The Wisdom of Insecurity Quotes

“If you look at it carefully, you will see that consciousness—the thing you call “I”—is really a stream of experiences, of sensations, thoughts, and feelings in constant motion.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“WE SEEM TO BE LIKE FLIES CAUGHT IN HONEY. BEcause life is sweet we do not want to give it up, and yet the more we become involved in it, the more we are trapped, limited, and frustrated. We love it and hate it at the same time. We fall in love with people and possessions only to be tortured by anxiety for them. The conflict is not only between ourselves and the surrounding universe; it is between ourselves and ourselves. For intractable nature is both around and within us. The exasperating “life” which is at once lovable and perishable, pleasant and painful, a blessing and”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Under these circumstances, the life that we live is a contradiction and a conflict. Because consciousness must involve both pleasure and pain, to strive for pleasure to the exclusion of pain is, in effect, to strive for the loss of consciousness. Because such a loss is in principle the same as death, this means that the more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“To the degree, then, that life is found good, death must be proportionately evil. The more we are able to love another person and to enjoy his company, the greater must be our grief at his death, or in separation.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Unquestionably the sensitive human brain adds immeasurably to the richness of life. Yet for this we pay dearly, because the increase in over-all sensitivity makes us peculiarly vulnerable. One can be less vulnerable by becoming less sensitive—more of a stone and less of a man—and so less capable of enjoyment.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“We worry because we feel unsafe, and want to be safe. Yet it is perfectly useless to say that we should not want to be safe. Calling a desire bad names doesn’t get rid of it. What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it. In other words, if we can really understand what we are looking for—that safety is isolation, and what we do to ourselves when we look for it—we shall see that we do not want it at all. No one has to tell you that you should not hold your breath for ten minutes. You know that you can’t do it, and that the attempt is most uncomfortable.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Goethe says it in words which, to the modern mind, may be plainer: The highest to which man can attain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes him wonder, let him be content; nothing higher can it give him, and nothing further should he seek for behind it; here is the limit.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Science may, slowly and uncertainly, give us a better future—for a few years. And then, for each of us, it will end. It will all end. However long postponed, everything composed must decompose.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“So every spiritual journey ends by closing the circle. The frightened mind that runs away from everyday terrors meets the seeking mind that wants a better world.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“The “I” was not, is not, and never will be a part of human personality. There is nothing unique, or “different,” or interesting about it. On the contrary, the more human beings pursue it, the more uniform, uninteresting, and impersonal they become. The faster things move in circles, the sooner they become indistinguishable blurs. It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about “I.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“For the feeling will not correspond to the theory until you have also discovered the unity of inner experience. Despite all theories, you will feel that you are isolated from life so long as you are divided within.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“Nevertheless, the physical reality is that my body exists only in relation to this universe, and in fact I am as attached to it and dependent on it as a leaf on a tree. I feel cut off only because I am split within myself, because I try to be divided from my own feelings and sensations. What I feel and sense therefore seems foreign to me. And on being aware of the unreality of this division, the universe does not seem foreign any more.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“If the mind is the directive force behind action, the mind and its vision of life must be healed before action can be anything but conflict.

Something must therefore be said about the healed vision of life which comes with full awareness, for it involves a deep transformation of our view of the world. As well as words can describe it, this transformation consists in knowing and feeling that the world is an organic unity.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“What do you mean by happiness? What are "better" people better for? About what will you co-operate? What will you do with peace and prosperity?”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“The proper meaning of "theory" is not idle speculation but vision, and it was rightly said that "where there is no vision the people perish."

But vision in this sense does not mean dreams and ideals for the future. It means understanding of life as it is, of what we are, and what we are doing.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“It is open to all of us in so far as "the mastery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." It is given to many to be seers, but few to be prophets. Many can listen to music, but few can perform and compose.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“By trying to understand everything in terms of memory, the past, and words, we have, as it were, had our noses in the guidebook for most of our lives, and have never looked at the view. Whitehead's criticism of traditional education is applicable to our whole way of living:

"We are too exclusively bookish in our scholastic routine... In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animals before he named them: in the traditional system, children named the animals before they saw them.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“There is no rule but "Look!”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“The pain is no longer problematic. I feel it, but there is no urge to get rid of it, for I have discovered that pain and the effort to be separate from it are the same thing.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“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. But so long as you are not aware of the inseparability of thinker and thought, you will try to escape.

...Seeing that there is no escape from the pain, the mind yields to it, absorbs it, and becomes conscious of just pain without any "I" feeling it or resisting it. It experiences pain in the same complete, unselfconscious way in which it experiences pleasure.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“The pain is inescapable, and resistance as a defense only makes it worse; the whole system is jarred by the shock. Seeing the impossibility of this course, it must act according to its nature -- remain stable and absorb.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“But the mind-body is a system which conserves and accumulates energy. While doing this it is properly lazy. When the energy is store, it is just as happy to move, and yet to move skillfully -- along the line of least resistance. Thus it is not only necessity, but also laziness, which is the mother of invention.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“The "open" mind does this as most of us breathe: without being able to explain it at all. The principle of the thing is clearly something like judo, the gentle (ju) way (do) of mastering an opposing force by giving in to it.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“If, on the other hand, you are aware of fear, you realize that, because this feeling is now yourself, escape is impossible. You see that calling it "fear" tells you little or nothing about it, for the comparison and the naming is based, not on past experience, but on memory. You have then no choice but to be aware of it with your whole being as an entirely new experience. Indeed, every experience is in this sense new, and at every moment of our lives we are in the midst of the new and the unknown. At this point you receive the experience without resisting it or naming it, and the whole sense of conflict between "I" and the present reality vanishes. For most of us this conflict is ever gnawing within us because 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.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“If, on the other hand, you are aware of fear, you realize that, because this feeling is now yourself, escape is impossible. You see that calling it "fear" tells you little or nothing about it, for the comparison and the naming is based, not on past experience, but on memory. You have then no choice but to be aware of it with your whole being as an entirely new experience. Indeed, every experience is in this sense new, and at every moment of our lives we are in the midst of the new and the unknown. At this point you receive the experience without resisting it or naming it, and the whole sense of conflict between "I" and the present reality vanishes.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“The more we accustom ourselves to understanding the present in terms of memory, the unknown by the known, the living by the dead, the more desiccated and embalmed, the more joyless and frustrated life becomes.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“No possibility remains but to be aware of pain, fear, boredom, or grief in the same complete way that one is aware of pleasure. The human organism has the most wonderful powers of adaptation to both physical and psychological pain. But these can only come into full play when the pain is not being constantly restimulated by this inner effort to get away from it, to separate the "I" from the feeling. The effort creates a state of tension in which the pain thrives.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“The principle thing is to understand that there is no safety or security. One of the worst vicious circles is the problem of the alcoholic. In very many cases he knows quite clearly that he is destroying himself, that, for him, liquor is poison, that he actually hates being drunk, and even dislikes the taste of liquor. And yet he drinks. For, dislike it as he may, the experience of not drinking is worse.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety