Think how much is going on inside you every second—in your soul, in your body. Why should it astonish you that so much more—everything that happens in that all-embracing unity, the world—is happening at the same time?
Meditations 6.25
Odds are good that Marcus Aurelius knew of the hermetic teachings.
Ancient aphorisms like this seem to be truths known to the ancients, to be proved correct by <Jocko voice> “science” </Jocko voice> in modern times. They are Lindy. Their survival signals their truth.
I am drawn to the esoteric, the occult, the hidden wisdom of the ancients. Let’s acknowledge that bias up front. That’s one of the reasons I spent so much time patrolling through the Fourth Way, theosophy, the Gnostics, Rosicrucians, etc.
They all turned out to be dry wells. All of them, eventually, seemed to devolve into ceremonies, personalities, and frivolities. They fell off The Path.
Perhaps that is the course of entropy in systems of knowledge: ego eventually triumphs and personalities trump the principles. Consider the clarity of Christian principles, then visit St. Peter’s Basilica in The Vatican. The contrast knocks the fillings out of your teeth.
Watch for that in your own life. Stick with the principles, the eternal truths. Don’t add your own personal bullshit.
As above (ego destroys organization), so below (ego destroys the individual).