The Wisdom Of Insecurity (Signed) A Message for an Age of Anxiety

by Alan W. Watts

1 POCKET-SIZE SOFTCOVER BOOK

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Spirituality, Self Help, Religion, Buddhism

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Alan Wilson Watts was a British philosopher, writer and speaker, who held both a Master's in Theology and a Doctorate of Divinity. Famous for his research on comparative religion, he was best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Asian philosophies for a Western audience. He wrote over 25 books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, higher consciousness, the meaning of life, concepts and images of God and the non-material pursuit of happiness. In his books he relates his experience to scientific knowledge and to the teachings of Eastern and Western religion and philosophy.

Reviews

[Brianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book is bloody brilliant.

For the last couple of months, I've been very lost as far as my personal philosophy and religion. I used to be a Christian; I used to be an atheist; I used to be an agnostic; and then I couldn't even commit to not committing to anything. And I've been in a lot of pain, not from my philosophical and religious drifting but a medical condition beyond my control.

And then one day, on a whim, I decided to browse my local library's used bookstore and I saw this book staring down at me from the shelf. I had no idea what it was about. I think I saw the word 'insecurity,' and thought, "Hey, I'm pretty insecure," which I realize sounds completely ludicrous, and, as a teenage girl, I don't expect to be taken seriously when I do foolish things. But I was in a lot of pain, and I felt lost in my life, and I needed direction.

And this book provided it.

I'm not sure to what I should attribute this success; maybe it was luck or chance, or maybe it was that incredible unconscious mind that Malcolm Gladwell described that read the reviews on the back cover and through some miracle of unconscious processing arrived at the decision.

But I bought it and it was the perfect book for me. I had questions and Watts had answers. I'd just been studying Daoism, Buddhism and Hinduism in school and these schools of thought appealed to me but I didn't know how to go about making them mine. And this book essentially solved my problem. I honestly think that if I had spent many years studying East Asian philosophy (drawing from literature and other sources as well, as Watts does) and compiling my findings into a short book, I would have come up with something very similar. But I've been unwell and unable to do much work or thinking at all, even what is required for my day-to-day life, and it really feels like a godsend that someone has done exactly the work that I would have wanted in exactly the way that I would have done it and it's just fallen into my lap.

I have been taught by the very liberal community in which I have grown up to be skeptical of anything written by a white man in the 1950s and, in general, I think this skepticism is probably warranted. I can imagine the criticism that might develop from reading a book of philosophy that is so secondhand; why not go straight to the source? But we've already covered that I've been feeling pretty shot and my brain is no longer working as well as it once did. I needed the digest version. And if there is anything objectionable (not that I detect anything, but like I said, my brain is shot), some kind of slant or bias in the writing, it doesn't matter much to me, because I've got the ideas and concepts that I need. At the end of the day, the source for these kinds of things doesn't matter much; it's just getting the ideas and running with them.

If you came to this page expecting a review rather than my life story, then I apologize for the disappointment. I don't think it would do the book justice to summarize but I will do my best to give you an idea of whether or not you should read this book.

I think the best indicator of how much you will like this book is how similar you are to me. If you:

- Have a logical and scientific mind
- Are lost in your own religious and philosophical pursuits
- Constantly feel stressed, anxious and overwhelmed
- Are struggling to find your identity
- Are interested in philosophy in a theoretical and logical way
- Are willing to accept new ways of viewing reality

Then I would highly suggest you read this book. It may be your godsend as well.*

*To be clear, if you do not meet the above criteria, I'm not saying you shouldn't read the book. But if you are already well-read in East Asian philosophy, for example, you may find that the truths that I found revelatory are concepts with which you are already familiar. I should also note that if you are not hearing these things for the first time, you will probably find the book repetitive (though I found it rather calming). I don't think this makes the book any lesser, it just means that it's not quite what you need. It really is rather like a digest, so if you're looking for a textbook, look elsewhere. Best of luck to you, fellow philosophy aficionado.

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Faulkner used to fume, fuss and fidget in his armchair for what seemed to him an eternity as the clock on the wall ticked slowly towards 4 PM. You see, he had raised his own personal bar to that level of anxiety - for four was his own Happy Hour. Time for a drink!

You know, there IS a wisdom in insecurity...

Cause Insecurity can help us catch sudden glimpses of a HIDDEN side of our personas. It’s a lot like CATCHING yourself looking at your reflection in the mirror... in another nearby mirror. Spooky, isn’t it?

Maybe there’s some truth to its wisdom, the wisdom of the hidden - but I’m of two minds on that!

Because if you live in a recurring state of High Anxiety quite often (remember the HILARIOUS Mel Brooks movie?) you may not like it - but, on the other side of it, to more sophisticated readers of 2021, it may seem trite:

Quite often, I think, our own reflections have been leeched of existential meaning. Because anything other than surface meaning has been banished from our self-image.

Anxiety can be a fear of an Unknown Self.

Have we lost the idea of a real self with meaning? Oh, not a self with added contextual meaning - but our selves Alone - without the meaning of our environment.

Work, for instance. Or talk or entertainment. Without a context in the modern world we risk vacancy. That’s why nowadays folks fall between the cracks. Without identity there is no connectivity.

Now, this book is a bit like The Idiot’s Guide to Nothingness... hey! It was written a full 70 years ago!

And, hey! I’m of that age myself! Yikes.

So I have an excuse. I’m an Old Fogey. Well, where were we?

Oh yes - well - it may seem simplistic to all you young bucks...

But you gotta realize, W.H. Auden wrote his epochal AGE OF ANXIETY the same year. And the screws were only JUST THEN beginning to be tightened on our brains by our intense political and cultural pressure!

Don’t take my word on it, though, READ Rollo May’s wonderful book, The MEANING of Anxiety.

It’s like the poet Rainer Maria Riike said 100 years ago: “could it be that the real world is something I’ve never KNOWN?” Well, that’s scary. Without a foundation, we can be lost!

Yes, anxiety’s Everywhere now. So if you have it real bad, maybe you should avoid The Wisdom of Insecurity - maybe.

Because the author’s a bit old-fashioned, as I said, and he offers you at one point only a passe Fifties’ Fad, Vedanta, as a possible solution. That and meditation.

Nothing wrong with that, really, but it’s certainly not on everybody’s list of go-to occupations anymore. We’re too busy.

But, still, his point remains valid - because most faiths, firmly held, can help you finally overcome your anxiety.

Buddhism did THAT for Lenny Cohen, the wonderful late singer and writer! But any nascent belief has its rocky beginnings, and my own early Christian leanings were no exception to this.

For in the Quest for the Holy Grail, the Knight who’s questing has to endure a final nerve-wrackingly horrific dark and evil night in the fateful Chapel Perilous.

And perhaps it’s THERE that he learns The Wisdom of Insecurity... and I think that’s probably the final hurdle of anxiety we have to submit to.

But the beginning of Anxiety is REALLY in the Birth of the Intuition of Being. Our littleness in a big world. That’s where it all starts, when, as Watts says, we glimpse the ultimate peace of Being.

Now, Being to us in our fractious lives seems to be constantly Threatened by Non-Being - evil, or Nothingness as Sartre puts it.

For when we first glimpse the peaceful simplicity of just being-there (remember the Kozinski novel?) this nothingness arises ferociously to subvert it.

Our nature is essentially dualistic. We each contain both good and evil.

We are forced to wrestle with the demon of nothingness, until that day when, through thought, prayer and meditation, we - or rather the Being of God - melts it in a Fire of Attention, Love and Peace.

That is the classic defeat of Anxiety.

And it works.

And Watts’ method of Vedanta, or universal religion, might work as effectively as the more traditional forms of religion to this end.

All I know is, the Peace that crowns our life’s long, hard struggle is Marvellous!

[Sanjay · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Any system approaching perfect self control is also approaching self frustration. Such a system is a vicious circle, and has the same logical structure as a statement which states something about itself, for example, "I am lying", when it is implied that the statement itself is a lie. The statement circulates forever, since it is true to the extent that it is false, and false to the extent that it is true. In other words: I can't throw a pebble so long as I am holding on to it- so as to maintain perfect control of its movement. The desire for perfect control, of the environment and of oneself, is based on a profound mistrust of the controller. Ignorance is the failure to see the basic self contradiction of this position - from which arises a futile grasping or controlling of life which is self frustration, and the pattern of life a vicious circle. Search for security is the fundamental problem from which arises our insecurity. "


This book is another gem from Alan Watts, and is as enlightening as his other works.

Highly Recommended!

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Utterly disappointing. It's like listening to a reasonably intelligent person talk out loud while cleaning his navel.

Watts posits all sorts of random ideas without backing them up in any form (i.e. evidence or even further thought), and there is no clear logic to the order in which he presents these ideas. I was expecting a thought-provoking question or two to rise to the surface, so I kept at it, but in the end was left with the distinct feeling that I'd just listened to a stoner with a big ego ramble on for a while.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's funny..., I showed this book to one of my brilliant high school students and he took a look at it and called it a self-help book for people who aren't strong enough to think for themselves and read Nietzsche. (Sounds exactly like something I would have said when I was his age, how far have I fallen...)
Anywho, I wasn't sure whether or not i wanted to give this four or five stars...and I couldn't help it, not only does Alan do a great job explaining some nuggets of Zen Buddhism to the masses but this book has a funny way of giving some practical application to the whole "letting go" phenomenon that psychologists, twelve-step people and religious enthusiasts alike seem to rave on about.
The book also has an open/non-judgemental tone about it that sees the beauty and the divine in every man-made religion. Most Westerners who get hooked on 'those mystical religions of the east' tend to be those who completely misunderstand the religions of the west and blame all the problems the last two hundred years (colonisation, the crusades, capitalism...whoops!, in my opinion that is not a problem) on Christianity and Islam.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are the type of reader that highlights the important parts, i would suggest just dipping this entire book in yellow dye. I read it in a little more than 4 hours but i could spend days talking about it. The clarity of Watts' writing amazes me. Highly recommended.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very difficult to give a such a highly regarded book 2 stars, but I'm playing safe with Goodreads' system that 2 stars means 'It was ok'. Because if someone asked me what I thought of this book in conversation, that would be my likely response.

In many regards a book ahead of its time, and for that reason I can understand its long-standing adoration. However, from my point of view as a very pragmatic person (although willing to try and open my horizons and better myself in any which way), I struggled in making a connection between Alan's overly indulgent flourishes of metaphor and any practical application.

As short as this book is, I felt the bulk of the points to take away could be established in a quarter of the pages. He rambles on at times, jumping back and forth with a lack of cohesion. There may be some beauty in that, in the sense of an organic stream of thought, but to me it felt untidy and consequently difficult to draw conclusions from his theoretical prattling (of which nothing was backed up with any real world reference).

This is a book for some people. But not for me.

[Ldrutman Drutman · Rating 5 out of 5]

To even attempt a review of this almost undermines the point, for Watts is writing about how definitions and descriptions always try and fail to fix what is fundamentally transient and flowing. But to attempt anyway: This is a book about living in the present moment, and it kind of messes with your mind in that great expansive sort of way. What if there really only is this present moment, unfolding forever? Watts was one of the early popularizers of zen buddhism in the west, and this book was written in 1951. Yet it feels oddly prophetic. He warns about the ever-quickening pace of society, brought on by technology, and how it takes us further away from our authentic experiences and more into planning and scheming for the future, which never ends. I really enjoyed reading this book. It made the familiar strange, and took me out of my habitual ways of thinking and perceiving for a little bit. I almost feel like it's a book to read on a regular basis, just to give the mind a good scramble every now and then.

[CutFromAbove · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's unbelievable that this short book was written in 1951, foreshadowing massive amounts of today's popular "self-help" ideology. However, this makes the stunning revelations in the book less stunning than they would have been 60 years ago. There's some good work here on the layers that our minds add to the true reality, and some good metaphors to explain why those should not be important to us. But it's a bit idealistic and very difficult to apply in practice. It's a personal revelation, not an approach to building a society. It's still a bit of a must read though, because Watts isn't trying to sell us on anything, instead, he seems truly invested in helping us reach the next realization.

[Mark Bao · Rating 3 out of 5]

A number of very interesting insights, unfortunately couched in an overwhelming amount of unfounded speculation, illogical and mystical concepts, and baseless assumptions. Worth a reread at some point, in case I didn't "get it". There is some good stuff in here, and this is what I took away:

• Live in the present, because the present is essentially all there is; the past and future are mental memories that we evoke in the present.
• We have no assurance of a happy future, and if we make plans for a happy future, then we are making plans against reality, essentially. [Doesn't mean, though, that there aren't in practical terms better or worse decisions for a beneficial future. —M]
• Do not escape from the present. By separating the present from the "I", we are escaping ourselves from the present. By separating fear from "I", we attempt to escape but inevitably fail.
• We are, in a way, God: we create reality through what we render in thoughts and words.
• There is no separation between the world and "I"; we are all part of it.
• Regarding the title ... We need to be insecure to really face insecurity, instead of running away from it. This is similar to all the "reversed effort" stuff he talks about; by trying to be secure, we gain insecurity, and to reach peace, we need to accept that we are running away from insecurity, embrace insecurity, and somehow that leads to us being secure. I don't know how. (Arjun, if you're reading this, some help please?)

The philosophical ideas that he has aren't really very logical, and he says that his arguments aren't meant to be logical but read with the intuitive mind. I tried my best to do so, but the leap is hard to make. His idea of the unified self seems to be against the divided self that Descartes' cogito presents. As is evident from his forgettable arguments about determinism, his own admittance of the relevant concepts' reliance on intuition and not intellectual argument, and the vast number of assumptions he makes without evidence, this is not meant to be considered a 'scholarly' work at all, despite the scientific references within.

In general, I didn't get the effect that it seemed to have for others with this book. Maybe it's because I don't get it. Maybe it's because my woo-woo meter was moderate (around the same level as Eckhart Tolle's books) and that was a distraction from really trying to throw away my preconceived notions and understand what he's saying. But in any case, there are some good insights that are worth thinking about. Thoughts welcome.

[Stephanni Bahr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very simply written and accessible, yet very complex at the same time. An amazing book that I will come back to again later and he says so much more than what I am going to mention here. In this book, Watts often states the obvious. But only because it needs to be stated in order to remind the reader of what is important or to ensure it is not forgotten. Sometimes what is the most obvious is exactly what we don't see. I saw this book as a sort of manual on how to train the mind to experience or be aware of what is now rather than dwelling in the past and the future. He says, "The art of living in this 'predicament' is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past and the known on the other. It consists in being completely sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive." So, not living in the present moment causes more pain and suffering. Dwelling in the past brings depression and sadness. And according to Watts, we don't even have the true past to draw upon, but a memory of the past which is really only part of the present. What we are remembering about the past is happening right now and thus becomes part of our present experience. But in doing this we are not aware of the present moment for we are focused on our memory of the past. Planning for the future brings with it anxiety, a false sense of security and safety, both of which do not exist. And by planning for the future, again, we are not living in the present moment but a future one that may or may not ever come to be. This also brings sadness and self imposed suffering from unachieved, unrealistic expectations. There is no security and only in truly realizing this can we be free from our desire for it. Another notion I thought was compelling was the idea that a focus on self-imporvement causes the person pain. This is because of the two reasons I mentioned above. Self-improvement implies a split of self, one of the past, negative view of the self (the mistakes I made, what I need to fix) and one of the future, idealistic self (an unrealistic ideal of the future self, that may or may not come to be). If the self is split between the past and the future, how can it experience what is now? It is a projection of the past self on to a future, non-existant self. Not only that, but I cannot actually "fix" anything and to try to do so is denying the self. It also lies in the assumption that my feelings, actions, thoughts (the self) are somehow faulty and need repairing. They are not allowed to exist as they are, they are then viewed as being invalid. Now is all that really matters because it is all we can truly experience. I do not know what I will experience in the future. So, how can I know what my self will be? The answer is that I don't. I don't know anything other than what I know right now. I think what Watts is trying to say is that to focus on something too much is to loose it and ultimately be disappointed. Do I really need to focus on learning in order to learn? Or does it just happen naturally with an open mind and a willingness? Do I need to focus on improving myself? Or does it just happen naturally by doing my best in the moment? Perhaps we would achieve more, and be happier, if we stopped making it our destination. "The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." It's like the old saying, "it's not about the destination, it's the journey." Easy to say, even harder to truly conceptualize, accept, and live by.

[Doug Hagler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Watts is an ex Episcopal priest who converted to Zen Buddhism and then to Taoism, and then sort of moved beyond both in his own way. The Wisdom of Insecurity is a book that was for me life-changing. It argues, among other things, that insecurity, indeterminacy, is the truth of existence, and that to cling to particular things as if they were eternal is to waste your time and strength. He says it far more eloquently than I can. If you are the kind of person who asks questions, this is a book for you.

[Ken]

My philosophical start to 2020 (an attempt to see clearly) continues with this, my first Watts book. The title says it all in that the odd bedfellows "wisdom" and "insecurity" are paired. Looking for answers, then, is suspect.

Although there's scant mention (though some) of Eastern philosophic thought (chiefly Hindu and Buddhist), it's clear that Watts has been there and that it informs his thinking. The first things to heave-ho are the hardest to let go: namely the past and the future. Think of how much rides on those two things. And yet, each is the source of untold unhappiness, desire, frustration.

Watts points to our so-called "lessers," the animals, who have the innate wisdom to live in the moment. What constantly steers us away from the moment? Our brains, which have developed a tyranny of sorts over our bodies. Is thinking too much of a good thing? It is if you worry about the future and fear sickness, pain, and most of all death.

The irony is that many of us have little patience or use for the present moment unless we are experiencing pleasure. The trouble with pleasure is it cannot exist without pain. And so, we are in a constant retreat from and avoidance of pain.

In addition to the "simple" animals, there's something to be said for the simpler *us* that was us during our childhood. If the simplest things caused wonder, if you had little use for thinking of the past or worrying about the future, then the "childish" you was truly living in ways you cannot even begin to fathom as an adult.

It's almost too simple to be acceptable as an answer. You know, that we're living *in* the answer. We just don't know it or know how to realign our priorities to appreciate it. It's not the way we're trained, really. We are too much wed to goals or to promises.

To what end? If the pursuit of happiness seems like a practical joke inserted into the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, you might read this book and declare a little independence as well -- from your "self," for starters.

[Milena]

Glas i misli Alana Votsa sam prvi put čula u numeri "Dreams" grupe Nuages a guglajući dobila sliku gospodina evropskog porekla sa ducktail bradom i u kimonu.

Neki bi kvalifikovali ovu knjižicu kao krindž, ali ko nije krindž neka prvi baci kamen a to sigurno nisam ja. Vrlo napredna za svoje vreme (objavljena pedesetih), o bivstvovanju u sadašnjem trenutku (pre nego što se to počelo zvati ma-ma-ma-majndfulnes i krenulo da iskače iz frižidera sa ekrana leti po kući a ne možeš da ga ucmekaš tabalicom za muve). I nije napisana u formi self-helpa.

Knjižica mi je baš legla, jer se Vots ne bazira na isključivo logičkim argumentima (ima par falinki, nije da ih nema, ali koga briga), nego igra na foru intuicije. Pa ko ti je kriv kad ti je intuicija zbog života u kapitalizmu na nivou krave opaučene maljem koja ide u klanicu na pokretnoj traci.

Ima vrlo pristupačna objašnjenja, vrlo je interesantan i sažet. Jedino što malo iritira jeste čuveno "novac nije cilj, ne mo'š jesti novac", mislim da i ja imam taštu punu k'o brod kao njegovu verovatno bih meditirajući u kući na kalifornijskoj obali došla na istu ideju.

Sam Vots je magičan (preporuka za bilo koji kratak prelet njegove biografije), najbolje opisan kao budista epikurejac, ljubitelj dobrog vina, dobrih cigara i - vanbračnih veza. Jer, kako drugačije živeti, uživeti se i uživati u sadašnjem trenutku!

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alan Watts explores in this book why humans are so dissatisfied and unhappy. He argues that the cause of human frustration and anxiety is people's inability to live fully in the present and their futile quest for psychological security. He argues that individuals must relinquish control and embrace the insecurity and uncertainty that is inherent to life itself.

Much of the insecurity referenced in the book's title comes down to obsession with the future. Ultimately, individuals must abandon the futile quest for security and understanding and learn to simply live in the here and now, which is essentially all that there is.

[Isz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book forever changed my life and irreversibly changed the way I look at anything and everything. Alan Watts has an ability to cut through the bullshit in human life and expose what it means to be alive: nothing.

Read it with a fresh mind, read it more than once, and remember that Watts will often sacrifice the clarity of his point for a play on words or a joke.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

You worry. Realizing that you're worried you think to yourself that you ought not to be worried. But still you can't stop worrying, so now you're worried about worrying. Next you will worry that you can't stop being worried about worrying. And as such the vicious circle of worry tightens in on itself and worsens, turning into anxiety, which devolves into anxiety about the fact that you're anxious. And so it goes ad infinitum, or until suicide, which will present itself as the only escape if this circle gets its way.

In simple yet beautiful language, Alan Watts offers a explanation on how these thoughts arises due to illusions of language and the idea of the self. Showing the path forward by pointing out that words are symbolic representations of reality, in the same sense that money is representative of value and not value itself. It's the act of misunderstanding a symbol for what its pointing toward that create the illusion.

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Put this one up there with Untethered Soul and The Echart Tolle books and Robert Wright's on Buddhism. Read it and the others because they are so useful and their lessons are so easy to forget. There were some brilliant passages in this book that I will not soon forget.

[Ashraf Bashir · Rating 1 out of 5]

Super boring, super unorganized, worst style of writing, and unpractical. This book is overrated!

[Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Words could never do the contents of this book or the power of the author ANY justice.

[Стефани Kalcheva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Има няколко хубави момента, но като цяло повтаря едно и също (да живеем в настоящето и че няма Аз).

[Fred Darbonne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fair warning: This work is not for the faint of heart, nor for those who desire every writer to flatter what they already believe or to help them prove that they are “right,” and others are “wrong.” Alan Watts does none of these things, but instead challenges our constant striving for security and permanence in a world that in reality is always changing, exposing our endless search for security for the illusion that it is. For Watts, “this insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.” We can lock ourselves into never enjoying the present due to our rehashing of the past, and our constantly living in some constructed future that we imagine will be more secure than the present. No matter how much security we try to gather we will always need more, which only perpetuates our anxious cycles.

Watts further argues that we have created an inner division within ourselves by fragmenting reality into inner and outer experience. We assert our ego-self by thinking of ourselves as separate from our experience, which leads to unnecessary anxiety. A focus on security is a desire to be separate from life, a separateness that in turn only makes us more insecure.

One gets the sense that Watts has wrestled with his own demons and developed a depth of self-awareness that would scare many of us. Writing in 1951, he had just lost his vocation as an Episcopal priest and his young wife in a divorce. He writes from an Eastern perspective, which has a holistic view of reality as opposed to a Western dualism that relies on linear, logical propositions. This will unsettle, even upset, some traditional religious readers. He pokes holes in the dark side of some traditional understandings that in reality can be driven by one’s ego-self. One example:

If I am afraid, my efforts to feel and act bravely are moved by the fear, for I am afraid of fear, which is simply to say that my efforts to escape from what I am are moving in a circle. Beside the examples of saints and heroes I feel ashamed that I amount to nothing, and so I begin to practice humility because of my wounded pride, and charity because of my self-love. The urge is ever to make “I” amount to something. I must be right, good, a real person, heroic, loving, self-effacing. I efface myself in order to assert myself, and give myself away in order to keep myself. The whole thing is a contradiction. (pp. 128-9).

While I can’t embrace many points of Watt’s argument—and I almost shelved the book a few times—my perseverance paid off in terms of having certain presumptions brought into the light for critical examination. I see how my own anxiety is fueled by worrying about a future that I can’t really know nor completely prepare for. I realize that no matter how much security I may gain I will always need more of it, and this striving can set me on an endless “hamster wheel” of anxiety. I need someone like Watts to challenge me with a discomforting perspective that forces my self-examination, even when he says things I don’t like. If anything, I am driven back into the embrace of the words in Matthew’s Gospel (6:25-30, NIV) that I’ve obviously been overlooking:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

all of us confront insecurities and vacillations in distinctive ways. It goes without saying that there's a whole another perspicacity to this subject had one looked deep through the illusion of it. Watts unquestionably rips apart the wound and studies it to its very bottom, however much it may hurt. He challenges your thoughts, your definition of "right", cuts through the bullshit of our constant yearning for security and approval. Unmistakably a book to spend time with, each passage requires a thorough reading with a lot of thinking. My cogitative self is disbursed after putting myself through an endless hard time full of anxiety, underconfidence and feeble self-worth.

“To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.”

[Stephen Gallup · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read this slim volume way back in the early 70s. Picked it up one day last month thinking I could reread it during a lunch hour between depositions downtown. Wrong! Every paragraph is worth five minutes' thought. But at the same time the concepts are so basic and so fundamental to everyday life.

As I slowly proceeded, I was reminded of a great many other books from the same general time frame, including Aldous Huxley's Island and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five . However, the one idea underpinning everything said here goes back to antiquity, and is probably the heritage of Eastern mysticism.

That idea is that each of us should strive to have "an undivided mind." This means remaining in the present moment instead of worrying about the past or the future.

The problem, Watts says, is that "Our lives are one long effort to resist the unknown, the real present in which we live, which is the unknown in the midst of coming into being. Living thus, we never really learn to live with it."

On the subject of achieving desired results in life, he says, "When each moment becomes an expectation, life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded, for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. ... But to the undivided mind, death is another moment. ... Death is the epitome of the truth that in each moment we are thrust into the unknown. Here all clinging to security is compelled to cease."

He says, in terms of morality, "A mind that is single and sincere is not interested in being good ... Nor, on the other hand, is it interested in being free, in acting perversely just to prove its independence. Its interest is not in itself, but in the people and problems of which it is aware; these are 'itself.'"

Applied in terms of religion, everything around us is God the Father, and our thoughts and mental words are "the Son who must be crucified if we are to see the Father, just as we must look at reality without words to see it as it really is."

There's a New Age-y aspect of this (which is mostly likely what put it in my hands back in the 70s; the handbook in those days was another Watts book, The Joyous Cosmology ). The interpretation of Scripture is very poetic, and that sort of thing has always appealed to me. Still, I remain uncertain of how one could adapt such thinking to the inescapable fact that we must consider future consequences in order to avoid catastrophe. I wish I could talk about this with Watts. In short, the thinking here is very stimulating, if not sufficient in itself to close the case.

[Laura Noggle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death."

Watts was amazingly prescient when he wrote this 70 years ago, it is just as relatable today. And quite the trip! Basically, being human is to be caught in a constant mental feedback loops from which there is (essentially) no escape.

“This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the 'ability' to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable.”

This book is incredible on so many levels, and so very timely, especially for minds caught in quarantine:

“Indeed, one of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one’s own existence, to be absorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and people. Conversely, one of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and the surrounding world.”

“What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.”

Free from clutching at themselves the hands can handle; free from looking after themselves the eyes can see; free from trying to understand itself thought can think. In such feeling, seeing, and thinking life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself. In this moment it is finished.

[roosmarijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting stuff, love some of the points watts makes. I went into this thinking it would be a book about self-acceptance, reading “insecurity” in the way that I wanted it to be: it’s not. It’s about security of thought and security of present and mind, in a way.

I loved what Watts wrote about time here. Its slipperiness and manipulation. How we’re given the ability to think and reminisce and wish and expect but how exactly those things are giving us unrelenting stress and anxiety.

A friend of mine captured it perfectly writing to me: “it’s almost as if time at once is and is not, in that the future/past never actually “exist” but at the same time seem to be such a substantial part of what makes any sort of present”.

Can’t wait to come back to this book when I can look at it with a more critical and experienced mind.

[Blaine Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this a long time ago when I was 24 years old but its message is even more relevant for today's insecure, distracted, fragmented smartphone generation who (in many cases) need a wisdom-message of the first order. And we used to think television was messing up our lives! How quaint!

If I remember correctly, the central idea is the Daoist principle of "invest in loss" as we say in Taiji Quan practice. To GET something you have to LET GO of it first. In order to be straight, you first have to bend. You want to be fast? Practice it slowly. Seeking hard? Practice softness. You want security? - embrace insecurity. It's a very non-Western principle but it contains a depth of truth that Western philosophy has never quite understood. That is the truth of the inter-pervasion of opposites, the inner mutual alliance of all opposing forces, ideas, concepts... otherwise known as the philosophy of nonduality. As Alan Watts said (probably somewhere in this book), "Explicit opposites are actually implicit allies." This is the nondual truth underlying all duality.

This philosophy exists only in few schools of world philosophy: two schools in Buddhism, two in Indian Hinduism, and Chinese Daosim. When understood properly, nondual philosophy is the natural end of the road where all philosophizing reflects back at itself in the final punchline to the set up called "life," or "the search for meaning," or "the human condition," or... or... or...

It's a short book so don't miss it!

[Ekin · Rating 1 out of 5]

His train of thought was too fast, it was vaguely there for me to catch it. Could not read it without my mind slipping away from it. I expected this book to be a solid philosophical commentary on how anxiety affects society rather than relatively plausible, unfinished ideas. It could have been a good read for me, maybe around the decade it was published, but unfortunately, I will not continue reading it.

[Glenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I keep coming back over and over to this book. It helps me cope with tragedy, anxiety, and the pressures I put myself under. The simple message in this short book is one of surrender and non-duality. It is filled with simple examples illuminating eternal truths of all spiritual paths and applying them to the modern world.

[Gabriela Kozhuharova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Удивително е, че тази книга е публикувана през 1951 г. Епохата на тревожността явно никога не си е отивала, щом в наши дни думите на Уотс звучат също толкова актуално, ако не и повече.