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




Truth, And What's True

The Endless Summer Bar~Café, Santa Barbara, California, USA

July 26, 2014



This essay, Truth, And What's True, is the twelfth in a group of twenty written in Santa Barbara:
  1. Santa Barbara
  2. Unbelievable
  3. Give Me Money (That's What I Want?)
  4. True Gold
  5. Getting Into Your World
  6. You Say Stop: About Resisting Transformation
  7. The Cavalry's Not Coming
  8. On This Team Everyone's The Leader
  9. Fireside Chat
  10. The Next Best Thing
  11. Full Circle, Full Spiral
  12. Truth, And What's True
  13. Snowflakes In A Furnace
  14. Something In The Air
  15. Vocal Prowess
  16. Flames In My Rearview Mirror
  17. Back Nine
  18. Chess II
  19. But And And II
  20. My Baby Girl, Now A Bride
in that order.

It is also the eighth in an ongoing collection with embedded Music Videos: I am indebted to Galeazzo Frudua and to Howard Bashew who contributed material for this conversation.



Face it: it isn't easy telling the truth. Now by that, I'm not referring to "telling the truth" as the opposite of "telling lies". Most of us know the difference. Most of us know there's a not so fine line between telling the truth and telling lies - and most of those of us who don't know the difference soon discover, in the course of life itself, telling lies doesn't work as well as telling the truth (that is, if you're willing to tell the truth about telling lies). Rather, what I'm referring to is really  telling the truth about what's really  going on with us. Unflinchingly. The idea  of telling the truth about what's really going on with us, in principle, is simple. But it's not easy.

with Alexandra - Lyin' Eyes (The Eagles)

This video is muted on YouTube at The Eagles request.
What I've discovered is the main consideration when telling the truth about what's really going on with me, is this: what may be true for me ie what I say is true for me, isn't necessarily real. I know that's a tough, difficult assertion to confront. Yet without it, the truth is harder to flesh out; without it, the truth becomes slippery  ... and both of them conspire to make the truth harder to tell. So what exactly is the difference between what's true ie between what we say is true, and what's real?

Two easy examples of truths which aren't real yet are held as if they're real (which is to say truths blurring the lines  differentiating them from what's real) are: the tooth fairy, or the thought "They're out to get me". Both the tooth fairy (if you're of the age when you believe in the tooth fairy) and the thought "They're out to get me" may be true for you. But that doesn't mean they're real. That's one of the most liberating ideas I've gotten from Werner: what's true for me, may  not be real. Gee! I hope you get that. Once I could own that, I could relinquish childish defensiveness and blaming.

Blurring those lines isn't an amoral  matter, and neither is it an unethical  matter. It's not a matter of blurring the lines between doing what's right  and doing what's wrong. Blurring the lines between what's true and what's real, isn't something we ordinarily do with intent. It's certainly not something done with sinister  intent. Rather, it's a phenomenon driven by the mind whose logic system  is "Everything is the same as everything else ... except not always"  (as Werner Erhard may have said). It's unstoppable. It's a machination running on full automatic.

It's just possible that this is why telling the truth about what's really going on with us, isn't easy: because we've got a lot of what's true for us, mixed up with what's real. And it's a matter of our individual survival programming / patterning / automaticity that we don't allow ourselves to be unattached from what's real - and so by default we also hang on to what we say is true for us, giving it way more weight and import than the story it ultimately often is  (ie the story we made up) deserves.

God! It's more than just a little embarrassing  for me to look back over my life and see how much of what was true for me, I thought was real  - indeed, some of those slo-mo  replays are arduous to watch. I've completed them and, the truth is I'm wiser for them. Taking responsibility for them is what allowed me to grow up.



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