When I am worn out

Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.

A man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a thought evolved being, for such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought, and as he develops a right understanding, and sees more and more clearly the internal relations of things by the action of cause and effect he ceases to fuss and fume and worry and grieve, and remains poised, steadfast, serene.

The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others; and they, in turn, reverence his spiritual strength, and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him.

The strong, calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm.

After one night without sleep, the amygdala — which registers threat — responds about sixty per cent more strongly to unpleasant images. At the same time the connection between it and the prefrontal region that normally moderates it weakens. The alarm gets louder and the hand on the volume comes off.

That is the deprivation finding. The more interesting proposal is about what sleep is doing when you get it: that during certain stages the brain reprocesses the emotional content of the day, keeping what happened while turning down the charge attached to it. The memory survives; the sting is reduced.

Which is why a difficult evening genuinely can look different in the morning, and why it reliably looks worse at two in the morning when you have not slept. That is not weakness of character. It is a measurable state.

How completely sleep does this, and for whom, is still contested.

The twelve signs are sorted three ways, and the one people meet last is mode. Four signs begin a season — Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn — and the tradition calls them cardinal. Four hold the season at its full width. Four dissolve it so the next can start.

What the scheme insists on is that beginning is only one of the three jobs. A year that was all cardinal would be all January: a great deal of starting and nothing brought to term. The tradition treats the holding and the dissolving as work of the same rank, which is not how most calendars are sold.

Read that way, a season of no visible progress is not a failure of the season. It is what the middle of anything looks like from inside it.

Astrologers reading a chart heavy in one mode do not describe it as better or worse. They describe what it will find easy and what it will have to be taught.

"The day is short, the task is great, the laborers are sluggish, the reward is much, and the Master of the house is urgent."

He also used to say, "It is not thy duty to complete the work, but neither art thou free to desist from it."

The (state of) vacancy should be brought to the utmost degree, and that of stillness guarded with unwearying vigour. All things alike go through their processes of activity, and (then) we see them return (to their original state). When things (in the vegetable world) have displayed their luxuriant growth, we see each of them return to its root. This returning to their root is what we call the state of stillness; and that stillness may be called a reporting that they have fulfilled their appointed end.

The report of that fulfilment is the regular, unchanging rule. To know that unchanging rule is to be intelligent; not to know it leads to wild movements and evil issues. The knowledge of that unchanging rule produces a (grand) capacity and forbearance, and that capacity and forbearance lead to a community (of feeling with all things).

"Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Tiredness lies about its own cause. It presents as a failure of character — you are lazy, you are behind, you should be managing this — when the actual reading is much duller. You have been carrying something for a long time and have not put it down.

Some of the weight is not yours. A surprising amount of what people carry was handed to them by somebody who was glad to be rid of it, and it can be set down at any point, though rarely without an argument.

Some of it is yours and cannot be set down. That is not the same as being crushed by it. Weight that is genuinely yours becomes carriable in a way that weight you are merely holding for somebody else never does.

The test is simple and unwelcome: if it were finally finished, would you rest, or would you find the next thing? Most people know the answer immediately, and most people do not like it.

This then remains: Remember to retire into this little territory of thy own, and above all do not distract or strain thyself, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal.

But among the things readiest to thy hand to which thou shalt turn, let there be these, which are two. One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.

The other is that all these things, which thou seest, change immediately and will no longer be; and constantly bear in mind how many of these changes thou hast already witnessed. The universe is transformation: life is opinion.