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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Do You Believe In Guard?

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

July 24, 2023

"For me this is a practical matter. Instead of having the answer about God like some guy or some thing or some explanation or some anything, I have a space of possibility like an openness, like a place for God to show up in my life."


...		speaking with Reverend Terry Cole-Whittaker about God

"I don't talk about God with people who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground."


...

"It is not the ideas we do not have that block our thinking but the ideas that we do have."

... Edward de Bono

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

... Socrates

This essay, Do You Believe In Guard?, is the nineteenth in a group of twenty reflections of God:

It was written at the same time as Never Mind The Fairy Tale II.

I am indebted to Penelope "Penny" McLean who inspired this converstion.

He's a devoted church-goer, an enthusiastic Catholic and a generous sharer of the faith. I always enjoy my time with him. We've known each other for a long, long time, ever since we were very young and both lived in the same neighborhood (he lived in "Shady Pine", I lived in "Honor Oak"). He also knows me from these Conversations For Transformation. So when our discussion turned to religion, he wanted to know if I believe in God. He asked me "Do you believe in guard?". No, that's not a typo. It's phonetic. It's the way he pronounced it: "Do you believe in guard?".

I didn't answer immediately. Transformation forever alters the context in which that particular question is asked. Yes it patently has a "yes / no" answer. But without first fully and authentically distinguishing the context in which it's asked, there'll be an insufficient opportunity to flesh out something more profound than either "No, I don't believe in guard" or "Yes, I do believe in guard" - more profound for sure, as well as arguably even more real and more accurate too.

He waited patiently for me (I could tell that he could tell that I was compiling my response). There are four areas I wanted to get onto the mat first before answering "yes" or "no". Look: for starters, there are actually more than two answers to a "yes / no" question: there's "yes", there's "no", and then there's also Edward de Bono's Zen "po". "Po" is the neither "yes" nor "no" answer. It's the third possible answer to a "yes / no" question. But wait! There aren't only three: soon I'll propose an obvious fourth answer to a "yes / no" question, and to the question "Do you believe in guard?" in particular. The four areas are:

•	Who are you in the matter of "Do you believe in guard?"? Who's the you in the matter of whether you believe in guard, or not?
•	Belief is our go-to access to guard, yet centuries later, it may still be neither powerful enough nor revealing enough to be up to the task.
•	What interference does your brain play in hijacking what guard may be or may not be in actuality? and: are you cognizant of its interference?
•	Here's that fourth obvious answer I promised: it's "I don't know.". Not "yes", not "no", not even "po", but "I don't know.". Is it your intolerance of "I don't know" that's driving you toward there's gotta be a "yes / no" answer to "Do you believe in guard?" ... or can you bear to be with "I don't know."?

It's unavoidable: asking the question "Do you believe in guard?" imposes a certain context. Imposing a context isn't a problem in and of itself. We all do it all the time. What's always a problem is when we're blind to both the context as well as to its imposition ie when both are unexamined. So how do we reveal the context, see through the veil of its imposition, then re-examine the question newly? Through a rigorous, unflinching inquiry in which many if not all of our tired old albeit cherished belief systems are up for grabs, and could be discarded. For example, who and what is the we that believes in guard, or not? and: even if we believe in guard, is it proof enough that she exists? and: even if we believe in guard, aren't we just believing in our brain's concept of her?

He listened to all of it - merely perfunctorily at first (like listening is the polite thing to do), then intently, then intrigued, then riveted. The thing is anyone asking the question "Do you believe in guard?", no matter what (blind) context it imposes, is worth hanging out with. It's a conversation "to be continued".

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