As I write about Alan Watts, or anyone I admire, I want one thing to be perfectly clear: he is still just a man. Obviously he and man being the operatives. What is important is that he, in distinction among his peers, was able to write about the deep mysteries humans perennially face in such an entertaining, engaging way. His 'abstract' or transcendental teaching is what should be lauded and focused on. If you care to, interest yourself in the man himself, get to know the face behind this voice of wisdom, but don't elevate the face to a state of pedestalization. When you do that, people opposed to his view would be justified in using any normal, material and human hang-ups to somehow discredit his extraordinary way of teaching that goes beyond his physical body in his writing and waves of influence. Such it is with art. I'm hesitant in using the word teaching here because he frequently turned away from his guru label; he had nothing to explicitly teach and much more to share. He simply expressed a point of view that he enjoys. "Preachers err, [Joseph Campbell] told me, by trying 'to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery.' How he did reveal a joy for learning and living!" Bill Moyers said that in The Power of Myth on Joseph Campbell, and I see it ring very true indeed for Alan Watts.

During my personal journey for Truth thus far, I’ve had no greater "connector of dots" than Alan Watts. When I started to search for answers to What is Reality, Whose God is the One, Is Life worth it?, and so many other religious and philosophical questions, I had first to get a grasp of the religious language I was forced to deal with these things. Besides being raised in an irrefutably Judeo-Christian society, I also attended a private Christian school from Pre-K to eighth grade, and was raised in an all Christian household. It was easily deducible my language was Christian, of the Father and King of Kings.

Right now, I'm sitting at a desk in a cabin, looking out from the top of a mountain. I see the rolling hills of Mill Valley, California, and the soft, protective ring of fog and cloud coming in from the ocean, resting gently all around me on the hills beyond view. Interspersed in the new growth of trees in the foreground, I notice the singed and dead reminders of a raging wildfire that burned brightest where I sit now, so many years ago. Sitting just outside the door is the love of my life, with our two dogs: Luna and Moose, writing in her own journal; and just below us on the hill, the eldest son of Alan Watts is laying the foundation to a new cabin that will decorate this hillside. As I sit here I started to wonder how I ended up in such a dream-like situation as this. I could say luck brought me here, but it wasn't that at all; this situation I so graciously find myself in is the culmination of every past experience good, bad and ugly, all leading to Now. To this fulfillment, this inspiration, this joy. I have, as a result of reflection on these things and the outcome of Now from them, an acute sense of appreciation and understanding for any suffering as well as good fortune that I have experienced in my short, dense life.