The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-being. Hale Dwoskin

people, both in small groups and individually.

      Lester believed strongly that personal growth was not dependant on any external source, including a teacher, and he did not want to be anyone’s guru. But, because of how elevated people felt around him, despite his protestations and attempts to avoid it happening, many of Lester’s students insisted on seeing him as a guru. So, in 1973, Lester realized that his teachings needed to be formalized into a system that he could allow others to teach—leaving him out of the equation. A way to transform his powerful techniques for personal growth into a do-it-yourself system was devised, which is now called the Sedona Method: the topic of this book.

      How Releasing Has Influenced My Life

      From the beginning, my relationship with Lester felt like being with a good friend. I was immediately so drawn by him and his teaching that I rapidly took all three of the courses he offered: the Basic Course in November, the Advanced Course in January, and the Instructors Training in February. I was in a rush to learn everything I could. I also started working with Lester on sharing his teachings with the world.

      Working with Lester afforded me the opportunity to spend more time with him, observe him in action, and see how he dealt with life’s inevitable challenges. I was very impressed. One of the ways we related was by sitting in coffee shops and speaking at length. He consistently enjoyed sitting and chatting over a cup of coffee, right up until shortly before his death. He frequently stated, “My office is my brief case, and the nearest place to get a good cup of coffee.” Our meetings were always a little comical, and sometimes frustrating to me, because I always thought it was important to discuss the truth, whereas Lester would invariably steer the conversation to as mundane a topic as possible. Nonetheless, every time we were together, my understanding and direct experience of truth would deepen—even if we never spoke about it. He was a living example rather than a pontificator. This helped me discover the opportunity to release and experience greater freedom in every moment, a practice that stays with me to this day.

      I was so engaged that I even started holding support groups for people using the Sedona Method in the living room of my Upper West Side apartment. But it wasn’t long before I realized that I needed to mature and grow personally before I could be of much use to Lester and his budding organization. I decided to support him as a volunteer and active participant instead of as an employee while continuing to explore in different ways how releasing would affect my everyday life.

      Soon after that, I started my own business selling jewelry. The success of this venture afforded me the opportunity to work part-time while exploring life and my releasing full-time. I continued this venture and my more casual involvement with Lester until around 1981. As I worked with the Method in my business and personal life, I became ever more convinced that I’d found a technique that could help anyone. In the late ‘70’s Lester moved out to Arizona. Except through his teachings, my contact with Lester during this period was occasional, but it continued to influence me profoundly.

      Then, in 1981, I was invited to fly to Phoenix to participate again in an Instructors Training. This seminar began a new phase of our relationship. It also rekindled my desire to work closely with Lester on sharing the Method with the world. I started leading workshops for Sedona Method graduates on a regular basis in New York City and flew to Arizona several times a year for more training and to participate in weeklong or longer retreats called Intensives. Leading the workshops and participating in the Trainings and Intensives greatly accelerated my personal use of the Method. I noticed profound results in myself and in friends who were also participating.

      During this same period, I decided to participate more actively, full-time, in the world of business. I briefly worked for my father selling industrial real estate in and around New York City, but I didn’t feel the job suited me. Then I joined a firm in Manhattan that sold co-ops and condominiums. I was quickly able to use the Method to support my sales ability and became one of their top salespeople. For a while I enjoyed doing this, but then an opportunity presented itself to join my brother in establishing an investment division back in my father’s real estate firm. I happily made the transition to selling office buildings, shopping centers, and other real estate investments.

      For the first time in our lives, my brother and I became friends. I was able to release the old baggage that I had been carrying around about our earlier relationship, and we became a terrific business team. We were having a recurring problem, however, of starting many more deals than we were actually closing. Then, one day out of the blue, Lester called me up to see how I was doing. I explained what was happening. He said one sentence that totally turned around our closing ratio and the rest of my business career. He simply said, “Bank in the bank, not in your head.” Without me saying anything about it, he had picked up on a tendency that I and most other people in the sales profession have, which is “head banking.” I was so busy imagining how great it was going to be when I closed each deal that I was neglecting actually closing them. As soon as I started releasing instead of fantasizing, we started to close a lot more deals.

      Another important lesson about letting go was learned when I received a listing for nine shopping centers from what was affectionately known in the industry then as a Xerox broker. A Xerox broker is someone who gets written listings on properties from other brokers, then copies and sends them to other brokers and principals without ever bothering to check the facts or get in contact with the actual owner or listing agent.

      I sent a copy of the listing to one of my better customers, and he shot me back an immediate, almost full-priced offer. Of course I was excited, so I picked up the phone to call the man I thought was the principal, only to discover that the listing had come from a Xerox broker with no way of contacting the true owner.

      Distraught, I realized that there was nothing I could do but let go. So I did. I cleared my mind and released all my feelings about the situation until I reached the point where it was okay whether or not I ever made the deal. The very next phone call in our office was from the actual principal of the shopping centers, responding to an ad looking for properties that we just happened to have running in the Wall Street Journal. When he offered us the listing on the very same property, I nearly fell over.

      This is only one of many events that have led me to understand that a statement I’d heard repeatedly from Lester is absolutely true: “Even the impossible becomes completely possible when you are fully released on it.”

      I also got to practice using the Method right while closing deals, sometimes when people were renegotiating multimillion dollar contracts and trying to cheat me or each other by making up a whole new story of what we’d agreed on, instead of simply signing the papers and exchanging checks. These were tense occasions, as a lot of money was at stake. Nonetheless, because I was releasing, I knew when to be quiet—which is very difficult for a broker. I also knew when to stand up for what was correct. The financial rewards were beyond my expectations.

      By early 1987, I’d saved enough money to move to Arizona to rejoin Lester and support him in sharing his wonderful technique with the world. Much to the consternation of my brother and father, I relocated to Phoenix and became a full-time volunteer for his non-profit organization, the Sedona Institute, doing whatever was needed to get the word out. I spent most of the remaining years of Lester’s life working closely with him on his mission, almost entirely without monetary compensation. The reason I didn’t mind working for free was that I could see how much good I was doing, and how much I was personally changing for the better.

      In 1989, Lester asked me to move to Sedona to help him sell some of the organization’s real estate holdings to graduates in order to raise money. It was there that I met my wife Amy. I saw her in a karate class and immediately recognized who she was to me, so the next day I asked her out. She was dating another man at the time, however, and asked for my card in case her situation changed. A few months later, I got a call from her and we went out on a date. That was a Wednesday. By that Saturday she was taking the Sedona Method Course.

      Today, Amy and I have a beautiful, loving relationship, but it wasn’t always that way. It was tough in the beginning. Honestly, Amy was interested in other men at the time we met, so I had to do a lot of releasing for her finally to pick me. Once we married,