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

In The Midst Of Chaos

Napa, California, USA

April 14, 2018


"Reinventing yourself into an impossible future doesn't alter how life turns out. It alters who you are being and what is available, while life turns out the way it does." ...

"There is a long way between chaos and creation if you don't say which one of these you're gonna choose." ... Sir James Paul McCartney, Chaos And Creation In The Backyard

This essay, In The Midst Of Chaos, is the companion piece to

I am indebted to Anita Lynn Erhard who inspired this conversation.

Without rigor, it's an easy misconception to fall into. When we're overcome by circumstances and in the midst of what we ruefully (and with a knowing, resigned nod) describe as "chaos" in the world, when it doesn't appear as if anyone is driving the train (that is to say, when it doesn't appear as if anyone with the greater good in mind, is driving the train), in other words when it seems like things are totally out of control, the misconception lies in hoping that transformation will be a kind of a band-aid ie a sort of a fixit, a remedy for the chaos.

I'm sorry, but it won't be. It's not happening. Transformation doesn't fix anything. It doesn't make anything better. What transformation does is it alters who you are being and what is available, while life turns out the way it does.

With that said, one of the "disciplines of transformation" (if you will) is the willingness to take full responsibility for our experience of life, whatever the experience may be. Paradoxically, the chaos is never transformed by transforming the chaos (Man! Are we thrown to try to transform the chaos, or what?!). No, the chaos is transformed by transforming our experience of the chaos ie the chaos is transformed by transforming our experience of being out of control. Trying to transform the chaos just plain doesn't work. And if you doubt that, notice for how many centuries we've been trying to transform the chaos ... and how's that going for us?

KEEP YOUR FINGERS OUT OF THE MACHINERY!

This sign should be mandatory in every single human course, workshop, laboratory, home, workplace, experience, relationship, endeavor, and conversation.

Here are three of Werner's powerful approaches I'm re-creating, that transform the experience of chaos ie that transform the experience of being out of control:

One is when you're out of control, be out of control. When you're being out of control when you're out of control, you're in control. That's profound (it's also very Zen). Another is when you're out of control, then create being out of control. When you create being out of control when you're out of control, you're in control. That's equally profound. A third is when you're out of control, then re-create being out of control. When you re-create being out of control when you're out of control, you disappear being out of control (note to self: "re-created experience, disappears" is axiomatic) and you're in control again. Wow! That's profound to the max.

Then there's this: no matter how out of control things seem to be, no matter how turbulent the chaos, you and I possess within ourselves, at every moment of our lives, under all circumstances, the power to transform the quality of our lives - and I know you know that's not a Laurence Platt original idea: it's vintage Erhard. So let's assume, just for a moment, that your intention really is to impact the chaos ie to make some sense out of it, to stabilize it, to still the waters (so to speak), to transform it. Clearly a powerful step toward stabilizing the chaos, is standing in possibility, rather than standing in reaction to the chaos, yes?

The more intense the sense of chaos is ie the more intense the sense of being out of control is, the more the possibility of transformation, calls - but not like a call to vote to change the circumstances: as much as we're thrown to do that, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose! Rather, its like a call for the genesis of a new space to come from in the midst of chaos ie a new context in which to hold it all. Look: authentically transforming chaos, comes from transforming the experience of chaos, rather than trying to transform the chaos itself ie rather than trying to transform the circumstances themselves. When experience is transformed, then chaos and the circumstances themselves, are experienced in a whole new way, a way in which (should you choose to do so) possibility rather than more reaction, can be forwarded.

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