Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.63

Enter into every man's ruling faculty, and also let every other man enter into yours.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8 (tr Long)

In our modern times, or more properly in our post-modern times, each mind can appear so terribly isolated from every other. My thought is my own, and your thought is your own, and the two seem to arise quite independently of one another, if not in direct opposition to one another. How often have I now heard people speaking of “my truth” as distinct from “your truth”?

And so a good many us may feel isolated, estranged, alienated. We may all be walking around in the same world, going through the same automatic motions and assaulted by all the same images, but we perceive each individual inner consciousness as trapped in a separate box. I hear people tell me not only that I don’t understand them, but also that I can’t possibly understand them.

I suspect, of course, that this is hardly a new problem, as human nature is already made in such a way that it confronts obstacles in discovering itself. We have only found new ways of expressing that struggle.

Seeing that shared human nature, as a part within all of Nature, is the key to overcoming the anxiety and despair that come from feeling alone.

I should recognize that for all our accidents, we participate in the same essence. Reason is never something closed in upon itself, but is by definition open and directed toward all that is present to it. Mind does not gaze upon its own emptiness, but is filled by and through other things. Most wonderfully, mind can recognize itself when it engages with another mind.

We all share in the same type of awareness, and live in the same world, and so we are all seeking the same truth. Truth is to be found in the unity of all that is real, not in obsessing about the broken bits and pieces.

In the simplest sense, I can try to express my thoughts to others with clarity, and listen to how others express their thoughts with patience.

On a deeper level, I can try to think with another, instead of only thinking about another. I can ask myself not only what he says, but also how and why he understands it the way he does.

Even more profoundly, I can reflect that every mind is an expression of Universal Mind, just as every being is an expression of Universal Being. The Stoic sees that nothing ever exists in isolation, and that shattering the illusion of estrangement requires only remembering that all things are inherently one.

I may not be recognized or praised for it, but I never need to feel alone when I conceive of myself as necessarily joined to everyone, and everything, else.

Written in 7/2008