This essay,
The Transformation Of China,
is the one hundredth essay in this
Conversations For Transformation
internet series. That doesn't mean anything. It's just
what's so.
It is the second in the trilogy
World Transformed:
I am indebted to Evan Hough and to Josh LeGassick and to Jerome Downes
and to Randy Loftin who inspired this conversation, and to Victoria
Hamilton-Rivers who contributed material.
Many things about who human being really is are contentious. That is
actually a lot closer to the truth than it sounds.
When I set aside the conceptual machinery and look at the context of my
experience, what I see is my Self. When I am alone, when I am by my
Self, I get that when each human being sets aside the conceptual
machinery and looks at the context of their experience, what they see
is their Self. One of the most contentious things about human beings
regardless of philosophical, political, or religious affiliation
(particularly regardless of religious affiliation) is when they each
see their Self, the Self each human being sees is the same Self, which
is the same Self as my Self. Indeed, Self is all there is.
I am not saying that in order to be contentious. Neither am I saying it
as a matter of positionality nor to be righteous nor to have something
to believe in - I, for one, do not believe in belief. I say it rather
as a place to stand. I say it as a space in which to create, an opening
in which the truth can show up and go to work.
When Werner Erhard first introduced me to transformation, years of my
so called searching came to an abrupt end. What Werner showed me was so
blindingly simple, so completely obvious that I wondered how come I had
not seen it before on my own. What I got was my Self ie
the Self ... and the possibilty of generating life rather
than being run by it.
Some years later I revised how I was holding another of Werner's
distinctions. I saw I was mistaking what I am for
who I am.
I assert that mastering this distinction (what we are distinct from who
we are) designates when a human being has truly grown up ie when all so
called searching is over, when the train has arrived in the station,
when "This Is It!" is the platform for living.
The distinction "what I am" as opposed to
"who I am"
is this:
What I am is the context for my life, the opening in which the events
of my life occur, the Self I am, the Self you are, the Self we all are,
the Self which is all there is.
Who I am,
on the other hand, is constituted in language. We are
human beings - who-man beings - because of
who we are (and who we are is constituted in language) not
because of what we are. All other sentient beings and
everything else that doesn't speak shares with us what we
are but not who we are.
In an earlier health conscious time it was said
who I am
is what I eat. In a later wealth conscious time it was said
who I am
is what I wear. Instead I would like to consider a new possibility,
whether understood or not, that
who I am
is what I speak.
The source of all possibilities is at the confluence of
what we are and who we are. What
we are, the Self, is whole and complete. There is nothing to do and
there is nothing to fix. Who we are is what we speak.
That being the case, let it be that whatever we speak is worthy of
life. Let it be that whatever we speak generates life.
Bearing in mind that everything is already whole and complete, mastery
is generating possibilities worthy of life simply by speaking them into
being rather than speaking in terms of fixing things.
I propose we start a new game like a possibility. Let's
transform* China. Just for the
sake of transforming China. There's no ulterior motive. I want nothing
less than the transformation of China. There's megalomania for you!
It would be great to observe transformation in China. That's not a
political statement (and if it were, I suspect it would actually
prohibit transformation of any kind). Rather, what it says is it's
always inspiring to observe transformation emerge in any country in the
world which at one time didn't have it.
How do you transform China? The same way you transform anything. You
start a conversation about the transformation of China. What will
transform China is being in a conversation about the transformation of
China. And when you are no longer being in a conversation about the
transformation of China, China will no longer be being transformed.