"The frightened or lonely person begins at once to think, "I'm afraid," or, "I'm lonely." This is, of course, an attempt to avoid the experience. We … - Alan Watts

Conscious attention is not really the effective controlling force in your life, it’s merely the lookout. It's merely an information source which warns the organism as a whole of unusual features of the environment. […] It is the trouble-shooter - and if you identify yourself with your trouble-shooter, well then, you become one-sided and you become a perpetually anxious person.

Trying not to grasp is the same thing as to grasp since it's motivation is the same, my urgent desire to save my self from a difficulty. I can not get rid of this desire since it is one and the same desire as the desire to get rid of it.

The self pretends that things are getting serious, just like a great actor on the stage. Even though the audience knows that what they see on stage is only a play, the actor’s skill takes them in — they weep and laugh and sit on the edge of their seats with anticipation. They’re utterly involved in what they really know is just a play. So that’s what’s going on here. Brahman is a tremendous actor with absolutely superb technique, so much so that Brahman takes itself in and feels that the play is real. We are all the Brahman acting out our own parts and playing the human game so beautifully that Brahman is enchanted, and this is what enchantment means — under the influence of a chant, hypnotized, spellbound, fascinated. And that fascination is maya.