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

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If We Don't Know Who We Really Are

Veterans Memorial Park, Napa, California, USA

January 12, 2021

"God's greatest work wasn't creating the universe: it was disappearing into it afterwards." ... 
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." ... Professor Albert Einstein



A friend of mine, concerned, said to me "These are strange times we live in.'. "No they're not" I said, "they're just the times we live in.".

His brow furrowed as he turned and looked at me in disbelief. But a moment later, he lit up in a huge smile, clapped me on the back, and intoned "Thanks. I got it!".

There's a great deal of agreement (that is to say, there's a great deal of unexamined  agreement) for the notion that our problems start with, live in, and are mostly a product of our circumstances. Indeed, the more dire our circumstances are, the more sagely, noddingly  certain the agreement becomes. In fact there's so much agreement for looking at our circumstances that way, that any other insights regarding the real  root of our problems, are likely to be glossed over and missed entirely. But if we're looking to the root of our problems with the intention of solving them, then we have to (as Albert Einstein counseled) set aside our current opinions ie we must be willing to stop parading our tired old debates about them, and consider other, newer ideas which bring with them power over / facility with all circumstances.

Try this on for size: if there's a problem, it's never  with the circumstances (that's right) no matter how dire, no matter how compelling, no matter how desperate both the circumstances and the problem may seem to be. Instead, if there's a problem, it's always  with our being out of touch with / having no access to who we really are in the face of the circumstances. It's having no access to who we really are in the face of our circumstances that costs us our very real power to act in the face of any circumstances. When we have access to who we really are in the face of our circumstances, our circumstances are just our circumstances  - or (stated with rigor) our circumstances are just what's so. Be careful: being what's so, doesn't mitigate any circumstances - rather it recontextualizes  them (I love that word). That's profound.

If we don't know who we really are in the face of our circumstances, we don't act  in the face of them: we simply re-act to them. And there's no power to transform  any circumstance in reacting to it. No, it's worse than that. It's if we don't know who we really are, it's impossible to act authentically  in the face of any circumstance (if we don't know who we really are, then who's acting authentically  in the first place? - it's just reaction). And: if we don't know who we really are, it's impossible to act with integrity  in the face of any circumstance (if we don't know who we really are, then who's acting with integrity  in the first place? - it's just reaction).

But the implications go way beyond than that, waaay  beyond. They extend to include if we don't know who we really are (which is to say if we haven't examined our lives and discovered who we really  are, and have settled instead for society's colloquial versions of who it presumes all of us to be), then we have a far-reaching array of questions to grapple with. For example, who  is to be counted on when we give our word? And who  will actually deliver on the promises we make? And who  is the actor in any situation in our lives? If we don't know who we really are, we're then in the untenable predicament in which someone  is to be counted on when we give our word, and someone  will presumably deliver on the promises we make, and someone  is the actor in any situation in our lives ... but we just don't know who it is.

It brought us full-circle back to his "These are strange times we live in", the strangest aspect of which now is how we've operated at all in our complex and seemingly complicated world, not knowing who we really are in the first place. Isn't that deemed "robotic"? Wouldn't that make all  times strange, not just these in which we now live? If we don't discover who we really are, would it not ongoingly ensure that all  times on Earth would of necessity be strange times? The question is disconcerting.



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