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
The Circumstances I've Got
Napa, California, USA
April 24, 2020
"The truth is not found in a different set of circumstances. The
truth is always and only found in the circumstances you've got."
...
"If I sit in my own place of
patience,
what I need flows to me, and without any pain. From this I understand
that what I want also wants me."
... Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī aka
Rūmī
I am indebted to JeanneLauree Olsen who contributed material for this
conversation.
Werner's
coaching, that the truth is always and only found in the circumstances
I've got, not in a different set of circumstances, is one of the
gamechangers
in a life leading to the onset of being transformed. Yet even as I
listen
him ie even as I
listen
what he's distinguishing, I notice it seems so ... well ...
obvious. I mean, doesn't it? Of course the truth is
always and only found in the circumstances I've got, and not in a
different set of circumstances. And in any case, "I already knew
that!".
But wait! Whoa! Let's back up a bit. Upon
closer
scrutiny, it's anything but obvious. That retort "I
already knew that"? It's the
voice
of the
already always
listening
arrogantly chiming in - to which an appropriate response would be
something like "No, seriously? Did you? Did you really already know
that? I mean, did you really?".
And the truth is no, I didn't. Not really. As I look back on
my life,
it certainly doesn't play like I already knew that. Rather, it plays
as if I believed that somewhere else it would be better
(ie it would be better in a different place) or soon it
would be better (ie it would be better at a different time,
"someday").
And if I'm
unflinchingly
honest about it, "I already knew that" is just a ploy. It's a mechanism
for avoiding the truth
(listen:
the machinery protects itself by avoiding the truth - at
any cost).
It's worth it, just for a
moment,
to look closely at the
already always listening
of "I already knew that". It speaks to a remarkable divide between
hearing the truth, and living the truth. The trouble never lies with
the truth. The truth is just the truth, yes? Rather, it lies in the way
I relate to the truth. If "I already knew that" is true, that is to say
if I already knew the truth is always and only found in the
circumstances I've got, then I've been living inconsistantly with it ie
out of integrity with it. The
proof
of that, is the actual screenplay of
my life
reads like if I were somewhere else, the circumstances will be better,
or it reads like soon the circumstances will be better.
And it's not even relevant whether they will be or they won't. They
may. They may not. The point is that's living inconsistant with the
circumstances I've got.
So what does life look like lived, when I live it like the
truth is always and only found in the circumstances I've got? For
starters, when lived like this, being complete in any place, is always
as
accessible
as in any other place. Being complete at any time is always as
accessible
as at any other time. That's profound. Yet immediately I
notice I'm tenuously slipping into and getting caught up with "...
well in that case, if it's all the same, why bother?". Oh boy!
That machinery? It's so hair-triggered, so spring-loaded as to protect
this possibility from being entertained, even for a
moment.
And what exactly does this possibility allow for? To get that, first
consider this:
Even though I've heard this distinction
Werner
is speaking, in different forms many times, each time I hear it I
listen
it newly. This is a requirement with distinctions. I
listen
them newly each time because they have no enduring
presence.
Making distinctions isn't like learning to balance on a bicycle.
Balance on a bicycle, once learned, has enduring
presence.
Distinctions, on the other hand, have a short
half-life,
and need to be
re-created
from time to time (that's
vintage Erhard,
it's not my
original).
So I
listen
newly, again and again, until an interesting play starts unfolding, one
which
began
by being entirely about the circumstances I've got, then gradually
turns and points me in the direction of a truth which isn't at all
circumstantial: it's the truth of who I'm being in relation to the
circumstances I've got, any circumstances, all circumstances. When
I'm
listeningWerner,
I
begin
by
anticipating
I'll learn something new which will simplify dealing with the
circumstances I've got. I do, but more profoundly, I learn something
new about transformation, about who we really are. And as I engage with
it, those circumstances clear up and take care of themselves.