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
Anatomy Of A Wasted Life
Los Gatos, California, USA
May 4, 2019
"I had the realization that what my life was about was really
meaningless, it was
empty,
and this realization that the things that I thought were so
significant
like looking good and winning, just the normal things that I guess
most people think are important, that they really had no importance,
that it was all
empty
and meaningless. When I
broke through
the
sadness,
broke through
the sense of despair of having wasted my life, I all of a sudden
realized 'My
God!
I'm
free!'."
...
"A foolish man may be known by six things: anger without cause, speech
without profit, change without progress, inquiry without object,
putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends."
... Arab proverb
Transformation comes - and goes ... and comes again ... and goes again
... and comes again. I'm sorry, but that's the nature of the beast.
Just when
you think you've gotten it
forever,
it's gone. And as soon as you notice it's gone, there's an opportunity
to create it again (at the heart of the matter, a transformed life is a
created life). You're never off the hook when it comes to being the
source of transformation in life. Look: who will create transformation
in your life and in the world if not you? And if not you, then who?
Allow even the briefest, tersest,
closest
encounters with transformation to remind you that if you're not fully
present to the miracle it is to be alive, and instead keep getting your
fingers stuck in the machinery in your head, you're wasting your life.
Literally.
An old friend of mine (we go back nearly forty years) hasn't
participated in
Werner's work.
Of course I've shared it extensively with her, to be sure. She is
enrolled. But she hasn't registered. That's OK with me. I share it with
her ongoingly anyway (like the energizer bunny, I've been
going and going for forty years ...). She tells me
God
delivers everything she wants when she asks for it. I don't challenge
her assertion. It's actually none of my business to challenge it.
In one of our many conversations, she talked about believing in
God
and about
praying
to
God,
and assumed I do too, and that we should discuss them. Actually I do do
both: the former with qualification, the latter infrequently. But I
kept silent. My silence came from having discovered that without
establishing a certain context for it first, I'm reluctant to just
blithely and blindly sally forth into that particular conversation.
Given what's possible with
conversations for
transformation
ie given what's at stake, I didn't want to squander the opportunity her
God
conversation opened up. In this regard, I'm really a big fan of
Werner's
notorious albeit simply marvelous counterpoint to such assumptions, a
counterpoint that draws a
laser-thin
line between our concepts of
God
and this context, and opens it up, laying it bare. It's
Marvelous. Absolutely bloody marvelous (that's a British expression).
It's one of those
Werner
zingers that cuts through all the BS, and gets people to sit bolt
upright and pay attention. But be careful: it's purpose isn't to
denigrate people's belief in
God
or in whatever they conceptualize
God
to be. Rather it's to ratchet up their awareness of what
God
is and who we are in the matter of what
God
(really) is and to tease it out onto
front and center
stage where it can be fully examined and appreciated, very often for
the first time.
Not waiting for me to reply, she told me that when she
prays,
God
gives her so much (quote unquote). Her tone told me she
was trying to convince me. That's OK. After all, hers is a widely
shared sentiment. It's even arguably true. But it's an
unexamined true - and therein lies the root of the
problem. And like any essential tenet of the martial arts, the moment
you're distracted by the unexamined true, all is lost.
I decided to try a new tack. I said "Here's what I think: I think if I
was
God
(yes, that's an OK platform on which to stand and look), and you asked
me to help you, I'd say 'Go away! I've got a full plate
right now managing the entire cosmos. Besides which, I've
already given you strengths beyond measure, power beyond
belief, and abilities that defy doubt to ensure you'll have a great
life. Look: you're not even fully using the gifts I've already given
you, yet you're asking me for more?!'. It's more than that
actually. It's not discovering who you are as the powerful space in
which
God
shows up, epitomizes a wasted life.".
Now to be clear, this essay ie my assertion isn't about
God
or about believing in
God
or about
praying
to
God
or about what
God
can and can't and will or won't do for us. Really it isn't. As
evidence,
notice I haven't even included it in the
group of my Conversations For Transformation
essays titled "Reflections Of God".
As noble as the
God
conversation is, here its only relevance is that it's the conversation
in which the distinction "a wasted life" appeared. And I'm saying a
life lived without transformation ie a life lived not inhabiting the
space of who we are in which all of it, including
God
and you and I all show up, is a wasted life.
I'm not angling for that to be getable intellectually. I do however
intend for it to be getable experientially. Experientially, it's
the space of transformation. And whatever I've said about the space of
transformation whose absence epitomizes a wasted life, I don't say it
like it's "The Truth" (and it may be). Rather I say it as
a suggestion. Try it on for size. If it fits: take it, it's yours. If
it doesn't:
walk on,
it's not.
