"Working rightly, the brain is the highest form of "instinctual wisdom." Thus it should work like the homing instinct of pigeons and the formation of… - Alan Watts

The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.

The self-conscious brain, like the self-conscious heart, is a disorder, and manifests itself in the acute feeling of separation between “I” and my experience. The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.

"For
the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from
the standpoint of someone standing aside from it — as if it were quite
other than himself — and then trying to grasp it.

But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on
the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the
world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts — based on the
realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process."

If you say what it is that you see, you erect an image and an idol, and you misdirect people. So it’s better to destroy people’s beliefs than to give them beliefs. I know it hurts, but it’s true. It’s what cracks the eggshell and lets out the chick.

For every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree. To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole body. The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation.