Life is Transformative

In an ancient Hindu legend, the creator Brahma creates the world then rests each of its four corners on the back of a celestial elephant. The psychologist William James asked an Indian holy man to explain what supports each of those four celestial elephants on the backs of which rest the four corners of the world.

"Each of the four elephants" said the holy man "stands on the back of another elephant.".

James paused, and then asked "And what supports those elephants?".

"Each of those four elephants" replied the holy man "stands on the back of another elephant.".

"And what" asked James "supports those elephants?".

There's nothing to do. There's nowhere to go. There's nothing to get.

In the normal course of events, if I say that, people will hear me speaking apathy and resignation.

It's not that. It's really an inspired state.

What's tantalizing and therefore interesting about it is you can't make it happen. You can't make "nothing to do" happen because that's making something to do. You can't make "nowhere to go" happen because that's making somewhere to go. You can't make "nothing to get" happen because that's making something to get.

Now I'm just being here high up on the edge of this cliff overlooking the river meandering through the canyon thousands of feet below, and if I just cold, plain, flat-footed look and tell the truth about what I see, I notice it's already done, I notice I'm already here, I notice there's nothing to get and I already got it.

No one has to do this or take this on, but I say that in the new realm of possibility, anyone can take on being the master of sleep.

Once we thought that smoking cigarettes was OK. It turns out that smoking will kill you. Once we thought that red meat and potatoes was a good diet. It turns out that it will clog your arteries. Once we thought we had to have ten hours of sleep a night.

Well, in the public domain, we have not vanquished that one yet, but I say that just like cigarettes and red meat, what really works is probably not what you think works, nor what current lore dictates.

If you bring conscious intention to bear when you are awake, miracles happen. So why not bring conscious intention to bear when you are asleep? And don't say that you can not do that - you can. If you do, not only is a whole new realm of possibility available to you, but so are many, many more waking hours of the day, too.

In a transformed life, there are no solutions - only questions. Yet one of the solutions I am most often asked for is the solution to being upset.

You are sailing along, happily, in your transformed yacht on a transformed ocean under a cloudless, blue, transformed sky with nothing but transformed intentions, when suddenly ... Wham! ... there it is: the disruption and the dislocation of an upset making it's unwanted, ugly presence known suddenly, surprisingly, unexpectedly, automatically, and rudely against your will.

While I do not have a solution for that, it is useful to consider this:

I don't see myself as any different than anyone else. I am actually quite ordinary and probably a bit boring. In many respects, I don't have anything unusual going on in my life. I have no inner secrets which everyone should know. I have no red telephone or hotline to enlightenment.

There is one area in my life where I notice I have something to offer, and that is in my speaking and listening. When I first experienced transformation, I knew that the way I had lived up until that moment was finished. I saw that it was all over for Laurence Platt. I saw that who I am is the space in which the events of my life occur. I saw that I am not my story.

There is something to add to the Sleep After Transformation conversation in the following three paragraphs, the purpose of which is to round off, complete, and maybe clarify something of what was said:

The need for sleep is very personal for people. You need rest. That is not in question. Exactly how much you need is in question. If you eliminate escape sleep (ie if you are intent on eliminating escape sleep) and sleep just to sleep and not to escape life, then I assert that the duration of sleep you need is far, far less than is commonly believed.

You have to also have a context for my remarks. I am not mouthing mere platitudes about sleep in general. I am specifically speaking about sleep after transformation. People start to notice that being inauthentic drives them unconscious (ie once they can make that distinction) - in other words, being inauthentic is very, very tiring.

Since we have all begun processing through what happened on Tuesday September 11, 2001, I have participated in many, many conversations, all of which started with what happened, and then quickly lost their distinction from and devolved into the story about what happened.

Someone said the following to me (and I am keeping her name private because while she may be misinterpreted as being totally callous, her distinction is also razor sharp, terse, and accurate). She said:

What happened was two airplanes flew into two buildings.

Food for thought, right? That is what happened. And what ensued is the mother of all stories about what happened ...

Especially now, the relevance of the conversation for transformation is that it gives a platform from which to distinguish the source of your transformation from the events in your life - no matter what those events are - and thereby to provide a stand for what becomes possible out of the languaging we are.

This is today's iteration of an ancient, ancient conversation. The Vedic pundits of India of five thousand years ago noted that when the word for any object was uttered by a saint in the Sanskrit language, that object would materialize and manifest out of nothing.

Others have said: "In the Beginning was the Word ...."

I watched the events unfold in New York City yesterday via the internet from a computer on my trainer's podium during a five day seminar I am leading this week in Wichita, Kansas.

This is what I got:

THAT is not who I am. THAT is content only. Yes, it is horror movie content, but that's all it is - content.

As I got the enormity of it, I got bigger to take it in. Then when THAT horror movie seemed to get bigger, I got bigger again to take it in.

Eventually I got - out of THAT - how big I really am.

Whatever my compassion, regret, emotion, anger etc about THAT really is, in the end, I choose my context to hold that content, and I declare I am bigger than that content. WAAAAY bigger ...

Watching Werner in action, I wondered how he did what he did with such velocity and alacrity, two days straight, over sixteen hours each day, with very, very little sleep.

The question arises: What is the basic requirement for sleep in a transformed life? The evidence is that more energy, more alacrity, more aliveness, more zeal, and more drive than you ever imagined is obviously possible with fewer hours of sleep than you ever imagined.

Before I participated Werner's work for the first time, I needed to sleep at least eight hours a night, and on most weekends, at least ten hours a night. I had it that my body needed that much sleep in order to function effectively.