Discover the insights of one of the twentieth century’s world’s greatest spiritual thinkers.
Have you ever read something that made you rethink the world and reality?
That happens to me every time I read Allan Watts’ books.
And I want to share three of his most disturbing thoughts that will blow your mind if you internalize them.
Let’s start.
On the meaning of life
“A person is like a slit through which the energy of the universe becomes aware of itself.” — Alan Watts (Book: Tao: The Watercourse Way.)
Alan Watts once said, “As waves are to the ocean, so is the human being to the universe.
The waves are made of seawater, and we are made of stardust.
We are the universe, a peephole through which the universal consciousness can experience itself in each of us.
And to that end, the universe makes us sprout like leaves on trees using what psychologists Phil Stutz and Barry Michels call the force of progression in their book The Tools. Each of us is the result of the embodiment of a particular moment.
Or, in the words of Milan Kundera in his short story The Apologizer, “What made him suppose that every human being was the replica of the instant of his conception.”
Can you imagine if we were the replica of the instant of our conception? That instants were people?
That would give meaning to astrology, the astrological chart, and the birth chart.
Beliefs rooted in humanity since the Mayas and Aztecs.
I don’t know about you, but this blows my mind 🙂
On problem-solving.
“If a problem can be solved, understanding it and knowing what to do comes to the same thing.” — Alan Watts (Book: Cloud-Hidden. Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal.)
It’s not “How do I fix it?” the right question is, “What the heck is going on?”
The solution appears by understanding what’s going on.
I’ll show you a personal example.
Problem: I overeat.
How do I fix it?
With diets.
Mistake.
After trying a thousand diets, and always ending up regaining my weight, I started to investigate the reason for my eccentric desire to eat gigantic amounts of carbohydrates, and I discovered that I had associated food with being safe because, at school, I suffered bullying and coming home at lunchtime meant the end of the daily hell.
When I understood that I was overeating to feel safe because I had associated food with feeling safe, the solution appeared.
The issue was to improve my self-confidence to feel safe. And by increasing my self-confidence, I began to change my eating habits and lose weight.
So as Watts said, “When a problem remains unsolved over time, we must suspect that we have been asking the wrong questions.”
Moral of the story: it’s not the answer that matters; it’s the question. If you ask yourself the right question, the answer appears, and it usually leads you to understand what is going on and, consequently, to the solution.
On fear of oneself
“To be afraid of life is to be afraid of yourself.” — Alan watts (Book: The Way of Zen.)
We live locked in our comfort zone for fear of suffering.
Our ego wants us to crystallize our personality at a specific point to stay the same. But the only sure thing in this life is that everything changes.
And no matter all the arguments of your ego: you are not safe even in your comfort zone.
As Joan Dideon said in her book The Year of Magical Thinking, “Life changes you in an instant. You sit down to dinner, and the life you knew is over.”
Joan knew this well, as her husband died suddenly, upending her reality completely.
So, there is no safe place. The comfort zone is an illusion of self-deception.
What happens is that we are afraid to do the individual work of knowing ourselves.
And it is essential, especially when we reach the middle of life.
Because as the doctor and psychologist Paul Tournier said in his book Learning to grow old, “What in youth he found and had to find outside the mature human being will have to find it inside himself.”
I know it’s scary, but it’s the only way. That’s why we are afraid of the unknown; we are so scared to live because, in doing so, we would have to step out of our comfort zone and discover who we are.
And if you want to age emotionally well, you have no choice but to lose that fear and discover who you are.
A virtual hug
AG
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