210930 What I learned in my studies this morning

Star trekkin' 'cross skies

Space is bigger than we think.

Our light still shines forth.

Daily Stoic:

Stilpo was Zeno's mentor.  He taught Zeno the lessons which would become the beginnings of Stoicism and helped Zeno understand that nothing can hurt him with his consent: his mind controls his reality. 

Can I survive suffering?  

If I find myself subject to immense pain, could I handle it?  Would I fold?  Would I stand? 

If I lose a loved one, would I collapse? Would I bear it? Would I exist or survive or thrive or fail? 

Though I will eventually find myself subject to such challenges, life inevitably tries us despite our best efforts to the contrary, I can practice on the smaller issues I face each day. 

Mental discipline, like any other skill, develops and improves with use. The more I learn to set aside judgments of small events, daily travails, and try to deal with them as they are without adding to or subtracting from reality, the better trained my mind will be and the more impenetrable my Inner Citadel. 

Today's Meditation:

Is solitude the sine qua non of enlightenment? 

Today's Meditation II:

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Book 1, §3

Today's Wordsworth :

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, a collection by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge