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
Ascension
Sonoma, California, USA
July 15, 2009
I am indebted to a
Friend
who inspired this conversation.
I often wonder how
You
first noticed it: the obviousness, the such‑ness, the
thus‑ness of it all. I mean, we (that is to say, every
member of the entire human race now living plus all those who've ever
lived before) have certainly had more than ample time to figure it out.
Given this brief history of time (as Stephen Hawking may have said),
having not enough time (or resources, for that matter) is
a lame excuse. And even those few who have noticed it haven't fully
grasped and articulated the power and the possibility of it in quite
the same way as
You
have. One of the beautiful ironies of life is how it's even possible to
be alive and yet not know ie not have
direct
experience
of the such‑ness, the thus‑ness of it all. I
don't know why it's so. And I'm unattached to there having to be a
reason for it being this way. But it is. How can a
bird
not know the sky? How can a fish not know the ocean? How can a human
being not know the such‑ness, the thus‑ness
of it all? Yet mostly, truth be told, we don't. The truth, as they say,
is often stranger than fiction.
If you don't have
of the such‑ness, the thus‑ness of it all, if
you don't know who you really are, life correspondingly
and consistently (and not surprisingly) shows up as "This
isn't IT!". If life correspondingly and consistently shows
up as "This isn't IT!", naturally enough we consider the
wise men among us, our "realized" masters
have something we don't have: a kind of secret we don't
yet know, the knowing of which would enlighten us enough to see the
such‑ness, the thus‑ness of it all, enough to
jog us loose from the deadening stupor to live, instead, coming from
"This IS it!"
But there's no secret! None. What could possibly be
secretive about the such‑ness, the thus‑ness
of it all? It's such! It's thus! It's so
blindingly simple.
When you finally get it you could kick yourself for not getting it
sooner. Such‑ness. Thus‑ness. The
un‑secret. The un‑Cola.
When you come to think about it given the prevailing climate of
"This isn't IT!", if wholeness and fulfillment were to
show up here and now in this
life rather than in the next one, that would by definition be a
miracle,
wouldn't it? Yes it would. And the thing about a
miracle
is pretty soon what a miracle makes possible becomes
commonplace to the point where everyone forgets the
commonplace was once considered to be a miracle.
If it weren't for the fact that
You
have already owned the miracle, that
You
have already taken responsibility for it, it may already
be too late. Once anything becomes commonplace, once anything
becomes passé regardless of it's value, it's on a
slow downward slide to what once was, to un‑hip, to no
longer cool. Any developed language which once was useful bringing it
forth rapidly devolves into
jargon
and eventually disappears from everyday use.
There's only one thing I know which keeps it alive, which keeps it
present, which keeps its enormous value
front and center
stage,
and that's
You.
Just by
speaking
it, just by staying in integrity by
languaging it, just by standing for it - in a word,
just by being it -
You
bring it forth and give it life. But embodying it this way isn't
simply a matter of talking the talk as well as walking
the walk. It's way more than that - waaay more. It's
in the end, when all's been said about it and when all's been done
about it, there's only one guise in which it ever shows up as anyway,
and that's as
You.
It doesn't diminish it in the least if the man standing next to me
doesn't see who I see
You
being. He's not been where I've been. He's not heard what I've heard.
He's not seen what I've seen. He doesn't have my point of view, and I
don't expect him to - and by the way, neither does that stop me from
having an enrollment conversation with him. The miracle is already in
place. It's already fait accompli.
You
have created yourself as who
You
are. The fish has walked up on the land bringing with it
elephants
and eagles like a possibility, simply because
You
speak it. That's the miracle I'm referring to. If it hasn't yet registered
with each and every one of the near seven billion human beings alive on
the planet
today, that's OK. What it's done is make it possible for
it to register with each and every one of the near seven billion human
beings alive on
the planet
today. That's what we have now. That, right there, is the global
impact of the miracle: before
You
came along, before
Youexuberantly
burst onto the world stage and intensely into my most intimate life, we
didn't even have it like a possibility.
We do now.
Elephants
are trumpeting at play. Eagles are soaring high.