The Marcus Aurelius Quote Steven Pressfield Couldn’t Ignore

In today's episode, Ryan and Steven Pressfield https://www.instagram.com/steven_pressfield/?hl=en discuss one of Marcus Aurelius’ most striking lines: “Life is warfare and a journey far from home.” What begins with the epigraph to Steven’s new novel The Arcadian https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-arcadian?_pos=6&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r turns into a conversation about the hero’s journey, the ideas we carry with us for decades, and reincarnation. 📚 Grab signed copies https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=steven+pressfield* of Steven’s books at The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=steven+pressfield*: The Arcadian https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-arcadian?_pos=6&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r Turning Pro https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/writing8?_pos=5&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/put-your-ass-where-your-heart-wants-to-be-signed-by-steven-pressfield?_pos=13&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r The War of Art https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/war-of-art-break-through-the-blocks-and-win-your-inner-creative-battles?_pos=8&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r The Daily Pressfield https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-daily-pressfield?_pos=1&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r The Warrior Ethos https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-warrior-ethos-signed-edition?_pos=7&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r A Man At Arms https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/a-man-at-arms-a-novel?_pos=14&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r Gates of Fire https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/war11?_pos=3&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r The Virtues of War https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/virtues-of-war-a-novel-of-alexander-the-great?_pos=10&_sid=17e25241f&_ss=r Steven Pressfield is an American author https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=steven+pressfield* of historical fiction, non-fiction, and screenplays. Steven wrote for 27 years before he got his first novel published. During that time he worked 21 different jobs in eleven states. Steven taught school, drove tractor-trailers, worked in advertising and as a screenwriter in Hollywood. He worked on offshore oil rigs, and picked fruit as a migrant worker. Follow Steven on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/steven_pressfield/?hl=en| @steven_pressfield https://www.instagram.com/steven_pressfield/?hl=en Check out more of his work on his website: https://stevenpressfield.com/ 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 VIDEO EPISODES https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail -- Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC http://ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Do you know what an epigraph is? Not an epitaph. An epitaph is what goes on your tombstone, also the name of maybe the greatest newspaper in the history of the United States, the Tombstone Epitaph. No, an epigraph is the quote that goes like in the front of a book, or maybe at the top of a new chapter, or a part one, part two, part three of a book. I love epigraphs. If you've read any of my books, you know, I'm a sucker for epigraphs. You know, part of how I researched it, no, because I'm just always collecting these little things.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  And I don't always know how or want to integrate them into the text. I want to sort of sit it there. It's like, it's kind of capturing the theme. It's a meditation. It is the inspiration for the chapter I'm writing. I did epigraphs quite a bit in, I mean, my first book has an epigraph. One of the ones I'm proudest of is the Epigraph to Conspiracy, which has a quote from Walker Percy's Lancelot, one of my favorite books. I didn't do epigraphs as much in the Virtue Series. I did, you know, one at the beginning of the book. And then there's one for part one, part two, part three. But I didn't do one, you know, at the top of every chapter, trying to practice a little, little discipline.

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  Apparently it comes from the Greek word epigraphae, which is the act of inscribing or inscription. It's funny, I pulled up the Merriam-Webster definition of this, just so I made sure I had it exactly right. It says, "A quotation said at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest a theme." And then it has like recent examples from the web. And it's quoting a Vulture article from November 2025. And it says, "That's the bitter epigraph that opens this invigorating first episode of Death by Lightning. And one important aspect of the book on which the mini-series is based, Candace Millard's Destiny of the Republic."

• 2:22Ryan Holiday?

  Oof. I just love that because like, that is one of my favorite books. Destiny of the Republic is an incredible book by Candace Millard. It's not as good as, as River of Doubt, but it's, it's pretty damn good. I want to say two things on epigraphs real quick. Number one, I have found so many things that I love through epigraphs. To me, what, one of the things an epigraph is a chance to do, it gives an author or writer a chance to kind of cosign or endorse, or go like, hey, this is cool. You've heard of this. Maybe also to go like, hey, I'm cool. I've heard of this. But the point is, I'm always marking books, circling the thing that's mentioned in the epigraph going, ooh, I want to, I want to hear more about that. I never heard. It's just a great way to discover stuff. It sends you down a rabbit hole.

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  But also I feel like epigraphs have set the tone for what I'm reading, and then also set the tone for what I'm writing. Okay, so for what we are going to talk about today, I was struck reading Steven Pressfield, one of my favorite writers, his new novel, The Arcadian, which is incredible. It's part of this series he's working on. You maybe read the first book in this series, which I raved about, A Man at Arms. There are just very few people who do historical fiction better than Steven Pressfield. I am the acknowledgement, not the epigraph of one of his books, The Daily Pressfield. But, so I pop open The Arcadian,

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  and I notice, boom, Marcus Aurelius quote as the epigraph, "Life is warfare and a journey far from home." So the difference, to be clear, pertaining to Steven Pressfield. The difference between an epitaph and an epigraph would be, epigraph is Marcus Aurelius saying, "Life is warfare and a journey far from home" as the front page to The Arcadian. An epitaph is something Steven quotes. I have it on my wall on the other side of this wall here. He quotes the famous epitaph to the Spartans at Thermopylae in Gates of Fire on the last page.

• 4:26Ryan Holiday?

  "Go tell them, stranger passing by, here obedient to their laws rely." Which I went and saw last summer in Greece. So I knew I was going to love this book because, first off, the Marcus Aurelius, but that's one of the most fascinating and, and revealing passages in Meditations, because you can read it both philosophically and literally. It is one of the few biographical notes from Marcus, although it's easy to miss, which is what we're going to talk about in today's episode. So Steve and I are nerding out a little bit about a Marcus Aurelius passage, which is not something I necessarily expected we would do when he came out. But as I said, Steven Pressfield, if you don't know his stuff, I don't know what you're doing with your life.

• 5:11Ryan Holiday?

  Turning Pro, The War of Art, The Warrior Ethos, Gates of Fire, Daily Pressfield, and then the new one, The Arcadian. Oh, he signed a bunch of them while he was here. He's amazing. Had an incredible life. Let's just get into it. Here we go. So your book starts with a Marcus Aurelius epigraph, which is one of my favorite quotes in Meditations. He says, "Life is warfare and a journey far from home." And I, the first time I read this, took it as being metaphorical. And then I was, 10 years ago or so, I gave a talk in Budapest. And I was flying into Budapest. And so I was like, I know nothing about Budapest. And I was like, I should read about it. And so I'm reading about it on the airplane.

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  This is embarrassing, but I'd already written two books about Stoic philosophy at this point. And it hit me that Marcus Aurelius had been to Budapest.

• 6:03Steven Pressfield?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  As I'm reading like the Wikipedia page, I go, wait, we're so far from Rome. This is insane. How could the, how could the Emperor of Rome been in Budapest? And then I go down this rabbit hole. I'm looking at this map of like the known travels of Marcus Aurelius. I mean, he dies in Vienna. And I go, oh, that, that quote, that "life is warfare and a journey far from home." Like, it hit me in a new way because I had the physical manifestation of how far he had traveled. And then I realized, I think he was being a lot more literal than, than I took that quote to mean.

• 6:39Steven Pressfield?

  Oh, I took it the, the opposite way.

• 6:42Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 6:42Steven Pressfield?

  I thought I, I know the guy traveled long ways, you know, journey far from home. And to me, it's like about reincarnation.

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 6:49Steven Pressfield?

  I mean, I'm sure I think the same metaphor you thought. I thought, far from home is our, our place among the stars, you know? And life, here we're down in this purgatory where it's warfare.

• 7:00Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 7:01Steven Pressfield?

  And we're a long way from our real home beyond the stars, you know?

• 7:05Ryan Holiday?

  That's a very interesting interpretation.

• 7:07Steven Pressfield?

  That was how I saw it. Now, maybe he, he probably didn't mean it that way.

• 7:09Ryan Holiday?

  No, I mean, I think it's probably working on, on a bunch of different levels. And, and he probably also means like, life is fighting and arguing and struggle. And, and, and, you know, it's lonely and you're, takes you away from home. But I mean, he spends the majority of his reign, or large chunks of his reign, you know, fighting with the Roman army in these frontier provinces. I think it works on both levels, but you go, oh, this guy wasn't dealt the hand that he wanted to be dealt.

• 7:37Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  He had a nice palace.

• 7:39Steven Pressfield?

  He always had a great way of, yeah.

• 7:40Ryan Holiday?

  But he didn't get to live in it.

• 7:41Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah, yeah. That's so true. Yeah. Wow. But he sure made the most of it, you know?

• 7:47Ryan Holiday?

  But I mean, what I took it to mean as an epigraph was just, is that some version of the hero's journey, that it's, you got to fight for things. It takes you far away from where you want to be. And, and it's also in a way a battle to get back home.

• 8:00Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah. And the other epigraph, just for anybody that's a writer here, this is a quote from Empedocles, who I'm not even sure who Empedocles was, just that he was a Greek philosopher.

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  A pre-Socratic philosopher who I was just reading about, went for, because of this discovery. Do you know how he died?

• 8:18Steven Pressfield?

  No.

• 8:19Ryan Holiday?

  So Empedocles believed, this is, this is one of the dangers of the muse stuff we've been talking about. So he believed that all his works were a gift from the gods, and that he himself had become immortal through his gifts and creativity. And so he, he died throwing himself into a volcano to prove that he was a god.

• 8:38Steven Pressfield?

  Oh, wow.

• 8:40Ryan Holiday?

  So you got to be careful. The, the line between, uh, between.

• 8:43Steven Pressfield?

  Note to self, stay away from volcanoes.

• 8:45Ryan Holiday?

  The line between mysticism and insanity is thin.

• 8:51Steven Pressfield?

  But in any event.

• 8:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:53Steven Pressfield?

  The quote that is at the start of this book is something I carried with me for like 40 years. I don't know if I ever told you this, Ryan.

• 8:59Ryan Holiday?

  Really? No, no, tell me.

• 9:00Steven Pressfield?

  I, I, I don't even know where I discovered it. But I read it and I thought, this is fantastic, whatever. And I thought, there's a story in here, but I had no idea what it is. And I just kept it with me forever. And what the heart of the, of the quote is for, is, he's, Empedocles says in this really high-flown, archaic way, "Anyone who commits murder, who takes another life, and including soldiers who kill in war in an honorable cause, three times 10,000 years, that soul shall wander and outcast from felicity." And so I thought, karma, this is justice, this is karma. And I thought, this is my character, Telemann.

• 9:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Steven Pressfield?

  So when I finally put those two together, I thought, oh, he's going to led these, these many lives.

• 9:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 9:47Steven Pressfield?

  And this is why.

• 9:48Ryan Holiday?

  He's serving out his sentence.

• 9:49Steven Pressfield?

  He's serving out his sentence. Not that he was an evil guy. He was just a soldier that fought in war. And so anyway, if you're a writer and you've got a quote floating around in your head, hang on to it.

• 10:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:00Steven Pressfield?

  Because it may, you know, come to fruition at some point when you can't predict it.

• 10:04Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, the obstacle is the way it came because I wrote down this passage in Meditations. And I thought, oh, there's something here.

• 10:10Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:11Ryan Holiday?

  And then, you know, many years later, that became that book. And there's something magical about that too, where you save something and then it pops in your head, oh, this is exactly where I can use that thing that I've been keeping.

• 10:23Steven Pressfield?

  Something in us recognizes something, even if we can't put our finger on it, you know? This is a value. Hang on to it, you know?

• 10:30Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's time travel. The mystical example is it's some form of time travel, right? Certainly your past self is flashing forward and giving you something in the future, right? Like, for me, it's no cars when I'm like, how did I know? How did I know that this was exactly what I needed? When I was writing Courage is Calling, I decided I would, the third part, I would talk about the 300 Spartans. I would tell that story. And so, you know, in 2020, when I'm working on the book, I go, okay, so obviously I have to go back and read Herodotus and his story. And, you know, I opened up a book that was at that point 20 years old for me, or no, not 15 years old. And how did my college self highlight and underline the exact passages

• 11:15Ryan Holiday?

  that I would need to write a book that I had not even conceived? That gets me very excited when that happens. That's time travel to me.

• 11:26Ryan Holiday?

  Let's talk about Telemont a little bit. I don't know if I wasn't paying attention. I, it was very obvious to me that he's the same, that he's a reincarnation of the character from A Man at Arms.

• 11:36Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah.

• 11:37Ryan Holiday?

  But I didn't, I didn't know he appeared in the other books.

• 11:40Steven Pressfield?

  Ah.

• 11:41Ryan Holiday?

  Has, have you been doing this a long time?

• 11:43Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah, but the first, he was in, he was in Tides of War and he's in The Virtues of War.

• 11:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:47Steven Pressfield?

  So that's probably 15 years ago, but as a minor character.

• 11:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:51Steven Pressfield?

  And then I sort of, for like 10 years, I thought I gotta do something with this character, but I couldn't figure out what it was. So he was sort of, you know, asleep for about 10 years. And then with A Man at Arms, I said, okay.

• 12:04Ryan Holiday?

  For a couple of hundred years, thousands of years.

• 12:06Steven Pressfield?

  Well, right.

• 12:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Steven Pressfield?

  That's his thing.

• 12:10Ryan Holiday?

  But wait, isn't there a similarly named character in Gates of Fire? Or that's a coincidence?

• 12:14Steven Pressfield?

  No, there's no one, no one.

• 12:15Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 12:15Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah.

• 12:16Ryan Holiday?

  There's some similar name, right?

• 12:18Steven Pressfield?

  Not that I can think of.

• 12:19Ryan Holiday?

  Let me see.

• 12:20Steven Pressfield?

  It certainly wasn't intentional if there was.

• 12:22Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, Telemoneous.

• 12:24Steven Pressfield?

  Hmm.

• 12:24Ryan Holiday?

  There's a Telemoneous in Gates of Fire.

• 12:26Steven Pressfield?

  There is?

• 12:26Ryan Holiday?

  So maybe, maybe it's.

• 12:28Steven Pressfield?

  Are you sure? How did, why did you look that up?

• 12:30Ryan Holiday?

  I have it in my phone.

• 12:31Steven Pressfield?

  Oh, wow. Well, Telemont is a real, is a real name.

• 12:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 12:35Steven Pressfield?

  It's a real ancient Greek name.

• 12:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Ryan Holiday?

  So, so maybe it, maybe it was, uh,

• 12:40Steven Pressfield?

  It stuck in my head.

• 12:41Ryan Holiday?

  Artistically in there longer than you knew.

• 12:43Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah. So anyway, he evolved out of the two characters in those two books and then got his own book. And now he's got two more.

• 12:50Ryan Holiday?

  It made me think there's a, have you, uh, did you watch the second Gladiator movie?

• 12:55Steven Pressfield?

  No, I didn't.

• 12:56Ryan Holiday?

  I thought it was pretty good, the, the new Gladiator sequel. But there was famously a script floating around for many years, written by Nick Cave, musician.

• 13:03Steven Pressfield?

  Uh huh.

• 13:03Ryan Holiday?

  That had Maximus, because he dies at the end. So what are you supposed to do with the character, right?

• 13:09Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Ryan Holiday?

  And, and the device was that he is this reincarnated warrior spirit for like every genera, it shows him as a modern marine.

• 13:17Steven Pressfield?

  Oh, I'm glad I didn't see that. Oh, really?

• 13:19Ryan Holiday?

  But it just, it's a fascinating device. When you have the character and the ethos of the character, can they transcend their singular space and time?

• 13:28Steven Pressfield?

  Well, for me.

• 13:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Steven Pressfield?

  The, the concept of the thing, as you know.

• 13:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Steven Pressfield?

  Is that he has committed a crime in the deep past and is being punished.

• 13:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Steven Pressfield?

  By heaven for this. And his punishment is to be, live lifetime after lifetime, always as a soldier.

• 13:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Steven Pressfield?

  Always killing and being killed. So that gives you the sort of the, the license.

• 13:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:50Steven Pressfield?

  To track his evolution.

• 13:52Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 13:53Steven Pressfield?

  Like the new one that I've, that I've just finished is a prequel. Like way back in time.

• 13:59Ryan Holiday?

  But before A Man at Arms or between A Man of Arms?

• 14:01Steven Pressfield?

  Way before A Man at Arms. It's like set in the era where the continents drifted apart, that far back.

• 14:08Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 14:08Steven Pressfield?

  In history.

• 14:09Ryan Holiday?

  Like a prehistoric character.

• 14:11Steven Pressfield?

  Well, not prehistoric, but in my concept of what that time was like, there were great civilizations that had tremendous access to the occult powers that we've lost.

• 14:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:23Steven Pressfield?

  And the civilizations are gone now, totally under the land, whatever. And the same character, Telemont, is sort of, it's like the young Telemont.

• 14:33Ryan Holiday?

  So this is his origin story?

• 14:35Steven Pressfield?

  Sort of, yeah. Maybe I'll go back and I have even more of an origin story. But a lot of the kind of points of view that he has about fighting only for money.

• 14:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Steven Pressfield?

  You can sort of see in this book where that all came from.

• 14:46Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 14:47Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah. Which is fun, you know?

• 14:49Ryan Holiday?

  Do you believe in reincarnation?

• 14:50Steven Pressfield?

  I do, absolutely.

• 14:51Ryan Holiday?

  Tell me about that.

• 14:52Steven Pressfield?

  I hope it's true, because I don't, don't want it just to end.

• 14:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Steven Pressfield?

  But you, you know, I mean, you have kids, right? And as, when they were born, they came into this world with their own personality, right? And even with their own calling, right? Their own destiny in a way. Same thing with kittens and puppies and I'm sure horses and everything like that. So it does make you wonder, where does that come from?

• 15:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Steven Pressfield?

  You know that, what is that Tennyson's, I think it's Tennyson, inti, Wordsworth, Intimations and Remortality? Do you know that poem where he says, "We come into this, into this life not naked" or something like that, "But trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home." So if it's good enough for Wordsworth, it's good enough for me.

• 15:41Ryan Holiday?

  Well, when I was reading the book, I was thinking of that famous Patton poem that he wrote, where he believes he's the reincarnated.

• 15:47Steven Pressfield?

  Exactly.

• 15:47Ryan Holiday?

  Spirit of all these different warriors.

• 15:49Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah. That was such a great scene in the movie Patton, yeah.

• 15:53Ryan Holiday?

  You know, some version of that happened in real life?

• 15:55Steven Pressfield?

  Really?

• 15:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, so in, in the movie, they're in North Africa or Europe or there's some, he's like, this is where Roman Carthage fell.

• 16:01Steven Pressfield?

  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:03Ryan Holiday?

  But yeah.

• 16:03Steven Pressfield?

  North Africa, yeah.

• 16:04Ryan Holiday?

  Between the wars, he was touring a battle, from the Battle of the Wilderness in the Civil War.

• 16:12Steven Pressfield?

  Oh.

• 16:12Ryan Holiday?

  And he's being told the, how the battle went by the tour guide. And he says, no, no, no, that's not how it happened. And he starts to, he was like, I know, I was here as a boy. And he was born well after the Civil War. And the docent's kind of like, what's happening? It's being corrected by Patton. They're interrupted by this old man who says, no, no, no, he's right. I was here. That's how it went. This Civil War veteran intervenes and, and sides with Patton.

• 16:40Steven Pressfield?

  Wow, what a great story that is.

• 16:41Ryan Holiday?

  And for Patton, I think obviously there's some element of the, the movie device in here too. For Patton, that's proof that, you know, he was this reincarnated spirit. I would argue, he just really loved history. Patton's dyslexic. And so, growing up, um, his parents take him out of school and they just read to him orally till he's like 12. And I think he imbibes these stories in his imagination.

• 17:07Steven Pressfield?

  Could be, could be.

• 17:08Ryan Holiday?

  And it becomes, it becomes a part of him. So whether it's literally.

• 17:11Steven Pressfield?

  Do you believe in reincarnation?

• 17:13Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, I don't, I'm not so mystical as that, but I do think there's some, some way, at the very least, through story, he's able to live multiple lives. I certainly believe that literature is a form of reincarnation, because we're able to take these lessons and these ideas and make them live again. And then we can add their experience into our own lives. That's something Seneca said, that through the study of philosophy, we annex all of the wisdom of the past into our own sphere. So I believe in that. Do I believe in literal reincarnation? I don't know. Not anymore out of the possibility to me of the other sort of religious ideas, so.

• 17:55Steven Pressfield?

  And also in the movie Patton, there was a thing about the, the German officer that was supposed to get into Patton's head, who says he's going to invade Sicily because Al-Sabiyya has invaded Sicily. That's what the next thing is going to be.

• 18:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:09Steven Pressfield?

  I don't know that, whether there was any truth to that at all, but it's interesting.

• 18:11Ryan Holiday?

  It's funny, Jet Li was here yesterday, you know, the Kung Fu master?

• 18:15Steven Pressfield?

  Oh, really? Get some interesting people in here.

• 18:17Ryan Holiday?

  He, he believes in reincarnation. And he was saying, the proof of that for him was, as a young kid, he gets sort of selected to be in this sort of Chinese school of martial arts. All the kids are, are selected for their physical attributes, but why did he pick it up faster than the other kids? And he believed it was past knowledge that he was drawing on.

• 18:38Steven Pressfield?

  Uh huh. Interesting. I mean, I've done past life regressions, you know?

• 18:42Ryan Holiday?

  What is that?

• 18:43Steven Pressfield?

  Have you ever done that?

• 18:44Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 18:44Steven Pressfield?

  It's a, you know, they sort of, actually, this was a friend of mine who did it for me, who was a hands-on healer.

• 18:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Steven Pressfield?

  And they put you on like a table, like a massage table, and kind of work on you to get you deep, deep, deep, deep, deep into that state, you know? And then they say, okay, now you're going to come out into a place, tell me what you see.

• 19:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Steven Pressfield?

  And you start to see stuff, you know?

• 19:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:05Steven Pressfield?

  And you, and you talk. And I've actually, in the new Telemont book, I started off with a, something that really happened to me in a past life regression. So, you know, and a feeling in it, I'll give you sort of the short, short version of this. I was on an ancient battlefield and I was like a kid. And I was looking for, the, the fight was over. There were bodies everywhere on the battlefield. And I was looking for my brother and I couldn't find him. And I knew he was dead because he, he would have found me if he was alive. So the short version of it was, I, I buried him on this battlefield.

• 19:47Steven Pressfield?

  And as we're doing this past life regression, I felt, although he was dead, waves of love coming.

• 19:56Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 19:56Steven Pressfield?

  From him, like I never felt in my life, not even close.

• 20:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Steven Pressfield?

  From any, you know, overwhelming. And so I just thought, I don't know what that means, but. There's something to that. And I remember my friend who was doing that when we kind of came out of it, he said, you can always go back to that. You can always access that.

• 20:16Ryan Holiday?

  That love.

• 20:17Steven Pressfield?

  That love.

• 20:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:18Steven Pressfield?

  But I have not been able to.

• 20:20Ryan Holiday?

  Huh.

• 20:21Steven Pressfield?

  Many times I've tried, but it sure made a tremendous impression on me because I never in my life, in real life, have I felt anything like that.

• 20:30Ryan Holiday?

  Do you have a brother?

• 20:31Steven Pressfield?

  I do have a brother.

• 20:32Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 20:32Steven Pressfield?

  But this brother in the thing was actually my friend that was doing the hands-on healing with me. So, which he's always has felt like a brother.

• 20:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:42Steven Pressfield?

  Anyway, who knows what it's all about. But in any event, that really made a deep impression on me. Like, there's got to be something to this.

• 20:49Ryan Holiday?

  Well, at the very least, I think there's something to the kind of mystical supernatural thing you're talking about. Like, I was just reading an early copy of Robert Greene's new book, which is all about sublime experiences.

• 21:00Steven Pressfield?

  Oh, I'm really looking forward to that one.

• 21:01Ryan Holiday?

  It's so, it's so good.

• 21:02Steven Pressfield?

  We've been waiting for like seven years for this.

• 21:04Ryan Holiday?

  I know, I know. And when you read it, the amazing thing is when you read it, you're like, I see where, this is what I told him. I was like, I hope this comes off as a compliment. I see the seven years.

• 21:14Steven Pressfield?

  Uh huh.

• 21:14Ryan Holiday?

  Like, like, I see why it took seven years because it's just at another level.

• 21:19Steven Pressfield?

  Ah.

• 21:19Ryan Holiday?

  Like, the writing is better. Not that he's not an amazing writer, but it's just so, like, in one of the scenes, he tells the, the story of the Temple of Demeter and the, the mysteries that they would go. And, and it really feels like you're there, which is funny because in another scene, and one of the other law, sections is about historical sublime, like how you can connect with history that you haven't experienced. So it's all very similar to what we're talking about here. But just the ancient relationship with those sort of things you can't explain and the sort of, what you're talking about. We live in a hyper rational, objective.

• 21:57Steven Pressfield?

  Yes.

• 21:57Ryan Holiday?

  Sort of distilled world that, that kind of tries to keep all that stuff out of your mind.

• 22:04Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah. You know, God bless him for even thinking of doing, writing a book about the sublime. Who else would think about that?

• 22:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 22:10Steven Pressfield?

  I mean, nobody, right?

• 22:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:11Steven Pressfield?

  And, you know, so it's such a great contribution, you know, to have a mind like his, you know, that's going to really commit.

• 22:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:18Steven Pressfield?

  God bless him.

• 22:18Ryan Holiday?

  Cause I mean, you believe, like, you, you say a prayer to the muses, you believe in reincarnation, you, you believe in the daemon, like the, the voice that talks to you. What does all that mean to you? Like, that's clearly an important part of your, both your sort of practice as a person, but also your creative practice.

• 22:38Steven Pressfield?

  I, I ask myself, we all ask ourselves, how does, how does the world work?

• 22:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Steven Pressfield?

  You know? And like you say, our dumbed down world says, oh, we're only this body, da, da, da, da. But I absolutely believe that there are, is at least another dimension.

• 22:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Steven Pressfield?

  Directly above us, where the muse lives, you know, angels, whatever. And that we as writers, and I'm really interested to hear what you say about that, that's what we kind of access. That's what we channel.

• 23:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:08Steven Pressfield?

  That's where the books come from, or movies or everything like that. And, but a part of me, of course, is really skeptical. I'm, you know, I'm born here, I'm, I have a material body. So I really try to, to reinforce within myself, the reality that there are other forces and other entities out there that are on our side.

• 23:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Steven Pressfield?

  And are aiding us. And it's our job to connect to them, to open ourselves up to them. And so if that's the sublime, I don't know what, what you call it. It's the divine anyway.

• 23:41Ryan Holiday?

  There's something beyond us that we don't control and can't fully conceive and certainly can't comprehend. I'll concede to all that. You know, there's, there's something, I mean, just what you, one of the, one of the ways you're in touch with that as an artist or a creative or anyone that makes something, is that sense of like, where did that come from?

• 24:02Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Ryan Holiday?

  You know what I mean?

• 24:03Steven Pressfield?

  I mean, look at what you've created here, you know, a kid from Riverside, right?

• 24:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, Sacramento.

• 24:08Steven Pressfield?

  How did this, or Sacramento? You went to school in Riverside.

• 24:11Ryan Holiday?

  No, that's true. But I just mean, like, like, just where did those words come? Like, you're sitting there and you're almost like, you're typing the end of a sentence that you're in the middle of. Like, how, like, this goes back to Plato. Like, how do you know, how do you know this?

• 24:25Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Ryan Holiday?

  There's, there is something fundamentally otherworldly about the, the creative act because it, it's coming from somewhere or something, even if, even if you want to just tell me it's this emergent thing happening in our brains, it's crazy.

• 24:45Steven Pressfield?

  I mean, you've heard so many stories about like musicians that are driving down the freeway and it's suddenly a song.

• 24:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:51Steven Pressfield?

  Complete.

• 24:52Ryan Holiday?

  And they're rushing to get it down. Yes.

• 24:54Steven Pressfield?

  How does, how does anybody, I mean, it could be the subconscious, you know, I suppose. But I don't, I don't know. That's, I don't, that doesn't happen.

• 25:02Ryan Holiday?

  Even the subconscious, it's pretty like, so it's like your brain and then you have another part of your brain and it's just like.

• 25:08Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah.

• 25:08Ryan Holiday?

  There was this old, there was this theory that at one point our brains, like, you know, we have two hemispheres of the brain. Have you heard the, the bicameral mind theory?

• 25:16Steven Pressfield?

  No.

• 25:17Ryan Holiday?

  It was sort of popular and then discredited, but it's kind of this out there theory that like, at one point we had two brains and, you know, now our brains, they, they communicate with each other, right? But, but like, what if they didn't? Like, what if, if they were separate? And, and like, the ancients would hear the voice of God, like, go do this, or you need wooden walls, or you know, all the, the different things? What if that was just one side of the brain talking to the other side of the brain, but they, they didn't recognize it as such? But even that's insane, like, the idea that, that like, you can know something and not know it, even your idea of the resistance. It's like, I want to do this. And then there's some part of me that doesn't want me to do it. And then I can make

• 25:58Ryan Holiday?

  myself do it. That's crazy. What, how is any of that work? It's, there's something just unfathomable about that.