Seminars

Late Nineteen-Seventies

I was making my living as a graphic designer, working out of a studio in my home. I would usually work late into the night, when everyone else in my family was asleep. That’s when the vision would occur – late at night. It was always the same. I’m standing in a large room before a seated audience, talking. For what reason, or in what context, I had no idea. (I wasn’t on a stage, or behind a lectern – that much was clear.) Now, I don’t know about you, but back then I couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than having to stand in front of a group of people and talk. (It’s still a source of anxiety, even after years of standing in front of groups as a seminar leader.) I also couldn’t think of anything I wanted to be able to do more. Oh, if only I could able to do that, I would think, overwhelmed with longing. Around this time, a friend of mine convinced me to attend a seminar that he had just participated in. One of those self-actualization seminars, spawned in California, which were becoming more and more popular on the east coast (in and around Boston and New York, to be precise). He was wildly enthusiastic about it. He said that it would change my life. Like everyone else in the seminar, I had to go up in front of the room and introduce myself to the group and say a few words about what I wanted to get out of the seminar. I was in a panic, knees shaking. The seminar leader, who could see how incredibly nervous I was, told me to take a breath. “Now take a moment to look at the people,” he said. As I did so, I realized that the room looked uncannily like the one in my vision, as did the people.

The vision is ready for us, but we’re not always ready for it. It’s showing us what we will be if we’re willing to take the journey. Into terrifying new territory, in my case.

Transforming myself from the solitary, introverted graphic designer that I was back then into a seminar leader was no easy task – I had to overcome my terrible fear of speaking in front of groups, for one thing – and there was never any agreement from the people around me that I had what it took to be one – just the opposite, in fact – but there was always that vision to sustain me: I’m standing in a large room before a seated audience, talking; I’m talking with great passion and conviction; I’m making people laugh. (No greater gift than the ability to make people laugh, I would think.) As many of the people who knew me back then would have testified, nobody seemed less inclined to this type of behavior than yours truly. But then, as I have stated more than a few times in my seminars, If you can see it, you can be it. At the very least, the image or vision gives you something to believe in.