You've read the books. You know what Marcus Aurelius would do. But when life gets hard, the philosophy disappears. This podcast is for people who want to close the gap between knowing Stoicism and actually living it. New episodes weekly. Start with the free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: https://www.stoicchallenge.co/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-description&utm_content=global
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11:21
In this guided meditation you will imagine an apocalyptic scene, the end of the world, as a way of bringing your most important values sharply into focus.
It draws on the Stoic practice of premeditation of adversity. Picturing what could go wrong leaves you better prepared, lets you rehearse meeting hardship calmly, and quietly deepens your gratitude for what is still here. So much time gets lost to the quiet assumption that we will live forever. Sitting with the shortness of life has a way of steering us somewhere truer. Find somewhere quiet and let yourself go there.
When you start any kind of meditation or visualization, there's an energy or a momentum which you're carrying around with you in your mind. It could be a momentum from socializing earlier on, it could be a momentum from having vivid dreams, it could be a momentum or an energy just from some sort of toxic drip of stress. So let's begin first of all simply with the decision to quiet the mind. Drop now immediately into the present moment. As you listen to me, pay attention to the beginning, middle, and end of each word, as well as the silences between the sounds. Let all that exists around you other than what is immediately in your awareness drop away. Now I want you to imagine that in a few short minutes the world will end. Close your eyes. Really picture this. The world and everything on the world will be destroyed. And what will you see when this happens? Well, the only thing you can see is the fuzzy patterned dance of colour behind your eyelids. You can maybe hear the ambience in the room around you, your breathing. And you can see images in your mind's eye. The breaths you take now, I want you to realize, will be the last you ever take. Isn't it interesting how simply changing our relationship to such simple things, such a simple thing as breathing can have profound emotional effects? Imagine you have one hundred breaths left. How is the quality of your awareness as you imagine this? Now, as you're awaiting the impending destruction of everything you know and hold dear in your life, I want you to go back through it. I want you to figure out how you ended up right here, right now. So please, consider your earliest memories. Bring to mind mental snapshots of the following items from your childhood. Your first pet. A picture on your bedroom wall. A song you played on repeat. Your favourite candy. A time you were very, very naughty. A birthday party that you remember vividly. A toy that you absolutely loved. An obscure memory from a Christmas. These images that you just brought to mind are unique to you and you alone. I want you to feel this uniqueness, feel these early memories, and trace the lines of these early experiences into your adolescence, into your teenage years? Can you remember the beginning of your puberty? Can you remember your first sexual encounters? Can you remember times in high school where you were embarrassed? Times where you felt lonely? Times where you felt confused? Do you see yourself from the outside? Do you see yourself from the inside? Do you feel the current age you are now as you remember it? Or can you get back into the age you were during the memory? Back then, when you were a teenager, how did your relationship with your parents affect who you are now? How did your status in high school change how you see yourself? And does that still impact you today? Were you ever picked on or bullied and do you carry that around with you? How attractive or athletic were you when you were young? Does that change any of the thoughts you have about yourself? Maybe when you look in the mirror, maybe how you think you're perceived by others now? What skills or talents did you possess did you get approval and validation for? Did this actually help you or did it hurt you? What you'll realize as you dig deeper into the past, into your unique story, is that who you think you are now is a direct result of a hugely complicated web of experiences that began the moment you were born. Every role model, every insult, every win, and every loss is with you right now. In fact, how you perceive reality right now, how you are listening to my voice, the emotional impact that it's having is directly linked to your values, and your values are directly linked to your life experiences. So quite literally, what now determines how you pay attention are linked to what you might have considered inconsequential events from your past. But I digress. We know, as I said at the beginning, that your unique world, everything that is special about you, all of the amazing and terrifying things that comprise your special identity in just a few minutes will disappear. Everything you've strived for, all of your life, all of the relationships you've built, all of the material possessions you've amassed, will be thrown into oblivion, an atom by atom torn apart. Most of the unique things you've thought up during this visualization will remain unknown by the vast majority of civilization. And even if you can tell other people about your experiences, they will filter those stories through their own experiences. And even if they remember it, they too will die one day. But of course, everyone will die in a few minutes. And how does that make you feel? How does it make you feel that all that matters in the end is your own satisfaction with how you lived your life? And are you satisfied as you sit there? Did you waste any time on the wrong things, on the wrong relationships, wrong pursuits? Did you live as virtuously as you wished you had? Did you be the person you knew you were capable of being? If you could do it all over again, what kind of changes would you have made? Now, whatever the answers to these questions may be, it's important to realize that everything you've gone through so far in your life doesn't actually make you you. They may have contributed to the unique flavor of your personality, but you have a choice right now, in this very moment, now, here to start again and to do things right. Where you are right now, whether rich or poor, happy, sad, lonely, popular, certain or confused, you should remember that where you are is not who you are, and who you are is not who you could be. If fortune permitted, your life could take a major turn for the worst tomorrow. Major turn. But now you have the opportunity to take fortune into your own hands now and make a commitment to start fresh, to allow all of those wonderful memories that contributed to who you are now to just be the events that made you change, the events that gave you the motivation to reach your potential. Not stories for being a victim, not stories for why you failed. Stories In fact that showed your life could have gone one way, but didn't. When I said the world was going to end, I meant it. I want you to want the world to end. The world as you know it. The world how it has been for the last few years. Now, open your eyes and choose to embark on a new journey with me. A new quest, if you will, towards stoic mastery. I'll see you soon.
