210819 What I learned in my studies this morning

To think many things,

Too many thoughts to avoid.

Two paths to choose from.

Daily Stoic:

Avoid unnecessary acts.  Good advice for me.

Sometimes, most of the time, I talk too much and listen too little. If I stopped to reflect, as Marcus suggests, on whether or not my comments are worth saying, are they useful to what is happening or to achieve my goals, I would keep my mouth closed, more often than not.  I've done this on occasion in the past and would benefit from doing it more.  

Herding my mind into leaving behind useless thoughts, however, is a much more daunting task.  The problem is that I have intrusive thoughts: <<. . . an unwelcome, involuntary thought, image, or unpleasant idea that may become an obsession, is upsetting or distressing, and can feel difficult to manage or eliminate.>>  They are most prevalent at night as I try to fall asleep.

I fight against them when they arise.  Sometimes I can shut them down simply by opening my eyes.  Sometimes I shake my head.  Sometimes I get up and walk around.  Of course, these "solutions" retard my attempts to fall asleep, but anything that interrupts the pattern is on the table.

I tell myself that these thoughts are ephemeral and not worth the effort to expunge them.  I use a Stoic / Zen approach and try to let them flow out of my mind, acknowledging their presence but commenting in my internal monologue that they are free to drift away and cannot harm me.  

I tell myself this is just a  short-circuit within my mind and not the real me.  Given my antipathy toward these thoughts, this seems like it would be an easier sell than it is.

I'll add Marcus' thoughts to the arsenal with which I fight these fiendish fallacies.

Today's Meditation:

From Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, Letter LXV:

In this letter, the longest so far, Seneca asks Lucilius to referee a dispute concerning physics (ontological causation).  Then, asking whether this sort of inquiry is useful, Seneca (seemingly) detours into an aside about the relationship of the body and the soul. 

Stoics, he says, believe that things have two fundamentals: matter (the substrate from which a thing is made) and cause (the action which crafted the result or gave it the form it takes on).  Only the latter can truly be called a cause.

Next, Seneca examines Aristotle's Four Causes.

1. Material cause: "that out of which" it is made.
2. Efficient Cause: the source of the objects principle of change or stability.
3. Formal Cause: the essence of the object.
4. Final Cause: the end/goal of the object, or what the object is good for.

To these four causes, he adds a fifth from Plato:

With Aristotle's and Plato's causes in the arena, Seneca now criticizes them as "either too much or not enough."

Bolstering his discussion of causes, Seneca naturally turns to explaining his thoughts about why we should explore such topics and, of course, how the body is a prison for the soul and how we should greet Death.  Wait.  What?

This letter is tough to examine, formed as it is out of seemingly disparate parts. Was senility creeping into Seneca's writing?  Steven Lowenstam of the University of Michigan doesn't think so. He argues that Seneca's letter is well-formed, in fact artful, in its presentation.

<< . . . the apparent signs of looseness in Epistle 65 entirely obscure the fact that all its material fits into a two-term dialectic that is enunciated in the very first sentence and hence that the epistle is very carefully crafted, both in its construction and in the ways it disguises that very organization.>>

I'll finish exploring Letter LXV, and Lowenstam's argument, tomorrow.