Will anyone sneer at me?

“Will anyone sneer at me? That will be his concern; mine will be to ensure that nothing I do or say shall deserve the sneer. Will he hate me? Again, his concern. Mine, to be in friendship and charity with all men, ready to show this very man himself where he is mistaken, and to do so without recrimination or ostentatious forbearance, but – if we may assume that his words were no mere cant – as frankly and generously as Phocion of old (Phocion was an Athenian general and statesman, accused of treachery and condemned to death by his people. Asked if he had any last words to say, he replied; “Only that I have no grudge against the Athenians”). That is the right spirit for a man to have within him; he should never be seen by gods in the act of harboring a grudge or making a grievance of his sufferings. What ill can touch you if you follow the proper laws of your being and accept moment by moment whatever great Nature deems opportune, like a true man who is bent on furthering by any and every means the welfare of the world?"
– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

NOTES: Everything is a lesson and everyone you meet is a Teacher. Teachers and lessons are everywhere; it is just a matter of our own awareness that will allow for us to be able to recognize the moral of the lesson and to know we are being taught. Most of us drudge along in our daily lives believing that things just happen and look at the bad things as though something were wrong or bad. Everything, good and bad, are lessons and in return good and bad people can be teachers. We just have to be open minded enough to accept the teacher and lesson. We have to swallow our pride and shed our egos to learn from all that is around us and all those we have contact with. Some teachers are greater than others and we can only hope to learn the lessons they have learned to advance us along the path of enlightenment a little quicker. Some teachers are insignificant or even mean, disrespectful or angry but, our own egos and overbearing pride will not allow us to learn their lessons and sometimes these are the greatest lessons of all because they teach us about our own selves.

So how does this pertain to this quote? We are learning from Marcus Aurelius not to be deceitful, angry or hateful and how we can learn from people of such character to not act in those ways ourselves. We should act in ways that we would like to be treated ourselves. How easy it is to only thing of ourselves and our own personal agendas, we think to ourselves “As long as it does not affect me what to I care?” But this is not the way, it is not the path, we do not want to be the one sneering or being sneered upon. We want “to be the ones to be in friendship and charity with all men”, we should not be the ones “Harboring a grudge or making a grievance of our sufferings”. If more people were to look at things in this way of peace the world would be a better place and we would think of what others may think before we act or say things offensive or hurtful. “What ill can touch you if you follow the proper laws of your being and accept moment by moment whatever great Nature deems opportune?” “Nature” being natural law and the proper course that nature takes adhering to the laws of nature. The Maple tree does not complain or grieve over the Oaks taking up all their sunlight in the woods. The mouse does not set forth on a path of war against the Hawk when he is singled out for a meal and killed, nor do his kin folk. These things are just accepted by nature as part of life. But us as humans think we are above this basic fundamental law of survival. The more we accept the moment by moment things that occur as natures opportune, the more we will act in accord with natural laws and see things as lessons of enlightenment. Pride and ego are creations of our minds and therefore only exist as thoughts in our heads and as mentioned before thoughts do not exist but, some of us like to put faith and substance to that negative energy and give it form and that form created by the nothingness of out own pride and ego can only create the form of negative energy that will come back to us 100 fold in the future. Which, will bring up a future discussions of “Karma” and positive and negative energies?

Peace and love and all that happiness stuff,
GhostDog