The individual leading Esalen is not, in fact, our sweet and entirely unqualified CEO. The individual’s name is Scott Stillinger. While he seems to be no more intelligent than Tricia, every Esalen community member I’ve spoken to about his character agrees that his vacantly amiable demeanor hides a soul mired in darkness. Calling him mechanical and incompetent would be a glib dismissal of a person whose power and influence at Esalen is vast. The extent of that influence, because it is unofficial, is unknowable. The means of his power, although unnamed and unacknowledged, is clearer. He controls Tricia through and within their undefined and suspect close personal relationship. He controls the community by expanding the role of his (obscenely bloated by any industry standards) department within the day-to-day operations of Esalen, and then tightening its grip. He controls the institute’s future. His agenda is entirely obscure. I personally do not find this state of affairs troubling. I find it terrifying.
Through the generosity of an Esaleaks contributor, we are able to present Esalen’s complete federal tax returns (IRS Form 990) for the years 2002 through 2009, excluding 2006. The returns include annual compensation data for officers, directors, and trustees. Here we chart the totals:
How has the doubling of executive compensation helped the financially strapped Esalen to achieve its mission? Answers are invited from Esaleaks readers, especially Esalen officers, directors, and trustees.
The raw 990 documents may be downloaded in PDF format here.
In the interview, part of a “Unique Genius Superhero” series which apparently matches McEntee’s recent “Superhero” theme for Staff Week, the CEO discusses how a weekend of salsa dancing and yoga, followed by a weekend of collage, led her to the discovery her life’s purpose. McEntee says that her final collage, shown here, now serves as a “litmus test” for every decision she makes and how she does her job.
Cut from the pages of magazines, McEntee’s “vision board” intersperses new age vernacular like “deliciousness,” “sustainable living,” and “free spirited & fabulous!” with a symbolism consisting mainly of hearts, hands, plants, animals, rainbows and unicorns. The only philosophical content is a laser-printed set of platitudes which pay token service to Esalen philosophy but offer surprisingly little in the way of depth.
Does the vision represented in McEntee’s sparse collage serve convincingly as a litmus test for the how the CEO conducts her job and makes her decisions? McEntee says, “I could hardly separate my own life purpose from what Esalen’s mission is in the world as I saw it.” How well does her life purpose collage reflect the worldwide Esalen community’s sense of the mission of the institute?
All commentary is welcome. Full video and transcript follows:
TM: Hi. I’m Tricia McEntee. I’m the new CEO of Esalen Institute, which the magnificent, magical retreat center on the coast of California in Big Sur. And our mission is all about human and social transformation in the world.
Q: That’s great. So Tricia, recently, in the last year or so, you got really clear on your purpose. So I love to hear about just the process you went through to get clear on it.
TM: Yeah, I was — yeah, it was a phenomenal process, actually my background is really in the business world of being a CPA and very kind of strictly left-brain business oriented, and I was here as the CFO, and I was really trying — you know, I’m passionate about the mission of Esalen, and I was in a place where I was trying to find how I could bring more of that into my work and my job, and I went on — I — it started with like this wonderful salsa dancing and yoga extravaganza workshop that I went to with my daughters in Puerto Rico and we just had a great time really opening up and playing together, and then I came back, and the very next week I got back I went to an inspirational leadership workshop here at Esalen, and that workshop really talked about mission and focus and purpose and I was — you know — it was, as well, kind of a very playful approach, kind of a more right side of the brain approach — and then I was preparing — shortly after that I was preparing for a pretty serious conversation with the Chairman of the Board, exploring ways that I could be more influential and how I could bring my passion more into my work, and as I was trying to prepare for that, I just started this — I basically made a vision board, or a collage, I didn’t really realize what I was — was it a planned process, I just started cutting out different things in magazines that just really spoke to me about my purpose and what really moved me in my life, and it — and I as I put it together I didn’t really know what I was putting together, I just started cutting and pasting and I couldn’t stop and it went on for a whole weekend and I barely slept or ate, and when I got it almost done I kinda stepped back and took a look at what I was creating and just — the purpose, my mission, my life’s mission, just, just came out — it was like a 30 second — a 60 second — moment, and I just knew, of all the pieces and pictures that I had cut out, what my purpose in life was, and it was such that I could hardly separate my own life purpose from what Esalen’s mission is in the world as I saw it. So it was a really “aha” moment for me, knowing that this is where I belonged in life. This is my calling and where I need to be. And it was a blast, it was great fun too.
Q: How did you — so what is your purpose, your calling, your — I’ll focus the video on it while.
TM: Okay. It’s “always stay connected to your heart, courageously respond to the call of leadership, humbly commit to a life of open exploration and growth, be a witness to the miraculous unfolding of spirit, and relish the journey, it will exceed your wildest dreams.”
Q: [reading] “Yahoouo!”
TM: [laughs] Yeah. “Yahoouo!”
Q: Alright, so one last question which is, so now what are you doing with it?
TM: Well, at this — about four months after I created this, the CEO position became available. It wasn’t even an open position at the time — I had no idea — and when it became available it was, again, my wildest imagination that I would be the one in this job, but here I am, it’s a year later, and I am using this [looking at collage] — basically, my mission statement — as a litmus test for pretty much every decision I make and the way I go about my job. And I’m having a great time doing it.
Q: Hey, Tricia, thank you so much for your story, and also for just the work you’re doing here at Esalen. It’s really powerful.
TM: Thank you very much.
McEntee was promoted to CEO after a community-endorsed worldwide search for the position was scrapped by the Board, in favor of hiring the former CFO.
As an older member of the Esalen tribe, I want to open a door to you current staff at Esalen, allowing for you to express yourselves, in a possibly more honest conversation than otherwise, by using the intermediary of willing Nine.
So, with interest and curiosity, and if you so desire to answer, I ask you:
How was your Staff week?
Did you have an outside facilitator for the week?
Where you able to sleep in seminarian rooms on the property?
Did the managers cook and serve you any of your meals?
How were the morning Community meetings?
Was an honest process permitted to unfold?
If yes, how?
If no, why not?
Where you able to express any of your current issues/concerns?
If yes, how?
If not, why not?
Did you have a voice in the theme presented of: “the Future direction of Esalen”?
If yes, how?
If not, why not?
Now that Staff Week is over, retrospectively, what has been the overall outcome for you:
on a personal level
within the Community
and how do you feel about that?
closer to management?
empowered?
Any additional comments you would like to share?
Thank you for responding. From a caring Esalen member.
Growing up in rural America, my early life was naturally involved with Christian Fundamentalist subcultures. We often had Mormon missionaries appear on our doorstep. My family would invite them in to hear what they believed. We were taught by our parents how to examine the nature of Christian belief systems — to ask ourselves whether these Christian ideals, these concepts and their terms, formed a coherent and logical world view.
So picture a young woman Mormon missionary on your doorstep, alert, emotionally honest, inspired, full of herself, on a mission from God for humanity. Now imagine that same young woman, Tricia McEntee, grown up and CEO of the famed Esalen Institute, still on her Salvationist mission for humanity.
There she was, introducing this year’s 2011–2012 Esalen Staff Week. Ms. McEntee proceeded to give her talk outlining the future of Esalen, as she sees it, with the title “Inspiration into the Future.” What followed was actually a mostly incoherent, rambling monologue. She followed the standard form of Salvationist Mormon missionary rhetoric, about how this vision of hers will change the world as we know it. She even broke down in tears, filled with the emotion of potential salvation she was bringing to us with her testimony.
Like Sarah Palin, she spoke as a provincial, with a very limited range of existential terms. She failed to muster even the least of philosophical vocabularies, and resorted to superlatives — amazing this, awesome that. How different from the distinguished leaders and teachers of our past: Aldous Huxley, Gregory Bateson, Allan Watts, George Leonard, Buckminster Fuller, and so many others.
And then, toward the end of the week, community members were instructed to perform an exercise in which we were to don paper capes, which were supposed to represent our “super-hero nature.” Our paper capes were to be worn in order to remind us that we were all super-heroes. How soon can we expect the mandatory investiture of Mormon Sacred Underwear at Esalen Institute? How long until Esalen philosophy and spirituality are fully consumed by shallow religiosity?
If Esaleaks is creepy disinformation then why doesn’t everyone just openly air all the “real” information and then everyone will be informed, able to create their own opinions and action plans based on “the facts” and transparency? A virtuous state of communication between people would be achieved. The solution seems so simple to me. —Anonymous
The big picture is lost — not only at Esalen, but in the world at large. It seems the world financial crisis has lead to Esalen Management using what Melanie Klein calls the “shock doctrine” to push the elite agenda — sheer capitalism — during a crisis, while folks are too numb and scared to respond. —Anonymous
When the Nine held sway at the Institute the world was changing radically, and people were looking for new ways of being, new ways of seeing, new ways of interacting with the Divine and with each other. Esalen is as American as apple pie — and it is being taken over by corporate greed heads, group-speak fear mongers, and insidious Power Point thinking. And the workers are distracted, getting triggered by things like lack of health care and insecure financial futures.
All are losing sight of the big picture — the transformation of consciousness and each person’s role in it. The transformation is partly in moving past a “Maslow-based” model. His ideas have been co-opted and twisted beyond recognition. His true focus was on peak experience, not management principles. Self actualization is available under all circumstances. If we all and each seek peak experience, we will contribute to the transformation of human consciousness. And we will transform our community, and it’s influence in the world. Social transformation is coming. We are already a part of it.
The trick is to experience ourselves as actors in this cosmic game, and to transcend the limited culture of our time.
Know yourself as the “warrior with no enemy.”
We agree that Esalen workers are distracted by minutia, but “lack of health care and insecure financial futures” are not mere distractions. The notion that “self actualization is available under all circumstances” can only come from someone who has never experienced a lack of fulfillment in their basic needs. This is a limitation of many in the upper ranks at Esalen and elsewhere, who have forgotten that the lower levels of Maslow’s Pyramid are the foundation for the higher ones, not vice versa.
The Nine invite more contributions about the notion that Esalen can move successfully to a post-Maslow model.
Esalen President Gordon Wheeler recently sent a message to the Esalen community in which he derided Esaleaks as a “creepy” disinformation campaign, in which we have supposedly discredited ourselves by noting that he and Nancy were compensated over $200k yearly by Esalen. Wheeler’s hefty rebuttal of course ignores the whole thrust of Esaleaks as a platform for the unheard, and the important questions being asked.
On this note we must present Esalen Staff Compensation January 2008, graciously provided by an Esaleaks contributor, in which the Wheelers’ combined total compensation of $282,760.00 is disclosed, based (naturally) on a calculation of their (then) Point House residence at equal value to a room at South Coast.
The ultimate point of course is not the Wheelers’ compensation, but the total balance of power at Esalen, threats to its moral and spiritual constitution, and whether the community can preserve the fundamental qualities of our spiritual home amidst some very destructiveinfluences.
We look forward eagerly to hearing and publishing the community’s words, humbly winnowing for the truth, and inclusively plotting a righteous and resonant path for Esalen. The power of anonymity will serve the community so long as the power of personal intimidation is abused by authority.
