Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

Purple Child

Jessel Gallery, Napa, California, USA

October 27, 2006

This essay, Purple Child, is the companion piece to Reflection On A Window.

It was written at the same time as

I am indebted to Jessel Miller who inspired this conversation.

When children come to me I see them as nothing but pure possibility. They can do anything. They can go anywhere. They can become anything. All the world's in front of them. What will they be?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not referring to the things which will happen to them during the course of their lives. I'm not alluding to the situations and the circumstances off of which they'll inevitably bounce like balls in a game of bagatelle, the impacts from some of which they'll recover immediately - those from others will take a little longer. I'm talking about whether or not each child, as they grow, will recognize they have the inherent ability to invent any possibility for themselves and for their lives. I'm talking about whether or not each child will come to realize they have the inherent ability to make the future success of all mankind their own personal business. I'm talking about whether or not they'll joyfully take that on, whether or not they'll commit their lives to making a difference, whether or not they'll choose to bring who they really are to bear on their lives and on all those whose lives they touch.

The color purple in one's aura indicates compassion ... or so they say. Whether or not you're a proponent of auras or of Kirlian photography to record them is not a requirement for this conversation. I'm personally neutral on both - which means I have the space for them to have validity or not. What's useful for this conversation, however, is the notion of so called purple children, children who are born into the world with an already compassion for human life, indeed with an already compassion for Life itself, which they'll manifest, develop, and gift to humanity during and as a result of their lives on Planet Earth.

The purple child. Think of the Dalai Lama's Tibetan Buddhists' purple robes. Yes, that color. Then align that color with the soul of a child. That's where the notion of the purple child arises. Kind of like Buddha babies, Buddha children. There's a lot of them coming through right now. The purple child finds himSelf easily. To the purple child, presence of Self is already fait accompli. To the purple child it's incongruous at first that other people actually embark on a journey towards Self. The purple child is born already there, at least like a possibility.

A child comes in various shapes and sizes when it comes to being who he really is. There's the one who manages to get along, and he gets along well. He does what needs to be done. And if he doesn't know what needs to be done he seeks to learn what needs to be done. Life goes well for this child. Yet if you asked him to tell you the truth in those quiet after midnight hours when he, from time to time, lies awake unable to sleep, he'll tell you something's missing but he won't be able to say exactly what it is.

Then there's the child who doesn't quite get along. Life is a struggle. All the time. With everything. No matter what he wants, no matter what he tries, life and the world never quite sanction his base choices. He clashes, to one degree or another, with life and the world when he does what he wants to do. It's not who he really is which he clashes with life and the world because he has no idea who he really is. It's how he really is which he clashes with life and the world. Frustrated, thwarted, and even angry with life and the world for not committing themselves to making him happy, he ends up in therapy or, in the worst case, in jail.

Werner in Philadelphia, 1939
four years old

Then there's the purple child. Content from the day he's born with simply being alive, the purple child has an uncanny almost magnetic ability to draw the best out of everyone around him seemingly without doing anything to make that happen. While other children fill their conversations with the latest fashions, hand held devices, or video games, all of which make life and the world a more exciting place for them to live in, the purple child simply gives of his own presence, of his own being, of his own sense of his already loved life thereby making those qualities possible for others for whom they didn't exist before.

For the purple child, what's worth going for are those qualities of life which, when shared, will bring out that same sense in and for others. And, being a purple child, he doesn't even have to go for them: he's already being them, and he already knows he's being them with an innocent authority which cuts to the chase and gets everyone to sit up and take notice. Even though they may not be exactly sure what it is they're sitting up and taking notice of, people experience their consciousness raised around the purple child.

But eventually the purple child will bow to the ways of the world which grind into him he's not perfect. He'll learn (Man! He ... will ... learn!) he must vacate his calling if he's to get along in life. He'll be convinced (by those who know no better) he can't make anything disappear. And with that, he'll begin a time of endarkenment - the lost years.

Then, more sooner than later (and certainly much sooner than for most - in fact, lifetimes sooner than for most if you subscribe to the Buddhist notion of reincarnation), the purple child's purpleness will triumph and come through, first to the purple child so quietly and so intimately and so gradually even the purple child himself will at first not realize anything special is happening. And then it will come through to those with the good fortune to be called to be in the orbit of the purple child.

When asked whether or not they believe in the purple child, those people will say no, they don't believe. Instead they will say (as Carl Gustav Jung may have said) they know.

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