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
False Bottom
Sailing On San Francisco Bay, California, USA
October 5, 2004
When the menu of emotions is passed around at the smorgasbord of life,
I have very specific tastes. I have very little penchant for sadness. I
am willing to cry albeit reluctantly. I
resist
tears. I avoid emotional pain if I can, both causing it as well as
experiencing it. I prefer causing happiness as well as being happy.
Indeed, who doesn't?
None of that has much to do with freedom of choice. The menu of
emotions is driven by automatic avoidance of pain and sadness and by
attachment
to happiness. Automatic avoidance of anything is not freedom. It is
automatic avoidance.
Attachment
to anything is not freedom.
attachment.
It makes very little
difference whether I automatically avoid pain and sadness or whether I
am
attached
to happiness, both simply being different colors of the sky of the
morning I wake up into.
As every red blooded macho male will understand, I learned that a man
withstands sadness stoically and deals with it internally. I learned
(as immortalized by the rock group 10cc in their classic "I'm Not In
Love") to "be quiet ... big boys don't cry ... big boys don't cry ...
big boys don't cry". But withstanding sadness does not make for
happiness. All withstanding sadness makes for is withstanding sadness.
If withstanding sadness does not make for happiness then what
does make for happiness? I know happiness when I
experience happiness. But what makes for happiness? If I experience
happiness without causing it, isn't that just more automaticity? Beyond
the repetition of those things I am
attached
to that make me happy, what makes for real, thrilling happiness? At
first, all that shows up in answer to that question is my own
perplexity.
Werner Erhard puts forth that "happiness is a function of accepting
what is". That seems like a good place to start. In fact, Werner
mirrors the ancient Vedic notion of "satchitananda" which roughly
translates from the Sanskrit to "the bliss of being conscious of the
absolute".
If happiness is a function of accepting what is, then withstanding
sadness is the same trap as wanting to be happy.
Brought on by a family breakdown, I have been
reflecting
on the
gravity
of sadness in my personal life. Whether or not I want the cards that
are dealt to me, they are the cards that are dealt to me. Back at the
smorgasbord of life, I notice that having very little penchant for
sadness is simply not enough to avoid sadness. There seems to be no way
out. No matter what I do to avoid it, there it is
front and center stage
when I go to
sleep
at night. And there it is again,
front and center stage
when I wake up in the morning.
I go this way to avoid it. I go that way to avoid it. I explain it. I
share it. I communicate it. I rationalize it. I do everything I can
think of doing to dissipate it. Pretty soon I have tried everything.
Nothing works. The best space I get to is learning to live with it ie
resignation. And the very, very, very last thing on my
mind to do is to turn around and face it. It's not that I've resolved
not to turn around and face it. It's that having very little penchant
for sadness, it doesn't even occur to me to turn around and face it.
Totally out of options, I give up. I yield. I surrender. I accept
it.
I turn around and I face it. I walk unflinchingly directly into the
open maw of the beast. Now I want to know its true nature. Or, failing
that, I want to die trying or to be killed by it coming to grips with
it.
* * *
Much to my surprise, continuing with the same intention that was
thwarted and stopped at tears and pain, continuing and pushing through,
I am in the clear. The impenetrable barrier is actually a false bottom.
I push through and out the other side through the false bottom in spite
of myself. I am not stopped. Wow! The Doors knew this singing "break
on through to the other side".
In retrospect, I can see the tears and pain barrier of sadness was once
the surefire sign to stop, telling me I had reached my natural limit.
Magically, almost
mystically,
it is not a stop now. Something deeper more profound beyond it opens
up: absolute being -
vast,
free, absolute being. Pure possibility.
I can't go around the tears and pain barrier of sadness. Try as I might
I can't avoid it. Try as I might I can't get out of it. Authentically,
all I can do is accept it and allow it to be. When I allow it to be, it
allows me to be. When it allows me to be, I can experience it fully and
go through it.
The only way out is through.
This is the way of the warrior.
We are called on to be absolute warriors in a world which pivots on
emotion rather than on absolute being. The beauty of that is if the
world already pivoted on absolute being, the game would be over and you
and I wouldn't be here.