The Wisdom of Insecurity

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Everyone wants to lead a happy and fulfilled life. At the same time, no one wants to experience tribulations. They spend their lives worrying about how to make it all easy and make the pain go away. From my limited appreciation of both Watts’ views and cognitive science, I see nothing so glaringly contradictory that it would undermine one or the other. However, I do think there are some interesting possibilities for investigating what this kind of experience he describes may be. Consequently our age is one of frustration, anxiety, agitation, and addiction to "dope." Somehow we must grab what we can while we can, and drown out the realization that the whole thing is futile and meaningless. This "dope" we call our high standard of living, a violent and complex stimulation of the senses, which makes them progressively less sensitive and thus in need of yet more violent stimulation. We crave distraction—a panorama of sights, sounds, thrills, and titillations into which as much as possible must be crowded in the shortest possible time. While not being all sunshine and rainbows, the strong and indoctrinated morals and beliefs of religion gave people a sense of comfort and fulfillment. Knowing you’re working towards an afterlife in paradise is reassuring and lets you put up with a lotpain.

Here is a person who knows that in two weeks’ time he has to undergo a surgical operation. In the meantime he is feeling no physical pain; he has plenty to eat; he is surrounded by friends and human affection; he is doing work that is normally of great interest to him. But his power to enjoy these things is taken away by constant dread. He is insensitive to the immediate realities around him. His mind is preoccupied with something that is not yet here. It is not as if he were thinking about it in a practical way, trying to decide whether he should have the operation or not, or making plans to take care of his family and his affairs if he should die. These decisions have already been made. Rather, he is thinking about the operation in an entirely futile way, which both ruins his present enjoyment of life and contributes nothing to the solution of any problem. But he cannot help himself.” [emphasis added] If there is a moment to be enjoyed, it must be a present moment. However, if we are continuously living in an imagined, abstracted future (or past) moment, then when those moments actually come, we will miss them if we are living again in another imagined moment. Given this description of the problem, is it possible to get out of it? The answer, according to Watts’, is yet another seemingly paradoxical yes-and-no situation. Leadership Journeys [132] – Josh Staph –“A good leader knows what questions to ask and what questions need to be answered” I do not believe, as he contends, that most Christians view the stories in the Bible as being merely metaphors for the process of insight he describes in his book. Many practicing Christians genuinely do believe in an actual future heaven and hell, as opposed to being an analogy for enlightenment and the vicious circles we engage in on this earth.Another way of putting the ideas, is that Watts advocates living fully in the present moment. Focusing attention on current experience, rather than being subsumed in the world of thoughts, memories and future projections.

It's funny..., I showed this book to one of my bri It’s like the poet Rainer Maria Riike said 100 years ago: “could it be that the real world is something I’ve never KNOWN?” Well, that’s scary. Without a foundation, we can be lost! We are forced to wrestle with the demon of nothingness, until that day when, through thought, prayer and meditation, we - or rather the Being of God - melts it in a Fire of Attention, Love and Peace. I think the best indicator of how much you will like this book is how similar you are to me. If you: This chase for happiness will never be over. It’s just what society’s trying to sell you, because it still hasn’t managed to come up with a better way of giving you true fulfillment.Leadership Journeys [135] – Manish Kumar –“You never get enough time to spend with your loved ones”