Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered or disturbed, or grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves — that is, to our own views. It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself.
Situation
When something hurts and I can't stop it
5 traditions are shelved here, each stating the question in its own words.
Which part of this is the event, and which part is my judgement of it?
A school of Greek and Roman philosophy taught from the third century BCE onward, concerned with judgement, action and the distinction between what a person controls and what they do not. Its surviving handbooks were written as practical training rather than theory.
Am I being struck once, or twice?
A tradition originating with the teaching of the Buddha in northern India and preserved in several textual collections. The discourses gathered here come from the Pali canon, recorded as talks given to particular people in particular circumstances.
"Mendicants, an unlearned ordinary person feels pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings. A learned noble disciple also feels pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings. What, then, is the difference between a learned noble disciple and an ordinary unlearned person?"
"When an unlearned ordinary person experiences painful physical feelings they sorrow and wail and lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience two feelings: physical and mental.
It's like a person who is struck with an arrow, only to be struck with a second arrow. That person experiences the feeling of two arrows.
In the same way, when an unlearned ordinary person experiences painful physical feelings they sorrow and wail and lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience two feelings: physical and mental.
When a learned noble disciple experiences painful physical feelings they don't sorrow or wail or lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience one feeling: physical, not mental."
What is actually here, if I take the story away?
Reflection that does not appeal to a religious or philosophical authority. The pieces here were written for this collection and make no claim to be anything other than one way of putting a question.
Pain arrives with instructions attached, and most of them are wrong.
It says: fix this now. It says: this will not end. It says: you should have seen it coming, and someone is to blame, and the blame will help.
Try separating the sensation from the instructions. The ache in the chest, the tightness, the wanting-it-to-stop — that part is simply happening, and it is not asking you for anything. The rest is a story the mind is telling at speed, in the hope that the telling will change something.
So: what is actually here, right now, if you take the story away? And is there anything in front of you, in the next hour, that you could do — not to end it, but to be a little kinder to the person carrying it?
What is this season asking me to sit with?
A practice of reading meaning from the positions of the sun, moon and planets, attested in Babylonian, Hellenistic, Indian and Chinese forms and continuous in the West since antiquity. Western astrology divides the year into twelve signs and reads the movement of the planets as a description of timing, season and disposition.
Saturn does not move quickly, and neither will this.
When Saturn crosses a sensitive point in the chart it does not remove the difficulty; it slows everything down around it until the difficulty has to be looked at. This is the planet of limits, of time, of the structures that hold weight. Its seasons are not punishments. They are the long stretches in which something is being built or something unsound is being taken apart, and both of those take longer than anyone wants.
What Saturn asks for is endurance rather than cleverness. Not the burst of effort that fixes a thing in an afternoon, but the unglamorous discipline of showing up to it again tomorrow, and the honesty to admit which parts will not be hurried.
The transit ends. That is the other half of the reading, and the half most often forgotten while it is underway. Saturn keeps moving. What it leaves behind, when it has finished with a house, is usually the only thing in that area of life that was ever going to hold.
Where is God when my heart is breaking?
A tradition rooted in the Hebrew scriptures and in the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, carried through two millennia of churches, commentaries, liturgies and practices. Its texts are read as scripture by their communities.
The righteous cry, and Yahweh hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles.
Yahweh is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but Yahweh delivers him out of them all.