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




Already Here

Sacramento, California, USA

July 8, 2011



This essay, Already Here, is the companion piece to
  1. Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go, Nothing To Get
  2. Out Here
  3. Here And There
in that order.

I am indebted to Chuck Anderson who inspired this conversation.




In a conversation coming from already  being transformed (along the lines of: there's nothing to do to become transformed except to get you're already transformed), the title of this essay, "Already Here", couldn't be "Already There". If it was, it wouldn't be the same conversation. Not only that: if it were "Already There" it wouldn't be about transformation.

In a conversation like this, you could say "We're already here" and you could also say "We're already there.". Yes they both sound as if they imply the same thing - even though the latter is the more colloquial form. But notice they're not interchangeable. "Already Here" speaks coming from we're already transformed here  - speak "I'm already here" and be with the languaging  of it to really get the transformed experience of it. "Already There" speaks coming from there's some place to get to  - speak "I'm already there" and be with the languaging of it closely, and you'll see "Already There" doesn't refer to transformation at all. "Already There" lives in the domain called "someday".

What this conversation calls attention to is how we're thrown  (if you will) to speak about a future (not a future as possibility  but rather a "someday"  future) when we'll be transformed or when we'll become transformed. Speaking this way is evidence we don't know we're already  transformed. Or it's proof we've forgotten  we're already transformed. Or both. I'm referring to the way we speak during the untransformed phase of our transformed  / untransformed  / transformed  lives, the way we're thrown to speak in terms of "being there" ie the way we're thrown to speak in terms of becoming transformed without realizing we're already here. Paradoxically, yearning to be there, striving to be there, working  to be there is powerful enough to generate a momentum in which the possibility of being already here is killed off.

Here's that clarification again - articulated as a ratio:  being "Already There" is to being "Out There" as being "Already Here" is to being "Out Here". It's only the latter which is the domain of transformation. Notice being  is present in "Already Here" and "Out Here". Notice there's no being in "Already There" and "Out There".

Cautionary note: while it works better experientially  to say "We're already here", saying it this way without being responsible for how it lands in untransformed ears is tantamount to speaking Fahrenheit  in a Celsius  world. Saying "We're already there"  works better communicatively  inside the conversation we are, inside the yearning we are, inside the thrown-ness  we are to want to "be there".

But that's the grand illusion, and if you speak "We're already there" rather than "We're already here", you're only feeding into and furthering the grand illusion. The grand illusion is that there's some other way to be other than the way we are, that there's some other place to get to other than where we are. And I'm suggesting there's no other way to be other than the way we are, that there's no other place to get to other than where we are.

I'm suggesting we're already here.



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