Preety_India

The real challenge does not lie in calling a spade a spade, but calling a brick a spade His fragile ego just cannot handle anything. Bullshit is bullshit even if you put a elitist sophisticated spin on it. The real challenge does not lie in calling a spade a spade, but calling a brick a spade. When you see a thug, you can call him a thug but what to do when a sophisticated person is peddling you. White collar crime. Beneath all that veneer, all that sophistication, deep down there is ugliness, a fetish to feed the ego, and basically its sophisticated hustling. The problem is you can't put a finger on it, can't say why it is wrong or evil, These people and their ideological and philosophical ramblings. Ain't going anywhere with all that narcissistic crap. He is high up there in the ranks of truly undesirable people. His fragile ego just cannot handle anything. Bullshit is bullshit even if you put a elitist sophisticated spin on it. The real demon is not the demon himself but Judas who is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Who appears like he is teaching the masses but in reality he is sowing the seeds of hate. You're just wrapping it up in a different judgemental bullshit package. When someone cannot be your downfall, you are your own downfall The greatest Bible in the world is karma. Karma is the biggest teacher. It teaches you everything. Karma will put you in your place. Karma is the ruler. It is a mirror that shows you the truth and shows who you are. Spirituality and life is about morality. Those with moral values do not spread hate. Narcissism causes you to lose that which was once beautiful. Your narcissism will be your own downfall. It will make you lose everything you were once so proud of you. Pride is nothing but self deception and delusion. Crafty means skilful and tricky in achieving goals Conspirator means schemer or plotter or someone who is the mastermind behind a conflict or disaster. Deceptive means a person who is very vague and not providing clarity and his true nature reveals that his impressions were fake. Like he said he is going to help. But when you need help he is being evasive. Deceitful means a person who cheated and used a specific method to get his goal. For example a man who copied to get good grades. Liar one who lies Shady means sneaky that is there is something suspicious about that person or that person's work. Fake means a person who puts on a display of an emotion without actually feeling for a specific intent. Phony means a person who is pretentious. Like always being pretentious and always putting on a fake display of intentions. Like everything they do is a show or a display. Just not genuine. Traitor. - they destroy your trust and completely betray you by turning against you for their selfish means. Manipulator is someone who has bad intentions for you or selfish intentions for them and talk you into getting done what they want. They also brainwash you for their means. Devious - a person who gives an impression that they are doing everything for your good but hiding their real agenda behind their impressions. You become aware later that you were being used for their benefit and their true agenda was something else that benefits them. Disingenuous - a person appearing to be having all good intentions or interests behind what they do but clearly their agenda is their own benefit and this is covered up or kept hidden or made to appear less relevant. For example an author who claims to raise awareness about a crime but their real motive was to profit from the book sale. Con artist - is someone who is outrightly scamming people by tricking them into a scheme that is obviously a scam and completely false.

One big difference that will happen to you on the path of spirituality is the onset of depression. Your heart will grow bigger and bigger and your mind will expand in awareness and you will begin to notice how petty and shallow and disappointing humanity is. You will be depressed looking at the state of the world. You grasp a piece of beauty from a higher plane and it will be so beautiful that in comparison to it, the whole world will look so ugly and despicable. It's like you have been with the most loving people and now you are suddenly thrown into a prison full of thugs and bullies. It will feel unreal, sad depressing and you would feel like you don't belong there and that you have to stay away from such toxic people, you wouldn't find them relevant because your moral scale is higher. You will find those people like worthless nuisance destroying your agenda and not allowing you peace. You won't even discuss things they do because those things will be irrelevant to you. Once you are on the path of spirituality you will experience beauty and only beauty and the beauty will be so astonishing and pleasant and ethereal that all the richness treasures achievements of the world will fail in comparison. And suddenly everything and anything human will appear incredibly valueless, vague, ugly, shallow, hypocritical and futile and cringe worthy. Humanity will look like a pile of garbage and you will be residing in a different plane of beauty and eternity. You will feel eternally alive and blissful and invincible, no hate will destroy you, you will feel liberated and you will feel so peaceful so joyful and The people who will look genuinely good to you will actually be the weirdest out of the whole crowd because they would be ostracized for being spiritual and not like money hungry successful ones

Just a reminder to myself - Never world Never to dabble into ghosts, paranormal, supernatural, aliens, UFOs, cryptids, ancient cultures, sasquatch, strange artifacts, strange places, creepy stories, occult, occultism, witchcraft, vampirism, magic, psychic powers, mediums, faith healing. Supernatural claims, NDE claims, spontaneous healing claims, christ testimonies, identifying as someone else ex elf, strange disappearances, Esp, demonology, tarot reading, divination, ancient aliens, afterlife stories, weird things, illuminati, conspiracy theories, fortune telling, numerology, time travel, alien abductions, cheap cgi effects, demons, monsters, ouija boards, time slips, men in black, cursed objects, curses, strange deaths, shrines, high strangeness, occult books, occult artifacts, haunted buildings, places, good luck symbols, energy of crystals, creepy pasta

Taken from an article. The Unbelievable Skepticism of the Amazing Randi Share on Facebook Post on Twitter Mail Image By Adam Higginbotham Nov. 7, 2014 A few minutes before 8 o’clock one Sunday evening last July, around 600 people crowded into the main conference hall of the South Point casino in Las Vegas. After taking their seats on red-velvet upholstered chairs, they chattered noisily as they awaited the start of the Million Dollar Challenge. When Fei Wang, a 32-year-old Chinese salesman, stepped onto the stage, they fell silent. Wang had a shaved head and steel-framed glasses. He wore a polo shirt, denim shorts and socks. He claimed to have a peculiar talent: from his right hand, he could transmit a mysterious force a distance of three feet, unhindered by wood, metal, plastic or cardboard. The energy, he said, could be felt by others as heat, pressure, magnetism or simply “an indescribable change.” Tonight, if he could demonstrate the existence of his ability under scientific test conditions, he stood to win $1 million. The Million Dollar Challenge was the climax of the Amazing Meeting, or TAM, an annual weekend-long conference for skeptics that was created by a magician named the Amazing Randi in 2003. Randi, a slight, gnomish figure with a bald head and frothy white beard, was presiding from the front row, a cane topped with a polished silver skull between his legs. He drummed his fingers on the table in front of him. The Challenge organizers had spent weeks negotiating with Wang and fine-tuning the protocol for the evening’s test. A succession of nine blindfolded subjects would come onstage and place their hands in a cardboard box. From behind a curtain, Wang would transmit his energy into the box. If the subjects could successfully detect Wang’s energy on eight out of nine occasions, the trial would confirm Wang’s psychic power. “I think he’ll get four or five,” Randi told me. “That’s my bet.” The Challenge began with the solemnity of a murder trial. A young woman in a short black dress stood at the edge of the stage, preparing to mark down the results on a chart mounted on an easel. The first subject, a heavyset blond woman in flip-flops, stepped up and placed her hands in the box. After two minutes, she was followed by a second woman who had a blue streak in her hair and, like the first, looked mildly nonplused by the proceedings. Each failed to detect the mystic force. “Which means, at this point, we are done,” the M.C. announced. With two failures in a row, it was impossible for Wang to succeed. The Million Dollar Challenge was already over. Stepping out from behind the curtain, Wang stood center stage, wearing an expression of numb shock, like a toddler who has just dropped his ice cream in the sand. He was at a loss to explain what had gone wrong; his tests with a paranormal society in Boston had all succeeded. Nothing could convince him that he didn’t possess supernatural powers. “This energy is mysterious,” he told the audience. “It is not God.” He said he would be back in a year, to try again. Early one morning last summer, on a visit to Randi’s house in Florida, I drew up outside a few minutes later than we had agreed. Randi, wearing a canary yellow sweatshirt, was waiting at the front door, holding his watch in his hand. “You’re late!” he barked, and it was hard to tell if he was joking. We sat down in the living room to talk, and Randi spent half an hour laboriously adjusting his watch, winding the hands to display the correct date. “I am a little bit obsessed with having the right time,” he said. “I’ve always been very, very, big on knowing what time it is. That’s one of my connections with reality.” Randi has never smoked, taken narcotics or got drunk. “Because that can easily just fuzz the edges of my rationality, fuzz the edges of my reasoning powers,” he once said. “And I want to be as aware as I possibly can. That may mean giving up a lot of fantasies that might be comforting in some ways, but I’m willing to give that up in order to live in an actually real world.” That fixation on science and the rational life — and a corresponding desire to crusade for the truth — has a long history among magicians. John Nevil Maskelyne, who founded a dynasty of English conjurers in 1855 and became a prolific inventor, began his career by exposing fraudulent spiritualists and reproducing their tricks. Houdini turned to debunking mediums in his middle age as his career as an escapologist went into decline. He offered his own $10,000 reward to any spiritualist who could perform a “miracle” he could not duplicate himself. Martin Gardner, whose book “Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science” is a founding text of modern skepticism, was also fascinated by magic, and became well known for his books explaining how many conjuring and mind-reading tricks rely upon strict laws of probability and number theory. Penn and Teller have since followed Randi down the path of conjurers who have become debunkers. Randi now sees himself, like Einstein and Richard Dawkins, in the tradition of scientific skeptics. “Science gives you a standard to work against,” he said. “Science, after all, is simply a logical, rational and careful examination of the facts that nature presents to us.” Although many modern skeptics continue to hold religious beliefs, and see no contradiction in embracing critical thinking and faith in God, Randi is not one of them. “I have always been an atheist,” he told me. “I think that religion is a very damaging philosophy — because it’s such a retreat from reality.” In July last year, Randi came closer than ever to the end. He was hospitalized with aneurysms in his legs and needed surgery. Before the procedure began, the surgeon showed Peña scans of Randi’s circulatory system. “Very challenging, a very difficult situation,” the surgeon told him. “But he lived a good life.” The operation was supposed to take two hours, but it stretched to six and a half. Since then, Randi has had several brushes with death. But nothing has shaken his steadfast rationalism: neither the heart attack he suffered in 2006, nor the cancer that followed. Nor, for that matter, did a conversation he had with Martin Gardner a few years before Gardner’s death in 2010, when his friend confessed to having chosen to believe in the possibility of an afterlife. “That really surprised me, because he was the rationalist supreme,” Randi recalled. “He said: ‘I don’t have any evidence for it, you have all the arguments on your side. But it brings me comfort.’ ” Randi told me that he now feels mild trepidation each time he goes to sleep at night, and pleasant surprise that he wakes up in the morning. But he insists he does not need the sort of reassurance that Gardner sought in his own last days. “I wouldn’t have any comfort from it — because I wouldn’t believe in it,” he said. “Oh, no, I have no fear of my demise whatsoever. I really feel that sincerely.” Most mornings, Randi is already awake at 7 o’clock, when Peña comes in to check on him; sometimes he’s up at 6. “I’ve got a lot of work to do, still,” he told me, “and I’ve got to make use of my viable time.” He is currently completing his 11th book, “A Magician in the Laboratory,” and spends several hours a day responding to emails from his desk in the chaotic-looking office he maintains upstairs. He Skypes with friends in China or Australia once a week. Peña likes to cook, and paints downstairs, beside the framed lithograph recalling the triumphs of the Man No Jail Can Hold. The couple have spent much of the last year traveling to film festivals and screenings across the United States, helping to promote a new documentary about Randi’s life, “An Honest Liar,” which will be released in February. Randi has been surprised by the response. “Standing ovations, the whole thing,” he told me. When Randi began to come to, heavily dosed with painkillers, he looked about him in confusion. There were nurses speaking in hushed voices. He began hallucinating. He was convinced that he was behind the curtain before a show and that the whispering he could hear was the audience coming in. The theater was full; he had to get onstage. He tried to look at his watch, but he found he didn’t have it on. He began to panic. When the hallucinations became intensely visual, Peña brought a pen and paper to the bedside. It could prove an important exercise in skeptical inquiry to record what Randi saw as he emerged from a state so close to death, one in which so many people sincerely believed they had glimpsed the other side. Randi scribbled away; his observations, Peña thought, might eventually make a great essay. Later, when the opiates and the anaesthetic wore off, Randi looked at the notes he had written. They were indecipherable

Chapter 265 I will add another step to this. Review contemplation After many hours of contemplation, you can do a review contemplation that focuses on productivity, outcome, result and future corrections, additions and considerations. I have written before about brail and chi energies. And now it is a different form that I came across in my contemplation exercise. And this is attraction based energy. This energy you build up by attracting certain things to yourself. You can either attract positive or negative based on the law of attraction. Chi is the output or vibe. Brail is the inner state of homeostasis. And this can be called element energy or psychic energy. Brail, chi and element. Chi is output Brail homeostasis Psychic energy is feeding. And there is attraction and visualization as parts of the mind.. Parts of the mind 1..shadow 2.. Utterance 3. Awareness 4.. Equilibrium brail or homeostasis 5. Security 6. Nourishment 7. Filteration 8. Observation 9. Memory 10. Judgement 11. Cohesion 12. Avoidance or protection 13. Freedom or release 14. Recovery 15. Contemplation 16. Rehabilitation or therapy.. 17. Visualization. 18. Order or sequence 19. Attention, concentration, focus. 20. Cleaning. 21. Attraction.and telekinesis. 22. Compass Attraction based contemplation. Desire based contemplation Observation based contemplation. Here you observe your mind and see what it's attracting. And whatever you need to attract. Observe your own mind. Third person based. Never world.

Chapter 264 I'm feeling much better today. Much better. I feel confident than ever. I feel like I can finally get a grip on my life. What I did for this is laid-contemplation I will layout 4 types of contemplation. Laid-contemplation - you have to lay down and close eyes and just focus on different sensations of the body. Let the sensations slowly settle down and calm. Sitting contemplation - sit upright and a straight back. Stretch your arms and warm up. Now hold a rod in your hands. Like a long metallic or wooden rod. This is to keep the hands engaged. If not a rod, use a big bowl a metallic and hold it with both hands and the bowl placed as you sit cross-legged. Standing contemplation - stand with upright posture. Place hands on a wall at a horizontal angle. Now slightly bend head towards the wall with the neck bent in. You can do this on a wall or a door or window. Now silently contemplate. Silent contemplation - be completely silent and shut down all sounds in the environment. Use any of the positions above... No thoughts. Completely blank and silent

I'm so glad this worked

Today I tried contemplation and silence practice. And it was wonderful

April 19

Chapter 263 So now I have to cut down on some of my teenagey obsessions. I can even call them addictions. They operate in the form of pathways or feedback loops. Examples. Coffee - - - - >. Stimulated - - - - - > active - - - > tired - - - - >craving - - - - >coffee Food - - - - > filled ---> energetic ----> hungry ----> down time --->comfort--->want to feel cozy - - >food... Sugar - - - > feel good - - - - > excited - - - - > energetic - - - - - >feel down- - - - -cravings >hunger pangs - - > sugar Entertainment, video games, gossip, drama, sports, YouTube, documentaries, Stimulation fun engagement - - - - - ->makes you feel upbeat and engaged - - - - - - - - - > makes you feel productive - - - - - - - -> gets your brain engaged - - - - - - - - -> relieves anxiety through distraction - - - - - - - - > feeling of boredom as soon as you take a break - - - - - - - - - - - > craving for more stimulation - - - - - - - - > Stimulation fun engagement. I have every form of these obsessions. Not to mention the obsession of writing this journal. But this is productive and it helps me a lot with understanding what is going on. At least I can keep a record. To break this habit do limited time contemplation But...... I'm putting my foot down. Enough already No more junk. No more addictions. I have to identify and set a curfew for myself Once the curfew cut off is reached, I need to go back to productive stuff.

Chapter 262 So two nights I spent on the noura Jackson case and bought the book on her. Read it obsessively because I was so damn curious. It had me riveted. Well enough of that now. I have been obsessed with crime for a long time. It's time to focus on productive things. I have done everything that aroused my curiosity but I think I have realized it's the teenage syndrome I mean it's like being all over the place. Being obsessed with anything that provokes my curiosity. But it doesn't bring any real benefit. It's just a mind trick.

Chapter 261 I have developed an interest in the occult, paranormal, not so much in the occult, supernatural, aliens, skinwalkers ranch, afterlife, cryptids, ancient cultures, sasquatch, strange artifacts, strange places, creepy stories, Im trying not to allow these things to shape the definition of life. What I will do is just call this whole bunch of mysterious unknown stuff "never world" I think it's best to leave it as it is and not to dabble too much into all of the mysterious phenomena because I think it contains a lot of negative energy. And the more I invest into it, it eats into my inner energy and drains me. That's why it's mysterious because it's supposed to drain us. The best thing to do is to not dabble into and not attract it to oneself because I think it's dangerous and there's nothing to gain from it.

Godhouse Death valley

Came across this.

Chapter 260 Parts of the mind 1..shadow 2.. Utterance 3. Awareness 4.. Equilibrium 5. Security 6. Nourishment 7. Filteration 8. Observation 9. Memory 10. Judgement 11. Cohesion 12. Avoidance or protection 13. Freedom or release 14. Recovery 15. Contemplation 16. Rehabilitation or therapy.. 17. Visualization. 18. Order or sequence 19. Attention, concentration, focus. 20. Cleaning.

Personal Growth Wabi-Sabi: The Japanese Philosophy For a Perfectly Imperfect Life Thomas Oppong Nov 1, 2018 Photo by Robbin Huang on Unsplash Life is unpredictable. And that’s okay. Embrace it. When nothing is certain, everything is possible! Your plans for tomorrow, next month or next year may not unfold as you expect. But it’s important to make plans and move on. Landon Donovan once said, “Life isn’t perfect, of course, but we all know it’s how you react to things that counts.” Imperfection is the basic principle of Wabi-Sabi, the Japanese philosophy of accepting your imperfections and making the most of life. “Wabi” is said to be defined as “rustic simplicity” or “understated elegance” with a focus on a less-is-more mentality. “Sabi” is translated to “taking pleasure in the imperfect.” The concept of wabi-sabi, is wide and almost impossible to distill in a single post, but can easily be applied simply to moments of everyday life. The relentless pursuit of perfection — in possessions, relationships, achievements — often leads to stress, anxiety, depression and hasty judgement. This is where wabi-sabi invites a pause. The Japanese philosophy encourages us to focus on the blessings hiding in our daily lives, and celebrating the way things are rather than how they should be. Wabi-sabi prizes authenticity. Wabi-Sabi is “a way of life that appreciates and accepts complexity while at the same time values simplicity,” writes Richard Powell in his book, Wabi Sabi Simple. Richard says it acknowledges three simple realities: “Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.” In Zen philosophy, there are seven aesthetic principles in achieving wabi-sabi: Kanso — simplicity Fukinsei — asymmetry or irregularity Shibumi — beauty in the understated Shizen — naturalness without pretense Yugen — subtle grace Datsuzoku — freeness Seijaku — tranquility The timeless wisdom of wabi-sabi is more relevant now than ever for modern life, as we search for meaning and fulfilment beyond materialism. Wabi-sabi is like minimalism with a conscious choice. The concept has its roots in the traditional Japanese tea ceremony. A common explanation is the example of a well-loved teacup, made by an artist’s hands, cracked or chipped by constant use. Such traces remind the observer that nothing is permanent — even fixed objects are subject to change. A great example of wabi-sabi in creativity is the art of kintsugi, where cracked pottery is filled with gold dusted lacquer as a way to showcase the beauty of its age and damage rather than hiding it. The fault is not hidden but highlighted. This is not to say the Craftsman was sloppy (wabi-sabi isn’t an excuse for poor craftsmanship). Wabi-sabi draws attention to the cracks in a tea cup as part of the beauty of the object. In his book The Unknown Craftsman, Soetsu Yanagi argues that imperfections are necessary for a full appreciation of the object and the world. We in our own human imperfections are repelled by the perfect, since everything is apparent from the start and there is no suggestion of the infinite. Wabi-sabi is everywhere, you just need to know how to look, and what to do to embrace the concept in your life. The cracks in the old teacup are seen as assets rather than flaws. “Wabi sabi is a different kind of looking, a different kind of mindset,” explains Robyn Griggs Lawrence, author of Simply Imperfect: Revisiting the Wabi-Sabi House . “It’s the true acceptance of finding beauty in things as they are,” he says. What does it take to embrace Wabi-sabi in your life? Robyn explains that you don’t money, or special skills to appreciate your imperfections and make the most of life. Bringing wabi-sabi into your life doesn’t require money, training, or special skills. It takes a mind quiet enough to appreciate muted beauty, courage not to fear bareness, willingness to accept things as they are — without ornamentation. It depends on the ability to slow down, to shift the balance from doing to being, to appreciating rather than perfecting. Mike Sturm says Wabi-sabi is about accepting yourself and building on what you already have in life. He writes. Embracing wabi-sabi is as easy (or as difficult) as understanding and accepting yourself — imperfections and all. It’s about being compassionate with yourself as you are, and building on whatever that is — not feverishly trying to rebuild yourself in order to pose as something else entirely. Today, appreciation of the things we have, people we love, and the experiences we have the opportunity to weave into our lives is losing value. Wabi-sabi represents a precious cache of wisdom that values tranquillity, harmony, beauty and imperfection, and can strengthen your resilience in the face of materialism. It gently motions you to relax, slow down, step back from the hectic modern world and find enjoyment and gratitude in everything you do. Put simply, wabi-sabi gives you permission to be yourself. Embrace the perfection of being imperfectly you. Before you go… If you enjoyed this post, you will love Postanly Weekly, my free weekly digest of the best posts about behaviour change that affect health, wealth, and productivity. Join over 50,000 people on a mission to build a better life. Courses: Thinking in Models, and Kaizen Habits.

Drudge talk and drudge stuff

Trying to focus on many things right now Tarot cards Brail cards Ether cards Shadow personality cards Self expression cards. Rune cards. Parts of the mind 1..shadow 2.. Utterance 3. Awareness 4.. Equilibrium 5. Security 6. Nourishment 7. Filteration 8. Observation 9. Memory 10. Judgement 11. Cohesion 12. Avoidance or protection 13. Freedom or release 14. Recovery 15. Contemplation 16. Rehabilitation or therapy.. 17. Visualization. 18. Order.

Tips and techniques will be written in private messages to my friend.

Hopefully one day I will find love, I will find peace and I will find hope.

Taken from a website What Is Stoicism? A Definition & 9 Stoic Exercises To Get You Started For those of us who live our lives in the real world, there is one branch of philosophy created just for us: Stoicism. Get Your Free DAILY STOIC Starter Pack Get ItIncludes an introduction to Stoicism, best books to start with, Stoic exercises and much more! A brief synopsis and definition on this particular school of Hellenistic philosophy: Stoicism was founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC, but was famously practiced by the likes of Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy asserts that virtue (such as wisdom) is happiness and judgment should be based on behavior, rather than words. That we don’t control and cannot rely on external events, only ourselves and our responses. Stoicism has just a few central teachings. It sets out to remind us of how unpredictable the world can be. How brief our moment of life is. How to be steadfast, and strong, and in control of yourself. And finally, that the source of our dissatisfaction lies in our impulsive dependency on our reflexive senses rather than logic. Stoicism doesn’t concern itself with complicated theories about the world, but with helping us overcome destructive emotions and act on what can be acted upon. It’s built for action, not endless debate. It had three principal leaders. Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of the Roman Empire, the most powerful man on earth, sat down each day to write himself notesabout restraint, compassion and humility. Epictetus endured the horrors of slavery to found his own school where he taught many of Rome’s greatest minds. Seneca, when Nero turned on him and demanded his suicide, could think only of comforting his wife and friends. But it is not only those three—Stoicism has been practiced by kings, presidents, artists, writers and entrepreneurs. Both historical and modern men illustrate Stoicism as a way of life. Prussian King, Frederick the Great, was said to ride with the works of the Stoics in his saddlebags because they could, in his words, “sustain you in misfortune”. Meanwhile, Montaigne, the politician and essayist, had a line from Epictetus carved into the beam above the study in which he spent most of his time. The founding fathers were also inspired by the philosophy. George Washington was introduced to Stoicism by his neighbors at age seventeen, and afterwards, put on a play about Cato to inspire his men in that dark winter at Valley Forge. Whereas Thomas Jefferson had a copy of Seneca on his nightstand when he died. The economist Adam Smith’s theories on the interconnectedness of the world—capitalism—were significantly influenced by the Stoicism that he studied as a schoolboy, under a teacher who had translated Marcus Aurelius’ works. The political thinker, John Stuart Mill, wrote of Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism in his famous treatise On Liberty, calling it “the highest ethical product of the ancient mind.” Stoicism differs from most existing schools in one important sense: its purpose is practical application. It is not a purely intellectual enterprise. It’s a tool that we can use to become better in our craft, better friends and better people. It’s easy to gloss over the fact that Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor without truly absorbing the gravity of that position. Emperors were Deities, ordinary men with direct access to unlimited wealth and adulation. Before you jump to the conclusion that the Stoics were dour and sad men, ask yourself, if you were a dictator, what would your diary look like? Stoic writing is much closer to a yoga session or a pre-game warm up than to a book of philosophy a university professor might write. It’s preparation for the philosophic life where the right state of mind is the most critical part. Stoics practiced what are known as “spiritual exercises” and drew upon them for strength. Let’s look at nine of the most important such exercises. Get Your Free DAILY STOIC Starter Pack Get ItIncludes an introduction to Stoicism, best books to start with, Stoic exercises and much more! 1.Practice Misfortune “It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself for difficult times; while fortune is bestowing favors on it is then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs.” -Seneca Seneca, who enjoyed great wealth as the adviser of Nero, suggested that we ought to set aside a certain number of days each month to practice poverty. Take a little food, wear your worst clothes, get away from the comfort of your home and bed. Put yourself face to face with want, he said, you’ll ask yourself “Is this what I used to dread?” It’s important to remember that this is an exercise and not a rhetorical device. He doesn’t mean “think about” misfortune, he means live it. Comfort is the worst kind of slavery because you’re always afraid that something or someone will take it away. But if you can not just anticipate but practice misfortune, then chance loses its ability to disrupt your life. Montaigne was fond of an ancient drinking game where the members took turns holding up a painting of a corpse inside a coffin and cheered “Drink and be merry for when you’re dead you will look like this.” Emotions like anxiety and fear have their roots in uncertainty and rarely in experience. Anyone who has made a big bet on themselves knows how much energy both states can consume. The solution is to do something about that ignorance. Make yourself familiar with the things, the worst-case scenarios, that you’re afraid of. Practice what you fear, whether a simulation in your mind or in real life. The downside is almost always reversible or transient. 2.Train Perception to Avoid Good and Bad “Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.” -Marcus Aurelius The Stoics had an exercise called Turning the Obstacle Upside Down. What they meant to do was make it impossible to not practice the art of philosophy. Because if you can properly turn a problem upside down, every “bad” becomes a new source of good. Suppose for a second that you are trying to help someone and they respond by being surly or unwilling to cooperate. Instead of making your life more difficult, the exercise says, they’re actually directing you towards new virtues; for example, patience or understanding. Or, the death of someone close to you; a chance to show fortitude. Marcus Aurelius described it like this: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” It should sound familiar because it is the same thinking behind Obama’s “teachable moments.” Right before the election, Joe Klein asked Obama how he’d made his decision to respond to the Reverend Wright scandal. He said something like‘when the story broke I realized the best thing to do wasn’t damage control, it was to speak to Americans like adults.’ And what he ended up doing was turning a negative situation into the perfect platform for his landmark speech about race. The common refrain about entrepreneurs is that they take advantage of, even create, opportunities. To the Stoic, everything is opportunity. The Reverend Wright scandal, a frustrating case where your help goes unappreciated, the death of a loved one, none of those are “opportunities” in the normal sense of the word. In fact, they are the opposite. They are obstacles. What a Stoic does is turn every obstacle into an opportunity. There is no good or bad to the practicing Stoic. There is only perception. You control perception. You can choose to extrapolate past your first impression (‘X happened.’ –> ‘X happened and now my life is over.’). If you tie your first response to dispassion, you’ll find that everything is simply an opportunity. Note: This exercise served as the inspiration behind The Obstacle Is The Way. 3.Remember—It’s All Ephemeral “Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both.” -Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself a simple and effective reminder to help him regain perspective and stay balanced: “Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend…or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.” It is important to note that ‘passion’ here isn’t the modern usage we’re familiar with as in enthusiasm or caring about something. As Don Robertson explains in his book, when the Stoics discuss overcoming ‘passions’, which they called patheiai, they refer to the irrational, unhealthy and excessive desires and emotions. Anger would be a good example. What is important to remember, and this is the crucial bit, they seek to replace them with eupatheiai, such as joy instead of excessive pleasure. Returning to the point of the exercise, it’s simple: remember how small you are. For that matter, remember how small most everything is. Remember that achievements can be ephemeral, and that your possession of them is for just an instant. If everything is ephemeral, what does matter? Right now matters. Being a good person and doing the right thing right now, that’s what matters and that’s what was important to the Stoics. Take Alexander the Great who conquered the known world and had cities named in his honor. This is common knowledge. The Stoics would also point out that, once while drunk, Alexander got into a fight with his dearest friend, Cleitus, and accidentally killed him. Afterward, he was so despondent that he couldn’t eat or drink for three days. Sophists were called from all over Greece to see what they could do about his grief, to no avail. Is this the mark of a successful life? From a personal standpoint, it matters little if your name is emblazoned on a map if you lose perspective and hurt those around you. Learn from Alexander’s mistake. Be humble and honest and aware. That is something you can have every single day of your life. You’ll never have to fear someone taking it from you or, worse still, it taking over you. 4.Take The View From Above “How beautifully Plato put it. Whenever you want to talk about people, it’s best to take a bird’s- eye view and see everything all at once— of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets— all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites.” Marcus Aurelius Marcus would often practice an exercise that is referred to as “taking the view from above” or “Plato’s view.” It invites us to take a step back, zoom out and see life from a higher vantage point than our own. This exercise—envisioning all the millions and millions of people, all the “armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths”—prompts us to take perspective and just like the previous exercise, remind us how small we are. It reorients us, and as Stoic scholar Pierre Hadot put it, “The view from above changes our value judgments on things: luxury, power, war…and the worries of everyday life become ridiculous.” Seeing how small we are in the grand scheme of things is only one portion of this exercise. The second, more subtle point, is to tap into what the Stoics call sympatheia, or a mutual interdependence with the whole of humanity. As the astronaut Edgar Mitchell, one of the first people to actually experience a real ‘view from above’ put it, “In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.” Take a step back from your own concerns and remind yourself of your duty to others. Take Plato’s view. 5. MEMENTO MORI: MEDITATE ON YOUR MORTALITY “Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” Seneca The quote from Seneca above takes part of Memento Mori—the ancient practice of reflection on mortality that goes back to Socrates, who said that the proper practice of philosophy is “about nothing else but dying and being dead.” In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote that “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” That was a personal reminder to continue living a life of virtue now, and not wait. Meditating on your mortality is only depressing if you miss the point. The Stoics find this thought invigorating and humbling. It is not surprising that one of Seneca’s biographies is titled Dying Every Day. After all, it is Seneca who urged us to tell ourselves “You may not wake up tomorrow,” when going to bed and “You may not sleep again,” when waking up as reminders of our mortality. Or as another Stoic, Epictetus, urged his students: “Keep death and exile before your eyes each day, along with everything that seems terrible— by doing so, you’ll never have a base thought nor will you have excessive desire.” Use those reminders and meditate on them daily—let them be the building blocks of living your life to the fullest and not wasting a second. 6. “Is This Within My Control” “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .” Epictetus The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather— no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change. Return to this question daily—in each and every trying situation. Journal and reflect on it constantly. If you can focus on making clear what parts of your day are within your control and what parts are not, you will not only be happier, you will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle. 7. Journal Epictetus the slave. Marcus Aurelius the emperor. Seneca the power broker and playwright. These three radically different men led radically different lives. But they seemed to have one habit in common: Journaling. In one form or another, each of them did it. It would be Epictetus who would admonish his students that philosophy was something they should “write down day by day,” that this writing was how they “should exercise themselves.” Seneca’s favorite time to journal was in the evenings. When darkness had fallen and his wife had gone asleep, he explained to a friend, “I examine my entire day and go back over what I’ve done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.” Then he would go to bed, finding that “the sleep which follows this self-examination” was particularly sweet. And Marcus, he was the most prodigious of journalers, and we are lucky enough that his writings survive to us, appropriately titled, Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, Ta eis heauton, or “to himself.” in Stoicism the art of journaling is more than some simple diary. This daily practice is the philosophy. Preparing for the day ahead. Reflecting on the day that has passed. Reminding oneself of the wisdom we have learned from our teachers, from our reading, from our own experiences. It’s not enough to simply hear these lessons once, instead, one practices them over and over again, turns them over in their mind, and most importantly, writes them down and feels them flowing through their fingers in doing so. In this way, journaling is Stoicism. It’s almost impossible to have one without the other. 8. PRACTICE NEGATIVE VISUALIZATION The premeditatio malorum (“the pre-meditation of evils”) is a Stoic exercise of imagining things that could go wrong or be taken away from us. It helps us prepare for life’s inevitable setbacks. We don’t always get what is rightfully ours, even if we’ve earned it. Not everything is as clean and straightforward as we think they may be. Psychologically, we must prepare ourselves for this to happen. It is one of the most powerful exercise in the Stoics’ toolkit to build resilience and strength. Seneca, for instance, would begin by reviewing or rehearsing his plans, say, to take a trip. And then, in his head (or in journaling as we said above), he would go over the things that could go wrong or prevent it from happening—a storm could arise, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates. “Nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation,” he wrote to a friend. “. . . nor do all things turn out for him as he wished but as he reckoned—and above all he reckoned that something could block his plans.” By doing this exercise, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans. He was fitted for defeat or victory. 9. AMOR FATI: LOVE EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would describe his formula for human greatness as amor fati—a love of fate. “That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.” The Stoics were not only familiar with this attitude but they embraced it. Two thousand years ago, writing in his own personal journal which would become known as Meditations, Emperor Marcus Aurelius would say: “A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.” Another Stoic, Epictetus, who as a crippled slave has faced adversity after adversity, echoed the same: “Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy.” It is why amor fati is the Stoic exercise and mindset that you take on for making the best out of anything that happens: Treating each and every moment—no matter how challenging—as something to be embraced, not avoided. To not only be okay with it, but love it and be better for it. So that like oxygen to a fire, obstacles and adversity become fuel for your potential. Stoicism is Ideal for the Real World The Stoics were writing honestly, often self-critically, about how they could become better people, be happier, and deal with the problems they faced. You can see how practicing misfortune makes you stronger in the face of adversity; how flipping an obstacle upside down turns problems into opportunities; and how remembering how small you are keeps your ego manageable and in perspective. Ultimately, that’s what Stoicism is about. It’s not some systematic discussion of why or how the world exists. It is a series of reminders, tips and aids for living a good life. Stoicism, as Marcus reminds himself, is not some grand Instructor but a balm, a soothing ointment to an injury wherever we might have one. Epictetus was right when he said that “life is hard, brutal, punishing, narrow, and confining, a deadly business.” We should take whatever help we can get, and it just happens that that help can come from ourselves. P.S. Want more? 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Reflection on brail energy.