Where to look when you are… faced with different choices
We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.
Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
As you gain more and more access to your nature, you will also spontaneously receive creative thoughts because the field of pure potentiality is also the field of infinite creativity and pure knowledge. Franz Kafka, the Austrian philosopher and poet, once said,
"You need not leave your room. Remain sitting on your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait. You need not even wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll ecstasy at your feet."
The essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice; just as the essence of evil is another kind. What about externals, then? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil in working with them. How will it find the good? Not by marveling at the material! For if judgments about the material are straight that makes our choices good, but if those judgments are twisted, our choices turn bad.
The unrestricted person, who has in hand what they will in all events, is free. But anyone who can be restricted, coerced, or pushed into something against what they will is a slave. — Epcitetus, Discourses, 4.1.128b-129b(resource) Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom Perseverance and Art of Living
Think of the whole universe of matter and how small your share. Think about the expanse of time and how brief- almost momentary- the part marked for you. Think of the workings of fate and how infinitesimal your role." ~ Marcus Aurelius Meditations, 5:24
