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




Located Inside Language

Hall Wines, St Helena, California, USA

November 13, 2018



This essay, Located Inside Language, is the companion piece to Constituted In Language.

It is also the twenty third in an open group on Language:
  1. Last Word
  2. Speaking Of Freedom
  3. The Transformation Of The World
  4. Constituted In Language
  5. Zen Bland
  6. Source Of Zen Bland: Hand Grasps Itself?
  7. Linguistic Acts
  8. Language: The Scalpel Of Experience
  9. Wordsmith
  10. Source Quote
  11. Being And Acting Out-Here: Presence Of Self Revisited
  12. My Word In The Matter
  13. You Are What You Speak
  14. Residue Of Meaning
  15. The Effortless Breakthrough
  16. The World's Conversation
  17. Read To Us
  18. Everything You Say
  19. Breakfast With The Master IV: Language As Music
  20. Leading With My Word
  21. Language And Results
  22. No, It's What You Say  About It
  23. Located Inside Language
  24. Be A Good Day
  25. Words Are Like Numbers
in that order.

It is also the sequel to Being Upset: This Side Of A Breakthrough.

I am indebted to Dr Joseph DiMaggio who inspired this conversation.




What's become clear to me observing nearly fifty years of Werner's work (March 2021 will be it's fiftieth anniversary), is its language has been steadily and inexorably refined and sharpened, and rendered more rigorous, uncannily accurate, and clear. That's not to say it wasn't all of the above at the get-go. It was. Compared to any other languaging of the day deployed by transformation's aspirants at the time, its refinement, sharpness, rigor, accuracy, and clarity were simply jaw-dropping in their bold, brassy newness. And now with nearly fifty years of practice, these same qualities of its language have ongoingly evolved to an ever more unprecedented degree.

Also clearly observable is as its language evolved, so did its critical preparatory experiences. Don't get me wrong: the experience of transformation is the experience of transformation. That's been a constant over the years. The evolution I'm alluding to is of the facility with which its preparatory experiences are delivered. I'll explain.

Earlier, at the start of these fifty years, more use of scripted, rigorous processes were deployed, at the completion of which a certain experience was fleshed out which, in turn, became a building block for the next experience in the sequence of transformation's critical preparatory experiences. As the processes Werner deployed became more effective in fleshing out transformation's preparatory experiences, we could converse more precisely about the experiences themselves. And as we conversed more precisely about the experiences themselves, a profound shift in the way the materials are delivered became possible: a shift in conveying transformation through language alone. Not requiring as much time to deliver the processes, the duration of the flagship program of Werner's work, decreased by a day and a half and more.

<aside>

It's useful to pause for a moment here to refresh this critical distinction, one with which graduates will already be familiar.

The shift to conveying the preparatory experiences of transformation through language alone, secondarily implies speaking about transformation in a more refined, sharper, more rigorous, more accurate, clearer way.

But primarily it implies deploying language itself to convey transformation. In the phrase "speaking about transformation", the word "about" becomes not only unnecessary but also misleading if not distracting. The shift to conveying transformation through language alone, implies "speaking transformation"  - period ("about" is not required).

<un-aside>

Take for example the way Werner's work has evolved in addressing the oh so very human experience of being upset. If you tell the truth about it, even if you've applied only a modicum ie just one iota  of interest to your own condition of being human, it's the onset of the seemingly out of control  experiences of being upset you've most likely wanted to do something about. In the onset of its addressing this phenomenon, Werner's work focused on three components  of an upset:

These three components not only comprised the upset, but they also provided three access points which together allowed the upset to be decoded, owned, managed, then disappeared. It was extraordinary, remarkable, technical, breakthrough stuff. Therapy never saw anything this direct, this simple, this powerful, or this effective.

Now look at where this technology has evolved to today. There are now two components of an upset: The problem is seldom if ever in what happened. The problem is in the meanings, interpretations, conclusions, and stories we add to what happened - in other words, an upset is located inside language. By shifting our languaging of an upset, we transform / disappear the upset. Transformation isn't spoken about:  it's spoken - period. Like that, an upset isn't in what happened: it's in what's spoken about what happened. Both transformation and upsets are located inside language.



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