Assisting - For WE&A, Then for Landmark
Who were those guys, anyway?
Like I said, there was something very special about the people who assisted at my training.   Take Matt, for instance.  This was the guy assigned to bring me my medication.    And like clockwork, three times a day, every day of the training, I would get a tap on my shoulder, get a paper cup of water and a reminder to take my dilantin.    This guy was special - I wanted to get his name and office number so I could switch from my current neurologist to him!!    Imagine my surprise when I ran into him about 6 years later and shared with him how impressed I was - and he told me he was an engineer!!.
 

What was assisting all about?
I walked into the assisting meeting for a training two months after mine, and had to promise to get more out of it than I put into it. That simple act dispelled for me any idea that I was "cheap labor."  I listened hard to all the "experienced" assistants who shared repeatedly about how they never really got it until they assisted!  I was a little skeptical, but only until the end of the first weekend.  At that point, I could see what they were talking about.  In addition to being moved and touched as people were doing their training, I found that I had my own issues to grapple with.   The difference was, I had some very close-knit support.   That was something special!

My first training was as the Trainer Support person; I got to take care of Angelo for the weekend.  Given that it was in his weekend that I had my breakthroughs, it was as though someone somewhere had decided I needed to allow myself to have more in life.   I was thrilled and had a ball.  That was the beginning of many years of assisting that culminated in supervising trainings.   And that was just the beginning of all the assisting.  

 

What kinds of things did I get to do?
That first weekend was a little unusual; in addition to picking up the trainer at his hotel, I had to shop for his food and prepare his meals.  Which wouldn't have been all that bad, except he was "one of those California guys" who wanted strange things like mangoes which I didn't even know could be found in Central New Jersey!   I spent hours looking for them, and then, after getting them back, was told they weren't ripe!    (Which was true - but I didn't know it, and hadn't thought to ask about it.)  

One of the supervisors saw that I was somewhat upset - or at least not as sharp as I had been.  We talked and uncovered what used to be called a "mechanism" but now is known as a racket.  "I didn't know" was the mechanism; it kept me from taking responsibility for an action or even admitting mistakes, and instead reversed the direction of the responsibility.

I could get mad without consequence.  I could even get people to agree that I had done my best (and this was much bigger than mangoes, I knew) and that because I tried really hard, and because I couldn't be responsible for something I didn't know about, then any criticism of what I had done was unjustified!  That was astounding!  I had been doing that all over the planet and completely unaware of how visible it was and how little power it left me with.

In the second weekend Angelo was back and I was thrilled!   Even better, however was that the Production Supervisor knew him and knew he liked fresh Mozzarella cheese.  So I spent a great deal of that weekend warming up Mozzarella cheese slices.  I smelled like it for a week - but had a real ball!   Enough so that I decided I would continue assisting.

 

What else was there besides the trainings?
Without going on for hours and hours and hours about all the varied assisting positions I had, it's simply worth highlighting some of the best - or favorites. 

GSLP - at the time, the program known as the "Guest Seminar Leaders Program" was the access to being trained to lead programs for Werner Erhard and Associates.  A 6 month program, it involved weekly classrooms, weekly assisting in "guest seminars" or on the telephones, and several weekends with other groups from other Centers in the country.  The primary classroom leader was always the Enrollment Manager, and midway through our 6 months that person left, to be replaced by someone else.  I attended all the classrooms and weekends and spent weekday nights in guest rooms.  Additionally, my marriage broke up (my wife decided she didn't want to be married any more) and I was back on my own.  It's hard to separate the two in my mind, but the outcome of the GSLP was that I lost what little fear I had of speaking to groups, and pestered every member of my family to do the training.    None of them ever did, by the way!

The 6-Day - one program I had heard about almost ever since doing the training was "the 6-Day."  There was even a film about it, featuring John Denver's music.  After I saw that film there was no question in my mind that I would do the 6-Day. It took some time to get the money together, but I did and in 1983 journeyed up to Kingston, New York to spend 6 days "on the mountain."  And just as with the training, I was attracted to assisting.  For a class of about 100, there was a team of 45 who were there the entire time - including two days before and a day afterwards.  Some of them were people I knew from assisting in New Jersey, and others I just met there.  But I was in love with ALL of them by the time it was through.

There was another group of people who came up mid-week - the "Ropes and Breakthrough" team.  They set up the Ropes Course (three events in separate locations around the mountainous campus), manned them all, and provided leaders to the small groups that traveled the course. 

The ATP - The Assistants Training Program was the team that came up to the 6-Day and produced the Courses.  In 1984 I went up for 10 days to produce the New Jersey Course.  And, just as it had been assisting around the Training, it was as valuable to me as doing the Course!  I had a rapport with 43 other people; I spent a week supporting all kinds of people having wonderful breakthroughs in their lives, and I worked my tail off.  I knew I would go back! And that was the beginning of a number of  summers of wonderful assisting.  I eventually became the PTL (Production Team Leader) - the person who enrolled everyone and got them there, and continued from there to lead ATP Classrooms and enroll people in the Course.   I only stopped when I moved to California at the end of the 80's.
 

After WE&A....

I came out to California in 1989 and assisted again at a 6-Day at the Santa Rosa site; I didn't do much else, however.  Shortly after I came out here, however,   the Advanced Course was introduced.  I did that with my wife, and after coming out of that entered the IFLP - the Introduction to the Forum Leaders Program (since renamed to the Introduction to the Landmark Forum Leaders Program) - for 6 months in a program that had its roots in the old GSLP, but its heart in the newer work of the Landmark Forum.   Shortly after leaving that program I became a coach for the Self Expression and Leadership Program (SELP) with my wife. 

Much like my love of the ATP, the SELP was the heart of my life for three years.  As a coach, and then as a head coach, I was in a position to directly affect the quality of people's lives in a program that was designed to have them be more powerful in their own life and circumstances by mastering the distinction of enrollment.  Whether I was coaching a participant or training a team of coaches, I was thrilled and excited - and confronted in those moments when I was less than a possibility for humanity.
 

What I loved about assisting - and why I continued to do it.

I only stopped assisting in the past few years because my time commitments have made it far too difficult to be on time and make every agreement. But I have never lost my love of it or my respect for the training I received.  The opportunity to make a difference in another's life is something I hold sacred, and having the opportunity to do that is something I count as a blessing in my life.

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