Life, Living and Winning the Game

From a lecture given by Werner Erhard in San Francisco on May 23, 1973

Living is really pretty simple. Living happens right now; it doesn’t happen back then, and it doesn’t happen out there. Living is not the story of your life. Living is the process of experiencing right now.

Thinking about right now, figuring it out, perceiving it, arguing, reading about or believing anything about right now – none of these produce any certainty about living.

When you get beyond the symbols and beliefs about now, beyond thinking about it, beyond efforting or working at it, when you get even beyond merely feeling it, when you get all the way up to observing it, being with it, and finally up to totally experiencing it, the uncertainty about living goes away, because you know the truth in the only way in which a being ever knows the truth – by direct experience.

Actually, it is possible to open up the space for people to transcend life, to transcend these things that get in the way of being here now, so that they can experience being here now for themselves.

Let’s take a look at the nature of now. What I’ve noticed with the people I’ve interacted with is that everyone who truly experiences right here, right now, actually sees that it’s all perfect exactly the way it is. When I am being myself, nothing more and nothing less – when I am doing exactly what I am doing – when I am allowing what is so around me to be exactly like it is – when I am being right here instead of where I am going – when I am observing it all just as it is without adding any judgments or evaluations or comparing it, then I observe that it is perfect. (For right now, - not that it should stay that way.) A thing is perfect when it is the way it is – when it is itself. To take away or add to that would produce a flaw. Therefore it is all perfect because, in terms of experiencing, that is to say, living, what is so right now is what is so right now. Truly, that is the whole realization. There is nothing startling about that. What is, is and what isn’t, isn’t. So what! – That’s precisely what people say when they find out. Enthusiastically – So What! There’s an enormous freedom in experiencing that. When you can really observe and experience that, it transforms your ability to experience living.