Notes - Erhard, The Heart of the Matter

Everyday concerns

What kind of being is a human being?
What is the possibility for being for human beings?

—> Questions aren’t about looking good

What is the practical value, what is the impact that these issues have for us?
What is the correlation with these issues and our Everyday way of being and concerns in life?

Erhard’s method: Transformation

The Domain: Being
An inquiry in being in the domain of being

Not designed to produce answers or solutions, or a prescription for living.
In the process of this inquiry insights show up that dramatically impact the quality of our lives.

Insights don’t show up as answers, but as actual openings, or a space for being, a sense of freedom, or a being empowered in your everyday being in the world and your everyday concerns

Thinking that’s gotten us to where we are is insufficient to solving the problems of where we are. - Einstein

Working on what you don’t know: Ask questions to get answers to expand what you know

This is not about what you know, your opinion …

It’s about what you don’t know that you don’t know. Very few people know anything about what they don’t know that they don’t know.

What Werner Knows:

The kind of question, relationship with what we don’t know. Finding out is not much of value, when you begin to deal with what you don’t know that you don’t know. Asking questions, doesn’t work. Asking questions to get the answer isn’t powerful in dealing with what you don’t know that you don’t know.

There is a way to question or be with the question which is appropriate for getting at what you don’t know that you don’t know.

You don’t pose the question to get an answer, but to stand inside of as in a space and look out from to the whatever is the world to look out to.

Uncharted waters that may not be like water or act like water.

From which to stand, looking inside out, an moving from space to space still in the question.

To get to this stand, one needs to be willing to do violence to what we identify with and what we know.

We’re trained to listen for answers. This is about freedom and power, not about getting better, reducing the risk that life is by getting answers or solutions or prescriptions.

We’re here rather to conduct a special inquiry.

We are a psychological interpretation, a set of assessments … This is not about that.

The domain is being, not psychology, or history, or biology.

Authenticity:  We abhor the thought, we’re committed to looking good.
    We showed up in the commitment to looking good.
    We are inauthentic about being inauthentic. We are a cover up for our own inauthenticity
        Thus—> The need for violence.


Getting permission to be with one’s own inauthenticity, be in the clearing of the question, and get beyond what we think or believe and be in the question, looking out to see what you can see.

Superstitions are only powerful when they’re not superstitions, when they’re an *IS*, are so …

Superstitions determine the options in which people live. Recognizing a superstition neutralizes the *IS* and gives a person more and more freedom to be and live.

The you that you are is a superstition.  The *I* you speak when you say *I* think, is a superstition.

We are that we are the *I* that is pointed to in I think or I feel.

Human being was here before we showed up, already had a scope of possibility. Maybe human being is using us. We showed up in human being, and it is using us, it already was, a thrust, a scope, a definition, a certain set of options. And those options are using us.

    There are thoughts, there is thinking, consider the possibility that it isn’t you thinking.
    *IT* thinks and you have the thoughts.
    “One of things it thought up is YOU.”

What is it that the stars will move for?  That’s missing, that we don’t know that we don’t know about this issue.

Our concerns are for our own identity. Our appetites have us. Our concerns have us. Our appetites and concerns are *IT*s concerns, not my own.

The possibility of being a human being is an already set of options we showed up in. There are no possibilities, just a set of options.

There only OPTIONS in the possibility that we showed up in as Human Being.

One possibility of options.
    Begin to see why problems have not changed since beginning of time
    Options on the board we showed up in.

Our lives not determined by the circumstances but the box in which circumstances showed up in.
    The box has more power than the circumstances themselves
    Not much power in what you think.
        Tell your opinion to the stars and see if they care or not
    The box determines what you think
        Some people who are about to die, have lives richer than people who can pass physical
        Intelligent people less effective than less intelligent people due to the box

We give no thought to the box, far more to the circumstances.
    We’re unaware that we’re unaware
    We live in a structure of interpretation
        We only think what’s allowed in that set of options.

What are we being used for?  By this box that we showed up in?

Being of Human Being is survival, that is what we’re being used for, a possibility.
When you are that you are *IT* … The I in the phrase I think, I want, I
    What it’s up to is making you right and everything else wrong
    Using me to Win, justify it, invalidate anything else

If you cover up being used, you are resigned to being used
    only coming to confront our inauthenticity that *IT* thinks and we that have the thoughts

It’s a trap, resistance and avoidance is more of the trap

Lots of options, no choice. We’re thrown to a particular set of options

MOOD of RESIGNATION
 
    that environment of being which you wake up to in the morning

Observe … is their any possibility, are they thinking
    or are they really speaking out of the resignation to the options that own us.

Addiction to looking good holds the resignation in place. Our unwillingness to confront our own
    inauthenticity, making ourselves right and others wrong

Most complaints are a racket to not show up at whatever opportunity is there
    complaints help us to avoid domination
    we don’t give everything we got in relationship
    let’s us off the hook for being responsible for relationship as an opportunity.

The rackets payoff is that you get to be right
    people would rather be right than be loved or love

The Acceptance of the inauthenticity will lead to a breaking up of the Resignation that you are
    The environment of being that you wake up in the morning
     Looking good, we don’t mean it, and we know we don’t mean it
        afraid to express our own doubts for fear of not looking good

Best place to look are those places that you complain in life.

Erhard: I promise you will never get happy in life. The pursuit is an absolute guarantee against happiness.

    Life has no meaning or purpose, same as a thunderstorm
    not going anywhere like a purpose, wonderfully unpredictable
    adding meaning, we cover up inauthenticity of the being of human being
        fundamentally inauthentic, a being used by being

The being of human being is a mechanism the design which is of survival
    we can’t hear this because we think its going to work out
    it’s not going to work out, because this is it, this is the way it worked out
        if you don’t like it, too bad

The whole story in which you are a player in the script called your life, is fundamentally inauthentic
    like a thunderstorm, doesn’t mean anything
    we kick in our windshield when we have a flat, our complaining
    doesn’t mean anything that it doesn’t mean anything

The Box in which options come determines the quality of life
    the box we showed up in has no being
        no choice

can’t use the fact that its meaningless and empty, it’s empty that it’s empty
    Erhard: I say it’s a possibility to stand and look out at life.

Domains of Showing Up
    what opportunities for showing up is there?
   
    structure of concept limits and shapes our experience which reinforces the concept - viscous circle

Collapse of 2 Domains
    no distinction between what is and my representation
    between the presence and concepts in our lives
   
Restore the distinction between experience and concept

I forgot lives in a different domain of showing up than being late.

There is no difference if your late and you forgot and your late and you remembered
    our culture doesn’t make the distinction either
        it wants to know why your late

A question arises when we confront our inauthenticity
    what is the possibility of being for human beings
    asked in the environment called resignation gives more inauthenticity, survival answers

    None of the answers makes any difference
    the questioning generates a breaking open from the resignation, a sense of freedom

    instead of a given set of options, there will be a freedom to be with something constraining before.

The risk of being alive
First answer … there isn’t possibility of being for human beings.
    What we showed up in did not include being
    *IT* is only concerned with survival

If you can be with the emptiness and meaningless of life
    a thunderstorm about which we tell a story
    if you can be with the inauthenticity it becomes a clearing

Changing is something from something, we would change the situation
    except there is no possibility of being for human beings, so change won’t work
    change only alters circumstances, becomes another form of survival

Creation is something from nothing
    our whole lives is a derivative, a predicate   
    were always living into the options
    to create is to act without predicate

First you have to restore the emptiness and meaningless that you are
    Being honest about being inauthentic OPENS the possibility
   
Being cannot be evidence, there is no predicate, the possibility
    of being as itself, the stand that I am the stand that I take
    not a change
    the possibility of possibility,
        is a product of taking a stand as a clearing for that for which you stand

maybe your not the kind of meaningless which is i like, i want, i think

a clearing for life to show up in like a possibility, like something from nothing

Erhard: inviting you to take a stand that the stand that you take is a possibility or clearing for the stand you take

    live in the question, what is the possibility for being for human beings?
    not possibility of options, but being authentic about our inauthenticity
        instead of living our lives into our past and the resignation of the options using us

    a question like an opening is not to live into the resignation in which we wake up looking for an answer.

Einstein's ideas on God

Einstein's REAL view on G-D:

1)  I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.

2)  Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.

3)  My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

4}  The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.

5)  Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

## The scientists' religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

6)  There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

7)  The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

8)  The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious; It is the source of all true art and science.

9)  We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

10)   Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.

11)   When the solution is simple, God is answering.

12)   God does not play dice with the universe.

13)   God is subtle but he is not malicious.

14)  A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.

15)  Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

16)  The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

17)  Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

18)  Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.

19)  The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books---a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.

20)  The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

21)  What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

22)  The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.

23)  The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.

24)  True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.

25)  Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to form in the social life of man.

The Existence of God

Einstein said, "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am conv inced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."

"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious."

My comment is ...  I hear Einstein's arguement against the existence of god as a direct result of his idea that man's higher possibilities in general are directly related to his having higher levels of consciousness, and that these are independent of any idea or belief in God. The arguement then is that if what is possible is available independently of the idea of god then that necessarily invalidates the existence of God, because in a world where nothing changes of value when the idea of the very source of value is removed, then that source must not exist. For, it's very definition doesn't allow it to when it becomes unnecessary.

IE Would God ever be observed just chillin or hanging out, IE Existing? No, therefore, God does Not exist.