Tao of Seneca – Free PDFs

hardcover copy in the future?

Thank you

Tim,

Thank you for your work. You’ve truly changed my life! The fact you’re producing even more content at no charge is awesome and shows that the spirit with which you labor is one of compassion for the human condition.

Best,

Wei-Ming

Thank you, Tim! This is amazing.

Thanks Tim!!! Hugely appreciate this

Thank you !! I converted the pdf to work to load onto my kindle, so that I can study this stuff and make notes/flashcards etc 🙂

Thanks Tim, this is awesome!

Thanks Tim. These look beautifully constructed.

Appreciate the effort you and you team put in to creating them.

Ali

You’ve done a beautiful job composing & re-crafting Seneca’s work, I am immersing myself in the reading for a part of each day. This and much of your other works and collaborations have re-inspired me to take up an inquiry I’ve been working on for years now and that you have addressed in many of your interviews and writings – that it seems that our central problem, central to our suffering is the condition of solipsism, and the reflexive internal preoccupation with ourselves and what we talk to ourselves about. With inquiry I’ve concluded that this condition does not seem natural, it appears no other animal talks to themselves, and it doesn’t look like talking to ourselves is present at birth, for language is learned and thinking happens in words. So it must be true that this condition is imbedded in our linguistic culture, and as we learn language, we learn to talk to ourselves – as though there is a little self with which to talk, like an entity inside our rib cage, or an ethereal self, or maybe what some call a soul – a soul that has linguistic capacity. But how could this linguistic condition be serving us? We seem to tolerate a constant thread of suffering as a result of this condition. This internally bound voice plays on like a broken record – repeating the same criticisms, likes, dislikes, betrayals, doubts, worries, losses, wins, regrets, desires, embarrassments …. the endless stream of blaming, fault finding, comparisons, envies… the complaints that life has been unfair to us… and on the flip side of all that negativity (be it right or wrong) the way we can position ourselves as all knowing, better than, smarter, special, right and deserving. Its true that we’ve been wronged in our lives, everyone has and will continue to be … but is the constant replaying of these wrongs ever of value, isn’t it long over and done with, isn’t our time precious (as said so eloquently in one of your chapters from Seneca)

In contrast to this internally bound voice is the relief that we experience when we are out of our heads, enraptured with a favorite hobby, or when we ‘lose ourselves’ in writing, painting, reading, meditating, playing. For some its more extreme – risking life and limb in order to experience that totally in the moment feeling. Those experiences, of being free from ‘ourself’ are beautiful, peaceful, exhilarating – and must be able to be recreated through a shift in our understanding which with commitment and energy may translate to a shift in our behavior and more authoritative restraint on the self centered, egoistic, talking to itself ‘self’.

So then I think – what IS thinking? What would be the difference between talking to ourselves and thinking? At this moment, I think that talking to ourselves is a reflexive, habitual condition, its already there, requires no real thought or effort. Its there when you wake, already having its say and its almost always in the background of our mind. Thinking then, or at least good thinking, would be done in a more creative manner – we’d bring a subject, a problem, an inquiry to ‘the table’ – and with a pen or keyboard at hand, or a person with which creative dialogue is possible, then we could also reflect – in our own minds, but there would be a subject at hand and the exercise of writing or speaking that would bring this thinking to light and make more apparent to us the flaws as well as the insights and possible resolutions.

What if our freedom from this internally bound, solipsistic voice can come from a better understanding of who we are and who we are not, a re-learning of this human body as a coalescence of biology, history, language and culture, that the self with which we talk to is a myth – that all there is, is our brain and our body and our intersubjective connection to the environments we find ourselves in. What would we be like if we were always free from this voice, or at least able to temper its weight, fully present to what is right in front of us, free to listen and respond, untethered by our concerns for crafting our image – our concerns for being attractive, smart, competent, our almost obsessive desire to be right.

I think this will require an unlearning as much as a re-learning. A stopping of the habitual, reflexive, insistent voice inside our heads and a return, over and over again to the task before us, the conversation, the song, the page, the person, the project, the moment of engagement that we are always in. Kind of like being pasted up against life as it is, without the delusional screen of the talking to itself self. A life’s work for sure, but already enormously freeing … as long as I can keep myself away from the idea of some permanently rewarding end, and take joy in the process, the inquiry and the incremental changes we are able to make in the way we behave and therefore in the way we experience living. I struggle with what it takes to be competent in this modern world, to keep a roof over our heads, and at the same time be at peace with our existence, our finitude. But the struggle has been meaningful. Your work gives me a lot of fuel to work with, thank you for all you contribute.

Living life as an art project, finding what it means to be authentic, generous, joyful and making the effort to give meaning where there may be none.

Thank you for the generous gift, Tim. GREATLY appreciated!

Thank you Tim for this generous gesture. Your podcasts and books are slowly transforming my life at 58.

Amazing! sharing this 🙂

Thank you Tim!

I can’t even begin to tell you how grateful I am for this… there are no words! I have been dying to study Seneca and Stoicism since I started listening to your podcasts. This popped up in my e-mail at a really low point in my life and I am so excited to find healing through the Tao of Seneca! Much love to you, Tim!

Thank you so much for this wonderful gift! Best, Roger

Thanks, Tim! Wanted to get them for so long 🙂

Thank you so much for this! I really appreciate it

Thank you Tim!! These are fantastic.You and your staff produced a superb collection.

Wow, just wow. Thank you for all, Tim!

Wauw this is great! Thank you so much!

Excellent. Thanks.

What a wonderful gift for us all.

Thank you so very much.

I look forward to the Kindle version, as well as listening to the audio books that you created.

Am i the only one left who still prefers a paper book over audio or pdf? Regardless thank you, Tim.

Your kindness is so appreciated. Many thanks

Tim you are the best. Can’t thank you enough for sharing this. As will I.

Thank you!

Thanks! I have the first volume of the audiobook that I’m working through so far. Glad to have .PDF versions!

Thank you so much for putting these out for free as pdfs, but are you by any chance going to publish these books

Thanks Tim. All of your work greatly appreciated!

Wow, what a treat.

That was very generous Tim.

Thank you.

Thanks Tim.

Just stumbled upon these and just downloaded them. Only recently discovered the stoics after reading Ryan holidays book.

I enjoy most of your content, thanks for still pumping it out.

Adam