Don’t Be Scared It’s All A Show – Alan Watts

foreign that's why there are esoteric teachings but on the other hand there is another opposite extreme which is not realizing that the show is a show and that's as bad as giving the show away say you go to the movies and you go to see some great horror movie you know awful thing well why does one do it do you want a thrill and the whole of the universe wants a thrill that's what it's all about otherwise it would be boring but when you go to the movie you know in your heart of hearts that it's only a movie and yet you contrive to some degree to forget this while you're there and therefore get scared and feel real creeps that's great some people like to go and cry they go and see some tragedy and just love to weep because it's a catharsis it gets all the salt out of you or something I don't so uh you you you do this thing and uh it is we can say it's vicarious yep but that is the spirit of Showmanship play so one might say then that uh it is possible in this life to attain a sort of metaphysical courage in which you know really know deep within that the most harrowing experiences that physical existence can offer our show now this is the uh what you might call Ultimate nerve and for example when the samurai in Japan studied Zen that's what they wanted to get they wanted to get ultimate nerve so that absolutely nothing would phase them so there is a poem which says under the sword lifted High there is Hell making you tremble go ahead there is the land of bliss don't hesitate don't be blocked don't be phased non-plussed by the illusion now you would say well that's all very well but I can't bring myself I start to shake and I can't stop it is not to do with my will and no amount of gritting my teeth clenching my muscles exercising my willpower can get rid of the shakes when I am really scared that's true but you must remember that the secret to all this is not to be afraid of fear when you can really allow yourself to be afraid afraid and you don't resist the experience of fear you are truly beginning to master fear but when you refuse to be afraid you are resisting fear and that simply sets up a vicious circle of being afraid of fear and being afraid of being afraid of fear and so on and that's what we call worry good worry is simply a chronic condition and people who worry are going to worry no matter what happens because when one possible threat is exterminated they will immediately discover another because worry is an infinitely skinned onion and you can go on and on and on because the moment you see you reduce the size of the onion and you get your worried out about this suddenly your whole sense of distance and size changes and because you're looking so intently at this little onion it fills your whole field of vision and is once again a big onion see you start peeling that down but as you get another little one about this size then it enlarges itself in your judgment and your sense of values I think once more it's colossal now that's always going on so if you are disposed to worry there is always plenty to worry about you make plenty of money and you have no troubles about that then you start wondering if you're going to get a disease and the doctor says no it's all right nothing wrong with you then you wonder if you're going to get into an accident then you take precautions and then you wonder if there's going to be a political revolution whether your house is going to be wrong there's always something so it is a really this kind of worrying is a completely useless Pursuit and yet we feel a little guilty if we don't do it because uh it somehow put into us that a proper amount of worrying is uh showing a good sense of responsibility you're concerned and all people you might say who are socially conscious are concerned so when we say I'm concerned it means I have a frown on my face and uh I I'm worried about you about the Nation about the war it's on concerned until it said religion is ultimate concern I am concerned about the universe but what I call concern in the way I would want to interpret it instead of this sort of frown is something more like amazement in other words that existence is extremely I can't get my I can't explain this feeling because I don't know quite how to ask a question about existence so that I could be said to be wondering about it in some sort of clear thinking way what what uh this is a very nice thing to consider to yourself that if you were going to have an interview with the Lord God and you would have only five minutes and you might ask one question what would you ask and you've got plenty of time to think this over in advance and do you realize question after quest and say no that's not really the thing I want to get at uh-uh it's not bad like do you exist and God would say what of course yes here I am am I having a hallucination no well how can I be sure that this isn't the hallucination you see and then you reject all that sort of question and when you finally come down to it you don't know what to ask there is a sort of question in your mind not so much a question as a questioning a feeling of it's all unbelievable it's amazing I wonder at it I Marvel at it it is a miracle that there is anything that that feeling you see of the the marvelousness of being is what I call or would want to mean by two X-Ray's ultimate concern it's also love is involved in it see that's the part of the problem an abstractionist culture such as ours as I indicated we are not materialists we are abstractionists a materialist is a lover and therefore is somebody related to the present because you see you you can't love except in the present so if then you try to obliterate fear the fear that black may win you're working in the wrong way to attack atheist is to strengthen because immediately you feel guilty if you don't succeed or you feel inadequate but fear is something that arises naturally and spontaneously under certain circumstances just as you will feel warm if you get near a fire and you can't go up to a fire without some sort of self-hypnosis and then say well I refuse to be warm there's something a bit weird about that on the country it is very natural to be afraid and so if you don't try to knock it down you don't try to make yourself over into some sort of preconceived idea of what you ought to be then you're on the track