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

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Breakfast With The Master X III:

Broadening Horizons

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

April 27, 2022
"Until what is significant is created by you, you aren't living your life: you are living some inherited life."  ... 
"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it." ... Eckhart Tolle
This essay, Breakfast With The Master X III: Broadening Horizons, is the companion piece to Essays - Ten Years Later: Decade.
It is also the third in the tenth trilogy Breakfast With The Master:
  1. Breakfast With The Master X: Living In A Story
  2. Breakfast With The Master X II: Don't Believe In The Buddha
  3. Breakfast With The Master X III: Broadening Horizons
in that order. 		The first trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Conversation With A Laser
  2. Shut Up And Do What You're Doing
  3. Secret Agent
in that order.
The second trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Breakfast With The Master II: Future Health
  2. Breakfast With The Master II: Future Finances
  3. Breakfast With The Master II: Future Open
in that order. 		The third trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Raw Power
  2. It Works Better As A Possibility
  3. Magic At Heart
in that order.
The fourth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Breakfast With The Master IV: Parental Care
  2. Breakfast With The Master IV: Taking The Guilt Out Of It
  3. Breakfast With The Master IV: Language As Music
in that order. 		The fifth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Whatever Works
  2. Yesterday's Transformation
  3. Billions And Billions Of Stars
in that order.
The sixth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Breakfast With The Master VI: Doo-Wop, Coffee, And Intention
  2. Breakfast With The Master VI II: Cherish These Days
  3. Breakfast With The Master VI III: Forwarding The Fulfillment
in that order. 		The seventh trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. We're Here
  2. Being A Being Coach
  3. You Already Got It
in that order.
The eighth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Breakfast With The Master VIII: What People Crave
  2. Breakfast With The Master VIII II: Keep Talking
  3. Breakfast With The Master VIII III: Fearless In The Face Of Life
in that order. 		The ninth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. A Fountainhead Of Clarity And Power
  2. Conversation With A Laser II
  3. Being A Being Coach II
in that order.

They (ie whoever "they" are) say I'm a prolific writer (as evidence, witness these nearly one thousand seven hundred Conversations For Transformation essays). People assume I'm therefore also an avid (voracious) reader. But I'm not. The truth is I hardly read at all. And I've never declared myself to be an avid reader either. Neither have I ever extolled the need to read as an essential access to transformation. Look: people read ... or they don't. It's just that reading isn't an essential  access to transformation. Speaking  and listening  are essential accesses to transformation. Reading isn't. I assign the longevity of the assumption to the (unexamined) widely held faux equation that prolific writing goeswith  (as Alan Watts may have said) avid reading. And I'm a prolific writer. Therefore people assume I'm an avid reader.

They send me books to read, suggestions of articles to read, links to click to read (with the taken-for-granted assumption of "You wrote that  ... so you'd be interested in reading this  ...") to all of which I respond politely and respectfully, honoring the gift with thanks, stating that I appreciate it, and the truth is I'm unlikely to read it.

Why not? I don't read much in the genre of transformation that's been written by people unfamiliar with Werner's work. There's no mystery to that. I prefer to commit to looking into my own space ie to looking into the context for my life, then to distinguish the material for myself as newly and as originally as possible. It ensures I'll write from my own experience and not from what others have theorized about transformation and possibility. For me unabashedly, Werner's personal speaking is the exception. And it's not that he's better  than the others. It's not even that others haven't derived original material also. It's that he is, by any and all of our tests of direct, authentic experience, the clearest. My method has become writing / sharing conversations for transformation which, as far as possible, I've derived for myself without simply re-distributing an amalgam of everything else I've read that others have written in the genre, Werner's personal speaking being the notable exception.

So when during this virtual tenth Zoom breakfast with "the Master", the subject turns to notable books, many of them as possible source / research material for the very questions I pose, I listen ... and decline his suggestions. And that's actually a step up ie an improvement for me: in the early days of our friendship, I would have listened, then tacitly ignored him and  his suggestions, not 'fessing up that I was ignoring him and his suggestions (it was all very covert). For me, people speak with their being. What they write is merely an accompaniment ie a background soundtrack  which while possibly useful, isn't the featured attraction for me (and let there be not one iota / not one shadow of doubt about this: when I say writing "... isn't the featured attraction", it's particularly  true for me in the case of my own writing).

He looks at me intently, eyes locked on mine, not saying anything. And when he finally breaks the silence, it's with this gem: "You really need to broaden your horizons: no one  has a total hold on transformation and possibility.". He's suddenly and familiarly harkening back to Newton's gravity and the access which Sir Isaac masterfully distinguished in language in a way that's arguably uniquely his, yet the abstract  transformation / possibility / gravity, belongs to no one in particular.

Suddenly I'm / we're in an entirely new conversation, a conversation with broadening horizons, a conversation which allows me to be more open to what others have spoken and written in the genre of transformation. Listen: even if I haven't become imminently more likely to buy their books and read them, I've suddenly become a lot  more respectful and appreciative of their contribution to the genre ... and  ... I've become willing to 'fess up and say so without compromising myself (or them) in the process. When you tell the truth, it keeps you straight (that's particularly true when you tell the truth in Werner's space ie when you're being around Werner).

For a moment ie just for a moment, we reflect on this the tenth annual Breakfast With The Master session. As we do, time seems to move faster looking backward (from the tenth Breakfast With The Master session looking back to the first, seems like but a flash in time) than it does looking forward (from the first Breakfast With The Master session looking forward to the tenth, seemed like we'd never get here). What stands out here is the finality  (if you will) of the tenth  breakfast. "I've scheduled our eleventh" I tell him. "Have a great year" he says, and clicks off so fast (as people are, perhaps unintentionally, wont to do) that I just manage to get in my good-bye before the screen freezes, leaving me exactly where I started: forever and always complete, altered yet ever the same, wondrous yet never surprised.


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