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

We've Already Arrived

Silverado Vineyards, Silverado Trail, Napa Valley, California, USA

November 16, 2015


"No you're not!  No, you used  to be different. Now you're the same."  ...   responding to a Six Day Course participant who's saying she's different after transformation 
This essay, We've Already Arrived, is the companion piece to Fight, Flee, Or Face Up (The Train Is In The Station).

It is also the prequel to Here Now You.

Conversations For Transformation receives its one millionth view with the publishing of We've Already Arrived.

I am indebted to the graduates and the assistants and the staff of the Six Day Course who inspired this conversation.


I hear people describing the spiritual journey  they say they're on. Transformation recontextualizes  (I love  that word) all spiritual journeys (not to mention all paths and all creeds and all belief systems and all doctrines and all religions). So whenever someone tells me they're on a spiritual journey, I respond with "No you're not!". And when I do, I'm very careful to smile as I say it. I want it to be palatable. I want it to be getable. Above all, I want it to be listen-able. If I said it brusquely and / or dismissively, there's a good chance it wouldn't be heard in the way I intend it. The whole idea is to have a conversation which forwards the action  rather than stops it in its tracks. "No you're not" without a smile, could easily stop it in its tracks, and I intend to say "No you're not" so it creates a clearing, a breakthrough opening.

What I'd consider to be the most valuable thing there is to say about being on a spiritual journey, wouldn't be what it means to be on a spiritual journey. Neither would it be what it takes to be on a spiritual journey. Rather, it would be the raison d'etre  for being on a spiritual journey in the first place ie it would be the spiritual journey's premise. It would be what we're being and how  we're being when who we are as our conversation, is that we're on a spiritual journey getting somewhere.

Being on a journey (being on a spiritual journey in particular, but being on any  journey actually) implies we're getting somewhere ie there's an implication we're going somewhere. So I'd like to interrupt this notion ie I'd like to violate it a bit, by asserting that assuming we're getting somewhere spiritually ie that implying we're going somewhere spiritually, is missing the point that we've already arrived. I assert the way life looks (ie exactly  the way it is, and exactly the way it isn't) is what it looks like when we arrive at the end of a spiritual journey. In other words, if you were on a spiritual journey and it came to an end (and you know you would want it to come to an end more sooner than later because then you would have arrived at where you were wanting to get to spiritually, yes?), this is exactly how it would look.

Now, if you're heavily invested in being on a spiritual journey, if you haven't questioned a spiritual journey's premise ie if you're resistant to or simply uncomfortable with the idea that you've already arrived (even though it's arguably Self-evident), you may hear what I just said as unkind and / or as dampening and / or as negating and / or even as discouraging. It's not my intention for it to be any of the above. There's actually another way you could hear this ie there's another possibility for listening it which would allow it to be a contribution, and which would allow it to be apropos, and which would allow it to be relevant and useful. That's my intention.

We've already arrived. And when I say that, I say it's by virtue of being born, that we've already arrived (it's nothing more mystical than that, it's nothing more esoteric than that, it's nothing more Earth-moving  than that). This is it! Missing the point that we've already arrived, and staying seduced by and attached to the cherished notion that there's something else to get, ensures that the spiritual journey we say we're on, actually interferes with living life freely and openly and fully to the max.

Apropos the notion of a spiritual journey, there are pragmatic questions to ask. I say it's not pragmatic to ask "How are we going to get there?" (ie to wherever it is we say we're going to spiritually). No, it would be pragmatic to ask "We've already arrived, we're here, there's no place else to get to, this is it, what are we going to do now?"  (ie what are we going to do now, that will make a difference?). That's the question to ask. Belaboring the question "How are we going to get there?" ie asking how we're going to get to the end of our spiritual journey when we've already arrived, is to avoid being transformed ie it's choosing to stay uncommitted. It's the equivalent of staying seated when the train arrives at its destination. Stand up! We've already arrived. Live your life. There's nothing to get. This is it. Here. Now. You.


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