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

Out Of The Blue

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

December 2, 2010


This essay, Out Of The Blue, is the prequel to Empty Cup, the fourth essay in an open group Conversations With A Friend.

It is also the second in an open group Conversations With A Friend Prequels:

Napa Valley, California, USA
Out Of ...

What it comes down to is this: so much of what I consider to be my verbal communication  is really little more than blabbing, chattering. I get that. I've done a lot  of it. Way  too much in fact. At parties. In the gym locker room. By the water cooler. After the ball game. Blabbing, chattering, "going off"  is an accurate assessment of all that's available to me when the transformative component  of honoring my word as myself is absent from my speaking - as it was until I met you. Since I met you I've noticed if in the context of verbally expressing myself I'm not honoring my word as myself, then at best all I do is make noise. At worst I waste the possibility of my life. At some point I stopped doing that. I stopped doing that around about the time I figured out honoring my word as myself is  my life.

Around you, there's no down time. Around you, there's no wasted life. If there's no wasted life around you, then there's no wasted speaking around you. On another note, there aren't any coincidences  or mistakes  around you either ... no mistakes, that is, except  arguably coming in unprepared for the opportunity being with you is. So when I'm present to the anticipation of being with you again, it's only natural I'm committed to being prepared. But there are no guidelines. You don't give me any. Prepare for what?  Nothing's expected. There's just open time  scheduled to be together - You and I - to do nothing  together. How do I prepare for nothing?

God!  It's hard to prepare for nothing. It's so god‑damned  hard to prepare for nothing. Part of the trouble is this: I could prepare what I'd like to speak with you about - because speaking with you is the access to being  with you. But I'm already being with you!  So there's really  nothing I can prepare for. It's an intense paradox, one which, if I didn't have a context for, would be enormously frustrating. But this isn't new. I've been in this space before. Actually for me, it's more than a paradox. It's an enigma. The way I ensure I have no struggle around the enigma is I allow the enigma to be an enigma. This is just the way it is  whenever the time for being with you comes around again.

Gradually it dawns on me the only  preparation worth doing is indeed preparing what to speak with you about - only because enigma aside, that's who You and I are when we're together: speaking and listening.

So here's what I do. I've done it before - many times. But whenever I rediscover it as "THIS  is what I have to do", it's like it's the first time I've ever  discovered it. This is what I rediscover: to prepare for you, I ask myself the most obvious question I can think of asking myself - which is "If I were with you right now, speaking privately with you about anything I want to speak with you about, what would I speak with you about?". To be sure, I can come up with a few things. I make notes. Some items are about you. Some items are about me. But to qualify, to be on my list, they must all have one thing in common: whatever we speak about should be useful in the listening of the world. That's what brings dignity and purpose to our meetings, to your work.

... The Blue
Photography by Keth Luke
The items which will have the most impact aren't clever. When I look to see what to include which will be useful in the listening of the world, I eschew being the smarty pants. There's no need for that. What I look for is raw. What I look for is real. What I look for is capable of including everyone being transformed everywhere all the time, just as it's capable of including where I'm inquiring as a human being, just as it's capable of including a conglomerate communication from everyone else  which says "We Love You!".

That said, when we meet what will happen will happen all by itself anyway out of the blue, so to speak. In fact what I'm really doing now with all this preparing is carving out the context in which it will show up.


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