Sterling Men's Organizations
The Sterling Men's Weekend is a modern men's "training" and initiation weekend created by A. Justin Sterling, and produced by the Sterling Institute of Relationship (SIR). It is a male version of an earlier Women's weekend also produced by SIR. Both are somewhat similar to an EST (Erhard Seminars Training) weekend, and the leader (Justin Sterling) was an EST trainer prior to his founding of the SIR.
The Sterling Men's Division is a men's group that grew out of the community of men who participated in early Sterling weekend events. It began in the early 1980's and had an informal relationship with the SIR, including some implied agreements regarding how decisions were to be made; these agreements were met with resistance from some of the membership, and occasional episodes of political unrest. In 1999 the Men's Division split off from the SIR and formed their own organization. After a couple more years Justin Sterling began a new group called the Sterling Men's Weekend Dojo ("Dojo") which largely took over the role that the Division had filled (as the volunteer organization supporting SIR and its weekends). The Dojo was established in several self-sufficient chapters in different regions of the U.S. and Canada, and performs volunteer work that during the interim had been conducted on a less organized ad-hoc basis by individual men. The political issues that had troubled the earlier volunteer organization were settled from the start by making the relation between Dojo and SIR explicit and official. During the following several years the Dojo and MDI men have moved towards coordinated joint efforts on a region-by-region basis.
Why I am thankful for having done the Sterling Men's Weekend
In the summer of 2008 at a men's convention, a man came to me after having read my personal core values and some of the related pages. He was a respected MDI leader and told me that "the man who wrote this appears to be at least 150 years old". Although the web pages are all of my own creation and written in my own words, I credit the Sterling orgnization with being a motivation to start compiling a glossary and encyclopedia of terms. During that process I developed my teaching skills and the core values material is an example of that. The man's "150 years old" comment reflects this, and I drew up the following mock balance sheet:
Summary Statement of Accounts, period of 1995--2008 inclusive Accounts Payable: Courses: SMW . . . . . . . . . . . . . $500 Alumni Reunion: . . . . . . . $300? (I forget) Travlel and Hotel: . . . . . $240 Airfare . . . . . . . . . . . $850 (approx) Dues (SMD, late 1990's) ($120 x 3.5 years): . . . . . $420 Dues (MDI, to date) ($180 x 4 years) . . . . . . . $720 Production Team fees: . . . . . $200 (approx) Incidental expenses: . . . . . $1000 (approx) (includes gas, T-shirts, cigars, pool halls, buying roses for Family of Women, etc. etc.) Accounts Receivable: 101 added experience-years of acquired wisdom . . . . . . Priceless
Links
The Wikipedia page on the Sterling Institute of Relationship
The official web site of the Sterling Institute of Relationship
SIR's page on the Sterling Men's Weekend
A Google search will also yield a variety of opinions, ranging from glowing testimonials to outspoken attacks. As with the Internet in general, you're sure to find some writers who will feed into your hopes and fears, and others who will annoy you.
This page was written in the "embarrassingly readable" markup language RHTF, and was last updated on 2015 May 12.
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