I am indebted to Scott Grande who inspired this conversation.
There is no sense (as far as I personally am concerned) in pretending
that the
conversation for
transformation
started all by itself. Werner Erhard started it. Werner Erhard
sources
it ongoingly. That's just
what's so.
Furthermore, I assert recreating the
conversation for
transformation
without acknowledging Werner Erhard as its
source
is about as underhand as knowingly selling fake Picassos to
unsuspecting art collectors.
In case you're concerned that this implies some kind of
attachment
or possessiveness, bear in mind that when Werner Erhard started the
conversation for
transformation
in March 1971, his stated intention then was that
the work
would eventually disappear into the fabric of society. He was clear
from the get go the only way to keep this
conversation for
transformation
would be to
give it away
That's how you get to own
transformation
completely: by
giving it away.
That's how Werner Erhard saw it and that's what he built into the warp
and the weft of the
conversation for
transformation
from the get go:
giving it away.
So my assertion of Werner Erhard as
source
isn't a question of possession or ownership. It's a question of
origination, authorship, and authenticity.
It's often erroneously postulated that Werner Erhard got what he got
from participating in other programs. The implication therein is that
Werner Erhard didn't
source
anything new. It's that he simply rearranged what he already knew ie
what he had gotten from participating in other programs, and packaged
it more attractively. To be sure, all knowledge even if skewed adds to
the overall perspective. However the
work Werner Erhard
started
didn't come from what he knew. It's closer to the truth to say
Werner Erhard's work
came from what he didn't know. What I would like you to consider
like a possibility is the
source
of
Werner Erhard's work
is
who Werner Erhard
is,
not what he knows, nor even what he doesn't know (as pivotal as that
is), not the programs he's participated in, nor the ones he hasn't
participated in. All that stuff is really peripheral to who a human
being really is. I'm asking you to consider like a possibility
secondarily that the
source
of
Werner Erhard's work
is
who Werner Erhard really
is,
then primarily to consider, in that way, that the
source
of your own life is
who you really are.
It's really a matter of accuracy, integrity, and generosity to
acknowledge
source.
Once you've done that, yourSelf ie
your-Self
as
source.
of your own life is available to you. That's the start of living the
life you love instead of having the explanation for why the life you
have isn't the life you want. That's the tollbooth token into the
conversation for
transformation.
Historically, before Werner Erhard started the
conversation for
transformation
there wasn't a
conversation for
transformation.
Prior to March 1971 when Werner Erhard started the
conversation for
transformation,
the word
transformation
hardly appeared in our day to day vocabulary at all, if ever.
By now, Werner Erhard's
conversation for
transformation
is absorbed into and is included in other programs, sometimes by
agreement, sometimes without agreement. It appears in business
strategies, in advertising (witness the current MasterCard campaign),
in our common language and (for better or for worse) in street talk and
in jargon. It has brought together in face to face conversations such
diverse opposites as self professed Palestinian terrorists and Israeli
Mossad ie secret police in the Middle East, and as
Protestant clergy and Catholic clergy in Northern Ireland. It has
presented itself in such unlikely partnerships as with the erstwhile
Soviet Union, with the democratized Costa Rica, and with
South African
mining conglomerates. It's had the brassiness and the verve to dare to
take enlightenment to
India.
It's been delivered to and been gotten by deaf people and blind people.
Clearly it isn't limited by the senses. It's delivered in many
languages, and when it's delivered in a language not understood by its
participants,
they get it anyway. People as young as eight years old and as old as in
their nineties get value from it. It's tipped the axis of the
beingsphere
of millions and millions and millions of people on
the planet
who have participated in it, who have contributed to it, and who have
been touched, moved, and inspired by it. It has totally and
inexorably
altered what's possible for being for human being.