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
Straight And Narrow Path
Sleepy Hollow, Marin County, California, USA
December 9, 2009
This essay,
Straight And Narrow Path,
is the companion piece to
Eye Of The Needle.
If in a conversation outside of
Conversations For
Transformation
you speak about the straight and narrow path (to
enlightenment, to
God,
to whatever), you'll most likely get stuck speaking into an
already always listening
which associates straight and narrow with something arduous, with
something restrictive, with something that's no fun at
all.
That said, I'd like to focus on the opportunity for transformation
which
shows up
in life from time to time like an opening to a time warp
(as the Time Bandits may have said). If you miss this
opportunity when it
shows up,
if you don't take this chance when it
shows up,
if you don't walk through this opening when it
shows up,
it may not re-occur for a while - for years, perhaps.
Now, forty years after the presence of
transformation was first made
known,
there's a group of people (they know who they are - hundreds of
thousands of people, millions perhaps) who didn't
capitalize on the opportunity for transformation when it first showed
up in their lives. Also comprising this group are people who
did capitalize on the opportunity for transformation when
it first showed up in their lives, who were astounded by the impact of
its power and magic, and who then neglected to recreate, refresh, or
review its distinctions ie who neglected to be responsible for keeping
its distinctions alive. The distinctions of transformation, like
radioactive isotopes, have a short
half-life:
they fade if left unattended, just as anything you're responsible for
degrades if left unattended. They need to be recreated from time to
time (as
Werner Erhard may have
said).
Then when the opportunity for transformation showed up again many years
later in the lives of this group of people, they heard something in it
for themselves they'd not heard before. Notice what they'd not heard
before had always been said before. But if you'd asked
them "How's it going?", not as a perfunctory greeting but rather with
pointed reference to how their lives are turning out given their choice
to go it alone without trying transformation on for size,
their answer (if they're unflinchingly honest) would have been "Not so
well - this isn't going the way I wanted it to go or expected it to
go.". If they don't tell the truth about it or if they dodge the
question entirely, their giveaway is the resignation on their faces,
their steadfast righteousness, their giving up on
aliveness, the result of too often visiting the restaurant of Life and
eating the menu instead of the steak. For these people, the opportunity
for transformation has the possibility of
showing up
(or
showing upagain, as the case may be) as the get out of jail
free card in the Monopoly game of Life.
I assert this opportunity, this get out of jail free card,
occurs on the so-called straight and narrow path. But to think
of this path as restrictive and / or arduous
is to misread its true nature. Ironically, to think of this
path as something to be followed is also to
misread its true nature. We'll get to this in a moment.
An opportunity for transformation is what it is and ain't what it
ain't. In this sense, there's no middle ground here. Here there's
no gray as in a field of
black and white.
It's either/or as in off/on.
That's its nature. An opportunity for transformation occurs ... and
you capitalize on it ... or you don't.
Werner's work
has been available since March 1971. That means it's been here for the
offering for nearly four decades. The opportunity for transformation,
for transforming your life, has been around for nearly forty years.
That's more than half the life expectancy of the classic three score
years and ten allocated to each human being.
Life looks, feels, and breathes a certain way after transformation, and
another completely different way without transformation. That's not an
evaluation that Life is better with transformation than
without it - although indeed, some people may say that's the case for
them. Rather, a life chosen with transformation is whole
and complete and full and
satisfying exactly the way it is and exactly the way it
isn't with nothing needing to be added and with nothing needing to be
taken away. When life is lived whole and complete and full and
satisfying exactly the way it is and exactly the way it isn't, new
possibilities are noticed on the radar screen which weren't noticed on
the radar screen before, new opportunities manifest which didn't
manifest before, new openings for action call you
powerfully into action which didn't call you at all before (as a
Landmark Forum Leader
may have said).
That's the magic of transformation. Almost everyone who has
participated in
Werner's work
can attest to the magic of transformation. But here's the thing: the
emperor isn't wearing any clothes. The magic of transformation
isn't really magic at all. Really! It isn't. Transformation isn't
magic, and don't let anyone fool you otherwise. Rather - and it takes
balls to be able to look at your own life, to step up to
the plate, and to 'fess up to this: it's living life in an
un‑transformed way which kills off the possibility of the
magic of Life itselfshowing up.
Is it any surprise when we stop killing off the magic of Life, that
Life
shows up
magical? That's transformation.
Life looks a certain way, say, a week after graduating from
Werner's work.
A few years after that, when the maturity and mastery of transformation
have had an opportunity to age and breathe, Life looks another way -
perhaps richer and fuller. What would your life look like today after
forty years of transformation? What would your life look like today if
you allowed transformation into your life decades ago rather than years
ago or months ago or weeks ago? Hindsight is always 20/20
vision, but isn't there just a tad of chagrin as you realize no one
held off transformation coming into your life decades sooner than it
did - no one, that is, except you? It goeswith
transformation (as
Alan Watts
may have said) that just as you get all the credit for allowing
transformation to come into your life when you do, you also get all the
credit for
resisting
transformation coming into your life until it does.
Notice what I'm fleshing out here aren't so much opportunities for
transformation which
show up
as
black and white
but not gray, as much as I'm fleshing out whether or not you
capitalize on these opportunities for transformation when
they occur. It's you capitalizing on these opportunities, rather than
the occurrence of these opportunities themselves, which defines the
straight and narrow path. To think of it as restrictive and arduous is
to argue from a position of survival when staring total freedom
straight in the face.
Another way of looking at this is thus: without a tightrope, the
thrilling tightrope walker wouldn't have a medium on which to
demonstrate
her remarkable expression of art. To call a tightrope a straight and
narrow path may be semantically accurate. But it's only useful when
that's said within a broader context of total freedom,
fearlessness,
and a remarkable no holds barred Self expression.
That's because the thing about a tightrope which is pertinent here,
aside from it being considered to be like a straight and narrow path,
is you don't walk a tightrope like an obligation, like a
coercion. In fact it's perfectly fine to never walk a tightrope
at all, ever. The thing about walking a tightrope is you can only do it
as a choice. You can only do it by stepping up and
by stepping out. That, plus you don't follow a
tightrope.
That's what the straight and narrow path really is. It's neither
arduous nor restrictive. In fact, it's as wide open as
total freedom. What's straight and narrow about it is
the
black and white,
off/on choice you make to transform your life like a stand
or (in the case of a tightrope) like a walk, or not.