MAS: An Oft-told Tale

BACK IN '78 my ex-husband and I lived in Lafayette, a suburb of San Francisco. Our best friends, Sally and Ray Caldwell, had recently attended a weekend seminar offered by Lifespring, a New Age, large group awareness training, often compared to Werner Erhard's 'est' seminars. The focus in these kinds of groups is on personal choice and taking responsibility for your life. Sally and Ray enthusiastically encouraged us to go to the next weekend seminar which was held at the Holiday Inn in S. F.

On Sunday evening, one of the final exercises was to pair up with someone from the group that you didn't know or come to know during training. As I recall, there were nearly 200 people in attendance. The purpose of the exercise was to use our intuition in getting to know the other person; to try and discover some nugget of information unlikely to be known by anyone but the person in front of you. After a weekend of opening up to new ways of thinking, the trainers said that we were in a state of "suspended awareness" and open to such an exercise, unlike we might have been earlier in the training. My experience had been very positive over the weekend. I was game. We were allowed to ask questions but the respondent could only shake their head 'yes,' or 'no,' to the questions.

I was paired with a man in his early 60s. We sat opposite each other, knees barely touching. I volunteered to ask questions first so I got comfortable, quickly scanned his face, and relaxed into the process. I asked him some general questions, like...are you enjoying the workshop, do you live nearby, but I was almost immediately distracted by a strong aroma. I tried to ignore it but the aroma only intensified.

Finally, in a fit of frustration I apologized to the man and said that I really didn't see the need to go on because of the distraction. Of course he was bewildered and asked me to explain. I felt totally foolish in even mentioning it but figured I had nothing to lose. I told him that I couldn't focus on the task at hand because of the powerful smell of ... dare I say it ... peanuts. The man swallowed hard and looked at me as if I had just revealed a dark family secret. Seemingly out of nowhere, he confided that his baby granddaughter had died less than a year before. The next thing I knew he began to cry and I found an unused Kleenex in my pocket to give him. Clearly distraught, I gave him time to gain his composure and then he dropped the bomb. "Her nickname was Peanut," he said. "That's what we called her from the day she was born. She was so tiny; so precious. Peanut is what we called her."