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The Wisdom Of Insecurity by Alan Watts
The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts
Many of you maybe intimately familiar with Alan Watts’ works. He’s particularly popular on YouTube today as his son has continued to carry on his legacy of dispensing the wisdom that his father so eloquently bestowed upon us during the height of his life. He stands true as the only real “Philosophical Entertainer”. Watts’ linguistic style has been compared to a blend between poet, rural southern Baptist minister, and circus ringmaster. Not only does he engage the deepest level of thought, he also captivates your attention in such a way that you are inspired beyond belief.
If you have followed Alan Watts for years and you are ready to go to the next level of understanding, this is the book to purchase. This book is one of Watts’ early writings and I would equate it as his foundational piece; this is the bedrock from which all of his auto lectures come about. After listing to Watts for many years and reading his other books, there was still something missing from my comprehension. There were puzzle pieces that hadn’t quite clicked. This book transforms the intellectual into the intuitive.
The Wisdom of Insecurity was written during the Cold War where society was faced for the first time with complete annihilation. People were scared that everything was going to be lost in the blink of an eye. What Watts leads the reader to accept is that not only is nuclear war a possibility, but that everything and anything is possible. There is absolutely no security anywhere to be found yet there never has been nor ever will be. That is the constitution of existence. We do not know what will happen this very next moment and it has been so since the beginning (if there was one).
Though this book was written in 1951, absolutely everything he writes is pertinent and relevant to today because nothing has changed and it never will (on the outside). Insecurity is a source of wisdom when we understand that we must let go of our illusion of control and time. Neither of these truly exist outside the vibrational frequencies with which we relate to them.
Watts breaks down the internal separation that we create within our minds, between I and experience. It is this dichotomy that creates the insecurity that we feel. The void is only apparent because we falsely believe that we are separate from that which is all of us. Insecurity is just as much an illusion as our ego or sense of self.
Each sentence is perfectly crafted to take you along a logical argument to a conclusion that you once thought absurd, until you have seen the path and that there is no other possible truth.
If you are ready to Let Go of fear and see life as a dance, then this is the book you need to read.
“The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music, also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the find chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.”
“When each moment becomes an exception life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. Where there is life there is hope - and if one lives on hope, death is indeed the end. But to the undivided mind, death is another moment, completely like every other moment, and cannot yield its secret unless lived to the full - And I laid me down with a will.”
“Nothing is more creative than death, since it is the whole secret of life.”
“If you are aware of fear, you realize that, because this feeling is now yourself, escape is impossible. You see that calling it “fear” tells you little or nothing about it, for the comparison and naming is based, not on past experience, but on memory.”
“What happens if you know that there is nothing you can do to be better? It’s kind of a relief isn’t it? You say ‘Well, now what do I do?’ When you are freed from being out to improve yourself, your own nature will begin to take over.”
The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts