I am indebted to Kihā "Billy" Pimental who inspired this
conversation.
It would be totally inauthentic of me, the author of
Conversations For
Transformation,
to not get myself clear about the difference between the domain of the
written word and the domain of the spoken
word as vehicles for imparting
transformation.
Even if I get clear about this difference for myself, it would
be inauthentic of me to not generate it as a distinction
in such a way as to be a stand for it.
It's often been noted how
futile
it is to hunt butterflies. Once you've captured them, they've lost the
very quality they had which made you want to own them in the first
place: their freedom.
So it is with
Conversations For
Transformation.
By writing them down I've taken them out of the domain of
transformation
ie out of the domain of the spoken word, out of the domain of
speaking and listening, and put them into a mere
close approximation to
transformation
ie into the domain of the written word, into the domain of
writing and reading. When I write them down they
lose some of the very quality which made them noteworthy in the first
place.
What I've written down shares my experience of
transformation.
But it's only an approximation to the up close and personal,
face to face
experience of
transformation
which is
constituted
in a conversation when
transformation
is spoken. My written word isn't the spoken word. That is to say
the written word isn't the domain of
transformation.
I'm gratified when I realize
Conversations For
Transformation
create space for people. Creating space for people is my intention.
Conversations For
Transformation
is my expression of this. I made up
Conversations For
Transformation.
Out of nothing. Out of nothing, that is, other than my
friendship
with Werner. One day I just up and decided to do this. Twice a week.
Really. The thing is I've got no private access to the inside track.
I've got no special gift or ability to do this. I'm just a guy who
likes
surfing
and a cold beer from time to time. Neither do I get any special favors
from anyone for doing this. If I write
Conversations For
Transformation,
they happen. If I don't, they don't. And even when they happen, no one
checks up on me or corrects me or tells me ways to write them better.
Sometimes I'm concerned when I read something I've published after the
fact, and it doesn't meet even my own standards for clarity. But people
get it anyway. Or at least people get most of it - most of it, that
is, when I'm being clear. So I say they
work.
Or rather somethingworks.
Question (which I'm actually asking myself but posing it openly
nonetheless): is it possible
Conversations For
Transformation,
the written word in the domain of writing and
reading, can impart
transformation
as effectively and as powerfully as the spoken word in the domain of
speaking and listening? I've got some
experience in this by now. I'm not a guy in a diner about
this any more. My answer is this: for all intents and purposes, no. But
it's not im‑possible. It's just very,
very difficult - human beings being what we are. If, for
example, the Bible and the Torah and the
Koran and the Vedasworked
just by reading them, enough of us have read them that there'd be peace
in the world by now.
The great philosophers have it that the philosophical discourse in its
purest form is poetry. When you're living it,
when it's real, when it's no longer something you're trying to
grasp (and nor, for that matter, when it's not longer something you're
trying to teach), when you're just living it in the empty
silence and joy it really is, then what you've got is pure
poetry. In that sense, I'm willing to stake the
value of
Conversations For
Transformation
as poetry, even before I'd be willing to stake the value of
Conversations For
Transformation
as equivalent to or even similar to what's available in the
transformative
domain of the spoken word ie as what's available in the domain of
speaking and listening as
transformation.
To be sure,
Conversations For
Transformation
are another inlet, another way to get something, another way to
provide a background, a
context
for listening
transformation.
Yes they do make a difference - especially for those already
initiated into, already fluent in Werner's possibility of
transformation.
But does reading them accomplish the same thing as what happens in up
close and personal,
face to face
experiences with Werner in conversation about
transformation?
I, their author, am under no illusions whatsoever that it
does.
What it comes down to for me is this: in one on one
face to face
conversations with Werner, not unfamiliarly known as the Socratic
method, people
transform
their lives. I've looked at the how of this and at the
why
of this for nearly forty years. And what I can say about it now -
clearly, unequivocally, and certainly - is this: I don'tknow how it
works
and I don'tknow why it
works,
and it neither matters if I know how it
works
nor if I know why it
works
because people
transforming
their lives in one on one
face to face
conversations with Werner is just
what's so.
It's count-on-able. It's what happens. It's just the way it
is.
That said, all
Conversations For
Transformation
can ever be (and I'm willing to stake this also: all
any words, all any books written abouttransformation
can ever be) are close approximations to
transformation.
But not
transformation.
Pointers to. But not the experience. Menus. But not the steak.
That's me - in my current role as the author of
Conversations For
Transformation:
I'm at best a menu writer. You could even call me the "ad
man" - I've been called
a lot of things.
But I'm not the chef in my current role. And I'm under no
illusions about being the chef in my current role either.