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

Face In The Water

Harvest Inn, St Helena, California, USA

November 5, 2010

Conversations For Transformation receives its three hundred thousandth view with the publishing of Face In The Water.

I am indebted to Jim Manton who inspired this conversation.

There's no secret to these Conversations For Transformation. There's no secret to why they work. But if there were a secret, here it is (Warning! Spoiler alert!): it's where they look from. With regard to this "where they look from" element, it's possible anyone taking a stand for where they look from can generate transformation simply by standing up and reading the telephone book or the dictionary out loud for people. Similarly, it's possible anyone who takes a stand for where they look from can generate transformation simply by standing up and reading these Conversations For Transformation out loud for people. Or the telephone book. Or the dictionary. It's the same thing. It's where you look from. There's nothing to it. I mean that literally.

In fact Conversations For Transformation have neither a secret nor a new perspective. They offer nothing new. Honest they don't! There's nothing noteworthy or innovative about what they convey, or even about how they convey what they convey. That said, there's an experience of transformation possible here. And given the way we usually regard the cause of experience, given the way we usually regard the origination of experience, you could say it's totally out of left field for me to say simply being in Conversations For Transformation brings forth lasting, real, thrilling transformation.

I've looked at this - a lot. How is it that given all our efforts, given all our attempts, in fact given all our struggles to have life work, to make things "better" as we say, given all the good will and all the heroic humanitarian efforts and all the best intentions of all the great people, how is it that the surest vehicle through which transformation reliably comes forth is a simple conversation?

I don't have a great answer for this. I wish I did. But I don't. I could say it's because this is what's so. That's enough for me. But it may land for others as if I've ducked the question. I really wish I had a great answer because we're so thrown to reject out of hand that which is simple - as if an idea must be complicated and obscure before we'll believe it can possibly have any value. And that's a hard one to counter - it's so firmly embedded. But it may indeed be as simple as that. Sometimes the truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. Oftentimes the truth, as I say, is simpler than fiction.

We're fixers. We're make right-ers. That's what we do. We're problem solving machines. There's nothing wrong with fixing. There's nothing wrong with making things right. There's nothing wrong with being a problem solving machine. Really there isn't. But given we're so good at this, what get's overlooked as we look at what there is to fix, at what there is to make right, at what there is to solve, is a certain sublime perspective.

I assert we're so habituated by looking at what there is to fix, at what there is to make right, at what there is to solve, that the perspective "there's something to fix, there's something to make right, there's something to solve" becomes entrenched. Coming from that entrenched perspective leaves no chance of getting the perspective "things are really OK just the way they are and just the way they aren't - it's OK the way it is". That's what gets overlooked: the perspective that things are really OK just the way they are and just the way they aren't, that it's OK the way it is.

Notice I didn't say it's "the truth" things are really OK just the way they are and just the way they aren't, that it's OK the way it is. Indeed, it may be "the truth" and it may not be. Whether it is or whether it isn't, isn't what I'm speaking about here. What I'm speaking about here is not "the truth" but rather the perspective, the place in which to stand and from which to look, that things are really OK just the way they are and just the way they aren't, that it's OK the way it is. Shift into this perspective, shift where you look from, and the world immediately shows up differently.

<aside>

Actually that's not quite it. It's "Shift where you look from, and the world immediately shows up the same.". But that's a subject for another conversation on another occasion.

<un-aside>

Photograph courtesy kokomosnorkeling.com

Face In The Water

Above the water, I see only open ocean and a few islands. But with my face in the water, I see the richness of marine life. I see coral. I see kelp beds. I see fish, sting rays, turtles etc. What's below the water is always there, was always there. I didn't put it there. I didn't fix it there. I didn't make it right there. I didn't solve it there. It was already there. What made it available was putting my face in the water. What made it available was simply shifting my perspective.

You can't bring forth transformation by fixing, by making right, or by solving because transformation is always there, was always there like a possibility. If anything brings forth transformation, it's a shift in perspective. It's another way of looking at the same material. It's the difference between looking at the open ocean from above the water, and looking with your face in the water. What's there was always there in spite of any efforts to put it there by fixing, by making right, by solving. So the way I bring forth transformation in these Conversations For Transformation is by generating new conversations about the same old same old, about what's already there, about what's always there, but with my face in the water - so to speak.

It changes nothing. Yet everything shifts. Everything.

It's my intention to give away transformation, which accounts for these Conversations For Transformation coming forth - I own this. But it's your perspective, it's where you look from which you, by being who you are, share with us / with me which brings into view what I see to write.

Communication Promise

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