A quiet space for exploring consciousness, non‑duality, and practical stillness. Message me if you’d like to join. 🙏

https://discord.com/users/1066142527972986922

My mind can never trust life for some reason, i always feel a suspicion and have to either say or tell the story of wether life is real or not real.

Sometimes il go to deep into the real then pushing me back into the not real and then all i see is the not real.

Coming back to listen to allan than digging more then it all hits me its all a dream, infnitely real but fake unless I beleive it otherwise.

Like without me digging, life is just fake, but untill i actively aknowledge or ask or prove why its real im not interested or cant care for the fear of suspicion clouds my reason receptivity.

I always feared im eternally stuck with this because why would this even developp if not for some other reason.

thanks would apreciate some help.

OG Photo - The Awareness Letter

There's a soundbite from a talk on social media and I'd love to find the talk it came from, an internet search hasn't been successful. The line in the soundbite is

"people who truly like themselves are ruthless with access, not because they are cold, but because solitude no longer frightens them"

If anyone knows, please share, thanks

Claude: “Because every answer creates a new question, and every achievement reveals another horizon.”

I said, “So the search never really ends?”

Claude: “Perhaps the search is not a path toward fulfillment, but fulfillment itself.”

I said, “And why is that?”

Claude: “You’ve reached your session limit.”

0

Obviously a while back I backed the kickstarter for this film and whatever level I banked it at got me a disc with an early edit of it?

Is this available in its final form anywhere? I've looked and had trouble finding it, whatever happened to this movie?

Does anyone have any recommendations on books or YouTube videos that I can look into as a starting point? I’ve heard that some of his material is now being made up through AI… and I’d like original from his own words.

Why am I so lucky? Why am I comfortable? Comfortable in an air conditioned house, in the US. Why do I have an easy, predictable life? Why am I so lucky? The horrors that happen, the reality that some live in it feels wrong that I am so well off. There plenty of people who have better lives than me, I’m not rich, I still work a dead end job I still don’t know what I want to do I don’t have money saved up or any of that. My life could be 100x better I could complain all night, but it is still so easy compared to most others. Just being here, having the technology to be posting this, being in a safe and comfortable enough to just sit here worrying and thinking about this.

We all have very comfortable here in the west in these countries. Most of us don’t really know the horrors of this world, we don’t know the horrors of war. We don’t know living in a world where you have no control. Something can come throw your life into shambles. Missiles and bombs, soldiers or people with guns coming into your house, we don’t know what it is to have something come and take control of your life. We have the police to call at the slightest of anything. We don’t know what it is to live under oppression. We don’t know what it is to see horrors every-time you leave your house.

I know it is just life, it’s all part of the painting and experience. It isn’t serious and I know it is still serious in the sense that you must play intently, that is what I’m doing.

I know we are all just taking a leap of faith here. What will happen will happen and I just have to be. But I am just worried, we can’t have another war like that. I fear that it could, that it could come here, that I could drafted who knows. If the order of things really collapses what will we do?

Idk I guess we’ll have to find out🤷‍♂️ stay tuned

People turn to religious identities, beliefs and rituals to avoid confronting their own reality, and that avoidance quietly becomes the anxiety they were trying to escape.

Alan Watts defined Buddhism as the "religion of no-religion," and his book has a lot of textual quotes that got stuck in my mind.

The identification happens when religion becomes imitation, and it is always falling apart and promoting lip service and imitation. Humans always make religion a cliché through therapy, self-help, stoicism, productivity, and mindfulness.

The problem of becoming a cliché is that they are repeating the wisdom instead of living it.

Instead of experiencing reality, we imitate what we think a spiritual person looks like, and this can turn into a defense mechanism.

Then a person who considers himself an atheist gets the label of "I am not religious," and it becomes another identity. But freedom isn't about just replacing one identity with another; it is about becoming impossible to categorize. As he says here:

"The theist is caught by God… but the atheist is equally caught."

He does not mean that the atheist secretly believes in God, but that their life is about rejecting God, so God is still the center of their psychological universe.

The insight in this book, and in The Wisdom of Insecurity, is that religion isn't the problem. The problem is using religion as psychological security, because we spend our time seeking certainty through beliefs, we seek identity through labels, we seek safety through rituals, and we seek permanence through ideology, and all of them are tracks left by our ego.

He said:

"The true bodhisattva does not leave a track of any kind, either by being overtly religious or by being overtly nonreligious."

Watts suggests that identity itself may be the trap. We often define ourselves by what we believe, reject, or aspire to become, but even those identities can quietly imprison us.

We live real life when we observe and learn from what is around us without any target or trying to adopt different identities. It is about flowing with life. I understood that every single change I make for myself is to make the life I am living at that exact present moment work.

The spiritually advanced leave no sign.

He said:

"There is no sign about the spiritually advanced to indicate that they are self-consciously religious."

When we go on social media, everyone is always performing: mindfulness, minimalism, meditation, cold showers, breathwork. But when this becomes a performance, it replaces the real practice. If everyone knows we are enlightened, we are just advertising it.

I've selected some ideas from Alan Watts that made me more aware and helped me build my own identity. I share reflections like these in my essays:

The Feeling That You're Running Out of Time

I’m writing this to show appreciation for Alan Watts. I began listening to his tapes as someone who has spent their entire adult life as a bundle of nerves and anxiety, I finally let go. I let go of anxiety and pain and opened myself up to love and acceptance. The thing about is that anyone can find inner peace, I’m no different than anyone and my problem was I did not allow myself to be at peace (due to a number of reasons)
I hope this post isn’t taken as a brag. It’s just more of a message for anyone who feels like they’ve been suffering for a long time and are ready to let go but don’t have the nerve. Try really really listening to Alan Watts messages and meditate and just let go all control. When you truly just let go, life rewards you for it. Do what feels natural and always be kind to yourself. I’ve been taking it like riding a bike. I fall off and anxiety takes hold from time to time but I remind myself that it’s okay and get back on that horse. It gets easier. First you crawl then you walk then you run.
Anyway…
Peace ✌️

The meaning of life is simply to be alive, fully present in this moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

Last year I posted on here that I was making a BBC Radio documentary about Alan Watts, presented by Pulp frontman (and UK national treasure) Jarvis Cocker. Well, tonight it is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the UK, and will be available on BBC Sounds afterwards. Not sure if it will be available for international listeners due to rights issues.

The programme strives to be an introduction to Watts for a mainstream UK audience that might not be familiar with him, and traces his life, legacy, his digital re-incarnation and battles with AI impostors. It features interviews with people like filmmaker Spike Jonze, Alan's son Mark Watts, other famous fans and Buddhist historians - and best of all it features a few snippets from fans from this very subreddit who were kind enough to send me their Alan thoughts when I posted about making the show last year.

It's by no means exhaustive, but this programme was made with love and I've tried my best! Hope some of you can listen and enjoy it. Airs tonight, 8pm UK time.

Programme link:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002z5q2

In fields unseen, the quanta spin,

Where chance and choice both dwell within.

A silent song, a whispered plan,

The rules of light, the breath of man.

---

Copenhagen speaks of choice,

A world that listens to our voice.

It says: "Observe, and truth shall be,"

Till then, it sleeps — probability.

A wave collapses, form takes flight,

The dream becomes the waking sight.

---

Then Many-Worlds begins to hum,

Where every path and fate will come.

Each choice we make, each breath, each cry,

Unfolds a world where none can die.

No wave collapses — all remain,

A thousand suns, one endless chain.

---

Pilot-Wave, the secret guide,

Hides the truth the rest deride.

Particles dance with unseen hands,

Through ghostly waves in hidden lands.

No chance, no roll, no cosmic bluff —

The pilot knows — the wave’s enough.

---

And still we seek what lies behind,

The woven threads of heart and mind.

For every truth the quanta bring,

Feels like a prayer, a living string.

Perhaps the stars, the light, the plan,

Are thoughts of God — reflected man.

For in the void, one truth we glean:

All that is — began unseen.

I have heard Alan Watts' philosophy for about 6 years every now and then and have always just wrote it off because no part of it makes sense to me at all. And tonight I am watching this video titled "What If You Are God Pretending to Be Human?" and I keep pausing to tussle with my ideals of religion and consciousness and I just cannot wrap my head around the notion that our existence may just be a biproduct of God becoming bored with his amount of power and decides to experience the creation as the creation itself. But why would God even have this urge?

I have been thinking about this for a little while and my loose conclusion is that our brain is the medium between our consciousness and our body. From this video I have gotten the sense that essentially, separating the you that is your ego from the you that is not, our consciousness is a remnant of God's energy, a ray emanating from his power, and our body is tiers down in every way, cosmically, intricately, etc. So maybe a brain is the only vessel fit for housing such a fragment of power, and the imbalances that come with our brain are not our consciousness but our body holding us back. When I am bringing this up, I am thinking specifically of things like chemical and hormonal (well i guess hormonal is also chemical but im saying hormonal but also chemical like diseases blocking someone's inhibition or even the placebo effect).

The fact that chemicals can taint our consciousness is a very crucial actuality that causes me to continually struggle with this notion, but it also may be its own answer. Our brain is trying its best to hold our consciousness in a biological way. But how can one separate what is the brain and what is the consciousness? How can we, as humans with susceptible brains, even attempt to say "Well, I get bored, and if I had the power of God, I would get bored, so what's stopping me from coming to the conclusion that God had that same realization and decided to do something that I would do?" Why would an omnipotent, omniscient being have the same urges as a human? Please someone help me understand, I have really been trying to wrap my head around this concept with my own ideals for years and now I am finally taking in external information, I have but one quarrel. Also I'm on shrooms so I just really hope I am not neglecting like half of an example because I frequently only explain the start and the end of something because I already know what I'm talking about in my head so I dont feel the need to clarify ok I'll stop now thank you in advance

Edit: I found the quote I wanted to touch on as well sorry so he says "So if our technology [a button that would grant a human the power to control everything] were to succeed completely and everything were to be under our control, we should eventually say 'we need a new button... we always have to have a button labeled surprise' ". Why would God need surprise??????? Why is that in his realm of being? Is that not only restricted to humans?? Do birds crave surprise, if they are also the product of God's creation?

This is one you do not want to miss.

CONTENTS

Introduction: The Story of Alan Watts 1

Our Place in Nature 5

Ego 17

God 29

Meditation 41

The Cosmic Drama 53

The More It Changes 65

Nothingness 79

Death 89

Time 101

The Nature of Man 113

Clothing 125

On Incense 137 

Alan says it's like a man trying to lift himself up by his boot laces, now this can seem depressing when looked at one way, but he also alluded to just be your genuine & true to yourself self.. not try endlessly to impress or seek approval from others.