“Our problem is that the power of thought enables us to construct symbols of things apart from the things themselves. This includes the ability to make a symbol, or an idea, of ourselves apart from ourselves. Because this idea is so much more comprehensible than the reality, the symbol so much more stable than the fact, we learn to identify ourselves with our idea of ourselves.”
-Alan Watts
This Week’s Discussion Topic
What ideas and symbolic concepts do you most often use to represent your ‘self’? What makes these ideas and concepts so attractive to you? What happens when you stay focused on your actual moment-to-moment experience of reality instead of these ideas?