What I've gotten clear about, having
served
Conversations For Transformation
for nineteen years so far, is twofold. First, it's
y'all
who did all the work. You provided the listening in
which they show up.
Acrylic paintings
show up on canvas or on bristol paper, and would actually not show
up at all without them or something similar. Similarly
conversations (indeed any conversations, and
Conversations For Transformation
in particular) show up in our speaking and listening, and would
actually not show up at all without them. Thank
you
for having generously provided the listening
(about one
million six hundred and fifty thousand views
so far) for
about one thousand seven hundred
essays
over these nineteen years. I couldn't have
served
what I've
served
without
you.
Second, I say "I couldn't have
served
what I've
served
..." because it's actually not totally
experientially accurate to say "I couldn't have
written what I've written ..." (it's arguably not even
totally factually accurate either). OK, what does that
even mean
Laurence:
to say "... it's actually not totally experientially accurate to
say 'I couldn't have written what I've written ...'"? What it means
is that in my experience, it's hardly me who writes these essays.
It's actually that these essays write themselves, or that
they use
me
to write them, or even that they write me
- none of which are colloquial postures.
Now here's the
trouble
with each of those three postures: they come perilously close to
insidiously insinuating these essays a) come through
me, turning me into some kind of b) medium, both notions of
which I
eschew,
and neither of which I want to ignore or step over because if I do,
they'll distract from what's really going on. It's easy to
differentiate between them.
Being used by something
bigger than myself
without
being committed to
being used by something
bigger than myself,
would yes in all likelihood turn me into a medium. Instead,
being committed
as I am to the possibility of all people being transformed,
a possibility bigger than myself, a possibility beyond a direct
personal payoff, allows that
commitment
to use me. And my
commitment
is a function of
Life itself.
It would then appear as if that which
uses me
ie
Life itself,
is the "something that's bigger than myself", and separate from me.
But am I not my
commitment?
My
commitment
is who I really am ... and ... that is
Life itself.
So there's no medium. There's just me.
It's mine, all
mine!
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<aside>
That seems to be a
paradox:
it uses me
... and ... yet ... it is me?
Sit with it in your lap like a hot
brick.
You'll get it (it's patently getable).
<un-aside>
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Allowing myself to be used by (and my life to be run by) this
"something that's bigger than myself" (and it's no
secret:
it's
Life itself
that's the "something that's bigger than myself"), has my entire
drama fall naturally into lockstep behind it, shaping my being and
actions so that they're now in
service
to making something available that's beyond my personal concerns
for myself, something that
Werner
describes as being beyond a "direct personal payoff". The
particular conversation that is transformation, along with its
related distinctions (both
Werner's
classic bedrock,
plus the ones I'm
discovering for
myself
in
observing
the way
Life works)
brings to my life a bigger way of being than my
business-as-usual
drama ever could. And it's this bigger way of being that includes
and makes my
business-as-usual
drama
worthwhile
(without it, my
business-as-usual
drama wouldn't be
worth
living - as Socrates may have said).
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