My Klemmer Experience

NO EVENT SPOILERS AHEAD:

As you may or may not know I am heavily involved in a non-profit organization Elev8Life. Our mission is to equip everybody with the tools to become a leader to make the world a better place, through serving leadership. This is Dr. Andrea Hazim’s brain child. Her dream is to train up a generation of compassionate serving leaders and she is 8 years deep. After having a life shifting experience at her annual summer camp I decided to pour back into it by volunteering my video creativity to grow the brand. I’m blessed to be apart of this organization for the past 6 years. Her dream and mission was inspired by an experience she had with an organization called Klemmer and Associates.

Brian Klemmer was a man on a similar mission. He has passed away, but his legacy lives on through the impact he made on other people to continue his efforts! Today the company holds leadership conferences that penetrate DEEP into your soul and pulls out the programs that run our lives into the light. It’s a great chance to grow and understand why you are not where you want to be in life, no matter where that may be.

This is my experience:

In September an amazing couple that goto my church, Robin and Larry, sponsored me to goto Klemmer’s first intro class, “The Quickening”. The Quickening is their Biblical version of their first class “Personal Mastery”, that connects the concepts to scripture. I got to go with Dr. Andrea and my best friend Isaiah. It was an incredible experience full of growth and understanding. This class I made connections with people instantly and it felt like an adult version of the Elev8Life teen program I went to when I was 16. Understanding why my life looks the way it does and understanding that I, and I alone, am the only person accountable for it. My father always told me as a kid, “nobody can make you feel anyway unless you let them” so I understood this concept well, but it is always impactful to get reminders! This was just the talk I needed and I got a greater understanding of what programs run my life and why. Unfortunately this experience is only 1 weekend long, and although I gained a lot, I needed more! Isaiah and I signed up for the next class instantly. We had to continue our journey in personal development and leadership.

Lets take a moment. Before you start to Google Klemmer, let me just tell you what you’ll find. If you look up Klemmer on google, the first link in the drop down is “Klemmer CULT” & “Klemmer SCAM”. I would like to say that this is indeed a cult. If a cult is simply defined as a culture, Klemmer is a culture of people who care and love, wanting everyone to be the best version of themselves. Creating a culture of how to effectively communicate without shame, blame and guilt. I am apart of many cults really! The cult of Jesus Christ. My church is also a cult! We believe that Yahweh is the one true God and his Son died so that my sins are forgiven. We even have a list of commandments, He gave us, that we are told to follow!!! Crazy!

Now if you want to use the cult definition of “A religion considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader.” Then Klemmer is most definitely NOT a cult. There is no one person running the show and they are SUPER supportive of everybody’s belief systems. No matter where you come from, what religion you practice, race, attitude, everybody is welcomed and nobody is forced to stay. They don’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. They don’t demand money or shame you into conforming. I had a great experience and learned so much. Back to the story…

A month later we fly out to Bandera, Texas where we goto the ranch! Legacy Ranch it’s called. Here is when it got real. For one week we are immersed in experiential learning that really made me aware of the lenses I look at life through. Given many tools to shatter them and view life from an accountable stand point. A few people from my Quickening class were there and the connections I made were excellent. Some people I am still keeping in touch with and care about. This week I became aware that although I have viewed myself kindly in the past, recent events have changed the way I look at myself and the world. I had many revelations on money and how I view it. I gained an understanding of how I sometimes put on a show, or a front, to the world (& myself) that all is well, leaving peoples experience of me as not being authentic. I didn’t want to feel negative emotions so I lie to myself by shoving my true feelings so deep that I have a hard time really understanding them. This does not get rid of them and it will boil up and implode! I gained many tools on how to lead more effectively and I was able to reassess my dreams and ambitions for the next year (news years blog post coming soon).

After the week was over Isaiah and I actually missed our flight. The next one wasnt for 2 more days so we were STUCK in San Antonio! We didn’t loose our cool once. We remained joyful, spreading love and then went to Six Flags. I ate a fantastic gluten free pizza and we slept in an AirBNB. I felt like this is exactly how one who trusts in God should act in the world. All thanks to tools we learned at ALS.

While I was there I got a chance to talk with their Videographer and Photographer Ethan. He’s a great guy and after talking for a bit I learned that he has not had a chance himself to go through the program, because he is the one capturing it. I understood this VERY well filming TLTCON, with Elev8Life. Being a student and being a camera man are different experiences. I offered to shadow under him for the next class and the class after that take his place so that he can go through the course. He accepted my offer!

Overall it was a fantastic experience and I signed up for their Heart of the samurai course in San Diago, California this June!

Now I sit here again in Texas on the ranch, looking back at another incredible week of growth. Ethan taught me a lot about how to edit faster and more efficiently, setting up systems so that I don’t need to stay up until 3AM every night editing. He showed me how to be a true fly on the wall to not get in the way of other peoples experience, but simply capture it. I had a revelation that when I film on the back wall with a zoom lens, stay quiet, not make jokes and resist the urge to get to know people deeper I actually am SERVING people better. Not making things about me, even without concisely thinking about it that way. This is something I will take on-set with me in the future, because people got to be fully present. It really clicked for me at the end as they laughed, cheered, and clapped at the amazing video Ethan put together. They would come up to us afterward and say “THAT WAS AMAZING! I didn’t even know you were there all week!”, “I didn’t even see the camera once through the week”, “How can I get this video sent to me, I want to use it to relive this experience”. I feel if we were really involved, filming every single moment, talking to people the whole week, they wouldn’t have had this grand reaction. He has a system set up to film only what is going in the video, editing throughout the day, and leaving the room when we weren’t needed. I look forward to filming the one at the end of January with all these tools and systems, of course with a lil DeBrincat flare to it. The drone is comin out!

With all this being said I do have one negative thing to say. I have been stuck in a self hatred thought cycle for about 5 months, and before July I was extremely depressed from September 2021 - January 2022 after my Papa passed away. I talk down to myself and feel like i’m not enough. This was exacerbated after my experience going to the Advanced course.

Now this is NOT Klemmers fault at all! They encouraged and gave me tools for the opposite effect. I made my new understanding of being the only person accountable for my thoughts and actions mean that I am to blame for everything wrong with me. That I am a horrible sinner and if it wasn’t for Jesus’s blood I would be a good for nothing, rotten, POS. While the TRUTH is i’m responsible for both. I am everything wrong with me AND everything good with me too. Jesus is the perfect example and He did die so that I may live, but I made this mean that I must be sinless and perfect or I am not worthy of loving myself. As I shed my sinful desires and life behind me, I find more sin and little ways I am not perfect. This would cause me to feel like I would be better off dead. I never blamed Klemmer for these thoughts, I know that I am responsible for them. I do recognize though that the more I understood how I think and act in the world, the worse the self demeaning thoughts got.

After helping Ethan out this week, I truly understand my purpose for being here. Yes, it was to serve the students and Ethan, but there was a sneaky lil plan God had to benefit me. I gained an understanding, after opening up to the staff on feeling I was having, that everybody is human. Just because I push my feelings of not wanting to live on earth anymore down, in the name of “it not being real”, doesn’t mean they go away. I have been turning away help and not believing the good things people have to say about me, creating a self destructive cycle leading nowhere good. They spoke to me in a place of love and gave me hard to swallow, but GREAT, feedback. I realized that I can be helped by God AND people. I thought that only God can help me so I would read my Bible every chance I got looking for God to heal me, but I have been denying people He is sending to help me.

I am changing my mindset. I am responsible for my life and my thoughts, but that doesnt mean I SUCK! It really means I can actually change it. I can make my life look however I want and I want to live! I want to love! I want to love myself. I need to be at peace.

Yahweh amazes me and I feel Him talking to me everyday. I am here on earth for a great purpose and Klemmer was a God send to remind me of this truth.

I highly recommend this course to anyone and if my estranged wife is reading this, find a Quickening class near you. I’m not sure how you are doing, but I believe that it will help you.

Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. -Ephesians 1:2