Retreat to your inner citadel
If you’ve been going through the three disciplines in sequence, you’ve put in a great amount of work. Practice, however, shouldn’t feel like work—it should be a respite. It didn’t feel restful at first to Skylar, who practiced Stoicism with grim determination. But after catching her thoughts and attitudes, she saw what led her to make Stoic practice feel like drudgery: the techniques she chose were not comforting to her. After adjusting her approach to find words that made her feel better, practice felt more like a vacation than a slog. She learned this technique from reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, which you’ll be working with this week.
"Men seek retirement in country house, on shore or hill; and you too know full well what that yearning means. Surely a very simple wish; for at what hour you will, you can retire into yourself. Nowhere can man find retirement more peaceful and untroubled than in his own soul, specially he who has such stores within, that at a glance he straightaway finds himself lapped in ease, meaning by ease good order in the soul, this and nothing else. Ever and anon grant yourself this retirement, and so renew yourself. Have at command thoughts, brief and elemental, yet effectual to shut out the court and all its ways, and to send you back unchafing to the tasks to which you must return. What is it chafes you? Men’s evil doing? Find reassurance in the tenet that rational beings exist for one another, that forbearance is a part of justice, that wrong doing is involuntary; and think of all the feuds, suspicions, hates and brawls, that before now lie stretched in ashes. Think, and be at rest. Or is it the portion assigned you in the universe at which you chafe? Refresh yourself with the alternative—either a foreseeing providence, or blind atoms—and all the abounding proofs that the world is as it were a city. Or is it bodily troubles that assail? You have but to realize that when once the understanding is secure of itself and conscious of its own prerogative, it has no more part in the motions of the pneuma [soul], smooth or rough, and to rest in the creed to which you hold regarding pain and pleasure. Or does some bubble of fame torment you? Then fix your gaze on swift oblivion, on the gulf of infinity this way and that, on the empty rattle of plaudits and the fickle accident of show applause, on the narrow range within which you are circumscribed. The whole earth is but a point, your habitation but a tiny nook thereon; and on the earth how many are there who will praise you, and what are they worth? Well then, remember to retire within that little field or self. Above all do not strain or strive, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as of mortal make. Foremost among the maxims to which you can bend your glance be these two: First, things cannot touch the soul, but stand without it stationary; tumult can arise only from views within ourselves. Secondly, all things you see, in a moment change and will be no more; think of all the changes in which you have yourself borne part. The world is a moving shift, life a succession of views.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.3
We all feel exhausted and in need of a retreat from the world, from time to time. Here, Marcus offers us the ultimate retreat to restore our peace of mind, the only place that is available to us at all times no matter where we are. He draws a parallel between our occasional need to withdraw to a country house or some other quiet place to restore our sanity and the opportunity we always have, at no expense at all, to retire into our own minds. Many philosophical and religious traditions similarly advise that the human mind is a citadel; we may need to get back to the mind and shut out the rest of the world in order to recover the ability to get back out and do what needs to be done.
Retreating into your own citadel, however, is not too useful if you don’t also have a number of ready strategies to deal with whatever caused the problem in the first place. If, for example, what bothers you is that people sometimes do bad things, remind yourself that we are made to help each other, and that enduring what cannot be avoided is part of the deal. It also helps to keep in mind the Stoic doctrine that people do bad things out of “ignorance” (meaning lack of wisdom), not because they want to be evil. Seen this way, we can afford to be compassionate and to quell our anger, while doing our best to correct injustice.
When he is talking about trouble with his body, Marcus reflects that it is pervaded—as is everything else—by pneuma (literally “breath”), which makes him akin to every other living being or thing in the cosmos. Modern science doesn’t rely on the Stoic concept of pneuma, but it is nonetheless true that we are literally made of stardust, since the molecules that make up our bodies were forged in the heat of a supernova explosion. Stoics find reflecting on this universal connection comforting regardless of whether there is providence (a purpose to things) or “blind atoms” (things that happen as a result of a web of cause and effect, with no rhyme or reason).
As for fame or the opinion of others, as Marcus says, don’t let them trouble you at all; think of the immensity of time and space, and how consequently puny human beings and their opinions are. Besides, do you yourself hold such judgmental people in high esteem? If not, then what do you care what they think of you?
Finally, Marcus reflects on two basic truths he derives from Stoic philosophy. First, external events become troubling only once we attach certain opinions to them, and attaching such opinions (or not) is up to us. This is another restatement of the dichotomy of control. Second, everything is in flux; all things change. The Stoics inherited this concept from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. Whatever is troubling you right now will soon be gone, turned into something else—and so will your worry.