August/September 2005
Cultivating
Relational Intelligence
Nina Simons
Crimes
Against Democracy: An Interview with Thom Hartmann
Jim Guiness
Rebirth
in the Forest
Will Sears
Right
Living, and Surviving, After The Age Of Oil
John Darling
Permaculture
and Place
Steve Gabriel
Think
of Local Food First
Wendy Siporen
Sustainable
Living at Solviva
Anna Edey
Year-Round
Gardening in Home and GreenHouse
Jeffrey M. Smith
The
Greening of Cuba
Caroline Whyte
A
Path of Peace, Kindness and Compassion
Jody Woodruff
From
Hurt to Heart
Eryn Kalish
Epictetus'
Handbook Revisited
Gay Hendricks & Phillip Johncock
The
Sky of Now
Katie Davis
The
Complete Book of Raw Food
Reviewed by Rachel Bendat
Whole
Foods Companion
Reviewed by Rachel Bendat
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
Epictetus’
Handbook Revisited
By Gay Hendricks and Phillip Johncock
Epictetus’ Handbook has been treasured by spiritual seekers for two thousand years. When you savor its nourishing wisdom—radiantly clear from its first sentence to its last—you will understand why emperors have carried it with them in war and peace, and ordinary citizens have carried it with them into every walk of life. In assessing its impact on the Western heart and mind, many people consider it second only to The Bible in its influence and power.
What gives this book such power to change lives?
The answer is in the very first sentence, and to understand the meaning and implications of this sentence is to make a transformational shift that can be applied to every life situation, no matter how troublesome or trivial. Here’s the vital piece of wisdom transmitted in the first sentence:
“You can be happy if you know this secret: Some things are within your power to control and some things are not.”
Rather than pondering this concept intellectually, take a moment to apply its masterful simplicity to a life situation of your own. Choose something real that has given you worry or concern. For example, you might be sad or grieving over the loss of a loved one. Months have gone by, and you cannot shake the sadness. You have talked to friends, to counselors, to family, and still the sadness remains. One day you pick up this little book, and by inner guidance or just good luck you read the first sentence. You take a few deep breaths and let its wisdom suffuse you. You realize that the fact of the loss is far outside your power to control. You cannot control it! As this sinks in, you see that you have been expending massive energy trying to control the past so that the loss did not occur. You have been attempting to re-write reality, and the exertion is exhausting you. You let go of the futile effort, and feel a new serenity spreading through you.
Suddenly, though, an even deeper understanding sinks in: You realize you have been engaged in a battle to control the emotions of grief and sadness in your own body. You see that you have been trying to control them—to minimize them, to make them not be there, to get over them. Even your family and friends, with the very best of intentions, have been trying to talk you out of your feelings. You have been trying to control things that are fundamentally uncontrollable, and the cost has been the moment-by-moment disruption of your peace of mind. Your inner experience since the loss has been somewhat like driving a car with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brakes. You have felt nothing but an unsettling inner shimmy, and the rattle has unnerved your every moment.
But now, with the help of Epictetus, you realize the futility of trying to control your emotions. They have a life of their own, and they will last as long as they last. Applying the wisdom Epictetus conveys in his first sentence, you relax your resistance, letting go of your effort to wish your feelings away. A whole-body, whole-being serenity begins to spread through you, and it feels very, very good.
This sequence of events actually happened to Gay Hendricks, with exactly the same results. “Once, in a time of deep sadness about the loss of a child I’d loved and held in my arms nearly every day for the six months she was with us, I felt despair about ever being able to get out from under the cloud of grief that engulfed me. Part of me knew I needed to dispel the fog of grief so I could be present for others who needed me. It was then that I picked up an ancient, battered edition of Epictetus. I read the first line, and everything changed. Suddenly I saw that I’d been trying with every fiber of my being to control something I could not control. I cannot describe the serenity that rushed over me when I relaxed my futile attempt to control the uncontrollable. I still felt the sadness, of course, but now I was at peace with it … simply letting it be. For me it was the essential first step in moving beyond the devastating experience so I could be there for the other loved ones who were counting on me.”
Every person we’ve ever known who has been touched by this book feels fortunate, even graced, by its presence in his or her life. When you know a bit about its history, you may feel we are fortunate it made its way to us at all. For starters, Epictetus didn’t write a word of it himself. According to history, this remarkable book of wisdom was gathered by his students from oral teachings that came from the lips of the master teacher. One student, Arrian, collected them into the book which was originally called The Enchiridion (which means “close to hand” and is usually translated as Manual or Handbook.)
It’s even something of a miracle that Epictetus got to speak these words. First of all, he was born a slave, never an easy challenge to overcome. He was sent to Rome in a slave caravan. Actually he limped to Rome, because his knee was shattered and untreated from injuries and beatings. When he arrived in Rome, his injuries so crippled him that he did not bring a high price on the auction block. Fortunately his genius eventually came to light, leading to his apprenticeship with one of Rome’s great teachers of philosophy. Epictetus went on to found his own school of conscious living, which attracted many well-connected students, including the future emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
It was a time of incredible turbulence in the Roman Empire, which was being rocked from within by political revolts and threatened from outside by barbarians. Most importantly, though, the heart and soul of Rome was being seized by religious fervor inspired by the teachings of a young Jewish master, Jesus, recently crucified for stirring up the citizens of Israel. Epictetus fell victim to the turbulence when a fundamentalist emperor took over and closed the non-religious schools. Luckily for all of us, Epictetus relocated to the hinterlands, accompanied by a band of passionate students, and it was here that the material in this book was lovingly collected.
Now, two thousand years later, the concepts in the book still serve us as brilliantly as they did so long ago, and you can see how deeply the ideas in it have penetrated into the transformational literature of our time. For example, the Serenity Prayer, repeated millions of times a day by members of Twelve-Step programs, is based almost verbatim on the teachings of Epictetus. The modern therapy techniques of cognitive behavior modification are also based on the foundation of Epictetus’ teachings.
The rich wisdom in this book is very distilled. In fact, it is essential—it contains the very essence of what human beings really need to know. Here is a small taste of this wisdom:
You can be happy if you know this secret: Some things are within your power to control and some things are not.
You can control your opinions, for example, substituting one for another as you please. You can also control the things you want and the actions you take. You are always in charge of where you place your attention. You don’t have any control over what goes on in someone else’s body, so there is no way you can manage another person’s feelings or the opinions that person has of you.
When you focus on things you can control, you feel free, unhindered and part of the natural flow of the universe. By contrast, when you focus on things you can’t control, it inevitably leads to weakening your sense of connection to the universal current. When you give attention to what you cannot control, it weakens you and results in a sense of being enslaved and at the effect of other people’s actions. You take on the role of victim, and you think, “Somebody did this to me.”
Freedom comes to you the moment you let go of trying to control or change things that are not yours to control.
When you imagine that something is within your control when it is not, you also hamper and disturb the natural flow of energy in and around you. You begin to blame others, even God, for what is happening to you. However, if you focus on things you can control, and withdraw your attention from things you can’t control, then no one can control you. No one can to hinder your progress towards getting what you want. You stop blaming others for your situation. You stop doing things that you don’t want to. Your enemies even fade away, believe it or not. Ultimately, no one can harm you because you do not let their actions affect you.
To achieve everything you want, it isn’t enough to be just moderately motivated, partially committed. This half-hearted effort never works. For example, you can’t just let go of control over some of the things you can’t control—like other people’s opinion of you—some of the time. Also, you can’t postpone taking control over certain things (for example, what you eat) for a later date. If you want to be happy and free, you need to commit fully to taking responsibility for the things you can control and to letting go of the things over which you have no control. Then, when you get off track, you need to recommit.
Wisdom comes when you begin to know the difference between your thoughts and reality. When something comes up in your mind, perhaps someone saying, “I don’t like you,” first say to yourself, “This is a thought.” Then, ask yourself, “Does this have to do with something I can control?” Or, “Does what came up have to do with things that are not up to me?”
If what came up is beyond your control, be ready to reply, “This is something I can’t control.”
It all begins with your ability to know the difference between what is a thought and what is real. To know that “a thought is just a thought” is at first unsettling, then massively liberating.
Gay Hendricks is the author of more than 25 books dealing with personal and relationship issues, including Conscious Loving co-authored with his wife Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks (www.hendricks.com). Philip Johncock, author of Dream-Making to Billions, a book on the art of grantwriting, is also a coach and consultant (www.johncock.com).
A new interpretation
of Epictetus’ Handbook, entitled The Book Of Life: The Master Key To
Inner Peace and Relationship Harmony, edited and interpreted by Gay Hendricks
and Philip Johncock, is available through the Transformational Book Circle
and is the first book all
members receive when they join the TBC. Visit www.transformational
bookcircle.com for information on how to become a member.
