stoicism (attitude)

48:6.36Even as mor­tals, so have these an­gels been fa­ther to many dis­ap­point­ments, and they will point out that some­times your most dis­ap­point­ing dis­ap­point­ments have be­come your great­est bless­ings. Some­times the plant­ing of a seed ne­ces­si­tates its death, the death of your fond­est hopes, be­fore it can be re­born to bear the fruits of new life and new op­por­tu­nity. And from them you will learn to suf­fer less through sor­row and dis­ap­point­ment, first, by mak­ing fewer per­sonal plans con­cern­ing other per­son­al­i­ties, and then, by ac­cept­ing your lot when you have faith­fully per­formed your duty.

149:5.3“Much of man’s sor­row is born of the dis­ap­point­ment of his am­bi­tions and the wound­ing of his pride. Al­though men owe a duty to them­selves to make the best of their lives on earth, hav­ing thus sin­cerely ex­erted them­selves, they should cheer­fully ac­cept their lot and ex­er­cise in­ge­nu­ity in mak­ing the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s trou­bles take ori­gin in the fear soil of his own nat­u­ral heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pur­sues.’ ‘The wicked are like the trou­bled sea, for it can­not rest, but its wa­ters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’

181:1.8A cer­tain amount of both sto­icism and op­ti­mism are ser­vice­able in liv­ing a life on earth, but nei­ther has aught to do with that su­perb peace which the Son of God be­stows upon his breth­ren in the flesh. The peace which Mi­chael gives his chil­dren on earth is that very peace which filled his own soul when he him­self lived the mor­tal life in the flesh and on this very world. The peace of Je­sus is the joy and sat­is­fac­tion of a God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual who has achieved the tri­umph of learn­ing fully how to do the will of God while liv­ing the mor­tal life in the flesh. The peace of Je­sus’ mind was founded on an ab­so­lute hu­man faith in the ac­tu­al­ity of the di­vine Fa­ther’s wise and sym­pa­thetic over­care. Je­sus had trou­ble on earth, he has even been falsely called the “man of sor­rows,” but in and through all of these ex­pe­ri­ences he en­joyed the com­fort of that con­fi­dence which ever em­pow­ered him to pro­ceed with his life pur­pose in the full as­sur­ance that he was achiev­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

12:5.10Un­spir­i­tual an­i­mals know only the past and live in the pres­ent. Spirit-in­dwelt man has pow­ers of pre­vi­sion (in­sight); he may vi­su­al­ize the fu­ture. Only for­ward-look­ing and pro­gres­sive at­ti­tudes are per­son­ally real. Static ethics and tra­di­tional moral­ity are just slightly super­an­i­mal. Nor is sto­icism a high or­der of self-re­al­iza­tion. Ethics and morals be­come truly hu­man when they are dy­namic and pro­gres­sive, alive with uni­verse re­al­ity.