What is this thing called “Life”? Acceptance of Death, by Alan Watts

"Life is found when the end of effort is found (not by means -of- effort)."

The other day, I watched the following 4 minute video. It struck a chord in me because it reflects my current reality of Life, Death everything in between, before and after. Your comments are welcome but I'm not looking for validation or "high fives", or to rally the troupes in an effort to get everyone (anyone) to agree with me. My reason for the few words I'll share, along with this video, is a deep desire for what is in me, to live longer and louder than my Earth suit.

If you view the below video, I hope you'll read the following few words and allow them to really challenge you: "To behold God, you become like Him. If you believe God to be the place where your heart is satisfied, where you're able to 'fly', where He's all you need; then, you will become those things to your world." It is possible that you are having difficulty understanding how all this could be. If you're struggling with this mindset, it may be that you've fixed your affections on "this world" and your identity is anchored in Earth.

All my love,
David

THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO:

Now there really isn’t anything radically wrong with being sick or with dying. Who said you’re supposed to survive? Who gave you the idea that it’s a gas to go on and on and on?

And we can’t say that it’s a good thing for everything to go on living. In very simple demonstration that if we enable everybody to go on living, we overcrowd ourselves and we’re like an unpruned tree.

And, so therefore, one person who dies in a way is honorable because he’s making room for others… Although each one of us, individually, will naturally appreciate it when anybody saves our life, if we apply that case all around we can see that it’s not workable.

We can also look further into and see that if our death could be indefinitely postponed, we would not actually go on postponing it indefinitely because after a certain point we would realize that isn’t the way in which we wanted to survive.

Why else would we have children? Because children arrange for us to survive in another way by, as it were, passing on a torch so that you don’t have to carry it all the time. There comes a point where you can give it up and say now you work.

It’s a far more amusing arrangement for nature to continue the process of life through different individuals then it is always with the same individual, because as each new individual approaches life is renewed. And one remembers how fascinating the most ordinary everyday things are to a child, because they see them all as marvelous – because they see them all in a way that is not related to survival and profit.

When we get to thinking of everything in terms of survival and profit value, as we do, then the shapes of scratches on the floor cease to have magic. And most things, in fact, cease to have magic.

So therefore, in the course of nature, once we have ceased to see magic in the world anymore, were no longer fulfilling nature’s game being aware of itself.

There’s no point in it any longer. And so we die. And, so something else comes to birth, which gets an entirely new view.

It is not, therefore, natural for us to wish to prolong life indefinitely. But we live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture, in particular, suffers.

What is this thing called “Life”? Acceptance of Death, by Alan Watts

THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO:

Now there really isn’t anything radically wrong with being sick or with dying. Who said you’re supposed to survive? Who gave you the idea that it’s a gas to go on and on and on?

And we can’t say that it’s a good thing for everything to go on living. In very simple demonstration that if we enable everybody to go on living, we overcrowd ourselves and we’re like an unpruned tree.

And, so therefore, one person who dies in a way is honorable because he’s making room for others… Although each one of us, individually, will naturally appreciate it when anybody saves our life, if we apply that case all around we can see that it’s not workable.

We can also look further into and see that if our death could be indefinitely postponed, we would not actually go on postponing it indefinitely because after a certain point we would realize that isn’t the way in which we wanted to survive.

Why else would we have children? Because children arrange for us to survive in another way by, as it were, passing on a torch so that you don’t have to carry it all the time. There comes a point where you can give it up and say now you work.

When we get to thinking of everything in terms of survival and profit value, as we do, then the shapes of scratches on the floor cease to have magic. And most things, in fact, cease to have magic.

So therefore, in the course of nature, once we have ceased to see magic in the world anymore, were no longer fulfilling nature’s game being aware of itself.

There’s no point in it any longer. And so we die. And, so something else comes to birth, which gets an entirely new view.

It is not, therefore, natural for us to wish to prolong life indefinitely. But we live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture, in particular, suffers.

By Alan Watts

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THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO:

Now there really isn’t anything radically wrong with being sick or with dying. Who said you’re supposed to survive? Who gave you the idea that it’s a gas to go on and on and on?

And we can’t say that it’s a good thing for everything to go on living. In very simple demonstration that if we enable everybody to go on living, we overcrowd ourselves and we’re like an unpruned tree.

And, so therefore, one person who dies in a way is honorable because he’s making room for others… Although each one of us, individually, will naturally appreciate it when anybody saves our life, if we apply that case all around we can see that it’s not workable.

We can also look further into and see that if our death could be indefinitely postponed, we would not actually go on postponing it indefinitely because after a certain point we would realize that isn’t the way in which we wanted to survive.

Why else would we have children? Because children arrange for us to survive in another way by, as it were, passing on a torch so that you don’t have to carry it all the time. There comes a point where you can give it up and say now you work.

When we get to thinking of everything in terms of survival and profit value, as we do, then the shapes of scratches on the floor cease to have magic. And most things, in fact, cease to have magic.

So therefore, in the course of nature, once we have ceased to see magic in the world anymore, were no longer fulfilling nature’s game being aware of itself.

There’s no point in it any longer. And so we die. And, so something else comes to birth, which gets an entirely new view.

It is not, therefore, natural for us to wish to prolong life indefinitely. But we live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture, in particular, suffers.

By Alan Watts

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