Blog Archives

Life isn’t a Dance (Day 263)

9/20/2019

Image Credit: Wikipedia - Sambo at the 2015 European Games. Andrei Kazusionak (BLR) vs Ashot Danielyan (ARM)

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.61

Flexible and agile. Hardiness. Sensitive to the flow. Lead and follow.

These are all necessary, and useful skills to have when navigating life, as well as a dance.

However, in a dance (or a kata/hyung for that matter), there is either a pre-arranged set of expectations, and/or an implicit or explicit agreement to work together for the sake of “the dance”.

In other words, no one is trying to actually punch you in the face, or choke you unconscious, or break your bones on purpose, or intentionally send you to the hospital, or end your life.

Fighting (or sparring), like dancing, requires agility and flexibility, sensitivity (to know “beyond” the senses), and the ability to lead (make openings) as well as follow (take advantage of mistakes)... as does life.

Disciplining one’s mind with practices like Stoicism and other methods of ego-taming hones our character like a whetstone helps to create a sword’s cutting edge. It prepares us for a sparring match and not a dance.

Leave dancing to dancers.

Let’s get scrappy.

(See y’all tomorrow)

Flexibility of the Will (Day 262)

9/19/2019

Image by Peggy Choucair from Pixabay

Remember that to change your mind and to follow someone’s correction are consistent with a free will. For the action is yours alone - to fulfill its purpose in keeping with your impulse and judgement, and yes, with your intelligence.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.16

Industriousness and Perseverance are Virtues. Like any other Virtue, there’s a spectrum of practice from ‘Idiot’ to ‘Weaponized’, and being Virtuous to lacking Virtue.

We are not trapped by our quest for the Virtuous life.

People can be proud of the amount and type of willpower they have. Some believe that strength of will means unmoving. Having an ‘Iron Will’ is prized by so many.

Not by me.

I prefer to have a ‘Willow Will’. Flexible, yet strong. Natural and growing. Filled with vibrance and possibility.

Bend and adapt. Have a Willow Will.

(See y’all tomorrow)

Dealing with Pain (Day 261)

9/18/2019

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Epicurus said that nothing is unbearable or unending, that everything that is now, and everyone we know or have known will eventually come to an end, and that as long as we’re alive we can bear a great deal more suffering that we can imagine. He’s right. Nothing is permanent, and we ARE resilient.

Remember: Employ these two keys, and we’ll unlock the prescription to deal with pain.

What happens, though, when we allow the little annoyances to rank as pain? What about when we’re tired, or haven’t eaten in a bit? What about when we can’t sleep, or have no appetite for food? When annoyances combine with ego, the delusion of “pain” happens… and we respond.

Remember: Nothing is permanent. We are built for resilience.

Giving in to pain, or compromising our integrity in hopes that the pain may stop is foolish. If the pain is coming from an outside source, we have no control over whether or not it’ll stop no matter what we do. If the pain is originating egoically from within, we can do something about it. If it’s chronic and ever-present?

Remember: Nothing is permanent. We are built for resilience.

There have been books written on pain management, dealing with chronic doses of it, and all sorts of opinions on the topic of pain. How many of them are full of identity sickness? How many of them bolster the ego? How many of them completely forget the very root-of-power when it comes to dealing with pain:

Nothing is permanent. We are built for resilience.

(See y’all tomorrow)

Dealing with Haters (Day 260)

9/17/2019

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

What if someone despises me? Let them see to it. But I will see to it that I won’t be found doing or saying anything contemptible. What if someone hates me? Let them see to that. But I will see to it that I’m kind and good-natured to all, and prepared to show even the hater where they went wrong. Not in a critical way, or to show off my patience, but genuinely and usefully.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.13

I’ve been hated on by a lot of people for all sorts of reasons, and I can’t help how they feel about me. I can live with integrity, and that’s about it. The sad irony is that the haters are usually secretly or unconsciously attracted to the same people that they’ll be shit-talkin’ when they’re with their hater friends.

Truth be told, I’m too busy thinking about what I’m thinking about. I really don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of thinking about what other people are thinking about... even if who they're thinking about is me.

It’s a bother, really.

Just be good. Do good. Spread good in the world. Remember, you’ve no control over others’ opinions of you. After all…

…haters gonna hate.

(See y’all tomorrow)

Anyone can get Lucky, Not Everyone can Persevere (Day 259)

9/16/2019

Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay

Success comes to the lowly and to the poorly talented, but the special characteristics of a great person is to triumph over the disasters and panics of human life.”
Seneca, On Providence, 4.1

Luck and privilege sure can get someone very far, yeah? We’ve all seen people who seemingly fumble through life, relying on their unplanned, cavalier, haphazard antics to get them where they want to go. We all know those folx who never train, practice, drill, hone their skills… and yet, they still seem to get ahead in the world.

Perseverance, however, is a quality that luck cannot bestow, as the lucky rarely have the ability to always get back up one more time than you’ve been knocked down.

Like the other Virtues, Perseverance is something that we have to develop over time, something we have to work hard at acquiring, and something that will always be with us… even when luck has seemingly abandoned us to our fate.

We look at people like Jeff Bezos and name him lucky. We assume that because he’s one of the richest people on the planet that he’s lucky. What we forget is that he worked his ass off to get the opportunities that came before him. Read about his life before naming him lucky…

… because what actually happened was that he persevered.

(See y’all tomorrow)

A Garden is Not for Show (Day 258)

9/15/2019

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

Over the last several years of my clergy service, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that I’m calling: identity sickness. This is when one’s outward appearance and cultural presentation becomes what pathologically defines their character, and ultimately, WHO they are as people, or at least who they THINK they are. Essentially people with identity sickness have height and width… but no depth. Depth cannot be understood two-dimensionally...

… and neither can the complex spirit.

Our souls, as well as the practices, philosophies, and the methods we use to temper them aren’t meant to be worn as a “virtue costume”. Like a garden, our souls are meant to be in symbiotic and reciprocal relationship with us, feeding us as we “feed” them. When we start putting on display how “whatever” we are, we become like the plant that bears fruit before the stalks and stems are strong enough to support the weight: collapsing under its own pressure, and rotting back into Earth, returning its minerals and nutrients to the garden to, one day, try again at becoming.

The difference between us and the little decomposing plant is that we are responsible for our own early death and two-dimensionality, while it is not. Our very sense of self, AKA our egos, are at the heart of identity sickness.

Since we think we can become who we appear to be, we never have to face who we are beneath.

Being healthy, vibrant, and radiant is very different from appearing that way.

In the former case, everyone knows and you’ve never got to say anything. The latter, no one would know unless you said something.

(See y’all tomorrow)

A Different Way to Pray (Day 257)

9/14/2019

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Try praying differently, and see what happens: Instead of asking for ‘a way to sleep with her,’ try asking for ‘a way to stop desiring to sleep with her.’ Instead of ‘a way to get rid of him,’ try asking for ‘a way to not crave his demise.’ Instead of ‘a way to not lose my child,’ try asking for ‘a way to lose my fear of it.’”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.40.(6)

In our moments of vulnerability, when we’re powerfully yearning for something, or someone, or a particular outcome… in those moments of prayer, how much of our own selfishness is woven through our pleas? How much do we beg and plead for things to mystically be different, even in the face of certain circumstances?

In the spirit of what wise Marcus says above: pray for what we have control over, and can realistically acquire, to face the situations at hand.

Miracles are unrealistic. Don’t pray for a house...

… pray for the fortitude and strength needed to command the resources necessary to get your own damn house!

(See y’all tomorrow)

Protecting our Inner Fortress from Fear (Day 256)

9/13/2019

Image by Montse González from Pixabay

No, it is events that give rise to fear - when another has power over them or can prevent them, that person becomes able to inspire fear. How is the fortress destroyed? Not by iron or fire, but by judgements… here is where we must begin, and it is from this front that we must seize the fortress
and throw out the tyrants.”
Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1.85-86; 87a

Today is Friday the 13th, and apparently since the arrest of hundreds of Knights Templar in the Middle Ages, or the times of Joshua ben Josef’s famous Last Supper, or some other “meaningful” time we connect “bad” things to them happening on a Friday the 13th. It’s rather inescapable, as the Friday the 13th legend seems to have woven itself into Indo-European informed cultures all over the world.

But really, what’s happening on this day of "bad luck" is our ancestral inner-calendar giving us a place to put our fears, our concerns, and our irrationality, because at its core, the whole “Friday the 13th” mythos is nothing more than:

Superstition.

And it’s superstitions that create the space for “bad things” to happen, even though we know that when we’re riddled with inner fear, we can only see the “bad” things around us, therefore honing in on any negative things out in the world, and ultimately, weakening us from within. Weakening, in all truth, our souls.

The ancient Stoics believed that nothing could touch the soul except for the being to whom the soul “belongs”, and this is true. We see throughout history the horrific tortures and sufferings we inflict upon one another. Without even looking hard, we can easily find a trail of broken body after broken body left in the wake of injustice, prejudice and ignorance. We’ve also seen indomitable will and adamantine Courage coming from those very same broken bodies. Why? Because only you have access to your soul. Fear, the enemy of good sense and judgement, doesn’t pick locks or scale the walls of your inner fortress.

Which means: YOU allow entry to the enemy, fear.

When we surrender to ego’s desire to be fearful, we lose the ability to keep secure our soul, our inner fortress.

... that's because we’re the only ones with the keys.

(See y’all tomorrow)

Be Down to Earth, or be Brought Down (Day 255)

9/12/2019

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

Zeno always said that nothing was more unbecomming than putting on airs, especially with the young.”
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.22

Putting on airs… yeah, I remember what my people used to say about those who acted as if they were somehow greater-than others. They used to say that this person: thinks their shit doesn’t stink. But, we’ve all had those moments, haven’t we, where for a while, we get used to the smell of our own… aromas? Getting ahead of ourselves, and more importantly, thinking we’re above those with whom we’re on this together-journey and who haven’t quite got it as “figured out” as we do… it’s a huge problem, and it’s one that we have all known at one point or another.

Arrogance. Over-inflated self-opinions carry us over others… not ground us alongside them.

A healthy sense of self and self-worth shouldn’t be filled with air, but instead, with sterner stuff: virtue practice, embracing interconnectedness, always living for and looking for the “greater good”.

If the ego balloon that increases the space between people is never filled, then it’ll never need to be popped… and sometimes the popping of that bubble can be quite, abrupt, shall we say? My people, down in south Louisiana, used to say that someone was: in desperate need of an ass kickin’.

It shouldn’t ever have to come to that, so remember: it’s more Virtuous to be hospitable than it is to be right.

(See y’all tomorrow)

What Would Less Look Like? (Day 254)

9/11/2019

Off-hand training.

How one approaches it depends on the tradition. In aikido, for example, students are expected to practice on both left and right sides for both the “entering” principle and the “turning” principle of each technique. In many combat pistol courses, students are taught to assign a good-to-fair amount of time in shooting practice training the non-dominant hand. However, some Korean systems aren’t as comprehensive. For example, both Kuk Sool Won and HanMuDo (Hapkido derivatives) only teach techniques in one way, in one side of the body. Students are “encouraged” to practice the off-hand on one’s own time, OR instructors will hold an “off-hand” or “backwards” class where for ONE DAY every now and again students get to fumble about with what other arts consider to be “regular training”.

More importantly, what’s off-hand martial training methodology got to do with “What would less look like?”

Let me ask: What happens if through injury, or age, or whatever reason you cannot use your dominant hand in a time of need and crisis? What happens is: you have LESS (fewer) resource(s) in which to do your daily work. Whether the resources be limbs or digits, finances, time… if we prepare to still do the best, even without the most ideal of circumstances, when the wort finds us, it’ll find us ready and awake.

To ask ourselves, “what would less look like” is to ask ourselves questions along the lines of: Can I live within or below my means? What if I lost my right hand, or arm? What if I lost a leg in a motorcycle accident? Then, after we’ve asked ourselves these kinds of questions, we admit that we don’t know, and put together ways to practice… just in case that day ever comes.

The lesson today is to train ourselves to be the best in the worst circumstances by doing that training in the best of times.

(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.

A Year of Contemplation