Alan Watts Being in the Way

Taking a trip through the constructs of form and labeling, Alan Watts philosophizes about the limits of language.This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit play.alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanThis time on Being in the Way, Alan Watts philosophizes about:Unexamined systems of belief underneath languageIdeas that are built into our common senseThe substance of form, pattern, and organizationThe profound mystery of matterLimitations in trying to use language to define the ineffable‘Matter’ as a root word for many thingsChinese views of natureWhy verbs do not necessarily need subjectsBeing at peace with ourselves in a world of formRecognizing the universe as a process“When we divide the world into operations and agents, doers and doings, then we ask such silly questions as ‘who knows, who does it, what does it?’ When the what that is supposed to do it is the same as the doing. You could very easily see that the whole process of the universe may be understood as process, nobody is doing it.” – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Using wisdom from Eastern philosophies, Alan Watts explains why Westerners should let go of any preconceived notions of God.This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.This Alan Watts lecture features a discussion on:Comparative studies on religionThe absurdity of Christian imperialismSuperiority and lack of faithThe difference between faith and beliefBlasphemy and those who claim to be GodThe political image of God in the westThe ceramic model of the universe (material and form)Hindu mythology and dramaSelf-discovery of supreme realityThe meaning of MayaPunitive reasons why people say that God is deadFixed notions of God as idolatryContemplative prayer and letting go of our ideas of GodExistence as relationshipBuddhist vows versus western obedienceLooking beyond the skin-encapsulated ego“It must be understood that the crux of the Hindu and Buddhist disciplines is an experience, not a theory, not a belief.” – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This time on the Being in the Way Podcast, Alan Watts delves into questions of identity, purpose and buying into the ‘Myth of Myself’.Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanIn this episode, Alan Watts explores:The question of our own identity and our place in the worldMyths of the self handed down through historyViewing ourselves and the world with a “floodlight consciousness” – rather than the narrow “spotlight consciousness” we are taught to see the world throughHow we are not born into this world, but grow out of it – “In the same way an apple tree apples, the Earth peoples.”“The most fascinating problem in the world is who am I? What do you feel when you say the word I? I myself?This problem has fascinated me for many years. Most Western people locate their ego inside their heads. This is the ordinary average conception of what is oneself.” – Alan WattsThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit https://Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Delving into the historically complicated human relationship to divinity, Alan Watts describes the trap of separateness. Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanIn this episode, Alan Watts explores:The sensation of our own existence Jewish Christian mythology Identifying with the tribeUniversal law and the roots of justiceFreud and the energies of the psyche Man as a product of nature versus the supernaturalThe idea that we were all subjects of a divine king you might say was a political model based on the organization of the great city-states of the ancient near east. That image, you see, has absolutely haunted Western man throughout his whole development because he has felt that he is in the universe on probation and sufferance. He doesn't quite belong here." – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sifting down behind the cultural myth of man as separate, Alan explores how we are all actually Earth, the Universe, and the Big Bang.In this episode of Being in the Way, Alan takes us on a journey from childhood to adulthood, highlighting how we are trained into separation from a young age, and forced to focus on the never-arriving “future,” rather than being present in the moment. Through this lens, he further spelunks the “hoax of man” and offers insight into how this sense of ego identity creates tension and frustration.Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan In this episode Alan discusses:How from childhood onward we are constantly preparing for something in the future, rather than being present for lifeThe culture’s division of work and play, and the confused idea that money can buy you pleasureGrowing up in society, identity, defining a person, and being a “genuine fake”How the sense of ego creates tension, separation, alienation, and frustrationThe inseparable connection of the polarity of self and otherThe dawn of creation and how we are not actually separate from the Big BangThe 19th-century myth that man is a fluke in an unintelligent, automatic universe“Your actual self—what is finally and fundamentally you—is not a separate and lonely part of the world, but the real you is the world itself, everything that there is, expressing itself as this particular organism here and now.” – Alan WattsThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Exploring modern culture as actually anti-materialistic, Alan tackles matters of sedentariness, sensuousness, isolation, work, play, God, and sexuality.Host, Mark Watts, returns to introduce another thought-provoking talk from his father, Alan Watts. In this powerful lecture—one of his earlier field recordings, entitled ‘The Unpreachable Religion,’—Alan turns our common idea of modern materialism on its head.Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanThis series is brought to you by the Alan watts organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Contemplating the coincidence of opposites within the 'human game,' Alan ponders the simple yet thought-provoking question: is existence serious?Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanIn this episode of Being in the Way, Mark introduces a lecture from his father Alan Watts called 'Coincidence of Opposites' – the first talk in a seminar called 'Learning the Human Game,' given in 1965 at the University of Michigan to a small group of psychology and philosophy grad students.This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts."One has to get used fundamentally to the notion that different things can be inseparable—that what is explicitly two, can at the same time be implicitly one." – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.