I am indebted to
Steve Zaffron
and to
Jeri Echeverria
and to Miriam Carey and to Tabatha White and to Anne Peterson and the
entire IEM (Innovative Event
Management) team who inspired this conversation.
Werner's
Erhard's
promise
is (quite
simply)
off the charts, outrageous, audacious, bodacious, ridiculously
over the top,
fearless.
Now to be quite
clear
about this, I've
listened
him make the same
promise
many
times
before on different occasions (which, although they all occurred within
the last fifty years, were each actually made in different
eras)
in different countries in various
contexts
and
under different
circumstances,
as well as (given the ever-changing zeitgeist) in
different vernacular (ie whenever and wherever he's
spoken
it, he's
spoken
it deploying subtly different
languaging).
Yet in its
essence,
it's always been the same
mind-bogglingly
bold
promisespoken
as an assertion you know no
human being
should ever make, indeed one you know no
human being
has any
business
making - no, it's an assertion you know no
human being
could
possibly
make (in other
words,
it's an assertion you know a
human being
has neither the
power
to make nor the right to make - at least not reliably nor
count-on-ably).
"Enlightenment",
a term we use to convey (ie to
point
to) life lived in a
state
of
fulfillment
and
empowerment,
is (by now) such a loaded term, a term so fraught with so
much
meaning,
so dripping with significance, so oil-stained
by association and comparison as to be rendered no longer effective
(we've settled for eating the menu, forgetting there's a steak) that
its perhaps best to
simply
discard it altogether and let it enjoy a dignified passing into the
annals of
time.
That said, when I pursued that particular
linguistic
abstraction if you will (by that I
mean
"enlightenment"
as a
linguistic
abstraction brings forth a
realm
of
possibility)
and that which it
pointed
to and offered (that is to say when a much younger moi
pursued that which it
promised),
I was
clear
it was something I would aspire to, something I could perhaps even
accomplish (attain may be a more apropos expression of
how
I'd conceptualized it). I was also
clear
(which is to say I had already pre-conceived) that it
would "take
time"
(and because of that, I knew I'd have to wait for its result, and be
patient while waiting for it - possibly for years). More than
that, I was
clear
the onus would be on me to make it
happen
- in other
words,
I was
clear
no one could (quote unquote) lay it on me (or on anyone
else, for that matter) like a
gift
(the idea of
enlightenment
as a given / received
gift,
was for me a contradiction in terms, an example of what it is to be
unclear on the concept).
The stone cold, flat-footed beyond-dispute fact of the matter is for
decades
now, he's turned that ubiquitous, cherished paradigm on its ear. He
says (in effect) "I
promise
to deliver it for you if you do this, then
inquire
into that, then have a
conversation
with me about what you discovered", "it"being
becoming effectively,
naturally,
joyfully 1,000%
clear
about
who you really are
(and about who you actually aren't) and
empowered.
Oh, and the process doesn't require lifetimes as some
devoted, dedicated, zealous
monks
may assume. No, his timeframe is days, a week tops. And I did
say he
promises
it. You and I can and may
promise
a lot of things in our day to day lives (and we often do). So the
act
of
promising
in and of itself, is neither unusual nor unfamiliar to us. But
listen:
how
can anyone
promisethat?
But wait! There's more: he
promises
he'll deliver it whether or not you take notes, and whether or not you
remember all the minutiae and details afterward. Say whut?
No note-taking needed? No studying required? No need to remember it
all? Actually no. None of the above. All he requests is you
commit
to stay in the
conversation
with him through to its
completion.
In effect you're
invited
to
simplybe around him
ie to be with him and to
speak
with him. That's all. Do that, and he
promises
he'll deliver it - which, by itself, is astonishing to the
point
of
being
preposterous (I hear myself muttering under my breath "No
one can
promise
that, no one ...".).
And then, just when I think I can't stretch myself to
consider
this erstwhile impossible idea as even remotely close to plausible, he
continues, magnifying it, leaving it as an expanding opening rather
than merely as an idly dropped static line, by adding this killer
distinction: that you'll realize the result "... as ...
your ...
natural
...
Self
... expression ..." - which is to say when you
get it
ie when you
get the Big "IT",
you'll
get it
as your
naturalSelf-expression
ie as
who you really are
in
the world.
And then he continues and unflinchingly delivers exactly
that - no ifs, no ands, no
how
about?s, no buts.
And when it's over, he casually exits
the course
room, checking on some
notes
scribbled on paper handed to him as he
walks
through the door and out of sight into the sultry Mexican night. And
although you're likely to want to run right out after him and hug him
and say "Thank you! Thank you so ... much!",
there's no need. He knows you've
got it
for yourself as a
gift
now, and you know you've
got it
for yourself as a
gift
now (you could even say you've
created
it for yourself as a
gift
now) and you're
empowered
now,
free
to give it away yourself, or to
simply
enjoy it for yourself by yourself.
You
wonder
what could be
next
for you, given your
experience
of your own
being
isn't now anything like it was a mere few days ago, and you're no
longer the kind of
human being
you once were back then - in fact you're actually somewhat
unrecognizable to yourself at this
point
in
time
(and maybe you're even a bit edgy and slightly uncomfortable with this
deliciously new unrecognizability) given who you once
used
to be for yourself, and the enormity of it all sinks in
that you'll continue to be astonished ongoingly by this
transformation
of
who you really are
in
the world,
and
how
you're
being,
for the rest of your life.
