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If You Are Spiritually Awake, Never Reveal These 5 Things To Anyone! - Alan Watts | Alan Watts Daily Wisdom | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: If You Are Spiritually Awake, Never Reveal These 5 Things To Anyone! - Alan Watts
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Core Theme
The core theme is that true spiritual awakening leads to insights that are often incommunicable through ordinary language, and attempting to share them directly can cause confusion or misunderstanding. Instead, awakened individuals learn to embody their insights and share them through presence and action rather than direct explanation.
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You know, there's something rather
peculiar that happens when you begin to
wake up. And by wake up, I don't mean
simply opening your eyes in the morning
or having a nice cup of coffee. I mean
when you really begin to see through the
game, when the veil of ordinary
consciousness starts to slip and you
catch a glimpse of what's actually going
on here. It's quite marvelous really.
But here's the thing that nobody tells
you. Once you've had that glimpse, once
you've tasted that freedom, there are
certain things you simply cannot share.
Not because they're secret in some
mystical hush- hush way, but because
sharing them would be like trying to
pour the ocean into a teacup. It just
doesn't work. And more than that,
attempting to do so can actually create
more confusion than clarity.
So let me tell you about five things
that if you are spiritually awake, you
should never share. Not out of spiritual
pride, not because you're part of some
exclusive club, but simply because these
things cannot be communicated in the way
that ordinary information can be
communicated. They're more like the
scent of a flower. You can describe it
all day long, but until someone smells
it for themselves, they haven't really
got it.
Now the first thing you must never share
is your direct experience of awakening
itself. You see the moment you wake up
there's this tremendous urge to tell
everyone about it. You want to grab
people by the shoulders and say, "Look,
look, I've seen it. It's all right
here." We've been looking in the wrong
direction the whole time. But what
happens when you do this? The other
person looks at you with a mixture of
confusion and concern. They nod
politely. They might even say that's
wonderful for you. But inside they're
thinking you've gone a bit strange. Why
is this? Because awakening is not an
idea. It's not a concept that can be
passed from one mind to another like a
recipe for bread. It's a lived reality.
It's the difference between reading
about swimming and actually being in the
water. When you try to describe the
water to someone who's never been wet,
what do they hear?
Just words, just sounds. The actual
feeling of water, the way it holds you,
the way it moves around your body that
cannot be captured in language. I once
knew a man who had what you might call a
profound spiritual experience.
He was walking in the garden one evening
and suddenly everything became transparent.
transparent.
He saw that he was not a separate being
walking through a garden. But rather the
entire process of gardening was
happening. There was no walker and no
garden. Just walking gardening as one
movement. Well, he was so excited by
this that he rushed to tell his wife.
And what did she say? She said, "That's
nice, dear. Don't forget to take out the rubbish."
rubbish."
You see, she couldn't receive what he
was trying to give because she hadn't
had the experience. It's like trying to
explain the color red to someone who was
born blind. You can talk about
wavelengths of light. You can describe
how it makes you feel, but you cannot
give them the direct experience of
redness and spiritual awakening is far
more subtle than even that. So, what
happens when you insist on sharing this
experience? You begin to sound like
you're bragging. Oh, I've had this
marvelous insight. I've seen the truth.
I understand what life is really about.
And immediately, you've created a
division. You've put yourself over here
as the awakened one and the other person
over there as the unawwakened one. And
in doing so, you've actually
contradicted the very insight you were
trying to share, which is that there is
no division, no separation, no you and
them. The awakened person learns to be
quiet about their awakening, not out of
false modesty, but because they
understand that talking about it is like
a finger pointing at the moon. The
finger is useful if someone wants to
look where it's pointing. But if they're
fascinated by the finger itself, they'll
miss the moon entirely. And most people
when you try to share your awakening
become fascinated by your finger. They
want to know what you did to get
awakened. They want the technique, the
method, the secret practice. But
awakening didn't happen because you did
something. It happened when you stopped
doing and simply saw what was already
there. The second thing you must never
share is the specific practices or
methods that worked for you. Now, this
might sound contradictory.
Surely, if something worked for you,
wouldn't it be helpful to tell others?
Ah, but here's the trick.
What worked for you worked because it
was right for you at that particular
moment in your life. It fit your
temperament, your situation, your
particular flavor of confusion. Imagine
you have a headache and you take a
certain medicine and the headache goes
away. Does this mean everyone with a
headache should take that same medicine?
Of course not. One person's headache
might be from tension, another's from
lack of sleep, another's from dehydration.
dehydration.
The same medicine won't work for all of
them. In fact, it might harm some of
them. Spiritual practices are exactly
like this. What brings one person to
clarity might trap another person in
technique. I might sit quietly and watch
my breath and in that watching suddenly
see through the illusion of the separate
self. But if I tell you you must sit and
watch your breath, you might spend years
sitting and watching and getting
absolutely nowhere because your
particular knot is different from mine.
There was a student who came to his
teacher and said, "Master, I've been
meditating for 5 years just as you
instructed and I still haven't had any awakening."
awakening."
The teacher laughed and said, "Perhaps
you should stop meditating." The student
was shocked.
But you told me to meditate. Yes,
said the teacher. And now I'm telling
you to stop. You've turned meditation
into another form of striving, another
way of trying to become something you
think you're not. Stop trying to be
awakened and see if you're not already
awake. You see, the moment you give
someone a method, they turn it into a
goal. They think if I do this practice
correctly, I will achieve enlightenment.
And now they're further from awakening
than when they started because they've
created a future moment when they
imagine they'll be complete.
But awakening is not in the future. It's
only now.
It's seeing what's already here,
not creating something new. The third thing
thing
you must never share are your insights
about other people. When you wake up,
one of the things that happens is you
begin to see people very clear. You see
through their masks, their pretenses,
their games. You can see when someone is
operating from fear, when they're
defending an image, when they're lost in
their own story. And there's a
tremendous temptation to help them by
pointing this out. But this is almost
always a mistake. Why? Because people
are not ready to see themselves until
they're ready. And when they're ready,
they'll see it themselves. They don't
need you to tell them. In fact, if you
tell them before they're ready,
you'll only create resistance and
resentment. Think about it this way.
Suppose you see a butterfly struggling
to emerge from its cocoon.
You think, "Oh, I can't help.
I'll cut open the cocoon and free the
butterfly. But if you do this, the
butterfly will die. Why? Because the
struggle to emerge is what strengthens
its wings. Without that struggle, it
cannot fly.
In the same way, people need to struggle
with their own confusions in their own
time. Your helpful insight delivered
before they're ready for it might
actually harm them. I remember sitting
with a friend who was going on and on
about how unfairly he'd been treated at
his work. He'd been passed over for
promotion and he was convinced it was
because his boss had something against
him. Now I could see quite clearly what
was actually happening. My friend had a
certain arrogance, a way of dismissing
others ideas that made him difficult to
work with. This was the real reason he
wasn't promoted. But did I tell him
this? No. because he wasn't asking to
see himself clearly. He was asking for
validation of his victim story. If I'd
said, "Actually, you're rather arrogant
and dismissive."
What would have happened? He would have
become defensive.
He might have ended our friendship and
he still wouldn't have seen the truth
because he wasn't ready to see it. So
instead, I listened. I made sympathetic
noises and then months later without any
prompting from me he suddenly said you
know I think I might have been a bit
difficult to work with there it was the
insight arose in him naturally when he
was ready for it the awakened person
learns to trust this natural process
they don't rush around trying to
enlighten everyone they understand that
consciousness awakens in its own time
like a flower opening in in the morning.
You cannot force the petals open. You
can only provide the right conditions
and then step back. The fourth thing you
must never share is your experience of
the void, the emptiness, the fundamental
groundlessness of existence.
This is perhaps the most dangerous thing
to share because it can be deeply
disturbing to someone who isn't ready
for it. You see, when you really wake
up, one of the things you see is that
there's nothing solid anywhere.
Everything you thought was permanent and
real turns out to be more like a dance,
a flow, a process.
Your own sense of self, which feels so
solid and continuous, is actually more
like a river. You can say there's a
river, but if you try to grab it, you
get nothing but water passing through
your fingers. The river is not a thing.
It's a happening. Now, this realization
can be incredibly liberating.
It means you're not stuck being who you
think you are. It means all your
problems, all your anxieties, all your
carefully constructed identities are
like clouds passing through the sky. But
to someone who hasn't seen this yet, it
sounds terrifying.
It sounds like you're saying nothing
matters, that everything is meaningless,
that we're all just random collections
of atoms bouncing around with no
purpose. I once made the mistake of
trying to explain this to a colleague.
We were having dinner and he was talking
about his plans for the future, all the
things he wanted to achieve, the person
he wanted to become. And I said rather unwisely,
unwisely,
you know, there really is no you to
achieve anything. What you call yourself
is just a pattern, a habit of thought.
It's not real in the way you think it's
real. Well, he looked at me as if I'd
just announced I was going to rob a
bank. What are you talking about? He
said, "Of course I'm real. I'm sitting
right here. I have thoughts, feelings,
memories. How can you say I'm not real?"
And then he became quite upset. He
thought I was denying his existence,
dismissing his life as meaningless. What
I was actually trying to say is that
he's real, but not in the way he
imagines. He's not a separate isolated
self trapped in a bag of skin. He's the
whole universe expressing itself as a
particular pattern called him. But he
couldn't hear this because it threatened
his entire sense of identity. And
without a stable sense of identity, he
felt he would fall apart. This is why
the great teachers throughout history
have been very careful about who they
share the deepest teachings with. They
understood that these teachings
are like medicine. In the right dose at
the right time, they heal. In the wrong
dose at the wrong time, they poison. The
truth about emptiness, about the void,
about the groundlessness of existence.
This truth must be approached gradually, gently.
gently.
or it can shatter someone's world before
they have the capacity to rebuild it.
And the fifth thing you must never share
is your sense of ultimate freedom and
why you no longer feel bound by
conventional rules and morality. When
you wake up, you see that all the rules,
all the shoulds and shouldn't,
all the moral codes and social
conventions are just agreements, games
we've all decided to play. And you
realize you're free to play or not play
as you choose.
But if you announce this to people, if
you say I'm beyond good and evil, I no
longer follow conventional morality
because I see it's all just made up.
People will think you've become
dangerous. They'll think you're going to
start robbing banks or harming people
because you no longer believe in moral
rules. What they don't understand is
that true freedom is not the freedom to
harm. When you really wake up, you see
that harming others is harming yourself
because there is no real separation.
The person you hurt is just another
aspect of the same consciousness that
you are. So naturally, spontaneously,
you treat others with kindness. Not
because a rule tells you to, but because
that's what flows naturally from the
understanding of unity. A truly free
person follows the spirit of the law
while being free of the letter of the
law. They act morally, not out of fear
of punishment or hope of reward, but
because moral action is simply what
happens when you see clearly. They're
kind not because kindness is virtuous,
but because unkindness would be as
strange as punching yourself in the
face. But try explaining this to someone
who still believes morality comes from
external authority,
from God or society or some cosmic rule book.
book.
They cannot understand how you can be
both free from morally rules
and yet act morally. To them, it seems
like a contradiction. So, they assume
you're either lying about your freedom
or you're secretly immoral and just
haven't acted on it yet. The awakened
person learns to follow social
conventions even while knowing their
convention. They play the game because
not playing would create unnecessary
conflict and confusion. They pay their
bills. They obey traffic laws. They
treat people with respect, not because
they must, but because it's simply
easier and more harmonious to do so.
They're like a master actor who knows
it's all a play, but gives their
performance everything they've got anyway.
anyway.
So, there you have it. Five things you
must never share if you are spiritually
awake. Your direct experience of
awakening. Your specific practices and
methods, your insights about other
people, your understanding of emptiness
and groundlessness, and your sense of
freedom from conventional morality. Does
this mean you can never talk about
spiritual matters? Of course not.
But there's a difference between
pointing towards something and claiming
to have captured it. There's a
difference between offering a
possibility and insisting on a
conclusion. The awakened person speaks,
but they speak lightly. They suggest
rather than assert. They invite rather
than command. They know that words are
fingers pointing at the moon. And they
never confuse the finger with the moon
itself. And perhaps most importantly,
they've learned that the deepest
teaching is not in words at all. It's in
presence. It's in the way they move
through the world. It's in their laugh,
their silence, their simple being.
People might not understand what you say
about awakening, but they can feel when
they're in the presence of someone who's
awake. They feel it as a kind of peace,
a kind of spaciousness, a sense that
this person is somehow at home in the
universe in a way that most people
aren't. So be quiet about your
awakening. Live it rather than talk
about it. And trust that those who are
ready to wake up will wake up. Not
because you pushed them, but because
consciousness itself is waking up
through all of us. Each in our own time,
each in our own way. You're not the
awakener. You're just another expression
of the awakening that's always already
happening. And if someone really wants
to know if they really come to you with
genuine curiosity and readiness, then by
all means speak. But speak as one beggar
telling another beggar where to find
bread, not as someone who has arrived
telling someone else how to get there.
Because the beautiful secret is this.
There's nowhere to get to. We're already
there. We've always been there. We're
just playing this magnificent game of
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