Suffering in imagination: How the ancients dealt with it?

Renowned Stoic senator and playwright, Seneca, once wrote:

“We suffer more in imagination, than in reality.” - Seneca.

Our minds are beautiful. It makes us creative and apply logical and critical thinking. But, at the same time, it’s also a nuisance. It’s given us self-doubt, and has a tendency to create self-sabotaging habits and a whole load of insecurities.

So how do you stop our mind from being a nuisance?

Well, you technically can’t. But the ancients knew a great deal about our mind’s flaws before mainstream psychology. Stoicism, Buddhism and Taoism were all well aware about the frailties of the mind. Each of these philosophies centred around acceptance - and each of these philosophies had their own way of practising acceptance

As for me, I’ve suffered from long bouts of self-doubt and depression. I was my own worst enemy. The nuisance side of my mind hampered my career, my personal relationships and my health. 

If it weren’t for these three philosophies, I would still be in a rut. Here are the key lessons that I've learnt from each one.

The logic & rationality of the Stoics

The Stoics were known to ground themselves in what is actually happening to them right now, as well as, around them.

A key technique that they used is the dichotomy of control, where they are able to distinguish what they can control and what they can’t control. They fully understood they can’t control their emotional impulses, but they could control how they could react to it. 

To keep their emotions in check, they also resorted to techniques like imagining the worst case scenarios. This is something Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher king, said in his Meditations:

“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.” — Marcus Aurelius.

When thinking about the worst-case scenario, the feeling of disappointment is lessened as you’ve already played it out in your head. 

The other technique that Marcus Aurelius adopted is what is known as zooming out. Here, we shift our perspective of the current situation.

We take a bird’s eye view of whatever challenge or emotion that you’re facing to enable you to see the bigger picture, and you’ll realise whatever issue you’re dealing with is actually insignificant. 

There are hundreds of galaxies out there (perhaps billions). We’re just a blip on the radar. So why are we getting so worked up over something so insignificant in the grand scheme of things?

Here’s what Marcus Aurelius wrote about this:

“You can rid yourself of many useless things among those that disturb you, for they lie entirely in your imagination; and you will then gain for yourself ample space by comprehending the whole universe in your mind, and by contemplating the eternity of time, and observing the rapid change of every part of everything, how short is the time from birth to dissolution, and the illimitable time before birth as well as the equally boundless time after dissolution.” — Marcus Aurelius.

Zen practice for quieting the mind

I was first introduced to Zen indirectly through a wonderful little book called the Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallway, which introduced me to the concept of the two selves, Self 1 and Self 2. 

Self 1 being our conscious and our ego which tends to give all the instructions, and Self 2, which is the subconscious part of ourselves and our body.

The inner game fails when both Self 1 and Self 2 are not in alignment. Whenever Self 1 tries to tell Self 2 what to do, but it doesn’t comprehend. It leads to overthinking, which then causes us to tense up.

Through repeated effort on Self 1’s part, Self 1 then jumps to the assumption that Self 2 is useless, which then opens to a stream of negative thinking and self-doubt. These thoughts soon become a self-fulling prophecy.

To overcome this, we need to quieten Self 1 and trust Self 2. This is where the book begins to introduce us to Zen-related practices such as zoning our attention, letting go of the outcome and practising seeing things as they are without adding any judgement.

“Quieting the mind means less thinking, calculating, judging, worrying, fearing, hoping, trying, regretting, controlling, jittering, or distracting. The mind is still when it is totally here and now in perfect oneness with the action and the actor.” -W. Timothy Gallway.

The book also makes an important point by saying “when we unlearn how to be judgmental, it is possible to achieve spontaneous, concentrated play.”

Taoism’s philosophy of purposeless (not being emotionally attached)

When I first discovered the world of self-help, a lot of the material suggested that I try to find a purpose. Here’s one example from The Way of The Superior Man:

“A man must discover his deep and true purpose in life, and pursue it with a singleness of intention beyond all other commitments.”

Now, it’s good to have a goal. But, it’s not good to be overly attached to the goal. 

To give you an example, whenever I play squash for fun, without being concerned about the win, I would bring my best game. However, if I play in a competition where there’s a prize to be won, then automatically, the game is no longer fun. It becomes serious, and we become overly attached to the outcome.

What’s helped me is to not be overly attached to the point where I’m not really bothered by the outcome. While this might seem counterintuitive, not focusing on the outcome gives me a bit of breathing space so I can flourish.

In Taoism, this is called purposelessness where you do an activity or task because you enjoy it.

Similar to the Inner Game, well-known philosopher, Osho, introduces us to another set of two selves, the achieving mind and the non-achieving mind. Most of us have been wired to have an achieving mind, where we aim to achieve good grades at school, be degree-educated and get a good job. 

But as Osho wrote in Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi those who have been conditioned with an achieving mind, are never happy.

“An achieving mind.. Is always trying to achieve something or another. And whenever something is achieved, again and again the mind asks, “Now what? What is to be achieved now?” It cannot remain with itself. It has to go on achieving. This achieving mind will never be blissful, it’s always tense. Whenever something is achieved, the achieving mind will fee frustrated, because new goals have to be invented.” - Osho

With a purposeless mind (or non-achieving mind), whenever we go about our day, life becomes play. In Hinduism, this is called leela, and was emphasised in the life of Krishna.

So it’s really important to let go of the achieving mind to allow freedom, creativity and fun back into our lives.

Why worry?

Our mind is something that’s so unique, clever, yet so detrimental at the same time. The ancients knew this, and they found their own way to help us work better with our mind so that we’re not always suffering in our imagination.