Alan Watts Academy
Alan Watts
Practical Non-Duality
Ego Awakening with Alan Watts
We offer tools, contents and services that help people with turning the words of Alan Watts into direct experience – in all three stages of the process.
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
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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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.
Considering Non-Duality?
Make up your own mind.
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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