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

Essays - Three Years Later:

Internet Presence

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

August 17, 2006


This essay, Essays - Three Years Later: Internet Presence, is the third 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.

It is also the sequel to Wet Water.

It is also the prequel to
  1. Invitation To Enroll
  2. Uncommon Correspondence
  3. Internet Presence II
in that order.


Conversations For Transformation
Conversations For Transformation
Essays By Laurence Platt
Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
And More
Way before I ever became interested in transformation as a genuine living possibility, Werner Erhard demonstrated for me beyond any realm of doubt how transformation is sourced  and shared by the simple human acts of speaking  and listening. Werner did more than that for me, actually, a whole lot more, some of which I got  then, but most of which unfolded steadily, inexorably  over the next few decades.
Werner distinguished speaking and listening as the resident domain of ie as the context for  transformation. He asserted nothing less (and nothing more) than this: when you're no longer in a conversation for transformation, transformation, you're no longer transformed.

Once I got clear about that, I got I, too, can source transformation. It was more than that really. I got anyone  can source transformation because transformation comes from speaking and listening who we really are. Obviously everyone is who they really are (think about it ...) even though people may differ in the degree with which it's front and center on their radar. So anyone can source transformation by speaking and listening, at least like a possibility.

My natural expression of that clearing was sharing transformation with thousands of people starting Werner's work in South Africa in 1979.

While I was clear about sharing transformation by speaking and listening, I wasn't yet clear about sharing transformation by writing and reading. Writing and reading seemed to me to be one degree removed from speaking and listening.

And so twenty five years passed before I paid any real attention to sharing the possibility of transformation by writing and reading.

It was Professor William Warren "Bill" Bartley III, Werner's official biographer, who created arguably the finest example ever that all of it can  be communicated by writing with the educational and riveting "Werner Erhard, The Transformation of a Man - The Founding of est".

Having read it and experienced it, I realized in the right context transformation can be delivered in writing/reading  provided writing/reading  is recognized as one degree removed from the authentic working context for transformation speaking/listening.

So "I write, therefore I am" (as René Descartes may have said). But grand philosophy aside, I always thought René had it backwards. Shouldn't it be "I am, therefore I write"? And now, thanks to Werner's way of seeing experience, the truth is probably closest to "I am, therefore I am", whether I write ... or not.

Over the past three years these Conversations For Transformation have reached their expanding audience, twenty thousand people a year at last estimate, in ever more effective ways. When Werner recently shared with me his intention to expand his internet presence, I asked myself if it were really possible.

Having gotten writing/reading, the context for my work as a writer, is one degree removed from speaking/listening, the working context for Werner's work of transformation, I began to live inside the question "Can a website truly support Werner's intention to expand his internet presence?". I mean really?

I wasn't asking simply whether or not a website can share light on Werner's work. I already knew writing/reading  can do at least that. I was asking whether or not a website can actually cause transformation.

The way that resolved for me was people whom I've never met contacted me from countries I've never been to saying after reading the Conversations For Transformation I've written, they're enrolled, registered, and are participating in Werner's programs.

QED.

* * *

When all this started Werner noticed one of the most ironic yet fundamental aspects of transformation is if you want to keep it you have to give it away. With these Conversations For Transformation I'm doing exactly that.

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