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

Serene Passion

The Artist's Studio, Spring Drive, Tam Valley, California, USA

April 25, 2012


This essay, Serene Passion, is the companion piece to Power Play.

I am indebted to the creators of The Leadership Course: Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological / Phenomenological Model who inspired this conversation.


Authentic creative Self expression.

Later in this conversation, I'll get to articulating what authentic creative Self expression is - in a terse phrase suitable for the dictionary. Until then, my approach to it is this: when I see authentic creative Self expression, it's imminently recognizable. One of the ways I recognize it when I see it, is I have an experience of it as my own authentic creative Self expression even if  I'm watching someone else's  authentic creative Self expression. That's a hallmark of authenticity, a characteristic of creative Self  expression.

Robert Redford playing the iconic Tom Booker in The Horse Whisperer. Joe Brown singing I'll See You In My Dreams  accompanying himself on the ukulele at the seminal Concert For George  celebrating the life and music of George Harrison. Any of the many paintings of light  by prolific artist Thomas Kincade. Chipped icicle fragments carefully placed end to end till they freeze together into spirals brilliantly refracting daybreak's first light by sculptor extraordinaire  Andy Goldsworthy. A ballerina. A gymnast. A poet. A seminar leader. A surfer.

The threefold purpose of this conversation is

 1)  to create the possibility of being clear about what your authentic creative Self expression is, and

 2)  to be clear that expressing whatever your authentic creative Self expression is, gives total access to your life, and

 3)  to be clear that doing whatever it is which gives total access to your life, is completely fulfilling and satisfying.

It was pivotal for me to get the primary  manifestation of my authentic creative Self expression is that I'm alive. So my authentic creative Self expression is already fait accompli because I'm already doing it. It was equally pivotal for me to get that whatever the secondary  manifestation of my authentic creative Self expression is, it isn't required for me to be whole and complete and perfect: by virtue of being alive, I'm already  whole and complete and perfect.

In other words, whatever my authentic creative Self expression turns out to be, it's never an addition  to who I really am. Rather, it's an extension  to who I really am ie it's an expansion of  who I really am. And when I discover what it is, doing whatever it is seems like I'm not doing anything at all. Said more rigorously: when I discover what my authentic creative Self expression is, doing whatever it is seems  like I'm not doing anything at all except living my life. In hindsight (and hindsight is always  20/20 vision), that's obvious, yes?: I don't have to do anything to be who I really am. So when I discover my authentic creative Self expression, doing whatever it is seems like I'm simply peacefully being who I really am.

In fact it's more than peace I experience whenever I manifest my authentic creative Self expression: it's serenity.

Furthermore, I've noticed whatever form my authentic creative Self expression takes, it's enjoyable. As stoopid  as that sounds, it's true there's a sense of joy simply with being authentically, creatively Self expressed (as Werner Erhard may have said). Actually whenever I'm manifesting my authentic creative Self expression as an expansion of who I really am, it's more than merely something I enjoy  doing: it's something I'm passionate  about doing. And that, by the way, could be the terse phrase suitable for the dictionary of what authentic creative Self expression is: when you're serenely passionate about doing whatever it is you're doing.

A major form of my own authentic creative Self expression is writing these Conversations For Transformation, the experience of which shows up for me as serene passion. It gives total access to my life. And it's completely fulfilling and satisfying.


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