“In order to understand the dance one must be still. And in order to truly understand stillness one must dance. Without stillness, there can be no movement.”—Eckhart Tolle
ALAN WATTS
There was a funny meme trending on social media that I can’t stop thinking about. It’s a green-screened video that starts off showing a boy panicking underwater. Then a text bubble pops up that says: “When you’re drowning, but you remember you can drink water…” The boy stops panicking, pulls a straw out of his pocket, and drinks all the water. The video ends with an audio clip TikTokers use to jokingly seem wise. It’s the voice of Alan Watts when he said, “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.”
Alan Watts was a man of many interests. He went to school for theology, philosophy, and religion. He devoted his life to studying, observing, and applying many of the ideas and concepts that dealt the mind and soul. One of his core concepts was mindful meditation.
Before Alan Watts brought mindful meditation to the West, the word meditation conjured up images of reclusive yogis sitting cross-legged, deep in thought, utterly detached from the worldliness of life. Alan Watts smashed this concept and taught that meditation was a practice that could be done anywhere, at any time.
He made meditation accessible to the masses and translated the ancient practice into a modern context. He encouraged his students to meditate while they did household chores, while they went for their morning run, or when they were raking leaves and sweeping driveways.
Alan Watts embraced Buddhism but transcended all organized doctrines. He practiced many forms of meditation, and his teachings from his vast pool of experience have become a gift to society. His prolific writings and guided meditations are used globally by a new generation eager to escape the busyness of daily living and the anxieties that come with it.
THOUGHTS YOU HAVEN’T THOUGHT
Let’s revisit the Alan Watts quote that trended on social media. “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.” Even though kids and teens used this quote to make jokes about their deep thoughts, I dug deeper to understand what Alan was implying. Here’s an excerpt from his full explanation:
“I remember when I was a boy, they had a common saying: ‘Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.’ Now, obviously, if I talk all the time, I don’t hear what anyone else has to say. And so, in exactly the same way, if I think all the time, that is to say, if I talk to myself all the time, I don’t have anything to think about except thoughts. Therefore I am living entirely in the world of symbols, and I’m never in relationship with reality.”
Think about it. When you meditate, your one goal is to clear your mind, to stop thinking thoughts. You seek silence. You’re not just seeking audible silence. You’re seeking complete mental silence. You’re not thinking about the past or the future. You’re letting go of all the ideas of the world. You’re allocating all of your mental energy to focus on your present moment.
This is where you confront reality. In this headspace, your mind will make connections with the world around you that it’s never made before. It’s a natural psychedelic trip where you unlock the ability to think of ideas you would’ve overlooked in your everyday life. When you allow your mind to use thought patterns it has never used before, you will think of thoughts you’ve never thought before.