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

On Reaching The End

Portland, Oregon, USA

December 12, 2019
"Transformation is getting to see as a possibility who you might be really." ... 
This essay, On Reaching The End, is the companion piece to
  1. It's All Over For Laurence Platt
  2. No "I / Me" Is Involved
in that order.

It is also the third in a trilogy written in Portland Oregon, December 2019:
  1. You Will Never Have To Be That Way Again
  2. On Being With The Automaticity
  3. On Reaching The End
in that order.

The trilogy written in Portland Oregon, December 2019 is the prequel to Breakthrough In Family.


To be clear, not to mention to restate what we already know well, this (Life, all of it) has been going on for millennia. And it'll be going on for millennia to come. We won't reach the end because there is no end (oh, and arguably there was no beginning either - but that's a subject of another conversation for another occasion).

Now about "there is no end": in the aforementioned sense, there's no end. But there's another end which is reachable in a profound sense, an end for which there's no pressure to reach, an end for which there's no compulsion to reach, an end for which there's no natural leaning to reach, an end for which there's not much agreement that's it's reachable. Yet it's the great unspoken, the elephant in the room. And without reaching this end, transformation has no chance of showing up. None. Zero.

To quote Werner:


<quote>

TRANSFORMATION IS GETTING TO SEE AS A POSSIBILITY WHO YOU MIGHT BE REALLY.

<unquote>


In other words, the onset of transformation marks the end of identifying with that which are not  really. As Life itself, you have no end. As an identity (which you could say is who you consider yourself to be, yet are not really) you do have an end - like a possibility.

If we tell the truth about it unflinchingly, we can chart the genesis  of our identity - which means we can chart its evolution starting from its beginning. In the beginning, this happened ... and we identified with it (eg a tribal or a political or a family feud). That happened ... and we identified with that (eg a disappointment, a disillusionment, a breach of trust). Something else happened ... and we identified with it (eg a physical impact, a prolonged illness - with which, by the way, began the laying down of the faux  certainty that we are our bodies ie our identification with our bodies as who we are). Our identities lay down rules for who we are, how we are, and even what  we are ie our identities even lay down the acceptable, believable  rules and parameters for what it is to be human. And here, I'm not simply alluding to all our associated human behavior. Rather, I'm alluding to exactly what it is we assume a human being to be ie what we believe  a human being to be.

So the onset of transformation is, in a very real sense, reaching the end of what we've erroneously assumed we are as human beings, and getting to see as a possibility who we might be really. In other words, transformation is reaching the end of our false identities of who / what we are as human beings.

Given we live much of our lives constrained by such false identities, life and living has come to look and feel a certain way. So it's hardly a stretch of the imagination to predict that living life transformed ie living life having reached the end of identifying falsely with that which we are not, will correspondingly come to look and feel another way. Be careful: that's not a better  way, not an improved  way, rather it's simply an authentic  way (look: when you identify with that which you aren't, by definition that's inauthentic, yes?), a clearly more workable way. No argument, debate, persuasion, or politics are required to take up being transformed. Rather, it's an opportunity that's available to each of us simply by virtue of being human, waiting to show itself, waiting to unfold, waiting to play out for all the millennia to come.

It's the world that goads us toward false identification. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just the way it works. That said, the miracle that it is to be born human includes / comes with the possibility of reaching the end of all that, and instead getting to see as a possibility who we might be really - to which I'll add my own comment / codicil "... and to choose to live that instead if you want to  (and you don't have to).". Reaching the end is a transformed possibility. It's a profound one.


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