The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

Belief, as the opposite of faith, is the conditional adherence to the truth when/if that truth corresponds to preconceived prejudices that gel with one’s ego. People believe in ideas that buttress their sense of self. However, for Watts, beliefs provide a false sense of security: “Belief is the insistence that truth is what one would ‘lief’ or wish it to be” (24).

Faith, as opposed to belief, entails the unrestrained welcoming of any truth, regardless of whether it supports one’s current system of ideas or views: “Belief clings, but faith lets go” (24). Faith thus entails a fundamental trust in the world and requires a willingness to step into insecurity. Watts writes that faith is a virtue of science and of religion when it is not “self-deceptive” (24).

The “great stream” is Watts’s term for the ineffable flow of reality that we call life, the present moment, or the “eternal now” (53). When we are properly aware, we experience vision of God and are tuned into the great stream. This stream, the ineffable reality of which we are aware, is ultimately indistinguishable from our awareness of it. It is the expression of the flowing unity of all things together in time.

The spiritual facet of something indicates its transcendence of any fixed form. Things are always more than the mind’s attempt to grasp and delimit them through concepts, words, ideas, or thoughts. Watts views this term as dated, but still employs it to make a point: “Matter is spirit named” (71). In proclaiming this, Watts is reiterating his non-dual philosophy: There is no true distinction between the material and the spiritual realm.