Five Basic Exercises in Philosophy as a Spiritual Practice

Streets of Naples, Italy

The hunger after doing something positive, opposite the negative, makes us strive after being something else; in this struggle we feel, that we are alive, that there is a purpose with our life, that we gradually can remove the causes of the conflict and the sorrow. We feel, that if we no longer were active, we would be nothing, be lost, our lives would be completely without meaning. Therefore we continue, and that will say: we continue the divisions, the conflicts, the confusions and the opposites. But in this process we at the same time feel, that there is something more which we all the time lose, that there exists something, which is quite different, something, which is above and beyond all this distress and misery. This feeling is the existential guilt, the guilt over the unlived life. In this way a permanent struggle is going on inside us.

Thought Training, Incubation and Meditation Upon Death

The Ancient Greek Healing Tradition called Incubation. Incubation was also a spiritual practice.

Question: I have been meditating for many years, and I have had a lot of benefits from it, but now I seem to have reached a point where there doesn´t seem to happen anything further. I can´t stop my thoughts, they keep on repeating the same themes. How can I progress further? 

Primordial Meditation

Remedios Varo—Solar Music

Our language, all our fictional productions, are reflections of the universal images in the great vision of the creation. They are signs from the metaphysical time, from the enchanted time. 

In the one who is alone, life is timeless; in the one who is alone, there is no death

That which is alone is flexible and therefore persistent.

Only those who are alone can co-operate with that which is without cause, the immense.

In the one who is alone, life is timeless; in the one who is alone, there is no death.

The one who is alone can never cease with being, because alonebeing is life itself, the eternal flowing alonebeing of life.

Sorrow is a concrete despair, despair is a universal sorrow

Despair is a relationship with loss.

Sorrow can be the despair over a particular loss, namely death, but despair can also be a sorrow over all kinds of loss.

Sorrow is a concrete despair, despair is a universal sorrow.

The primary definition of despair is, that it is the lived meaninglessness.

In the despair truth and values have broken-down.

Despair is the experience of, that meaning in your existence has broken in pieces.

There happens a breakdown in the structure of meaning, which you live in.

In the same way the despair shows an identity, which more or less is lying in ruins.

Despair is the emotion of breakdown. Despair, or meaninglessness, is existential chaos.

Hope is born from despair. They are two sides of the same coin.

Where there not is hope, there is hell, and because we are afraid of hell, we seek the meaning, which is in the hope. Then the illusion begins.

The word has in that way led to an illusion, and not at all to God.

God is the illusion, which we worship, and the non-believer creates the illusion about another God, which he worships – science, the state, utopia, or a book, which he thinks contains the whole of the truth.

So, what we as Idlers ask ourselves, is whether we can be free from the word with its illusions? Would that lead to despair?

Death is the unknown, the landscape that can't be mapped

When we speak about life we usually mean life as a continuation-process, where there happens an identification.

When we say life, we often mean I and my house, I and my wife, I and my bank account, I and the experiences I have collected.

To live is therefore a process whereby something is continued in memory, conscious as unconscious, with the multifold struggles of the process, all the quarrels, episodes, experiences.

It is all this we call life.

Opposite is standing death, which means, that all this is being brought to an end.

Therefore, we create an opposition, life and death. Life is the known, the perspective we have created on the background of the images of time. Death is the unknown, the landscape that can't be mapped.

Not to accumulate, but to die every day, minutely, is timeless being

To stop becoming something is to stop accumulating in philosophical sense.

Not to accumulate, but to die every day, minutely, is timeless being.

The mystics call it a kind of death.

The Stoics trained themselves in being present in the Now by philosophizing over the meaning of death in their lives.

To philosophize became in that way, for the Stoics, a way of learning how to die.

An example of this is the Stoic Horace, the man behind the expression ”Carpe diem!” (Seize the day!).

Death is the landscape which meditation enters into

When we speak about life we usually mean life as a continuation-process, where there happens an identification.

When we say life, we often mean I and my house, I and my wife, I and my bank account, I and the experiences I have collected.

To live is therefore a process whereby something is continued in memory, conscious as unconscious, with the multifold struggles of the process, all the quarrels, episodes, experiences. It is all this we call life.

Opposite is standing death, which means, that all this is being brought to an end.

Therefore, we create an opposition, life and death. Life is the known, the perspective we have created on the background of the images of time. Death is the unknown, the landscape that can't be mapped.

This landscape is what meditation enters into.

The split in ourselves either leads to self-construction, or to self-destruction: insanity

The contradictions in ourselves grow illusions and pain, and in order to get away from them we take our refuge to a line of self-deceits, which only increase the conflicts and misery.

And when the inner contradiction, because of crises, or violent challenges, becomes unbearable, we conscious or unconscious seek to escape through insanity, or through death; or we dedicate our life to an idea, to a group, to a country, to some activity, which completely can swallow up ourselves; or we subject ourselves to the organized religion with its dogmas and rituals.

In that way, this split in ourselves either leads to self-construction, or to self-destruction: insanity.

Not to accumulate, but to die every day, minutely, is timeless being

Action as we know it, is in reality a reaction, it is an incessantly effort with the purpose of becoming something; that is to say: a denial of, an effort of avoiding what you are.

When you try to avoid what you are, then this is because you confuse the Now´s fact with that problem, which the thinking´s past and future thinks the fact is. This is an unreal condition, a feeling of loss and emptiness, of insufficiency. And that is precisely what you are, the lived despair.

But when you are the emptiness present without choosing, without condemning or justifying, then the understanding of what you are will imply action, and this action is the creative being.

To stop becoming something is to stop accumulating in philosophical sense. Not to accumulate, but to die every day, minutely, is timeless being. The mystics call it a kind of death. The Stoics trained themselves in being present in the Now by philosophizing over the meaning of death in their lives. To philosophize became in that way, in the Stoics, a way of learning how to die. An example of this is the Stoic Horace, the man behind the expression ”Carpe diem!” (Seize the day!).

In the deep, deep silence of the forest

When you walk in the forest you are alone.

But the one who is alone is flexible and therefore persistent.

Only those who are alone can co-operate with that which is without cause, the immense.

In the one who is alone, life is timeless; in the one who is alone, there is no death.

The one who is alone can never cease with being, be cause alonebeing is life itself, the eternal flowing alonebeing of life itself.

We know the memories about continuity, but the condition where there no continuity is, we don't know

Identity as some images of life, as experience, belief and knowledge, as a striving after becoming something, a will to power, a will to control, master, frame, no matter on what level, is hard to understand and bring up in the light.

We only know continuity, we have no knowledge about non-continuity.

We know the experiences, the memories about the continuity of the events, but the condition where there no continuity is, we don't know.

We call it death, the unknown, the secretiveness etc., and by giving it a name, we hope to be able to maintain it, which again is the desire after continuity, the permanent.

In the one who is alone, life is timeless; in the one who is alone, there is no death

That which is alone is flexible and therefore persistent.

Only those who are alone can co-operate with that which is without cause, the immense.

In the one who is alone, life is timeless; in the one who is alone, there is no death.

The one who is alone can never cease with being, because alonebeing is life itself, the eternal flowing alonebeing of life.

What is death?

So what is death?

How can you find out without that it only is a belief you adopt?

Is it possible to be death present in passive listening, not another's death, but your own death?

It demands that you don't identify yourself with something, what of course is very difficult.

Most of us identify ourselves with our furniture, with our house, with our wife or husband, with our government, with our country, with the image we have of ourselves, and we identify ourselves with something greater – the world-image, which perhaps is a tribal feeling that expands to embrace the nation; or you identify yourself with a special property, a special image.

What happens if you don’t identify yourself with all this?

Is it possible to be death present in passive listening?

What is death?

How can you find out without that it only is a belief you adopt?

Is it possible to be death present in passive listening, not another's death, but your own death?

It demands that you don't identify yourself with something, what of course is very difficult.

Most of us identify ourselves with our furniture, with our house, with our wife or husband, with our government, with our country, with the image we have of ourselves, and we identify ourselves with something greater – the world-image, which perhaps is a tribal feeling that expands to embrace the nation; or you identify yourself with a special property, a special image.

It is a sorrow to realize what you are, but not to realize it is the greatest sorrow

It is, as a Life Artist, a big sorrow to realize what you are.

But not to realize it is the greatest sorrow.

And then death becomes terrible, as Tolstoy has depicted it in Ivan Iljitsch´ Death.

Ivan Ilyich is lying in the deathbed and can´t let go of life because of mortal dread.

He screams three days and nights through.

Not until he realizes, that the life he'd lived, hadn´t been an actual life, yes, that he in fact never has lived at all, not until then he can let go of life, and reconcile himself with death.

You can´t be afraid of death, the unknown, because you don´t know what the unknown is

Death is the unknown, which always threatens the known, the patterns you have created.

The paradox is, that you can´t be afraid of the unknown, because you don´t know what the unknown is, and therefore there is nothing to be afraid of.

Death is a word, and it is the word, the image, which creates anxiety. The word is a manifestation of your self-image and world-image.

For as long as the image exists -  the image from where the thought origins - the thought must constantly create anxiety.

Then you rationalize your mortal dread and build a defence against the inevitable, or you invent countless faith-conceptions, which can protect you against the anxiety of death.