-------
Here we come full circle back to the beginning discovering that It is us and we are It, but we cannot be defined based on the shape that we have taken. In reality, this sham, known as a body is one of the many costumes for IT in the game of hide and seek it plays. Knowing this makes us no better or worse than the other costumes that IT occupies, it only makes us more knowledgeable. Since this is a rouse, all fear is evaporated and we can say with truth “there is no emotion, there is peace.” What really threw me for a loop is the last part of the book:
“Now you know—even if it takes you some time to do a double-take and get the full impact. It may not be easy to recover from the many generations through which the fathers have knocked down the children, like dominoes, saying "Don't you dare think that thought! You're just a little upstart, just a creature, and you had better learn your place." On the contrary, you're IT. But perhaps the fathers were unwittingly trying to tell the children that IT plays IT cool. You don't come on (that is, on stage) like IT because you really are IT, and the point of the stage is to show on, not to show off. To come on like IT—to play at being God—is to play the Self as a role, which is just what it isn't. When IT plays, it plays at being everything else.”
I cannot really grasp the full meaning of it right now, but I believe that living with this knowledge that I am IT in my day to day life will help me come to the final realization more naturally.
I guess what Watts is trying to get us to understand through out the book is that we are not really living, merely existing, fulfilling a role which society has designed for us. But to do this without knowing that it is a role can really burn you out. Once you do know it (that this is a role) it turns life into a game and allows you to enjoy it more fully.
No comments:
Post a Comment