Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More



Packing My Own Parachute

Durbanville, South Africa

June 8, 1983



This essay, Packing My Own Parachute, is the fourth in a group of twelve adapted from my thesis BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING:
  1. Keeping Your Word Means Making Happen What You Said Is Going To Happen
  2. Commitment And The Willingness To Have It All Work Out For Everyone
  3. Keeping Your Word Is A Black And White Issue
  4. Packing My Own Parachute
  5. Fear
  6. Commitment Creates The Space For Keeping Your Word To Happen
  7. Skydiving
  8. Workability
  9. Participation
  10. BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING
  11. Seeing Is Not Believing (Seeing Is Seeing And Believing Is Believing)
  12. Attention To Detail


Paying close attention to detail goeswith  life working (as Alan Watts may have said).

I became aware of minute details of my equipment while packing my own parachute during a skydiving intensive - threads, specks, patterns in the weaving of the reserve parachute pack, and similarly fine details of the harness and skydiving gear when I came to put them on.

So pointed did my attention become that a focus, which allowed me to notice everyone and everything all around me in intimate detail, became spontaneously enlivened. It was both pleasing and refreshing, a perceptual opening, a melting away of mists from my field of vision.

If I paid as much attention to detail in my daily life as I paid while packing my own parachute while preparing for skydiving, my life would work infinitely better.

From now on, I will live as if my life depends on it.


This essay, Packing My Own Parachute, recreates Observation 7: Attention To Detail of my thesis, BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING, which is available at

http://laurenceplatt.home.att.net/breakthrough

The essay BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING introduces the thesis.


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© Laurence Platt - 1983, 1986, 1995, 2000, 2002 through 2009 Permission