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




Being Upset:

This Side Of A Breakthrough

San Ramon, California, USA

November 4, 2001



This essay, Being Upset: This Side Of A Breakthrough, is the companion piece to It is also the second in a hendectet of Breakthroughs: It is also the prequel to
  1. Expectation, Or Possibility?
  2. The Amygdala Hijack
  3. Coming From Love
  4. Located Inside Language
in that order.




In a transformed life, there are no solutions - only questions. Yet one of the solutions I am most often asked for is the solution to being upset.

You are sailing along, happily, in your transformed yacht on a transformed ocean under a cloudless, blue, transformed sky with nothing but transformed intentions, when suddenly ... Wham! ... there it is: the disruption and the dislocation of an upset making it's unwanted, ugly presence known suddenly, surprisingly, unexpectedly, automatically, and rudely against your will.

What's useful to consider ie to try on for size  is this:

Behind every upset is a commitment. Literally. If you're not already committed to something, you can't be upset. Or - to put it another way - you aren't upset unless it's against a background of commitment.

No, I don't mean you're committed to being upset. What I mean is if you look, you'll see without a commitment to something great being thwarted, upsets wouldn't show up like upsets.

I'm suggesting you question everything going on with you when you're upset, to reveal and get back in touch with what you're really committed to. Not only will that give you your vision and power back: it will also create a new opening for action to get you back on track.
Werner Erhard distinguishes three components of an upset:

You don't have to do anything, nor do you have to be any particular way to be OK. You're already  OK. If you look at an upset in the light of you're already OK, you'll be able to tell the truth about the upset. You'll be able to distinguish its three components.

If you take appropriate actions to complete them, you'll get your life back. You'll be enabled to move on to the breakthrough which awaits.



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