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




Who You Might Be Really

Coombsville Appellation, Napa Valley, California, USA

July 16, 2020

"Transformation is getting to see as a possibility who you might be really." ...   speaking with Laurence Platt in Conversations With A Friend IX (What Did You Do To Me?) 
"God's greatest work wasn't creating the universe: it was disappearing into it afterwards." ... 
This essay, Who You Might Be Really, is the companion piece to Essays - Two Years Later: Glass Walled Studio.

It is also the fifteenth in an open group on Transformation:
  1. Transformation
  2. Nelson Mandela And Transformation
  3. The Way Of Transformation
  4. Transformation: The Life And Legacy Of Werner Erhard
  5. Moment Of Truth
  6. Transformation II
  7. No Line
  8. Transformation Is Timeless
  9. Transforming Life Itself: A Completely Started Inquiry
  10. Transformation Is Accountability Plus Committed Speaking
  11. Not One Size Fits All
  12. Transforming Disciplines
  13. What It Also Comes Down To
  14. Transforming The Untransformable
  15. Who You Might Be Really
so far, in that order.

It is also the sequel to Feelings Feel Me.

I am indebted to amanda "blue" leigh who inspired this conversation.




If you look with discrimination, and rigorously, you may notice there's a recurring thread woven over and over through the tapestries of all the world's great disciplines which purport to provide an access to transformation (or to whatever descriptor is deployed to connote what they construe "transformation" to be). It's this: accessing transformation calls for unflinchingly confronting our epistemology. And even though each discipline may have its own proprietary way of expressing this pivotal idea, saying "unflinchingly confronting our epistemology" is good enough for jazz.

Say whut?  OK Laurence, what is our "epistemology"? Our epistemology is not so much that particular "-ology" addressing what we know to be true about our own lives. It's deeper than that. Our epistemology is how we hold  what we know to be true about our own lives. Simply put, our epistemology isn't "what we know": it's rather "how we hold what we know". Moreover, while we know  what we know to be true about our own lives, we don't  know (that we don't know) how we hold what we know to be true about our own lives. This tells us most of what we know to be true about our own lives may not be true at all. It's an anomaly held in place by an "epistemological lock"  (a term I invented). So don't worry: transformation won't con  you: you've already been conned. By life. Transformation is the un-con.

For example, without rigorous discrimination, we all know that who we are is "in here", yes? (points to head, or to some other upper body part). We know it with total certainty. Yet maybe this certainty that who we are is "in here", is simply consistent with a primal epistemological lock, and if so, everything you know to be true about your own life, is held in check (if not check-mated)  by it - that is to say everything you know to be true about who you are as "in here", is only construed as true because of the coercion of the epistemological lock which has you hold it as true. But maybe, just ... may  ... be ... it's not true about who you really  are, and if that epistemological lock were to let up somehow (which is to say, if that epistemological lock were to release, open, or be transformed  somehow) then you'd have the possibility (after a gasp of delighted, incredulous surprise) of catching your first glimpse of who you might be really.

And that's transformation, or at least it's the moment of the onset of  transformation, the moment when you first get to see as a possibility  who you might be really.

So: who might you be ... really?

We identify with who we are as "in here" because we're compelled to do so by an epistemological lock which safeguards our survival by convincing us we're "in here". And the work of transformation brings forth the context  for it all, a context out-here  in which all content of our lives, all the events of our lives, and Life itself, show up. While all the events of your life move toward becoming whole and complete, the context of your life ie who you might be really, is already  whole and complete.

Inside of this already whole and complete context of who you really are, all of it, all times, all pasts, all presents, all futures, everything that happens, everything that's happened, everything that will happen, and everything there is, was, and will be, shows up. You already know this, and you forget it now and then. Once you notice you've forgotten it, you get it again. Inside of this already whole and complete context of who you really are, you can share anything from your life, knowing it's just "what happened". As content, sharing it is the vehicle for bringing forth the context that's already whole and complete ie the context which is who you might be really.



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