In 2011, when I was interviewed by The Washington Post, I recommended Stoical philosophical exercises with the aim of preparing the reader for Hurricane Irene. To be sure, Stoicism was then all the rage–it’s carried on, even grown in popularity since–and so it wasn’t surprising that I would have implied that Stoical philosophy was suitable for the modern world.

Of course, I was wrong.

As you know, I’ve recently been writing about what Swami Sivananda calls “thought power.” And thought power, it must be said at the outset, is at odds with the Stoical exercise of premeditatio malorum.

The latter exercise begins by urging the practitioner to select a future event about which one is concerned. Then he is to imagine whatever bad things could befall him. Third, applying the dichotomy of control, he is to distinguish between what, in that imagined scenario, is within his control and what is not. Finally, he is to imagine acting virtuously in the face of this or that setback.

Considering the fact that this style of thinking is so ingrained in the minds of certain technologists, entrepreneurs, and finance professionals, it could be asked, “What’s the matter with it?”

A lot, it turns out.

I’ll begin with the two most basic assumptions, both of which stem from ignorance. First, this sort of exercise, regardless of the feigned or attempted heroic ending in which one rises to the occasion, “bakes in” the alleged reality of life being hard. (This assumption I seek to get us to transcend in my book Chop Wood, Carry Water: The Yoga of Work.) See that what has gone unchallenged is precisely the premise that life is an ordeal, one that pits “things that can or might or do happen” against me. Thus does life not only get figured as an ongoing ordeal; it is also construed as a persistent antagonist.

Now, in what way is life conceived to be hard? This brings me to the second assumption. The dominant conceptual metaphor is that life is a battlefield. The Stoical practitioner is a warrior whose task is to defeat the ill-begotten phantasms of his mind.

A word about these phantasms. If Sivananda is right, then thinking in such and such a way creates “thought grooves.” In the case of the premeditatio malorum, one’s mind is (shockingly) training itself to be on the lookout for worst things! Time and again, one is thinking about, visualizing, and imagining what may befall one. The final thought, in which one prevails, fails because it has already granted “provisional reality” to all the worst thoughts that one indulgently and repetitively entertains.

This approach is not wisdom but folly. It is strictly quixotic: imagine that the windmill is an evil giant so that one can go on to fight it! Not surprisingly, the one who thinks in this way discovers that the train is late, the meeting cancelled, the friend unresponsive, clients a bit peevish, the winter season dour, the world crumbling. Yea, “as you think, so you become.” Or: “As you think, so life is served up.” The Stoic can, perversely, remain a Stoic by dint of this thought groove (“life is a battle: always unfolding, never ending”).

What is at the bottom of these mental-concocted phantasms? At the root of this entire practice is fear. Yet one doesn’t conquer fear by giving it room to express itself and then by trying to vanquish it. If that worked, then there wouldn’t be the shocking repetitions in which fear is manifesting itself again and again and again! Instead, fear dissolves when the deepest trust and the vastest love prevail. In short, one needs a new picture (a better one) of how manifestation unfolds.

One must realize that fear is ultimately unreal or non-existent (asat in the language of Sanskrit). How? Ah ha! Let’s turn to thought power. If I can ascend to the Indwelling Self that I am, then I can also see with the eyes of the Indwelling Spirit in such a way that I experience the bountifulness, benevolence, and beauty of the manifest world. This is what thought power discloses. When fear occasionally arises, it’s seen as ignorance. It’s replaced by a thought that points at the truth. This truth slowly colonizes one’s experience, coloring and coloring, deepening and extending one’s understanding with the fundamental yes at the heart of all becoming.

Rarely, after some time of diligent practice, does one think of worst things. They hardly have room in which to appear. Yet when an old, crusty fear does arise, inner power is so great that the fear burns up, and in its place is revealed the glory of shimmering, dancing, beautific creation.