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




Two Busies

Connecticut Avenue, Washington DC, USA

June 10, 2016



"I'm playing so hard I've got no time to be busy." ... Laurence Platt

This essay, Two Busies, is the second in a group of four written in Washington DC, June 2016:
  1. City Girl
  2. Two Busies
  3. Washington DC Words
  4. Completion: An Inquiry Into The Point Of It All
in that order.

The group of four written in Washington DC, June 2016 is the sequel to Sitting II, and the prequel to Mind Control.

I am indebted to John Taylor who inspired this conversation.




Let's differentiate between two ways of being busy ie let's differentiate between two "busies"  (if you will) as an exercise in making distinctions.

There's busy ... and then there's busy. Now I'm not just talking about busy as differentiated from really  busy. I'm not just talking about having what we call a lot to do, as differentiated from being what we call completely swamped. The first busy I'm talking about is busy like always doing something, like having a packed schedule. This busy is characterized by no satisfaction. It's accompanied by a sense of being run by. The second busy  I'm talking about is busy like always doing something, like having a packed schedule. This busy is characterized by satisfaction. It's accompanied by a sense of being joyously creative.

Notice both busies are the same inasmuch as they're both always doing something, and they both have packed schedules. And yet the experience  of each couldn't be more different.

<aside>

There's what I call busy ... and then there's what I call busy. Then there's also what I call "Werner busy" which is simply the logical extension of the second busy: a vast  amount of work gets done effortlessly, accurately, immaculately, impeccably with integrity, powerfully, as promised in time and on schedule, a schedule which plans ahead in fifteen minute increments, twenty four hours a day, for a decade straight or more at a time.

<un-aside>

Observing either busy from afar, you'd perhaps only see a busy without it being obvious which  busy it is. So what is  the difference between busy and busy?  How do  you distinguish the one from the other? For my two cents worth, here are the distinctions:

The critical distinction of the first busy is it's the busy we deploy (which is to say it's whatever we do) to avoid experiencing whatever's incomplete in our personal space. Given the design of us human beings, avoiding experiencing whatever's incomplete in our personal space prevents us from experiencing the Self. It's one of the many enigmas of us human beings that we're thrown to recoil from the experience of the Self, which is to say we're thrown to avoid experiencing who we really are  if what we have to go through in order to experience it, is experiencing whatever's incomplete in our personal space. Once that avoidance ends (that's transformation) (and for some it may never end, yet there's an ever-present possibility it could end at any moment), then this first busy falls away. Until then, huge tracts of what we do are all arranged around ways of avoiding experiencing whatever's incomplete in our personal space ie whatever we can't bring ourselves to experience.

The critical distinction of the second busy is it's not a function of avoiding experiencing whatever's incomplete in our personal space. Rather it's just plain being in creative action.

These distinctions point to something important. They point to the place of the Self  in our lives, both prior to as well as after the onset of transformation. Prior to the onset of transformation, the Self and our experience of the Self are almost totally un-getable, given we recoil from the experience of the Self if what we have to go through in order to experience it, is experiencing whatever's incomplete in our personal space. The Self however being the Self, shows up anyway  from time to time, so in order to avoid experiencing it, we fill our lives with whatever activities are a barrier to this unwelcome experience of the Self. Ergo  the first busy is really nothing more (and nothing less) than a futile if not desperate barrier to the experience of the Self. Entire lives and careers end up being constructed this way. In many instances, what we decide to do and our long term projects, are structured (albeit unconsciously) as barriers to experiencing whatever's incomplete in our personal space, and consequently to the experience of the Self.

With the onset of transformation, the Self and the experience of Self are fully present - sometimes ongoingly, sometimes in discontiguous powerful bursts. There's no barrier to the experience of the Self because avoidance of the Self is no longer in play. What becomes available instead is full Self-expression, and an almost irresistible urge to create. On the surface at least, this may also appear as busy. And it is. It's the second busy. Where the second busy differs markedly from the first, is while the first busy is a barrier to transformation, the second is the full expression of it. So the second busy isn't merely a different kind  of busy. Rather it represents a complete recontextualization  (I love  that word) of what it is to do anything at all  really ie it represents the transformation of what it is to be in action.



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