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




It's All Yours Now:

An Un-Someday

Newark, New Jersey, USA

June 22, 2011



"It's all yours now."  ... 
I am indebted to Lisa Johnson who inspired this conversation.



We want it all. You want it all. I want it all.

There are two issues as I see them with wanting it all coming from  a sense of entitlement - which includes "I'm entitled  to have it all", "I deserve  to have it all", "I have a right  to have it all.". The egocentric demand "I want the world and I want it now" is doomed on these two fronts. They are:

 1)  "I want the world and I want it now" carries with it implicitly "I don't already have  the world now.". In this curiously Zen conundrum, my wanting the world now, ensures  I'll never have  the world now. My declaration supersedes reality. Consider the possibility we already have it all  - we just don't get it yet. We already have it all like a possibility.

 2)  That said, I say it's not the world we want anyway. Wanting the world is really little more than a euphemism  for wanting fullness, for wanting wholeness, for wanting satisfaction, and for wanting completion. Having fullness, having wholeness, having satisfaction, and having completion is what it is to have it all.

<aside>

Actually being  full, being  whole, being  satisfied, and being  complete is what it is to have it all. But for now, saying having  fullness, having  wholeness, having  satisfaction, and having  completion is what it is to have it all is good enough for jazz.

<un-aside>

Having it all this way doesn't require having the world. In fact it's famously documented throughout literature how having the world can actually get in the way  of having it all. Notice the lot of King Midas, and the by now nearly axiomatic "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (as Matthew the apostle quotes Jesus Christ as saying).

Be careful. I'm not saying don't  have the world. To the contrary, have  the world! - if that's what you want. Transformation as a ground of being has the power to fulfill all  possibilities. I'm not a renunciate. I don't propose renunciation as a lifestyle. Rather, what I'm pointing at is twofold:

 1)  Consider you already have  the world like a possibility but you don't yet get it totally, and (in any case)

 2)  the world, whatever having it may bring, isn't the source of fullness nor is it the source of wholeness nor is it the source of satisfaction nor is it the source of completion: I am.

It's a given that the demand "I want it all now" indicates something's in my way of having the experience "I already got it all  now.". What's stopping me having it all now? What gets in my way of having fullness, wholeness, satisfaction, and completion right now?

My answer: "Someday". When I say "Someday" as in I'm not saying "Someday" like a possibility. I'm saying it like a maybe, like a random roll of the dice  future not created but rather hoped for. And the thing about a maybe, the thing about a random roll of the dice future not created but rather hoped for is it's really nothing more than a fairy tale:  the odds of it ever coming true are slim to none.

In this sense "Someday" is simply not taking responsibility. As in: I'll have it all "Someday" - when I'll take responsibility for having it all. More to the point (and more honest): I'm putting off until "Someday" taking responsibility for having it all now. That's bad enough. But here's the real possibility killer: "Someday" creates a context  for living life. When I empower and live in a context called "Someday" I effectively kill the possibility of having it all now.

There's nothing you need to do to have it all now. You already got it all now. All there is to do is be responsible for having it all now. That ... and give up "Someday", the possibility killing context. As I said, I'm not a renunciate. I don't propose renunciation as a lifestyle. But if I were and if I did, "Someday" is worth renouncing.

It's all yours now. All there is to do is take it and own it.



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