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




Up All Night

St Helena, California, USA

December 26, 2007



Recently almost by accident I discovered something which turned my pleasure principle  around one hundred and eighty degrees on its ear. It's this:

Whenever I, a man, am intent on taking my own pleasure, whenever I receive  pleasure, it's over too soon. Then there's the obligatory relax and regenerate  interval before I can participate again.

That's not always a break I choose to take. Yet I must - I have no choice. That's not the way I'd like it to be. I'd prefer to play on. But I can't. It's certainly not personal. Rather, that's just the way it is with male physiology.

However, whenever I give  pleasure being less interested in my own in favor of another's, there's no limit. I can go on forever. I can stay up all night.

This is way more than mere boy talk. This is an adult, senior conversation which starts off noting obvious differences in male and female physiology, then continues from there to an even more valuable observation which is universally applicable regardless of gender and independent of physiology.

There's something very profound for me in this conversation, something fundamental dating back to antiquity in this examination of how my male body really  works, something which resonates deeply for me. When I accept the critical differences in the way my male body works differently than your female body, when I get what's so  about where we're different, when I act congruent with the way it is  rather than with the way I'd like it to be, something becomes available which was only hinted at before. It's something which never showed up before as what's possible. Until now it's only showed up as what's attainable  ie as a level of performance, and only as a level of performance to aspire to at that.

That's never sat right with me. In fact it's always showed up for me as a design flaw  in God's architecture of the way male and female human beings' bodies are constructed to work together. I'd learned in order to overcome this design flaw a certain masterful  performance was required. And if that level of masterful performance was attained, it was awarded the ridiculously furtive label "staying power".

That's how I had it pegged while being resigned to performing like a trained seal to make this design flaw, this fundamental incompatibility  in our male and female pleasure machinery. work.

That's classic, by the way: Laurence  criticizing God  for creating things the way they are ...  That's truly wild ...

Then came this. Stepping outside the box, what I saw is while there's never enough pleasure for me to take, there's more than enough, there's an abundance  of pleasure for me to give.

It's living proof of all the old adages  I've ever heard, all those wonderfully pithy  epithets which speak to the wealth we already are  and which we've long forgotten in our headlong rush to acquire wealth. We're told by the saints, by the seers, by the sages of the world how giving  is receiving, how without giving we can't ever get  enough to make us happy. Yet paradoxically lasting happiness goeswith  giving away whatever it is we ourselves want (as Alan Watts may have said). That's the golden rule. You can't always get what you want but you can  always give  what you want (as Mick Jagger may have said).

What's prudent about this discovery for me, where it's pragmatic and smart  is it's verifiable, it's prove-able, it works dramatically well, and in all likelihood it works for everyone.

That's exciting enough to keep me up all night.



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