Towards a more Stoic kind of journaling.

I presented this talk at Stoicon-X in Athens, Greece on Sunday, October 6 2019.

On Sunday 6 October 2019, I presented a half-hour session what I call “Meditations on ‘Meditation’” or “MoM” at the Stoicon-X Conference held on the day after Stoicon at Cotsen Hall, Athens Greece.

Here’s what I said about Meditations on “Meditations” (MoM).

If you’d like to try it yourself, please click here to apply to join the “Dead Good MoM” this November.

https://kathrynkoromilas.typeform.com/c/m5YoC9

The Pythagoreans thought the number ten a perfect number. And, so might we. After all, the #Stoics were greatly influenced by Pythagorean thought and contemplative practice.

Which is why I’m compiling a list of 10 reasons to create your own “Encheiridion” or Handbook for Life.

I started with one big reason. I was travelling and faced an unpleasant situation. I found a quiet corner and tried to focus and meditate on the journaling I’d done that morning. I’d been reading Marcus Aurelius as a prompt to work through some “issues.” But, my mind was completely blank. …

In a recent tweet, Nigel Warburton stated “In British politics, this is no time for Stoicism. We all need to be very angry. And to show it.”

In a recent blog post, I too considered Stoicism and anger as a political tool and came to a different conclusion. My focus is on the #metoo movement, not #Brexit, but the argument might still apply.

After a particularly difficult interaction with a key person in my life (a few years back now), I packed a notebook and my favourite Lamy fountain pen and took myself to a nearby museum. I sat in a comfy armchair in front of a large canvas over which was painted a peaceful, rustic scene. I pulled out my notebook and began to write.

I must have sat there for two hours. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I’ve since thrown those pages out. Their purpose was mostly for short-term relief from emotional pain, but also with some hope of longer-term…

I am quite convinced, my dear Stoic souls, that I am not just improving, but transforming. There are still many parts of me that need changing, of course, correcting even, and yet, this, even this fact that I am now writing to you to say this, even the fact that I am aware of it, of myself, isn’t that already proof that my spirit has lifted, that my thoughts and behaviours have altered, and that I have become better?

It’s been two months since I last wrote to you and in that time I have made so much progress every…

#DeadGoodApril #MoM

After a very early morning start and an event in Glasgow, we finally headed back down towards home and stopped at Dalrymple for a late lunch. After we’d settled in, chatted, ordered a starter, and were well onto the main, I had my first moment of contemplation. My eyes wandered for a few moments. There on the wall, just beyond our table, a pencil sketch. A ruin and a cemetery.

#DeadGoodApril #MoM

I’m not one to celebrate the coming of a weekend as a welcome relief after a week of work grind. But today, I find I am relieved that it is a Saturday and I can hide behind weekend conventions — break, day off, sleep in, snooze, hibernate — and not reply to work-related emails of which there have been far too many this week!

It’s Saturday!

I wrote this in my journal this morning and paused and frowned. I am not the type of person to live for the weekend. I have a fairly flexible weekday life…

The true disciple of philosophy pursues death and dying. Said Socrates, according to Phaedo. And, of course, Plato.

I have spent the better part of the last two hours pursuing death and dying. No, I’m not actively pursuing dying — there’s no suicide attempt in the works — but I am reflecting on death in some daydreamy, abstract way.

And that is, kind of, all I’m doing. Actually, it is all I’m doing.

According to the Stoics, a daily dose of death contemplation should quite promptly stimulate us into activity and clarify what is…