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




Redemption And Peace

Napa, California, USA

August 24, 2006



This essay, Redemption And Peace, is the companion piece to Fulfilled And Accepting.



I'm looking at this new possibility I seem to be being. It's lush, mellow, cool tones comfort and calm me with azure notes of loveliness and smooth sensuality. And yet, tantalizingly, it's just out of reach of languaging. I see it. I feel it. I know I want  it. Yet it's not clear enough for me to say  exactly what it is.
Werner has given me tools with which to look for, at, and into possibility. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of what he's shown me is this: if you can't articulate possibility you can't have its results. To become  possibility (here the verb "become" is active rather than passive - in other words, to manifest / to have the results of who you're being like a possibility), you must say it in a way that's clear and comprehensible to others. It's not enough to simply get a sense  of what's possible. The results of what's possible become available when you say  what the possibility is.

I don't know why it's this way. I don't always like it that it's this way. Yet after close scrutiny and examination I'm clear Werner's right on the money: you can't have it until you get it clear enough to say it. And here, "say it" doesn't mean "talk about  it". Here "say it" means "generate it  with language".

So I start asking myself "What is  this new possibility I'm being for myself and for my life?". I keep on inquiring until it suddenly pops into sharp focus and I get it.

The possibility I'm being for myself and for my life is the possibility of redemption and peace.

From the Cambridge International Dictionary:

<quote>
Definition
redemption


noun
from the verb redeem (RELIGION)
an occasion when someone is saved from evil, suffering
<unquote>

Also from the Cambridge International Dictionary:

<quote>
Definition
peace
(CALM)

noun
calm and quiet; lack of interruption or annoyance from worry, problems, noise or unwanted actions.
<unquote>

I'm providing the Cambridge International Dictionary listings for redemption and peace, the possibility I'm inventing, for clarity to ground it. However, rather than discuss the genesis of the possibility of redemption and peace, the purpose of this conversation is to add voice to Werner's idea that you can't have the result of a possibility until you articulate it and others get it and are inspired by it.

When I examine this axiom, this law of the universe, I'm amazed by its efficacy. What Werner has noted on this score is not merely a matter of grand philosophy, of right or of positive thinking. It's a matter of how life works.

Can you ie are you willing to allow that Werner's work is the observation of what makes for having life work? I'm not naïve. I know that being the kind of people we are, accepting that is a stretch, a tall order. But that's understandable. How can people who don't know Werner possibly know where he looks from? Who can get or even lend credence to that the way Werner looks  is he simply observes life working then reports on ie transcribes  what he sees?

This isn't religion. This isn't a system of thinking. This isn't even a well crafted set of beliefs. This is looking into the beingsphere then saying whatever's there. To be sure, this way of looking (or said more accurately, the willingness to look this way) is a gift. The way to empower a gift like this, especially the way to get the most value from it is to check it out, try it on, look from its vantage, and then take what you get.

While it's been well documented and duly noted in the thirty five years and more of Werner's work, looking this way doesn't have any value at all (indeed can't  have any value at all) until you bring forth a willingness, a risk  ie take a chance to let it be valuable. When people do, reportedly what shows up for them is the only reason they didn't yet have the same observations as Werner is they hadn't invested the time looking. I assert if you invest the time looking, you'll see the same consistent axioms of workability as Werner, life being what it is.

That said, for me to have the results of my invented possibility redemption and peace  in my life, what's called for is to enroll others in me having gotten that possibility. Why? Because then people can relate to me as that possibility. That ... and because it works that way.

Now I'm redeemed and at peace. No one ought to be surprised.



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