We can contemplate the night sky, or images of the cosmos, or imagine our soul rising through space. We can practice this visualization exercise as well - it’s been called the ‘View From Above’. Cicero describes Scipio’s soul leaving his body and ascending, seeing the battlefield, then his country, then the continent, the Earth and finally the whole of space, and feeling freed from all his earthly cares. Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, for example, imagines a near-death experience of Scipio, a Roman general. The same technique appears in other ancient philosophers’ works. Think of it as a ‘cognitive distancing’ technique: rather than zooming in and making a ‘mountain out of a molehill’, you zoom out, and make a molehill of every little mountain in your life. Many of the anxieties that harass you are superfluous: being but creatures of your own fancy, you can rid yourself of them and expand into an ampler region, letting your thought sweep over the entire universe, contemplating the illimitable tracts of eternity. Visions of this kind purge away the dross of our earth-bound life. Often picture the changing and re-changing dance of the elements. Survey the circling stars, as though yourself were in mid-course with them. Marcus often tells himself to look up and contemplate the night sky and the stars, as a way of getting a perspective on his troubles. A favourite technique of the Stoics - also popular with Platonists and Epicureans - is to zoom out from your personal situation and see the Big Picture.

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