Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

An Actionable Access

Coombsville Five-Way* Intersection, Napa, California, USA

December 17, 2018


"Transformation is getting to see as a possibility who you might be really."
...   speaking with Laurence Platt in Conversations With A Friend IX (What Did You Do To Me?) 
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
... Professor Albert Einstein
This essay, An Actionable Access, is the companion piece to How To Enroll The World.

It was conceived at the same time as

In the absence of rigor, we lapse into speaking about  transformation in lieu of speaking  transformation, effectively jargondizing the language of transformation. So in the conversation for transformation, we're always at risk of running out of time - by that I mean it's only a matter of time before the current iteration of our effective languaging of transformation, becomes tainted and ineffective, requiring us to re-invent it newly all over again (speaking transformation is always and only an ongoing work-in-progress). If you've been around the work of transformation for at least a few years, you'd have noticed by now its languaging is constantly being re-invented. To be sure, the earliest iterations of its languaging clearly worked well, so they'll also work now. The newer languaging however, is free from our already associations  ie it's not yet embossed by our own tendency to jargondize it - at least for a little while longer.

But in time, most of even our newly spoken derived language, will also devolve into jargon, especially when it's used arbitrarily, inaccurately, and out of context (which is exactly what we're thrown to do with it). Already in the public sphere for example, the term "transformation" itself is used synonymously with "change" - the ads say "transform"  your body, "transform" your kitchen, "transform" your wardrobe etc etc. There's certainly a good case to make for changing your body, your kitchen, and your wardrobe, but not if languaging it as "transforming" them, causes the term to be jargondized, resulting in a blunting of the scalpel of experience  in the process.

It's useful to notice the term "transformation" as used in the conversation for transformation, conveys a process profounder than the way it's deployed in the public sphere. "Transformation", as Werner began using it, was a necessarily newly derived and specifically applied term which, due to the worldwide reception for Werner's work, is now well known and spoken outside  the conversation for transformation. The inevitable danger is this will render it as jargon, which will cost us its power.

Borrowing from Professor Albert Einstein, the most incomprehensible thing about transformation is that it is getable. No, that's not an error. I don't mean "the most incomprehensible thing about transformation is that it is comprehensible". I'm not borrowing from him verbatim. I'm actually not looking to comprehend transformation ie I'm not looking to understand  it. Going down the path of comprehending / understanding transformation invariably interferes with the experience of being transformed, if not ruins it entirely. So I do mean the most incomprehensible thing about transformation is that it's getable. Transformation is "getable" means it can be gotten  (or, borrowing from Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, grokked). By that I mean it can be experienced directly  - comprehension / understanding isn't required.

So if we avoid the path (and the trap)  of trying to comprehend / understand transformation, my question is: is there a more workable path to getting transformation - that is to say, is there a path to being transformed that doesn't require comprehending / understanding it? Asked in a more rigorous way, is there an actionable access  to transformation? By that I mean is there an actionable access to real, authentic, thrilling  transformation? (not merely to transformation jargondized as change).

The answer is: yes there is. That's exactly what Werner's work provides: an actionable access to transformation. And the access is through language which is ongoingly scrutinized, revised, and enhanced, thereby safeguarding it from our propensity to reduce it to jargon and thereby disempower it.

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* This essay comes from an epiphany I had while idling at the infamous Coombsville five-way intersection in Napa, waiting for the lights to turn green.

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