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

Committed To Your Commitment

The Hess Collection, Mount Veeder, California, USA

February 16, 2012
"I am committed to your commitment."  ...   answering the question "What are you committed to?" 
This essay, Committed To Your Commitment, is the fifth in a octology on Commitment:

Photograph courtesy ReVision: The Journal of Consciousness and Change
Werner Erhard
It's not found in your town's schoolhouses' first through tenth grade school curriculum. They don't teach it there. Nor do they teach it in college, for that matter. Neither did you learn it at home growing up when your mother and your father generously taught you everything they knew you'd need to know in order to live a decent life.

It's often said in certain psychological  circles (which is to say, in circles where a meaningful collection of specific terms spoken from the psychologist's viewpoint are languaged together to analyze, explain, and treat lives) that by the time you're four years old, you've pretty much gotten your entire modus operandi sussed out  from then on for the rest of your life.

What you sussed out back then was your act, your strategy, how you'd survive. Here's something you didn't  suss out.

Commitment. You're not born with it. It's not your birthright. Indeed, it doesn't live in the domain of "rights". Even the nobly crafted Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn't include the right to it. And even if it did aver it's everyone's right to commitment, one of the truths about commitment is you can't be committed (ie commitment doesn't show up)  as a "right".

Commitment, instead, shows up in my speaking. When I commit to something, it's purely an act of language. Speaking "I'm committed to ..." is a linguistic act. It's the linguistic act of speaking "I'm committed to ..." which defines and constructs my commitment and makes it real and known in the world. In other words, I'm committed to what I'm committed to simply because I say I'm committed to it.

Be careful. That's not just any kind of "say". It's "say" when (and only  when) I'm speaking honoring my word as my Self.

Considering this, notice if I say "I'm committed to that cause  ..." or if I say I'm committed to this cause ...", it's really bass ackwards. Speaking "I'm committed to ..." is  the cause. Literally. Said another way, speaking "I'm committed to ..." is what causes. Stated even more rigorously, speaking "I'm committed to ..." is what makes the cause, the commitment, real.
Werner's work's stated intention is to support you having whatever you want in Life. It's to support you living a life you love. It's to support you and whatever you're committed to. In fact Werner's work is committed to your commitment. It's a relationship of empowerment. There's only one thing powerful enough to get you whatever you want in Life, there's only one thing big enough to empower your commitments so they completely serve what you're committed to, and that's You.

In the face of Werner's commitment to your commitment, I can't not  discover who I really am.


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