ORLANDO STOICS: Mindfulness and the Stoic Art of Paying Attention
Details
This week, we turn to a practice that sits at the heart of Stoicism yet often goes unnamed: focused attention, or prosoche. Psychotherapist and writer David Alexander, a recent guest on the Perennial Meditations podcast, defines prosoche as the ancient Greek term for "focused attention," the first skill a student of philosophy must learn. In his conversation with J.W. Bertolotti, Alexander explores how this ancient discipline translates into a modern mindfulness practice for daily life.
For Epictetus, attention was not optional. In the Discourses he warned that letting our attention slip is not a neutral pause we can simply reverse at will. Each lapse builds a habit of inattention, and then a habit of deferral, of putting off again and again the tranquil and appropriate life lived in accordance with nature. What we practice, we become.
Modern psychology makes the same point. In Focus, Daniel Goleman argues that the most powerful distraction is not the noise of the people around us but the chatter of our own minds, and that real concentration requires stilling those inner voices. He notes that the crucial instruction in meditation is to return the mind to its focus whenever you notice it has wandered, and that the difficulty is how rarely we catch the moment it drifts. Alexander frames the same challenge in terms of autopilot: we can move through each day doing the next thing we think we "should," or we can stop, notice, and actually inhabit the moment we are in.
Epictetus put it most plainly: you become what you give your attention to. Ralph Waldo Emerson made a similar case for guarding our spare moments, calling them uncut diamonds whose value is lost if we discard them and revealed only if we improve them. The invitation, then, is simple but demanding: to caretake this moment, attend to the person and task in front of us, and quit the evasions that keep us from really living.
Sources:
Stoic Mindfulness for Modern Life with David Alexander, Perennial Meditations Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfxvep3V6oI&t=14s
Prosoché: Stoic Mindfulness as a Modern Practice, David Alexander:
https://thewalledgarden.com/prosoche-stoic-mindfulness-as-a-modern-practice/
Time (USA)
7:00 PM Eastern
6:00 PM Central
5:00 PM Mountain
4:00 PM Pacific
Zoom Link
Join Here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88155941092?pwd=IKUxmDJ6trWCg8X87PvXj21xtxabBC.1
About Our Group
We welcome open-minded, respectful conversation on Stoicism and its relevance to daily life, personal growth, and modern thought. Our discussions connect ancient philosophy with contemporary science, psychology, and culture—always with the aim of cultivating practical wisdom together.