Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
it won over the family and in some level brought Marilyn and I
closer together. I felt, well, maybe I do belong in this possibility.
But that's a good example of how you can enter a moment so
empty, and it can be so empowering. Whereas if I went in with all
my credentials or all that I thought I was, it would have been a
level of self-important arrogance that you might have pulled off for
the moment, you might have impressed a few people with your
material benefits, but it could never equal the power of that
moment. And those were the moments I lived, that's what that
embodied prayerful life was about, being present to what the
moment called for, and it was a wild Easter egg hunt, you never
knew what the next moment, and I still don't know.
TRIP: Man, you've had an amazing life, you're really “gumping” it
just like my pal the Wizard in a serious way. You've got so many
stories in that book of yours, and I want to drill down into some of
them. You talked about holding the space for people that showed
up at the studio, and often when you did that you were silent. At
first this may have come from an awkwardness you felt about
speaking, but later you discerned the power of silence, and you
came to an understanding that silence sharing is a real gift. But
this gift was not passive, like sleeping, it was an active something.
What is the active aspect of sharing in silence?
JERRY WENNSTROM: Well, in a way we can't make a thing out
of silence, no more than we can make a thing out of talking. Again
it gets down to that, what does the moment call for? And I had
moments where someone would come into my studio and I would
feel this intense agitation coming from them, and even the silence
would make them even more uncomfortable. And there was a part
of me that wanted to talk just because I was nervous about the
energy they were bringing into the room. But there was something
about, again, being present in that moment that I wouldn't speak.
I had a woman come exactly in that situation where she was so
wound up, and at first she was talking 100 miles an hour, and I
just stayed silent. Then the silence got a little deeper, and there
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