Fantesca Estate, Spring Mountain Road, Napa Valley, California,
USA
August 21, 2021
"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark
should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by
dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in
magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of
man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to
prolong them. I shall use my time."
I am indebted to Bruce Preville who inspired this conversation and
contributed material.
Transformation doesn't make life better. You were hoping it would? Too
bad. Sorry about that. Holding transformation in the same
philosophical framework
as we hold all those other disciplines ie as we hold all those other
intersections
(as
Professor William Warren
"Bill" Bartley III,
Werner's
official biographer, may have called them) which purport to make life
better, is to be unclear on the concept. No, transformation
doesn't make life better (really it doesn't). Transformation makes life
the way it is (and the way it isn't).
When I relate to life the way it is (that is to say when I relate to my
life the way it is, and to
Life itself
the way it is, and not to the way I'd like them to be), what becomes
obvious is things are more likely to
work.
When I relate to my car as if it's a car, it's more likely to
work
than if I relate to it as if it's a canoe and attempt to navigate
rapids with it - which will surely put a damper (pun intended) on its
workability.
A car is the appropriate vehicle for driving on a road. A canoe is the
appropriate vehicle for navigating rapids. Relating to my car as a
canoe won't make it
work
in a
river
navigating rapids. Transformation is relating to a car as a car, not as
a canoe. Corollary: transformation forwards
workability
regardless of the vehicle (and
workability
doesn't necessarily live in the realm of making things better).
At some point in the
rigorous
inquiry that gives
access
to transformation, I realized that in spite of all my penchants and
predilections to the contrary, none of this is personal. Whether
I like it or not, my life is swept along
inexorably
by a
river
which will eventually, sooner or later, time and again, go through
rapids. It's as ongoing as it's immediate. There's nothing I can do to
avoid them. Yet even though I can't avoid them, what I can
do when I'm in
the river
headed for rapids, is paddle (or row, or
swim)
into the optimum spot I
can put myself in, for when it inevitably goes through rapids ... and
then let go /
surrender
to
the river's
direction and power.
To be sure, sooner or later we discover there are ways to go through
rapids which don't
work
(eg
resisting),
and there are ways to go through rapids that
work
(eg
surrendering)
even when (ie especially when) going through them isn't
avoidable (in this regard, once I entertained the possibility that it's
not personal, it got easier).
What I mean by paddling into the optimum spot in
the river
I can put myself in, for when it inevitably does go through rapids, is
one,
recontextualizing
(I love that word) who we hold ourselves out to be, and
two, maintaining
integrity.
That's all of what setting up for the rapids calls for!
And after setting up that way, let
the river
/ life take its course (and it will: it turns out the way it turns out
anyway). In this
analogy,
transformation is the technology for paddling into the optimal spot in
the river,
in readiness for when we inevitably do go through rapids. So I
eschew
saying transformation will make life "better" - rather it allows for
the possibility of life
working
with less stress, less effort, and less struggle (a list from which
"better" is intentionally absent, having neither the transformational
leverage nor the
access).
And now I'm a not-so-spring-chicken at
71,
and it's a canoe I'm sitting in not a car, and I'm in
the river,
bound for rapids. I can sit here, exactly where I am, not be
responsible, and be swept through rapids even if I
resist,
stress, effort, and struggle, and all the while opining about how
unfair the entire process is, and in spite of all my
hopes and desires to the contrary, eventually get inserted
into a rock or three ... OR ... noticing the imminent,
upcoming rapids, I can dip my paddle into the river just so,
putting my canoe in the optimal spot in
the river,
thereby facilitating ease,
mastery,
and grace in the
inexorably
rushing rapids and maelstroms ahead.