'Doing' things that are really supposed to 'happen' by Brian Swichkow

This philosophy was derived from a passage in Out of Your Mind by Alan Watts. [1]

It is, in a way, like we were when we were babies; when we hadn't been told anything and didn't know anything other than what we felt—and we had no names for it. Now of course as we grow older, we learn to differentiate one thing from another—one event from another. And above all, ourselves from everything else. Well and good, provided that you don't lose the foundations. Just as mountains are differentiated, but they are all based on the earth. So the multiple things of this world are differentiated, but they have as it were a basis. There is no word for that basis, not really, because words are only for distinction. And so there can't really be a word, not even an idea, of the non-distinction. We can feel it, but we can't think it. But we don't feel it like an object, you feel you're alive, you feel you're conscious, but you don't know what consciousness is because consciousness is present in every conceivable kind of experience. It's like the space in which we live, which is everywhere. It's like a fish being in water—and presumably, a fish doesn't know it's in the water because it never goes out. A bird, presumably, knows nothing of the air. And we really know nothing of consciousness and we pretend space isn't there. However, when you grow up and become fascinated, spellbound, enchanted, by all of the things that adults wave at you—you forget the background. And you come to think that all of the distinctions which you've been learning are the supremely important things to be concerned with. You become hypnotized. And so when we are told to pay attention to what matters, we get stuck with it. And that is what, in Buddhism, is called #attachment. Attachment doesn't mean that you enjoy your dinner or that you enjoy sleeping or beauty, those are responses of our organism in its environment as natural as feeling hot near a fire or cold near ice. So are responses of fear or of sorrow. They are not attachment. Attachment is exactly translated by the modern slang called 'hangup'. It's the kind of stickiness—or what in psychology would be called 'blocking'—when you are in a state of wobbly hesitation, not knowing how to flow on. So when the chicken has it's beak put to a chalk line, it's got a hangup. It's stuck on that line. And so in the same way we get a hangup on all the various things that we are told when we grow up—by our parents, our aunts and uncles, our teaches, and—above all—our peer group. And the first thing that everybody wants to tell us is the difference between ourselves and the rest of the world. And between those actions, which are voluntary and those which are involuntary, what we do on the one hand and what happens to us on the other. And this is of course immensely confusing to a small child, because it is told to do all sorts of things that are really supposed to happen—like going to sleep, like having bowel movements, like loving people, like not blushing, stop being anxious, and all sorts of things like that. So what happens is this, the child is told in sum that we your parents, elders, and betters, order you to do what will please us only if you do it spontaneously. And no wonder everybody is completely confused. We go through life with that burden on us.