Practice like a Stoic: 42, Retreat to your inner citadel

It is always possible to retreat into one’s own mind to seek peace and serenity

The inner citadel, by Midjourney.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic.Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the book for details on how to practice the exercise, download the exercise forms from The Experiment’s website, and comment below on how things are going. Greg and/or I will try our best to help out! This week’s exercise is found at pp. 247-249 of the paperback edition.]

“Men seek retirement in country house, on shore or hill; and you too know full well what that yearning means. Surely a very simple wish; for at what hour you will, you can retire into yourself. Nowhere can man find retirement more peaceful and untroubled than in his own soul, specially he who has such stores within, that at a glance he straightaway finds himself lapped in ease, meaning by ease good order in the soul, this and nothing else. Ever and anon grant yourself this retirement, and so renew yourself. Have at command thoughts, brief and elemental, yet effectual to shut out the court and all its ways, and to send you back unchafing to the tasks to which you must return. What is it chafes you? Men’s evil doing? Find reassurance in the tenet that rational beings exist for one another, that forbearance is a part of justice, that wrong doing is involuntary; and think of all the feuds, suspicions, hates and brawls, that before now lie stretched in ashes. Think, and be at rest. Or is it the portion assigned you in the universe at which you chafe? Refresh yourself with the alternative—either a foreseeing providence, or blind atoms—and all the abounding proofs that the world is as it were a city. Or is it bodily troubles that assail? You have but to realize that when once the understanding is secure of itself and conscious of its own prerogative, it has no more part in the motions of the pneuma [soul], smooth or rough, and to rest in the creed to which you hold regarding pain and pleasure. Or does some bubble of fame torment you? Then fix your gaze on swift oblivion, on the gulf of infinity this way and that, on the empty rattle of plaudits and the fickle accident of show applause, on the narrow range within which you are circumscribed. The whole earth is but a point, your habitation but a tiny nook thereon; and on the earth how many are there who will praise you, and what are they worth? Well then, remember to retire within that little field or self. Above all do not strain or strive, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as of mortal make. Foremost among the maxims to which you can bend your glance be these two: First, things cannot touch the soul, but stand without it stationary; tumult can arise only from views within ourselves. Secondly, all things you see, in a moment change and will be no more; think of all the changes in which you have yourself borne part. The world is a moving shift, life a succession of views.” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.3)

We all feel exhausted and in need of a retreat from the world, from time to time. Here, Marcus offers us the ultimate retreat to restore our peace of mind, the only place that is available to us at all times no matter where we are. He draws a parallel between our occasional need to withdraw to a country house or some other quiet place to restore our sanity and the opportunity we always have, at no expense at all, to retire into our own minds. Many philosophical and religious traditions similarly advise that the human mind is a citadel; we may need to get back to the mind and shut out the rest of the world in order to recover the ability to get back out and do what needs to be done.