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
Gaping Holes
Jamestown, Tuolumne County, California, USA
March 25, 2006
This essay,
Gaping Holes,
is the companion piece to
Clearing.
Who I really am is an opening for something to show up, a
clearing in which the events of my life occur.
That's not just poetic analogy. If you stop and look (you
can't think this out) you'll get it.
We're openings, clearings.
Gaping holes.
When I say "stop and look" I'm not suggesting you look with your
eyes. Indeed, looking with our eyes is what you and I
ordinarily think of as looking. However in the interests
of generating a new, clear experience of what I mean by "stop and
look", it's fraught with
too much
familiarity.
Try this on for size. I'm suggesting you'll get the opening, the
clearing you are directly, immediately, and intimately if you look
with your
ear.
Human being is an opening, a clearing in which Life occurs. That's You
and I. We're openings, gaping holes in which Life occurs, so we're the
same. And we have points of view of the clearing, so we're different.
The power of love for gaping holes starts with the willingness to give
space to points of view, coming from the one clearing for Life. The
pitfall is positionality.
That's
what's so.
But knowing it doesn't buy you or me anything. It won't eliminate
what's there for you to do. You can't use it to avoid what's there for
you to be responsible for. Worse, even as I speak this it becomes an
interpretation,
a belief. And the truth believed, as Werner says, is a lie.
To be a gaping hole, gape so something can show up. Be an
opening. Be a clearing for Life. That's who you really
are. And notice you're skewed to believe it.