🖌️ On the Nature of Gods, Pleasure, Fear, and Building a Life
Monday Muse (September 18th, 2023)
Greetings Readers!
Here is the latest Monday Muse with a morning meditation, perennial reminder, question, and recommendation(s) to consider. If interested, I encourage you to sign up for Happiness & the Meaning of Life. The course is free for Perennial Meditations members and includes email meditations (every Tuesday and Saturday) along with an end-of-course meetup.
Be wise and be well this week!
📿 Morning Meditation
This week’s morning meditation is courtesy of The Wisdom School podcast (Apple or Spotify). Today’s meditation is a short selected reading (delivered in a Lectio Divina style) inspired by the writings of Cicero.
📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
Epicurus was more concerned with mental pleasures than physical ones, and in some respects more concerned with avoiding pain than pursuing plea-sure directly. His vision of the ideal human life focused not on satisfying one’s physical appetites but rather on reaching a state free of all mental suffering. He called this ataraxia, literally ‘untroubledness’, but perhaps best translated as ‘tranquillity’. That, he suggested, is what we are all really after, and he claimed to know how best to achieve it.
Source: The Pocket Epicurean by John Sellars (Listen to the conversation).
💡 Perennial Question(s)
Fear is the primary reason we stay stuck. We might be afraid of what life will be like when we leave where we are and venture into something new. Our fears may be of change, of the future, of the new, of leaving the present and the familiar. But there is more to this fear. It may also be fear that we won’t survive if we are out there on our own. We doubt the fiber of our own autonomy. […]
Source: Ready by David Richo (Listen to the conversation).
🔥 Recommendation(s)
This week's recommendation is a recent episode of the Tim Ferris Show. The particular episode I’m recommending is Tim’s conversation with Arthur C. Brooks, the co-author of Building the Life You Want. Arthur is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness.
🎧 Recent Podcast(s)
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Thank you for reading/listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W.
P.S. As always, if you’re interested in becoming a member but unable to afford it. Feel free to request a complimentary membership or use this discount link if you need a little help.