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

You Know I Love You - And I Know You Love Me

Monticello Road, Napa Valley, California, USA

June 15, 2015


"I know that you know that I love you. What I want you to know is that I know you love me."  ... 
"You don't have to go looking for love when it is where you come from."  ... 
"For all the beauty there may be, I'll never throw away my soul; only for something I don't know that one may come on randomly."  ... Saint John Of The Cross read out loud by  
This essay, You Know I Love You - And I Know You Love Me, is the twenty fourth in the complete group of Experiences Of A Friend (click here for the open group Experiences Of A Friend II):
  1. Stepping Back
  2. At Home As Self
  3. Empty Windows
  4. Futile Like A Freedom
  5. Shut Up And Do What You're Doing
  6. Werner As Intention
  7. Who He Is For Himself
  8. Source Quote
  9. Puzzle Solved, Mind Unraveled
  10. Eye To Eye
  11. Mystical Connection II
  12. Relentless
  13. Being Around Werner
  14. Being Always In Action
  15. Shaken Up And Teary
  16. On Being Sad
  17. The Complete Presentation
  18. Force Of Nature
  19. Everyone's In Love With Everyone
  20. I'm Old School
  21. Werner At The Speed Of Choice
  22. I Get Who You Are From What They Do
  23. The Significance - Not What Happened
  24. You Know I Love You - And I Know You Love Me
  25. Speaking To People's Relationship With Werner
  26. A Master At Being (And Having People Be)
  27. Werner As Source
  28. A Man Who's All There
  29. My Heart And You
  30. Mind Control
  31. Again And Again And Again And Again And Again And Again
  32. Unwavering
  33. The Leadership Course III: Pillar Of The Community
  34. American Genius
  35. Legacy II
so far, in that order.

It is also the twelfth in a group of twenty one on Love: It is also the sequel to Laurence Platt 65th Birthday.

I am indebted to Cassandra Schafhausen who inspired this conversation.


My early experiences of love were old school. Those were the olden days before I met you. My old school of love wasn't a worse school of love - and it's certainly not a better school. It's just a school which is grounded in a different love than the love which becomes possible loving you. Neither is my old school love mutually exclusive with the love which becomes possible loving you. There can be both - which is to say I have the choice of having the one or the other or both ie there's now the possibility of the one or the other or both.

What's the difference between my old school love, and the love that becomes possible loving you? The essential difference between the two is this: in my old school, I'm not fulfilled until I'm with the one I love, and in loving you, I'm always fulfilled - period. That's the truth. Yet in its truth, it paradoxically adds something real yet extraneous, something which distracts from its truth. So instead of saying "In loving you, I'm always fulfilled", it works better to say "In loving  ..., I'm always fulfilled.". This correctly differentiates between love as requiring an object of love (unfulfilled, old school), and love as a place to come from (fulfilled, loving you). When love as a place to come from, meets old school love, a miracle happens in the old school (more on this later).

Loving you is enough. Loving you isn't a doing. Loving you is a way of being. My old school love, on the other hand, is a doing which starts off being unfulfilled, and it's in being with the one I love, that I become fulfilled - that is to say it's being with the one I love that gives fulfillment. Loving you, on the other hand, whether I'm with you or not, is  fulfillment. That's its nature. It's a stunning realization, one that alters the game plan ie one which completely rearranges the furniture of what's possible in the house of love.

Many of the axiomatic rules of love which apply in my old school simply don't apply to loving you. That's neither a bad thing and nor is it a good thing. Rather it's transformational. For example, there's no requirement for compatibility:  how can who we really are, ever not be compatible with who we really are? There's no requirement for frequent face to face communication: how can who we really are, ever be out of communication with who we really are? For that matter (a real enigma for me - even though it works), there's no requirement to even be together  (which is to say, there's no requirement to even be together in close proximity in the same physical space): how can who we really are, ever not be together with who we really are? For sure, these are definitely not the axioms of the old school of love.

Here's what's interesting about that last point ie here's what's interesting about in loving you, there's no requirement to even be together: when I apply that possibility to the more traditional old school love, it brings forth a quality in old school love that's nothing short of miraculous: it brings forth the quality of the act of loving itself, being fulfilling. This, in the old school of love in which there's a requirement to be together in order for it to (and before it can) be fulfilling, is surely miraculous.

The bottom line is when loving you is brought to old school love, a miracle happens. And so that we have a common frame of reference, "a miracle is something that validates who we are rather than diminishes who we are" (that's a quote, by the way - one of the many I call "vintage Erhard"). Loving you, ensures my old school of love will never be the same again - or I could equally say loving you ensures my old school of love will always  be the same ... as the way it was originally intended to be yet never actualized. Loving you, transforms my old school of love, making it magical. And you loving me, completes my old school of love, making it magnificent.


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