My Journey to Stoicism (Part IV)

MY JOURNEY TO STOICISM: Part IV

DAVID ALEXANDER

This is part 4 of my 4 part series on ‘My Journey to Stoicism.’ Link to Part I

At the same time I was learning about these deeper questions in philosophy, I was also learning about Jungian Psychology.

Stoic Philosophy was a start. Accept your fate. Look to yourself for the things that are within your control. Your thoughts and actions. Look within yourself to try to understand the truth of Wisdom, Justice, Temperance, and Courage in any given situation.

I still have much to learn about Stoicism, but it has led me to focusing on other philosophical approaches towards the question “How does one ‘Know Thyself’?”

Jungian psychology goes beyond looking within your rational mind for answers to the causes for your thoughts and actions. Looking beyond: to your unconscious mind. To understand your True Self. The unconscious motivations for your thoughts and actions.

Carl Jung says that the second half of life requires finding “a mature spirituality”. It is not something that can be given to you by other people or organized religion. It is something you have to wrestle with for yourself.

Cattle die, kinsmen die,

the self must also die;

I know one thing which never dies:

the reputation of each dead man.

The Poetic Edda, Havamal, Stanza 77.

It does not have to be belief in God or the supernatural, but I think it is accurately defined as a belief in something greater than one’s self. The self lives and the self will die, and then what? To find meaning in death is to find meaning in life. Doing the work of a human being is to work towards something that is greater than one’s self.

Building corporations that will last generations, building monuments that can last 4000 years, writing books that are read 2000 years later. These are all noble accomplishments, but all are ultimately lost to the sands of time. But working towards the human cause that lives beyond the self. That’s the idea of the cosmopolis.

“At Dawn, when you’re reluctant to get up, have this thought readily available: I have work to do as a human being, and that’s why I’m getting up. Do I resent it if I’m on my way to do the work for which I was born and for the sake of which I was brought up into the world?”

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations, Book 5, Section 1.

What is the work of a human being? To do Good. To act with Virtue. To be in alignment with the Nature of the Cosmos (Robin Waterfield’s footnote on Meditations 5:1).

Conclusion

As I learned about Stoicism, it felt like something familiar that I had learned before but lost for a while and came back to. My journey to Stoicism did not actually begin when I started studying Stoicism in 2020. It did not begin at age 18 when I started reading Albert Ellis.

I recently found the eulogy that my father wrote for his father. In the first few lines, he wrote that his father must have grown up learning “Roman Virtues.”

I had no idea what it meant when I read it many years ago. Ethnically our family is not Italian or Roman. It was a strange statement. But to read it again in 2020, it all made sense. What is Virtue?

My father and his father both worked for the U.S. Federal Government. I think after World War II, it felt like the U.S.A. had defeated evil at an existential level, and was building the roots of a great cosmopolis. A utopia where people can find a place where they belong. Where they can provide for others and are provided for in return. Where rationality will prevail, if people can only be educated and given opportunities.

I think you would be hard pressed to find any of that optimism about the federal government over the past 5, 10, or 20 years.

But the Cosmopolis is not to be found in the material world. It is an ideal, like The Sage, to keep in mind and to give direction, purpose, and meaning.

If you want to see my reading list of books I read during my journey to Stoicism, see the end of my personal blog.

WRITTEN BY

DAVID ALEXANDER

I bring to the Walled Garden my interest in writing and teaching about ideas integrating philosophy, psychology, mythology, and spirituality towards the goals of creating a meaningful life and self-transformation.

SUBSCRIBE TO
GARDEN PICKINGS

Get weekly garden pickings offering the best of The Walled Garden, as well as updates on upcoming events.

"I'll play it first and tell you what it is later."

"There's a rhythm in my heart... Incredible."

"The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts."

"To heed is to have faith in one’s own ability to be transformed."

"Things are not all as graspable and sayable as we are led to believe."

"To the distant hills we go, with philosophy as our guide."

"If I had not been admitted to these studies it would not have been worth while to have been born."

"The Logos hath risen."

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

"The key is offered to all, and yet not all have opened the door to peer within."