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

Complete Work

Napa Valley, California, USA

May 14, 2020

"All is well, and I'm happy." ... Marjie Parrot (1941 - 2020), Landmark Senior Consultant and Wisdom Course Leader

Each essay in the collection of essays posted on this Conversations For Transformation website, reflects complete work. What that means is this entire website reflects complete work. It's the onset of transformation which brings with it the possibility of complete work. Said another way (drilling down deeper): complete work is really the outcome of us being complete while we work (ie bringing being complete to whatever work we're doing) even more than it's a descriptor of the work we're doing.

Complete work is holographic: the whole work, and each of the components of complete work, is complete work. The entire body of work on this website - that is, the entire collection of all the essays in this body of work - is holographic in this way. My intention in making them available, is to leave you with an experience of being complete holographically, rather than to merely impart new information. In this way, each of these essays are only secondarily about something which gives them value. Primarily these essays are intended to bring forward the experience of being complete, regardless of whatever they're about. That's what makes them valuable.

For that to work, I deemed this body of work to be complete even before posting anything to this website. I built it from scratch inside an "already-always-complete" context like a possibility. That required that my declaration of being complete (that is, speaking something akin to "I'm complete, all is well, and I'm happy"*) be followed by a way of being committed which comes from being complete rather than from plot, nuance, subject matter material, story, or even factual content, all of which are crucial, yet none of which have real power to influence the tipping point for whether or not each essay makes being complete available like a possibility.

What's useful to discover for yourself and get clear about, is that the authentic domain of transformation ie of being complete, is speaking and listening ie the spoken word. Yet these Conversations For Transformation occur in the domain of writing and reading ie the written word, a close approximation to the spoken word, but not the real deal frankly (colloquially stated, they're "Close, but no cigar."). Indeed, when we refer to "conversations", we almost always imply the spoken word, don't we? 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 not being complete.

I assert there's such a tangible difference between the two that you and I, whether the distinction "being complete" is real for us or not, can grok the difference (as Robert Heinlein may have said) simply by listening it. Granted, you may not be able to articulate the exact difference (at least not yet). But you'll be able to grok it. Human beings being complete, have a certain timbre and feel when they're listened, just as the body of work on this website has a certain timbre and feel when it's read (even with no cigar). Listening and reading are worlds apart. Yet both test the mettle of complete work. Both can recreate being complete in their own domains.

"Complete" work doesn't mean the work is over ie that it's ended. That's not the way it's used. It means it's full, whole, integral, capable of standing alone, conscious, error-free etc. What's distinguished here is: being complete, these essays are less a function of me ensuring they're full, making them whole, keeping their integrity in, fine-tuning them as standalone pieces, and correcting all errors, as they are a function of me being complete, and bringing forward being complete when I write them. Their being complete isn't a function of being built in a particular way, or with a proven formula or a recipe. Rather it's a function of who I'm being when I write them. Neither is it a function of any particular motive, ulterior or otherwise, to achieve or attain something. Their Zen is: I write them because I write them, because it's what I do, because it's what I say I do. We do complete work not in order to accomplish something. We do complete work because it's integral and enough in and of itself.

Postscript:

When I declare "I'm complete, all is well, and I'm happy" as an expression of being complete, it isn't positive thinking. Neither is it an affirmation, nor is it psyching myself up to be complete, and it's definitely not fortune cookie bon mots either.

Rather it's an example of a powerful linguistic act. A linguistic act is an act of speech which has a world to word fit. When an act of speech has a world to word fit, its speaking brings with it a world - in this case, my declaration "I'm complete, all is well, and I'm happy" brings with it the world of being complete.

On the other hand, when I speak with a word to world fit (ie the other way around), my speaking matches the world that's already there - for example, when I say "There's a tree!" as I point to a real tree, it's a word to world fit. Notice speaking with a word to world fit is not a linguistic act.

Spoken with a world to word fit, the linguistic act of declaring "I'm complete, all is well, and I'm happy" is being complete.

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