Thank you, and thanks for engaging :) Yeah, the Stoic metaphysics is really fascinating, and I appreciate the fractal nature of both seeing "myself" composed of individual cellular entities, while acknowledging that "I" am also a cellular unit of another, higher, organism. The *logos* puts the "organization" in Nature, and the organization in organism.... haha. Bad joke.

Se7enZ

Dying, too, is one of our assignments in life.

The second quote caught my attention. I like your point that "energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed." Marcus, as a stoic, didn't believe in the afterlife as other ancient philosophies or traditional religions do.

But, instead, he believed that the soul returns to the universe after death. The soul was a part of the collective universal being, which would be absorbed back into the heavens after death.

This is the reason, I think, why Marcus considers the "act of dying, as a job or duty, to be performed well, to the best of our ability," as you put it.

Even though I don't necessarily see things the same way, I still think it's a really cool and interesting point of view!

BooksAndArticles

Stoic Book Club: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius #6 - Book 6

Great posts, as always! 

>Dying, too, is one of our assignments in life.

The second quote caught my attention. I like your point that "energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed." Marcus, as a stoic, didn't believe in the afterlife as other ancient philosophies or traditional religions do. 

But, instead, he believed that the soul returns to the universe after death. The soul was a part of the collective universal being, which would be absorbed back into the heavens after death. 

This is the reason, I think, why Marcus considers the "act of dying, as a job or duty, to be performed well, to the best of our ability," as you put it.  

Even though I don't necessarily see things the same way, I still think it's a really cool and interesting point of view!