The Biggest Joke of All - Alan Watts on The Ego

the biggest ego trip going is getting rid of your ego and the joke of it all is your eco doesn't exist there's nothing to get rid of it's an illusion i don't exist so uh they're all characters that i played jim carrey was a less intentional character right because i thought i was just building something that people would like but it was a character the cautionary voice was my ego trying to protect itself against an assault and that i was about to mount on it looking for jim carrey again and having trouble finding him and at a certain point i i realized hey wait a second you know if it's so easy to lose jim carrey who the hell is jim carrey but you still want to ask how to stop the illusion know who's asking [Music] and the big difficulty is this i want to find a method whereby i can change my consciousness [Music] but the therefore to improve myself but the the self that needs to be improved is the one that is doing the improving and so i'm rather stuck well what is it that you feel when you feel i what do you do when somebody says pay attention what is uh the difference between looking at something and taking a hard look at it or between hearing something and listening intently what's the difference what's the difference between waiting while something goes on and enduring it why the difference is this that when you pay attention instead of just looking you screw up your face you frown and stare that is a muscular activity around here when you will you grit your teeth or clench your fists when you endure or control yourself you pull yourself together physically and therefore you get uptight you hold your breath you do all kinds of muscular things to control the functioning of your nervous system and none of them have the slightest effect on the proper operation of the nervous system if you stare at things you will rather fuzz the image than see them clearly if you listen intently by concentrating on muscles around the ears you will be so much attending to muscles here that you won't hear things properly and you may get singing in the ears if you tighten up with your body to pull yourself together all you do is constrict yourself with the thought that it's achieving psychological results the sort of psychological results it's intended to achieve now all this amounts to is it's like you're taking off in a jet plane you've got a mile down the runway and the thing isn't up in the air yet you get nervous so you start pulling at your seatbelt that's what it is now that is a chronic feeling we have it in us all the time and it corresponds to the word eye that's what you feel when you say i you feel that chronic tension because when an organ is working properly you don't feel it when you are fully functioning you are unaware of the organ when you're thinking clearly your brain isn't getting in your way actually of course you are seeing your eyes in the sense that everything you see out in front of you is a condition in the optic nerves of the back of the skull that's where you're aware of all this but you're not aware of the eye as the eye so when we are aware of the ego eye we are aware of this chronic tension inside ourselves and that's not us it's a futile tension so when we get the illusion the image of ourselves married to a futile tension you've got an illusion married to a futility and then you wonder why i can't do anything why i feel in the face of all the problems of the world impotent and why i somehow cannot manage to transform i now here we get to the real problem because we're always telling each other that we should be different am not going to tell you that tonight [Music] why not because i know you can't be nor can i that may sound depressing but i'll show you it isn't it's very heartening [Music] how can i stop identifying myself with the wrong me [Music] well the answer is simply you can't and the christians put this in their way when they say that mystical experience is a gift of divine grace man as such cannot achieve this experience it is a gift of god and if god doesn't give it to you there's no way of getting it now that is solidly true you can't do anything about it because you don't exist well you say that's pretty depressing news but the whole point is it isn't depressing news it is the joyous news there's a zen poem which puts it like this talking about it me it means the mystical experience satori the realization that you are the eternal energy of the universe it says like this you cannot catch hold of it nor can you get rid of it in not being able to get it you get it when you speak it's silent when you are silent it speaks now in not being able to get it you get it because there is no method all methods are simply um gimmicks for strengthening your ego so how do we not do that you're still asking for a method there is no method if you really understand what your eye is you will see there is no method you

Channel: T&H - Inspiration & Motivation

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Id: QumMSGHITo0

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021