Alan Watts And Self Development

[Emre]

If you are a spiritual seeker or having tough times or just into philosophy you have probably heard of Alan Watts and if you didn't I strongly recommend you to listen at least a short talk from him. You would be amazed with his wisdom! 

So, when he is talking about how one can make oneself a better person he clearly says that this is not possible. He says that especially western people are all out there trying to 'develop' 'improve' themselves when such a thing is not possible at all.

"When the one that is going to do the development is the one that needs development; this is just a CIRCLE" he says. What are your thoughts about this view that self development whatsoever is not possible at all?

 

[DoubleYou]

Balancing between the need to improve versus the acceptance of who you are is a tricky thing to get right. 

The way I see it, this body is completely self-sustainable. So in a way, accepting it's qualities IS in fact the 'act' of improving oneself. Just not the way you thought it was going to be. Letting go of an ego is not a thing you do. It's not an improvement on your self. It's literally just raising awareness of that which is based on a lie.

In other words, allowing the self to be exactly what it is, is in fact what will make it thrive. Don't mistake this for allowing the ego to be what it is, because ego itself IS non-acceptance. You merely have to become aware of it so that it's destructive patterns become that obvious to you that you'll drop it in an instant.

It's like cleaning up a dirty old rock only to discover there was a diamond underneath it all this time. There was nothing to improve, it was already there. And now it can shine. 

[Emre]

@DoubleYou So by that the reason that all the problems we are trying to eliminate are here because of the way we are raised? Because if we are missing  something that is always here and now the reason we are missing it can not exist naturally and must come with attitude that goes against the nature.

[SOUL]

I haven't listen to much from him, I have for a few mins on a couple of topics but not at all on the topic you mention. Although, I have personal experience that differs greatly from what you presented as his ideas. Things change and we change, our patterns, habits and behaviors along with our identity and associations to these change all by themselves even if we don't try to change any of it. In fact, we cannot prevent change or stop change from happening.

So we can be an active participant in the change that happens so exert some influence in how it unfolds or we can allow the change to happen spontaneously without any intentional participation in the process but still will be affected with the random results. There is the idea that at our core our genuine nature is unchanging and the change we experience is just a temporal part of our expression. Even within that concept though we can attempt to influence the evolution of our experience by aligning our temporal expression more and more to reflect our unchanging nature.

The mind may try to label the experience as "development" or "improvement", maybe "realize" or "actualize", even "empowerment" or "enlightenment". A paradigm in the mind could be built around the ideas and concepts with everything in it labeled and identified so it can be referenced to measure and guide the process.

If you say he suggests it's impossible to change, I suggest it's impossible to not change. Maybe he only means that we cannot be an intentional part of the evolutionary experience of life but I myself have my own life as evidence of being an intentional part of my own experiential evolution.