So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level. Alan Watts More Quotes by Alan Watts More Quotes From Alan Watts There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love. Alan Watts frustration self life If we are not totally blind, what we are seeking is already here. This is it. Alan Watts seeking blind ifs You know that if you get in the water and have nothing to hold on to, but try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will float. And this is exactly the situation of faith. Alan Watts faith letting-go hands The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events--that the world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies--and will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends. Alan Watts nature attitude life Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. Alan Watts freedom inspiring inspirational The Highest to which people can attain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes them wonder, let them be content; nothing higher can it give them, and nothing further should they seek for behind it; there is the limit. Alan Watts limits giving people To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet. Alan Watts purple insecurity feelings A person who thinks too much only ever thinks about his thoughts Alan Watts too-much persons thinking The animal tends to eat with his stomach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is never sure when to stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratification. Alan Watts brain animal men Running away from fear is fear; fighting pain is pain; trying to be brave is being scared Alan Watts pain fighting running Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I. Alan Watts knowing names order A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention. Alan Watts paradox standing attention The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world. Alan Watts community trying giving We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives. Alan Watts giving war thinking Nothing fails like success—because the self-imposed task of our society and all its members is a contradiction: to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force. Alan Watts our-society tasks self Everyone is the fabric and structure of existence. Alan Watts fabric existence structure To be alive spiritually man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart from this union his religious life will be an empty drudgery, a mere imitation of true spirituality. Alan Watts religious spiritual men Everything is perpetually becoming new. Alan Watts becoming-new becoming change Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment. Alan Watts mirrors attitude people Someone once described “Christian Secularism” as the assumption that there is nothing at all to life except a pilgrimage between the maternity ward and the crematorium, and that it is within that span that Christian concern must be exercised because that is all there is. Alan Watts maternity happens
