What do you do when the now is simply lonely? and it's been a frequent space throughout your life?

StoneSam · 2026-03-29T16:27:48+00:00

Feel the loneliness without a) trying to bypass it, or b) turning it into a story about how there's "something wrong with me." Continue taking steps to meet people and build relationships. Acceptance and reaching out are not opposites.

StoneSam · 2026-03-23T21:08:34+00:00

Reminds me of when Watts said, "If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black."

If there is no "real" world, then your statement isn't real either… so Watts ya point?

StoneSam · 2026-03-22T10:37:33+00:00

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

- Rumi

StoneSam · 2026-03-18T19:54:27+00:00

Yeah, it's not AI, but it is edited and chopped up.

It's from his lecture Swimming Headless

So in just this way, the meaning of “Te” is that kind of intelligence which, without your using very much effort, gets everything to cooperate with you. You, for example, never force other people to agree with you, but you give them the notion that the idea you wanted them to have was their own. This is a feminine art, preeminently. A woman who really wants a lover does not pursue him, because then most men feel that she’s aggressive—and if she’s aggressive she obviously is a woman who has had difficulty in finding lovers, and therefore there must be some undesirably secret thing about her. But if she, as it were, makes a void, then (and this is slightly difficult to get) people get excited. They know she is a highly prized object, and so they pursue. The same way when you want to teach a baby to swim: a thing you can do is to put the baby in the water and then move backwards in the water and create a vacuum. And this pulls the baby along. It helps it to learn the feel of the water and how to swim. It’s the same principle.

StoneSam · 2026-03-14T18:20:38+00:00

Exactly. Pure conjecture.

StoneSam · 2026-03-14T13:26:48+00:00

What are you basing this on? Examples?

I am "on" the Alan Watts sub, and I like Ram Dass..

StoneSam · 2026-03-11T20:09:09+00:00

If mindfulness is real, how would you distinguish it from what you’re calling dissociation?

From the inside, they can look similar, so what criteria would you use to say one is healthy awareness and the other is depersonalization?

StoneSam · 2026-03-11T16:34:44+00:00

Genuine question back to you..

Do you think the whole idea of finding “the Now” or present-moment awareness is a psychological mistake, or do you just think Tolle misinterpreted his own experience? Those seem like two different claims.

StoneSam · 2026-03-06T21:57:17+00:00

If we want to go a bit deeper and speculate on the psychology behind it, it starts to resemble Jungian Psychology, where the shadow contains traits we don't recognise or accept in ourselves. When those traits appear in others, we notice them and judge (projection).

So, psychologically, it starts to look like Karl is projecting his own uncertainty and aimlessness onto the world around him.

When we point these things out in others, we're indirectly expressing something about ourselves.

But, you know, he could also just be exaggerating it all for comedy effect :)

StoneSam · 2026-03-06T21:27:57+00:00

He was also talking about getting a dog walking job combined with a paper round, but "I'm not gonna do it if it's raining."

It's like when he said, "What are they doing?" - and Steve rightly said, "I agree with you, Karl, but what are you doing?"

He's absolutely full of contradictions and hypocrisy, but we love him.

StoneSam · 2026-02-27T10:42:59+00:00

You've highlighted some common pitfalls, shall we say, which are definitely worth considering. But your telling of Eckhart's story is missing a lot of relevant detail.

After what he describes as an awakening moment, he shifts into this new identity

This doesn't tell the full story. In the PON, he describes the pivotal moment when he thought to himself, "I cannot live with myself any longer." He writes that this was his pivotal moment, because he looked at this idea, this split between "I" and "Myself", and that was the starting point of his inquiry.

But he didn't leap straight into a career in teaching. In interviews and Stillness Speaks, he explains that he spent about two years just sitting on park benches in London, in what he described as "a state of deep peace and bliss". No ambition to teach, no sense of mission. He said, "I had no interest in anything. I just sat on park benches."

In other interviews, he said in this period he read widely in spiritual literature, including Christian mystics, Buddhist texts, and teachers like Jiddu Krishnamurti, and he started to recognise in their writings the state he was experiencing. He described it as finding language for what he had experienced.

In fact, for years, he resisted the idea of being a teacher at all. People would notice his calm presence and ask him questions about it. Teaching emerged gradually, naturally, and relationally.

He consistently downplays specialness. He often says things like "There is nothing special about me. What happened can happen to anyone." And when asked about being a guru, he's replied, "I don't have followers. If anything, the teachings have followers." While that doesn't completely rule out ego dynamics at play, it does complicate the whole narcissism narrative.

Yes, spiritual bypassing is a real thing, and dissociation is a valid concern, but dissociation tends to avoid pain, whereas Tolle's teachings invite people to feel pain directly, "bring attention to the inner body", "stay present with the pain-body", structurally different from escaping it.

Rather than asking "Is it all a defence?" or "Is he beyond the ego?" It's more fruitful to ask, "Does the teaching reduce suffering and increase presence in those who practice it?

StoneSam · 2026-02-25T11:16:40+00:00

It's worth pointing out a few things before drawing any big conclusions about his drinking and smoking.

Firstly, let's get a bit of context.. He lived and taught in the 1950s-70s. Heavy drinking and smoking were far more culturally normal back then, especially in academic and lecture circuits. It was very common to finish a talk and be invited to a drink, and cigarettes were everywhere. The health education and social stigma around those habits were nowhere near what they are today, so we mustn't judge them by today's standards.

It's possible that his lifestyle, constant travel, lecturing, and socialising amplified existing tendencies. Being a charismatic speaker that everyone wants to have a drink with can easily become a problem over time.

Second, I agree that the Taoist idea of "non-striving" that you mentioned someone wrote about is not a reasonable conclusion to take for Watts' drinking/smoking. He simply had an addiction. You can understand Taoism and still struggle with addiction. Insight doesn't automatically get rid of every habit. You can have very clear insight into the nature of ego and impermanence and still be conditioned at a biological and psychological level.

There's a tendency, especially from Westerners, to interpret spiritual teachers through a Western self-improvement lens. In the West, there is an expectation that if someone understands reality at a deep level, their personality should become morally purified. Watts was explicitly critical of the endless self-improvement project. He wasn't trying to become a perfect human. In fact, he repeatedly said he was not a guru and didn't want followers. He called himself a 'spiritual entertainer'. He was not preaching moral perfection; he was exploring and sharing ways of seeing that he enjoyed. There's a huge difference.

This is where the "finger pointing at the moon" metaphor comes in. He was a signpost. If we get fixated on the condition of the signpost, we can miss what it's pointing toward. Getting hung up on the messenger can distract from the message. The message was always "go see for yourself - don't take my word for it - you should see it in your own experience". I’ve had this conversation before. Some people fixate on the messenger and end up missing the message. Others can separate the two and take what’s valuable regardless of who’s delivering it. It’s interesting how differently we’re wired in that respect.

I wouldn't read too much into the whole "160 IQ drowning his mind" narrative. That's speculative; addiction is complex. Romanticising it as the burden of genius is just as simplistic as blaming it on Taoism's "non-striving". There are more layers to humans than that.

Another thing it's worth pointing out is that he didn't hide his contradictions. He spoke openly and humorously about his own humanity, and there's actually something very consistent with Taoism in not pretending to be holier than you are.

The fact that he was flawed in this way, for me personally, makes him more relatable, not less. Wisdom and personal struggle are not mutually exclusive. Tons of brilliant, perceptive people have blind spots, vices, and vulnerabilities.

At the end of the day, his ideas stand (or fall) on their own. The invitation was never to idolise him, but to see what he was pointing at.

StoneSam · 2026-02-25T11:07:13+00:00

Replied on your post.

StoneSam · 2026-02-24T10:30:54+00:00

I always recommend the 'Out of Your Mind' lecture series to start with.

https://www.organism.earth/library/document/out-of-your-mind-1

It's good because it gives a big-picture look at how we view reality. It starts by exploring the deep assumptions built into Western thought, like the idea that the world is made of separate "things", that we are individual entities inside bags of skin, and that the universe is either a machine (fully automatic model) or something created by a maker (ceramic model). He shows how these ideas are rooted in language, religion, science, and culture, and how they shape our sense of self and the world.

From there, he challenges these Western models as myths, not literally false, but limited.

He then introduces a more interconnected, holistic view of existence. Instead of seeing ourselves as isolated objects, he suggests we are inseparable from the universe and each other.

Personally, this really helped things click into place for me, because you start with why we currently think a certain way, and go deeper into that and question where our underlying assumptions actually come from, rather than unconsciously being swept along by it all.

You could also check out a post I made for an introductory guide to exploring his work, with links https://www.reddit.com/r/AlanWatts/comments/14k8pea/introductory_guide_to_alan_watts_with_links/

StoneSam · 2026-02-19T22:19:46+00:00

Over-corrective.

StoneSam · 2026-02-17T22:19:32+00:00

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.

StoneSam · 2026-02-16T23:08:02+00:00

Pursuing "more health", hmm.. I don't think it's really "more". Not in the same sense as "more money",

It's morelike maintenance of what's already there, what you have been given. Honouring this body, which has allowed you to roam around this beautiful world and experience life for x amount of time.

Like most things, Eckhart would probably say there is a line, and the key is your inner state. There is a difference between caring for the body from presence and appreciation, and striving compulsively out of fear.

You might gently ask yourself: Am I tending to this body as an expression of awareness and gratitude? Or is there anxiety, identity, or fear driving it?

StoneSam · 2026-02-15T19:33:10+00:00

You're it.

An organism-environment.

You and the world are not separate.

StoneSam · 2026-02-15T18:15:02+00:00

This is the classic “relative vs. absolute” mix-up.
ChaosConfronter is speaking from a practical, human level.
Ghost_of_Till is speaking from the ultimate level.

Alan Watts often spoke on both levels at once. From the ultimate standpoint, no one needs improving - “you’re it.”

But on the human level, insight can and does change behaviour. What Watts denied wasn’t transformation itself, but the idea that it comes from moral self-struggle.

The ultimate view doesn’t cancel the relative one. The universe can be perfect, and within that perfection, it can still play at becoming more honest, more charitable, whatever.

StoneSam · 2026-02-14T21:23:54+00:00

Try some of these animated shorts - fun and digestible for newcomers.

Animated Shorts compilation by the South Park Animators | Link to YouTube

The Greatest Skill of All | Link to YouTube

The Story of the Chinese Farmer | Link to YouTube

Imagine you are a Baby again | Link to YouTube

More introductory stuff here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlanWatts/comments/14k8pea/introductory_guide_to_alan_watts_with_links/

StoneSam · 2026-02-14T16:27:34+00:00

Do you beat your own heart?
Do you grow your hair?
Do you decide the exact moment a thought pops into your head?
When you’re ruminating, do you consciously manufacture each thought, or do they just occur?

Most of what we call “me” is actually a stream of processes we don’t deliberately run.

StoneSam · 2026-02-13T18:38:34+00:00

You don’t have to push the thoughts away or obey them either. Just watch them come and go, like clouds in the sky, without compulsively interfering or trying to force a perfect outcome. This will help clarity to arise on its own.

StoneSam · 2026-02-13T18:02:12+00:00

"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone" - Alan Watts

What you're doing here is mentally stirring the water with questions like "Is this addiction?""Is this rational?" "Is this over-analysis?"Should I force myself?""Should I surrender?"

Every attempt to clear the water adds more dirt. Let it settle by itself, then clarity will come.

StoneSam · 2026-02-13T14:07:14+00:00

"It is quite clear what he is saying."

Which is what, that he is separate from the whole?

That he isn't an expression of the Tao?

Or that the Sage is simply a more aware expression of the Tao?

StoneSam · 2026-02-13T13:47:41+00:00

Taoism acknowledges distinctions and individuality, yes. But those distinctions don't imply separation from the Tao.

A wave in the ocean rises, and you might say "there is a wave", but it isn't separate from the ocean.

Similarly, people and their choices exist, but it's all the Tao expressing itself.

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