Currently reading “The Book” by Alan Watts – a stunning essay on “the taboo against knowing who you are.”

In particular, he offers a devastating critique for any looking to “change the world”:

“The startling truth is that our best efforts for civil rights, international peace, population control, conservation of natural resources, and assistance to the starving of the earth -urgent as they are – will destroy rather than help if made in the present spirit.

For, as things stand, we have nothing to give.

If our own riches and our own way of life are not enjoyed here, they will not be enjoyed anywhere else. Certainly they will supply the immediate jolt of energy and hope that methedrine, and similar drugs, give in extreme fatigue. But peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love.

No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

View more Alan Watts clips here.

“I believe in fact, and I believe in the plain truth told wholly — that the truth retold can be a net thrown around life at a certain time and place, encompassing all within, and that people can go out there, live as actors, work within their staging ground, do so with a soft heart; I want others to go in the world with an idea, with intentions and means, and come back with a story about how their actions affected the world and how they themselves were shaped by the results.

I have a belief that such endeavours can improve the world, however recklessly, especially when these people go forward and interact, give, solve, change the situations they encounter–and also, even those with no intentions of recording their actions.

There’s nothing to be gained from passive observance, the simple documenting of conditions, because, at its core, it sets a bad example. Every time something is observed and not fixed, or when one has a chance to give in some way and does not, there is a lie being told, the same lie we all know by heart but which needn’t be reiterated.

Friends, I urge you to find us hopeful. I urge you to find that we tried something, knowing nothing of the results. There is a chance that everything we did was incorrect, but stasis itself is criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.”

— Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity

“For three hundred fifty years, people in the Western world have convinced themselves that they live in a bleak world of dead matter spinning in empty space, when the real universe all around them is aflame with magic and power and infinite life. We need to wake up from the trance of scientific materialism and embrace …the dancing powers that surround us at every moment.” — John Michael Greer

I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason. But not in the way most people tend to use the phrase.

Traditionally, I find optimistic people say “everything happens for a reason” when they’re trying to console a friend after a painful event. Or to convince themselves that a poor decision or consequence is the result of God (or the universe) testing them.

Will their faith or resolve carry them through the event to find the silver lining?

But I like to think of it under a different perspective. I believe each moment in our lives is not the result of divine intervention, rather, it is an opportunity to learn something new. To shift our perspective. To challenge us to see things in a new light.

The “reason” for everything is to raise our awareness enough to perceive a more enlightened reality.

In this way, I seem to find powerful passages in books at just the right time. These are phrases or ideas that resonate with my thought patterns, causing ripples of agreement that I perhaps can’t justify rationally, but nevertheless, feel to be true.

One particular passage caught my eye on a recent roadtrip to San Francisco. The classic book: The Teachings Of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda.

At some point in their lives, many people ask themselves the question: am I doing what I should be doing with my life? Am I on the right path? And more importantly, how do I know the right path when I find it?

Quoting Don Juan, Castaneda captures beautifully how one must make the decision:

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Does this path have heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t.

One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

A path without heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy, it does not make you work at liking it.”

All the career books ever written, all the life coaches’ words ever spoken, all the religious scriptures of history, can be distilled to this simple teaching.

How often do you check in to ask yourself if your path has heart? Share your thoughts in the comments!

“All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.” — Ezra Pound

“When a man (or woman) knows the solitude of silence, and feels the joy of quietness, he is then free from fear and he feels the joy of the dharma.” — Buddha