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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Essays - Twenty Years Later:

Connected With Werner

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

August 17, 2023



"Transformation is being in a conversation for transformation. When you are no longer in a conversation for transformation, you are no longer transformed."
... 
This essay, Essays - Twenty Years Later: Connected With Werner, is the twentieth annual State Of The Union  celebration of Conversations For Transformation:
  1. Essays - One Year Later: Critical Mass
  2. Essays - Two Years Later: Glass Walled Studio
  3. Essays - Three Years Later: Internet Presence
  4. Essays - Four Years Later: Side By Side
  5. Essays - Five Years Later: Arm In Arm
  6. Essays - Six Years Later: A Very Good Year
  7. Essays - Seven Years Later: By My Self
  8. Essays - Eight Years Later: Riding The Open Range
  9. Essays - Nine Years Later: Recreation
  10. Essays - Ten Years Later: Decade
  11. Essays - Eleven Years Later: Unimaginable
  12. Essays - Twelve Years Later: A New Beginning
  13. Essays - Thirteen Years Later: A Certain Space
  14. Essays - Fourteen Years Later: Lenses Of Creativity
  15. Essays - Fifteen Years Later: Essence
  16. Essays - Sixteen Years Later: It's All In The Mouth
  17. Essays - Seventeen Years Later
  18. Essays - Eighteen Years Later: The Heart Of The Matter
  19. Essays - Nineteen Years Later: On Being Used By Something Bigger Than Myself
  20. Essays - Twenty Years Later: Connected With Werner
  21. Essays - Twenty One Years Later: Being In Werner's Conversations
in that order.




http://www.laurenceplatt.com/wernererhard

          Conversations For Transformation
                    Essays By Laurence Platt
      Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
                                 And More

                            Click to expand
Essays
I assert we don't know how Life started. Yet we're convinced  we do know all about it. We've even constructed elaborate belief systems which we all cherish, that purport to explain how Life started. But we don't really  know (if we tell the truth) how Life started, do we? What we do  know is Life hasn't stopped  since it started. Maybe that's why Conversations For Transformation, once started, don't stop (I'll wager you one dollar that's why).

It's been said that yesterday's transformation is today's ego trip, and that today's  transformation on the other hand, is simply transformation. So what about tomorrow's  transformation? Tomorrow's transformation is what we designate as possibility. This isn't just your typical linear sequence of what we ubiquitously refer to as time. Tomorrow's transformation (possibility) has the uncanny ability to reach back into the past and transform the past. So much for being stuck in the past! So much for the access to the past being lost on the slag heaps of history. Transformation doesn't adhere to the typical linear sequence of time that only moves forward. Transformation can reach back in time, and recontextualize  (I love  that word) the past. Even if it isn't patently obvious, what's become clear is transformation's always been started, continuing on for all eternity like a possibility.

If that idea was too much for me to lay on people in the early days of my sharing Werner's work, what worked well was keeping people connected with Werner. I'd share an experience of him, then I'd say (as others did before me) "You'll talk about him forever.". It was a long shot. It worked. As it turned out, it was very  effective (effective in that it unfettered / unleashed the power and magic of Conversations For Transformation for people).

I've been writing these Conversations For Transformation for twenty years today exactly to the day (this one is #1770), and I've connected people with Werner for forty five years this week almost to the week. Those are two ways of articulating what's happened. Yet in retrospect, both of them may not be entirely accurate. The first one, "I've been writing these Conversations For Transformation for twenty years today exactly to the day", may be better articulated as "These Conversations For Transformation have been writing me  for twenty years today exactly to the day.". The second one, "I've connected people with Werner for forty five years this week almost to the week", may be better articulated as "Who I really am  has been showing up in the Conversations For Transformation that is Werner's speaking, for forty five years this week almost to the week.". And no, that's not just playing with mere semantics (but listen: even if it were, it's all  semantics - which is the subject for another conversation on another occasion).

I have a mental picture of the perfect enrollment conversation. This isn't imaginary. It really happened. Afterwards, when I looked at what actually transpired, I realized it was everything I could aspire to in an enrollment conversation sharing the possibility of Werner's work and transformation with people. Here's how it played out: I was leading a guest event at the Newlands Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa in 1979. At the end, with the people milling around, a man walked up to the front of the room, stood before me, and just stared at me. I took it all in, smiling, waiting for him to speak. Then, in a thick "boer" accent, he said: "You spoke for an hour. I didn't understand anything you said. Whatever you've got, I want it.".

"Whatever you've got, I want it  ...". It was perfect. It's not what transformation's about  that people want. It's the space it creates to be free to be and free to act that people, once we fully realize what it actually is, can't get enough of. It shows up in being, not in understanding, cleverness, or dogma. Being around Werner, I've had my own "Whatever you've got, I want it" moments. There've been many of them. Staying connected with Werner is a training entirely unto itself, a constant unerring reminder. For me, that's what's really at the heart of this twenty year long celebration.

Thank you for your Listening. When you listen these Conversations For Transformation, I experience it as a very personal gift. Thank you for your gift. I want you to know I'm using it well.

Thank you for being connected with Werner.


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