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




Created Word

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

August 27, 2019



This essay, Created Word is the second in the trilogy In The Listening Of A Heroine:
  1. An Unimaginable Commitment
  2. Created Word
  3. Choosing Like Breathing
in that order.

It was written at the same time as
  1. An Unimaginable Commitment
  2. Choosing Like Breathing


I asked her what called her to commit her life to working with Werner. In particular, I asked her what called her to make the unimaginable commitment she made soon after experiencing Werner's work for the first time, to give her life to it 24 / 7 / 365 for now going on for five decades (oh, and still  find time to manage a family and raise children). What was it  that called her?

She proceeded to tease out and distinguish an idea she articulated as (quote unquote) "created word". Participating in Werner's work, she said she got the possibility of transformation, as well as the possibility of "created word" for people. And in the split-second in which she got these two possibilities (there was no dithering) she committed her life to working with Werner. In the nearly five decades since then, she hasn't had one moment of doubting it was the  choice for her to make. Not one. Ever. That's remarkable - totally extraordinary in fact.

I know what called me. Everyone who's called is called by something likely very unique and intimately personal. How you go from not being interested in (and maybe not even knowing about) Werner's work, to being interested in it enough to invest time and good money to experience it, is a far-reaching study in itself. For me, there were two distinct enrolling experiential events (if you will) in this order: first I experienced who Werner is for his family, and then I experienced who Werner is for himself, period. The first experience? That's when I enrolled. The second experience? That's when I fell in love with him. When he appeared in front of me it wasn't merely that I instantly recognized what I was seeing: it was that I also instantly recognized what I was listening. It was love at first sight. That's what happened. To be sure, he may or may not occur that way for everyone (and he does appear that way for a good many people). But that is the way he occurred for me.

I asked her to flesh out "created word" for me. Now, I did have my own ideas about it. But I wanted to hear it from her. Particularly I wanted to directly experience  her fleshing it out for me. That's how I really get things best. It's far more effective for me to get things that way than it is to focus on figuring out their explanation.

She shared with me how she arrived at created word. She was in a conversation with Werner. She got there's no way out of being dominated in life. We're dominated by circumstances. We're dominated by what's required of us to simply run our lives. We're dominated by the demands / expectations of other people. We're dominated by the government, and by the laws of the land. We're dominated by natural disasters etc. Even avoiding (or trying to avoid) being dominated by some or all of the above by doing nothing at all, is what it is to be dominated. So (she said she realized that) since she was going to be dominated anyway, she may as well choose to be dominated by the word she creates, the word she gives to what she says is worthy of her life and Life itself. That  word is what "created word" is for her.

I was stunned, rocked, moved to the core. She's being her created word ie she's being the word she creates as worthy of her life and Life itself. With a few spartan phrases expressing one brilliant idea, she accomplished nothing less than carving out the whole damn thing  for me in one remarkable paragraph. We're all capable of getting what she got. Yet few of us are capable of articulating it so tersely - but then again, who among us has had her nearly five decades of practice delivering it?



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