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
Dogshit Reality
Frog's Leap, Rutherford, California, USA
January 31, 2009
Dogshit Reality: classically characterized by the robed,
beaded, self-realized master, the Saint walking with his
clamoring, adoring disciples, ministering to them,
accidentally
stepping in dogshit.
This essay,
Dogshit Reality,
is the companion piece to
Low Road.
I know you didn't need me to write this essay to explain it to you.
You already know what dogshit reality is. Everyone does.
It's the down and dirty component of life,
the nasty component of life, the component of life which
happens to you almost always unexpectedly and
unwantedly. You'd rather it didn't happen at all. As soon as it
happens, you'd like to wish it away. You'd like to
undo it and you can't. You must deal
with it right here and right now.
We say we're responsible for everything we do. We take responsibility
for our actions. Yet arguably even a saint would have to swallow hard
to keep his word (and his cool) in this regard taking
responsibility for
accidentally
stepping in dogshit. It's never deliberate. It never shows up as
something amazing or wonderful or awesome. It shows up as an
immediate, urgent major hassle. It commands your attention. It's
dictatorial.
It's basic. It impacts everyone equally. It comes with the
territory of being human, of living on
Planet Earth.
You can't ignore it, and if you do ignore it, you ignore it at your own
peril. I'd like to suggest that the down and dirty, even the
nasty component of life epitomized by dogshit
reality is really a wake up call.
Whenever it shows up, dogshit reality, the simplest, basic level
of reality for human beings living on
Planet Earth,
is always a measure of how much we're paying attention, of how
much we're aware of our surroundings - in a word, of how
much we're
awake.
There's nothing to do
about dogshit reality other than to factor it
in to daily living and to allow for it ie to create it as
it is. Neither is there any point in voting against
it. In fact, voting against dogshit reality isn't an
option we have anymore - our being here is living proof
we've already cast our votes. Clearly, dogshit
reality won by a landslide.
As I said, I know you didn't need me to write this essay to explain
dogshit reality to you. What I think is useful, however,
is to examine with you, is to inquire into with you the
extent of dogshit reality in our lives.
Watch:
There are those amazing, wonderful, awesome, even
miraculous moments in which we have
breakthroughs in our lives, in which we discover who we
really are, in which things we've been struggling with or putting
up with or trying to change forever simply clear up and
vanish just in the process of life itself, in which life suddenly and
discontiguously starts working in areas which always
failed before. And then, in contradistinction, in the midst of
frolicking along the sidewalk, there are those moments of having our
reverie stopped stone cold by stepping in dogshit ie by
the dogshit reality moments.
What I'd like to suggest here, what I'd like to bring
forth in this essay is the possibility that in life, it's
alldogshit reality - all of it. In this essay I'd
like to bring forth the possibility that for us human beings, our life
on
Planet Earth
is really one long dogshit reality moment. Really!
But here's the thing:
To bring forth the possibility that for us human beings, our life on
Planet Earth
is really one long dogshit reality moment, I'm not asking
you or expecting you to suffer through your preconceptions
of what dogshit reality is, of how awful it
is, of how you'd rather not have to deal with it at all. Rather, I dare
you to rearrange your preconceptions of what dogshit
reality is. I dare you to consider the possibility that
living life at the level of dogshit reality is the
highest, the most magnanimous level at which a
human being can live life.
In effect I'm asking you to consider the possibility that if you can't
deal with or are unwilling to deal with and master living life at the
level of dogshit reality, then you leave yourself no chance,
zero possibility of ever mastering living life at all.