The Possibility to Create your Life – Werner Erhard (Video)

Our experience always Devolves the memory that is to say to the representation of our experience our memories our concepts our descriptions of life which is not life, but a description of this our definitions Which is not that which is being defined namely not presence our Explanations our justifications our rationalizations shape our experiences So that rather than experience something directly like as an open and an opening you and I experienced through the already structures of interpretation namely our structure of concepts a conceptually shaped experience reinforces the concept of shape take the reinforce concepts more fully shapes the experience the More fully Shaped experience Reinforces the concepts and more and it goes around like this in a vicious circle that is what you and I live in – I Say that you and I live into a Vicious circle What is before us is not our past like a history? although many people Use that interpretation Rather what is before us is this vicious circle of the collapse of these two domains in which? there is no distinction between What is and? my representation of what is in which there is no distinction between the presence and the concept of The things in our lives that we live in to what goes in front of us The space into which we live our lives is this Vicious circle? Now there’s something very powerful about just that if You just restore the distinctions that you inherited as a human being so that life can show up when it is present as a present and Life can show up when it is being represented or conceptual as a concept? So I want you to be very very very clear that I am not talking about getting rid of concepts I’m not talking about irrational I’m not talking something panting intellectual that is for me like cutting off half of yourself No, there’s a richness and a power and a validity and a value in our concepts In our descriptions of life in our stories about life but not when they’re confused with the presence of life and For the most part for most people we have fallen into a collapse of these domains of distinction So change won’t work because change only alters the circumstances in the Vicious circle only becomes another form of survival creation is something from nothing from the no possibility of being for human beings From the emptiness and meaninglessness of the thunderstorm, which we are from that emptiness and meaninglessness From that no possibility from nothing something Really? Really have you got anything in your whole life which isn’t predicated on something no you Haven’t got anything in your whole life which isn’t a predicate Which isn’t predicated on something? Everything in our lives is a derivative We’re always living in to the options and to create is to Act without predicate So I’m leaving you in front of a blank canvas I’m not leaving you with a message I’m not leaving you with an answer I’m not leaving you with a prescription. I’m not leaving you any better than you were when you walked in I’m not leaving you improve I’m leaving you with a Blank canvas with an invitation What we’re talking about is a little bit like an example. I want to give you out of evolution We told that life again is a bit of protoplasm in a tropical sea And if at yeon’s the time you get life all over the sea in many various forms and so on and so forth That’s what we’re told We’re told that life in the sea Has evolved to cover every Niche and Cranny in the Sea. There’s life all over the to the top to the bottom from Fresh to soul from one sea to another and Then there’s this story about a fish who walked up on Land and I say that that’s not evolution That is to say that happens in an instant Compared to evolution and in that instant elephants and Eagles come into existence like a possibility for me the possibility the opening the freedom the chance To live with those concerns with those questions makes like an enormous privilege so being here tonight with you is for me a very profound privilege and For that privilege. I want to thank you goodnight you you