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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It's Never The Circumstances:

Context Is Decisive II

Cowboy Cottage Cattle Pasture, East Napa, California, USA

October 6, 2020
"Distinctions have a short half-life, and need to be recreated from time to time." ...   speaking with Laurence Platt in Encounters With A Friend #7 (Half-Life) 
"Integrity is actually very simple. Integrity is nothing more and nothing less than honoring my word and keeping an empowering context (conversation for possibility) present for myself and my life." ... Landmark Worldwide
This essay, It's Never The Circumstances: Context Is Decisive II, is the fifth in a hexalogy on Circumstances: It is also the ninth in a dectet on Context: It is also the sequel to Context Is Decisive (when I lived with having written Context Is Decisive, I realized a certain mastery was missing, so I wrote this sequel to bring mastery to the distinction).


To set the stage for distinguishing the decisive power of context, I'd like to incisively enumerate what for me are the three major components of a human being ie the observable elements of which each of us are composed. Bear in mind we (every one of us) comprise so many moving, working parts that if we ever begin compiling an exhaustive list of both the major components as well as all the minor ones, we'd be here all day - if not all week or even all year. So because it happens to be the third of my major three on which this particular conversation pivots, I'll focus on it and leave the rest (both major and minor) for another conversation on another occasion.

In the interests of terse transformed communication, here are what for me are the three major components of us human beings, the essential  ones, the ones that make us uniquely what we are - thus they're those that provide a fulcrum on which to authentically, powerfully, pragmatically leverage the decisive power of context:

 1)  we are beings who have minds, with
2)  the power to speak and deploy language, and
3)  the super  power  (if you will) to create context.

Those are the three which give us our very existence. The first allows us to be and to survive. The second allows us to interact and to create. The third allows us to transform the quality of our lives. And it's the third which allows us to triumph over the circumstances ie which allows us to be victorious  over our circumstances. And notice the milieu  of being victorious over our circumstances is a decisive context we create, a context within which we both include and be with the circumstances.

What does it mean to transform the quality of our lives? What does it mean really?  It means to shift the context of our experience of whatever's going on at any particular time. Stated tersely, it's to recontextualize  (I love  that word) whatever's going on at any particular time. Recontextualizing the circumstances (ie creating a decisive context for the circumstances) gives the possibility of being powerfully, and free in the face of the circumstances - indeed, in the face of any  circumstances.

A good friend of mine participated in Werner's work extensively for a decade or so. Subsequently she told me the "effects of transformation" (that's what she called them) "wore off", leaving her with a loss of power in the face of the circumstances in her life. I countered that maybe nothing "wore off". Just like a graduate of a fine university, a graduate of Werner's work is a graduate for life. What may have more likely happened is she just stopped creating an empowering context for her life (or simply forgot to continue creating an empowering context for her life), a context of being full, a context of being whole, a context of being complete like a possibility. If that's true, it's no surprise her life stopped being full, whole, and complete ie no surprise she stopped experiencing  her life as being full and whole and complete.

It's never the circumstances that account for a loss of power. While it may look like they do interimly, ultimately it's always the end of / the running out of a created context, that portends a loss of power. When I create a context of being full, whole, and complete, my life is likely to show up full, whole, and complete. When I stop creating that context (or when my created context runs out), my life no longer shows up as full, whole, and complete. I assert it's never the circumstances. Context is decisive. And contexts, like radioactive isotopes and / or distinctions, have a short half-life, and need to be recreated from time to time (as Werner may have said).


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