Ignorance is the first link in the chain, followed by Desire.

Together the two build a vast edifice of self-identity and the world around us.
Self-identity we all have, the wise build their identity on universal truth rather than the swamps of ignorance and shifting sands of desires.

At the deepest level of their self-awareness, too many people do not like themselves

They are uncomfortable being alone because they do not like, do not accept their self as they understand that self to be.
The inability to be alone with one's self is too common.
There a near constant need for diversions, entertainments, etc. to distract from one's own discomfort as an individual.

Frustration grows in beings who are never satisfied with 'what is' and are continuously chasing some brass ring on the merry-go-round of their not merry lives.
Frustration leads to lashing-out anger and that is an impediment to what one wants, which is to be connected.
This is not a problem that percolates in saints, sages, monks, yogis, hermits and rishis.

Now imagine if one self-identified, not as some limited body-mind-sense-complex-being who always needs external fulfillment, but rather as though a bubble of the totality. Imagine being identifitied with the inside-whole that remains when the bubble bursts. A soap bubble film seems to have an inside and an outside but the reality is that the inside is non-different from the outside. The seeming separation of bubble from world is a thin, temporary, translucent film (a flim-flam) that doesn't really divide space into two.

namaste

First, we need to recognize the we are tribal people. Pick a team; sports is the clearest example.
Religion, politics, interests, desires, tastes, style and fashion choices are some of the signs/ marks/ wardrobe within which we strut, flashing our colors, our choices, desires, beliefs and identity.

Individuals mix up their 'self' with all kinds of things that are not them.
So when someone else insults, say their state, they are personally offended.
The sight of a mask becomes a personal affront to the triggered tribal team individual who takes it as an attack upon their intelligence, politics, supremacy, or similar silly stuff mistaken as equal to 'self'.

We hear about " identity politics" but I submit that a better understanding can be had by understanding "mis-identity" politics.
Politics = ethics = morality = how we judge ourselves and those others, our worlds and others around.
Who is on my team, who is worthy, who is in fact 'human'; or conversely, who can I attack.

We must begin to teach our children well that they are individuals in society, not individuals surrounded by society.
We need to teach epistemology and logic; how do you know that you know and what is validity.
Conservatives and religion-ists often opine that morality and ethics and doing good requires God without which there is no measure of good.

I submit that ruth, justice, the American or any other successful way requires validity, a measure of fact without which there exists only the great-deceiver.

Alan Watts was a scoundrel, but he was also damn good at presenting the deepest spiritual truths in reasonably simple manner.

There is no reason why his "The Book" should not be part of the scriptures for a New New Testament.
The old old-new testament tradition really testifies to God's willingness to fess-up to failure and re-issue the teaching (owner's manual for the self).
This old old-old scriptural teaching was first presented in Sanskrit and has been revealed to the wise of every time, place and culture. It has also been bastardized, misunderstood, mistranslated and missed the point.

Watts' "The Book" presents a plan to teach the children well so they know they are never 'not' and always are, through and through, filled with the well-spring of inner peace. May all the inner children grow-up joyous and fully connected with 'what it is'.

Living objectively is vaccine against poisonous subjectivity.

Life is not easy, we say. That is the way it is, we say.
But what if life can be easy. What if life can be easy when we are not dis-eased?

One word describes and explains why life is not easy: DESIRE

Desire births action for the purpose of fulfilling the desire.
The cosmos frequently tosses in a slip 'twixt cup and lip and we get get less than or not at all what we wanted.
Thus unfulfilled desire births frustration from which arises anger.
Angers' broods are rage, delusion and failure. There are many angers.

Difficulties arise as we grasp for, defend, and lose our objects of desire; we even lose interest in our previously precious acquisitions (garage sale anyone!?).

I have come to believe that the downfall of humanity was the invention of the woven grass basket/bag.
Desire is the original disease.

You ("I", we all say) are Consciousness that has a body and a universe to experience.
All knowledge, anything you say is true, exists in consciousness as an object of consciousness.
All that vastness of the Universe spoken of in the video is known by sentient Consciousness and not known by the inert rocks.

Consciousness is not synonymous with awareness; Consciousness is not absent when there is nothing of which to be aware.
Awake, I am Consciousness aware of self in our shared world.
Asleep, I am Consciousness aware of self in my private world.
In deep sleep, I am Consciousness aware of Self.

Lack of memory does not prove absence of consciousness.
You likely lack memory of almost all of your life, but you know you were always there.
Indeed, it is impossible to negate your own Consciousness.
You have never known yourself to be non-existent.

However, one must know that 'Self' that has been the one existent string of Consciousness upon which all experience is strung.
That 'Self' is confused with its ego-wrappers, its cloak of many colors.
That 'Self' is the self-evident consciousness everyone knows and names "I".
It is there whole and complete (as Consciousness) in the baby, the child, the young adult, the grown-up and the grown-old.
(I could continue)
The rocks of our desires, choices, actions, accumulations, knowledge, experiences and beliefs come and go, are grasped at and discarded, interests and wardrobes change.
Consciousness remains constant as witness to change.
Be the witness, not the distressed.

A tapestry woven in time from the knowledge of countless lives, desires, choices, actions, reactivity, names, stories, memories, egos.
The tapestry is never complete yet always full of the complete reality of "Now".
It is a magic tapestry whose unseen back and unknown edges are never reached by one walking the weaving of this mystical Mobius.