I feel I may have accidentally put a kind of negative spin on the teachings of Alan Watts recently - that wasn’t the intention. I respect the guy as someone who was at the cutting edge of spiritual thought and practice during the 1960s. His lectures and books set the scene for grounding and growth and I would highly recommend them to anyone who is looking for answers to the ‘who am I?’ ‘what am I?’ variety of spiritual enquiries.

But within the context of the modern world, Alan would have been red pill.

I wrote a lot of philosophical shit on the subject, but I will cut to the chase and simply connect meditation with TRP goals instead:

Building power is fundamentally based on improving conscious attention and awareness;
Holding frame is the development of a discriminating mindfulness that mediates between the two. Being able to concentrate on a subject objectively while remaining aware of the situational context reduces the effect of the 5 hindrances is my definition of a strong mental frame.

The issue is that there is a big difference between holding frame during a tranquil meditation session and maintaining while jumping up and down at the rave. There is a helpful remedy: lift.

Application of meditative practice in gym work and lifting acts as a gateway. Being in a controlled environment facilitates focus of conscious attention to achieve measurable physical results- in this case, development of the body. Controlled exercising is the first step to bringing meditative practice into the real world. The goal is being able to bring all of your practice into your daily life outside the gym yet the gym, imo, acts as an important bridge between isolated meditative practice and calm in the unpredictability of the real world. I should point out that this benefit applies to sustained cardio work which also encourages focus through long periods of consistent effort.

So, going back to Alan Watts- for fun: I think he used his zen realisations to create the life that he did in the 1960’s. Today, I suspect he would have still been on the cutting edge and would swallow the red pill in the same way he swallowed LSD. I’m not saying he would have been Chad Thundercock, but I suspect we all know (or are at least starting to realise) that Chad is a bit of a superficial figure and, if he has any sense like Alan, he is fast moving on from the shagging birds chapter of what has always been a spiritual journey.