Regusci Winery, Silverado Trail,
Napa Valley,
California, USA
October 14, 2016
"But that is like saying that the
hole
in the sand looks like the
stick
that you made the
hole
in the sand with.
Holes
in the sand and
sticks
are
worlds
apart. To put
what happened
into
language
would be like trying to describe a
stick
by telling you about the
hole
in the sand."
...
"When you find yourself in the thick of it, help yourself to a bit of
what is all around you, silly
girl!"
... The Beatles, Martha My Dear
"The tree leaves, the ocean waves, the universe peoples."
...
Alan Watts,
deploying plural nouns "leaves", "waves", and "peoples" as
third-person verbs
This essay,
Wall
Socket,
is the companion piece to
What is
transformation?
That's the
question.
On any another occasion, this
question
may lean toward
considering
how we definetransformation.
But on this occasion, I'd like it to be
considering
something less pointed and therefore arguably more malleable and
accommodating: I'd like it to be
considering
how we knowtransformation
- which is to say I'd like it to be
considering
how we recognize our experience of it ie how we know when we're
experiencing it.
In looking deeper, I
get
to see it's possible to even narrow it down a bit more. What, for
example, would
account
for and provide the space ie the impetus for
fullSelf-expression,
health,
workingrelationships,
and sense of
well-being
etc to
show up
at all in the first place? What (I would ask) is
that thing ie what is that quality, that
catalyst,
that experience which makes it possible for all the others
to also
show up,
and against which we know all the others have
shown up?
At first, what I came up with was a certain elan, an alacrity, a
joie de vivre, all of which are certainly candidates for the
position. But the thing I saw on
closer
inspection is you can also motivate yourself to
act
with any and all of elan, alacrity, and joie de vivre. And if there's
one thing you can say about generating
transformation,
it's that it does not come from and nor does it require
motivation or being motivated. By the
way,
that's what's behind our request, if you're planning on taking on
ie if you're planning on
discoveringtransformation
for yourself, that you switch off and
close
all your motivation tapes, books, and manuals, and set them aside - at
least temporarily until thisconversation
is
complete
(you can always pick them up again later where you left them).
What it may be ie what the experience against which
transformationshows up
may be ie what the experience akin to putting your
finger
into a
wall
socket which shocks you
fullyawake
and has you be bolt upright and paying
attention
may be, is
discovering
the unified automaticity of
Life itself
for the first
time,
and realizing there are no hard edges and / or dividing
lines
separating
who we really are
from
Life itself.
It's all
turning
out, and we're all
turning
out along with it. And it's all
turning
out (which includes our lives are all
turning
out) mostly not because of what we do but rather in
spite of what we do.
It's likely that
getting
this,
creates
the space ie the ground, in which
transformation
takes root and
shows up.
It's likely that
getting
this, is the
finger-in-the-wall-socket
experience, after which it's just not possible to ontologically
be the same
way
about things ever again, paving
the way
for the onset of the
miracle
of
transformation.