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
Here We Are Again
Exertec Health and Fitness Center,
Napa,
California, USA
July 2, 2013
"Lots of people have talked about taking that
step
into the unknown. Taking that
step
into the unknown is actually a lot less courageous than taking a
stepfrom the unknown."
...
"Wherever you go, there you are."
... Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of
Christ,
circa 1441
The thesis of
Alan Watts'
seminal and brilliant work The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing
Who You Are
alludes to how we are (and there's no explanation for it, other than
we're thrown to be this way) likely to favor and promote
and pass down (as in bequeath) a
world
which will educate us (sometimes unknowingly) in almost anything and
everything except the experience of
who we really are.
It's more than that actually. It's
(Alan
unerringly asserts) there's what's tantamount to a taboo
against knowing
who we really are,
set securely in place in society. And
Alan's
book gloriously and mischievously does such violence to this taboo that
anyone who reads it can never be the same again afterwards.
When you think about it (and if you haven't done so already, then pause
to think about it now for a moment), isn't it amazing, isn't it
baffling that we can do anything at all
without knowing
who we are?
How can we do anything successfully if we don't know the
being we are? Well ... obviously we can ... and clearly we do ... but
that's no defense, that's no argument for continuing to do what we do
without knowing the being we are. Rather, the evidence of
the consequences of doing what we do without knowing the being we are,
is the shape
the world's
in today and the shape our lives are in today. We
stand
on the edge of a chasm, we
stand
at the side of an abyss between the way
the world
is, and what's possible for
the world
... and if we tell the truth about it, we're not even close to living
what's possible for us human beings on
our planet.
Not ... even ... close! And we
all know this at some level, yes?
Wherever we go, there we are (as Thomas à Kempis
may have said). Yet wherever we go and wherever we are and whatever we
do, we don't know
who we are.
That same ignorance of
who we really are,
that same ignorance
Alan
proclaims is held in place by a societal taboo, underpins all our
actions - and will underpin all our future actions ... all
our future actions, that is until the taboo is vanquished.
We can go and have gone to the
moon,
we can go and have gone to the depths of the deepest oceans, we can
climb and have climbed to the peaks of the highest mountains. And I for
one, am among the first to be blown away, touched,
moved,
and inspired by these massive accomplishments. It's more than that for
me, actually. It's in
celebrating
these, man's greatest accomplishments, that I get direct access to ie
I'm inspired by the possibility of my own life's true greatness. But
here's the thing: when we get to the
moon,
when we reach the depths of the deepest oceans, when we've climbed to
the peaks of the highest mountains, what's less than stellar is the
likelihood that what we've taken there is the ignorance
of, is the always not knowingwho we really are.
So what's true is this: wherever you go, there you are ... or
not ... as the case may be.
Listen: there's
nothing wrong
with any of that. There's
nothing wrong
with our thrown-ness to explore, to expand, and to
achieve. It's what's stellarly great about us. I assert, however, all
our great stepsinto the unknown, as courageous as they are, are actually
a lot less courageous than taking those
stepsfrom the unknown, in other
words
than taking those
stepscoming fromwho we really are.
And to take
steps
coming from
who we really are
requires we first discover
who we really are.
Now this is real courage. This is bravery. And it's
not necessarily the direction in which
the world
is going. It requires taking a
step from
the unknown rather than taking a
step into
the unknown.
Stepping into
the unknown (into any unknown, actually) without first
knowing
who we really are,
is just more
business as usual.
It may produce (for a fleeting moment, at least) a sense of temporary
achievement. But in point of fact it doesn't produce the long lasting
makings of a sustainable
world that works for
everyone.
What makes a difference is the pure possibility discovered by inquiries
into
who we really are.
Some of these inquiries into
who we really are
which I've
written down
as these
Conversations For
Transformation
are the ones which inspire me the most. They're the ones which drive me
out of bed early in the morning and keep me up late at night.