Alan Watts - What do you want?

submitted by niamhcronin on 02/01/16 1

Continuation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RANRVPQDbwQ (Compassion instead of control/power) --- "In thinking of ourselves the way we do all we have is a caricature of ourselves, and you know a caricaturist doesn't draw you all in, he just uses certain features whereby people will recognize you. It's a sort of skeleton. So we are, as it were, conceiving ourselves as a bunch of skeletons, and they've got no flesh on them just a bunch of bones; and no wonder we all feel inadequate. We're all looking for something to the future to bring us the goody that we know we ought to have, as if there were a golden goody at the end of the line somewhere. 'There must be a good time coming!', so we hope, but isn't that plainly ridiculous? Here we are, as it were, psychically starved and always, therefore, looking for, looking for, seeking, seeking, seeking; and this confused seeking is going on everywhere; we don't know what we want. Nobody knows what they want. We think of what we want in vague terms: pleasure, money, wealth, love, fulfillment, personal development etc.; but we don't know what we mean by all that. If a person really sits down to figure it out and write a long essay on 'Your idea of heaven' that will be a sorry production. You can see it already in medieval art where there are depictions of heaven and hell: hell is always much better than heaven. Although it's uncomfortable, it's a sadomasochistic orgy, but at least it's really rip-roaring whereas all the saints in heaven are just sitting and doing nothing, just being very-very smug as if they were in church. ... So what has happened is this: our 'I' is an illusion, it's just an image, and it is no more ourselves than an idol is the godhead." -Alan (Not what should be, not what might be but what is) (www.youtube.com/watch?v=t95DKcI4B8E)

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