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




A Self-Blurring Distinction

Hall Wines, St Helena, California, USA

November 2, 2018

"Something's happening because everything is moving." ... 
This essay, A Self-Blurring Distinction, is the companion piece to The Showing.



If you've been around Werner's work for a while, that is to say if you've engaged in Conversations For Transformation for a while, you've probably encountered and entertained (and given serious credence to) one particular distinction from its rich body of distinctions: the distinction which brings forth the difference between the circumstances ie what happens, and who you really are as the space in which what happens, happens. It's arguably the  distinction in these Conversations For Transformation, the token which gets you through the turnstile into the world of transformation. It's a distinction like an experience, not like an intellectual cleverness.

And if you've stayed around Werner's work for a little longer, you may have also discovered for yourself the wisdom of not restricting the scope of this distinction merely to Werner's work. In other words, you may have discovered the wisdom of blurring  the perimeter of the domain of this distinction a bit. You may have discovered the wisdom of differentiating between the circumstances ie what happens, and who you really are as the space in which what happens happens, in all  avenues of your life, and not restricting the domain of this particular distinction to Werner's work alone.

Lately I've become aware of how arbitrary both  domains for this distinction are. It's not that there's a distinction in Werner's work between the circumstances ie what happens, and who I really am as the space in which what happens, happens. It's also not even that there's a distinction in all avenues of my life between the circumstances ie what happens, and who I really am as the space in which what happens, happens. To restrict the domain of this particular distinction to either or both of the above, would unnecessarily curtail not just the power of Werner's work itself, but it would also unnecessarily curtail my own inherent power to make distinctions across the board in life, and thereby curtail my own inherent power to distinguish between what works and what doesn't work.

I'm willing to blur the perimeter of the domain of this distinction. I'm willing to open it up and let it expand so that it includes so much more than merely Werner's work, and so much more than merely my life. It's become a distinction which is applicable to Life itself. In the totality of it all, it's all  what happens, and it all happens in the space of who I really am. Look: these are remarkable, awesome, breakthrough ideas. Their treatises weren't found on your parents' bookshelves along with Emily Dickinson's and Robert Frost's. They're not what you learned in high school - although today there's a great opportunity for you to learn them in some colleges.

This is where I can most astutely leverage power for living. Power for living, to cut to the chase, begins with the critical, crucial  realization that what happens ie whatever turns out, turns out the way it turns out. Look: it's been turning out the way it's been turning out  for millennia, and it'll keep on turning out the way it turns out for another few millennia or three, over all of which I arguably have very, very little say so, if any at all. Where I do  have say so, is in the matter of who I'm being and who I'm going to be, as the space in which what happens happens ie as the space in which it all turns out.

Now the question is: did I really  blur this distinction? Or did this distinction blur itself?  I've looked closely at this. What I've noticed is if I stand authentically in the space of transformation long enough, then if I simply look  and tell the truth about what I see, it's that this distinction blurs itself ie it's a Self-blurring distinction. This Self-blurring distinction informs me the domain of "what's happening" isn't just Werner's work. It's not just my life. And to say the domain of "what's happening" is Life itself, may be superfluous, redundant. Rather, the domain of "what's happening" is simply what's happening  - period. And that also just happens to be good Zen.



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