Give It Away And It Will Come Back – Alan Watts On The Secret

anytime you as it were voluntarily let up control in other words cease to cling to yourself you have an access of [Music] power I don't know what I want but when you don't know what you want you've re reached the state of desirelessness when you really don't know but you see there's a there's a beginning stage of not knowing and there's an ending stage of not knowing in the beginning stage you don't know what you want because you haven't thought about it or you've only thought superficially then when you somebody forces you to think about it and go through and say yeah I think I like this I think I like that I think I'd like the other as the middle stage then you get beyond that say is that what I really want in the end you say no I don't think that do I might be satisfied with it for a while and I wouldn't turn my nose up at it but it's not really what I want why don't you really know what you want two reasons that you don't really know what you want number one you have it number two you don't know yourself cuz you never can the godhead is never an object of its own knowledge just as a knife doesn't cut itself Fire doesn't burn itself light doesn't illumin itself it's always an endless mystery to itself I don't know and this I don't know uttered in the infinite interior of the spirit this I don't know is the same thing as I love I let go I don't try to force or control it's the same thing as humility and so the upanishad said if you think that you understand Brahma you do not understand and you have yet to be instructed further if you know that you do not understand then you truly understand for the Brahman is unknown to those who know it and known to those who know it not and the principle is that any time you as it were voluntarily let up control in other words cease to cling to yourself you have an acccess of power because you're wasting energy all the time in self-defense trying to manage things trying to force things to conform to your will the moment you stop doing that that wasted energy is available and therefore you are in that sense having that energy available you are one with the Divine principle you have the energy when you're trying however to act as if you were God that is to say you don't trust anybody and you're the dictator and you have to keep everybody in line you lose the Divine energy because what you're doing is simply defending yourself so then the principle is the more you give it away the more it comes back now you say I don't have the courage to give it away I'm afraid and you can only overcome that by realizing you better give it away because there's nowhere holding on to it the meaning of the fact you see that everything is dissolving constantly that we're all falling apart we're all in a process of constant death all falling apart everything is that's the the great assistance to you see that that fact that everything is in Decay is your helper that is allowing you that you don't have to let go because there's nothing to hold on to it's achieved for you in other words by the process of nature so once you see that uh you just don't have a prayer and it's all washed up and that you will vanish and leave not a rack behind and you really get with that suddenly you find you have the power this enormous access of energy but it's not power that came to you because you grabbed it came in entirely the opposite way and power that comes to you in that opposite way is power with which you can be trusted there's a little game going on which I'm going to initiate you into and it's played in Zen it it works like this if you go to a teacher and ask for Spiritual instruction or even if you come to a seminar like this you are by doing that confusing yourself because you are looking for what you're asking for outside as if someone else could give it to you as if you didn't have it so the teacher knows that as long as you do that you haven't understood but he doesn't just tell you to go away or we may sometimes just say go away I'm too busy and any in any case I can't tell you anything well people won't take that for an answer they won't take no for an answer and furthermore if he just said go away they would just find some other teacher who would exploit them and uh maybe keep them as followers for years and acquire a great deal of money by so doing what he does is another thing he tries to give them the put down as if to say you have a great long distance to go yet your attainment is uh not at all perfect and uh where uh they they're always talking about other sects and other schools and saying well they haven't really got the point you see so that you keep losing faith in yourself and uh feeling my goodness I haven't yet attained this thing and that keeps you working but all the time you're being talked out it's like someone who's a pickpocket and he's stolen your own watch and is selling it to you but just so long as you can be talked out of your yourself you deserve to [Laughter] be now you become very aware of this if you ever do momentarily slip into some sort of mystical experience uh you become aware of this tremendous gamesmanship going on uh and you see it as sort of continuous with the with all sorts of cosmic games that are going on of uh creatures eating other creatures up and um the creatures that get eaten of course transform themselves into the creatures that eat them and then in turn uh eat other creatures and uh you you see the whole High and seat game going on and then you realize very clearly that the state of development that you are in now is uh no better and no worse than anybody else's State because it's like uh space again which planet is in or which star is in the best position well it's all equal they're all in the middle anyone can be considered as the center one any point on a sphere is the center of the surface of the sphere so in know that in the same way everybody in all his behavior whatever he's doing whether we call him from a certain point of view sick or whether we call him healthy whether we call him good or bad neurotic normal psychotic sane uh all the manifestations are just like uh the leaves on the trees and and uh in each uh being in a unique way is as Christians would say manifesting the will of God so they really from that point of view you see there is nothing to do to attain wood nothing at all but you see that's very difficult to understand because a lot of people when they hear that there's nothing to do try to do nothing and you can't because you are Karma and Karma means action you can't do nothing but uh the thing you're looking for or think you're looking for is what you're doing is what's called you only of course as we all know uh we we got ourselves into the idea that oneself is so difficult to see because it's like as I've often said trying to bite your own teeth or look into your own eyes and you can't find it it's always behind it's like your head is from the optical point of view a blank space 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