Blot out your imagination. Turn your desire into stone. Quench your appetite. Keep your mind centered on itself.
– MA
Discussion
Stoicism lvl 1 begins as "cute tips of how to overcome depression, xoxo" but from lvl 10 or so it's basically "transcend normies and be a hard core cyber monk or get rekt".
rolling Seneca moral letters to Lucilius feel like I'm learning how to live
and yet, imho Seneca is overrated. He writes beautifully and his advices are gems. But actually he comes from a rich family and never had to go through real hardship.
This contrasts a lot with Epictetus, who was a slave, and with Marcus Aurelius, who had to show up every day to rule an empire. Their lives were consistent with their talk.
agree with you, but still, the great part of the pattern to grow is internal, encouraged, but not hard-dependent on social roles.
Just know that no thought is true.
Any attempt to "live a better life" is just another ego framing activity.
Don't try to be a better someone. Realise that if you can be someone else, then you never existed in the first place.
I'd recommend looking into zen. It lays things out pretty well.
The mind is your enemy, clothed as your friend. Your emotions are hidden beliefs and thoughts.
Don't fight and don't worry about it but notice the moment of triggering. How your wife loads the dishwasher is as good a place as any to start.
If anything is annoying you, its because you're resisting what is.
Enjoy. And by enjoy, I mean get accostommed to stepping into your biggest fears and pain.
Love from my ego's desire to own "my" awakening process.
Modern philosophers have lost the belief that anything worth doing is worth doing boldly.
The general idea that everyone is basically good, life is nothing more than a series of sensations, and that we should try to limit pain the best we can is a philosophy for weak men.
Radical conversion is the way.
If it was that easy we could just maximize pleasure and everybody woul be happy. Tbh, OG hedonists knew about all this and advocated for moderation as the core principle of hedonism but this boring little piece of critical insight has been lost on today's hedonists.