“Can we be freed from the captivity and enslavement of our mentalities and beliefs?”

In Stoic thought, the most important question before us is this: which things do we recognise as falling within our power to change—things of which we will remain slaves if we fail to change them—and which things do we lack the power to change?

The Stoic person locates the struggle of life in four domains that can be changed: our mentality and beliefs; our inner motives and desires; the degree to which our reactions are unconscious; and our level of awareness.

According to this view, we are wholly free to continue our struggle on the ground where change is in our hands, while releasing what we cannot change and what lies outside our control.

Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher, once wrote:
“What is our principal problem is not the events of the external world but our interpretation of those events.”

People respond differently to the same event or phenomenon because they interpret it differently, and the Stoic believes that changing this interpretation lies within one's own power.

The Stoics believed that Logos—the light of truth that gives structure to all things—is the fundamental law and cosmic order, and that it is present in the human mind as well. Human thought, as an embodiment of this truth, gives us the capacity to recognise what is right and true.

To live according to truth and goodness is the only way of living in accord with the Logos, and this belief gives meaning to Stoic ethics and its way of life. Yet many people never make use of this power and remain for ever captive to their beliefs, desires, unconscious processes and ignorance.

Stoic philosophy holds that cultivating the god within brings the human being to such inner freedom that even the iron hammer of fate cannot touch it. Although this inner freedom cannot enable a person to change what has been determined in advance, it enables one to respond to events with full freedom and consciousness, and therefore to regulate the effect of those events upon one's happiness. In Stoic thought, happiness and pleasure arise when the person is freed from everything capable of fragmenting and saddening them. Happiness is a path that begins within the human being and takes form in the external world.

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