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
What's Out There And What's Out There
Chappellet Winery, St Helena, California, USA
October 18, 2016
"What is out there for you is not what is out there - that is, what is
'out there for you' is not the so-called 'objective reality'. While we
can confidently assume that there is an objective reality out there,
that is not the reality that
shows up
for you. What
shows up
for you is a 'reality' generated by your brain. Put in another
way,
while we assume that what we perceive is the reality that is actually
out there, in fact every shred of what
shows up
for you as reality is being wholly generated by your brain."
...
This essay,
What's Out There And What's Out There,
is the companion piece to
Werner's
assertions - that "what is out there for (me) is not what is out
there", also that whatever
shows up
as "out there for (me)" is wholly generated by my brain - are daunting
propositions
(to say the least). I'm willing to look at them
closely,
not because I
blindly
accept them as
"The Truth"
(that never does anyone much good, especially me) but because in his
track record with me over the last nearly four
decades,
he's said so many things at which I've balked at first ie which have
challenged me at first (no, which have rocked me at
first), and yet which also proved to be enormously valuable and useful
once I
committed
to
discovering
them for myself (and
"discovering
them for myself" is an entirely different
way
of being with
Werner's
ideas, than accepting them unquestioningly from him as
true
- even if they aretrue).
Many of his assertions at which I have initially balked, were
classically (sometimes maddeningly)
Zen
ie counter-intuitive.
"The truth believed is a
lie"
is one such prime and famous example.
Sitting
with it on my lap like a hot
brick,
I eventually
got
it. But this one, this "What is out there for (me) is not
what is out there", is a stop for me. I don't dismiss it. Neither am I
denying it. But I am (at least for now) stopped by it - or (expressed
more
rigorously),
I'm stopped at it (think "railroad crossing").
I wrestle with it. Like so many other counter-intuitive challenges from
this and earlier iterations of
Werner's work,
I do not
blindly
assume it's
true.
Rather I ask myself "What if it's
true?"
(it's a
question
I ask myself a lot
around Werner,
another version of which is "If it's
true,
what does it allow for ie what does it make possible?"). I
notice I have a strange
resistance
to it. I call it strange because I can tell there is something I've
got
going on that does not want to know the "reality" that
shows up
for me as out there, isn't the so-called "objective reality" but rather
a reality my brain wholly generates (the ostrich has its head very
deeply in the sand with this one).
Then I realize what it is I'm
resisting.
It is this: if I have to give over to ie if I have to
fully
accept that what
shows up
for me as out there, is actually a reality that my brain generates,
then I have to
fully
and
unflinchingly
give over to and be
who I really am.
That requires I give up who I think I am, and even give up
who I'd like to be. Oh my! Ouch. It hurts. There's
that! Oh yes, of course there's that. There
is no avoiding it. That's what I
resist.
And it's not that I can avoid it or change the fact that what
shows up
for me as out there, is actually a reality my brain generates. As
startling an assertion as it is (all its ramifications are
vast),
it dawns on me there is
nothing
to be gained by not accepting it, nor by not taking responsibility for
it. If it's
what's so
(and it is), it doesn't matter how long I put it off.
Resisting
it is
futile.
OK there's what's out there ... and there's what's out
there. Explain please
Laurence?
Yes. There's what's out there, the assumed so-called objective reality,
and there's what's out there, a reality wholly generated by my brain.
And what is worth exploring (if I dare) is the possibility that of
those two, it is only the latter which
shows up
for me ie it is only the latter to which I have access. Now
that's a
gamechanger
(and as we all know by now, calling it merely a
gamechanger
is a woefully inadequate understatement). In the banner title of every
single page of this nearly fifteen hundred page
Conversations For
Transformation website,
I aver each of
these essays
are "inspired by the ideas of
Werner Erhard".
This is just one of them: an idea in the dead-center of the near five
decades
long
worldwideconversation for
transformation.