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




Collect Your Self And Punt

Napa Valley, California, USA

May 1, 2009



When I create something, miraculously there it is.

When I really  create something, when I bring it forth from nothing, joy comes with my creation.

I'm human. Just like you. After a while, the joy which comes with my creation may fade. Sometimes the joy which comes with my creation may even devolve into business as usual. That's not because it's somehow doomed  to diminish over time. Rather it's because it wasn't about  my creation in the first place. It's because the joy which comes with my creation comes from the creative process itself, from the act of creativity itself. The further into the past the creative process occurred, the further I get from the act of creativity itself, the more the joy which comes with my creation is likely to fade. Then it's back to business as usual.

Like that, the joy which comes with creating transformation is likely to fade over time. This isn't a loss  for me. Instead I see it as an opportunity to re‑experience creating transformation. I see it as an opportunity to re‑experience the joy of creating transformation again and again and again, over and over and over, time after time after time.

Transformation starts, transformation ends. Transformation starts, transformation ends.

In transformation there's no resting on laurels.



Transformation Starts Transformation Ends Transformation Starts Transformation Ends



When I say "transformation starts, transformation ends", I realize the languaging of it needs to be more rigorous  for it to convey what's so, for it to communicate what's real. So, spoken again, this time with rigor:

Transformation starts, transformation may seem to  end.

You know "This is IT!"  immediately when you experience transformation for the first time. "This is IT!" goeswith  experiencing transformation (as Alan Watts may have said). There's no doubt about it. I have no doubt "This is IT!" not because I think positively, nor because I'm an optimist, nor because I have faith, nor because I believe in God, nor even because I voted for the good guys. Even if some or all of these qualities are indeed present in my life, none of them are the source of there's no doubt "This is IT!". There's no doubt "This is IT!" because transformation doesn't show up in the realm of doubt / no doubt  in the first place. Rather, transformation shows up as who I really am.

Obviously  I really am who I really am.

It was so blindingly simple  so obvious that first time ...

I put it in a silver box  and made a great memory out of it. I didn't realize I'd started living with the memory of it, with the concept  of it. Not surprisingly, it went away.

Then one day, I looked around, and there it was: back again close up, face to face, larger than life, and twice as natural. It came back, and if I look and tell the truth about it, I'll say when it came back it was richer  and fuller  than it was before it went away. Furthermore, if I look and tell the truth about it, I don't really know  why it went away, and I don't really know  what made it come back. In fact, if I look and tell the truth about it, when it went away I thought it was gone forever, I thought the bubble had burst, I thought it was over.

Until it came back again. Until it started again.

Transformation
starts ends
Transformation
starts ends
Transformation
starts ends

It wasn't merely fortuitous that it started again. When it came back I let it in. I allowed it to come in again. And even if I had no clue  how or why it came back, when it came back I uttered a sigh of relief. Having tasted it once before, I already knew life without transformation isn't worth living. When it ended, I was back there, stuck in a life not worth living. That much I recognized.

When transformation started again, to say I was relieved  is an understatement. I wondered if or when it would end again. It surely did. In fact, from then on it ended ... over and over and over. From then on I noticed it always seems to end after it starts  ... over and over and over.

And then I noticed something else: transformation always starts again  after it seems to end ... over and over and over.

It was the latter observation which got  me, which grabbed me and gripped me and eventually won me completely over.



Collect Your Self And Punt



It's certainly possible to explain  why transformation seems to end. But it's not necessary  to explain why transformation seems to end. Even if I do explain why transformation seems to end, whatever explanation I come up with is just the explanation I come up with  - it's not "the truth".

Let's pick an explanation - that is to say, let's make one up.

One good explanation, one good reason  why transformation seems to end is this: the clarity afforded by transformation allows all the hidden agendae  to be uncovered, to come forth, to see the light of day  (so to speak) for the first time. Now there's all this stuff  to deal with, all these things to complete, all these communications and conversations to put in place. It sounds like hard work. This work sounds like it's not the ease and freedom which caricatures  a transformed life ... and yet this work is exactly  what the clarity of transformation calls for.

Here's the paradox of the ease and freedom of transformation: the ease and freedom of transformation is the casualty  of the ease and freedom of transformation. At least it seems to be. At least sometimes. At least temporarily.

I can deal with, one way or another, whatever comes up in the space of transformation to deal with. Indeed, whatever comes up in the space of transformation to deal with is always unerringly  what's there to deal with next in life. It's not likely it'll ever come up in a clearer context. If I bypass the opportunity to deal with it when it comes up, it'll just go back to where it was before: below the surface, shaping my thoughts yet always out of reach, skewing my life yet never known, never tangible.

There are any number of brilliant processes, tools, and techniques to handle whatever comes up to deal with in the space of transformation. All of these processes, tools, and techniques aren't for this  conversation. To be sure, they're there to be looked at but in another conversation on another occasion. Rather, this  conversation simply looks at, in the face of transformation seeming  to end, the now certainty  it'll be back.

When transformation seems to end, because I get it'll be back, I can collect myself (ie my Self)  and punt, knowing I'm punting, so to speak, from one moment of transformation, across a moment of seemingly no  transformation, into another new moment of transformation.

I can count on it. Like a rock. That's not blind faith. It's simply what's so.



Transformation Never Ends



In actuality, transformation never ends although there are times when it seems to end. There's a special poignancy for me in those times when it seems like transformation has ended. In hindsight, these are the times when transformation is working most powerfully through me, so powerfully that no one, not even I, knows anything is going on. During these times, anything and everything I have going on incompatible with transformation is inevitably, willy nilly  becoming dislodged and uprooted, clearing up and disappearing just in the process of life itself.

Transformation
starts starts

To consider transformation is over  when it seems to end is as naïve as considering the sun is over  at night. The process only seems  to start and end, start and end, start and end. In actuality it never ends. In actuality it's always starting  - moment to moment, hour by hour, day by day, year after year, forever and ever and ever.

In those moments of what seems to be the imminent end  of transformation, collect your Self and punt. Just punt. Your punt starts  in transformation started. It ends  in transformation started. That's the secret (if, indeed, there's any secret to this at all): just before the seemingly imminent end of transformation, punt from  transformation started to  transformation started. You can count on transformation started being there like a possibility  - in both the from  and the to.

Once started, although it seems otherwise from time to time, transformation never ends.



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