How do we discover the secret of Marcus’ ‘Meditations’?
Consider Gentle Reader that in order to discover the secret of the ‘Meditations’ you need to spend time with it when life is breaking your heart or when you are engulfed in anxiety or self-pity or resentment or – and this is more challenging to do – spend time with it and savor Marcus’ insights during a time when your dreams appear to be coming true and it feels to you as if all will be well forever. During both of these times Marcus provides us with support and with a dose of reality.
What is it about Marcus’ insights and observations that for hundreds of thousands of us has brought us to a full stop – in the form of a new sense of inner dignity and strength? This is not the strength that helps us overcome our enemies or that promises wealth, status or even health. Marcus does not promise us ‘self-importance’ – recognition and honors. And Marcus does not promise that if we embrace his learning-experience that we will be able to endure life’s difficulties and hardships without flinching or stumbling.
The secret of Marcus’ ‘Meditations’ does not lie in such things – even though many have interpreted it in this way.
No, Gentle Reader, consider that the true secret of Marcus’ ‘Meditations’ lies in the fact that Marcus is writing these meditations to himself and to himself alone – not to you or me or any of the hundreds of thousands of us who, over the centuries, have carried this little book with them. Marcus is writing to and for himself. He is a fully human being expressing to himself what he is embracing, carrying, and inwardly questioning through his own awakened attention in the present moment.
Think about this.
Few of us will ever have any idea what his inner state must be like as he reflects and writes; nor of the immensity of the forces that are washing over – and within – him. Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, carrying the world upon his shoulders – determining the life and death of thousands upon thousands, judging, ruling, killing and rescuing. Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, fully human being that he is, target of both adoration and murderous hatred, a fully human being suffering and dying from an unknown illness as he sits late and alone in his tent far from home on the Eastern boundaries of his Empire.
What is amazing and awe-inspiring is that this fully human being coping under the force of such inner and outer conditions offers us a deep insight into the human work of attending consciously to one’s own developing mind, heart and soul. Marcus was on a search. He was, according to his own words, searching for self-knowledge and he was engaged in this search while living in the most harrowing of conditions – ten years of constant war far from home.
Given all of this he offers us penetrating practical insights. He offers us his vision of the Universe and of God and of the conduct of life that he is called to live – a life of compassionate objectivity toward himself, to others and to life.
We experience, as we reflect upon Marcus’ words the transformation that he experiences – the effect that the awakening of conscious attention can have upon the workings of the human mind, heart and soul.
It is this, then – this effect upon himself, not the great universal ideas he turns to but his inner questioning that is the secret of Marcus’ ‘Meditations.’
AND [remember Gentle Reader, there is always an ‘AND’], there is more to be discerned.