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Stoic Gratitude Meditation For Awe In Ordinary Life · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Stoic Handbook Podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is John Brooke speaking.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm going to share with you one of the meditations from my seven-day radical gratitude stoic meditation course.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: The ancient Stoic recognized that generally speaking, there are two paths to happiness.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: One is by crossing the gap between where we are and what we would like to achieve in the external world.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: While this is the path that is tempting and the path that most of us follow, it comes with costs.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: The external world is fickle and subject to fortune and can change.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And to base our happiness in something that is outside of our control, one could argue is foolish.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: We also adapt, and when we close the gap and achieve things or buy things or acquire things, very often a new desire will form and we just spend our lives chasing and wanting thing after thing without ever really being satisfied.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: The other path is a simple path, but also a profound path.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the path to learn to want the life you already have.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: This really goes against a lot of our conditioning in society.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: We are not very good subjects to marketers if we want exactly the life that we have, the things that we have, the possessions that we own.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Marketers want us to always want the thing that we don't have.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the Stoics said that training to become radically appreciative of what we have, the life that we are living, is a direct path to deep peace.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so in this meditation, we look at the wonder of reality itself.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to get access to the entire course, plus many other courses, QA's, premium podcast episodes, and so on, you can sign up to the Stoic Handbook Premium Podcast.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's only six dollars a month, and there's a two week free trial, so you can check it out and see if you like it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes to this episode, or you can visit stoichandbook.supercast.com.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get into today's meditation.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to day four of the Radical Gratitude Stoic Meditation Course.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have a hard time getting to this meditation?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Was it difficult to arrive?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: No?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: As you might know, the entity that is listening now, the entity we call you, consists of trillions of atoms that are so very precisely arranged that they will never exist in this formation again.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: All of the tiny particles that are in silent symphony right now are responsible for every heartbeat, every breath, every reaction you have ever made and will ever make.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: What's particularly odd is that even though you are a very complex and very alive person, if we were to pick you apart atom by atom, we would not find anything that is indeed alive.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: We would find the same atoms that might exist in a rock or a cloud or the sun, but arranged differently.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is also easy to take for granted that there is anything at all.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: The universe itself hasn't always existed.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: There was a time, if we want to call it that, where there were no flowers or people or animals or sky.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was no universe whatsoever.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the fact that you made it here today is indeed very impressive, not to mention, of course, how you've lived this long.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Of the billions of species that have existed on Earth, 99.99% have become extinct, gone, never to return.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: While the atoms in your system are very good at keeping you alive, the atoms in the world around you can cause major threat to that goal.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: At this point we also have to thank every one of our ancestors, who include monkeys, fish, and even single cell organisms, for reproducing at precisely the right moment in precisely the right way to allow us to exist.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if over the last 3.8 billion years any of our ancestors did anything differently, we would not be here, listening to this.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you are a betting person, but if you were to go back to the dawn of the universe, you would be beyond foolish to bet on your own existence.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: The likelihood of you being alive is equivalent to two million people all getting together with a trillion-sided die, throwing the die up in the air and everyone getting the exact same number on the first throw.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you look outside, it's almost impossible to contemplate that the cities and buildings and cars and coffee cups were once made of stars.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Stars that became unstable, then exploded to become gas clouds, eventually becoming solar systems.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the creation of the universe, according to science, is even stranger still.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that exists in the entire universe was once compacted into a space so small it had no dimensions.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is known as the singularity.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to imagine what a singularity would look like because it doesn't exist inside of a universe like ours.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: In many ways it is a no thing.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: The question I have for you is how is this landing?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: On a scale of one to ten, how much awe and delight do you experience contemplating these facts?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: How you answer might depend heavily on your age.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Your typical two year old will find true delight in walking through a puddle, or seeing how magnets repel each other, or the way a balloon seems to float.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: As this two year old gets older, the price of ore becomes more expensive.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: As a twenty two-year-old, you would need a significantly rarer and novel event to trigger the same amount of delight.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: That twenty-two-year-old may even be proud of their lack of ore, telling people they have grown up and simple things no longer delight them.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: From a stoic perspective, losing your sense of delight, which is a wonderful aspect of being alive, isn't something to brag about.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Just in the same way we would be concerned if we lost our sense of smell or taste, we should also be concerned if we can no longer feel awe, and more importantly, if this is the case, we should take the steps required to rekindle it.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: We can practice regaining the sense of awe we once had by trying to make the invisible visible again, by trying to see the magic of reality.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do that now in a guided contemplation.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sit comfortably and close your eyes.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the clothes you are wearing.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: What are they made from?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Who designed them?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of pen was it drawn in?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: What is the history of that pen?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine the designer designing the very clothes you are wearing right now.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: How hard did they study to be able to design them?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: What was their career like?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: The clothes you have on didn't come from nowhere.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you buy them from?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: What chain of events led them to appear at the store you got them from?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: How many different human beings were involved in you wearing these clothes?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: What about the food that you eat?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Think about the last meal you ate.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: What series of events led to its creation?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Where did the source ingredients come from?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Going even deeper, what is food?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: What is taste?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: How would you feel if you couldn't taste?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: How do you know when something tastes good or not?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: What about your friendships?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: What were the chances of these relationships forming?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Were they inevitable or a stroke of amazing luck?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you had made a different decision in your past, would you have met these individuals?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And with your family, what are the chances of these individuals actually being your family?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Think about your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents, and even further back.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: All of these relationships had to be exactly as they were for you and your entire family to exist.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: What about the world at large?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel about the sun?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: The trees, the atmosphere.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: We can very easily take for granted the conditions on Earth, but the conditions are actually perfectly matched to our biology.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: The air is just right for us.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Food and water does the job perfectly.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: The force of gravity is ideal, not too much that it's hard for us to move, and not too little that we are floating around.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't have to be this way, but it is.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: For the rest of today, pay particular attention to the magic of reality, the invisible but miraculous aspects of nature and the world that you have stopped seeing.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Become a master at seeing the invisible.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'll leave you with a quote from Marcus Aurelius.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you back here tomorrow for day five of the Radical Gratitude Stoic Meditation Course.