Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

You Don't Need This

Monticello Vineyards, Napa Valley, California, USA

May 11, 2009

This essay, You Don't Need This, was written at the same time as

You don't need this. You don't need transformation. If you've heard (or think you've heard) transformation is something which fills a need or (worse) is something you need, you'll never get it. It works to listen a certain way to get transformation, and if you listen transformation as something you need, that's exactly what plain doesn't work. In point of fact, you "need" transformation like a fish needs a bicycle (as Germaine Greer may have said). Honest! No fooling.

Don't listen to anyone telling you you "need" transformation, nor to anyone telling you transformation will make you better, nor to anyone telling you transformation will fix something about you because if that's the way they speak transformation, it's the classic case of being unclear on the concept. Transformation is being in Conversations For Transformation. Being in Conversations For Transformation is the access to transformation.

You're OK the way you are. This isn't therapy. This won't make you better. This won't make you alright. This is for people who are already alright. If you think there's something about you which needs fixing, if you're working on yourself, there's nothing for you here. I mean that quite literally: there's nothing for you here.

Be careful! Given our propensity for listening what we already know rather than for listening what's spoken, it's easy to miss the full implication of "there's nothing for you here" even though it sounds perfectly obvious.

There's nothing wrong, mind you, with fixing things about yourself. And there's nothing wrong with working on yourself either. Neither is there anything wrong with being in therapy, with being on the path to enlightenment, with following a guru, or even with praying for salvation. It's just not what this is. That's all.

The results of transformation are living life powerfully, and living a life you love. If you're in therapy, transformation brings being powerfully in therapy. If you're on the path to enlightenment, transformation brings being powerfully on the path to enlightenment. If you're the follower of a guru, transformation brings being the follower of a guru powerfully. If you're praying for salvation, transformation brings being powerful praying for salvation - or praying for anything else, for that matter. That ... and loving what you're doing whatever it is you're doing whenever you're doing it.

I suspect if you could ask God what she wants you to do, she'd say something like "What I want you to do is what you're doing - I don't want you to do anything else.". If that indeed were the word of God (and of course it's just my hyperthetical - which means it may not be the word of God or it may be), we'd have a hard time with it because of our already always listening we ought to be doing something else other than what we're doing.

Here's an entirely new scenario - not being better: rather, being the way we are; not fixing anything: rather, being the way we are; not doing anything differently: rather, being the way we are. And here, "being the way we are" implies being the way we naturally really are, not being the way that needs getting better, nor being the way that needs being fixed, nor even being the way that needs to be different.

In our obsession with getting better, fixing, and being different, the last place we look is who we are as we are, with nothing fixed, with nothing changed, with nothing added, and with nothing taken away. Since we already are who we are, we don't need to do anything to be who we are. Transformation isn't something you need - you don't need this. It's tough to get that. Life and everything in it grinds into us from an early age we need to (aspire to) get better, and we need to get better differently, and we need to get better differently more. To reveal transformation simply by discarding those tired, worn out old beliefs is a hard sell. It's tough. Yet obviously if it weren't tough, the world would be transformed by now.

There are no secrets. The emperor has no clothes. There's nothing to get . A master is someone who found out THIS IS IT! That's hard to get. We're obsessed with "This isn't it!". Or at least we're obsessed with "This isn't it - yet!".

You don't need this. No kidding. You don't need transformation. But if being who you really are, if living your life authentically, powerfully as a way of life interests you, then there just might be something for you here.

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