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 One Thing People Will Not Give Up
Twin Peaks, San Francisco, California, USA
March 18, 2015
"People are willing to give up anything to get
enlightened.
You and I both know people who've given up
wealth,
given up jobs,
families,
their
health,
give up
talking,
give up
sex,
give up you name it, they will give it up. There's only one thing
people will not give up to get
enlightened.
They will do everything they know to hold on to this thing that they
will not give up no matter what. The one thing people will not give up
to get
enlightened
is the idea that they're not
enlightened."
...
"Distinctions have a short
half-life,
and need to be
recreated
from time to time."
My challenge with these
Conversations For
Transformation
is to share something new with each one each time - twice a week, every
week, week after week after week. I've not met this challenge. Having
done this now for almost twelve years, with hindsight (and hindsight,
as Billy Wilder noted, is always 20/20 vision) I now doubt
it could ever have been met, even though it appears there's rife enough
turf on which to meet it. With that said, I'm no longer concerned with
meeting it. Instead I'll relate to it as a lamp I'm holding high above
me, bringing light to whatever it is I'm currently looking at.
Why
is it doubtful this challenge could ever have been met?
It's doubtful because there are simply too many already distinctions
which are fascinating enough to want to revisit ie to
return to. Also: once enlivened, distinctions then reveal themselves
spontaneously in greater and greater depth - so there's invariably and
always something new coming out of any known distinctions, and
consequently there's always something more to say about them, even
about already distinguished distinctions ie especially
about already distinguished distinctions. This is
whyConversations For
Transformation
will
authentically,
from time to time, present revisits - or reruns, if you will.
However when the subject of an
essay
is a distinction rerun, I'm
committed
that my
view
of the material will be new with each one each time.
That challenge I have met and will continue
to meet.
With all that said as the
background
for this
essay,
there's one distinction in particular I'd like to revisit. It's
something
Werner
said when I first met him, which fascinated me then, and which has
fascinated me ever since, perhaps more than anything else he's said.
It's something certainly worth revisiting from time to time because
it's arguably the seminal idea from which springs all of
Werner's work.
It's its
axis
if you will, a
brilliant,
maverick
idea which
creates
the space for all its other ideas to jump out and come
alive.
More than that, it could be said that without it, there's no
context
(which is to say there's no accuratecontext)
for any of them.
Getting
enlightened,
it could be said, is naïvely characterized by
getting it
then never losing it ever again. Experience shows it's probably
true-er
to say getting
enlightened
is characterized by
getting it
then forgetting it then remembering it again then
getting it
then forgetting it then remembering it again then
getting it
then forgetting it then remembering it again, over and over and over.
Consider
this (and to get this, I request you set aside, temporarily if you
like, all the ideas you may have about what getting
enlightened
is, as well as all the ideas you may have about what the access to
getting
enlightened
is): the access to getting
enlightened
is giving up the idea you're not
enlightened.
It's that dirt simple.
"The access to getting
enlightened
is giving up the idea you're not
enlightened"
is the third idea in a trio of
Werner's
ideas which when gotten, change the
game
plan for human beings dramatically and entirely. The first is
"This is 'IT'.".
The second is
"There's nothing to
get.".
However, volumes and volumes of tomes and hours and hours (if not
years) of oratories have been written and
spoken
extolling the contrary. In simply missing this trio, they've embedded
in the zeitgeist (ie in the
spirit
of the time) a certain blindness to our
true
nature. Here we are, right here and right now
(it's so
god-damned
obvious) ... and yet we remain convinced there's somewhere else we
ought to be other than here, and that there's something else we
ought to get other than this, the being in which and the getting
of which will somehow bring on getting
enlightened
or
Self-realization
or salvation or liberation or moksha or nirvana or satori,
or whatever else you like to call it ... and ... now
there's also the very real possibility you could just call it simply
what it is:
"ordinary
everyday wonder-filled
dogshit
reality
life".
Now, people will give up a lot to get
enlightened.
To get
enlightened,
we'll give up
sex
and become celibate. We'll give up
the world
and become reclusive
monks and nuns.
We'll divert hours and hours and hours of
creative
productive time to
meditation
and
prayer,
hoping they'll further us along the path to getting
enlightened
- which is to say hoping they'll hasten the onset of
getting
enlightened.
We'll give up lives of being home-makers and
parents
and become brahmacharis instead, taking on
service,
and scriptural and
spiritual
study. We'll give up just about anything and everything to
get
enlightenedexcept what it takes to get
enlightened
... which is giving up the idea we're not
enlightened.
It's the one thing people will not give up.
That's gorgeous, rich, indeed breathtaking when you
come to think of it. It's very
Zen.
It's also very
Werner.
Mainly, it's just very
workable.
When you get it (that is if you allow yourself to get it) don't be
surprised if it makes you
laugh:
big, full rolling belly
laughs
as you get the
joke
... that, as well as the calm and the relief that all the effort, all
the
worry,
and all the concern is at last finally alright.