The world is candidly an insecure place. Change is the only constant, however slight or dramatic. And the human mind, the "I," is constantly searching for security. So we are naturally at conflict with the world we live in.
"How are we to find security and peace of mind in a world whose very nature is insecurity...All these questions demand a method and a course of action. At the same time, all of them show that the problem has not been understood. We do not need action- yet. We need more [awareness]."
So take the question, "how do I become a better person, or a better me, or a better version of myself?"
That would mean that "There must be a good 'I' who is going to improve the bad 'me'...and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently 'I' will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make 'me' behave so badly."
To put it plainly separating the I and the me is impossible. And in trying to do so you are exacerbating the problem. One cannot fix the other. You are you, and that is all.
So we've all been there. Fixated on something in our lives that we are unhappy about.
"You want to be happy, to forget yourself, and yet the more you try to forget yourself, the more you remember the self you want to forget. You want to escape from pain, but the more you struggle to escape the more you inflame the agony."
I wanted to be the person that I thought I needed to be to make the relationship work. But all the while I was avoiding conflict and avoiding pain (referring to Watts early on in the book). And then, in the end, the relationship would blow up catastrophically because I didn't fix the potholes along the way.
I read that and thought- I've been in this battle before. I tried to convince myself that I wasn't unhappy about my relationship, about my job, about friendships...I made excuses. I said "it will all work out. I can figure this out. I don't need anyone's help." I was only isolating myself more from everything that I wanted and needed. I was searching for a 'safe' relationship. Trouble is, there is no such thing.
"What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is painful, and when we imagine that we have found it, we don't like it."
That describes my past relationships perfectly. I wanted safety, felt that I had found it, then immediately rejected it. So what is there to do?
Face your insecurities, right? Wrong. "To stand face to face with insecurity is still not to understand it. To understand it, you must not face it but be it...To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, 'I am listening to this music,' you are not listening."
You MUST fully immerse yourself in the present, in being, to experience both pain and pleasure because without one the other doesn't exist. The only way to understand and to experience, is to be. I can't put it into words as Watts has done so eloquently, but if you read it you will get it.