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You are a distinct portion of the essence of God in yourself. Why, then, are you ignorant of your noble birth? Why do you not consider whence you came? Why do you not remember when you are eating, who you are who eat; and whom you feed: do you not know that it is the divine you feed; the divine you exercise? You carry a God about with you.

Men are disturbed not by things that happen,

but by their opinions of the things that happen.

EPICTETUS

(55–135)

Epictetus, an emancipated slave, was a Greek Stoic philosopher. No written works survive, but his pupil Arrian preserved his essential doctrines in a manual.

When I was training in the field of counseling psychology many years ago, Epictetus was a source of inspiration to me. His name surfaced repeatedly in the study of how the mind impacts our emotions and our behavior, and he was consistently referenced in the literature on rational emotive therapy. I am still impressed by the wisdom of this man who was born a slave in the first century after the Crucifixion, became a freedman in A.D. 90, and was expelled from Rome by the despotic emperor whose tyrannical rule Epictetus criticized. Years later I dug into the primary works of this Stoic philosopher, read his Discourses, and learned more about his philosophy.

The two selections I have cited here are valuable spiritual and philosophical insights that are almost two thousand years old. I have included them in this book because I believe they can enrich your life as they have mine.

In the longer selection, which begins, “You are a distinct portion of the essence of God,” Epictetus reminds us that we often forget that we contain the divine spark, a “part of God.” This powerful idea is so difficult to grasp, yet Epictetus insists, from a background of slavery, that it is simply the truth. Imagine being fully aware that you carry God about with you.

If God is everywhere, then there is no place that God is not. And this includes you. Once you connect to this understanding, you regain the power of your very source. Rather than seeing yourself as separate from the miraculous power of God, you claim your divinity and reclaim all the potency that God is. When you are eating you are ingesting God and replenishing God. When you sleep you breathe in God and allow God to rest. When you exercise, you move about on God and strengthen God at the same time.

This may make sense right now as you read these words, but you are probably like many of us who did not grow up with this concept. A more popular image is something like this: God as a giant vending machine in the sky in the form of a white-bearded male on a throne. Deposit tokens, in the form of prayers, and God sometimes delivers the goods, and other times not. This is the idea of God as separate and distinct from ourselves. Epictetus suggests shifting from this concept of “the universe as a monarchy” to an understanding that you are a principal work, a fragment of God Himself.

Sai Baba is a contemporary avatar living in India who knows and practices being the divine spark of God, which he is a part of and which is a part of him. He publicly demonstrates his godliness in many ways, one of which is a variation of the divine ability to manifest fish and loaves. When a Western journalist asked Sai Baba, “Are you God?” he gently responded, “Yes I am, and so are you. The only difference between you and me is that I know it, and you don’t.” When you know that you are a divine manifestation of God, you have made conscious contact with God and you treat yourself and others as expressions of the divine. In Rome and in Greece, this is what Epictetus was telling us two thousand years ago. Trust in your divine nature, never dispute the nobility of your true self, and treat yourself with the same reverence that you have for God.

Epictetus’ second observation, as simple as it sounds, has been perhaps the most useful information I have ever processed in my life. It is our opinions of things and not the things themselves that cause the disturbances of our lives. What a great source of liberation to know that no one can upset us, that nothing out there can make us miserable, that we control how we feel by how we decide to process things, events, and other people, and their opinions.

As a school counselor many years ago I frequently invoked the wisdom of this observation. When a student was upset by something someone else had said or done, I would ask, “Suppose you didn’t know what they had said about you, would you still be upset?” The student would respond with something like, “Of course not. How could I be upset about something if I didn’t know about it?” I would then gently offer, “So it isn’t what they said or did. That happened and you weren’t upset at all, until you learned of it, and then decided to react by being disturbed.” The realization that no one can make us upset without our consent began to be a part of the student’s awareness.

These two gems from Epictetus have influenced my life and writing, and I enjoy reminding myself of their value each and every day. I share them with you because they have been so valuable to me. The spiritual insights from Epictetus are combined in this ancient Sanskrit saying: “God sleeps in the minerals, awakens in the plants, walks in the animals, and thinks in you.” In other words, there is no place that God is not sleeping, awakening, or walking about. God is the universal source of all life, a presence rather than a person, and this presence thinks in you.

And how shall you think? Use this presence of God to realize the enormity of your thinking capacity. It is not the things, events, circumstances, and opinions of others that cause you to feel uneasy and unsettled, it is how you use the God within, your invisible source, to process those extremes that determines your happiness—and nothing more! Realize that God is in you, with you, behind you, before you, and all around you, and can be felt everywhere, particularly in your opinions of the things that happen to you. To put these two ancient yet very up-to-date observations to work for you, begin to:

 Remind yourself daily that you are a divine creation and entitled to be treated lovingly by others, as well as by yourself. By seeing yourself as connected to rather than separated from God you will feel a greater reverence for yourself.

 Practice regular rituals to affirm the presence of God in you and all that you do. Bless your food and give thanks and, as you do, remind yourself that you are feeding the divine. Similarly, during your exercise activities, visualize the energy of God in your every cell.

 Give thanks for everything that you receive, including the rain, air, sun, and storms, however they manifest. Gratitude is one way of recognizing the God in all things.

 Let go of any inclination you have to blame external circumstances for your unhappiness. When you feel disturbed ask yourself, “How can I change my opinion of these things to remove my discomfort?” Then work at it until the blame is gone. This can be accomplished quite readily if you are willing to shift off blame and on to God realization as Epictetus encouraged us two millennia ago.