240618 What I learned in my studies this morning 4

Today's Meditation(s):

Discourses, 3.2.16-18 (Waterfield)

Continuing from yesterday . . . .

My early masters lead me down the wrong path — a winding path, eager I was to chase down, but wrong nonetheless — into a garden of subtle beauty I was not ready to appreciate, or, even, to understand that I could not yet appreciate elegance as it was laid before me.

My schooling skipped the first two disciplines.  Epictetus knew of this, 2000 years ago.

Hells! I'd not even heard of this tripartite division of philosophy until my studies began again more recently. 

Now I am back to the beginning, working to recast my mind, to throw off the habits of decades, to identify how to use those first principles in my life: where do I place my values? How do I constrain and reshape my desires and aversions so as to live according to Nature, never facing something I do not want and never being denied that which I do? How does amor fati live within me?

And to think I was proud of my 'learning' back in the day.  Epictetus would have scolded me soundly and sent me away.