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The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.

Alan Watts

Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.
ALAN WATTS

Attraction Content Inferior Material Package Pleasure Symbol
We confuse money with actual wealth.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Confusion Money One Liner Wealth
In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it’s all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.
ALAN WATTS

Connection Life Mouth Move Ocean Reality Separate Source Water
You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.
ALAN WATTS

Ocean Stranger Wave World
What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.
ALAN WATTS

Convention Fatal Forget Serious Thinking
When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.
ALAN WATTS

Attempt Avoid Control Deep Exercise Power
Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.
ALAN WATTS

Change Deceive Thinking
A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
ALAN WATTS

Anxiety Dead Each Other Equality Laugh Priest Religion Transformation
The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.
ALAN WATTS

Constant Construction Ego Empty Expectation Future Memories Past Reality Regret
You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.
ALAN WATTS

Explore Look Philosophy Universe
If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Aware Awareness Beginning Future Live Past Present Real World
You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.
ALAN WATTS

Function Ocean Process Universe Yourself
For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.
ALAN WATTS

Life Live Present
I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.
ALAN WATTS

Aware
No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
ALAN WATTS

Capacity Fear Future Heart Live Love Planning Valid Work
The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security.
ALAN WATTS

Alone Certain Deep exchange Isolation Joy Life Live Security Words World

The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.

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The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.

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