Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
In short, you must remember this - that if you hold anything dear outside your own reasoned choice, you will have destroyed your own capacity for choice.”
Epictetus, Discourses, 4.4.23
Ah, yes… attachment. A word and concept that makes most Western folx run screaming in the other direction, especially Western pagan folx. Attachments, you see, are the things that prevent us from accepting the inevitability of change. If we’re running away from studying attachment’s negative effects on our lives, then it’s not attachment-philosophy that’s broken… it’s us. We become our own worst enemy.
Only an enemy would keep us from information that would, otherwise, be the most beneficial to our continued health and existence. An enemy would have us invest in things upon which we cannot rely. Temporary, fleeting things. If we are ensnared by the attachment-enemy’s lures, we wind up attaching to are things that come and go, transitory and temporary in nature. An ally, however, would counsel us to invest and train the singular permanent trait upon which we CAN rely:
Prohairesis - our capacity for reasoned choice.
The greater our capacity for reasoned choice, the less we will engage in the attachment-neurosis.
Image, wealth and status, place and time, lifestyles or professions… all of these things are doors through which we can enter into the realm of attachment…
… unless we consciously and reasonably CHOOSE not to.
(See y’all tomorrow)
Only an enemy would keep us from information that would, otherwise, be the most beneficial to our continued health and existence. An enemy would have us invest in things upon which we cannot rely. Temporary, fleeting things. If we are ensnared by the attachment-enemy’s lures, we wind up attaching to are things that come and go, transitory and temporary in nature. An ally, however, would counsel us to invest and train the singular permanent trait upon which we CAN rely:
Prohairesis - our capacity for reasoned choice.
The greater our capacity for reasoned choice, the less we will engage in the attachment-neurosis.
Image, wealth and status, place and time, lifestyles or professions… all of these things are doors through which we can enter into the realm of attachment…
… unless we consciously and reasonably CHOOSE not to.
(See y’all tomorrow)
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