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




Our Living Room

Signorello Estate, Silverado Trail, Napa Valley, California, USA

August 23, 2012



This essay, Our Living Room, is the companion piece to A House On Franklin Street.

It is also the prequel to Our Living Room II.




Transformation is our living room.

You're welcome here any time you like. We're open 24 / 7 / 365. The only invitations you need to be here are your intending  to be here, and your listening for making this place your own. When you arrive, we request you leave your baggage outside the door. If you want it back when you leave, it will still be there exactly where you left it, untouched, waiting for you. Enjoy whatever you see here. Accept whatever you discover here as our gift to you, indeed as your gift to yourself  for being here. In fact, take  whatever you find here. It's all yours. Stay as long as you like. Leave whenever you like. If you choose to come back and visit again at any time in the future, we'll be here. You'll always be welcome.

Please notice it really is a "living"  ... "room". It's alive  ... and it's a space. In our living room there's an opportunity to experience and to share thrilling, alive transformation as the space of who you really are, indeed as the space of who we  really are. In our living room there's also an opportunity to experience and to share your transformation with and in the presence of everyone who's here, to experience and to share transformation as a possibility for everyone. Experiencing and sharing your transformation in our living room with and in the presence of everyone who's here, is an access to getting beyond holding back, an access to getting past keeping your transformation private and personal.

Listen: when transformation is kept private and personal, it isn't transformation. Really  it isn't. To say "transformation" in the same breath as "private and personal" epitomizes jargon. It's being unclear on the concept  to say "I got transformation" ... and  ... "I'm a private  person - I won't be in / share in groups.". When transformation is kept private and personal, whatever it is  is just a peak experience  - an enlightening peak experience maybe, a spiritual  peak experience perhaps, a peak experience which may have lasted years  even ... but merely a peak experience nonetheless.

Clearly the world is comprised of people, yes? That's how Life is. Transformation, if it's really transformation, includes everyone with no one and nothing left out. Transformation, if it's really transformation, is out-here  where people are. It's out-here where Life is lived. This is why Werner's work is set up to deliver transformation in groups. I'm an advocate for privacy, especially my own ... and  ... I'd like you to consider that saying "I'm a private person - I won't be in / share in groups" may sound like it's a description of a human attribute which is written in stone, as if it's something genetically ordained  by the DNA. But I say it isn't quite so absolute. It's more malleable  than that. I say it's merely an unexamined barrier  to participating wholeheartedly and fully, holding nothing back

Consider that transformation, until it's experienced at the level of group, isn't transformation. Furthermore, consider that until your transformation is experienced and shared at the level of group, it isn't complete. In our living room you'll experience and share transformation at the level of group, thereby completing your experience of transformation. Please take with you whatever you get from completing your experience of transformation out into the world when you leave our living room.

I thank you for being the source of what's available for you here. I'm not saying you're responsible  for what's available for you here. Later you may choose to take responsibility for it with us, or you may not. And you don't have to take reponsibility for it: we've already done that.

I thank you for the listening you are, for the gift  of your listening in which our living room shows up for you. I want you to know we appreciate it.


Postscript:
The presentation, delivery, and style of Our Living Room are all my own work.
The ideas recreated in Our Living Room were first originated, distinguished, and articulated by  .


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