your vain desires are your worst slaveholders
“Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.” (Epictetus: Enchiridion)
Some of these principles and notions are in our control and others not.
The Stoics had very clear ideas about these two classes:
“Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.” (Epictetus: Enchiridion)
-but they forgot about the third category.
My guidees learn to classify their principles and notions so they are clear about which of them are under their control and which not. And then we go one step further and discover the third category: things which are neither fully under our control nor fully outside of or control but which we can influence, a wide field of action for self-improvement, cultivated by Epicureans who did not want to live “in servitude to men’s opinions”.
After a time management training course they realize that the majority of the hours of the days and the nights they are a slave they may discover that their most powerful slaveholder is nobody else but their own desires. This discovery is the foundation of the two largest mental liberation movements the world has known: Buddhism and Epicureanism.
In Epicureanism we have a very clear and pertinent analysis about the relationship between a desire and need. Epicurus classified needs in three categories:
- 1. In the first category he put those needs which he called natural and necessary. If you do not satisfy these needs you will feel mental or physical pain: some of them are necessary for your survival like food and beverage shelter, others are necessary for mental and physical stress freedom.
- 2. In the second category are those needs which are natural but not necessary, like special food or luxurious housing.
- 3. In the third category are those desires which are neither natural nor necessary because there are no real needs behind them and they never can be fully satisfied, like wealth, power and social status.
My guidees learn to classify their desires and align them with their needs usually within the framework of the few coaching sessions.
This is one of the most difficult parts of the mental liberation process on the road from slavery to happiness through stress-freedom.
teachings are like food: healthy or fattening, fast or slow
There are more ways than one to keep you from starving to death. You can grab a BigMac in a drive-in or buy a sandwich at a filling station. Or you can drive to your mother or a friend, sit down, have a talk, peel potatoes for her while she is cutting onions, Then talk some more until her goulash is finished. For Epicurus and his friends it was more important with whom they ate than what they ate. The main idea was not to be dependent on complicated, hard to procure, expensive food. They even grew their vegetable in their own garden.
The food you get from me is cooked according the ancient Epicurean recipes. I might use a gas stove or a special casserole but the recipe had been tested for 800 years. You might not feel like grabbing a sandwich at the filling station, but to sit down and eat the food I cooked for you.
There are tens of thousands of quick-fixes of stress “reduction” or “management” etc. out there on the net and some of them might just perfectly suit some of you some of the time. If that’s what you think you need at this moment: go and get it.
If you want to find out about something about the roots of your desires and the consequences of your illusions, you should stop, sit down take your time and engage in some nourishing reflection. If your goal is to eliminate the causes of stress and stay stress-FREE, then you ought to take your time and spoon an adequate teaching, like e.g. Zen Buddhism or Epicureanism - if you are a more rational kind of person, more rooted in the European Enlightenment culture, trusting science and experience. It is available in a raw form, uncooked inside books or cooked and served by Galenios on this site.
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