Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More


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You II

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

January 13, 2022

"i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)"  ... e e cummings read out loud by  
"Enlightenment is giving up the notion that you are unenlightened." ... Laurence Platt, BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING 
This essay, You II, is the companion piece to No Greater Love.

It is also the sequel to You.

I am indebted to Reyhan Mehta who inspired this conversation, and to JeanneLauree Olsen who contributed material.





Werner speaking with University of Rochester's Simon School of Business:
"We want to get to (as we call it) opening the refrigerator door and finding the Grand Canyon in there."
I write. So I'm a writer. I intend to post two thousand essays or more to this Conversations For Transformation website before I die, thereby attracting two million views or more. Because I'm a prolific  writer, people assume I'm also a voracious reader. They send me lists of books and suggestions of articles to read based on what they assume would interest me. Some people ask me to recommend the books I've liked from which they'd get the experience of transformation.

It's often assumed all writers read a lot. But I don't read much. No I don't condemn / disparage the value of reading. It's that out of knowing you, I've discovered that authentic transformation doesn't show up in the written / read word. What you personify for me (brilliantly so, I might add) is transformation showing up in my mouth  ie in the spoken / listened word - and by that I mean in the spoken / listened face-to-face in-the-flesh fully-and-physically-present  word.

I don't disdain reading. But I'll bet big money authentic alive  genuine thrilling  transformation shows up when we're in spoken / listened face-to-face in-the-flesh fully-and physically-present conversations with you. And I'm the first to admit even my own essays are but approximations to an experience of transformation being around you (each of the essays is close but no cigar).

There's something else I have to say about that, which is this: not reading much, compels me to come up with the material by ... my ... Self  rather than draw from a space already filled with others' ideas. It keeps me on track to "discovering the material and the distinctions, for my Self" rather than merely regurgitating that which is already written. Distinguishing this  distinction is arguably your most brilliantly unique gift to humanity (certainly to me) for which I've never been able to thank and / or acknowledge you sufficiently or enough because my own astonishment at realizing the enormity of what you unerringly make available, keeps on getting in my way.

You don't tell me how to make (my) life work: your presence  / the way you be, reminds me (my) life is already  working / it's always  worked by itself. You don't espouse strategies to get me what will satisfy me: your presence / the way you be, reminds me of the possibility of having satisfaction just by being. You don't come across like some great man  as all those gurus do: when I'm around you I get I'm  the great man. You want nothing from me. No matter what's going on with me, you love me (yet you don't need me). You have no expectations of me. You're my Friend because you say you are. The friendship you afford me (us) is the keys to the kingdom. And so that there's no hidden meaning here: the "kingdom"? It's dogshit reality, the freeway, the morning commute, the basics, life exactly  as it's lived.

The coin of this realm? It's word. In it, you read us poetry* (from which I get: sharing who we really are is our highest calling). Poetry?! While the world looks the way it looks, while we panic the way we panic, you read us poetry!  No, it's not tone deaf at all: it's awesome. It's got verve. It's got brass. It's brilliant. It works. It's You.


* Click here for e e ("Edward Estlin") cummings' exquisitely crafted poem "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)" complete text (works best with latest versions of Chrome and Firefox).

Then create Werner reading it out loud for you.


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