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




How To Enroll The World

Muir Beach, California, USA

Christmas Day, December 25, 2009



This essay, How To Enroll The World, is the companion piece to An Actionable Access.

It is also the fourteenth in an open group Encounters With A Friend:
  1. Showing Up
  2. Poet Laureate
  3. A Man In The Crowd
  4. Real Men Cry
  5. A Different Set Of Rules
  6. Nametag: A True Story
  7. Half-Life
  8. Waiting On You
  9. Erotica On Schedule
  10. A House On Franklin Street
  11. NeXT
  12. Reflection On A Window
  13. Here And There
  14. How To Enroll The World
  15. Demonstration
  16. Two Of Me II: Confirmation Not Correction
  17. Holiday Spectacular
  18. Hello! How Are Things Going For You?
  19. Regular Guy
  20. A Scholar And A Gentleman
  21. Images Of You
  22. With Nothing Going On
  23. Where No One Has Gone Before
  24. Attachment: Causeway Between Islands
  25. If You're Not Then Don't
  26. Images Of You II
  27. Living Where Life Is
  28. Create Me The Way I Am
  29. How Do You Spell The Sound A Ratchet Makes?
  30. You Don't Ask "Why Me?"  When It's Raining II
  31. The Stink Of Zen
  32. Sitting Quietly In A Room Alone
  33. Footsteps On Metal Stairs
so far, in that order.

It is also the fourth in a group of eleven written on Christmas Day:
  1. High Class Zen
  2. Holiday Service
  3. Out Of My Head
  4. How To Enroll The World
  5. Holiday Service II
  6. A Game Worth Playing
  7. Peace On Earth And Good Will To All People: A Possibility
  8. Five Star Restaurant
  9. Direct Experience
  10. Thirteen Hawks A-Soaring
  11. Staying In Integrity
in that order.

It is also the third in a group of twelve on Enrollment: It was written at the same time as


I watch you closely. I can't watch you any closer than I watch you. I'd have to skin my eyes literally  to watch you any closer than I watch you.

I get who you are. I get what you do. I don't so much understand  who you are and what you do as much as I get  who you are and what you do ie as much as I grok  who you are and what you do (as Robert Heinlein may have said). Who you are rings  throughout my very being, vibrating through my every cell like the sound of the massive brass gong echoing through the monastery calling the monks to meals, meditation, and prayer.

As I watch you, as I listen you, my respect erupts, bubbling up like the question "How do you do  that?" blending perplexity evenly with awe.

When I ask you "How do you do  that?", what I mean by "do"  is "enroll the world". You've enrolled the world. How do you do  that? How do you enroll the world?

As I watch you, I answer my own question. Like this.

Here's how to enroll the world:



Enrollment isn't convincing or persuading or selling. Enrollment is being. That's it. That's all. Plain and simple. Just being. Nothing else. No doing  required. You being who you are is enrolling and inspiring. Absolutely completely sufficiently totally enough. Being who you are, you don't have to do anything or even discuss anything to enroll and inspire poeple. You could simply stand up and read the dictionary or the telephone directory, and people would be enrolled and inspired.

To be sure, regardless of how enrolling and inspiring you are, there are those people who make it their business to find something to criticize. When you read the dictionary, they grouse the story has great potential but  the author keeps changing the subject. When you read the telephone directory, they complain it has a rich, extensive cast of characters but  not much of a plot. These, of course, are the same armchair pundits who kvetch  God is a little too bossy.

I don't watch them. I watch you - closely. You've enrolled the world.

Game over.



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