Please comment below and share your experiences on anything related to living the Stoic life on day 2!
- Do you have any questions?
- Are you encountering any obstacles?
- Do you have any thoughts or observations to share with others?
‘Life, if you know how to use it, is long.’ Seneca, On the Shortness of Life.
Update: Piece about this week to appear in Guardian online belief section tomorrow morning.
Re-attending to the ideas and methods has had happy results. As I mentioned I used read Seneca two summers ago to good effect but after I put the book down the change in habits slightly slipped away. Repeating a routine daily secures any possible change for a better response than maintains longevity.
PS Using iphone & have let errors pass by. Have to check my comments. (Yes it’s early here & there’s a bit of rush about it. Stop the rushing.)
Here on my second day… I’ve been trying retrospective evening meditation & rehearsing generic precepts (not everything is in my control). For both of it, I have found very useful the great book “Words of the Ancient Wise”,
by Rouse (someone posted a link). Several snippets of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus for everyday. I think it is great for self-examining through writing, such as Marcus Aurelius did (and I have to recommend Pierre Hadot’s book on that).
At the moment, I am not doing lots of prosoche, really. Any tips on that? I would like to focus on it.Yesterday I thought about physical self-control, which I was neglecting. Is anybody doing it? I’m not sure how to focus on it. I remember reading that Marcus Aurelius slept in unconfortable beds when he was young. Today I have not brought today cookies to work, does it count? 😉
I’m ending my showers with a blast of cold water for a ten second count. Not a big change, but I’m enjoying it!
So I got a crap result in a philosophy essay and my first reaction was to be mite put out. But then I was all like ‘nope, this doesn’t bother me’ because by this stage the issue is outside of my control. As Marcus said ‘Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: say not, “This is a misfortune” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.”‘ And wisdom was readily recieved.
p.s. can anyone read Christopher Gill’s writing? If he reads this I meant no offence 🙂
Absolutely fascinating to see calmness come (back) so quickly. I’m combining the breathing meditation, generic concepts, specific things that could go wrong, the ideal vision of the sage, connection to the entire universe in one session, with 30 second breaks in between. In total, that’s 30 – 45 minutes of meditation in the morning, before eating breakfast, taking a shower, and going to work. The calmness stays with you the entire day, basically, and when it leaves it’s easily redeemed by reading some of the concepts you included in the booklet.
Intruiging how this calmness and rationality come with some basic practices.
If swimming lengths counts, I’ve been combining physical self-control training with impermanence, indifference, and cosmic consciousness. I try to be mindful of each stroke as I swim, reflecting on how it is unique in its own time and then gone, but still part of the cosmic chain of events, and is all that matters. As swimming comes at the end of a stressful day, it also is the perfect time to practise cognitive distancing (otoh I’m having less success with cognitive distancing and prosoche *during* the day). I get *much* more out of a philosophical swim than a normal one.
According to survey no-one is “Evaluating Profit (lusiteles).”
Has anyone done it and if so can they persuade others to give it a try?
http://thenewhumanism.org/authors/rick-heller/articles/reviving-stoic-practice … Interesting article claims Chrysippus died from laughing too much?
Could this be true?
Also has more ideas about day in the life of a Stoic
I’ve done a video for today as part of evening reflection http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Mp5xzDj_0&feature=youtu.be
I’m also very happy to feel a lot calmer than the start of the week!
After a pretty bad Day 1 and most of Day 2 I finally did some meditation and reflection last night and it resulted in a very calm and beneficial evening. This morning’s meditation focused on motivation (‘Do not act as if you had ten thousand years still to live…’) and I’m hoping it will translate into some good writing today!