Wait! It's so easy to miss the profundity of my second admission - most likely because I didn't emphasize it properly. I'll say it again with the emphasis in the right place this time: "I'm no longer interested in making my life work". Here's why: any attempts (which, by the way, are all invariably futile) to make my life work, to try to make my life work, fly in the face of Life works. It's worse than that actually. It's any attempts I make to have my life work, continually grind into reality the belief my life doesn't already work. "Life works" isn't "the Truth". It's a place to stand. I stand in this place where Life works ie where my life already works - which is to say, I stand that Life works. From this space of my life already works, I'm in‑a‑dance‑with Life itself. This isn't positive thinking or affirming something as a means to making it materialize. The proof of the view that Life works, is this: you're alive. So when I'm living in‑a‑dance‑with Life itself, my life works because Life works. It takes all the struggle and the effort out of living successfully. This is why Conversations For Transformation don't propose any methods or strategies for success or for winning. You're alive, so you're already successful. You're alive, so you've already won. Stop pretending it isn't this way. Stop pretending you don't get it. Rather, ask "What's next?". Now that's a question worth asking. Neither asking how to succeed nor asking and how to win, is powerful. Play from win. Conversations For Transformation are entirely my own work - except I'm one of those guys who considers it important to acknowledge source. If you're a classical musician, you acknowledge Ludwig van Beethoven or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. If you're a painter, you acknowledge Leonardo da Vinci or Pablo Ruiz y Picasso or whoever your inspirations are. That's real. That's authentic. To say Conversations For Transformation are entirely my own work, is only partially true, and therefore not real, and therefore inauthentic. Conversations For Transformation come from Werner Erhard - which is to say, they come from my conversations with Werner Erhard. To pretend it's any other way is not only not true, not real, and inauthentic: it's also childish and immature. |
What inspires me is the opportunity to express transformation in language. I spend a lot of my time expressing transformation in writing, even though the real expression of transformation is in speaking. But whether or not transformation is expressed in writing or in speaking, both genres (if you will) have something in common, which is this: you can write about transformation and you can speak about transformation, without communicating transformation in much the same way as you can write about swimming and you can speak about swimming without communicating the experience of swimming and even without getting wet. There's another way, and that's to drop the "about" - like this: write transformation rather than write about transformation; speak transformation rather than speak about transformation. This is an experiential distinction. It's subtle and profound. It's being transformed rather than knowing about transformation. This opportunity to bring forth transformation as language secondarily in writing and primarily in speaking, is enough to get me out of bed early in the morning and to keep me up late at night. There's no greater calling than this. And it never ends. The work of transformation ie Werner's work never ends. It is / Life is an ongoing work in progress. I'm clear I'll never get to the end of this work. To live Life as if it's a work which can be completed and which will be completed, is to miss the point entirely. The best it gets for me is to live Life as an ongoing, never will be completed, contiguous work in progress, all the while creating for myself the experience of being complete it's this way. |
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From the
Cambridge International Dictionary:
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