“The
most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or
what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent,
and isolated ego.
The
history and the geographical distribution of the myth are uncertain, but for
several thousand years we have been obsessed with a false humility—on the one
hand, putting ourselves down as mere “creatures” who came into this world by
the whim of God or the fluke of blind forces, and on the other, conceiving
ourselves as separate personal egos fighting to control the physical world.
We
have lacked the real humility of recognizing that we are members of the
biosphere, the “harmony of
contained conflicts” in which we cannot exist at all without the
cooperation of plants, insects, fish, cattle, and bacteria.
In the
same measure, we have lacked the proper self-respect of recognizing that I, the
individual organism, am a structure of such fabulous ingenuity that it calls
the whole universe into being.
We do
not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the
ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.”
Every
individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of
the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most
individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel
it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of
skin.
In the
act of putting everything at a distance so as to describe and control it, we
have orphaned ourselves both from the surrounding world and from our own
bodies—leaving “I” as a discontented and alienated spook, anxious, guilty,
unrelated, and alone.
Living,
loving, being natural or sincere—all these are spontaneous forms of behavior:
they happen “of themselves” like digesting food or growing hair. As soon as
they are forced they acquire that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere
which everyone deplores—weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless
like forced fruit.
Life
and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith—in life, in
other people, and in oneself—is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be
spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.”
Alan Watts
