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

Master Of Life

Chicago, Illinois, USA

April 13, 2007


This essay, Master Of Life, is the first in the third trilogy Visits With A Friend:
  1. Master Of Life
  2. Face To Face
  3. Love And Kindness
in that order. 		The first trilogy Visits With A Friend is:
  1. Second First Impression
  2. Do Artists Retire?
  3. Presence Of Love
in that order.
The second trilogy Visits With A Friend is:
  1. Black Brick
  2. Wet Water
  3. On Saying Nothing
in that order. 		The fourth trilogy Visits With A Friend is:
  1. Personal Piece
  2. Magnum Opus
  3. Walk A Way With Me
in that order.
The fifth trilogy Visits With A Friend is:
  1. Natural Expression
  2. Essential Question
  3. There Is No "The Answers"
in that order. 		The sixth trilogy Visits With A Friend is:
  1. Sophisticated Palate
  2. Open To Everyone
  3. Portal
in that order.
The seventh trilogy Visits With A Friend is:
  1. Meetings With A Remarkable Man
  2. Being Directed By The Unanswered Question
  3. Out Here
in that order. 		The eighth trilogy Visits With A Friend is:
  1. Visits With A Friend VIII (working title) : Coming
  2. Visits With A Friend VIII II (working title) : Coming
  3. Visits With A Friend VIII III (working title) : Coming
in that order.
The third trilogy Visits With A Friend is the sequel to Secret Service.


Not atypically, traveling here has been an eleven on a scale of one to ten of simplicity, convenience, and ease. The intention to follow this call of the heart  to come, to manage everything else then set it aside to be here, to line up anything required to facilitate being here is clearly supported by the physical universe which obligingly removed all barriers to its smooth fulfillment, making the fastest straightest possible line getting here into the shortest distance between two hearts.

I'm up well before the dawn. In this state of sheer electric anticipation, sleep is an unwelcome intruder. I'm showered, shaved, dressed, and ready with hours to spare. I'm open for anything, expecting nothing. Yet with a certain hard earned savvy (I've done this once or twice before), I'm already mellowing into the enormous joy, the sheer privilege of being here. It's already started, whatever it  will turn out to be this time.

I look up from my notes and he's standing there right in front of me. He wasn't there when I looked down. He's there when I look up, appearing out of nowhere. To be sure, he always appears this way. He's always there. He's always there for me. He's always there for everyone. In fact he makes "he's always there for me" available for everyone. I don't mind taking it personally. It isn't and it is.

To say I look forward to these moments with him doesn't quite convey it fully. It's more accurate to say I live my life into a future given by the possibility of being with him again. Although by now the breakthrough extraordinariness of these visits are totally bankable, what I wasn't expecting this time was there'd be no again  again in it anymore. What I get as we pick up seemingly exactly where we left off the last time is where we are today, where we are now. We're here  in the same space of relatedness, predictably under another plastic chandelier. The again, the new iteration, has morphed into a continuation, the next word in the current sentence in the lifelong paragraph in the ongoing conversation.

This conversation we're having is so accurate, so laser sharp that any add on  meaning and significance can't and don't survive. They simply burn off  in passing, leaving me in pure naked presence. He reminds me there's as much significance in getting to pure naked presence as there is in the fact that the dictionary he's holding is green. Furthering his point he reminds me it would be plain wierd  to make the green-ness  of the dictionary significant.

Because of his unerring, proven, repeatable ability to cut through significance into the very heart of the matter, his conversations for transformation and for mastery provide immediate access to the experience of transformation and mastery rather than merely discussing them as symptoms or concepts.

Watching him work, I'm listening and recreating his experience. I'm also noticing his wardrobe. I'm reminded of his uncanny dress sense. In earth tones, blacks and light browns, he looks fabulous. More than simply being appropriately attired to go to work bringing forth the extraordinary into ordinary life, his choice of clothes is a demonstration. Casual yet elegant. Relaxed yet attentive. He's so at home  in what he's wearing you get the sense you're having a personal private audience with Pablo Picasso at work in his private workspace, in his private studio in his private time ... you alone, along with another thousand or so of his closest, most intimate friends.

Stay alert. Don't be seduced. Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water, he reminds you he's not here to be nice. He can be nasty  if you play games with him. Yet he's your best friend when you reach, when you grapple with what it is to be human. The mixture is disconcerting. You may like him or you may not. You may accept where he comes from or not. You may take on his point of view or not, that is if you can even start to get over your rising skepticism that life could really be as god-damned  simple as he makes it sound.

However he lands for you, he keeps you on your toes. There's no being lulled into complacency when he's around, when he's front and center on the stage which he designed to best suit his own delivery. Depending on your responses to his oh so pointed questions, he could bite your head off or he could hug you. It's your call. But if you're here, it's evidence you've chosen to dance with a croupier  you know is already holding all the picture cards. Amazingly enough, whether he bites your head off or whether he hugs you, he's considerate enough to get your approval first.

As I watch and listen, sporadically making terse notes in chickenscratch  shorthand designed for maximum speed with abandoned regard for neatness given my reluctance to write everything down verbatim for fear I'll miss anything he says, it dawns on me the most extraordinary aspect of what he's doing is he's speaking for humanity. When all assessments, interpretations, and opinions are set aside, that's what he's doing.

But he doesn't ask you for your approval, agreement, or permission to do that. He doesn't ask you for your approval, agreement, or permission to speak for you. He simply goes ahead and does it. If what he's doing is what I purport him to be doing then it's clear he's already been authorized, his credit line has been preapproved. And part of the richness of your experience being with him is the discovery you're the one  who preapproved him. You'd simply forgotten you did that. Being here is your way of reminding yourself it was you.

Ultimately his mastery is to get you to see mastery isn't about being in an aesthetic place of love and kindness. That's just the beginning of mastery. In his terms, mastery is allowing the world to show up as it is. Then when he explains that your "I" is just another piece of the world to allow to show up as it is, that's the "A-Ha!"  ... and you're fully enrolled and present and ready to get down to work.


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