The Benefit of Living With No Purpose | Alan Watts

I want to provoke you…

Bhagwan (Osho)’s motto was:

“Live here and now.”

Enjoy this moment.

The past is over, and you can’t live in the future.

Alan Watts would agree — and so would Zen philosophy.

But what happens when we set goals and believe that once we achieve them, we’ll finally be happy and fulfilled?

I used to think that when I earned my engineering degree, everything would change.

Yet on my way to that goal, I had a Near-Death Experience — I left my body, saw it from above, and couldn’t even recognize that it was me.

When I came back, I realized that I had been suffering my whole life. My childhood was hell — daily abuse. But life, I realized, should be the sum of happy moments.

When I finally got my degree, I was seriously ill. My degree — my lifelong dream — suddenly meant nothing.

Even though becoming an engineer had been my childhood goal, it no longer held any meaning.

Can you relate to that?

I’m not against setting goals.

I’m against suffering for goals that don’t serve us.

I saw students who performed even better than me — and yet they enjoyed their time.

Short-term suffering is fine if it’s for something meaningful.

But most of our suffering comes from suppressed childhood traumas that we never processed — and so we end up repeating them.

Much of what we suffer for are things that others could easily enjoy.

The problem is our ego — our identification with something that makes us suffer.

The Alcoholics Anonymous program suggests a helpful question when facing problems:

“What does this have to do with me?”

There’s always someone who could handle the same problem with joy.

Now, I always ask myself:

Does this make sense, or is it just an ego trip?

Why should I suffer for an ego trip?

Ask yourself the same — and find a solution without your ego in the way.

Imagine how much your spouse (and the rest of the world) would appreciate it if you dropped unnecessary principles and ego trips — and just were yourself.

We learn so many rules and assumptions in childhood that are completely nonsensical.

Every day, question whether those rules still serve you or whether they’re even true.

We must keep adapting to an ever-changing world.

For example: a girl gets bitten by a dog, and for the rest of her life, she’s terrified of dogs — avoiding every place they might appear. Instead of healing her fear, she lets it rule her life.

Life is too short for ego trips, unprocessed traumas, and emotional loops we keep repeating.

The solution is simple:

See a life coach to work through your problems, or a therapist to heal your traumas.

There is only this moment, and we can’t truly enjoy it if we’re trapped by our ego or haunted by our past.

My Video:  The Benefit of Living With No Purpose  https://youtu.be/VIFuLpxXPAE

My Audio: https://divinesuccess.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/Podcast5/The-Benefit-of-Living-With-No-Purpose.mp3