Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the w… - Alan Watts

Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown.

As soon as we freed ourselves from the mirage of hurrying time — which was nothing more than the projection of our own impatience — we were alive again, as in childhood, to the miracles and ecstasies of ordinary life. You would be astounded at the beauty of our homes, our furniture, our clothes, and even our pots and pans, for we have the time to make most of these things ourselves, and the sense of reality to see that they — rather than money — constitute genuine wealth.

The outsider cannot just barge in like Santa Claus and put things to right — especially our kind of outsider who, because he has no sense of belonging in the world, invariably smells like an interferer. He does not really know what he wants, and therefore everyone suspects that there are limitless strings attached to his gifts. For if you know what you want, and will be content with it, you can be trusted. But if you do not know, your desires are limitless and no one can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.

For all the qualities which we admire or loathe in the world around us are reflections from within — though from a within that is also a beyond, unconscious, vast, unknown. Our feelings about the crawling world of the wasps’ nest and the snake pit are feelings about hidden aspects of our own bodies and brains, and of all their potentialities for unfamiliar creeps and shivers, for unsightly diseases, and unimaginable pains.