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




Reinventing The Game

Jessup Cellars, Yountville, California, USA

August 3, 2017



"The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time." ... Henry Ford

This essay, Reinventing The Game, is the companion piece to It is also the sequel to the ninth trilogy Visits With A Friend:
  1. Intimacy In A Crowded Place
  2. What Goes On Internally
  3. Riding The Horse Revisited
in that order.

It is also the fifth in an open group Visits With A Friend Sequels:
  1. Mint Condition
  2. Tempered Tornado
  3. Who Said That? Who Really  Said That?
  4. Creating For Creation's Sake
  5. Reinventing The Game
in that order.




Everyone who's spent any time being around Werner takes away something valuable. You may not like getting what you got (truth requires bone-numbing  honesty). You may love what you got. Either way you'll get something valuable. No one leaves him remaining neutral to the encounter. What people get, ranges from the generic universal hands-and-feet-on experience of transformation, to individual-specific insights which may be unique for each person. From my recent visit, I came away with both the generic universal experience (that can always be counted on) as well as an individual-specific insight: the insight into exactly where workability in the world and in and with living, first flounders ie first goes awry, like an insight into the origination of the first unintended yet inarguable flaw in an otherwise flawless diamond.

Here's my ante  for this conversation ie these are my chips for this game (try this on for size): it's just possible there's only one  problem in the world, the problem from which all others arise. "Only one?"  you challenge, skeptically. Yes. I'm jus' sayin'  it's possible there's only one problem in the world, the same one problem that there's in and with living: it's the problem of where we come from. Furthermore it's just possible that any and / or all of the plethora of other problems in the world and in and with living, are all a hybrid of ie are all a variant  of (or at least are all wholly or in part predicated on)  the problem of where we come from. Now if you're experiencing a problem like a flat tire, and you ask me how to fix it, I can tell you. More than that, I can tell you in simple, easy to follow steps what you can do about it. Heck, I can even fix your flat tire for you myself. That's easy. But when the problem is where we come from, it's not so easy to tell you in simple to follow steps what you can do about it, and it's nearly impossible  for me to fix it for you myself. Why?

Here's why the former problem, a flat tire, is easy to fix, and why the latter problem, where we come from, is difficult to fix, even with simple to follow steps. It's not because a solution to it can't be spoken - because it can be. The problem is the way we listen. If you have a flat tire, you have almost nothing  in the way of listening me say what to do about it. Whereas if someone says "The problem is where you're coming from", there's a veritably impenetrable concrete and lead slab ie a barrier in the way of listening what to do about it. We have a name for this barrier: it's called our already always listening. And even if by the wave of a magic wand we could disappear our already always listening, and listen newly ie listen crystal clearly  newly, there's still the likelihood of being unfamiliar with some of the arguably more counter-intuitive language implements used to coach people to come from a place that works. You can  however, get them if you discover them  (and it) for yourself.

That's why being around Werner, is to be immersed in a fast track to experiencing coming from a place that works easily, the discovery of which causes a plethora of problems both in the world and in and with living, to clear up and disappear just in the process of Life itself  (it does - no kidding!). It's not a course by study per se. It's a course by exposure. What does that mean  Laurence: a "course by exposure"?  It means it's gotten by immersion ie by osmosis  ie it's gotten by direct experience  and absorption. Completing this course is dead easy: just be  in it, have its conversations, participate whole-heartedly in its processes, and you'll get it. That's my promise to you. It's simple. It's only the explaining of it (or at least it's only the trying to understand how  and why  it works) that's very, very difficult.

Coming from who we really are, is coming from the  place that works. Coming from anywhere else  is almost certainly fraught with integrity issues and other problems. That's a take-away from being around Werner. Coming from who we really are, isn't just another way of playing the same tired old game. Neither is it a new way of playing the same tired old game better. And nor is it a way of fixing  the same tired old game. Coming from who we really are, is reinventing the game  entirely.



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