able to take out into my life as well and use in my career. Assisting gave me the opportunity to see for myself what it takes to keep going when I want more than anything to quit (a very powerful and useful little item that has given me enormous power in life).
Assisting took care of a large portion of what I would call my 'southern vanity' and showed me that there is no such thing as a task that is 'beneath me'. As a result of that, I gained an enormous respect for people's work that I did not have before.
It was also just great to be with people and work with people I never would have (I've gotta say it) tolerated in my private life. I guess it taught me that there is always something in each and every person that I can connect with, empathize with, be with, work with and even enjoy.
Assisting put a very (obsessively) private, shy, scared-to-death, introspective, quiet (believe it or not) young girl up in front of a room full of people time and time and time and time again and allowed her to speak herself into existence and occasionally, in doing so, make a difference in the lives of a person or two along the way.
And one more thing. For those of you who are suspicious and skeptical and cynical...assisting for me was a great way to keep an eye on the inner workings of the organization and make sure that it was what it said it was...and what I was saying it was! (This was the part of me that waited until I had advanced enough in the organizational structure to learn the secrets and the REAL hidden meanings of things...ROFLMAO.)
There really is so much more I could say. There were good times and there were bad times...highs and lows...breakthroughs and breakdowns. All in all I would have to say that it was a pretty damn good investment of my time and I was more than willing to give it.
-NikkiCM