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




Calibration Zero

Muir Beach, California, USA

December 31, 2010



This essay, Calibration Zero, is the companion piece to Where The Rubber Meets The Road.



Photography by Lyn Malone, Collage by Laurence Platt
"Werner In Sine Curve"


Even in spite of myself sometimes, I don't want to be any different than I am. I'm complete and OK now. Being complete and OK now  (and the way I say now  implies the eternal now, the always  now) shifts how I am with regard to both the past and the future. When I'm incomplete and not OK now, I have one kind of relationship with the past and with the future. When I'm complete and OK now, I have another kind of relationship with the past and with the future.

It's not being complete and OK with the past which gives me being complete and OK now. It's not being complete and OK with the future which gives me being complete and OK now. It's being complete and OK now  which gives me being complete and OK now. And there's nothing to do to be complete and OK now.

That's Transformation 101. It's profound.

I don't always live in the now. Neither do I aspire to. Sometimes I live in the past. Rather, said more rigorously, sometimes I look to  the past. If I look to the past, it's a matter of being complete. As soon as looking to the past becomes a matter of attempting to fix something to make a better now, it's fundamentally flawed. It's deadly. Sometimes I live in the future. Rather, said more rigorously, sometimes I look to  the future. If I look to the future, it's a matter of being inventive. As soon as looking to the future becomes a matter of attempting to see something great to look forward to which will make a better now, it's also fundamentally flawed. And it's just as deadly.

Both looking to the past and looking to the future are powerful rip currents. They're both treacherous undertows  to swim through. The one tells you you'll be complete and OK now only if  you fix what happened in the past. The other one tells you you'll be complete and OK now only if  there's something great for you to look forward to.

Be careful. There's nothing wrong with looking to the past to fix what happened in the past. In fact not  fixing (in the sense of not completing)  what happened in the past is tantamount to accepting a ball and chain around the ankle for Life. There's nothing wrong with looking to the future to have something great to look forward to. In fact inventing a future worth living into is pivotal to living a life you love and living it powerfully. The inquiry to be in is this: do you calibrate your life to the past? Or do you calibrate your life to the future?

I don't calibrate my life to the past. Neither do I calibrate my life to the future. And in case you're second guessing me, sorry but I don't calibrate my life to the now either. What intrigues me is the possibility of calibrating my life to zero. What captures my imagination like nothing else is coming back to zero  ie the possibility of re-calibrating my life to zero, the possibility of coming back to nothing. Coming back to nothing seems in hindsight (and hindsight is always 20/20 vision)  to be so ... well ... obvious. When I come back to nothing, then who I am, right here, right now, is obviously  whole and complete and OK and perfect.

Even if  I'm going to look to the past to complete the past, I'm going to do it from calibration zero ... which is to say I'm going to look to the past coming from  this, right here, right now, and the way I am right here and right now, is whole and complete and OK and perfect. I can create one kind of completion with the past when I'm not coming from the way I am right here and right now, is whole and complete and perfect. I can create another kind of completion with the past when I'm coming from the way I am right here and right now, is whole and complete and OK and perfect.

Even if  I'm going to invent a future worth living into, I'm going to invent it from calibration zero ... which is to say I'm going to invent a future worth living into coming from  this, right here, right now, and the way I am right here and and right now, is whole and complete and OK and perfect. I can invent one kind of future when I'm not coming from the way I am right here and right now, is whole and complete and perfect. I can invent another kind of future when I'm coming from the way I am right here and right now, is whole and complete and OK and perfect.

Calibration zero: the possibility of having whatever's  happening now be whole and complete and OK and perfect. That's a given ie it's axiomatic. What's awesome is the possibility this gives of standing at calibration zero, and having the past (ie whatever  happened in the past) be whole and complete and OK and perfect. What's really  awesome is the possibility this gives of standing at calibration zero, and having the future (ie whatever  will happen in the future including  whatever I invent as a possibility for the future) be whole and complete and OK and perfect.



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