In his Meditations, he shares how we seek retreats for ourselves in all manner of external ways, while forgetting that we can instead retreat into ourselves at any time – “into your own little territory within yourself [with] no agonies, no tensions.”

When the world is like nothing we’ve ever experienced, the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius and the power of having a calm and gentle inner landscape couldn’t be more valuable.

I spend a lot of time in my own head, which I don’t see as a bad thing. By choosing what I think about, I can select the furniture of my own mind. I spring clean and dust the cobwebs by gently evicting the thoughts I’d rather not allow to linger. And by encouraging joy and gratitude, I put some fresh flowers in there and open the windows.

Alongside this general upkeep, I furnish my mind by retreating into books. With every book I read, I have new places to imagine. There are Siberian forests, exotic beaches, magical libraries, and houses by the river to visit when I need a break. The journeys are endless – there are always more books to read.

Here are a few of the books I’ve loved retreating into – I hope they’re as soothing and rejuvenating for your mind as well.

“Men seek retreats for themselves – in the country, by the sea, in the hills – and you yourself are particularly prone to this yearning. But all this is quite unphilosophic, when it is open to you, at any time you want, to retreat into yourself. No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation than into his own mind, especially if he can dip into thoughts there which put him at immediate and complete ease: and by ease I simply mean a well-ordered life.”

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated by Martin Hammond

Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah

In the world of Glendy Vanderah’s novel, we meet Joanna Teale. After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her.

She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises.

The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles. For the rest of the story, venture into the unique world of Where the Forest Meets the Stars.

“the flower whisperer who made everyone and everything around her bloom. Her light is still with us, growing love across the universe…”

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

One small piece of joy for me in the global crisis has been seeing how more people are searching for tips on reading Tolstoy and finding my writing. I find that so wonderful to see – it’s an excellent time for Tolstoy.

If you decide to jump into the universe of War and Peace, try to immerse yourself in it. Don’t feel you need to remember every name of every character (there are far too many), just let the writing wash over you.

The best translation I’ve found for that is the Anthony Briggs, which you can read in this beautiful hardbound edition from Penguin Clothbound Classics:

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

A retreat to the Italian Riviera, where everything is in full bloom, soothing, and gleaming with freedom.

“That evening was the evening of the full moon. The garden was an enchanted place where all the flowers seemed white. The lilies, the daphnes, the orange-blossom, the white stocks, the white pinks, the white roses – you could see these as plainly as in the daytime; but the coloured flowers existed only as fragrance.”

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Pick up The Great Alone to head back to 1974, when Cora Allbright and her husband, Ernt – a recently returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war – uproot their thirteen-year-old daughter, Leni, to start a new life in Alaska.

Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.

“Books are the mile markers of my life. Some people have family photos or home movies to record their past. I’ve got books. Characters. For as long as I can remember, books have been my safe place.”

How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery

Retreat into a book that celebrates the joy of sharing a life with animals, learning from them how to be a good creature ourselves. Heartwarming and wholesome, it makes for a perfect gift for animal lovers (am I alone in sending myself more book gifts recently?)

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

This book shaped everything I read afterwards. It’s so beautifully crafted. When I think back to Tan Twan Eng’s writing, I think of light rain over trees, gentle birdsong at dusk, and sitting quietly alone in a garden that’s well-tended without keeping the wild out.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Journey to Rivendell and the Shire, whether for the first time or as a repeat visit, to appreciate the best of what life has to offer in a world that isn’t always wholly good.

“Elrond’s house was perfect, whether you liked food or sleep or story-telling or singing (or reading), or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness. … Evil things did not come into the secret valley of Rivendell.”

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd

Even if you can’t venture out and explore right now, reading The Living Mountain is one of the next best things. Divided into chapters about the elements of mountain adventures – Frost and Snow, The Plants, Senses, Being – The Living Mountain marks Nan Shepherd as one of Scotland’s finest nature writers.

Nan Shepherd is remembered on a Scottish banknote with her wonderful quote, “It’s a grand thing, to get leave to live.”

“This is the river. Water, that strong white stuff, one of the four elemental mysteries, can here be seen at its origins. Like all profound mysteries, it is so simple that it frightens me. It wells from the rock, and flows away. For unnumbered years it has welled from the rock, and flowed away. It does nothing, absolutely nothing, but be itself.”

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Murakami is a master of creating universes. Most readers fall into categories of adoring his writing, despising it with a soaring passion, or feeling utterly indifferent and unable to get past a few pages.

If you’re new to Murakami, there will be cats, whisky, inexplicable truths, and wonder. Kafka on the Shore is my favourite and high up the queue on my re-reading list.

“It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way by Lars Mytting

A fun outlier on this list, Lars Mytting’s book is part guide to chopping wood and part philosophical pondering. It’s a window into Scandinavian culture that’s ideal for kindling your imagination on a lazy afternoon.

Epic Hikes of the World by Lonely Planet

This is one book I’m retreating into often while spending more time at home. Walking the Arctic Circle Trail in Greenland last summer was one of the most transformational achievements of my life – I didn’t realise quite how strong I was until I completed it.

Now I’m looking to this beautifully-designed Lonely Planet book to help inspire my next adventure. Will it be Sweden, New Zealand, or one of the great American trails? Time will tell. In the meantime, my imagination can enjoy all of the great wildernesses on our beautiful planet.

Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane

To retreat into the depths of the earth and venture many millions of years before we existed, read Robert Macfarlane. His other books are incredible too – I love Mountains of the Mind – and will have you planning your next adventure.

More hand-picked book recommendations:

• 12 of the best audiobooks to enjoy now
• 8 books to appreciate how beautiful life really is
• 7 self-care books for relaxing and unwinding with
• 12 calming books to help you take a deep breath and relax
• The 10 best books I read in 2019

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Re-reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy has given me an interesting take on this – while the novel is often depicted as a romance or romantic tragedy (a little unfairly), there are essentially two sides to the story. There’s the better known affair of Anna and Count Vronksy, but there’s also the pure and uplifting love of Kitty and Levin. It’s this second partnership of Anna Karenina that becomes an ideal, or model of perfection, for so many readers.

I think that a large part of this model of perfection is Levin’s retreat into country life, or nature. We may aspire to roam the fields as he does, turn the hay with him in summer, and observe the seasons change. Good food, time for reading, and time spent outdoors is what his time is dedicated to.

At one stage of the novel Stepan Arkadych asks him, “Are you always in the country?” and, “I suppose it’s dull in winter?” to which Levin responds, ‘It’s not dull if you have things to do, and being on your own isn’t dull”. A nice summary, I’d say.

Here are some of the lessons that Levin gives us about the joy of escaping into nature, with quotes sourced from Rosamund Bartlett’s exciting new translation of the novel.

What we can learn from Levin’s retreat into nature

1. Levin spends time with his dog, Laska, and learns from her state of bliss

2. He remains mindful and notices the changes in the seasons

Meanwhile spring arrived—a beautiful, kind-hearted spring, without spring’s usual promises and deceptions, and one of those rare springs which plants, animals, and people rejoice in together. This beautiful spring energized Levin even more, and hardened his resolve to make a complete break with the past…

3. Levin retains a full life, despite, or because of, his solitude

6. He stays in the moment and cultivates gratitude, rather than grieving over loss

Have you read Anna Karenina and felt calmer after reading Tolstoy’s descriptions of nature?

Perhaps you’ve read another novel that’s helped you to escape into nature in order to reduce anxiety. Some of my favourites are listed on LitTherapy, my other website, and include The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng and Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.

The post Levin on The Joy of Retreating into Nature (Reasons to Read Anna Karenina, Part II) appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

I first read Man’s Search For Meaning a few months ago, but I’ve only just felt ready to write about it. It’s such an immensely provoking piece to read, and as a reader you feel quite unsettled after reading some sections. However, it is powerfully moral and philosophical, to say the least, and it must be one of the most obviously bibliotherapeutic (I’ll declare that a word) books I can think of.

Goodreads provides the following summary:

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl’s theory – known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos (“meaning”) – holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

Logotherapy is something that I can deeply relate to, yet also something that I’ve done most of my life without ever giving it a name (rather like bibliotherapy). When I surround myself with meaningful relationships, experiences and activities, my mental health is considerably better than if not.  I’m sure that a lot of you will have similar attitudes. Art is so important to me – particularly literature, as you may expect from my blog, but also the visual arts and music – and I couldn’t imagine a life devoid of it. A few years after my parents’ divorce I’d listen to music that both helped and hindered my state of mind: some songs allowed me to re-live negative memories, whilst others gave me the willpower required to distance myself from the event. More recently I’ve become able to realise this distinction, and therefore favour the latter trait in music and literature. But primarily, I’ve intentionally made an effort to pursue meaning and beauty. Doing this can aid almost any type of suffering, as Frankl demonstrates in this quote:

As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances. If someone had seen our faces on the journey from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their summits glowing in the sunset, through the little barred windows of the prison carriage, he would never have believed that those were the faces of men who had given up all hope of life and liberty. Despite that factor–or maybe because of it–we were carried away by nature’s beauty, which we had missed for so long.  

When writing about surviving life in a concentration camp, echoes of stoicism seems inevitable. Frankl quotes Dostoevsky’s declaration that man is a being who can get used to everything, and later states the following:

In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy makeup often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature.

Retreating into a “life of inner riches and spiritual freedom” greatly resounds with Marcus Aurelius’s teachings, a philosopher whom I seem to perpetually discuss on my blog. The extent of the trauma described in Frankl’s text is unimaginable to most of us, as is his survival of the experience and his ability to write about it. Nonetheless, this “inner retreat” can be utilised in so many situations in order to ease anxiety, low mood and the experience of difficult situations. We can pay attention to nature around us, recall pleasant memories, or create imagined places and experiences. To remind me to do this, I particularly like the following quote:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Although Man’s Search For Meaning is full of philosophical guidance, here are the three concepts that I’ve primarily dealt with in this blog post.

1. Life needs meaning – whether love, art, nature, or something else profound – for survival and mental health. 
2. Regardless of the situation, your emotions cannot be removed from your control. 
3. Similarly, you can retreat into a “life of inner riches and spiritual freedom” at any time.

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The book is a collection of short to medium statements that jump around in topic, as written by a guy who was not only a Stoic philosopher, but also a Roman Emperor (living AD121-180). His recorded thoughts weren’t intended for publication, and therefore there’s something very personal about Meditations. It’s a bit CBT-esque, recording your thoughts in a journal, and Jules Evans has written a lot of interesting information on the bridge from ancient philosophy to modern CBT. I’d really recommend his book Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, which I mentioned in this post.

Below are some passages from Meditations that I particularly enjoy, although the list is by no means conclusive.

On the fear of being judged:

“Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial. All of this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil. But I have seen that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong; and I have reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own – not a kinship of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind, the same fragment of divinity. Therefore I cannot be harmed by any of them, as none will infect me with their wrong.”

On the importance of mental calm:

“No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation than into his own mind, especially if he can dip into thoughts there which put him at immediate and complete ease: and by ease I simply mean a well-ordered life. So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.”

On the powerful influence of judgement on your wellbeing:

“Remove the judgement, and you have removed the thought “I am hurt”: remove the thought “I am hurt”, and the hurt itself is removed.”

On the brevity of life:

“No, you do not have thousands of years to live. Urgency is on you. While you live, while you can, become good.”

On the fear of death: 

“On death. Either dispersal, if we are atoms: or, if we are a unity, extinction or a change of home.”

The post The Therapeutic Value of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.