Coombsville Appellation,
Napa Valley,
California, USA
September 13, 2026
This essay,
You've Already Been Conned,
is the companion piece to
The Un-Con.
There's joy in
enrollingpeople
to experience
Werner's work.
Over the past 50 years, I've
enrolledthousands
of
people.
I've never won a toaster. It's not that kind of
enrollment.
It's more like recommending a really fantastic movie you've seen. Your
good friend
wants to know "What's it about?" and you say "Dunt esk. Trust
me. Just go and see it.
You'll love it.".
So she goes, and she does. It's not just that you know her taste in
movies so you can be accurate in your recommendations. When it comes to
experiencing
Werner's work,
you could say it to anyone who asks what it's about. It's that kind of
enrollment.
"Dunt esk, trust me, just go and see it,
you'll love it.".
And they do. I'm not
trained
in
enrollment.
I've never done any classes or courses in
enrollment.
Once you've experienced
Werner's work
and
you share
the being you got from it,
people
are
enrolled.
I've also experienced my share of skepticism and
resistance.
It's to be expected.
We human beings
are structured to defensively
resist
transformation - at least at first. Here's a sampling of some of
the resistances
I've encountered. They're not necessarily
true,
mind you. They're
simply
a selection of what
people
have heard, repeated, and now
believe
fervently as if they were
"The Truth",
then later
discovered
they're not
true
after all, and are rather a popular folk lore which has
been glommed onto
Werner's work
by
people
who only have an in-the-standsopinion
of it - you know, those
guy-in-a-diner
experts who know everything about everything.
"They break you down", "They deprive you of
sleep",
"They deprive you of food", "They don't let you go to the bathroom",
"The
course leaders
shout at you if you disagree with what they're saying, and if you do
disagree with what they're saying, they'll call you an *ss-h*l*", "It's
brainwashing, that's what it really is", "When you're in a
weakened state, you'll agree to almost anything they tell you, just to
get them to
stop",
"They tell you that you're
the cause ofwhatever happens to you
in life, that if you're bullied,
you caused it,
not the bully, that if you're violated,
you caused it,
not the aggressor", "It's a scam, it's one big sales pitch", "They want
you to take more of their courses, every five minutes they try to sell
you another one - the entire three days and the two evenings are just
one gigantic sales event, they want to lure you back to do more of
their courses, they tell you that you need them", "The whole thing is a
scam to take
your money,
it's all about
the money,
they're out to con you (meaning: to trick or swindle you)
and coerce you to give them
all your money.".
It's alright. It's OK to express
opinions.
Those are just some of
the ways
we defensively
resist
letting go of
the ways
we've
inauthentically
created ourselves to be, and
the ways
we defend ourselves against the threat of having to let them go - which
is to say against the assumption that we'll be conned into
it.
You've been conned by
the world.
The world
has conned you into
believing
that you're of not much
worth
if you're not
wealthy
and
successful.
You've been conned by Madison Avenue, using billboards, radio and TV
jingles, and spam, to buy the products they're advertising. You've been
conned by Wall Street to invest in high risk stocks which, when they
tank, leave you with nothing, yet reward their brokers with huge
commissions. You've been conned by
religion
to
believe
that any god other than the one you worship, is a fake. You've been
conned by politicians to
believe
that they'll deliver on their promises - really!
You've been conned by life to
believe
there'll be a
happy
ending when in reality, nobody gets out of here
alive,
and some of us will end up laboring under the most arduous
circumstances.
You've already been conned by society to
believe
that who you are is your name, social security number, and your mailing
address. You've been conned by the military industrial complex to
believe
that war solves problems and is good for you in the long run. We've
already been conned by our own expectations that
happiness
and
love
are out there ... somewhere. We've already been conned by our
own expectations to
believe
that we don't already have
happiness
and
love
and
fulfillment
in our lives like a possibility, that it takes nothing (nothing
at all) to have it ... on and on and on.
When people experience
Werner's work,
a space opens up in which they can start to see the areas of their
lives in which they've been conned, what the cons have cost them, and
how being conned in one area of their lives impacts their entire lives.
I'm sorry.
Werner's work
won't con you. It will
un-con
you.