Such an instantaneous release of the problem comes from appreciating key insights about reality and the self. While the insights are not truly separate, they are confusing, so I’ve done my best to separate them and present them in a sequence as I understand them. Insight #1: Words are Not Reality 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: Leadership Journeys [134] – Aron Ezra –“I love thinking about the future and different possibilities” Leadership Journeys [132] – Josh Staph –“A good leader knows what questions to ask and what questions need to be answered” Even if the observation is correct, the reasoning based on it is absurd. It is as if to say, "You say there is a fire in the basement. You are upset about it. Because you are upset, there is obviously no fire." The Agnostic, the sceptic, is neurotic. but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

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.”Of course there are no easy answers to suchbig, existential questions – you can’t find them overnight. What you can find overnight though, are things like alcohol, TV and a new handbag. Lesson 2:Consumerism comes with an empty promise of happiness. The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it. Because of this, Watts sometimes is prone to fit the evidence to his particular views of religion. Quoting extensively, he often creatively interprets scripture or sages to suggest they had his particular view of things. I’m not well read enough in these subjects to object to this characterization, but one is definitely left with the distinct impression that Watts’ views and traditional ones may have significant departures. This is to say that it may be, despite Watts’ assertions to the contrary, possible to actively work on cultivating a mental habit of attentional control. Rather than simply having it be the product of an instantaneous enlightenment which may never come. For Those Interested in Knowing More… This occurs because we believe that there exists a separate experiencer in addition to our experiences that persists through time. No such experiencer exists as anything other than an abstract concept.

What science has said, in sum, is this: We do not, and in all probability cannot, know whether God exists. Nothing that we do know suggests that he does, and all the arguments which claim to prove his existence are found to be without logical meaning. There is nothing, indeed, to prove that there is no God, but the burden of proof rests with those who propose the idea. If, the scientists would say, you believe in God, you must do so on purely emotional grounds, without basis in logic or fact. Practically speaking, this may amount to atheism. Theoretically, it is simple agnosticism. For it is of the essence of scientific honesty that you do not pretend to know what you do not know, and of the essence of scientific method that you do not employ hypotheses which cannot be tested. Leadership Journeys [121] – Sufiyan Sait –“The delta between your expectation and reality is inversely proportional to happiness”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!

It is the same with thinking, which is really silent talking. It is not, by itself, open to the discovery of anything new, for its only novelties are simply arrangements of old words and ideas.” 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.” A few friends recommended I read this book , because of my budding interest in Buddhism and Eastern religions. Alan Watts was one of the big popularizers of Zen and other Asian spiritual philosophies in the 50s and 60s, and I greatly enjoyed his television program. With consumerism, the chase for gratification never ends. We keep looking for happiness in materialistic gains which never leads to fulfilment. While almost everyone in the Westernized society is constantly fighting to achieve their materialistic goals, very few understand that these are mere empty pursuits, only adding to the vicious cycle of wanting more.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. Consumerism is the proverbial dangling carrot that only adds to one’s anxieties, leaving them with a feeling of constant discontent. 3. Pain and Pleasure are Two Sides of the Same Coin If you can learn to process the painful parts asjust one half of the whole thing, you’ll learn to see these emotions as temporary and that both are a necessary part of life. It is for this reason that most of the current return to orthodoxy in some intellectual circles has a rather hollow ring. So much of it is more a belief in believing than a belief in God. The contrast between the insecure, neurotic, educated "modern" and the quiet dignity and inner peace of the old-fashioned believer, makes the latter a man to be envied. But it is a serious misapplication of psychology to make the presence or absence of neurosis the touchstone of truth, and to argue that if a man's philosophy makes him neurotic, it must be wrong. "Most atheists and agnostics are neurotic, whereas most simple Catholics are happy and at peace with themselves. Therefore the views of the former are false, and of the latter true." To the extent that we can say ideas are technologies, this gives the impression that these “spiritual” technologies for living a vastly improved life have been widely available but very rarely employed. That depressing observation, has a few possible explanations.

Despite some opinions to the contrary, this is still the general view of science. In literary and religious circles it is now often supposed that the conflict between science and belief is a thing of the past. There are even some rather wishful scientists who feel that when modern physics abandoned a crude atomistic materialism, the chief reasons for this conflict were removed. But this is not at all the case. In most of our great centers of learning, those who make it their business to study the full implications of science and its methods are as far as ever from what they understand as a religious point of view.This reversing trend ofreligiousness started as early as the 1920s, when the Industrial Revolution brought wealth and prosperity to the US. As communication technology and science were on the rise, mythical stories and promises of a wonderful afterlife lost their touch – but also their positive impact. It's funny..., I showed this book to one of my bri