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

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Emotion Weather Report:

Expect Scattered Showers

Cowboy Cottage Cattle Pasture, East Napa, California, USA

June 14, 2023


"Sadness is supposed to cure being sad." ...		speaking with Laurence Platt in Conversations With A Friend #2 (Future Perfect)

"If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes." ... Samuel Langhorne Clemens aka Mark Twain

"Everybody talks about the weather but no one ever does anything about it." ... also Mark Twain

"If you don't like your emotion weather right now, just wait a few minutes." ... Laurence Platt riffing on Mark Twain

I've been intending to write something on a transformative way of "being with emotion" ie any emotion. "A transformative way of being with any emotion" implies being able to be with it / being complete with it without trying to control it. In researching suitable material for this essay, I fortuitously came across quotes by Mark Twain which got my attention. But interestingly enough, they were actually quotes about weather not about emotion - and even so, they fit.

Both "If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes" (I could just as easily relate to that apropos any emotion I may have) and "Everybody talks about the weather but no one ever does anything about it", Mark uttered sardonically. And when he says we don't do anything about the (planet) weather, there's no question that we could. We just don't. OK look: the thing is more sooner than later, we'll have to do something about the planet weather, given climate change and global warming. We'll have to deal with them. But for now, let's stick with Mark's quotes as he uttered them about the planet weather, and their transposition into what we may (or may not) do about our emotion weather ie how we may be with it in a transformative way.

It's actually very good Zen to do nothing about your emotion weather. Really it is. And doing nothing about it doesn't mean suppressing, resisting, denying, or ignoring it. But watch: does doing nothing about it come from being resigned, or (in almost a tenth measure) from being transformed? It could be either, and you and I get to choose which it's going to be. That's an essential question here: good Zen aside, does doing nothing about your emotion weather come from being resigned? In inquiring into that, look at what doing nothing about it (ie letting it be) makes available - like a transformative way of being with it.

<quote>

SADNESS IS SUPPOSED TO CURE BEING SAD.

<unquote>

That's Werner, speaking with me in Conversations With A Friend #2 (Future Perfect). And clearly, sadness doesn't cure being sad. Yes it's s'posed to - but (tell the truth) it doesn't (if it did, you wouldn't be sad, yes?). Sadness just plain doesn't work, so you may as well not dwell on it. Like rain on the roof in the background, you do nothing about it. Let it be the way it is without trying to cure or change it. And if you don't like your sadness weather right now, wait a few minutes. Mark's observation of New England weather ie his unspoken implication is it'll change. And if it hasn't soon, it won't be very long before it does.

The transformative way to deal with any emotion is to be with it - for example, fear: choose to experience it, and be afraid. Let fear be, and it lets you be. In the context of skydiving, you're afraid and you jump anyway. Indeed, fear goeswith (as Alan Watts may have said) skydiving. And emotion goeswith life.

Here's your hourly emotion weather report: expect scattered showers. That's always the emotion weather report. That's the forecast. And there's not much to do about it. What's clear is emotions don't cure what they're supposed to cure. So if you don't like them as they are, wait a few minutes. They'll change.

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