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




Transformation II

Golden Eagle Film Locations, Two Rock Ranch, Two Rock, California, USA

June 8, 2010



This essay, Transformation II, is the sequel to Moment Of Truth.

It is also the sixth in an open group on Transformation:
  1. Transformation
  2. Nelson Mandela And Transformation
  3. The Way Of Transformation
  4. Transformation: The Life And Legacy Of Werner Erhard
  5. Moment Of Truth
  6. Transformation II
  7. No Line
  8. Transformation Is Timeless
  9. Transforming Life Itself: A Completely Started Inquiry
  10. Transformation Is Accountability Plus Committed Speaking
  11. Not One Size Fits All
  12. Transforming Disciplines
  13. What It Also Comes Down To
  14. Transforming The Untransformable
  15. Who You Might Be Really
so far, in that order.




True identity defies description.

The precursor to any attempt to describe true identity is to be clear and straight that it can't be described. Once you're clear and straight it can't be described, then it can be shared. You can be  true identity (which is to say you can be who you really  are) and share yourself this way, and people will get it  if they're listening intending to get it. But any attempt to describe it only reveals words themselves are inadequate to the task and may even damage it.

Here's why:

True identity is the source of language. Language is the evidence  of true identity at play in the world. In language you can infer  the presence  of true identity but you can no more describe true identity using language than you can grasp your right hand with your right hand, no more than you can see your eyes with your eyes (without a mirror). You are  true identity whence language springs, which is why using language to describe true identity is a no op  like using your hand to grasp itself.

This all too real  yet frequently maddening state of affairs leads to naïve bon mots  like "Those who know don't tell; those who tell don't know". It's closer to the truth to say "Those who know do  tell by being  and by sharing;  their focus on what  they know is of critical yet only of secondary importance.".

At the heart of the matter, transformation is a contextual shift  in my awareness of Self  as the source of my life, rather than as the end result of it. At the heart of the matter, transformation is a contextual shift in my sense of who I really  am as the space in which the events of my life occur, rather than as an ongoing reaction to the events of my past. At the heart of the matter, transformation is a contextual shift in coming from  false identity to coming from true true identity. At the heart of the matter, of transformation, is a contextual shift from blaming my circumstances for the quality of my life, to taking responsibility  for my life - for all  of it regardless of the circumstances. At the heart of the matter, transformation is all of the above ... AND  ... transformation is the clearing for Life to be lived based on creativity rather than on change, for Life to be lived based on choice rather than on coercion, for Life to be lived based on what's possible for being in the future  rather than based on what's already happened.

In that list I'm also going to include this:
Werner Erhard invented transformation. This  is the heart of the matter. Really.

I want you to be crystal clear how I'm saying this. I'm saying Werner Erhard invented transformation by distingishing it then speaking it  in the same way as Sir Isaac Newton invented gravity by distinguishing it then speaking it in the same way as Professor Albert Einstein invented relativity by distinguishing it then speaking it in the same way as President John Fitzgerald Kennedy invented landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade (then, by 1970) by distinguishing it like a possibility  then speaking it.

Is transformation enlightenment?

In the account titled "Once Upon A Freeway" in chapter nine "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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