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 Unimaginable Commitment

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

August 27, 2019



This essay, An Unimaginable Commitment, is the first in the trilogy In The Listening Of A Heroine:
  1. An Unimaginable Commitment
  2. Created Word
  3. Choosing Like Breathing
in that order.

It was written at the same time as
  1. Created Word
  2. Choosing Like Breathing


Ask anyone who's participated in Werner's programs and experienced transformation, to share with you how transformation shows up in their lives where the rubber meets the road  ie what it's like, what it's worth, what its benefits are etc. You'll almost always hear transformation brings a rare, extraordinary quality to bear. Living improves and becomes more enjoyable, more workable  (if you will). Indeed, Life itself  works better as a result of ie with transformation. Mind you (to be honest) it's not that way for 100% of everyone. No it isn't. But it is that way for well into the top ninetieth percentile of all those who participate, most of whom say participating in Werner's programs is the  experience of their lives. That's a daunting claim ie it's heady stuff if you're asked to accept it sight unseen the way I'm asking you to do.

Having experienced transformation, it's natural to commit yourself to it - which means nothing more (and nothing less) than giving your word to living your life as  your word, not because you've now joined some exclusive esoteric clique with a kind of (wink wink) inner secret, the knowing of which makes you better than (or worse, superior  to) others, but because Life itself works better when you live as your word (that's a hypothesis you can test for yourself, or ignore at your own peril).

Living a life committed to transformation is a stand anyone can take. I've committed my own life to transformation. But with that said, I still manage my own life. I run it the way I want to. I call my own shots. I write these essays when I want to write them (and I don't when I don't). Nobody sets a schedule for me to adhere to.

Then there are those truly heroic people who've committed their lives to transformation in a manner waaay  beyond what I've done. Their entire lives, and everything in them, and all the slots in all their calendars are committed 24 / 7 / 365 to making transformation available for others. They're the staff of Werner's enterprises, the leaders of his programs. The lives they manage are the lives that are managed for them. The shots they call are the shots that are called for them. The schedules they adhere to are the schedules that are set for them. In such positions, what goeswith  the job (as Alan Watts may have said) is giving up their own privacy - which means giving up doing it "my way"  (as Frank Sinatra may have said). That's  what's called for, to do what they do. That's what they've committed to 24 / 7 / 365, some of them for decades. It's an unimaginable commitment. I'm committed. But mine is not an unimaginable commitment: I still do a lot if not most of this my way.

A woman who's a hero of mine made that commitment nearly five decades ago. She and I don't get to meet a lot, maybe once every ten years - which isn't exactly "often". But whenever we do, I'm clear she's one of the most important people in my life. One day she contacted me and asked, clear out of the blue, if I'd like to schedule time for a conversation. Would I?  If McCartney calls and asks "Would you like to come to Peasmarsh  and play on my new album?", you don't say "Sorry Paul, I'm busy.". No, you drop everything  and you run. Why? Because you get transformation being receptive to it as an experience born of speaking and listening - in other words, you get transformation inventing it as a possibility that lives in language, and being willing to be coachable in speaking and listening transformation.

Who is this person? Who is she who's made the unimaginable commitment to make transformation available on the planet? It's said "It's not what you know: it's who  you know.". No! For me, that doesn't work as an access to transformation. "It's not what you know: it's who you know speaking and listening transformation"  does. That's who she is: an unimaginable commitment to be with people as their word 24 / 7 / 365 even when they themselves don't relate to their own word that way.



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© Laurence Platt - 2019 Permission