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

Embrace The Fullness!

University of California at Santa Barbara, Goleta, California, USA

June 17, 2012

When a work colleague first told me about the possibility of becoming whole, fulfilled, and complete over the course of two weekends and an evening, I was intrigued. What intrigued me most was although I hadn't personally experienced the result of the course he spoke about, I already knew it - which is to say I already knew the experience of being whole, fulfilled, and complete is available to all human beings like a possibility.

I didn't know it was a possibility for all human beings by reading about it, by intellectual debate, by argument, by rationalization, or by being talked into it. Rather, the way I knew it was a possibility for all human beings, was everything in Life was already speaking it to me - even though initially I had mis‑construed being whole, fulfilled, and complete as a goal. I had even, on occasion, tried to move toward it - as if there was a linear path to it.

That was the space, if you will, I was in when I registered myself to participate in Werner's work for the first time.

Laurence and Alexandra Platt - Photography by Victoria Hamilton-Rivers - UC at Santa Barbara Graduation - Isla Vista, California, USA - 3:24pm Friday June 15, 2012

Embrace The Fullness!

To say I became whole, fulfilled, and complete is the result of participating in Werner's work, is perhaps to describe the experience inaccurately - twice. In the first instance, being whole, fulfilled, and complete is one of many results of participating in Werner's work. As great as this result is (and as heretofore elusive), it's not even the most powerful result it produces. In the second instance, to say I became whole, fulfilled, and complete as a result of participating in Werner's work is actually incorrect - as it turned out. What's correct is as a result of participating in Werner's work I discovered I was already whole, fulfilled, and complete. That's the correct descriptor.

I'm neither naïve enough nor arrogant enough to assume my experience will be everyone else's experience. Sure, I could say people, like me, get amazing value from participating in Werner's work. Actually everyone creates their own individual results which are personal and mostly unique. The results are dramatic and discontiguous. They're all over the map - so to speak.

Given the way the world is currently set up, a human being, being whole, fulfilled, and complete, is like an island surrounded by vast tracts of ocean. Don't mistake what I'm saying: it's totally alright to be an island surrounded by vast tracts of ocean. As the source of our experience, that's exactly what each of us really is (with all due respect to John Donne). Indeed, at first I assumed my experience of being an island surrounded by vast tracts of ocean is a component of the human experience of being whole, fulfilled, and complete, and is shared by everyone.

Unbeknownst to me, my assumption missed the mark: I didn't realize everyone else's experience wasn't the same as mine. Years flew by. Then gradually, so gradually I hardly realized it was happening, I noticed coming into view on the horizon of the vast tracts of ocean surrounding my island, were other islands, other islands of wholeness, fulfillment, and completion. These other islands in the vast ocean of Life, are people who also live life coming from being whole, fulfilled, and complete.

Life is an entirely new game when it's played from already being whole, fulfilled, and complete. But wait! There's more. There's an entirely new dimension to Life when it's played with people who are also coming from already being whole, fulfilled, and complete.

Embrace the fullness! Allow it to use you. Share it. Get practiced at expressing it. Anything less compromises what's possible.

Communication Promise

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