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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: gently comforted her and sought to release her, pointing out that the eye
and the ear and the other senses are full of deception, and persuading her
to retire from them, and abstain from all but the necessary use of them,
and be gathered up and collected into herself, bidding her trust in herself
and her own pure apprehension of pure existence, and to mistrust whatever
comes to her through other channels and is subject to variation; for such
things are visible and tangible, but what she sees in her own nature is
intelligible and invisible. And the soul of the true philosopher thinks
that she ought not to resist this deliverance, and therefore abstains from
pleasures and desires and pains and fears, as far as she is able;
reflecting that when a man has great joys or sorrows or fears or desires,
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