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




Generate It:

It Doesn't Last Forever

Archer Lobby, Napa, California, USA

November 30, 2019



"You know, people will give up anything - their jobs, their money, their families, their health - to get it, anything except the one and only thing you have to give up in order to get it: the conviction that you haven't got it."
... 
This essay, Generate It: It Doesn't Last Forever, is the companion piece to Can You Get It And Keep It Forever?.

It is also the sequel to Even Champions Sleep.




"It was great ... at first"  she said, a graduate for quite a few years now, sipping her iced coffee. "When I participated in the training, I couldn't believe how powerful it was. There was so much insight, so much joy, so many new perspective-altering (no, life-altering) ways of looking at things, so many new, fresh possibilities. I couldn't wait  to return to the training room again the next morning. And Wow! I had no need to sleep at the end of each day (no, I couldn't  sleep). I was so lit up.".

Her "... at first"  was ominous, and I wasn't going to step over it, or let it slide. So I asked "And then?  What happened?", curiously.

"It just ... well ... faded"  she said, "It delivered a lot of energy in the beginning, and then it just faded. Like many things I suppose, it has a limited shelf-life. It just passed its expiration date, I guess. It just ran out. The effect faded" (uh oh, I mused ... here we go!).

"No, I don't think so" I pressed. "What do you mean?" she asked, quizzically, confronted. I continued: "It didn't fade. It was powerful in the beginning because you generated it powerfully in the beginning. It  didn't fade - not until you stopped generating it. That's what happened: you stopped generating it. So? Then it faded!".

To conceptualize transformation as something to apply to  your life, to hold it that a prolonged exposure to transformation will result in an improved  life, is to miss it entirely. We're thrown to fix ourselves. We're certain that something added to our lives (or changed) will make the difference. We're sure that practicing getting better, will result in us getting better. But there's an element to being transformed that doesn't jive with applying it to our lives, or with a practice which will make our lives better. That element is: transformation is created ie it's always generated. Create it / generate it, and you're transformed. Don't create it / don't generate it, and you're not. Simple. Nothing you could add to your life / practice long enough, will ever make that difference. A master generates it. That's what makes a master a master.

One of the ways we prevent ourselves from confronting our responsibility for generating transformation, is we convince ourselves such things "take time". It's a belief that keeps our putting it off, justified. But the evidence is: the longer we wait, the longer we wait  (oh no!) and the longer we don't get it. That's all. The longer we take to generate it, the more we justify it by saying it "takes time". The belief / insistence that it takes time, dulls us into being OK with not getting it, and shields us from being responsible for creating / generating transformation now. We invest so much in our beliefs that it costs us the very experience for which we've invested.

And that accounts for its temporal nature: generate it, and you got it; stop generating it, and you don't got it any more. It does not last forever - which is to say left alone, it doesn't last forever. Generate it forever, and you got it forever. Listen: this isn't business as usual. It's transformational. Paradoxically, being transformed is only partially what it takes to be transformed (say whut?). Taking responsibility for generating transformation, and then generating it ongoingly, is what it takes to be transformed. It won't come from anything else. It's not gotten by virtue of an ongoing belief system or even from a devoutly practiced discipline. You can't apply it.

Then she said something that silenced / moved me: "You're right" she admitted softly, contemplatively, "I did stop. The program did pivot on generating it for myself. I forgot that. In all my excitement I forgot about it.". "And isn't getting it again, the possibility of being transformed?" I asked delightedly, when I got my voice back.



Communication Promise E-Mail | Home

© Laurence Platt - 2019, 2020 Permission