Calling Attention to Life

I was reading through a selection of readings on Group Leadership and found the following quote from Alan Watts in The Wisdom of Insecurity:

"Sometimes, when resistance ceases, the pain simply goes away or dwindles to an easily tolerable ache. At other times it remains, but the absence of any resistance brings about a way of feeling pain so unfamiliar it is hard to describe. The pain is no longer problematic. I feel it, but there is no urge to get rid of it, for I have discoverd that pain and the effort to be seperate from it are the same thing. Wanting to get out of pain is the pain; it is not the "reaction" of an "I" distinct from the pain. When you discover this , the desire to escape 'merges' into the pain itself and vanishes."

And he continues in reference to this "attention to life which is being lived in each moment and includes pleasure and pain, hope and fear, joy and sadness":

"For most of us, this conflict is ever gnawing within us because our lives are one long effort to resist the unknown, the real present in which we live, which is the unknown in the midst of coming into being. Living thus, we never really learn to live with it. At every moment, we are cautious, hesitant, and on the defense. And all to no avail, for life thrusts us into the unknown willy-nilly, and resistance is as futile and exasperating as trying to swim against a raging torrent."