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

Lonely Road

McKenzie-Mueller Vineyards, Los Carneros Appellation, Napa Valley, California, USA

February 13, 2017
"Don't want to walk that lonely road again." ... Paul McCartney, Lonely Road 
"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself." ... David Herbert Richards "DH" Lawrence
This essay, Lonely Road, is the companion piece to Out-Here IV: Clearing For Life.

It is also the sixteenth in an open group with titles borrowed from Songs:

There are two words in the English language which aren't in my vocabulary. The one is "bored". The other is "lonely". And even if they were in my vocabulary, I would not know what either of them means, at least not from direct experience. I've never been bored in my life, even when I've had (quote unquote) "nothing to do". I've never been lonely in my life either, even when I've been (quote unquote) "on my own / by myself". So I have no credentials for authoritatively describing what it's like to be bored or lonely. Yet from time to time in the company of friends when the conversation turns to being bored and / or lonely (which is sometimes a function of aging, yet it's most often simply a function of ... well ... being human), I realize I do have something useful to contribute about both, and especially about the latter.

We're surrounded by close to seven and a half billion people on the planet - soon to be eight billion. So it's arguably not always reality-based to equate the experience of being lonely, to there being a dearth of people to relate with. What's a more likely explanation is the experience of being lonely is the result of imposing on ourselves a misguided sense of who we really are. Let me explain what I mean by this.

The world and society at large, grinds into us from an early age, that who we are is the person in here  ie inside our body. We've come to know ourself as the person living in here. We get it's a trap too late: in order to correctly designate who we are this way, we emphasize and re-emphasize being in here, which in turn emphasizes and re-emphasizes our separateness, which in turn emphasizes and re-emphasizes our sense of being lonely. At some point, we simply accepted this overly emphasized separateness, forgetting how arbitrary the distinction is, and totally overlooked the fact that it's we who called it into being in the first place (that means it's not "The Truth"). This sense of being separate ie this false  sense of being separate, is the medium ie the Petri dish  in which the culture of being lonely, flourishes rampantly.

Realizing this sense of being separate is false, is not so much an axiom  of transformation (I've referred to axioms of transformation on other occasions in this Conversations For Transformation internet series of essays) as much as it's an experience which goeswith  transformation (as Alan Watts may have said): who we really are, and life and living, actually do not happen in here. Who we really are, and life and living, happen out-here. And out-here there's no sense of being separate.

Be careful: that's not a typo. I don't mean "out there". It's who we really are, and life and living, happen "out-here". And neither is it who we really are, and life and living, happen "out here". It's "out-here". The hyphen is critical. If you speak "out-here" for yourself ie if you language  it for yourself, first without the hyphen then with the hyphen, you'll get it. It's vintage Erhard.

Since there's no sense of being separate out-here, I assert it goes without saying there's no being lonely out-here either. As a matter of fact, the only place on the map in which that lonely road shows up, is in here. By simply re-locating who we really are correctly, which is to say by simply recontextualizing  (I love  that word) who we really are, being lonely becomes a non-starter. It's vanquished. The lonely road is re-routed (literally). And yes it really is that simple. No kidding! Really it is.

Now without changing too much of this thesis, almost the exact same things can be said about being bored. Being bored, like being lonely, is a function of misplacing who we really are in here, and is vanquished by recontextualizing who we really are out-here. But that's a subject for another conversation on another occasion.

Background soundtrack: Paul McCartney: Lonely Road - wait for 3.06M download

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