Alan Watts Quotes

Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.

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

By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us.

We see what we believe rather than what we see.

But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.

The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.

I owe my solitude to other people.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

But to me nothing – the negative, the empty – is exceedingly powerful.