Everything that happens to you happens because you want it to happen to you. - Alan Watts
How true is this?
Totally false
>>7618797
You have to have experience with mind altering drugs to understand this
"Everything that happens to you happens because you want it to happen to you", father said as he forced his penis into my anus.
>>7618797
100 % ( percent = per one hundred)
>>7618797
Not at all. And that quote is often taken out of context. Alan Watts was an entertainer, and he himself said not to take anything he said seriously.
>>7618805
Understanding, the big 'buddhist' lie.
>>7618837
Fuck off slavoj
>>7618805
Show me your understanding.
>>7618836
That's the point of his philosophy that truth is subjective. All deep thinkers are just entertainer.
>>7618841
that's gay
>>7618841
He didn't have a philosophy. He catered to New Age hippy types in California whilst riding the bandwagon of Japaneses Dogen Buddhism. A guy's gotta make a living in this world, and that was his niche.
>>7618797
This magical thinking bullshit is a really terrible meme.
There are people with mental disorders who worry about their house burning down 24/7 for 50 years and it never happens.
Also, part of the reason Elliot Rodger flipped out is because he tried to use "The Secret" to win the lottery and failed completely.
It depends purely on how you define yourself.
>>7618879
My parents fell hard for The Secret meme it was so sad watch?
My grandfather wanted to get dementia and die? My grandmother wanted stomach cancer? My father wanted a stroke? Those people in Paris wanted to get shot by terrorists?
>>7618922
Yeah.
>>7618927
Nah.
>>7618922
Oh come off it! At least pretend that the person on the other end isn't stupid before you make a response. This is a literature board for crying out loud, you ought to think more.
He's trying to break down the idea that it's possible for you to want something and not do it. By doing this he hopes you will see that in matters where you tell yourself "I want to but I just can't do it" that you really didn't 't want to do it, and that you only felt like you ought to want it. By this he hopes you will become more conscious of what you want, and that the horizon of what you'll allow yourself to do to expand.
>>7618937
>"I want to but I just can't do it" that you really didn't 't want to do it
Do you think this is true?
>>7619015
What he means is that the situation you're finding yourself in is not an accident. If for example you're finding yourself stuck in a dead-end job but dreaming of being an author (picking this example because of the board) you might be tempted to think of yourself as being "stuck," or having "wound up" in that place, and struggling to summon the energy to practice writing and wondering why. What Watts wants is for you to see that the problem is not a lack of energy but want. You may think you want to be a writer, but you want to not-write more, and so here you are.
I am excluding special circumstances. If you're interned in a Siberian prison camp you're excused for not realising your dreams but Watts (nor I) is addressing such people.
It's a simple psychoanalytic point, and the aim of psychoanalysis, as you might know, is to take troubling and unconscious material and make it conscious, or in other words, to take things you won't recognise as being yourself and make you see that they are really you; in this case to make you aware that your desire is you, and that this energy you are never finding for doing the work you think you want to do is the desire not to do it.
I interpreted this as: your emotional and intellectual response to an incident is what you want it to be. So that while you don't consciously or subconsciously choose to get cancer, you are responsible for feeling bad about it. Seemed pretty simple. Just turning ones perspective of fate inward to its subjective reception.
>>7618797
ye lol because no
>psyche
>externals
right
>>7618844
At least he was upfront about it. I recall a number of his recorder lectures where he begins with "I'm an entertainer".
