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




Resolving The World

Alston Park, Napa Valley, California, USA

June 28, 2018

"Lots of people have talked about taking that step into the unknown. Taking that step into the unknown is actually a lot less courageous than taking a step from  the unknown." ... 
This essay, Resolving The World, is the companion piece to

He was clearly upset by it. When I say he was "clearly upset" by it, I mean he was more than a few degrees north of being merely "bothered" by it. The situation was, according to him, "disgusting". He was referring to the current political drama unfolding in these United States. It had gotten to the point where he said he didn't even want to watch the local news any more or even read the local newspapers, preferring to watch the offshore London-based BBC  (British Broadcasting Corporation) coverage rather than the local Atlanta-based CNN  (Cable News Network) coverage to find out what's going on in the world.

I asked him what upset him about it. He said it was so out of control, so indeterminate. He longed for a kind of stability, a resolution, a return to predictability, even. It's quite likely, I suggested, that he was looking at the situation through a too narrow slit to get the full picture. As expected, he wondered what I meant by that (evoked questions work: they come with an already opening listening). What you're seeing, I suggested, is the current situation is unresolved, and you're holding out for it resolving. Widen the slit a bit ie include a longer timeframe, and notice the last decade  has the same characteristic of not resolving ie of not not resolving yet.

Now make the slit even wider. Include the last few hundred  years. Notice even in this extended timeframe, events are also always in an ongoing process of resolving (go back just a meagre seventy five years to London to where you now look for your news, and notice they were then under a rain of nightly bombings during the second world war - clearly not a resolved  situation, especially if you lived there, no?). Now make the slit even wider to include the whole world over all of history, and notice the world is always  in an ongoing process of resolving. It's more than "notice" actually. It's way more. It's really get  this: the world is always resolving. Period.

He opened his mouth to say something, kept it open for a moment, then closed it again, saying nothing, the same look on his face as before except now I could tell he was contemplating instead of merely expressing disgust. I leaned in: the world's been ongoingly resolving ever since we've been on the planet. The current political situation here, is simply where we're at now in this ongoing process. What's going on now isn't merely indicative of an isolated local political situation resolving ("an isolated disgusting  local political situation resolving" he chimed in, nodding in self-agreement). It's indicative of the world always and ongoingly resolving. What this  is, in spite of all our best hopes, wishes, and dreams to the contrary, is simply the current flavor of the month - of which there'll be ample more for millennia to come.

So: we're thrown to look for the current situation resolving - as if when it resolves, there will be transformation. But I'm sorry, that's not where transformation shows up. It's more than that actually. It's transformation has never  shown up there. And here's the killer (or the redeemer - depending how it lands for you): it never will.

His mouth opened and closed and opened again some more, and this time he even started to say something - but I interrupted him: "Don't look to the world for it resolving any time soon. That's a bad bet. Rather, just look to the world for the world. With that established as the ground on which to stand, the question to then ask is 'So where then do I look for transformation?' or (asked somewhat unconventionally yet exquisitely powerfully) 'So from  where then do I look for transformation?'".

Where you look from, is your Being. Not from your ego. Not from your opinions. Not from your interpretations. Not from your great ideas. Not even from your eyes. You look from your Being. Your Being is already transformed. Oh, and when you look from your Being, transformed, at the world? If you don't get the world is already perfect exactly the way it is, and exactly the way it isn't, then you have no chance whatsoever  (zero, zilch, nada, not one single iota)  of bringing transformation to it.



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© Laurence Platt - 2018 Permission