“Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights, of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say ‘Well, that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream which isn’t under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it’s gonna be.’ And you would dig that and come out of that and say ‘Wow, that was a close shave, wasn’t it?’. And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have. And when you are ready to wake up you’re going to wake up. And if you are not ready you are going to stay pretending that you are just a poor little ‘me’. If you awake from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death -or shall I say, death implies life- you can feel yourself. Not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.”

-Alan Watts

 

29 Responses
  1. Beautiful. Gorgeous quote. Though im a lover of love, and in extention,hearts, that heart like top stone coupled with the formation is praying mantis-ish to me. Love me some mantids. Love me some gravity glue too. :)

  2. Keep in mind that this post does not say that all is an illusion, it was said that the limits we see to what we are is an illusion. There is a fundamental reality; I believe it to be so, but the only absolute reality, the only absolute truth, is that which holds all that is. The lives we see ourselves to be are as real a part of that as is the “fundamental reality” that we put so much effort into trying to see.

    I think that if you want to know the next step toward seeing that larger reality and the larger self, look down at your own feet. The Universe did not hide the truth in secrets; it’s in plain sight in everything. Choose to see it as illusion; choose to see it all as real; it’s all a choice and every choice will show you something in the experience.

    1. Laurie, Michael Grab (Gravity Glue), tends to bathe his stone balance with a dousing of water from his hands at the final moment of creation. Fabulous! It’s like a baptism of his work. As though his artist signature has completed its art. (At least, that is how I see it)

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