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

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The Joy Of Transformation

San Luis Obispo, California, USA

March 21, 2024

"As stupid as it sounds, it's true there's a sense of joy with simply being with what's there."


...

"The cost to me of not doing so. I'm unwilling to pay the cost of carrying a resentment (or whatever) around, so I draw on the intelligence of forgiving."


...

answering Laurence Platt's question "On what do you draw to forgive people who are hardest to forgive?" in Questions For A Friend II III (Straight Talk)

This essay, The Joy Of Transformation, is the companion piece to The Magnificent Seven.

It was written at the same time as Law In The Universe II: An Inquiry Into Inquiring.

	Before		After

Werner's work's life-wiring diagrams

Werner is speaking (above): "... it's true there's a sense of joy with simply being with what's there.". And his speaking is coming from transformation. So my question for him would be: "If you're not coming from transformation, could there still necessarily be as much of a sense of joy with simply being with what's there? or can it be that the sense of joy with simply being with what's there is just a function of the sense of joy with coming from transformation?".

From the Cambridge International Dictionary:

<quote>

Definition
joy

noun
great happiness, a thing that causes happiness, pleasure

<unquote>

In the possibility of being transformed, we are emboldened (how could we not be? how can the inauthentic self be as bold as the authentic Self?). There's a certain joy (not to mention a certain relief) when I experience my own courage. And there's a joy in simply being alive, a joy coming from transformation which permeates everything that's there ie which permeates everything I do. In addition (and so extraordinarily) Werner's work teases out enlightenment* (being who we really are) which, after all the debates and all the significance and all the conjecture are laid to rest, is really no ... big ... deal. Really. It is not. Enlightenment (when all is said and done) is nothing more (and nothing less) than the natural, normal, very ordinary state of being for human beings.

In the possibility of being transformed, I'm willing to forgive. That's not because I'm a "good guy" or because I "do the right thing". Rather, it's a practical, pragmatic stand I take. Being forgiving, I free myself from resentment and regret. Being free from resentment and regret is what allows me to risk fully expressing my love, even for those who have "hurt me" and "wronged me" in the past (and believe me, I've faced this: "hurt me" and "wronged me" in and of themselves, are just stories which get incinerated like snowflakes in the furnace of being transformed). The possibility of being transformed brings forth its own joy, its own victory over the past which (as it's inspiring to be around) makes a difference in the world, one of a very few things which actually do.

In the possibility of being transformed, I've noticed that (without much fanfare) I'd spontaneously started making decisions without doubting myself. Doing so is actually a lot simpler than it sounds. And it's not that somehow I'd conquered doubt. It's that I was no longer blurring that thin line between "making decisions" and "doubting". "Making decisions" happens on one side of that line. "Doubting" happens on the other. Look: there's no magic to this. If you are going to make a decision, then make that decision. If you're going to doubt, then doubt. Just don't do them both at the same time. That's it. That's all it is.

In the possibility of being transformed, an access to an erstwhile elusive peace of mind suddenly (miraculously) appears. Try this on for size: your mind not being peaceful, is not the problem. Falsely identifying with your mind, is. In being transformed, I get to know who I really am. I am not my mind. I am the space in which my mind occurs. If I let my mind be, it lets me be. In this way, peace of mind is no more (or no less) than the peace of letting my mind be.

In the end (this is the bottom line) it goes almost without saying, that all of the above reinstate our integrity, refuel our productivity, inspire our creativity, deepen our relationships, expand our compassion, empower our Self-confidence, unfetter our Self-expression releasing any blocks to our communication, realigning us with what it takes to have the world work for everyone with no-one and nothing left out (how could it not?). This is the joy of transformation.

Footnote: is transformation enlightenment?:

In the account titled "Once Upon A Freeway" in chapter nine called "True Identity" in Part III, "Transformation", of Professor William Warren "Bill" Bartley III's official biography of Werner titled "Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man - The Founding of est", Bill asks Werner if what happened to him on the Golden Gate Bridge was enlightenment.

Werner says he sometimes calls it enlightenment yet he has two reservations with describing it as such. Firstly enlightenment connotes a kind of eastern mysticism, a context he doesn't require. Secondly his experience on the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't so much an enlightenment experience as it was a shift of the context in which he holds all content and all processes including experience and including enlightenment. Hence he refers to what happened on the Golden Gate Bridge as transformation and prefers not to use the word enlightenment at all.

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