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

On Having No Past

San Francisco, California, USA

January 15, 2006
Reposted August 27, 2020

This essay, On Having No Past, is the companion piece to

It is also, with Beginner's Mind: On Having No Memory and There's Nothing To Get, Revisited, the prequel to A Belief System Blind To Itself.

Werner Erhard

Werner says "Suppose you had no past. That would be an interesting place to be in.".

Here, we're not talking about having a past, but not remembering it or not being able to recall it. Neither are we talking about having a past, but putting it aside or ignoring it. We all have a past. I have a past. You have a past. When I live in my past (or, spoken with rigor, when I live from my past) I perpetuate the life I've already always lived. Nothing new can show up. When I tell the truth about it, that's not deeply satisfying, and I'm not nurtured by it. I'm stuck, powerless, a cog in a cog, a hamster in a wheel, a rat in a race. And we're alike, so some of that's likely to be that way for you too.

But suppose (as Werner proposes) just suppose you ... had ... no ... past ...

For the sake of argument, create the experience of having no past. Stand in the experience of having no past. What's it like? Having no past, what choices do you have? Having no past, where are your focal points? Who are you ... having no past? More pertinently, are you? ... (having no past).

Taking A Stand For An Anything Is Possible Future

I learned about relationship ie I got my first impressions of people in relationship, for worse or for better, from my parents. What I learned about women, I carried forward into all my relationships with women. What I learned about men, I carried forward into all my relationships with men. I carried forward everything I learned about relationship: the pleasure, the hurt, the betrayal, the wonder, the joy. Particularly the hurt and the betrayal. If I had no past in relationship, I wouldn't hold people in my present to account for what someone similar to them once said or did to me in my past. I'd relate to people not because I thought there'd be no hurt and because there'd be no betrayal. I'd relate to people not because there'd be pleasure or because there'd be wonder and joy. I'd relate to people because I'm related to people. I'd be related ... rather than wanting to be a relationship. Sound familiar?

We're alike, so some of that is likely to be that way for you too. You also tried. You also failed. You also put forth, yes? You were also rebuffed. So you learned. Man! You learned you could fail in life. And when you figured that out, you chiseled it into stone tablets to command your life by. You stopped questioning. You decided it's prudent to let what you can't do run, your life. You started believing you're smart because you figured out what's not possible in life rather than what's possible. If you had no past failures, you could invent a future you love that's worth living into, and not be stopped before you got started, by already knowing it wasn't possible.

The first time I experienced the visceral sense of fear, I lent credence to it. I instinctively knew to file away a memory of the cause of the fear, and to look out for it coming back in the future. I didn't regard fear as simply an autonomic response. I thought it meant something. So I make choices not freely and not without prior consideration but rather based on whether I'm afraid of what might happen, or not. I assume the way to play life is if I've any sense of being afraid of what might happen, it's a warning to cease and desist. That's how slowly, inexorably, I lock myself into only familiar, already always known activities - because I'm comfortable with them and because I'm not afraid of them. I never question my fear of anything new or unknown. Then, when nothing new opens up for me, I wonder why, and I rail against life. If I had no past fears, I'd be in the moment as an innocent not as a skeptic, I'd have an open vision of my future, and not limit its vistas with overprotective rules and frantic conclusions about new things not yet known. And we're alike, so some of that's likely to be that way for you too.

Where To Go From Here?

Suppose you had no past. You'd take company as it comes, and equally enjoy yourself by yourself. You'd express yourself fully without holding back or avoiding being embarrassed. You'd let love nurture you rather than require it prove itself to you.

Communication Promise

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