"When
the heart
speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object."
... Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
I am indebted to
Jack Rafferty
who contributed material for this conversation.
"Why do you write?" she asked. "I write to write" I told her. "I get
that" she said, "But what I want to know is why you
write.". Yes she did tell me she got it. But she didn't. I don't write
for a why. I don't write for
a reason.
In fact I
eschew
the naïvely vaguely hopeful notion that "Things happen for
a reason",
cocooning us as it does away from the sheer awesome profundity of
"Things happen - period.". I don't write for
a reason.
There's no why. I write to write.
Transformation understood isn't transformation. If I'm writing
about transformation to explain it, I may as well not
write anything at all. But if I just write coming from
transformation, it communicates the experience of transformation. So I
write coming from transformation, invoking all the
humanmachinery
the enterprise of writing draws on. When you read what I've written, it
invokes all the
humanmachinery
the enterprise of reading draws on. What follows as a natural
sequitur ie as a result naturally bonded with both
enterprises, is you get the experience of transformation - or at least
you get a good taste of it.
Who knows how this works. Who knows why. Who understands this. I
certainly don't. But you and I don't need to understand it. And look:
workability
(ie whether or not something
works)
doesn't require my knowing how / understanding. Something either
works,
or it doesn't. A bicycle with a buckled wheel doesn't
work.
And the thing is it won't
work
any more (or any less, for that matter) if I understand it or if I
don't. Understanding's got nothing to do with it. Tell the truth now:
we all already know that that which we experience as truly profound and
worthwhile
in life, is beyond / doesn't require understanding.
As the writer of these
Conversations For Transformation,
I'm interimly writing to a mind. But writing to a mind
from my mind, isn't enough to communicate transformation.
Now there's
nothing wrong
with writing to a mind from my mind. It's just that it's not the milieu
of transformation. Ultimately I'm writing from my being to a
being. So I'm writing to a mind, coming from my being. When that
works,
I'll be touching the being that owns the mind I'm writing to.
I write these
Conversations For Transformation
for you in a way that in the reading of each one, you'll experience a
sense of being transformed just by allowing their words to ripple
through the oceans of your listening. They'll leave you with an
experience of transformation rather than merely impart new information.
If you read something I've written and thus have an experience of being
transformed, then by definition what I wrote
works.
I'm clear that these
Conversations For Transformation
have to be pragmatic - or else they'll fail (there's a certain
Zen
they must inculcate, or else they're merely dither).
And again, I don't need to know how or why this process
works.
I do however have some ideas / hazarded guesses I'm not attached to /
not invested in, about the various dependencies in the stages of the
unfolding / expression of communicating transformation in writing to a
mind, in a way that
works.
Consider the following schematic representation of communicating
transformation when writing to a mind, and thereby touching the being
that owns it:
BEING
→
WRITER
→
MIND
→
THE SPACE BETWEEN US
→
MIND
→
READER
→
BEING
It's the full extent of the communication from being to being that
works
in sharing transformation. Transformation isn't gotten in the interim
communication from mind to mind. That's not its milieu. The process of
sharing transformation starts prior to that. It starts with coming from
being and writing, deploying the mind
(machinery)
in the transmission of it, then when it's received by / read by the
mind
(machinery),
it finds a familiar resonance in the being that owns the mind reading
it. As the writer of these
Conversations For Transformation,
I'm a being writing to a mind, thereby touching the being that owns it.
"Be all that as it may" I finally said to her, "neither my ulterior
motive nor your understanding of this is required. Communicating
transformation is a process which has
workability.
And that's what I do. And I do it because it's what I do.
There's no why. I write because I write. I write to write. There's no
reason.".
She nodded slowly. This time she did get it. I write to write. There's
no
reason.
In
the world
in which "Things happen for
a reason",
that's not an
easy
get.