I am indebted to
John Denver
who contributed material for this conversation.
Discovering never ends. That's something I'm discovering
for myself. The thing is I'm discovering it as an
experience, not as some rattled-off smart-alecky
concept.
I'm discovering for myself that discovering what's possible for me and
for life (and certainly that discovering what's at least
next
for me and for life) is never-ending. It's always ongoing. It's
perpetual.
Life itself
is always expanding, it's always evolving, it's always in a fluid state
of possibility in which I'm discovering there's always something
else possible, there's always something else
next.
Why?
Is it because I / we somehow fail to "get it all done"? No, it's just
that it's just that way. It's not that I / we somehow fail to
get it all done. It's that it's its nature that there's always
something else possible, always something else
next.
Always. And ever. Forever.
Once I got that, my life could never be lived the same way again.
Largely (and if not largely, then almost exclusively) I got it in the
ongoing inquiry which is
Werner's work.
To be open-minded and fair, there may be other avenues pointing to
discovering the same thing. And of them all,
Werner's
is the
leader,
unerringly effective as a powerful implement of discovery. In it (or
with it, if you prefer) I get the possibility of
possibility itself. In
Werner's work,
I get whatever is
next
for me and for life.
And as I get that
again and again and
again
ongoingly, there's always a question in the background for me which
goes something like this: if who I really am (aka if who we really are)
isn't distinguished, discovered, and known (in other words, if who we
really are hasn't yet entered the
play,
front-and-center-stage,
during the discovery / inquiry process), then who is it
exactly that's doing all the discovering in the first place?
Indeed, then who's looking at (and for)
what's next
in the first place? I'm discovering that anything I construe as
possible (even if remotely) stands precariously on thin ice whenever
I'm not first grounded in (and on) my own experience ie whenever I'm
not listening to my own experience ie to the experience of who we
really are (which suggests transformation precedes possibility).
Without being grounded in and on the experience of who we really are,
discovering what's possible ie discovering
what's next,
comes perilously close to devolving into simple survival ie into
fervent, furtive ways of merely getting by, mired all the while in and
with the same tired old conceptual frameworks in which we've been stuck
for millennia. Transformation less the discovered experience of who we
really are, is at worst little more than a kind of change, and a
fleeting kind of change at best.
It may even be a slightly elevated kind of change. It may even be a
surprisingly refreshingly pleasantly discontiguous kind of change. But
it's still just and only a kind of change. And no matter what kind of
change it is, authentic transformation does not equate to change.
Listen: plus ça change, plus c'est la même
chose - the more things change, the more they stay the same,
yes? Collapsing change with transformation / making change synonymous
with transformation, not only disempowers change, but it also defeats
the possibility of being transformed. Now be careful: don't go saying
"That's just semantics, Laurence!" because listen: it's
all semantics.
When I listen that change is synonymous with transformation (which is
to say when I'm listening for change without differentiating it from
transformation), it doesn't transform me, and it doesn't transform
life. Instead it defeats who I am, and it also diminishes life. In
contradistinction, it's listening to (and for) my own experience of who
I really am ie it's listening to (and for) who we really are, that's
unerringly transformative.
