To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape. ― Alan Wilson Watts

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The process of change does not occur on superficial levels, through mere “positive thinking.” It involves exploring, discovering, and changing our deepest, most basic attitudes toward life.

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What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it. ― Alan Wilson Watts

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There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said. ― Alan Wilson Watts

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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion. ― Alan Watts

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Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social environment. ― Alan Wilson Watts

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One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt. ― Alan Wilson Watts

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Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. ― Alan Watts

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So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself. ― Alan Wilson Watts

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You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean. ― Alan Watts

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