Tom M. Wilson

Having left Esalen I have had moments of missing the place. What I missed was the sense of being enmeshed in a small community of people. While staying at Esalen I sometimes found this overwhelming and without respite (and thought to myself that I wouldn’t want to live in an eco-village), but now away from it I realize that I also found it satisfying on a visceral level. For most of human history we, as a species, have lived in stable groups of between 20 and 200 people for just about our entire lives. With this in mind it comes as no surprise that after I’d slaked my thirst with a few days of peace and solitude, I started to miss the easy access to known characters that walking into the Esalen lodge (the dining area) always provided.

But there were things about that place that I had tired of. And although I’ve left the country and come to the city, I’ve not left nature behind. My path continues. Just to the west of the towns of Marin county is an area of woodland and hills. I’m regularly to be found up winding paths such as this one. As you can see, spring is here in this part of the northern hemisphere.

I’ve been into downtown San Francisco a couple of times. As you walk past Grace Cathedral into downtown proper the streets dip dramatically, and the ornate hotel facades, glimpses of the water through canyons of tall buildings, and well hallowed cable cars rattling up the incline, all make for an intriguing cityscape. I like it. The other day I and a friend visited a gallery downtown that exhibited the black and white photographs of the Californian photographer Brett Weston. I particularly like his photograph ‘Reeds, Japan, 1970‘. Abstract brush strokes from the creator.

I’ve visited Berkley across the bridge on the more polluted east side of the bay, and found that the energy level on the street there is far, far greater than over here in sedate and peaceful Marin County. As you walk into a pub it will be commonplace to hear a snatch of excited conversation about politics or philosophy from someone who is quite likely an academic or a student, or at least highly educated. I’ve also made a day trip down to Stanford University, south of here in Palo Alto (just around the corner from where Apple has its headquarters). The area Stanford is located in reminds me of quiet Canberra back in Australia, and doesn’t have the same rough vitality of Berkley street life. The architecture of the main quad is, strangely enough, just like the Byzantine style of the old buildings at the University of Western Australia (but UWA has a smaller and prettier campus).

But mainly I’m back in Marin, the area just north of the often fog-shrouded Golden Gate bridge. I lived here twelve years ago, but this time I’m more appreciative of the quiet valleys to be found in the hills around me.

This image was created by my friend Nate Bolt (rights reserved). It is of the Esalen hot tubs, and depicts the place as a planet.  Superb work Nate.

So I have now left planet Esalen (the retreat centre where I’ve been working and studying for the last ten weeks). Today I’m breathing a sigh of relief to have my own life back – to not be working for the machine and to not be constantly in the public eye. I am in control of my own days again. I have some privacy again. I can choose who I associate with again. Ahh.. at last. The sun is shining through the leaves of the oak trees in this quiet valley in Fairfax, just north of San Francisco.

What do I mean by ‘the machine’? On one of the feeback forms I took in the office from a guest at Esalen they had written ‘the machine is too well oiled’. And this is accurate – the selection process for becoming permanent staff at Esalen stresses organizational ability, punctuality, following orders without question (what they call ‘being a team player’), and the ability to give great significance to repetitious and banal work activities. Because of this the make-up of the Esalen staff is full of personalities that possess these traits. They run the machine of a workshop centre/ new age resort very efficiently. If this is the only litmus test of success then they succeed admirably. But could the machine possibly ‘be too well oiled’? Well the above mentioned personality traits do not often coincide with the relaxed, fun-loving, easy-going, jokey, creative, and charismatic aspects of human identity. In fact they can sometimes preclude these other aspects of human identity. The machine of a large new age hotel runs smoothly and efficiently at Esalen, but the people who live and work here permanently are often overly fastidious. Many of the people who work here are great at running to complete the next task, but they forget enjoy the journey en route. These people are great at making other plans, but they forget that life is what happens while you are making other plans. I’m sure many organizations in the modern Western world suffer from the same problem.

And I have to say that it is nice to be away from New Age discourse. This discourse, exemplified by many of the books in the bookshop, is full of slap dash poetic sentiment and nebulous and evidence-immune philosophical argument (more often plain assertion rather than argument). I have an image of Aldous Huxley come back from the dead. He is slumped at a table in the Esalen lodge, despondently listening to a zealot babble incoherently about the chakra system.

But of course there have been some great things about being at Esalen. The dance sessions for example…

And the hot tubs above the ocean fed by mineral hot springs…

Esalen massage is unique. It is full of long ‘settling strokes’ which give you a feeling of whole body integration, as well as rotations of the joints, and an emphasis on the quality of touch and presence of the practitioner. Although I’ve not talked much about it here, after ten weeks of studying massage I am now confident with practicing massage. I have a good knowledge of anatomy and I have mastered a range of bodywork techniques. I am ready to practice on those who need it, so let me know.

The other morning I sat in a hot tub under the morning sun as it tipped over the Santa Lucia mountains from the east and cast it warmth down on the naked loungers in mineral hot water. I looked down on the rocks of the beach below, gray and catching the dragging surf in an immobile clasp. The foam collected and ruffled like white egg yokes, then retreated to the west. The water I was in was hot, and only with an intellectual effort did I remember that the blue sea I was looking at below was very, very cold.

All of a sudden a movement to my right on the steep rocky slope. Salt peter and olive coloured bushes clung to the near vertical scree, and from among them I made out the shape of a squirrel. The squirrel weaved a perilous and sure footed way down the slope. It came to a ledge further below me again, but still high up over the sea. It stopped and looked out, static on the ledge. It was looking at the waves powering themselves onto the stones below and the big blue immensity out beyond. I could see that the only reason for being were it was and doing what it was doing was to perceive the dramatic ocean scene in front of both of us. I looked at the waves. It looked at the waves also. And then in that moment I knew that other living beings can also appreciate aesthetics, or visual drama. I was witnessing it happen before my eyes. It is not just the struggle for survival that preoccupies other mammals. A different living reality was here with me soaking in the spectacular tumble of the Big Sur coast.

Here’s me later in the day soaking in the view.

Green tea and sitting high above the ocean in an empty and quiet sunroom is the perfect combination for thought and reflection. That’s where I am right now. It feels good to use my brain again. With so much external engagement in the form of lots and lots of social interaction and massage and chores and meals and work in the office, my intellectual life has been dimmed somewhat. Good to reclaim it and sit here thinking and writing. I’m glad to be leaving Esalen in less than a week. Working and studying in this community/workshop centre/resort means constantly running from one thing to the next (I haven’t had time to update this blog or keep in touch with my friends). I need to slow down and focus on my own work more.

After experience in ‘process’ groups (group therapy), I have realized that many of the people here at Esalen want to find interpersonal psycho-drama when there doesn’t always need to be any. Many of them really want and expect that stuff. Rather than being attentive to the natural world, or discussing climate change, history or other such substantial and meaningful topics, many of them prefer to sit in a circle in a yurt and discuss the exact shape and colour of their respective navels. Let me make it clear that I am interested in the human drama, and I do believe in the importance of clear, constructive communication and an awareness of one’s inner emotional state, but sometimes these people can just go overboard. Get more upbeat, smile, get going on some bigger projects, and find a sense of humility through finding your place in the natural world, I often secretly think to myself. Many of these people don’t seem to understand the importance of normality, levity and humble simplicity. Instead they get swept up in the group delusion that earnest interpersonal psycho-drama is the most important thing in the world, when it is really something that will be remembered as much as yesterday’s weather.

But the land here still inspires me. Despite all the earnest, knotted-brow Californian errant knights of Esalen the land abides and stands tall. While people can bring you down, the reality of being here on the edge of this magnificent continent can still be touched. A diminutive squirrel still sits poised on a ledge, looking outwards to the sea.

Last weekend I was up the road a few miles north of here, walking on a trail through the redwoods which then wound up a valley through oaks and grassland, in Julia Pfeiffer state park. On the way up I and a friend sat on a rock high above the valley, surrounded by green, translucent leaves. The sun created highlights and dark patches on the tips of redwood trees on the opposite side of the valley and we dangled our legs over the rock and were silent. Sometimes a bird sang from below us or near beside us. There was so much peaceful, shadowy, empty space in the middle of the narrow valley before us. I had a moment of immersion in the wilderness, thinking that this place was always here, and always wild and unpeopled. This corner of California is far from the madding crowd, and due to a long distance from Big Sur to where most people in this state live, it will remain untrammeled by humanity. Days come and nights fall here, I thought as I sat on the granite boulder, with immemorial regularity and calm. This is why I come to nature – not to stride boldly through it, but to be still at places like this, to look outwards and sense the spirit of the place.

The human community can make a lot of noise, but there is another kind of community at Esalen, a community of non-human beings. Like these long-lived cypress trees standing on the edge of the cliff, the members of this other community are much quieter interlocutors.