Alan Watts Academy
Alan Watts
Practical Non-Duality
Ego Awakening with Alan Watts
We offer tools, content and services that help people with turning the words of Alan Watts into direct experience – in all stages of the process.
Free Course
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Watch the first chapters of our Alan Watts Fundamentals Course for free. Make a quick deep dive into the world view of Alan Watts, neuroscience, psychology, etymology and much more.
Valid for one month
Introduction to the Course & Alan Watts
The World View of Alan Watts: What is Non-Duality?
Topics: Neuroscience, Psychology, Etymology, Religion & more
Was Alan Watts correct? You decide.
Free e-book: "Considering Alan Watts"
Full Course
129
Turn the work Alan Watts into experienced reality. Deepen your understanding of non-duality with diagrams, humor and discussions of the best quotes by Alan Watts. Use your mind to go beyond the mind.
Valid until canceled
Everything in the Free Course
8+ Hours of Video Content forever available
Topics: Decision-making, Happiness, Purpose, Methods & more
Exercises, Quotes, Quizes & Paradoxes
30-minute private Q&A consult
Private Study Retreat
1,280
Immerse yourself for a week in our Alan Watts course with daily personal guidance by the creator of the course. The retreat can be in-person or online. Get in touch for date/location options.
Valid until canceled
Everything in the Full Course
1-Week daily 1:1 dialectic talks about course content
1-Week Unlimited Whatsapp Q&A support
After care: 3x weekly integration video call
Optional: Focus on Satori / Ego Awakening
Optional: Application of course content to a personal theme
Watts' philosophy in 8 Quotes
“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at itself”
Making Ego Awakening
Normal Again
Non-Duality and ego awakening are a little tricky to grasp, because you can't get it in the way you normally learn things or abilities. It's paradoxical.
Awakening is not a mechanical process, but that doesn't mean you have to be vague and abstract when you explain non-duality.
We explain non-duality as if it were a mechanical process. And, once someone gets it like that, we take a final step – we zoom in on why it's not mechanical – which usually results in ego awakening.
The works of Alan Watts (and some of his friends) have proven, again and again, to be the most effective tool in this process of using the mind against the ego.
It's no rocket science: Ego awakening often already happens after a few days of total immersion in the subject.
We're committed to developing all sorts of products and services, based on the works of Alan Watts, that make ego awakening normal again.
“The feeling that we call “I” is an illusion.
Taking oneself to be the thinker of one’s thought is a delusion that produces nearly every kind of human conflict and unhappiness.”
~ Sam Harris, neuroscientist
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1. Considering it →
Find out what non-duality is, if ego awakening makes sense and if the mind-over-mind path of Alan Watts is for you.
2. Getting it →
Use your mind to get past the mind. Digest the fundamental ideas of Alan Watts until you really feel them.
Watts Study Retreats
3. Living it →
Learn to live from your new mode of perception. Refine, integrate, stabilize and then no longer care about it.
Ego awakening retreats
Integration retreats
Ego Issues
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Impossible to find your Purpose
The egoic illusion leads to all sorts of conditioning about who you are, what others might think of you and what uncomfortable outcomes certain path may have. This often leads to your true purpose becoming a blind spot. As Alan Watts said, ask yourself "what would you do if money were no object"?
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Making Life Decisions
We make decisions all day long. We can do this rationally, emotionally or intuitively. The teachings of Watts imply that we use our minds and feeling to inform ourselves, but that we surrender to intuition for decisions, like how a dancer surrenders to the music. However, ego prevents this.
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Endless self-improvement
When there's ego, there's suffering from desire. The idea is that the egoic illusion creates a separation between self and things that are not-self. The self tries to become whole again by obtaining everything that is not self, but that never ends. Without ego, it would be clear which undesirable aspects of your personality are meant to stay and which require an effort. Yes, that could even include your fear, trauma or other inhibition.
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Outcome dependence
It's normal to have an intended outcome behind efforts. It's also normal that the outcome is sometimes different from your preference. Ego makes this feel like a failure and your happiness is affected by this. Without ego, happiness depends on being authentic while being aware of doing so. Once mastered, it makes one's happiness independent of outcomes, which makes things much more fun to just do for the sake of it.
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Karmic debt
Karma means that the universe will unwind whatever you wind up. Even if you do very kind, generous, social things it might lead to karma. That's because the good thing would not be the thing that was supposed to happen – the thing that would have happened if you'd have followed your intuition. In the words of Watts: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Ego leads to karma and karma is a bit of a b*tch.
Alan Watts
Fundamentals Course
The non-duality of Alan Watts seems like an immensely wide ranging topic of difficult concepts. Yet, upon a closer look, it's absolutely no rocket science.
It's pretty much a finite set of topics you need to (really, really) understand well. When you do, you're also quite likely to experience ego awakening.
"If you say you understand me but you don't feel it, I'd argue that you don't really understand me"
~ Alan Watts
We're recorded 8+ hours of content in which we explain all the main concepts in the work of Alan Watts, supported with quotes, diagrams and easy-to-grasp metaphors.
A selection of the topics we cover:
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The nature of Ego
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The different methods for awakening
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The paradox of Awakening
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Karma
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Decision-making (incl. tools)
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Happiness
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Reincarnation
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Free will
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Responsibility
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Surrendering to intuition (incl. tools)
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Purpose
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Intimacy (incl. tools)
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Absolute vs Relative reality
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Perception and mindset (incl. tools)
Our "Fundamentals Course" comes with free access to weekly online Q&A sessions where you can ask any question you like.
This course will provide a solid framework for our integration retreats, intensives and (eventually) co-lives.
Private Study Retreats
When studying non-duality, you're basically trying to shift from linear thinking to non-linear understanding as well as shift from conceptual thinking to non-conceptual thinking.
It's doable, but challenging due to blind spots. Especially when people around you stimulate your existing (egoic) thought patterns all the time.
For this reason, many people only understand non-duality in a linear way – the first 99% – and do not experience a paradigm shift or real-life change. The pay-off for the hard work start after the last 1% (when integration can begin).
We've been offering 1:1 study retreats in which you get to immerse yourself fully in (selected) works of Alan Watts and engage frequently in the kind of dialectic talks Watts would promote.
The talks during retreats draw out the unconscious (remnants of) beliefs the keeps the change from happening. But, as Watts would say, this won't happen... "along the wandering or circular paths of ordinary life which do not involve the experiments necessary for the denouncement [of ego]."
The only purpose of the course and discussing concepts is to fully grasp it. When this happens, your experience changes and we'll focus from thereon on the integration of this new mode of perception in real life. This makes the retreat suitable for any experience level.
The study retreats are lead by Richard van der Linde. Upon request, retreats can be combined to save costs, although part of the retreat will still consist of private discussions.
How it works
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We validate that this is really for you
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We agree on a date and location (Richard is often in the Netherlands, Spain and Indonesia)
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We book and confirm
The price for assistance during the retreat is fixed. When no travel for Richard is required, there are no other expenses involved. We can usually help out with suggestions (and discount) for local accommodations on all service/price levels.
When travel and accommodation is required, retreats are hosted for several people or the scope of the retreat is expanded with a challenging coaching objective, a fixed price will be quoted on beforehand.
“All Buddhist teaching is a dialogue.”
~ Alan Watts (in "Thusness")
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Just considering Non-Duality?
Try out the first chapters of our course for free
Curious whether non-duality makes sense? We give away the first two chapters of our full Alan Watts video course. This is where you'll find all the arguments for non-duality in one place – collected from the works of Alan Watts, Sam Harris, Osho, Rupert Spira, Eckhart Tolle and many others. In a neutral way, for you to make up your own mind.
✓ E-course chapters instantly available
✓ Free e-book included
✓ No strings attached
“If you got the message,
hang up the phone.”
~ Alan Watts
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