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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Conversation With A Laser II

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

April 18, 2021


This essay, Conversation With A Laser II, is the second in the ninth trilogy Breakfast With The Master:
  1. A Fountainhead Of Clarity And Power
  2. Conversation With A Laser II
  3. Being A Being Coach II
in that order. 		The first trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Conversation With A Laser
  2. Shut Up And Do What You're Doing
  3. Secret Agent
in that order.
The second trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Breakfast With The Master II: Future Health
  2. Breakfast With The Master II: Future Finances
  3. Breakfast With The Master II: Future Open
in that order. 		The third trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Raw Power
  2. It Works Better As A Possibility
  3. Magic At Heart
in that order.
The fourth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Breakfast With The Master IV: Parental Care
  2. Breakfast With The Master IV: Taking The Guilt Out Of It
  3. Breakfast With The Master IV: Language As Music
in that order. 		The fifth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Whatever Works
  2. Yesterday's Transformation
  3. Billions And Billions Of Stars
in that order.
The sixth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Breakfast With The Master VI: Doo-Wop, Coffee, And Intention
  2. Breakfast With The Master VI II: Cherish These Days
  3. Breakfast With The Master VI III: Forwarding The Fulfillment
in that order. 		The seventh trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. We're Here
  2. Being A Being Coach
  3. You Already Got It
in that order.
The eighth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Breakfast With The Master VIII: What People Crave
  2. Breakfast With The Master VIII II: Keep Talking
  3. Breakfast With The Master VIII III: Fearless In The Face Of Life
in that order. 		The tenth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is:
  1. Breakfast With The Master X: Living In A Story
  2. Breakfast With The Master X II: Don't Believe In The Buddha
  3. Breakfast With The Master X III: Broadening Horizons
in that order.
The ninth trilogy Breakfast With The Master is the sequel to Carefully Chosen words.
This essay, Conversation With A Laser II, is the sequel to Conversation With A Laser.

We're in a conversation. We're speaking. Familiarly. As old friends speak familiarly. Except this is no chit-chat. This isn't even what you may call relaxed-back-and-forth. It's him, so I'm in a conversation with a laser. Unlike ordinary speakers with mastery, he lasers words like a surgeon wields a scalpel. This conversation is daunting, not because he says what he's saying in some dialect with which I'm unfamiliar. No, he speaks plain English, so what he says is all clear. What's daunting is staying present to his conversation. To do so, I must deploy / conjure up a listening that's a match for his speaking, a listening that also lasers words like a surgeon wields a scalpel.

When I listen this way, it allows for his coaching to really happen. Listen: the content of what he speaks, is incidental (well ... almost  incidental). The opportunity  he provides is for me to match his laser speaking with my own laser listening, a listening I'm committed to bringing forth if I am to access who he's being. The currency for / the common ground in our meeting, is our face-to-face, mano y mano, larger-than-life laser speaking and laser listening. Anything less just plain doesn't work.

"Buckle up!"  I say to no one in particular (maybe it's to myself - I don't know) as I sit down (figuratively) behind him in his bullet-fast Argo Super-V Formula Continental  race car, "this is going to be one heckuva ride.". Warning: never  get into a (figurative) race car like this one, unless you have total  trust in the driver. And I do trust him. Implicitly. The speed is breakneck. The purpose is breakout. The racing is breakthrough. And he makes it all look so easy, so very, very easy.

There's a phrase I ante up  with, which comes from the work of transformation. That phrase is "under all circumstances" ... as in "access to Self-expression under all circumstances"  and "access to transformation under all circumstances"  et al. "Under all circumstances" once meant never more than "sometimes"  for me. Sometimes  I had access to Self-expression. Sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I had access to transformation. Sometimes I didn't. In the Leadership Course in Cancún Mexico in October / November of 2017, after 39 years of being around him, I discovered the access to Self-expression under all circumstances. In the Forum for Graduates - Free to Be and Free to Act [online] in January of 2021, after 43 years of being around him, I discovered the access to transformation under all circumstances.

It was a monumental  share (at least, moi  thought so). And he just smiles. He just ... smiles. Then I get it too. And I smile too: I'm being all ego!  Boy, this ego's still going strong after all these years. I recall something he told me a long time ago: ultimate ego is believing you've overcome ego!  Now we're both smiling. And what I get is we're not smiling at  anything, and he's not smiling at  me. We're smiling in the monumental emptiness  and meaninglessness  of it all. Then he says "Stop analyzing yourself, Laurence!" (he's so bang on the money  ...) at which I just nod my head, and we're both smiling some more (God! it's such a relief to let it all go).

"What else?" he says, startling me, allowing no time for me to rest on my laurels, not for one second. I offer my newly invented possibility of being inclusive. "OK" he asks, "what's it like?". I can tell he's interested. It's the laser of his listening which has that authentic, un-faked quality. My possibility of being inclusive has me include the things in my life I regret, which I wish hadn't happened, which I would rather have had turn out differently. I include them all in the space of my life because they occurred in the space of my life  (I am the space in which the events of my life occur). There's a grand peace with including it all rather than defending it, amending it, fixing it etc. He nods silently. Then he says "Smart, very smart", concurring without agreeing, without approving, without validating. Laser speaking and laser listening.


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