Time is Racing Toward Us | Pete Holmes on The Real Point of Philosophy

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: Time is racing toward us. We think that it's off in the distance. We think that it's far away. The future, old age, even our own eventual death. But this is wrong. Fundamentally wrong. Seneca writes that death is not something we are slowly moving towards, but rather something that is rushing towards us. In fact, it is something that is already here. We are dying every day, he says, for the time that passes belongs to death. We have to understand that there is no fixed point in the future that we are moving towards. There is no later. There is only now. There is this moment, and we have it only fleetingly.

0:56Ryan Holiday: We cannot delay. We cannot defer. We must live while we can. Live while we are dying. Take the present before it becomes the past. There is only what you can do with this moment before it disappears into the past. So don't hesitate. Don't delay. Live now. Now.

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3:41Pete Holmes: Terms and conditions apply.

3:46Ryan Holiday: People think philosophy is like this way of, is this riddle that like tricks you into thinking you don't exist, right? There is no self. How do you know you exist? And you go, what am I supposed to do with this information? Right. Right. But philosophy is actually more like your words hurt me. And then a stoic goes, how though? Like, show me how. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

4:09Pete Holmes: What Rupert Spire would say is, on whose behalf are you protesting?

4:13Ryan Holiday: Yeah. Like, show me that. They're just getting you. I think, obviously, it can be intellectually interesting to sort of take this all the way down to like, how do we know we're not living in a simulation? But for most of us, it should just be more like, yeah, why am I taking offense to this? Or like, why am I said I have to do this? Like, my therapist sometimes corrects me and she goes, no, no, what you make up about this is. Not this is. Realizing like, oh, no, no, the thing just is something. And then I have an opinion about that thing. And most of the time, a lot of the time, that opinion is making me feel shitty or insecure.

4:49Ryan Holiday: It's almost always making you feel less. Right. And so it's like if philosophy is about helping you with that and then maybe there's some professional mystics who can take it all the way to the actually nothing is permanent, nothing's ever lasted. How do we start with the mental tricks to help you just live better? Yeah. You're not going to just suddenly be questioning the purpose of everything and everyone. Right.

5:11Pete Holmes: I actually think going to the door, the closed door, saying like we all live in a simulation or there is no self or everything is a dream or whatever.

5:23Ryan Holiday: Is there really such thing as right and wrong? Yeah, sure. That's just kind of like an amusement ride.

5:30Pete Holmes: Yes. And I think, if I'm going to use a spiritual term here, but the ego, the separate self uses that to just seem important. It's the same thing as wearing a Raiders jersey and being like, I'm like these guys. Their strength is my strength. And when I go, this is a simulation, you're just kind of bolstering the fake thing by going like, you didn't fool me. The purpose of what you would call philosophy, what I would call mysticism, who cares, is actually to go through that door and to realize that what you seek is only veiled by the seeking of it. So when we're looking for peace and happiness, this is all Rupert Spira, by the way, which one of these has to be him.

6:08Pete Holmes: I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. The nature of your being, the nature of awareness is peace. It's the lack of agitation. It's the lack of yearning. It's the lack of seeking. It's the lack of resisting. And then the mind gets activated and we start seeking. Oh, I hope this podcast goes well. That's fine. That's dance. That's a play. But it does kind of rob me of my nature. So receding back philosophy for the sake of knowing what's going on and then flexing that for people is stupid. When realizing anything that points you to the nature of the self, the only self there is, being peace, patience, kindness, happiness, joy, that's valuable.

6:52Pete Holmes: I know it's stupid to now step back into our mind and be like, that's valuable. But I did that this morning. I was having a crummy morning. Crummy. And I, you know, I started my day reading Rupert and it reminded me that it was like, it's my seeking for a good day that's keeping me from it's the analogy that he uses uh is it's like consciousness or awareness is the screen and this is the movie and there's no peace for the characters in the movie they'll eat sandwiches and feel happy sometimes they'll get hit by a car and be sad other times but it's completely in flux all the time what isn't in flux the screen let's find the screen go to the go to the experience of being aware.

7:37Pete Holmes: And don't say, I don't know how to find my being. You're having that experience right now. It's not esoteric. It's go to it. I promise you know how to. That's going to the screen. That's step one. Step two is what is the nature of the screen? And the nature of the screen, just like a screen, is spacious. To me, successful spirituality is how spacious are you, not how good are you at winning a debate or whatever.

8:07Ryan Holiday: By spacious, you just mean like chill? What do you mean by spacious? Allowing. Yeah.

8:11Pete Holmes: The nature of the screen, you could say the nature of God, is this yes. It's this, it's almost offensive how yes it is. Yeah. And when we realize that we are that yes, I'll give you an example. I took an Uber here and the guy was listening to Christian Rock, which happens a lot in Texas. and I'm only a little embarrassed to admit that it's it can be a little triggering to me yeah because I grew up in that world and whatever those were good meaning people but it didn't do me a lot of favors it kind of confused me and scared me so when I hear that music I used to sing that music I used to lead the worship team I'm listening to it and I'm like and I'm like no this is just like let's just try to like be with what it actually is and this is the other thing that came to mind I'm reading non-violent communication I actually guess I could say I've read it there's a little bit left and he tells a story that really changed I have other examples of it but it was a good one he tells two stories of getting hit in the nose maybe you heard me say this on my podcast he got elbowed in the nose twice in the same week same force, same blood, same everything.

9:24Pete Holmes: One time it hurt like the dickens. The other time it didn't hurt. Same exact fracture. And he was like the first time he was breaking up for fight both times. The first time the kid he was pulling off the other kid, he hated this kid. This kid was a shit, a bad student, just a smart ass. And had rubbed this guy the wrong way. He hit him in the nose and it really hurt. The second time it was this sweet kid that he actually had a lot of love and compassion for. because he saw that he was kind of picked on and his heart was open to him, got elbowed by this kid. That's how fast the brain will build a story.

9:59Pete Holmes: Right. The interpretation of this person did it because they're bad and this person did it as an accident.

10:05Ryan Holiday: And that's what I mean. It's like, do you want to use this powerful tool to interpret everything down to a kind of nothingness or nihilism? Or do you just want to do it so you're not taking shit so personally anymore?

10:16Pete Holmes: I'm just saying most people just take the most effective 80 % of the thing and leave the 20 % to the people who are really into it.

10:25Ryan Holiday: Don't let the sort of mystic woo-woo part of it confuse you or deter you from the fact that the bulk of this is very practical and very helpful in the course of your normal life where you have a job and kids and you're not a monk at a silent meditation retreat.

10:41Pete Holmes: I would say that last 20 % is bolstering yourself to the point where you can convince other people of it and win debates. And then, how silly is that? And I'm guilty of this all the time. You've bolstered up something that you just spent all that time convincing yourself doesn't exist. Yeah. And Eckhart Tolle talks about that. It's like monks bowing to each other on meditation retreats. That is, that's a little candy. Yes. Your special I bow to you. But also, to your point, let's not get gunked up too much. There's this, I think it's Rumi. He's like, it's going to be a terrible paraphrase, but he's like, you're in the orchard.

11:18Pete Holmes: Yeah. Stop asking who planted the orchard and just eat some apples. That's a terrible paraphrase.

11:23Ryan Holiday: In meditation, Mark Cirullus talks about, he says, you don't have to delve into everything that lies beneath. You can just kind of. And I think there's something Nietzsche was not always a big fan of the Stoics, but he said sometimes the Stoics were superficial out of profundity. And there's something about just kind of staying on the surface that's like, hey, I got hit in the nose, you know, or, hey, I like this apple. I don't need to know why it came here, who planted it. or just like, hey, the stock market went down today, not the stock market went down and now my portfolio is fucked and now I have to work longer.

12:01Ryan Holiday: And then by the way, why did this happen? It happened because of this policy and it's these idiots who voted for this. It's just like, it's just news. Accept it as information and move on. And if you heard that it happened to someone else, you'd be like, it is what it is. But what happens to you, you just need so much more in the way of explanation and then you need to ruminate on it and you're not really doing yourself any favors.

12:21Pete Holmes: That's an epiphany anew at least once a month where I go, oh my God, when it's me, it seems to be so meaningful. Like when you're having an issue, I'm like, Ryan, you're just the screen. Like when it's happening to me, I'm like, this is urgent. That's why like I'm with you. Everything we've said, what my teacher Rupert Spira teaches is called the pathless path, meaning it's not even a path, meaning it's not even something we need to explain. I mean, it's when, whenever, anytime, good times, bad times, just kind of quietly keep a tether in the fact that you are the screen, not to have some sort of afterlife reward or the thrill of being smarter than everybody, or like me listening to the Christian music and being like, I find this theologically unsound.

13:14Pete Holmes: Good for you, Pete.

13:19Thank you.