The Best of est, or, "Whaddya Mean, 'I'm not Responsible?' "

STORY DESCRIPTION The Best of est, or "Whaddya Mean, 'I'm Not Responsible?' " by Earl M. Blecher The story, written in the first person narrator, is about a character who does the est training in his quest for enlightenment and transformation, and thinks he has now "gotten it." As he goes out into the world, something happens to him, and he tries to draw on the concepts and lessons he learned to make life work, "be here now," accept "what's so," be in control of events, and "take responsibility for whatever he creates." However, to his dismay, the more he draws on the principles, concepts, and philosophy of the training and be "responsible for creating" whatever happens to him, the more he is embroiled in a vortex of absurd occurrences that unfold. The story is told on two levels: while engaged in describing the (1) content of the unforeseen events, he is engaged in (2) stream-of-consciousness thoughts, trying to use the training concepts as a way of controlling the events, and turn life around. Halfway through the story, the concepts of enlightenment begin to resonate in a new "context." He lets go, "flows with the universe," getting the lessons of the training, and the events play themselves out in a new reality, helping him "get it." The narrative is filled with serious insights, as well as sardonic wit and humor, like that of Woody Allen and Holden Caulfield, pointing out how life's events and peoples' behavior, including our own, can be seen as bizarre and ridiculous, leaving us as an observer of our involvement. The novel should be read slow and deliberate, since it is also written to be performed on stage, so as to capture the voice inflections of the emotional changes the character goes through, including bewilderment, upset, surprise, insight, enlightenment and transformation, which result from the data and series of experiential processes during the training imparted by the trainers. These concepts are drawn from Eastern philosophy and Western psychology of the mind, as well as the idea of the illusion of consciousness taught by est and, now its successor program, the Forum, in addition to the multitude of other training seminars, such as Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins, and thinkers such as Alan Watts and Deepak Chopra, all drawn from the ideas of what we call the "New-Age" movement which began in the 1960's. Although the subtext of the novel is the est training, est is merely representative of the ideas that have emerged from the entire "New-Age" movement. Enjoy the read and journey.