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

Tilting The Axis

Coombsville Appellation, Napa Valley, California, USA

October 24, 2015

"If you keep saying it the way it really is, eventually your word is law in the universe." ...

This essay, Tilting The Axis, is the companion piece to Runaway Train.

	The Way I'd Like It To Be		The Way It Really Is

Tilting The Axis

Some of the reasons for why transformation is (for the most part) so slippery is that it runs counter-intuitive in so many ways to just about everything we're taught about life and about succeeding in life ie it runs counter-intuitive to everything we're taught about making it. It's not only what we're taught in school and in business courses about making it which contributes to the problem. It's what's ingrained in our society's norms and mores - in fact it's what's ingrained in many (if not in most) societies' norms and mores worldwide. We're taught that if we try really hard at something, we'll make it. We are that if we work really hard at it, we'll succeed.

<aside>

I have grave reservations about trying really hard at anything (there's no power in trying: there's only power in doing).

I do have a modicum of respect for working hard, and I have the greatest respect for playing hard, especially for the kind of playing hard which becomes possible when the lines between working and playing are blurred.

<un-aside>

All that said, trying really hard to be transformed, indeed working really hard at it, does about as much good as trying to pick up and hold a handful of water in your clenched fist. The more you try to be transformed, the less you be transformed - and transformation only shows up in the domain of being. You already be (you couldn't be reading this if you don't), so you already have the access to being transformed. There's no technique to being transformed. There's no trick to learn, no mantra to memorize, and there's nothing to practice - all of which runs against society's grinding into us to try hard and work hard at something in order to have it.

Other worlds which are wrapped around practicing, promise us good results if we do something long enough. Arguably those promises can be fulfilled in the worlds of playing the piano and / or Acapulco cliff diving for example. But they're not applicable in the world of transformation: counter-intuitively, transformation comes not when we do something but when we stop doing something ie it comes when we stop doing "being transformed" ie transformation comes when we stop practicing "being transformed". Being transformed is prior to all that. There's nothing to practice which furthers transformation. In fact practicing any so-called "transformational discipline" will only get in your way of being transformed. This is it. There's nothing to get. You can't get transformed. You already are. You can only be transformed.

Gee! I hope you get this ...

You're being transformed when you're being transformed, and you're not being transformed when you're not being transformed. When you notice you're not being transformed, you can choose being transformed again. So you could say being transformed is choosing being transformed. That's being transformed in the moment. To be transformed for your entire life, on the other hand, choose being transformed again and again and again over and over and over (ie it's moment by moment). We could say you're transformed as long as you're choosing being transformed. In the moment you stop choosing being transformed, you stop being transformed.

If you intend bringing transformation to bear ie if you intend to make a difference ie if you intend to tilt the axis of the world (so to speak), the access is choosing being transformed again and again and again over and over and over. That may sound like bad news - and if it does, I wish I was the bearer of better news. But I'm sorry: that's just the way it is ie that's just the way it works. What tilts the axis of the world is choosing being transformed again and again and again over and over and over, and speaking transformation again and again and again over and over and over (which is to say, being your word in the matter of your own transformation again and again and again over and over and over) - to quote Werner Erhard: "If you keep saying it the way it really is, eventually your word is law in the universe.".

If I intend to tilt the axis of the world ie if I intend to make a difference, it requires I (arguably for the first time) be with the world not the way I'd like it to be, and not the way I think it ought to be, and not the way I'm certain it was meant to be, nor even the way I consider it could be, but rather the way it really is. It's a law of nature that until I can be with something exactly the way it is (and exactly the way it isn't), I can't make any difference with it. Being with the world exactly the way it is and exactly the way it isn't, allows me to choose it newly rather than merely react to it. Until I choose to be with the world exactly the way it is and exactly the way it isn't, the only (slim) pickings available to me are trying to change it or to resist it. Tilting the axis, on the other hand, demands transformation from me first.

Communication Promise

E-Mail | Home

Permission