I entered into the Esalen fold during a very strange time, not only for myself but also for the Big Sur community at large. The Bridge collapse and subsequent Land slide, the largest in use history equaling 6 million cubic yards of material and costing 54 million dollars and a whole year to fix, had devastated Big Sur after a series of fires that had already taken much from the people there. If that wasn't enough Esalen had just renovated its lodge right before it happened, spending around 7 million dollars to complete it. so they spent all that time and money closing Esalen before the bridge collapse and the mud slide, and as soon as they opened the roads were shut down for almost a year. The community was shattered, many people being laid off or leaving and finding lives elsewhere, and Esalen went into a large amount of debt staying afloat. After the roads opened and Esalen started hiring again this is where I come in.
But it wasn't just that series of tragedies which made up the back drop of my arrival. There was a tragic death of one of the beloved staff members which also filled the air in a heavy aura of grief. I remember walking past the gardens and seeing a wake for the woman that had died. I didn't know what was going on and moved to observe, but my friend B shot me a glance, one that made very clear this was a private affair, so I nodded to him and kept walking on in respect.
Esalen is no stranger to Tragedy, this I would learn soon enough in my own experiences there, but also from the many stories I would hear from new friends that had lived and worked there many years. One of my friends told me of the four suicides he knew of that had taken place in its history, some of which quite tragic, even for such an already terrible occurrence.
The paradoxical thing about Esalen is that the same energy and freedom it brings to people, allowing them to feel and experience ways of being they had long been denied, also brought them terrible grief and anxiety about the lives they would soon return to. I saw it many times, heard and felt it in their voices and body language. They had found something primal and pure within Esalen's "container" the word used by the institute to describe the safe place that the land and its community represented, and tried hard to nurture. But once the newcomers had found this peace, and tasted its forbidden fruit, the reality of having to leave quickly knocked the wind out of their sails, sending them adrift at sea. Many of the suicides I imagine had much to do with this same facet of Esalen. One of the phrases I heard once from my friend Diem, was that Esalen was like mount Olympus, a place to have all of your desires fulfilled, but just like Prometheus, who dared to share the secret of knowledge (the fire of the Gods) with the other humans, both he and the other people who taste the fruit, are cast out into the wilds of societies from which they came.
Now, the truth is Esalen has gone through many different incarnations, and the idea of there being an Esalen tribe different than the original Indians for which the Institute is named, or group of people consisting of certain energies, which was often spoken of by the staff and guests, lives on in strange ways that must be recognized for the level of complexity involved, for not only is it cast in a positive light, but also an extremely negative one, considering the terrible history of colonialism and the systematic extermination of the Indians by all the forces of empire and corporate greed coming from the rest of the world.
In California's case especially since the gold rush made the hunting down and scalping of Indians a State policy, in which the government paid people $5 for each native Indian scalp. To put this terrible crime in perspective, one must realize that the average pay at this time was in the cents per hour for grueling work, and given that the white settlers had long since completely dehumanized the native people, murdering them for what was then huge sums of money, was far preferable than tedious, hard work. This holocaust was made an even greater tragedy given that the Federal government repaid the state of California in 1950, for every bounty it paid out for hunting down the native people.
These aspects as well as others make up the many tragedies of Esalen, but whats important to understand is these tragedies mostly come from wonderful and freeing experiences felt on the land once managed by the Esselen tribe, who had imparted upon the land extraordinary healing powers, and for the vast majority of people brings alive in them the powers to continue to grow and change themselves and thus the world for the better. This happened for me and for so many of the people I met there. The fascinating thing about places of great transformational energy like Esalen, is that it attracts people of like spirit from all over the globe. Whether they are already well tuned to such energies or need time to calibrate themselves to it, as in my case, makes little difference, we are all attracted to these places, and those who have committed themselves to the path of healing, find themselves there more often than not.
In the face of such Tragedy and Hope flowing in and out and all around the Esalen Institute, I find that regardless of what the institute becomes moving forward, as long as there are people on the land who hold the sacred relationship with the land, and with the divine, there will be plenty of energy to transform the people who are drawn there from all walks of life, from every corner of the planet. I only hope that people will continue to bare the sacred flame, and commit themselves to it no matter the cost.
