Alan Watts Quotes

I handle emotional pain by trying to understand that it's going to be painful and to allow for it instead of fighting it. Doesn't make it any easier, though.

Keep me preoccupied Keep me busy, busy, busy So I won't have to think I don't want to think Because it only brings me pain I just keep running away from My problems Keep me busy Give me a million things to do So I can keep running away from myself.

We have to face the pain we have been running from. In fact, we need to learn to rest in it and let its searing power transform us.

For me, what Macbeth is about is people who cannot face their fears and pain and instead of facing them and going beyond, they just run away and they try to cover this with power and violence, but it doesn't work.

We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.

It may look as if the situation is creating the suffering, but ultimately this is not so - your resistance is.

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.

I have to welcome the pain like I welcome the joy.

The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger.

I'm fighting against my will to control. I think that is what I am doing. I would like to accept things in life, in all matters of life I would like to accept, but it's so difficult. I think we all have this struggle.

Life ain't fair. It ain't. Not never. It's pointless and stupid and there's only suffering and pain and people who want to hurt you. You can't love nothing or no one cuz it'll all be taken away or ruined and you'll be left alone and constantly having to fight, constantly having to run just to stay alive.

I think the function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed; what I’m doing is judging natural events in such a way that I am creating suffering within myself. For instance, you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur. And if you just say ‘ok, here I am, I’m going to experience the pain,’ you don’t suffer. The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering.

If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay. (48)

Regardless of the source of our pain, we must accept that God knows, God loves, and God is at work.

Exactly! We run or we lose ourselves in something, somebody, anything to try and ease our pain.

Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me a tendency towards the positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened.

Forget about winning and losing, forget about pride and pain

Go with the pain, let it take you. Open your palms and your body to the pain. It comes in waves like the tide and you must be open as a vessel lying on the beach, letting it fill you up and then, retreating, leaving you empty and clear.

Some pain shouldn’t be wished away so easily. It has to be dealt with, even embraced.

We must accept our pain Change what we can and laugh at the rest

Sometimes the darkness lives inside you, and sometimes it wins.

... I stayed because running seemed too strange and too complicated. All I knew was how to fall back, find a patch of solid ground, and then dig my heels in and fight to start over.

Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine. That this wound did not blossom yet, did not shine yet, at this hour, made him sad. Instead of the desired goal, which had drawn him here following the runaway son, there was now emptiness.

And I have learned now to live with it, learned when to expect it, how to outwit it, even how to regard it, when it does come, as more friend than lodger. We have reached a certain understanding, my migraine and I.

When falling in love I think you should say to yourself, ‘I am going to do this fully.’ I love to the fullest extent that I possibly can - and why not?... Maybe this means there is going to be pain, but I am willing to accept the pain.