Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor and a Spiritualist. In his own estimation, living a Spiritual life was more important than ruling the most powerful empire of his time. He practiced his Spiritual principles daily so that he could command the empire without losing his treasured ideals of justice and humanity.
The Spirituality that he lived by is one of empowerment, independence, and self-reliance. Its principles led him to a life of spiritual contentment as well as worldly attainment, a potent combination that most people still find impossible to achieve.
The aim of living one’s life was to find contentment, to avoid misery and unhappiness, to find freedom of action and avoid becoming a slave to the “passions,” to become self-reliant and independent and not use other people for financial, social, or emotional support.
In the life of man, his time is but an instant, his substance ceaselessly changing, his senses degraded, the flesh of his body subject to decay, his soul turbulent, his fortune difficult to predict, and his fame a question mark.
Our main instinct is to survive, to protect this fragile self we have built up. To do this we generally seek pleasure and avoid pain. Seeking pleasure leads us to pursue actions that create emotions of enjoyment and acceptance and make us feel good. Avoiding pain means shunning actions and situations that lead to emotions of suffering: fear, sadness, anger, disgust, and shame. We are led by our desires, and our desires impel us to seek things we do not have and often cannot see. Our objects of desire include other people, money, food, and clothing, as well as more abstract things like fame, love, knowledge, and enlightenment. Our desires are endless and can never be satisfied.
The ability to judge and decide about events, objects, and people is the only thing we possess that is actually within our power. If we try to control something that is not in our power, we will suffer. The things that are not in our power or possession number quite a few: our bodies, our partners and our children, our friends and colleagues, our houses, clothes, and all material goods, our money, our jobs and worldly power and our reputation. These are all things that in the course of normal life and conventional thinking we are led to believe are under our control. The Spiritualist would disagree. Our bodies are not under our control because, although we can move them and dress them, we cannot stop them from becoming ill, aging, and eventually dying. Our partners may leave us; our children may die; our houses may burn down; our material goods may be stolen.
Limiting our desires to those things under our control puts us on the spiritual road to tranquility, contentment and compassion. As Marcus said,
“Remember that if you think things which are by nature dependent (on others) are free, and things which are in the power of others to be your own, you will be obstructed, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will blame both gods and men; but if you consider only that which is under your control to be your own, and that which is under another’s control as belonging to another, as it really is, then no man will obstruct you, you will never blame any man, you will do nothing against your will, you will have no enemy, for you will not suffer any harm.”
Marcus expressed this view for living in this world: “If you can work sincerely and correctly on what is at hand, and do so with energy and calm, not allowing distractions but keeping your inner spirit pure, as if you had only borrowed it and had to return it intact; if you can act in this way, hoping for nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with modulating your actions to the way of nature, and with fearless truth in every word you utter, you will live contentedly.”
Marcus Aurelius writes about one God, the originator and creator of the universe.
Marcus says that what “is so astonishing in the spiritual life is the irrestrainable stream of gratitude that it pours forth.” The Spiritual person was immensely pleased, grateful, and astonished that God had created a world in which there was, a miraculous coincidence between the needs of living beings and the facilities provided for them by nature.
Spirituality was a religion without ritual or priesthood, though Marcus Aurelius realized that each individual person made himself holy through the activities of his mind:
“For such a man, who tries to live by the right values, becomes a priest and servant to the gods, using the spirit that is embedded within him, which makes him unsullied by pleasure, impervious to pain, untouched by insults, feeling no wrong; a warrior in the best fight, one who cannot be overcome by any desires, with a deep love of justice, and accepting with all his soul everything that happens to him as his great destiny.”
By using reason and judgment to gain control over his mind and body, Marcus Aurelius was able to sustain an inner harmony and serenity that carried him joyfully through life. In an age when we are conditioned to have everything and to want even more, to seek no limitation on the desires of the mind and the body, this has become a revolutionary idea.
In this twenty first century , we may find that it is in the control of our desires that we can find the inner freedom for a different kind of contentment than the one we have been seeking. This contentment may give us the internal peace that we yearn for yet find so difficult to achieve.