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




Speaking Candidly:

Jargon Free Conversations For Transformation

V Sattui Winery, St Helena, California, USA

July 29, 2011



I am indebted to Laurel Scheaf who inspired this conversation.



You don't have to be an engineer to cross the Golden Gate Bridge.

It's true. You don't even have to understand the language of engineering to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. Neither do you have to understand the physics and the applied mathematics with which the Golden Gate Bridge was built before you venture across it. No grasp of the terminology of the Golden Gate Bridge's building science ("cantilever", "truss", "suspension" etc), while arguably of interest, is required in order to experience its magnificence.

What you do need to be clear about, however, is the direction in which you wish to travel. And if crossing the Golden Gate Bridge's facilitates you getting to ie being where you want to be, you'll cross it - whether or not you have any engineering background or knowledge at all.

In building the foundation for a future transformed, certain words, concepts, and ideas are carefully and pointedly used to make distinctions. "Reactivation"  for example. "Getting off it"  is another example. "Observing from the stands / playing on the court"  yet another. "Inventing a possibility"  still another. Werner's work delivers transformation and the foundation for a future transformed using language as the vehicle of delivery. Once the experience of transformation and the foundation for a future transformed are delivered, the intention is for transformation and for the foundation for a future transformed, to disappear into the fabric of Life itself. In the fabric of Life itself, the words ie the language through which transformation and the foundation for a future transformed were delivered, don't translate well ie they don't travel  well. Indeed, arguably they may actually get in the way in the real world, once transformation and the foundation for a future transformed have been distinguished and are being lived.

It's not required to speak the words and the language through which transformation and the foundation for a future transformed were delivered, for transformation and the foundation for a future transformed to be lived, any more than it's required to speak the physics and the applied mathematics with which the Golden Gate Bridge was built, before venturing across it.

If transformation can be described as the realization of (and here, when I say the "realization of", I mean the "making real  of") what's possible for being for human beings, then there's no domain anywhere in Life in which transformation isn't readily available. There's no place on Earth in which it doesn't belong. There's no people anywhere for whom it isn't an expression of their essential nature - which means our  essential nature. The quality I call essential nature  is instantly recognizable between human beings. It doesn't require studying, agreeing, explaining, debating, or arguing. Neither does it require any particular language set  to capture it. In fact once the language set which was used to bring forth transformation and the foundation for a future transformed is deployed later in lieu of ordinary conversation  between human beings, that's the exact moment when rigor of Werner's work is reduced to jargon. It's the exact moment when the rigor of Werner's work revealing transformation and the foundation for a future transformed, becomes less shareable. Jargon is a barrier to listening transformation.

An engineer sharing the magnificence of the Golden Gate Bridge is likely to interest more people in visiting and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge than if he shares, in engineering jargon, the physics and the applied mathematics with which the Golden Gate Bridge was built. So it is with transformation. The most wonderfully jargonized sharing of Werner's work I ever heard (which given its extreme, actually had me smiling broadly) was this priceless response to a guy asking a recent graduate. "What's it like?", to which she replied "Hey! It's a real cool nothing space, Man!". How much more pragmatic, useful, and enrolling would her response have been, had she candidly shared a real life experience in her own words of the oppressive significance  of Life lifting after transformation?

Share your experience of transformation candidly, in your own words. That's what interests people more, way more, than sharing the processes and the methods ie the language through which transformation and the foundation for a future transformed were delivered in the seminar / presentation in which you experienced Werner's work. Learn to differentiate sharing your experience of the Golden Gate Bridge from sharing the jargonized language of physics and the applied mathematics with which the Golden Gate Bridge was built. In terms of empowering you to be pragmatic, useful, and enrolling as you share your experience of the magnificence of the Golden Gate Bridge, they're almost irrelevant.



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