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Does stoicism have a cosmology and views of a soul or life beyond the human experience, or is it more so a philosophy of how to effectively live life?

10/18/2021

For the most part, people think of Stoicism as an extremely practical way of living. It is about accepting what we cannot change. It is also about living life to the fullest because we never know when it’s going to be our last day.
But the Stoics also had a cosmology and a concept of the soul.

They believed in what in Hinduism is called Prana—the breath of life. But they called it the pneuma The pneuma a mixture of the elements air and fire.

This pneuma is the creative force behind the all life, all inanimate objects, and the cosmos as a whole. The highest form of the pneuma is our soul, which they called the “psyche.”
The psyche is a a small part of the overall pneuma, which is the soul of God. Everything that exists is part of the pneuma in some way. Stoics divide it all into two categories:

Passive—matter and the material world, including us and our bodies

Active—divine purpose, or the “logos”

The Stoics saw the cosmos as an all-encompassing presence, with a mega-soul. This is where the god Zeus come into play. He’s the one that holds it all together with the power of the pneuma. And everything in the world is imbued with the pneuma.

I am completely in agreement with this view of the cosmos, minus Zeus. But I understand the need for humans to embody the forces of the Universe, and put a label on them, such as “Zeus” or “God.”

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Other than intent, are there differences between 'shower thoughts' and thoughts you get while meditating?

10/1/2021

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Thoughts I get while meditating are like bubbles rising into the horizon. I don’t get pulled into them or give them any importance. They are automatically generated by my thinking machine (ego mind) and have mostly to do with survival, the past, or the future.

They can be funny and they can be a nuisance, like a buzzing mosquito, but they are completely irrelevant to the mediations process. Meditation takes us into deeper layers of consciousness than mere thought.

Shower thoughts are about planning, getting things done, gettin clean, something someone said, a song you like, all kinds of random things, and they can be tied to intention or not. The ego-mind cannot be still in the present moment, so it seeks to distract itself with all kinds of thoughts, some of which are actually useful and problem-solving but others are just mental clutter.

The whole point of meditation is to go beyond this metal noise and get to a place of quiet peace. Therefore, thoughts during meditation are useless.

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Is constant unbearable physical pain the result of one’s karma?

10/1/2021

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Pain comes with the body and may not have anything to do with your karma. The body breaks down or has inflammation or it itches, it aches, it has stabbing pains. We can point to obvious physical causes: We stubbed our toe on the table, we cut ourselves, we got into an accident. On one level, pain is our friend because it is telling us that something needs to be attended to.

Maybe we didn’t eat as nutritionally as we could. Maybe we are careless or overindulge. We don’t want to blame all this on Karma. Karma isn’t like that anyway, giving out pain as punishment. It is more about how you face your life when you are ready to cross over. How much love did you show?

Humans often want all the pleasure of the body but we often don’t understand the yin/yang of pleasure and pain. Are we going to have all the pleasure and fun and none of the pain? That is not how the Universe manifests itself. Actually, people who cannot feel pain at all, die at an early age because they can bite their tongues or seriously injure themselves and just bleed to death because they have not sought help.

Don’t blame yourself for your pain. You don’t need that added psychlogical burden to your discomfort. Separate the pain from the suffering and see the difference. You can’t choose the pain, but you can choose the suffering (or not to suffer).
Yet pain has nothing to do with who you really are, as a Soul. The Soul feels nothing of pain or distress. It is not physical.

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How does Eckart Tolle's "Power of Now" help people who live in countries which are a failed state with the lack of basic everything and not a glimmer of hope for improvements?

10/1/2021

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All of us, no matter how wealthy or well-fed have found ourselves in terrible circumstances beyond our physical control. Eckart Tolle teaches methods for finding the peace within, from which we can solve whatever problem presents itself. We cannot solve any problem from a position of upset, anger, want, lack, need, and distress. Those emotions only cloud our problem-solving ability.

We cannot solve the problem of a failed state from a position of greed of the elite, torture, imposed hunger, and terrorism. Those are all the results of the lesser, human ego mind that seeks to entrench its position through domination and control. Only an enlightened understanding of the peace that dwells within the soul produces cooperation, preservation of resources, and the overall happiness of all in any society.

Eckhart Tolle’s books are not a magic bullet for all of a sudden getting rid of the human greed and cruelty that fuels world hunger and other human-caused disasters.

Eckart Tolle’s work has helped people who are in prison, on death row, and other circumstances that are beyond the individual’s control. He explains that you can be in the worst of circumstances and still find that peace within. From that standpoint, you can then work to embrace your life, and understand that you are more than a survival machine that eats, procreates, and dies.

But first, we must clear our minds of all the garbage and fear that it automatically generates. Then we must find a path to where our inner peace lives. After that, no matter what the circumstances, they do not affect our inner happiness or peace.

Tolle uses the example of being stuck in the mud or quicksand. It would do no good whatsoever to kick and scream in fear and upset until you wear yourself out and get taken under. Better to acknowledge, “This is where I am right now. What is my next step to get out of this?” Thinking clearly and calmly will bring much better results. That is all Eckart Tolle is about. Get rid of the little, fear-filled human mind and tune into the rich territory of the Soul.

The Soul is connected to all the natural intelligence of the Universe. And when people tune into it, problems get solved. Even if you do get taken under, you will not die in an agonized state of resistance, but will surrender to the larger forces that work within and are much larger than the individual ego.
Tolle is very clear that anything in the physical state is unstable. We cannot expect anything in the physical to last. But he points the way to what does last: The Eternal Soul.

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Does stoicism have a cosmology and views of a soul or life beyond the human experience, or is it more so a philosophy of how to effectively live life?

Other than intent, are there differences between 'shower thoughts' and thoughts you get while meditating?

Is constant unbearable physical pain the result of one’s karma?

How does Eckart Tolle's "Power of Now" help people who live in countries which are a failed state with the lack of basic everything and not a glimmer of hope for improvements?

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