Alan Watts Quotes, Rejection Quotes, Ego Quotes

The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash!

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Rejection Quotes , Ego Quotes

No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Order Quotes , Bridges Quotes

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Humor Quotes , Deep Thought Quotes

Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Inspiring Quotes , Frustration Quotes

Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Motivational Quotes , Art Quotes

I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good “I” who is going to improve the bad “me.” “I,” who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward “me,” and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently “I” will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make “me” behave so badly.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Lonely Quotes , Stress Quotes

In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Feelings Quotes

We have a strange anxiety in us; that if we don't interfere then it won't happen. Now that's the root of an enormous amount of trouble.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Roots Quotes , Anxiety Quotes

What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Attitude Quotes , Mean Quotes

The role of the Guru is to show the person that he already has what he is looking for.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Roles Quotes , Guru Quotes

But we must not suffer over the suffering.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Adversity Quotes

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

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Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Life Quotes , Cheer Up Quotes

Imagine a multidimensiona l spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Buddhist Quotes , Morning Quotes

To the Taoist mentality, the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one to see, and of the ocean surf forever washing the sand, to no end.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Depressing Quotes

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Inspiring Quotes , Thinking Quotes

People often say to me, 'I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don't really feel it, I don't realize it,' and I am apt to reply, 'I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it.'

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Talking Quotes , People Quotes

To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Life Quotes , Change Quotes

When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n; coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Mean Quotes , Mind Quotes

What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Ocean Quotes , Future Quotes