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    • Prairie Tidings (Church Blog)
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Mountain Ancestors Grove, ADF

A Year of Contemplation

A Higher Pleasure (Day 281)

10/8/2019

 
Picture
Image by feworave from Pixabay

Yes, getting your wish would have been so nice. But isn’t that exactly why pleasure trips us up? Instead, see if these things might be even nicer - a great soul, freedom, honesty, kindness, saintliness. For there is nothing so pleasing as wisdom itself, when you consider how sure-footed and effortless the works of understanding and knowledge are.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.9

​Growing up in a place where seeking pleasure and satisfying lust were parts of the cultural undercurrent really informed my relationship to the virtue/vice spectrum. New Orleans is a place where if you needed an itch scratched, you could get it scratched at any time of day or night. Power, pride, or dopamine… it didn’t matter. You could get any fleeting desire met whenever you wanted. 

However, none of those things last, nor are they within our control. 

Power comes and goes, and any power that you have to rent isn’t real. Pride is ego telling you how awesome you are, and the feelings that come with pride will fade and you’ll just need more. Dopamine, by its nature, passes through our minds and bodies leaving us with naught but the memories of the sex or drugs we just enjoyed… and like power and pride, we just want more and more. 

So, what lasts longer? What sustains us more? What is under our control? 

“... a great soul, freedom, honesty, kindness, saintliness.”

(See y’all tomorrow)

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    About the Blog

    Awakening the desire to explore Stoicism, and how it relates to his existing beliefs, Rev. William committed to working through the text, The Daily Stoic, a year-long journey to awaken the Stoic mind. 
    How things are structured can be found in the first post. 

    About the Author

    Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Rev. William attended Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado where in 2007 he graduated with a degree in Religious Studies, minoring in Psychology. Currently residing in Longmont, CO, he is one of the Priests and founder of Mountain Ancestors Grove.  He spends his time playing mandolin (and some guitar), writing, engaging in LGBTQIA+ advocacy and education, community service, and sharing a larger vision of how a polytheist perspective can lead to greater human understanding, acceptance, and gods be good, peace. 

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