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

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Coaching By Osmosis

Napa Valley, California, USA

Cinco de Mayo, May 5, 2024

"Transformation is being in a conversation for transformation. When you are no longer in a conversation for transformation, you are no longer transformed.


...

This essay, Coaching By Osmosis, is the companion piece to Zoom With The Master II: Ontological Trout Fishing.

It is also the sixth in the hexalogy Coaching:

It is also the twentieth entry in The Laurence Platt Dictionary:

The Laurence Platt Dictionary is the companion piece to A Certain Quality Of Communication.

This essay, Coaching By Osmosis, is also the sequel to Being Around Werner.

I am indebted to Keith Czarnecki and to James Patrick "Jim" Starlin who inspired this conversation.

This is what's always been real for me: I get more from speaking with and listening people in face to face coaching conversations (by asking questions and listening answers) than I do from reading the same material, even if it's material the people I'm speaking with wrote themselves. To wit, there's a certain je ne sais quois which is the "proof of the pudding" in the spoken word of face to face coaching conversations, that's simply not available in the written word.

It's not that the face to face approach to being coached is the best way to be coached, or even that it's the correct way to be coached. What I'm saying ie what I'm asserting is that in spoken word exchanges, there's more coaching to be gotten than in written word exchanges. So I keep myself open to being coached face to face by people rather than by books (it's the immediacy of spoken coaching conversations that calls out what's authentic and what is not).

<aside>

What's proved to be useful for me is the time I've invested in inquiring into, discovering, and getting clear, that the domain of transformation ie the domain of being complete, is speaking and listening ie the domain of the spoken word. Yet ironically, these Conversations For Transformation essays occur in the domain of writing and reading, and that's the domain of the written word - which is but a close approximation to the domain of the spoken word, and therefore indubitably not the real deal of transformation (idiomatically stated, it's "close, but no cigar").

Said another way, the domain of transformation is speaking / listening transformation; speaking about / writing about / reading about transformation, is not the domain of transformation.

Indeed, when we refer to "conversations", we almost always imply the spoken word. The spoken word has a certain timbre and feel when it comes from being complete, just as it has a certain timbre and feel when it comes from being incomplete. It's the timbre and feel of it which is evidence of the presence (or absence) of authentic transformation in the speaker.

<un-aside>

"A-Ha!" says a friend of mine, "You've got many life coaches! Way to go: be open to many people coaching you. So great!". It's true. I'm coachable ... but I don't consider my coaches to be "life" coaches. They don't teach me about life or how to live or how to strategize or how to be successful or how to win. That's not why I'm in conversations with them. It's not their strategies or successes that call me. What I consider them to be, is "being" coaches. It's their way of being that calls me. All I have to do is be around them, observe how they be, then take on their way of being as a possibility for myself. My idea is "If they can be that way, then being that way is also a possibility for people, so it's certainly a possibility for me too.". I say I get their coaching by osmosis.

From the Cambridge International Dictionary:

<quote>

Definition
osmosis

noun
the process in plants and animals by which a liquid moves gradually from one part of the body or the plant to another through a membrane

<unquote>

Adapting this definition (with a certain poetic license) by replacing "plants and animals" with "people", "a liquid" with "being", "part of the body or the plant" with "person", and "a membrane" with "space", gives us:

From The Laurence Platt Dictionary:

<quote>

Definition
osmosis

noun
the process in people by which being moves gradually from one person to another through space

<unquote>

In this regard, Werner is a great "being" coach. In the early days before the courses, what there was to do was be around him, and you'd get it. He, being the way he be's, opens doors for others to be the way he be's. Different than being a being coach, a life coach could be considered to be a "doing" coach.

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