Sob escombros

 Anatolii Savitskii

Um tempo houve em que,

de tão próximo, quase podias ouvir

o silêncio do mundo pulsando

onde também tu eras mundo, coisa pulsante.

Extinguiu-se esse canto

não na morte

mas na vida excluída

da clarividência da infância

e de tudo o que pulsa,

fins e começos,

e corrompida pela estridência

e pela heterogeneidade.

Agora respondes por nomes supostos,

habitante de países hábeis e reais,

e precisas de ajuda para as coisas mais simples,

o pensamento, o sofrimento, a solidão.

A música, só voltarás a escutá-la

numa noite lívida,

uma noite mais vulnerável do que todas

(o presente desvanecendo-se, o passado cada vez mais lento)

um pouco antes de adormece

sob escombros.

Manuel António Pina 

in, "Todas as palavras - poesia reunida 1974-2011"

Express What You Repress

Turning Our Repressions 

into Alchemical Gold

There is a special passage in the visions of the Alchemist Zosimos, analyzed by Carl Jung, which will be useful for us to understand on the path of our psychological development. 

This passage has to do with the expression of repressed contents of our unconscious.

Zosimos narrates the following fragment of his vision:

“I saw a man of copper who had in his hand a tablet of lead. He shouted while looking at the tablet: ‘I order those who are under punishment to stop and that each one take a tablet of lead and write with one hand, with eyes lifted up and mouth open until his tongue grows thick.’”

This apparently meaningless fragment contains one of the keys to Jungian therapy and has to do with the expression of our repressed unconscious content.

We will explain it shortly; first let us be clear that what Zosimos sees and what he calls a dream (and his predecessors a “vision”) seems to be a state of active imagination, that is, the interaction and participation of consciousness with contents coming from our unconscious. In such a state, although we are not asleep, we can visualize our unconscious in a lucid and visible way; this would be the explanation for the visions of the prophets.

Jung explains the meaning of the fragment of this vision of Zosimos:

“It could refer to a particularly convulsive opening of the mouth that is linked to a strong contraction of the pharynx. This contraction has the meaning of a choking movement that must represent the act of vomiting contents from within. The latter must be written on the tablets. They are inspirations coming from above which, in a certain sense, are received by the eyes lifted upward. It is presumably a procedure that can be compared with modern active imagination.”

What was Zosimos observing and why is it so important?

The visions of Zosimos are images of the process of psychological transformation expressed in the alchemical language of the late third and early fourth centuries.

The man of copper represents affectivity, eros, the equivalent of Mars and of relationship. 

Meanwhile, lead is associated with the unconscious, with what is heavy, dark, and with our shadow. 

The people who are under punishment are different psychological elements such as complexes, affectivities, non-integrated parts, unlived emotions, etc., which we usually see in dreams as crowds, and here they are under punishment because they have not been integrated.

The part that concerns us and from which we can extract true “alchemical gold” is Carl Jung’s interpretation, who refers to what happens in the vision as a movement of vomiting and choking. Psychologically, this would mean that there is something inside that must come out and become visible, and it comes out with difficulty, in a convulsive way like vomit.

 

The throat has to do with expression, while the lifted eyes are a kind of receptive attitude toward the divine/collective unconscious, which we must experience in order to materialize unconscious content—and this is what Carl Jung was doing in the manuscripts that make up his Red Books:

Mortificatio, the inevitable suffering on the path to transformation

No new life can arise, say the alchemists, without the death of the old one. 

They compare the art with the work of the sower, who buries the grain in the earth: it dies only to awaken to a new life. 

It is worth noting that Zosimos of Panopolis was a Greek-Egyptian alchemist who lived between the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. He is considered one of the first important authors of the alchemical tradition. He wrote numerous treatises in which he combined primitive chemical practices with a profound spiritual and symbolic vision. Jung placed special emphasis on him.

Today Zosimos will help us understand an inevitable and painful stage on our path to psychological realization that we all experience: the mortificatio. 

That moment when everything collapses, when the path becomes truly painful, but which precedes transformation.

The Vision of Zosimos

Mortificatio is experienced as defeat and failure. Needless to say, such an experience is rarely chosen. It is usually imposed by life, whether from within or from without… Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche

But before entering into the subject, it is necessary to know what the alchemist saw that so greatly interested Carl Jung. So I will present a rather condensed summary of the visions of Zosimos that Carl Jung selected on this occasion:

While asleep, Zosimos saw an altar in the shape of a patera (a type of dish used in antiquity to make sacred offerings) with several steps, upon which stood a priest who said his name was Ion, and who confessed to having been violently torn apart, flayed, and burned until he was transformed into spirit. Then Zosimos saw the altar filled with boiling water and a multitude of men who burned without dying, subjected to a maceration that also turned them into spirits. A man of copper appeared, who was at once sacrificer and sacrificed, who governed the process, ordering the punished to write while they were purified by fire. The alchemist is also asked to build a temple and sacrifice a serpent. In further visions, Zosimos attempted to ascend by steps, but lost his way and saw figures throwing themselves into the fire and being consumed: a man with a razor, a white old man called Agathodemon, and another led to sacrifice.

It is worth noting that while he was seeing these visions, Zosimos reflected on the alchemical process and tried to understand it. Carl Jung believed that the alchemist was trying to resolve the problem of psychological realization projected onto the alchemical work, and that this unfolded within the characteristic worldview of that era.

The visions of Zosimos are, in fact, revealing for the alchemist, for he reaches conclusions that are important for him and that help him understand the process. 

For example, the following:

“For everything is done according to a method, according to a measure and according to an act of weighing the four elements. Without method the combination and the decomposition of all things and the connection of the whole do not occur. The method is natural (fusikhv), giving and taking away the breath and preserving its rules, increasing them and bringing them to their end. And all things agreeing through separation and union; if the method is respected, in a word, they transmute nature. For nature turned upside down turns upon itself. This is the nature of the art of the universe and its connection.” 

Zosimos

In this way the alchemist understands the process of psychological realization projected onto the alchemical process. He understands the individuating forces (the natural method) and how to carry out the work. In other articles it would be worthwhile to delve deeper into these reflections because they are truly pure gold and are revealing; however, today the subject that concerns us is mortificatio.

Mortificatio, the painful dying in order to be reborn

“The vision of Zosimos symbolically describes the alchemical work as a violent sacrifice in which the matter (and the operator) must die, dissolve, and be dismembered in order to be spiritually reborn and transmuted from copper into gold”.  

 Carl Jung in his commentary on the Visions of Zosimos

Mortificatio is not necessarily a phase of the alchemical work, as would be the nigredo, the albedo, and the rubedo. Rather, it is an inevitable consequence that occurs when the alchemist begins to work with the matter, that is, in the stage of nigredo, primarily. In psychological terms, when the person begins to confront his unconscious.

The elements can react in unpredictable and chaotic ways when the alchemist begins to work and experiment upon them. The same happens when we begin to work on our psychological realization, when we concern ourselves with confronting our complexes, fears, hatreds, defects, or the dark sides of life. Although, as Jung says, life will most likely place us in such a situation, often in the most tragic way.

The same happens to the alchemist, since he does not seek chaos in the laboratory, but it occurs unexpectedly. In the same way, life places us before the situations we feared most for ourselves. However tragic it may seem to us, this process is not only inevitable, but also necessary. For as Jung would say in this same essay:

“Either the substances to be transmuted are tormented, or that which transmutes is tormented.”

This is how the theme of sacrifice probably arises in Zosimos’ vision, which shows a terrible and inevitable process, but from which a man of gold will be reborn, that is, the integrated Self.

The Importance of Mortificatio

“Everything is bound and everything is unbound. Everything is composed and everything is decomposed. Everything is mixed and everything is separated.”  

Zosimos

Since Mortificatio has to do with death, the alchemist must inevitably “bring to completion” or at least experience the end of different states of the matter he works with, in order to transmute the elements into new ones. This inevitably leads to chaos.

In psychological terms, it means the death of the ego. 

Our egos, together with the elements upon which they are sustained, must die in order to give life to new elements.

Jung says in this same essay, regarding the theme of Zosimos’ vision:

“The dramatization shows how the divine process is revealed in the realm of human understanding and how man experiences divine transformation as punishment, torment, death, and transmutation.”

Apparently human consciousness cannot integrate the divine without suffering, but it is not because suffering is a quality of the divine. What happens is that we constitute our egos in ways incompatible with wholeness, and in this way it is inevitable that the irruption of the divine / collective unconscious is experienced as punishment.

Jung later explains:

“The motif is, in a broader spectrum, that of the sacrifice of God, which has developed not only in the West, but also in the East and especially in ancient Mexico. There, the one who personifies Tezcatlipocâ (fire mirror) is sacrificed at the feast of Toxcatl”.

The psychoanalyst points out that Zosimos’ vision describes what the Aztecs already knew and brutally experienced in their sacrifices:

At the feast of Toxcatl, a man was chosen to personify Tezcatlipoca, the “smoking mirror” or “fire mirror,” that is, a divinity that reflects consciousness and destiny. For a year he lived as a god; then, at the culminating moment, he was sacrificed.

Thus we learn that the god who dies, is torn apart and transformed, is not an isolated case, but an archetypal image. It is the same symbolic structure that appears again and again when a culture attempts to think about how the divine is renewed and made effective in the world.

Jung places emphasis on this despite the little importance given to alchemy and the fact that in his time many dismissed it as nonsense. For this reason the psychoanalyst says the following phrase, with which we conclude this article:

“A ‘nonsense’ that captivated minds for almost two thousand years — and not minor minds (I refer, for example, to Goethe and Newton) — must contain something that will be of some use for the psychologist to know.”

What We Repress Possesses Us

“But if in consciousness there is no willingness to admit unconscious contents, then the energy of these contents is diverted to the sphere of affectivity, namely to the sphere of the instincts. From there arise emotional outbursts, irritability, moods, and sexual excitations by virtue of which consciousness usually suffers a profound disorientation. If the state becomes chronic, then a dissociation occurs, described by Freud as repression, with its well-known consequences.”

This explains why emotions can possess us, why harmful ideas become dictators of our behavior (even though deep down we logically know they are not correct), why the shadow can take control. It truly explains various psychological disorders and problems that can go far beyond a neurosis and reach madness.

What we repress, deny, or ignore does not disappear, but rather arises within us in an instinctive way, that is, in an automatic and uncontrolled manner. That is why Carl Jung explains that it goes to the sphere of our instincts. This is related to much of what Freud said about repressed sexuality.

In fact, going much further, for Jungian psychology one of the causes of schizophrenia is the inability of the individual’s ego to admit certain unconscious contents, and these then emerge into consciousness in an uncontrollable way.

Admitting unconscious contents is not simply a matter of knowing about them and taking them into account intellectually; it is having the willingness and disposition to live through everything that happens to us psychically, whether pleasurable or painful. That is, being with our emotions, fears, complexes, weaknesses, etc., without ignoring, avoiding, or denying them. 

It is a kind of momentary renunciation of ego control.

How to Express in Order to Integrate Unconscious Contents?

Later Carl Jung says:

“Dorn calls the vessel the vas pellicanicum (pelican vessel) through which the essentia quinta (fifth essence) is extracted from the prima materia (prime matter). The same is stated by the anonymous author of the scholia on the Tractatus aureus: ‘This vessel, indeed, is the true philosophical pelican, and no other is to be sought in the whole world.”

The theme of the Vas hermeticum, the alchemical instrument in which the alchemist works with substances and obtains the fifth essence, is relevant here, since it symbolizes the capacity of consciousness to be receptive and to contain everything, even the strong polarity of opposites.

Symbolically, the Vas Pellican is an interesting version of this instrument. Its symbol is due to the belief that the pelican wounded its own breast and fed its young with its own blood. Alchemically, it symbolizes matter giving birth to itself.

The true challenge for modern men and women, whose lives are overwhelmed by problems of all kinds (not only psychological), is undoubtedly to achieve this hermetic vessel—to give priority to oneself in the realm of psychological as well as personal development. That is, to succeed day by day in seriously working on one’s psychological/spiritual development and obtaining from the unconscious the fifth essence (which I understand as union with the Self).

However, to achieve something as ambitious as that, the right path is to take ourselves very seriously, to take a courageous step, and to consider ourselves the most important project of our lives. In this way, our psychological realization moves to the forefront and we can truly begin to work on ourselves.

By the way, I confess that this proposal may be somewhat selfish, but such is individuation (Carl Jung acknowledged it in the Zarathustra seminars). However, the best gift we can give to others is to do the best for ourselves; it is to present ourselves as whole individuals.

From such devotion to our realization, we can begin to work with these contents through spiritual practices such as meditation and active imagination. 

Also, why not? 

By creating our own Red Book where the unconscious finds expression through writing and drawing.  

Juan Duran

What to Remember When Waking

  

In that first

hardly noticed

moment

in which you wake,

coming back

to this life

from the other

more secret,

moveable

and frighteningly

honest

world

where everything

began,

there is a small

opening

into the day

that closes

the moment

you begin

your plans.

What you can plan

is too small

for you to live.

What you can live

wholeheartedly

will make plans

enough for the vitality

hidden in your sleep.

To be human

is to become visible

while carrying

what is hidden

as a gift to others.

To remember

the other world

in this world

is to live in your

true inheritance.

You are not

a troubled guest

on this earth,

you are not

an accident

amidst other accidents,

you were invited

from another and greater

night than the one

from which

you have just emerged.

Now, looking through

the slanting light

of the morning window

toward the mountain presence

of everything that can be,

what urgency

calls you

to your one love?

What shape

waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread

its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting

in the fertile sea?

In the trees

beyond the house?

In the life

you can imagine

for yourself?

In the open

and lovely

white page

on the waiting desk?

David Whyte

in,The House of Belonging

The Invitational Identity

quickshooting

 The Art and Practice 

of Shaping a Beautiful Mind

Quite often we feel that inner horizon beneath which our sense of surety lies, not as an invitation, but as a barrier of discomfort and resistance. Beneath that resistance is an urgency that threatens to break apart our quotidian, everyday and sometimes rather boring life on the surface.

We human beings have always had to live our lives amidst the difficulties, griefs, and foolishness of the world, and still find a place to step onto, and a place to step from, at all the crucial thresholds of our lives. 

Quite often the step we have to make is hidden from us: what is inviting us – and what we are inviting towards ourselves – is not yet illuminated. In that hidden step, and in our hearts and minds as we take it, lies the beginning of an understanding of the mystery of faith: the understanding that we somehow belong to enormous horizons in our lives that are calling us but that we have not yet reached. Many of those horizons will only be reached through difficulty and loss.

Every day and every moment has its own invitations, some of them absolute shocks to the system, but often bring new perspectives and new appreciations if we are big enough and generous enough to meet them. Who knows what lies ahead for all of us in this coming year? 

All of us will have our equal measures of light and shade. 

Some of us will pass through very difficult depths of shadow and challenge. 

One thing is sure; the ability to invite the right kind of help for ourselves as we move through our traumas and triumphs, our joys and our unexpected victories, becomes essential.

To begin with, there is a very real sense of astonishment, a sense of walking with the ones we have lost and, most especially, walking with your own grief while also letting go. The whole experience creates another form of intimacy with the person you have lost, even as you are giving them away.

Then come periods, after a few years perhaps, when you may not think of them for long stretches at a time. But in difficult times in your life, you may find yourself returning to their side and asking for their help. Recently, I went through a most extraordinarily painful but necessary time and found myself asking for my mother’s help in a very powerful way.

Who knows who we are asking for help—whether we are asking for help from an actual spirit who knows what we are inviting in, or whether we are inviting in that profound part of them that still lives in us, and always will, because they were such a foundational part of our lives. Almost always, as the years go by, there occurs a kind of blurring between what you think is other than you, and what you think is you.

We are all waking into a new life, every day of our life and I want to work with the theme of the invitational identity: what you bring towards yourself, but also, what quite scarily at times, is inviting you. Very often the invitation is one toward a more courageous centre and foundation inside yourself than the not so courageous part of you that holds the daily conversation of your life.

Quite often, whether we can remember a dream or not, there is a kind of physical tonality that we wake up with in the morning – something that invites us into a deeper way of being in the world. It is more than worthwhile, it is a form of treasure – to stay with those moments. There are times, of course, when you cannot. If you have young children running into your bedroom, bouncing on the bed, hungry and ready for the day, you do not have time for considering a dream. There are seasons of life in which you do not have the luxury to linger in the revelations that float up like cargo from the deep river of rest inside you. But if you do have the time, it is a very powerful way to open the day to something both new and renewing itself inside you.

I wrote the poem "What to Remember When Waking" to celebrate that opening, but also to remind myself of the discipline necessary to stay with the revelation no matter how opaque it might be. As a way of remembering I have often woken up and recited this piece to myself immediately.

Sometimes the imagery of our dream life – or, as I say, that very physical body tonality we wake up with in the morning – can be so uncomfortable or so frightening that we will not turn our face towards it. We refuse to investigate it. We are relieved instead to get up to our coffee, to go through the motions of making our breakfast, of beginning the day, and placing ourselves back into a more comfortable environment full of our familiar motions. But there is a deep practice in turning your face towards whatever has been given to you in the night, whatever difficulties you are being handed, regarding interpretation...

David Whyte

Just Beyond Yourself

Flickr

 

Just beyond

yourself.

It’s where

you need

to be.

Half a step

into

self-forgetting

and the rest

restored

by what

you’ll meet.

There is a road

always beckoning.

When you see

the two sides

of it

closing together

at that far horizon

and deep in

the foundations

of your own

heart

at exactly

the same

time,

that’s how

you know

it’s the road

you

have

to follow.

That’s how

you know

it’s where

you

have

to go.

That’s how

you know

you have

to go.

That’s

how you know.

Just beyond

yourself,

it’s

where you

need to be.

David Whyte

Anger as Identity

Piotr Marcinski

 

On directing strong emotion 

toward what actually matters

You wake up already furious. Before you’ve fully opened your eyes, the grievance is there: what they did, what they said, how they looked at you when they said it. The mind doesn’t ease into consciousness. It arrives hostile, primed, ready to continue the argument that was interrupted only by sleep.

This has been happening for days. Maybe weeks. The original incident has been replayed so many times that you can’t remember which parts actually happened and which parts you’ve added through repetition. The boundaries between memory and elaboration have dissolved. What remains is a burning.

But burning toward what?

The ancient physician Galen studied anger’s effects on the body with the same precision he brought to dissecting cadavers. He watched patients whose chronic rage produced tremors, digestive collapse, insomnia, accelerated aging. He documented how sustained fury literally heated the body, how the heart would beat irregularly, how breathing became shallow and rapid even when the person sat perfectly still.

His conclusion was medical but read like philosophy: 

Anger that doesn’t resolve into action becomes poison the body must process continuously. 

The physiological machinery designed to mobilize you for brief, intense response was never meant to run without rest. Keep it engaged long enough and it starts consuming the system it was meant to protect.

What interested him most was the contradiction. 

His angriest patients weren’t confronting active threats. They were rehearsing old grievances, maintaining fury about situations that had ended, keeping their bodies in combat mode against enemies who weren’t present. They’d converted a survival response into a permanent condition.

Why would anyone do this?

The obvious answer is: they can’t help it. 

Anger arises unbidden. But Galen noticed something else. When he’d ask patients to describe what they were angry about, they’d become more animated, more energized. The telling of the story intensified the state. They weren’t helplessly experiencing anger. They were actively maintaining it through repetition, elaboration, recruitment of others to validate it.

The anger had become something they were doing, not just something happening to them.

This matters because what you’re doing, you can stop doing. 

What’s happening to you might be outside your control. 

What you’re actively maintaining is entirely within it.

But there’s a complication here that needs acknowledging. 

Some anger should be maintained. Collective fury about injustice has driven every significant social change in history. The anger that fueled abolition, suffrage, civil rights, wasn’t a brief emotional spike. It was sustained moral outrage channeled into decades of organized action.

So the question isn’t whether sustained anger can be valuable. It clearly can. 

The question is: 

What distinguishes anger that creates change from anger that just creates more anger?

The difference is directionality. Collective movements convert outrage into concrete demands, strategic campaigns, institutional pressure, legal challenges. The anger fuels action that might actually produce different outcomes. Individual fury about things completely outside your influence, rehearsed privately or vented to people equally powerless, produces nothing but your continued suffering.

You’re enraged about political decisions made by people who will never know you exist. You spend hours consuming content designed to intensify that rage, then more hours discussing your rage with other enraged people. The cycle feels engaged, important even. But what changed? What shifted? What moved?

Nothing except your nervous system, which is now conditioned to seek out provocations, to interpret ambiguous situations as threats, to find enemies in neutral spaces.

Musonius Rufus taught that philosophy should make daily life easier, not harder. 

If your engagement with ideas leaves you more agitated, more reactive, more consumed by problems you can’t address, then you’re not practicing philosophy. You’re indulging in intellectual performance that makes you feel sophisticated while making your actual life worse.

Apply this to anger. If your fury about injustice translates into meaningful action, then it’s serving a purpose beyond itself. If it’s just making you bitter while changing nothing, then you’re performing moral seriousness while actually just marinating in resentment.

Most people can’t tell the difference because both feel intense, and we’ve learned to mistake intensity for significance.

Here’s how to test it: 

What would you lose if you released this anger? 

Not what would the world lose, but what would you personally lose?

• If the answer is “my motivation to act,” then the anger is functional. 
• If the answer is “my sense of righteousness,” then the anger is performative. 
• If the answer is “my identity,” then you’ve confused an emotional state with a self, and you’re trapped.

That trap operates through a mechanism most people never examine. The anger provides structure. It gives you something to think about when your mind would otherwise be empty. It offers moral clarity in an ambiguous world. It creates connection with others who share your outrage. It makes you feel less powerless by giving you at least one thing you can control: your fury.

These benefits come at a cost so familiar you’ve stopped noticing it. The anger narrows your perception until you see threats everywhere. It makes you rigid in your thinking because flexibility feels like compromise with what you’re rightly angry about. It isolates you from anyone who doesn’t share your specific grievances. It prevents you from experiencing positive emotions that would contradict your angry stance.

You’re paying for structure, clarity, connection, and control with your capacity to think flexibly, perceive accurately, relate openly, and feel anything except variations on rage.

Marcus Aurelius, governing during plague and betrayal and war, kept returning to one question: 

“Does this help me respond to the situation or just react to my feelings about it?”

Responding means: assess what can actually be influenced, direct energy there, accept what can’t be changed. Reacting means: feel strongly, express those feelings, maintain those feelings, mistake the feeling for action.

He watched himself constantly slip into reaction when response was available. The irritation at an incompetent general. The fury at a corrupt official. The outrage at circumstances. Each time, he’d catch himself and ask: what would response look like here? Usually it looked like patience with human limitation while addressing the limitation, or strategic removal of the incompetent person from positions of consequence, or adjustment to circumstances since circumstances won’t adjust to preferences.

The anger might be completely warranted. 

The situation might absolutely deserve fury. 

But once he’d noticed it, once he’d registered that this was wrong or harmful or unjust, what function did sustaining the emotion serve?

None. The knowledge that something was wrong existed independent of his fury about it. He could hold that knowledge calmly and respond to it strategically, or he could maintain the fury and decrease his capacity for effective response.

This doesn’t mean becoming passionless about injustice. 

It means distinguishing between anger as information and anger as identity.

As information: this situation violates my values, requires addressing. As identity: I am someone who is angry about this, and maintaining the anger proves I still care.

Information can be acted on or set aside depending on whether action is available. Identity must be performed constantly to prove it still exists.

When someone harms you directly, the anger that arises is information: this person violated your boundaries, isn’t safe, requires different terms of engagement or complete removal from your life. That’s useful data. Acting on it looks like establishing consequences, adjusting or ending the relationship, protecting yourself from future harm.

Maintaining fury at them months or years later, rehearsing what they did, imagining confrontations that will never happen, this is no longer information. It’s you keeping yourself attached to someone who harmed you by making your emotional state dependent on your relationship to that harm.

They harmed you once. Now you’re harming yourself repeatedly through your sustained focus on the original harm. They’re probably not thinking about you at all. You’re thinking about them constantly. Who’s being harmed by this arrangement?

The Stoics would say: you’re giving them continued power over your internal state long after they’ve stopped interacting with you. You’re making them more central to your daily experience than people who actually care about you. You’re allocating your limited mental energy to maintaining connection with harm rather than building connection with possibility.

Release doesn’t mean the harm becomes acceptable. 

It means you stop volunteering for additional suffering beyond what the situation requires.

But release requires facing what the anger has been protecting you from. 

Often, it’s been protecting you from powerlessness. The situation was outside your control, but at least you can control your fury about it. The fury becomes evidence you’re not passive, not accepting, not defeated.

Except you are all of those things. The fury just obscures them. 

You’re passive because you’re not acting, you’re rehearsing. 

You’re accepting because the situation remains unchanged despite your rage. 

You’re defeated because your emotional state is being determined by what defeated you.

Real power would be: this happened, it was wrong, I’ll use what I learned to ensure different outcomes where I actually have influence. The anger informed you about your values and boundaries. Now act according to those values and boundaries rather than continuing to feel outraged about their violation.

• What would you build if you converted every hour spent being angry into an hour spent creating something that matters to you? 

• What relationships would deepen if you brought presence instead of bringing rehearsed grievances?

• What capacity would you develop if you trained your attention toward what you want to grow rather than toward what you want to destroy?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. 

Your answers reveal whether anger is your tool or your master.

Today’s Stoic Gameplan

• Test directionality: Choose one thing you’re angry about. Ask: “What concrete action does this anger enable?” If there’s action, take it today. If there’s no action available, notice you’re maintaining emotional pain about something you can’t change. 

• Notice the mechanism: When anger arises today, pause before feeding it. What would you lose if you released it right now? Your answer reveals whether it’s serving you or whether you’re serving it. 

• Practice response over reaction: Next time fury spikes, ask Marcus’s question: “Does this help me respond to the situation or just react to my feelings about it?” Choose response even if reaction feels more satisfying. 

• Redirect the energy: Take one anger you’ve been maintaining and convert it. If someone harmed you: establish consequences or end the relationship instead of rehearsing the harm. If it’s systemic injustice: find one concrete action you can take or consciously release what you can’t influence.

Anger will keep arriving. That’s certain. 

The question is whether you’ll use it as fuel for building what matters or as kindling for burning yourself down while changing nothing about what provoked the fire.

in, Stoic Wisdom

O Peso do Mundo

Simoningate

Poderia libertar-me do peso do mundo nos teus braços; 

poderia tirá-lo de cima de mim, atirá-lo para o outro lado 

da casa, para algum canto escondido; e poderia 

ficar contigo, na leveza do teu corpo, ouvindo 

o cair do tempo nalgum relógio invisível. 

O mundo, no entanto, insiste comigo. Está ali, 

no fundo da casa, com o seu peso. Espera que alguém 

pegue nele, e volte a descer a escada, curvado, como 

se tudo o que tivéssemos de fazer fosse carregá-lo 

para baixo e para cima, nestas escadas sem elevador. 

E eu, contigo, ao abraçar-te, espero que o mundo 

não se mexa no seu canto, no fundo da casa. Abraço-te 

como se o teu corpo me libertasse desse peso, como 

se ele nao estivesse à minha espera, para que o desça 

e suba por estas escadas de um prédio sem elevador. 

Mas o amor também tem o peso do mundo. E as 

palavras com que nos despedimos, antes que eu pegue nele 

e te deixe entregue à tua leveza, trazem o eco das coisas 

que atirei para o fundo da casa, onde não quero que vás, 

para que não tenhas de carregar, também tu, o peso do mundo.

Nuno Júdice

Nothing Is Promised

Ivan Ryabokon

 Work collapses 

not because it is difficult, 

but because it refuses to 

reward us on schedule, and 

most people were never prepared 

to give without being paid.

People rarely give up on work because it fails.

They give up when it doesn’t pay off right away. When effort doesn’t quickly lead to progress, recognition, or relief, excuses appear. We blame circumstances, use timing as an excuse, and call the world unfair.

But under every excuse is a simpler truth: the work was never done freely.

It always came with an expectation of reward.

Expectation quietly undermines most efforts. It often looks like motivation, ambition, or planning, but it’s really a deal we try to make with reality: I’ll give my time and effort if I get progress, recognition, or relief in return.

When reality doesn’t deliver, our effort falls apart.

Instead of reflecting, we feel resentful. The work feels unfriendly, resistance feels personal, and difficulty seems like a sign we’re on the wrong path.

That’s why most people quit.

It’s not a lack of talent that makes people stop. They just can’t stand working without immediate results or feedback. They struggle to keep going when their effort doesn’t pay off right away.

So, people start to think goals are the problem. They say goals cause pressure, disappointment, and burnout. They decide to work without goals, telling themselves they’ll create freely and explore without direction. This sounds good, even wise, but it’s not the whole story.

Getting rid of goals doesn’t make you stronger. It just takes away structure.

Working without expectations  

isn’t the same as working without demands. 

The world will still expect things from you. Time still passes, your body still gets tired, money still matters, and people will still interrupt or doubt you. Changing your mindset doesn’t make these things go away. It just shows whether you can handle them.

Many people mistake enjoyment for strength. They believe that if work entertains the soul, it will sustain itself. This is a comforting illusion. Enjoyment is a side effect, not a foundation. It appears when energy is abundant and disappears the moment resistance sharpens. 

The work that survives only when it feels good 

was never rooted deeply enough to survive reality.

Your soul isn’t something that needs constant entertainment. It either grows or weakens, depending on what you do.

Meaningful work asks for courage before it gives you pleasure. 

It asks for sacrifice before it gives you meaning. 

It asks for persistence before things become clear. 

Anyone who says otherwise isn’t being honest.

The world is not designed to accommodate your inner life. It is designed to test it.

Every serious effort runs into the same wall. Fatigue. Doubt. Isolation. The sense that you are giving more than you are receiving. This is the moment when people begin negotiating with themselves. They soften their standards. They delay. They distract. They rationalize retreat as wisdom. They say they are choosing balance, self-care, or alignment. In reality, they are choosing relief.

Relief is the enemy of becoming.

1. If you only work when conditions are favorable, you are not disciplined. You are compliant. 
2. If you only continue when progress is visible, you are not committed. You are dependent. 
3. If you only persist when the work feels meaningful, you are not strong. You are entertained.

Creation does not ask whether you feel ready. It asks whether you are willing to be strained.

There is a popular fantasy that meaningful work flows naturally from passion. 

That once you find the right thing, effort becomes light. 

This fantasy has destroyed more potential than failure ever could. 

It teaches people to abandon work the moment it becomes heavy. It trains them to interpret resistance as a sign to stop rather than a signal to deepen.

Resistance is not an error in the process. It is the process.

The individual who continues despite resistance does not do so because they are optimistic. 

They do so because stopping would be a form of self-betrayal. 

Their work is not a hobby. It is not therapy. It is not an expression of personality. 

It is a battlefield on which they test their capacity to endure.

This is where most readers grow uncomfortable. Because this way of working offers no consolation. It does not promise happiness. It does not guarantee success. It does not care about your mental narratives. It demands that you stand upright under pressure without applause.

The modern obsession with purpose misses this entirely. 

People want a reason that makes suffering acceptable. 

They want meaning to justify endurance. 

But meaning is not a prerequisite for work. 

Meaning is something that appears afterward, if at all. 

Those who wait for it in advance rarely begin.

You do not need a reason to work. You need a spine.

The work that shapes you will not align neatly with your preferences.

• It will offend parts of you.

• It will expose weaknesses you would rather keep hidden.

• It will force you to confront limits you hoped were temporary.

If your philosophy cannot survive this confrontation, it was decorative, not structural.

There is no safe version of devotion.

To continue working when the world demands something from you is not a matter of necessity. You can always quit. You can always choose something easier. Most people do. 

What distinguishes the few who persist is not obligation but affirmation.

They choose the burden and then refuse to complain about its weight.

They do not ask whether the sacrifice is worth it. 

They have already decided that not sacrificing would be worse.

This is where self-deception ends. 

You discover whether your work was an escape or a commitment. 

Whether it existed to soothe you or to transform you. 

Whether you were seeking comfort disguised as creativity or discipline disguised as freedom.

There is no purity in avoiding struggle. There is only stagnation.

Those who endure do not do so because they believe the world will reward them. They do not believe effort guarantees outcomes. They do not cling to hope as fuel. Hope is unreliable. It fluctuates. It depends on circumstances. Discipline does not.

What carries them forward is something colder and stronger. 

A refusal to shrink. 

A refusal to abandon what demands growth. 

A refusal to lie to themselves about the cost of becoming something more than they are.

This kind of work is not romantic. It does not produce inspirational quotes. It does not feel like self-expression. It feels like pressure applied over time. It feels like returning to the same task after the excitement has died and before any reward has arrived. It feels like solitude.

Most people are not prepared for solitude. 

They crave feedback. They want reassurance. 

They want signs. 

But solitude is where strength consolidates. 

Without witnesses. Without validation. 

Without the comfort of being understood.

If your work cannot survive neglect, it cannot survive reality.

The world does not owe your work attention. It does not owe its success. It does not owe it fairness. Waiting for these things is another form of expectation. 

And expectation, as always, corrodes effort.

The strongest individuals do not ask whether the world supports them. 

They ask whether they can continue regardless of the world.

This is not about grit as a personality trait. It is about orientation. About whether you measure your life by ease or by expansion. About whether you want to be comfortable or formidable.

Pleasure will come and go. 

Motivation will fade. 

Clarity will dissolve. 

What remains is the question you cannot avoid.

Can you endure the consequences of choosing what demands the most from you?

If the answer is no, then stop pretending you were ever serious. Choose something lighter. There is no shame in it. But do not dress retreat as enlightenment.

If the answer is yes, then understand what you are accepting. 

You are accepting friction. You are accepting sacrifice. You are accepting that the work will cost you more than it gives for long stretches of time. You are accepting that no philosophy will save you from fatigue.

And you are accepting this without guarantees.

This is the point where shallow interpretations collapse. Where slogans about flow, balance, and joy fail. Where only strength remains.

Work is not a means to happiness. 

It is a means of self-confrontation.

Through it, you discover what breaks you and what does not. 

Through it, you learn whether your values are aesthetic or embodied. 

Through it, you either harden or hollow.

The question is not whether the work will succeed. 

The question is whether you will survive it without diminishing yourself.

Those who do are changed. Not made gentler. Made sharper. Less dependent on outcomes. Less impressed by comfort. Less eager for approval. 

They move differently. They work differently. They stop asking for permission from the world.

They do not need goals to threaten them into action. They do not need pleasure to seduce them into continuation. They do not need meaning to console them.

They work because this is how they remain intact.

Everything else is noise.

And most people will hate this. Because it offers no shortcuts. Because it exposes how much of their thinking is designed to protect them from effort. Because it refuses to reassure them that they are fine as they are.

That is precisely why it matters.

If something in you resists this, pay attention. 

Resistance is honest. It tells you exactly where the work begins.

in, Nietzsche Wisdoms

Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong

Alexandra Saper

 

Ocean, don’t be afraid.

The end of the road is so far ahead

it is already behind us.

Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

won’t remember its wings

no matter how many times our knees

kiss the pavement. Ocean,

are you listening? The most beautiful part

of your body is wherever

your mother's shadow falls.

Here's the house with childhood

whittled down to a single red trip wire.

Don't worry. Just call it horizon

& you'll never reach it.

Here's today. Jump. I promise it's not

a lifeboat. Here's the man

whose arms are wide enough to gather

your leaving. & here the moment,

just after the lights go out, when you can still see

the faint torch between his legs.

How you use it again & again

to find your own hands.

You asked for a second chance

& are given a mouth to empty out of.

Don't be afraid, the gunfire

is only the sound of people

trying to live a little longer

& failing. Ocean. Ocean —

get up. The most beautiful part of your body

is where it's headed. & remember,

loneliness is still time spent

with the world. Here's

the room with everyone in it.

Your dead friends passing

through you like wind

through a wind chime. Here's a desk

with the gimp leg & a brick

to make it last. Yes, here's a room

so warm & blood-close,

I swear, you will wake —

& mistake these walls

for skin.

Ocean Vuong 

in, Night Sky With Exit Wounds 

Dive In

In this tender poem of healing, care and remembrance, Ocean Vuong reaches out to his younger self.

1. The poet uses his own name several times, addressing his younger self. What effect does this repetition have on your reading of the poem? How do you think the poem would be different if it were written in the first person “I” voice?

2. What do you think it means for a poem to be “embodied?” What about a memory? Pause for a moment and close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Inhale deeply, in through your nose and out through your mouth. If you had to draw a map of emotions over your body, where in your body would you locate loneliness, envy, joy, sadness, anger? Write a line for each of those feelings without naming them. Instead, focusing on the sensations and place in your body where you feel them. See if your partner or other classmates can identify which feeling you were trying to convey. Remember, there is no right or wrong answer!

3. Which images in the poem do you find most stimulating, surprising, evocative, memorable, touching, meaningful? What are your personal associations with those images?

4. Find three examples in the poem of short lines in the imperative voice (i.e., telling someone what to do: “Stand up. Sit down.”). How does the mix of short and long lines affect your reading of the poem when you read it out loud? Which lines cause you to speed up and which ones force you to slow down? Why do you think the poet chose this effect?

5. Who are the other people in the poem? What does the poem suggest about the speaker’s relationships to them, and possibly about different aspects of his own identity (race, class, gender, sexuality)?

6. What does the poem suggest about the younger Ocean’s community and home environment? What sensory images (colours, smells, sounds, textures, tastes) bring them to life without actually telling us?

7. Imagine yourself at a younger age. Make some notes about your life at that time. What fears did you have? What personal challenges did you face, external (at home, at school) or internal (emotionally, personally)? What brought you joy and excitement? What did you struggle with? What do you think you were learning? Now, write a love poem to your younger self, offering them kindness, compassion and reassurance. Put your own name in the poem, and repeat it a few times in your poem, as you would if you were addressing a younger child. Make sure to include varying sentence lengths, including short imperatives (e.g. “Don’t worry,” or “Take your time.”). Title the poem, “Someday I’ll Love ________ (your name)”