Good morning.
Settle for a moment,
Feet on the floor,
Hands resting.
Notice the weight of your body where it meets the ground.
During the 170s of the Common Era,
While ruling an empire,
And often away from Rome,
Marcus Aurelius wrote notes to himself in Greek.
What survived is not a public book,
It is a private notebook.
Reminders to himself,
Sentences to keep ready to hand.
We don't know the exact form of his daily practice.
What we know is that he wrote,
More than once,
About the difficulty of getting out of bed in the morning,
And the kind of person he was trying to be when he did.
So this is what we'll do.
Eight lines from the meditations,
Then one quiet plan for the day.
First,
The body.
Three slow breaths.
Breathe in for four.
.
.
And out for sex.
Again,
In full.
Out 6 One more in.
.
.
And out slowly.
You've woken up.
That,
Marcus thought,
Was already a kind of privilege.
1.
From Book 5,
The Getting-Out-of-Bed Passage I am rising to do the work of a human being.
Not the work of someone trying to be impressive.
Not the work of someone trying to win.
The work of a human being.
From book two,
One of his best known morning reminders.
The people I meet today may be ungrateful,
Arrogant,
Dishonest,
Jealous.
But we were born to work together.
From Book 5.
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.
Four from book eight If a thing is in my power,
Why act as though it weren't?
If it isn't,
Why complain?
5.
From book six.
If anyone can show me I am mistaken,
I will gladly change.
Marcus,
Who could have anyone in the empire killed,
Asked his own mind to stay open to being wrong.
Most of us could try a little harder.
6 from Book 7 Confine Yourself to the Present 7.
From Book Two This is the Heavy One You could leave life right now.
Let that determine what you do and say and think.
Not morbid,
Clarifying.
If today were the last,
What would matter?
What would fall away?
8.
From book 10,
The line that lands hardest.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good person should be.
Marcus did this next bit too,
He rehearsed the day before it began.
Picture one,
Difficulty,
You actually expect today.
A meeting,
A conversation,
A temptation you keep losing to.
What would the version of you that took these eight lines seriously actually do?
Make one quiet plan.
If this happens,
Then I will.
One sentence.
Keep it.
That's the practice,
Eight lines from a man who by all accounts had reasons to lose his temper every single day of his life and tried in his notebook to remind himself not to.
We are not the first to need this and we will not be the last.
Take a slow breath in.
Notice your hands,
The weight of them.
Go gently.
And if you'd like more from the meditations,
Return to this track tomorrow.
The lines tend to work better the more familiar they become.
And if this helped,
Please leave a rating.
It helps other listeners find the track.
Thank you for practicing with me.
