Stoicism for a Better Life – Weekly exercise (January 3, 2021)
Hello there,
I hope last week’s exercise left you with a clear mind and a clean slate to begin the year. With that, I would like to reach outside of our school for some inspiration to help us focus our efforts and energies on things that are truly important. This is from Herman Hess’ Steppenwolf:
share Seneca’s words of warning from almost two millennia ago, when he urges us to heed the perils of excess. This is from his work on Providence:
“The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.”
Let us never forget that our true selves (the real you) is the consciousness that is your highest faculties. You are separate from the physical body. This is why you can look in the mirror over the years, and regardless of the physical change you will always self identify yourself as “me”. You, the real you, has nothing to do with the vessel that is your body. However, you do exist within this biosuit and we must recognize its importance. It is a machine that we must maintain and guide as it is not only a roommate we are stuck with for life, but also the only way we have to interact with the world around us both for receiving input (perceptions and senses) and exerting output (communication and interaction).
The body is a machine, and the body’s primitive mind has an autopilot. This autopilot is in control more often than not This is the mind that is in control when you are not being actively rational. This is the mind that drives you from point A to point B while you think about other things and you realize you never even paid attention to the road. This autopilot is not good or bad inherently. It just does what the body has been trained to do.
Although our school recognizes our autopilots to be decrepit (after all the starting point for all of us in a decrepit state – against our will of course), the school also recognizes that we can better ourselves. We may be social animals, but we have that capacity for reason and so we should use it. And every time we use our rational minds to be better and consciously be virtuous, the autopilot also gets trained to mimic that just a little bit at a time. Over a long period of time, one will see results in the change of the autopilot as well (i.e. you will notice you will be more virtuous even when you’re not paying attention).
To that end, for this week’s exercise let us consciously focus on the things that are important and consciously be the person we want to be. Because whatever it is you focus on is who you will become both consciously (rational mind) and unconsciously (autopilot). So for this exercise, clearly identify who you want to be, what you want to do and make every effort to focus on that. I would in fact encourage you to not only begin the year with a new found fervor to be the person you want to be and consciously act to do so, but to make a point of continuing this effort throughout the year as long as you can.
You can think of this as positive affirmation, daily reminders, meditations, journaling, wtv…but the idea is to 1) clearly identify who you want to be and what you want to do (identify your necessities) and 2) Just do it and do make excuses. Be the person you want to be and do the things you want to. Work is not the most important thing in life. Attention is not the most important thing in life. Sensory pleasures are not the most important things in life. Identify for yourself what is, and just go get it.
I wish you all a great start to the new year and hope you find the strength and discipline to be the better person that you want to be. We’re all in this together, and we’re all rooting for each other.
Anderson Silver