Quotes to know

Meditations: What am I doing with my soul?

What am I doing with my soul? Interrogate yourself, find out what inhabits your so-called mind and what kind of soul you have now. A child’s soul? An adolescent’s? A tyrant’s soul? The soul of a predator - or its prey?

Meditations: The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.

Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.

Meditations: Start praying like this and you’ll see

Start praying like this and you’ll see. Not “some way to sleep with her”—but a way to stop wanting to. Not “some way to get rid of him”—but a way to stop trying. Not “some way to save my child”—but a way to lose your fear. Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens.

Meditations: Anger and Grief

How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them

Meditations: Pursuing what’s wrong

It’s the pursuit of these things, and your attempts to avoid them, that leave you in such turmoil. And yet they aren’t seeking you, you’re seeking them. Suspend judgement about them. And at once they will lie still, and you will be freed from fleeing and pursuing

Meditations: Inner Power

It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.

Meditations: Mind Fortress

Remember that when it withdraws into itself and finds contentment there, the mind is invulnerable…The mind without passions is a fortress. No place is more secure. Once we take refuge there we are safe forever.

Meditations Answers Key Questions and it’s three answers

Why are we here? (Control what’s within our control and help others and do our civic duty) How should I live my life? (Justice, Wisdom, Discipline, Courage). How can I handle daily challenges and suffering? (Retreat into mind, separate what’s within and outside our control) How can we handle living when we know we will die? (Outside control: accept it as natural)

Perception and Stoicism

Meaning is assigned. The mind is like a camera - it interprets the world, but it can blur, add color to it’s prints. You should live your life without assigning meaning that is detrimental; the mind’s also like a fire, it can convert an obstacle into into meaning, into learning, into motivation, fuel that it burns.

How to live and Stoicism

Courage, Discipline, Wisdom, and Justice are the tenets for a good life. It isn’t explicitly clear on what these are, but it does emphasize that your will should be…

Precept #1: Logos: Life is like a moving wagon

and we’re dogs that are tied to it. We can be dragged, or we can walk alongside it.

Core focus on controllables in Stoicism

Your will should be aimed at

1) Helping your community

2) Doing your best in your current station (fair critique is that it doesn’t say much about changing your station - acceptance is a key tenet, Stoicism is, almost fundamentally, about dividing the world into things you can control and things you can’t - your focus should be aimed the things you can control, and ignore the rest - so you’re not going to get many catalysts for change coming from it)