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

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Getting Out Of The Way (So Others Can Experience Him)

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

October 18, 2026

This essay, Getting Out Of The Way (So Others Can Experience Him). is the companion piece to Who Are You As Family? Or: Is Your Word Your Bond?.

with Lonny McLaughlin

Sometime very early on in the piece, I knew I wanted to be around him. It wasn't when I saw him for the first time. Even then, though I sensed something remarkable was in the offing, I hadn't yet figured out what it was. I didn't understand it (these kinds of things aren't arrived at by understanding anyway). The first time I really knew I wanted to be around him and get whatever it was that he had, was when I realized almost everyone in his greater family has enrolled in his work. And not just his wife and children. Yes, all of them too, but plus his parents, siblings, cousins ... you know, the list, the who's who of it, went on and on and on. There was something about the unusualness of that, which you can really only get subliminally. That's when I knew he was on to something, even if I couldn't articulate exactly what it was. But I did get it. Back in those days, I wasn't yet able to share it in ways that enrolled others for them to get. Yet whatever it was I got, it was patently clear to me: this is it, the real deal, no faking, no pretenses. I was enrolled, and I was in love.

I knew I wanted to be around him, to be near him, to be more than just a face in the crowd listening him, hanging on to his every syllable. The attraction was instant, magnetic. But not in my wildest dreams could I have ever suspected that I would request and be granted private, personal one-on-one time with him. Sure, I could ask for it. That would be my authentic Self-expression. But I had zero reality on that my request would actually be granted. How wrong I was! I requested a private, personal meeting with him. Much to my surprise and delight, he granted my request! Even more surprising was that as that meeting with him was drawing to a close, I requested and was granted another private meeting. I could barely stand it / let in what a privilege that is. We've had nine private meetings in various cities round the world, depending on his schedule being conducive to it. For one of them, I flew from my home in California to Tokyo, Japan to have lunch with him, then returned to the airport after lunch and flew home. Distance is not a formidable barrier with him.

If we couldn't meet face to face in-person, telephone meetings were set up for us by his staff. We've had ten of those. Sometime in all those telephone meetings, he granted my request to e-mail questions to him in lieu of personal conversations during our private visits. There were one hundred and forty of those. He answered many but not all of them. In addition, there were numerous random meetings with him, each of which were personal encounters in their own right, leading to powerful experiences of him. I lost track of counting those encounters at over one hundred. And no matter how many of those brilliant, fortuitous, privileged encounters he granted me, it was never enough. I just couldn't get enough of them, and I could never get enough of him. I kept on asking again and again and again, ever-hopeful yet ever-expecting to be declined, and he (much to my surprise and delight) kept on granting.

Then one day I realized something profound: that after all our private, personal, one-on-one times together, I had gotten so much of what there is to get, that it was time to make room, to get out of the way, and leave the space (and his calendar) free so others could also experience him for themselves. That, I realized, is what I really wanted: for others, as many people as possible in fact, to experience what being around him makes available. And given what he makes available, at some point in the piece I began to see the inauthenticity in my not letting go of / relinquishing the specialness and privilege of being around him, so others can have that transformative* experience also. You can't hold on to transformation for yourself. You can't keep it to yourself. Why? Because transformation only works if you share it, that is if you give it away. I've realized that he always knew I had to discover that for myself. I've also realized that his generosity in making himself available to me on all those occasions until I discovered it for myself, is simply staggering. It's a divine gift.

Transformational or transformative?

transformational: pertaining to transformation

transformative: causing transformation

Citation: wikidiff

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