You can subscribe to my diary below. That's where I collect my meditative contemplations.
When life has something to say through me, I write. My task flows from my being as a flower emits its fragrance. As a tree bears its fruit and no other.
When I am still, life puts me in my place. When I am still, I become my part. And though it appears small to me, it might be vast. I can only see a frame of time that I fix in agony to fit my picture of the world. But God has other plans for me. And all the pain dissipates as I write.
They say, ‘you’ve got the gift, kid,’ as if it were something special. Gifts are innate. Wishing for another’s gift makes that gift seem special. You’ve got your own - magical to another - gift. Discover it, that’s special, and then the work starts.
The perfect action is when you don’t act. The perfect action is when you let life act through you. In complete harmony, what you create holds life. That is beauty in art, complete trust in life, a fall into God’s arms through your work. And you can claim a work you never touched as yours.
Life teaches itself through its parts. And true power is impersonal. It's the power of the whole through the individual.
And so I write my meditative contemplations out of joy. Like a poet writes his rhymes and a rhymer writes his songs in accordance with life. Like a mother embraces her child. Like a father embraces his responsibility to provide for his family. Like the thread of life connects the whole. Like the sun needs no outside source to burn, and its nourishment to us is its innate being. A function assigned to it. So you, too, have your function.
The task I am made of is philosophy.
Philosophy is about the flow of life, not about walls and gathering your moral armour. But words that liberate. Words that point to the unspeakable, the whole. Philosophy is not superiority, ritual, walls and formations that separate from life, but life itself. The art of philosophy is to dance around the subject of life, for it can’t be contained by human language, only by the language of the heart. It can be perceived with God, never alone.
I’d love to introduce you to my favourite philosopher: Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor. To reign with deep roots in philosophy, experience the whole through meditation and impart that grace to his kingdom. That is what true reign is—a responsibility through deep care through the pulse of the whole.
I will now read you some of my favourite parts from Book II of his personal meditative contemplations he never meant to publish. Fortunate for us, we now get to bathe in his book called ‘Meditations’.
Don’t ever forget these things: The nature of the world. My nature. How I relate to the world. What proportion of it I make up. That you are part of nature, and no one can prevent you from speaking and acting in harmony with it, always. (Book 2 Verse 9, henceforth documented as 2.9.)
You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say, and think. If the gods exist, then to abandon human beings is not frightening; the gods would never subject you to harm. And if they don’t exist, or don’t care what happens to us, what would be the point of living in a world without gods or Providence? But they do exist, they do care what happens to us, and everything a person needs to avoid real harm they have placed within him. If there were anything harmful on the other side of death, they would have made sure that the ability to avoid it was with you. (part of 2.11.)
The speed with which all of them vanish—the objects in the world, and the memory of them in time. And the real nature of the things our senses experience, especially those that entice us with pleasure or frighten us with pain or are loudly trumpeted by pride. To understand those things—how stupid, contemptible, grimy, decaying, and dead they are— that’s what our intellectual powers are for. (part of 2.12.)
Nothing is more pathetic than people who run around in circles, “delving into the things that lie beneath” and conducting investigations into the souls of the people around them, never realising that all you have to do is to be attentive to the power inside you and worship it sincerely. To worship it is to keep it from being muddied with turmoil and becoming aimless and dissatisfied with nature—divine and human. (part of 2.13.)
The human soul degrades itself: Above all, when it does its best to become an abscess, a kind of detached growth on the world. To be disgruntled at anything that happens is a kind of withdrawal from Nature, which comprises the nature of all things. … Or when it puts on a mask and does or says something artificial or false. (part of 2.16.)
Human life: Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion. Then what can guide us? Only philosophy. (part of 2.17.)