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

Forever

JavAmoré Café, Penngrove, California, USA

April 30, 2017
"If every word I said could make you laugh, I'd talk forever. I asked the sky just what we had. It shone forever." ... Dennis Wilson, Forever 
This essay, Forever, is the eighteenth in an open group with titles borrowed from Songs: It is also the seventeenth in a group of twenty one on Love:

It's the very stuff of fairy tales: a love that lasts forever. But in the real  world, isn't love always only fleeting? elusive? isn't that just the way love is? And listen: I'm not asking those questions as a skeptic. Rather, I'm asking whether or not there's more available for love than a fleeting, elusive experience. In the real world, is there the possibility of a love that lasts forever? When I began looking into this, I realized I would have to re-think ie to re-construe what I mean when I say "I love you.".

To do that, I had to distinguish then dispense with all the usual tired old concepts which obfuscate love. For starters, I had to get beyond love as feelings  - as in "I have feelings  for you.". I also had to get beyond love as approving  / liking  - as in "I like you / I like what you do / I like the way  you do what you do" etc etc.

I finally figured it out. When I say "I love you", what I'm really  saying is "I recreate that you are.". When I say "I love life", what I'm really saying is "I recreate that life is.". In other words, "I love you" translates directly to "I am  that you are.". That's a lot closer to the truth than it sounds. To further expand on, and tighten up this idea by invoking Werner, "I am that you are, exactly the way you are, and exactly the way you aren't.". That's what I mean when I say "I love you.". That's  love!

Said this way, "I love you" brings forth the possibility of love grounded in being. When I love you grounded in being, I give up love as an inventory of my feelings for you. Love as feelings, is a function of the vagaries of our endocrine systems, so love as feelings comes and goes. With love grounded in being, there's only "I love you" / there's no "I don't love you" (don't believe it just because I said so - inquire for yourself and see if it's true). Also, when I love you grounded in being, I give up love as approving you / liking you, what you do, and the way you do it. Look: neither disapproving nor disliking are impediments to love grounded in being. Really.

Grounded in being, I grant  you "I love you". And watch: granting you "I love you", doesn't require you earn  my love first. Really it doesn't. Love grounded in being, is a gift we give which honors that which already is  ie it honors what's already so.

It took me at least the first half of my life and then some, to get that. And getting it required so many false starts that I've lost track of exactly how many I endured. Love like this (in other words, love grounded in being) takes all the effort out of love ie it takes all the guesswork out of love. It also says something je ne sais quoi  about the true nature of love, raising the possibility of love perhaps arising synchronously with being. Given you and I and all of us and all this  already is, it's clear love (ie love grounded in being) is already in abundance everywhere like a possibility. That's the breakthrough which is available here.

When I love you (which is to say when I recreate that you are), all my attention is on you. When I love life (which is to say when I recreate that life is), all my attention is on life. Very little effort is required for me to recreate that you are, given you already are. Very little effort is required for me to recreate that life is, given life already is. So when I love you grounded in being, I have no attention on myself. If that were it, in and of itself, it would be a miracle. With love, it's life-altering.

This is the way of love grounded in being. This is not the love in a fairy tale. This is love in the real world. If there's ever going to be the possibility of a love that lasts forever in the real world, it's the possibility of a love grounded in being. Being is eternal. Being is forever. So it's a love which is grounded in being, that lasts forever.

Background soundtrack: Dennis Wilson: Forever - wait for 2.54M download

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