Plain
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor

God sees our minds and thoughts stripped bare of these physical bodies and surfaces and all earthly clutter. With His simple and pure understanding, He reaches into our deepest and purest parts, which first flowed from His like water through a pipe. If you learn to do this too, you will free yourself from all the baggage that weighs you down. Anyone who stops caring about their body, their clothes, their house, or any other external things will find great peace and ease.

Meditations, Book 12, Section 2 Book 12 · 3 of 41
Knowing Yourself Freedom & Control
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor Original

God beholds our minds and understandings, bare and naked from these material vessels, and outsides, and all earthly dross. For with His simple and pure understanding, He pierceth into our inmost and purest parts, which from His, as it were by a water pipe and channel, first flowed and issued. This if thou also shalt use to do, thou shalt rid thyself of that manifold luggage, wherewith thou art round about encumbered. For he that does regard neither his body, nor his clothing, nor his dwelling, nor any such external furniture, must needs gain unto himself great rest and ease.

Meditations, Book 12, Section 2 Book 12 · 3 of 41
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor

Now stay on this good path. Don't let other people's wickedness stop you. Don't let their opinions or harsh words stop you. Don't even let your own pampered body stop you — let the flesh deal with its own complaints. If you can do this, then when your time to die comes, you'll be ready to leave everything behind. You'll care only about your mind and the divine part of yourself. Your only fear won't be that you'll stop living someday. Your fear will be that you never started living according to your nature. Then you'll truly be human, worthy of the world you came from. You'll stop being a stranger in your own country. You won't be shocked by daily events as if they were strange and unexpected. You won't depend anxiously on things outside your control.

Meditations, Book 12, Section 1 Book 12 · 2 of 41
Freedom & Control Knowing Yourself Death & Mortality
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor Original

Now in this good course, let not other men's either wickedness, or opinion, or voice hinder thee: no, nor the sense of this thy pampered mass of flesh: for let that which suffers, look to itself. If therefore whensoever the time of thy departing shall come, thou shalt readily leave all things, and shalt respect thy mind only, and that divine part of thine, and this shall be thine only fear, not that some time or other thou shalt cease to live, but thou shalt never begin to live according to nature: then shalt thou be a man indeed, worthy of that world, from which thou hadst thy beginning; then shalt thou cease to be a stranger in thy country, and to wonder at those things that happen daily, as things strange and unexpected, and anxiously to depend of divers things that are not in thy power.

Meditations, Book 12, Section 1 Book 12 · 2 of 41
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Ancient philosophy, in plain English.

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