Coombsville Appellation,
Napa Valley,
California, USA
August 12, 2026
This essay,
The Clergy And The Work Of Transformation,
is the companion piece to
Crisis Of Faith.
There are
many paths
to ontological freedom, to distinguishing what runs us and to complete
it so that we're not run by it anymore. Indeed there are
many paths to
transformation
itself. Some paths, so it would seem, are more
powerful
than others. Some are more effective than others. Some are more
esoteric than others. Religion holds itself out to be a path to
ontological freedom - even if it doesn't say it in those exact words.
It's been said and noted that if the work of religion, in all its
forms, in all its expressions, in all its subtleties was
powerful
and effective (which simply means that it fulfilled on its promise and
delivered what it purports to deliver), the work of transformation
would be redundant. Transformation doesn't compete with religion.
Rather it
empowers
it.
See if religion equates to your work on transformation. Are they the
same? They aren't actually interchangeable. Religion doesn't occur in
the same domain as the work of transformation, even though what they
both purport to deliver is closely
related,
even if they may seem to be interchangeable. And whereas religion offers
well-established
belief systems
ie codes for living which when adhered to / followed offer a clearer
relationship
with the divine, the work of transformation offers
a context
in which all
belief systems,
the divine itself and all
relationships
with it and all paths to it including all religions,
show up.
What's
interesting
about this is that when members of the clergy and proponents of
religion come in
to participate in
the work of transformation, they come in cherishing their own paths,
their own ways, and their own
beliefs
which they aren't required to relinquish. Later when they leave, they
leave in the same way. So if nothing has changed, what exactly do they
get from
Werner's work
/ the work of transformation? Indeed, if what they get from
Werner's work
isn't religious in nature and doesn't add to, complement or supplement
their religious tenets, why would they
participate in it
at all? What's the attraction?
Whether you're a nun or a priest, a church
leader
or an ashram guru, a rabbi or an imam, then whomever you're being in
that
leading-role
determines how
powerful
and how effective your sharing and delivery of your religion to your
own congregation will be.
Participating inWerner's work
for women and men of the cloth doesn't add anything new to whatever the
conversations and lore their religions comprise. Rather, it allows for
the possibility of being
powerful
and effective with whatever the conversations and tenets of their
religion are. All religious conversations they have, stay the same. The
lore stays the same. They, as
leaders
of those conversations, bring
the access
to being more open, more
powerful,
and more effective in
leading-role
conversations. The work of transformation, rather than supplanting
religion,
empowers
the clergy delivering religion (coming from
already-ontological-freedomempowers
the clergy).
Whatever holds members of the clergy back, whatever stops them,
whatever thwarts them, whatever they're stuck with, is what they
unwittingly bring to their religious practice. The clergy (it should
come as no surprise) are
people
too,
human beings
who are held back, stopped, thwarted by, and stuck in the same
quagmires of
belief systems
and behavior which befuddle all
people.
The work of transformation allows them to be more
powerful
and more effective in all areas in which they had little or no
possibility of being
powerful
and effective before. Exposed to it, the clergy take the work of
transformation eagerly.