The Wisdom of Hypatia: Ancient Spiritual Practices for a More Meaningful Life (4 page)

If this scenario sounds like modern psychotherapy, it should! It might also remind you of Eastern guru-centered spiritual traditions, if you are familiar with those. (“Guru” just means teacher.) The reason is that these are age-old methods of spiritual guidance that have evolved independently in different cultural contexts; they are repeatedly rediscovered because they work.

spiritual practices 17

Philosophy, in the ancient sense, is supposed to teach you a new way of life, but learning to live in a new way requires
practice
. Therefore ancient philosophical instruction included a number of
spiritual
practices
or
exercises
that are still useful in learning to live wisely. In this chapter I will describe them briefly; in later chapters you will learn to practice them systematically in order to advance your spiritual transformation.

Since philosophy is a continual striving after wisdom, rather than a one-time attainment, these exercises become part of a life-long practice of philosophy, the “philosophical way of life.” Therefore, if you want to live Hypatia’s philosophy, you will want to establish a regular habit of practice.

The role of spiritual exercises in a philosophical way of life is analogous to the role of physical exercises in an athletic way of life. It is no coincidence that Plato located his school, the Academy, next to an exercise field. This reflected the idea that free, strong, independent citizens need exercises for the body, for the soul, and for the body and soul together. The body was exercised through athletics. Exercises for the soul were directed toward guiding one’s attitude and behavior in accord with the philosophy’s moral norms, so one might live wisely. Finally, exercises for the body and soul together were directed toward tempering and fortifying the body and soul through ascetic habits and practices.

Spiritual exercises
are those that involve the soul, with or without the body.

For all the ancient philosophies the ideal sage was godlike, a “divine man,” and therefore the aim of the spiritual exercises was to make you more like a god, and the “imitation of god” was the basis of the philosophical life. There are two broad approaches to becoming godlike. One approach is to approximate external or transcendent divinity, which encompasses the universe. By these exercises you
expand
your awareness to become godlike.

The other approach is to seek the god within, immanent divinity, by concentrating your soul into the innermost divine core of the psyche. By these exercises you
concentrate
to become godlike.

These are really two paths to the same place, for the outermost horizon is also the

innermost horizon. A Hermetic text from the twelfth century (but expressing a Platonic idea) “described the nature of God as a circle whose center was everywhere and its cir-cumference nowhere.”6 It was a popular saying among Neoplatonists and has been widely quoted. “As within, so without; as without, so within” expresses the same idea. Thus the greatest expansion and the most focused concentration reach the same place. Therefore the philosopher uses practices of both sorts to become godlike. In this chapter I will outline 18 spiritual practices

the most common spiritual practices. Don’t worry if the descriptions seem a bit abstract; I will give more specific and practical instructions later; my goal here is a quick overview.

Concentrating Inward

The practice of
Concentrating Inward
is a kind of meditation that effects a separation of the psyche into two parts; by concentrating into itself, the “I” leaves the rest of the psyche behind. One important effect is a separation or detachment of what is fundamentally
you
from the various feelings, desires, fears, worries, regrets, as well as physical ailments, discomforts, and pleasures, connected with you as an individual embodied biological organism. The exercise is a turning toward the
inner
or
true self
(however you understand it) and a turning away from your ordinary, egoistic everyday self. The result is assimilation to deity in the sense that you are focusing on the universal and eternal perspective of Nature or God (depending on the philosophy) and are setting aside all the particularities and partial perspectives of your ordinary, mortal life. By this practice philosophers maintain tranquility and independence in the midst of life’s circumstances. You will learn several versions of this practice.

In his dialog Phaedo Plato has Socrates ask rhetorically, “Is not philosophy the practice of death?”7 The idea of philosophy as the
Practice of Death
is central to the Western philosophical tradition, but it is not so grim and morbid as it sounds to our ears, for meditation on death is simultaneously meditation on life. For example, the philosopher Epicurus, whom we’ll meet in the Garden, wrote:

The exercise of living well

and the exercise of dying well

are one and the same thing.8

Just like many modern people, most of the ancients thought that upon death some sort of immortal soul separated from the body, perhaps to be reincarnated later into another body. Therefore, inward concentration can be an exercise in “dying before you die.” In it, the parts of the psyche that have the character of eternity and immortality separate from the body and from those aspects of the psyche that are entangled and enmeshed in the particularities of an individual human life. Regardless of your thoughts about the afterlife, dying before you die will help you to live in the present and make the most of this life. It spiritual practices 19

will help you to live in the Isle of the Blessed, the Summerland, Avalon, or Heaven while still on earth.

Another variant of the practice of inward concentration is to
Focus on the Present
and to turn away from the past and future, with their burdens of regret and worry. Here again the philosopher adopts the eternal divine perspective, for the eternal is outside of time, atemporal, timeless, the ever-present, whereas mortality is limited existence-in-time, defined by a finite past and future. The present moment is perfectly complete and self-contained.

This practice helps you to live in the present, which is the only thing at all within your control, for the past and present do not exist and are not in your control; therefore the present is the home of self-awareness and hence of wise action and of wise experience.

Like the practice of death, concentrating in the present helps you to live each moment as though it is your
last
, savoring every moment of life, but it also helps you to experience each moment as the
first
, imbuing it with freshness and delight, an opportunity to act in joyful wisdom.

The present moment is the crux of morality, for it is in the present that you make choices. Nevertheless, the present moment involves both the past—represented by present recollection—and the future—represented by present intent. In order to make these choices more wisely, philosophers practice the
Examination of Conscience
. In this your past actions and attitudes are submitted to an “inner judge,” who compassionately evaluates them and decides how they can be improved so that you can live better in the future. This same inner judge may award praise for your progress. This objective assessment of your own moral state is one of the meanings of the maxim inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi:
Know thyself.9

Therefore all ancient philosophies used the practice of
Morning and Evening Examination of Conscience
, as recorded in the
Pythagorean Golden Verses
:

Don’t suffer sleep at night to close thine eyes,

Till thrice thine acts that day thou hast o’er-run:

How slipped? What deeds? What duty left undone?

Thus thine account summed up from first to last,

Grieve for the ill, joy for what good has passed.10

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Each of your acts is classified as (1) an error of commission, (2) a virtuous deed, or (3) an error of omission. This practice is a way of judging your progress: celebrating your successes and establishing your intent to do better in the future. It also develops your memory, so that you will be more able to recall your intent and past actions in your present choices.

According to different philosophers this review should be practiced at night, at both waking and retiring, or at three times each day (e.g., morning, noon, and night). You can begin this practice today. Don’t wait!

Ancient philosophers also practiced
group confession
and
fraternal correction
as a means to more objective examination of conscience. Conversely, they supported and praised

each other for progress made. In our time too, it is easier to make spiritual progress in a like-minded community. Think about whether there are other people who could work

through this book with you.

Examination of conscience is directed toward the past, but other exercises address the future. For example, Porphyry said that Pythagoras recommended careful contemplation of your intentions at the beginning of the day:

As soon as thou hast waked, in order lay

The actions to be done that following day.11

This is also a practice that you can begin right away.

Another exercise,
Premeditation of Misfortunes
, was also directed toward the future. In it you vividly imagine possible problems that you might face in the future, or have faced in the past and might face again, along with the proper philosophical response to them. This exercise increases the likelihood that you will respond wisely if the situation occurs. You will learn the technique in chapter 6.

The ideal sage has internalized the philosophical way of life, it has become part of his or her character, and so they instinctively act wisely. For imperfect philosophers (seekers of wisdom), such as us, however, it is valuable to have rules ready-to-hand, ready to be applied in order to act wisely in the present. For this purpose, you need rules expressed in short, pithy formulas (
maxims
or
aphorisms
); you should be able to grasp their meaning in a single intuition. Similarly, you need short, persuasive
demonstrations
or arguments to establish your certainty in a rule. That is, you need to know both the conclusions and their reasons (called
theorems
and
proofs
).12

spiritual practices 21

Maxims are valuable for another philosophical practice:
Governing your Inner Discourse
.

We often run negative and counterproductive mental “tapes”—dialogs or monologues—

that reflect habitual ways of responding to situations. The philosophical maxims provide alternative inner narratives that can help you live the philosophical life.

Therefore, an important practice is to memorize these maxims and to spend some time

contemplating them. Then they will be ready to apply when you need them. For this purpose I have included many maxims (mostly from ancient philosophers) in this book. They are displayed in a distinctive way (for examples see “Don’t suffer sleep …” and “As soon as thou hast waked …” above). You should copy out the maxims you find useful, or that speak to you, and memorize them.

You can invent your own maxims too, to express philosophical rules and their expla-

nations. It is especially useful to find new, striking, fresh expressions of philosophical doctrines, if the old ones have become stale. (Much of Marcus Aurelius’
Meditations
, which we’ll explore in Part III, is devoted to reformulations of Stoic maxims.)

To be effective, the maxims must be potent, but they lose their potency with time and repetition. They are like magical spells, and they work because they work
on you
. Some define magic as “the art of changing consciousness at will,”13 and in this sense philosophical maxims are magical, but in Neoplatonism we use them to change not only consciousness, but also the unconscious mind. They can transform circumstances and ourselves.

You may be familiar with the idea of
affirmations
, which you repeat to yourself to bring about some change in your life. Most contemporary theory and use of affirmations is a resurrection of ideas from the New Thought movement in American spirituality, which was very popular at the beginning of the twentieth century.14 You can see that it has much older precedents. In any case, many of the rules for affirmations, such as that they should be in the present tense and positive, are also applicable to philosophical maxims. The reason is that affirmations and maxims operate by the same psychological principles.

Commonplace books
(or, more briefly,
commonplaces
) have been used for hundreds of years to collect general ideas and rules for living, as well as other material that you want to remember. In pursuing the philosophical way of life you too will find it useful to compile commonplaces. For example, as you read this book, you can use your commonplace to record quotations, summaries, ideas, and other things worth remembering. It’s kind of like a school notebook. Alternately, if you think of the maxims like magical spells, then your commonplace is a “book of shadows.”

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The purpose of the commonplace is to record universal verities, which will be valuable throughout your life and may be useful to other people too. Therefore it is impersonal, except insofar as the formulations strike a chord in you. If you wanted, you could make it public on a webpage or blog (as many people already do with their favorite quotes). (In this respect it is different from a journal, which I’ll discuss shortly.)

In any case, while in the past commonplaces were notebooks, you may find it more

convenient to keep yours on a computer, so you can easily print, edit, and reorganize it. On the other hand, you might find it more psychologically effective to calligraph the maxims in an attractive notebook that you’ve made by hand. You can decide right now how you will keep your commonplace. If you are going to use a notebook, you can start shopping for it or making it.