Welcome to Vol. 7 of our Perennial Habits course. Here’s a quick review: our first meditation discussed How to Change When Change is Hard and the need for clarity, motivation, and shaping the path for change. Next, we talked about How to “Think” About Change, which discussed the stages of change and the notion of cognitive flexibility. Then, we explored The Paradox of Small Changes, which focused on thinking big and small. Followed by Becoming Every Day: A User’s Guide, Discerning the Way, and A Simple, But Not Easy Stoic Exercise.
How to See the World — Like a Sage
The Platonists, Epicureans, and Stoics all discovered an “exercise of imagination through the infinite vastnesses of the universe.” According to the classicist Pierre Hadot, there is a conception of cosmic flight or view from above in each philosophical school as the best way to look at things.
The text from Philo of Alexandria describes philosophers in this way,
Their goal is a life of peace and serenity, they contemplate nature and everything found within her: they attentively explore the earth, the sea, the air the sky, and every nature found therein.
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself, “Watch and see the courses of the stars as if you were running alongside them, and continually dwell in your mind upon the changes of the elements into one another; for these imaginations wash away the foulness on the Earth. When reasoning about humanity, look upon earthly things below as if from a vantage point above them.”
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