Alan Watts Quotes

Oftentimes, those special brains, the ones that are capable of focusing more intently than others, do so at the expense of emotional maturity

Where your attention goes, you go.

My mother used to say, "Tell your brain you want that piece of information or you want to solve this problem, and then just walk away from it. Just forget about it. Just do something else, completely distract yourself, and you'll see, it's like a computer. Eventually, it will deliver it up." And I find that's really true.

The human brain is a wonderful organ. It starts to work as soon as you are born and doesn't stop until you get up to deliver a speech.

Attention is the material I work with.

What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a 'neural correlate of consciousness'?

There are still so many questions to answer about the workings of the human body and, most mysterious of all, it is influenced by our state of mind.

The amygdala in the emotional center sees and hears everything that occurs to us instantaneously and is the trigger point for the fight or flight response.

Some people think they are concentrating when they're merely worrying.

The mind is always present. You just don't see it.

We tend to think that when we're awake, we're on, and when we're sleeping our mind is off, but actually, we're not off. There's a lot going on!

Beyond mind, there is an awareness that is intrinsic, that is not given to you by the outside, and is not an idea - and there is no experiment up to now that has found any center in the brain which corresponds to awareness.

Attention is the ability we have to discriminate and to focus only on that which we want to perceive.

Thoughts are chemical. They can either kill us or cure us.

The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.

He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.

Whatever you focus on you're going to feel.

I'm alone. And I'm crying. And no one is coming to the crib. And the nightlight has burned out. And I'm mad. I'm so mad. Left frontal lobe. I...I...I don't feel so good. Left occipital lobe. I... don't remember where...Left parietal lobe. I...I...I can't remember my name,but...but...Right temporal...but I'm still here. Right frontal. I'm still here... Right occipital.I'm still...Right parietal. I'm...Cerebellum. I'm...Thalamus. I...Hypothalamus. I...Hippocampus...Medulla.

The quality of our attention determines our experience.

Our awareness is the key. It is our awareness more than our work effort that gets the right result right now.

Our brain is the factory of the emotions

In any given moment we are either practicing mindfulness, or defacto, we are practicing mindlessness.

There are a lot of things that I'm allowing myself to be, but it's a conscious effort to experience contentment for me. My brain doesn't do that naturally. I'm very overwhelmed all of the time.

Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit.

A working brain is probably a lot like a map, where anybody can get from one place to another on the freeways. It's the nonworking brains that get blocked, that have dead ends, that are under construction like mine.