Quixote, Stags Leap Appellation,
Napa Valley,
California, USA
April 27, 2024
"Werner's
point is that you don't agree with or
believe
in a ladder. You climb it. And if it breaks you get a new one. Thus to
treat his philosophical perspective as a system to be
believed,
or to be
committed
or
attached
to, is to miss its point. As he puts it: 'The truth,
believed,
is a lie.'."
"My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone
who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he
has used them - as
steps
- to climb beyond them (he must, so to speak, throw away the ladder
after he has climbed up it)."
... Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
"Enlightenment
is giving up the notion that you are unenlightened."
I am indebted to John Taylor and to James "Jim" Tsutsui who
contributed material for this conversation.
It's been argued (and perhaps it's even true) that once
people realize exactly what it is
the work of transformation
offers, they want it ie everyone wants it. And it's more
than that actually. It's that once people realize exactly what
the work of transformation
offers, they also realize they've always wanted it. People
have always sensed what could be possible with it (even if they haven't
said it in exactly that way). Yet with no reliable
direct access
to it until now, we've become inured to the likelihood of ever really
having it in our lives. We live like transformation's a grail, not
real. Now we may not realize we live like it's a grail, and we may not
even realize we want it. But fundamentally, at
the heart of the matter
of who we each really are, I assert that all people want it.
There's
a mountain
of material available from libraries, bookstores, and online, touting
how we got to be how we are. There's another
mountain
of material touting how to deal with life, given that we got to be the
way we are. There's even more material providing instructions, steps
and strategies / techniques to practice to win in life. You know what
I'm talking about. Some of those
mountains
are of cataloged research theses. Some of them are recordings of the
utterings of masterfully insightful people. Some of them have become
the tenets of
religions
and isms. Yet it could be said that each of them are afflicted
with the same fundamental flaw (it's found less in what they talk
about and more in where they come from when
they talk about what they talk about).
People send me material to read - a lot of it. Almost always, I'll
politely decline it. They'll say "You're a writer, so I thought you'd
find this
interesting"
(it's a well intentioned yet false assumption: "All prolific writers
are avid readers too."). And I'll say something like "Thank you
for your generosity, but I actually don't read much - hardly ever, in
fact. I prefer to keep the space open, adding to it as little as
possible while I see if I can
discover the material for
myself.".
But say for argument's sake that unlike me, you do read a lot. You
studied the material that explains how we got to be the way we are.
It's helped you deal with life better. You've gleaned material from a
variety of sources, instructions, strategies, techniques, and practices
that make life go better. You've listened to the audiotapes and you've
read the e-books. You may have even subscribed to
a religion
or an ism that's congruent with what you have come to
believe.
Now I put it to you that if the material has really done you good,
consider letting it all go. That's right: drop it. You've reached the
far shore. You don't need the boat anymore. Let it all go. Holding on
to it is simply an encumbrance. You can balance now. You don't need the
training wheels on your bike anymore.
And that fundamental flaw to which I alluded earlier? Look:
there's nothing to get and there's
nothing to fix.
If that's not gotten (let's face it: we're sure there's
something to get and lots to fix), we heap our plates with
ways to get what there is to get, and to fix what there is to fix.
Maybe what there is to do instead is not study more
materials touting ways to make us better, but less so that there's
room / some space in which the possibility of "You're
already alright" can tease out. All those materials, all
those
religions,
all those bibles, all the isms purport to reveal how you can be
alright. That may just prove to be one gigantic waste of time given
you've always been alright. When you get that, you can let all the
studied materials go. It's time. Really it is.