The Alan Watts Game
Life seems more fun with fewer rules. Yet, to make certain enjoyable games possible, all players must temporarily agree to a shared set of rules. For example, you can only play soccer if all players agree that picking up the ball with your hands is not allowed. Conversely, for a proper game of handball, all should agree to not kicking the ball.
In our workshop, we play a game you could call the Alan Watts game.
The game lasts 90 minutes and has a break. The ball is the ego and the goal is awakening.
The playing field: To make this game possible, we agree (to play) that...
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non-duality is correct
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non-duality implies intuition as leading principle
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ego is the root cause of many psychological issues and awakening is a logical first and large step to resolution
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none of the many methods for playing the ego awakening game is better than the others. In our workshops, we cover 3 such methods – dialogue, mindset and surrendering – simply because we feel like it.
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although you can’t do anything to reach ego awakening, some of us feel drawn to work on awakening, which makes this our form of non-doing
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ego awakening might be the goal, but the purpose of the game is to have an enjoyable game from simply following our natural inclination to play this game
+ we play without being under the influence of any substance
+ strict confidentiality: what happens during the game, stays among the players
+ while we don’t debate the rules, there is always room for questions about them
Definitions
Non-duality:
The philosophical idea that all and everything exists within Consciousness, which some call God, and that the sense of selfhood – the Ego – is an illusion.
In practical terms, non-duality is the intuition is the call of the authentic path. Other ways to express this are: surrender to the universe, follow an a-karmic path, become choicelessly aware.
Ego:
A thought-pattern. An identification with thinking – a belief the voice in your head is an independent, autonomous you. The belief and sensation that the organizing principle of the person is largely separate from others.
Ego awakening:
Breaking the identification with thought, getting into a non-conceptual state of mind, being in the Now or being Present (which is actually not a moment in time but timelessness).
This is a mode of perception where there is no belief in the sense of selfhood the mind still tends to create. It's a fleeting and returning state for a while. Once the awakening becomes permanent, it could be called enlightenment or nirvana or unconditional (impersonal) love or becoming god (experiencing what you always were). Then the neural pathways have adjusted in such fashion that the ego is no longer functioning as the organizing principle of experience. The shift can happen sudden, but in almost every case it happens gradually with some distinct moments of insights along the way.
Doing:
Strictly speaking, there is no personal “I” who can do things, but in our human experience there is definitely that sensation until there is (a moment of) ego awakening. However, when a person goes with the flow of intuition, it’s considered to be happening organically – a non-doing. Therefore, all that we do during the workshops are not really a doing if you do it because it participating in the workshop feels natural to you.
Soul:
When talking about consciousness, ego, personality and other related subjects, the concept of a soul is often included. Some non-dual traditions consider individual souls eternal, while other traditions do not. The difference seems merely semantic (a difference in definitions), since they all agree that nothing personal is eternal. Since the ego has a tendency to hold on to anything it can, we prefer the definition in which the soul is not considered eternal. Watts, Ramana and many other non-dual teachers even stress that the belief in personal continuation after death – reincarnation – keeps you in bondage. Not because they deny the possibility, but because the ego likes to make it personal whereas it isn’t personal.
Important:
We don’t really use the word important, except maybe out of habit to indicate the relative significance of something compared to something else, like how eating healthy is important when you feel weak. Awakening is not important. World peace is not important. Paying your bills in time is not important. And yet they are – from certain relative points of view. The only really important thing, if you will, is to do things in a non-doing way and without even believing that that is important. (That’s a paradox, or double-bind, that gets you right back at the core of any ego awakening game, including our Alan Watts game.)