0
SPEAKER_01
Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m thrilled to be joined today by the brilliant psychotherapist and best-selling author, Phil Stutz.
0
SPEAKER_01
Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
0
SPEAKER_01
On this show, we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand who we are and why we re here.
0
SPEAKER_01
Pulling the Thread is about big questions.
0
SPEAKER_01
Why we do what we do, how we can understand our own experiences within a larger spiritual and historical context, the ways in which we might begin to understand ourselves and each other better, and what s required to heal ourselves and our world.
0
SPEAKER_01
I ll be joined in conversation by luminaries and wise elders, those who have laid tracks on their work and lives to help us bring meaning and understanding to a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming.
0
SPEAKER_01
My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow.
0
SPEAKER_00
If there s this part of you that you think is inferior, that weak spot, something you re ashamed of, et cetera,
0
SPEAKER_00
That s one of those things where you believe it s true.
0
SPEAKER_00
There s a part of the human soul, we call it part X, that doesn t want you to have any kind of poor emotions.
0
SPEAKER_00
It wants to render your life a failure.
0
SPEAKER_00
It wants you to never re-change your potential.
0
SPEAKER_00
And it wants you to hate yourself, which is the biggest thing.
0
SPEAKER_00
The gist of The Tools came from the idea we have to be active about dealing with this.
0
SPEAKER_01
So says Phil Stutz, the creator of The Tools.
0
SPEAKER_01
You might know Phil from his best-selling book of the same name or its sequel, Coming Alive, which he co-wrote with his partner Barry Michaels.
0
SPEAKER_01
Or you might know him from the Netflix documentary Stutz, which is a profile of him as a beloved psychotherapist who doesn t practice in a particularly traditional way.
0
SPEAKER_01
What you might not know is that Phil is actually a psychiatrist.
0
SPEAKER_01
He received his MD from NYU and then abandoned the standard approach, feeling like he wasn t helping patients at all.
0
SPEAKER_01
He created the tools to do exactly that, to provide practices for people to move through life s obstacles rather than just listening to them talk about them.
0
SPEAKER_01
One of the things that I love most about Phil s approach is the way in which he uses the spiritual, or what he calls higher forces.
0
SPEAKER_01
Foundationally, he believes that a beneficent universe will move in as soon as you put yourself in motion, unlocking creativity and growth.
0
SPEAKER_01
His latest book, Lessons for Living, What Only Adversity Can Teach You, is a beautiful collection of essays from throughout his life about aging, hard times, and obstacles.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s equal parts moving and practical, much like Phil himself.
0
SPEAKER_01
Okay, let s get to our conversation.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I know you obviously are influenced by Carl Jung and shadow work and spirituality, but it s not Jungian, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Or when you practice, is there that element to it too?
0
SPEAKER_00
Jung obviously was a genius.
0
SPEAKER_00
And he saw things other people didn t see, especially that was basically 1900, which was fairly, I don t want to say crippled, but it was limited.
0
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, we go two ways with this.
0
SPEAKER_00
When I learned Jungianism, which it was up until that point was the best thing I had learned, the most effective and the most connected to reality.
0
SPEAKER_00
So once I saw that, I studied it, and I loved it.
0
SPEAKER_00
It changed your whole relationship to your dreams, for one thing.
0
SPEAKER_00
It also gave people the idea that there were generic forces or archetypes, you call them, that were like floating out there, and they applied to everybody.
0
SPEAKER_00
Nobody had said anything like before.
0
SPEAKER_00
So all props to Dr. Young.
0
SPEAKER_00
However, I felt like where he stopped was where we had to start.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the reason for that was Young, I think, by nature, but also just the times, it was very passive.
0
SPEAKER_00
So it was a time of science, but science didn t supply what was needed here, because it s like, if you re up to here, you re doing well, you re doing well,
0
SPEAKER_00
is a gap, and you have to jump over that gap.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the gap is the difference between understanding something, which is like cognitive and intellectual, versus doing something, which means you have to have an impact on the world around you.
0
SPEAKER_00
I haven t found that the union, and I don t want to characterize a whole million people or something,
0
SPEAKER_00
But I haven t found it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Not only didn t they know how to do that, they weren t interested.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the unions had this thing, basically it said, if you analyze the unconscious and you have some relationship with the unconscious, that s all you need to do.
0
SPEAKER_00
The unconscious will then resolve its own problems.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that s a form of self-regulation.
0
SPEAKER_00
I just don t believe it.
0
SPEAKER_00
I ve never seen it work in anything, in psychotherapy, in business, wherever you look.
0
SPEAKER_00
The idea of self-regulation didn t work too well.
0
SPEAKER_00
So, and I m no great altruist or anything, but it was driving me nuts, because I felt we would get right up to the edge of something, and we had no way to jump over.
0
SPEAKER_00
So anyway, so that was one part of it.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I think another part of it was that there were currents running through society, and the biggest one, which may surprise you, was the ascension of the female.
0
SPEAKER_00
starting then, you know, let s say early 20th century.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I believe there s certain things where the time has come.
0
SPEAKER_00
And at that point, they re going to be like the ascendancy of women is going to happen anyway, no matter what.
0
SPEAKER_00
The question is, is it going to be a good thing or a bad thing?
0
SPEAKER_00
It s hard to imagine it could possibly be worse than the way the males have fucked it up.
0
SPEAKER_00
But the whole idea of using the unconscious in a focused way
0
SPEAKER_00
With focus goals and focus tools, that was new.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I can t say that I was genius and I figured it out.
0
SPEAKER_00
It just unfolded, you know, piece by piece by piece.
0
SPEAKER_01
I work with a young Yan.
0
SPEAKER_01
So and I love the system, but I can also understand how and I see it in myself, how we all get stuck in our stories.
0
SPEAKER_01
And when really we need the moral of the story, right, or the underlying pattern unlock so that we can move forward.
0
SPEAKER_01
And as you were studying, and as you were treating patients, were you hearing a universality of story?
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, is that essentially where the tools came from, that we re not that different.
0
SPEAKER_01
And many of us share
0
SPEAKER_01
the same essential patterning?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I would say definitely.
0
SPEAKER_00
That itself was a huge breakthrough because it forced you to think about these things in a different way.
0
SPEAKER_00
If everything is connected on some level, and even if you can t quite figure out what the level is, it changes the whole world.
0
SPEAKER_00
And you re going to see the world s going to change so much in the next 10 years.
0
SPEAKER_00
It ll be more than the last 10 years of it, it seems even possible.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so, there are two parts to this.
0
SPEAKER_00
So, one is the Jungian part of interpreting the unconscious and what goes on in the unconscious and kind of hyper-choice.
0
SPEAKER_00
The other thing is tools.
0
SPEAKER_00
And here s the story with tools, at least as far as I m concerned, which are the tools are the only thing that can bridge that gap from what you think and your intellectual kind of impression to something and what you re going to do about it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Any philosophy starting in the 20th century, any philosophy, not just mine, if it doesn t end with an action, it s not a real philosophy.
0
SPEAKER_00
Now, if you re 1600, you wouldn t say that, but in the present time, that s required because it s an action-oriented universe and it s an action-oriented populace, you could say.
0
SPEAKER_00
So, I mean, it s much more complicated than that, but that s at least the starting point for me.
0
SPEAKER_00
The other thing about it is the patients loved it.
0
SPEAKER_00
They just loved it.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s because it was allowing them to do things that they didn t believe they could do.
0
SPEAKER_00
That actually seems impossible.
0
SPEAKER_00
Now, should I go into Part X?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, please.
0
SPEAKER_01
Let s talk about Part X. Okay.
0
SPEAKER_00
So you have the whole thing laid out in terms of where you need help, the changes that have to be made, etc.
0
SPEAKER_00
And yet,
0
SPEAKER_00
especially the first half of the 20th century, it wasn t working too well.
0
SPEAKER_00
At age 65, Freud realized psychoanalysis was failing, and he said, my system is bogus.
0
SPEAKER_00
He called it the death instinct.
0
SPEAKER_00
He said, we all have an instinct built in not to grow, not to change.
0
SPEAKER_00
Now, people had hinted at that, but this is the first person to make a theory out of it.
1
SPEAKER_02
As I told you, I don t believe in self-regulation anyway.
1
SPEAKER_02
I ve never seen it work once.
1
SPEAKER_02
But it seems at least for it to be possible for a human being to take their evolution or their direction in life or whatever they thought their mission was and have some agency in it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think Part X like deserves a long explication, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
But is it equivalent to the shadow in some ways?
1
SPEAKER_02
Part X is the shadow.
1
SPEAKER_02
when it s been treated badly.
1
SPEAKER_02
The shadow is not a bad thing, even though it comes out as sometimes as inferior, harmful, weak, and very badly injured.
1
SPEAKER_02
But that in and of itself means nothing unless you understand the genesis of it.
1
SPEAKER_02
So what that means is, the best way to say it is self-esteem.
1
SPEAKER_02
Why are people so insecure?
1
SPEAKER_02
And people I treat,
1
SPEAKER_02
There s no logical reason for them to be insecure, but they do.
1
SPEAKER_02
Now, the reason they feel insecure is everybody, me, you, Carl Jung, if he was alive, everybody feels insecure.
1
SPEAKER_02
Everybody has a part of themselves that they regard as inferior.
1
SPEAKER_02
Now, so what happens if there is this part of you that you think is inferior, the weak spot, something you re ashamed of, et cetera?
1
SPEAKER_02
That s one of these things where if you believe it s true,
1
SPEAKER_02
There s a part of the human soul, we call it Part X, that doesn t want you to have any kind of forward motion, doesn t like it.
1
SPEAKER_02
It wants to render your life failure.
1
SPEAKER_02
It wants you to never reach any of your potentials.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it wants you to hate yourself, which is the biggest thing.
1
SPEAKER_02
So the gist of the tools came from the idea, we have to be active about dealing with this.
1
SPEAKER_02
We called it Part X.
1
SPEAKER_02
But that doesn t tell you anything.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s just an X. Although it s amazing how many Xs there are now in popular culture.
1
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, so there was something in each person.
1
SPEAKER_02
Quart X is the shadow when you stop taking care of it.
1
SPEAKER_02
So you have North and South America.
1
SPEAKER_02
That s permanent.
1
SPEAKER_02
That s unchanging.
1
SPEAKER_02
So that s like a vertical line.
1
SPEAKER_02
Up here is North America, down here is South America.
1
SPEAKER_02
But you also have a horizontal plane, and in that plane,
1
SPEAKER_02
It s the relationship between your shadow and you or the lack of such that dictates.
1
SPEAKER_02
If you treat your shadows badly, it becomes a war, basically.
1
SPEAKER_02
But this is very important.
1
SPEAKER_02
The terms of the war is not for anybody to get shot or get killed.
1
SPEAKER_02
In some ways, as bad as that is, there s a clarity to that.
1
SPEAKER_02
Part X is something that works on you most of the time.
1
SPEAKER_02
When you re not aware of it, you re seeing or experiencing a part of yourself that doesn t want you to win, it wants you to lose.
1
SPEAKER_02
And that s very freeing for people because they feel less guilty.
1
SPEAKER_02
The idea that there s somebody out there that doesn t like me, that s trying to prevent me from moving forward.
1
SPEAKER_00
It seems like almost a ternary system.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if you would think about it like that, but if you think about how, and we can talk about higher forces as well, because I love that that s a dimension of your work.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s very important to me.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it almost feels like it s like higher forces, part X is like pace setting or blocking or stopping.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then the tools, rather than a stasis or a locked binary of paralysis, that the tools allow someone to move forward.
1
SPEAKER_00
And through that resistance to grow, change, set a new story.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, 100%.
1
SPEAKER_02
You can even go a step further than that and say, the purpose of the tools is to counteract hard acts at the moment when they re trying to block you.
1
SPEAKER_02
It has to do with possibility and impossibility.
1
SPEAKER_02
Part X is the avatar of impossibility.
1
SPEAKER_02
So Part X is saying it s impossible.
1
SPEAKER_02
You can t do that.
1
SPEAKER_02
Don t even think about it.
1
SPEAKER_02
Another way to describe that is Part X gives you a problem that you really don t need to have, and then it gives you a solution to the problem that makes it worse.
1
SPEAKER_02
That isn t the devil.
1
SPEAKER_02
I don t know what it is.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m Rachel Martin.
1
SPEAKER_01
After hosting Morning Edition for years, I know that the news can wear you down.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we made a new podcast called Wildcard, where a special deck of cards and a whole bunch of fascinating guests help us sort out what makes life meaningful.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s part game show, part existential deep dive, and it is seriously fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
Join me on Wildcard, wherever you get your podcasts, only from NPR.
1
SPEAKER_00
I want to talk about manifestations and I want to share a story from a tools workshop, which blew my mind.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I went as an observer more than a participant and it was for creatives.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think it was for screenwriters or the like.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he was talking about the inability of so many people to put their creative work into the world.
1
SPEAKER_00
They ll just take it almost to the finish line and then stop.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then he asked everyone in the room, he said, raise your hands if when you do the dishes, you have to leave a pot.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it was amazing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Everyone s hands went up.
1
SPEAKER_00
And my husband, he s not a writer, but he s a creative.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that s a classic Rob Fismer move is to let something soak.
1
SPEAKER_00
But in that moment, it was a beautiful illustration of how everyone, regardless of the content or the material, it s like the same thing that knocks them down or shuts them down right at that moment before they re complete.
1
SPEAKER_02
This is so important.
1
SPEAKER_02
So one thing you re mentioning is the universality.
1
SPEAKER_02
Once you have the idea of forces, which most people can t really fully accept, but once you have that going, there s a connection.
1
SPEAKER_02
Even if the connection is World War VI, everybody is subject to the same forces.
1
SPEAKER_02
That s number one.
1
SPEAKER_02
Number two, everything you do for your personal benefit, you want to write a novel,
1
SPEAKER_02
It doesn t matter, whatever you do because you want to do it or you want a relationship with a certain person, et cetera, if that does not also have a piece of good stuff for the whole world, for the whole world population, it s very hard to succeed at it.
1
SPEAKER_02
Now, what s going on now, to an unprecedented degree, the products is getting stronger.
1
SPEAKER_02
The book that s coming out now,
1
SPEAKER_02
is the compilation of ideas and life stories, and it was very helpful.
1
SPEAKER_02
But the book was written, not all of it, but most of it was written 25 years ago, 30 years ago.
1
SPEAKER_02
What does that mean?
1
SPEAKER_02
How can that world is changing?
1
SPEAKER_02
The world hasn t changed.
1
SPEAKER_02
The philosophy hasn t changed.
1
SPEAKER_02
The world has changed.
1
SPEAKER_02
And that s where dealing with Part X now becomes urgent.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s not a hobby or a speculative philosophical argument.
1
SPEAKER_02
Why is it so urgent?
1
SPEAKER_02
Because the universe to be healthy needs to be in one home.
1
SPEAKER_02
If you want to call it a cosmic family, whatever you want to call it.
1
SPEAKER_02
But X s job, so to speak, and part of its power to shatter the universe, or the human universe.
1
SPEAKER_02
And, you know, you can see it the first time I think there was a human person was the virus.
1
SPEAKER_02
Because you can see people couldn t even believe they re healthy.
1
SPEAKER_02
It was a fractionation.
1
SPEAKER_02
It was like the sun was shattered into a million different pieces.
1
SPEAKER_02
But there was something good about that, if you had tools.
1
SPEAKER_02
Because if you don t have tools, you have nothing.
1
SPEAKER_02
When you re in a situation where your understanding has reached as far as it can go, then you have to have something that you can do next.
1
SPEAKER_02
And if you don t, you re wasting a tremendous opportunity.
1
SPEAKER_02
And the tools, we ended up with so many of them.
1
SPEAKER_02
And you think, yeah, there s probably a lot of repetition.
1
SPEAKER_02
There really wasn t.
1
SPEAKER_02
We had at least 40 solid tools.
1
SPEAKER_02
And the book is constructed so that you can actually do research on yourself.
1
SPEAKER_02
Because there s so many tools and stories in there, you ll probably be able to find at least one.
1
SPEAKER_02
Some people find 10 that applies to them.
1
SPEAKER_02
You say, well, why can t they read it in the book?
1
SPEAKER_02
Because this is tailored to be doable or actionable.
1
SPEAKER_02
right at the moment.
1
SPEAKER_02
And on top of that, we don t bring people to try and win.
1
SPEAKER_02
That s not the goal.
1
SPEAKER_02
We train them to be disciplined enough to stay in the process.
1
SPEAKER_00
To stay engaged, ultimately.
1
SPEAKER_00
Do you think that there s a cultural part X and then a personal part X?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
The essay on ageism was so beautiful.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the way that I think you write about how the way that we re essentially polarized to value youth
1
SPEAKER_00
versus old people and wisdom.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s interesting to see it in this particular
2
SPEAKER_01
moment in time as well, the schism and the inability to reconcile that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then you write about how, you know, you could talk about that as a cultural shadow or big cultural pardex.
2
SPEAKER_01
We live in a very ageist culture.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then it trickles down into the personal, right, where we come to despise our own aging process.
2
SPEAKER_00
The thing about aging, obviously, it also has to do with death.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s a very strong instinctual
2
SPEAKER_00
drives now to get them off the playing field altogether.
2
SPEAKER_00
See, there s two universes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, universe one, value is denominated by numbers.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if value is determined by numbers, well, you end up with money as being the arbiter of everything.
2
SPEAKER_00
Universe two is completely different than that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Universe two, value is not a thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can t grasp it and take it home with you.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s the ability to create systematically is what Universe 2 is about, and it s the only thing it cares about.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I tell patients, all the time I tell them, you have to decide which universe you want to be in, and then you have to choose it over and over and over again.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just to go back to the tools, the tools we re working with at Spot X, they will not keep working unless you keep using them.
2
SPEAKER_00
Once they work, even once, I ll tell you, all of a sudden things begin to seem possible.
2
SPEAKER_00
If this isn t having an effect on you, and that s probably within 10 weeks, it s not 10 years.
2
SPEAKER_00
If it s not having an effect on you, you should fire me.
2
SPEAKER_00
And this is how I got into the whole thing with the tools and trying to come up with ways that would break free of the limitation.
2
SPEAKER_00
Anything that s numerical, by definition, it s not that the world is what it is.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not that.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s that your mind is absolutely encased and trapped.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can I draw a picture of you?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, please.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now this, what I m drawing, I ll show it to you in a second.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s called a birthday cake.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I was going to say.
2
SPEAKER_00
It has three tiers.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the bottom tier is space.
2
SPEAKER_00
And this is very specifically not the same thing as proof, which we ll get to in a minute.
2
SPEAKER_00
Faith has to be chosen.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s no way it can be proven.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you re trying to prove it, you re putting yourself back in universe one, which thrives on proof.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s the first step of the birthday cake.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, the next step is action, which just means just what I said.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because you have faith, you see?
2
SPEAKER_00
So the next one is action.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then if you have enough faith to take an action, there s no guarantees of anything at all.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you have that faith, then you become confident.
2
SPEAKER_00
Most philosophies and people say the opposite.
2
SPEAKER_00
They want to have faith.
2
SPEAKER_00
They only want to take action when they already have experienced a series of positive steps.
2
SPEAKER_00
But life doesn t work like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the choice of having faith then allows you to act, which means it allows you to do things that ordinarily you wouldn t do, you wouldn t want to do.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you become a confident person.
2
SPEAKER_01
Isn t this sort of the tool of forward motion too, that if you have faith that there s a beneficent higher force universe and there s something that s trying to come through you, that if you start to move forward, things will start to happen?
2
100%.
2
SPEAKER_00
We just call it the law of forward motion.
2
SPEAKER_00
See, the whole universe is moving all the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if you re just neutral, you re already losing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just to say even with the thing requires time and time.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a counter birthday cake.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, this other birthday cake, the foundation is not faith.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s doubt.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I doubt everything until it s proven to me.
2
SPEAKER_00
And proof is the abandoned, worthless stepchild of someone demanding proof, believing nothing until there s proof.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was incapable of really looking at the world differently.
2
SPEAKER_00
So for most people, it s a fight between these two worlds.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, what happened, and I think it happened about 2020, but it was near the pandemic.
2
SPEAKER_00
The rules changed.
2
SPEAKER_00
What s the difference between before and after?
2
SPEAKER_00
By the way, that difference is when we made the documentary.
2
SPEAKER_00
If we would have made that documentary 10 years ago, we would have come to see it.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it touched some kind of nerve.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it touched the nerve because it was a very convincing way, not to get you to have space to be open to it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And from there, you get the idea that two human beings, any two, can force a bond between them.
2
SPEAKER_00
And once you have a bond, then anything becomes possible.
2
SPEAKER_00
Human beings do have superpowers.
2
SPEAKER_00
Only if they use those powers in a collective setting is the best way of saying it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because I believe women are much more capable of making that leap.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not saying, you know, men can t, they can t do it.
2
SPEAKER_00
To go back to universe one, which is very competitive, it s very materialistic, women are cynical and skeptical about materialism.
2
SPEAKER_00
But at the end of the day,
2
SPEAKER_00
know on some level that they have something that the males don t have, which is they have direct experience of the most powerful force in the universe, the power that can create life.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, some of the stuff they do now to raise the level of opportunity for them is good.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s the external part.
2
SPEAKER_00
The internal part is to go all the way back to the beginning of whatever this is.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s to act as if they have faith in this creative process, because if they don t, you re gonna be a blip on the screen.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting to think, just being a woman and thinking about the creative process too, that there s some inherent understanding that a creative system is ternary.
2
SPEAKER_01
Also, just thinking about the tools and that context that there are these two forces that come together so a third can emerge.
2
SPEAKER_01
Whereas I don t think men, they re just a single force.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so maybe that s why it s so accessible.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I get that we live in a cynical, secular, highly materialistic culture.
2
SPEAKER_01
But as someone who works with creatives, maybe not exclusively, but many creatives,
2
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting that that idea of higher forces would be difficult just because anyone who I think has been in flow or been in a state of high inspiration has to recognize that something else wants to come through them.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is that not a felt experience for most of the people you see?
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, I would say for half of them it s a fairly common experience.
2
SPEAKER_00
For the other half, they want it, they like having it, but their habits aren t good enough.
2
SPEAKER_00
Women also, what I find is they have a natural respect for this whole thing that men don t really have.
2
SPEAKER_00
A male mostly, not 100%, but mostly wants dominance.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s all me, me, me, me, me.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s about dominance.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, women don t view that sort of power as really so great.
2
SPEAKER_00
See this triangle?
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a picture of a dynamic.
2
SPEAKER_00
In chemistry, there s a symbol for change.
2
SPEAKER_00
The lower left of that triangle is one point of view about anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the lower right side is the opposing point of view.
2
SPEAKER_00
Evolution and also survival requires us to somehow put the two together.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you can t just say, well, be compromising, be nice.
2
SPEAKER_00
You have to actually participate in this.
2
SPEAKER_00
And when you participate, you end up up here.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
You see?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, on top of the map, on top of the triangle.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So this is the way the universe moves.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is the way it creates.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s even a tool for that.
2
SPEAKER_00
You want me to teach you the tool?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, please.
2
SPEAKER_00
What would you say is a troublesome habit that you have?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I would say I have a self-soothing habit to do data entry, like compulsive tracking, like a self-soothing waste of time.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can spend hours just making lists.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not a good use of my time.
2
SPEAKER_00
I agree with you because I do the same thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s probably a different subject matter.
2
SPEAKER_00
So this school can
3
SPEAKER_01
So close your eyes and see yourself and feel yourself in that position where you re addicted, you re compulsive, you have to have it, you re attached.
3
SPEAKER_01
And try to make the feeling of it as extreme as you possibly can.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now erase that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now I want you to create the opposite feeling, even if you don t feel it very much, of complete letting go of anything and everything that s
3
SPEAKER_01
Not a fishing person.
3
SPEAKER_01
And just let that part of you expand.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, stop.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now we re going to do the same thing again, but I want you to just go from point one to point two, you know, back and forth.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now I m going to tell you to do something.
3
SPEAKER_01
Don t do anything until you hear my voice.
3
SPEAKER_01
But once you hear my voice, I want you to do what I ask you to do as immediately as possible, okay?
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, now.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that was good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Open.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you feel anything?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s very somatic for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I can feel sort of the anxious attachment in my chest and then the release into space.
3
SPEAKER_00
I can, it s very much in my body.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s, that s called category three.
3
SPEAKER_01
And usually let s say category one is usually something angry and category two,
3
SPEAKER_01
is usually something passive.
3
SPEAKER_01
But you can cut the pie in any way you want to.
3
SPEAKER_01
The point is, you need a way to weave those two extremes.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that you can t do by thinking.
3
SPEAKER_01
Complete waste of time.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you re a meditator, it ll help you a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_01
But what you need to do is when you find yourself looking for this purpose of today, you know, what came up, when you find yourself in a position
3
SPEAKER_01
where you re too far into one state or the other state.
3
SPEAKER_01
You want to use categories to be as fast as you possibly can.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you re combining two things that are opposites.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know what you get when you do that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Flexibility or expansion?
3
SPEAKER_00
Relief?
3
SPEAKER_01
Relief is good.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s probably the most.
3
SPEAKER_01
But what you re actually feeling is flow.
3
SPEAKER_01
And flow is the fourth in the universe that is two opposites.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of other tools that
3
SPEAKER_01
are similar.
3
SPEAKER_01
But at the beginning, it s just good to do something that people can feel.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, I would say like there s two centers of wisdom.
3
SPEAKER_01
One is here in the third eye.
3
SPEAKER_01
And most of what you get from the third eye area is worthless.
3
SPEAKER_01
Not everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
Mostly everything.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m curious to know why the third eye, what you get in the third eye, you think is worthless.
3
SPEAKER_01
The third eye is the center of intellect, logic, concise boundaries.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, there s a clarity to it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s very good to give a sign.
3
SPEAKER_01
But for important human decisions, it s worthless.
3
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t help.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why doesn t it help?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because nobody, when they have to make a decision, ever has enough information.
3
SPEAKER_01
This doesn t work like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It would be nice if you did.
3
SPEAKER_01
If I said, well, we have a new job.
3
SPEAKER_01
Would you like to make $400,000 or $400 million?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s not a decision.
3
SPEAKER_01
Just to show you how the circle part works, there s a cycle.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s called the instinct cycle.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I hope you don t mind these pictures.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I love them.
3
SPEAKER_00
You see the circle on the... The circle with the four numbers around it?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s called the instinct cycle.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the way it works is the point number is lower left.
3
SPEAKER_01
is basically you re using your instinct.
3
SPEAKER_01
I want to buy this stuff, I want to send my child to some kind of a vacation, or I don t want to be friends.
3
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t matter if it s pizzas or tomatoes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Your instinct, your intuition is telling you to do this.
3
SPEAKER_01
And again, it s the same thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
If it s instinct, there is no proof, there s no bottom line to it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And again, that s because it s an uncertain universe.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s station one.
3
SPEAKER_01
Station number two is decision.
3
SPEAKER_01
I know what I feel, so I m going to let myself be guided by that, even if I don t feel particularly confident.
3
SPEAKER_01
Number three, which is action.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now people say to me, why do you need that?
3
SPEAKER_01
You already decided to do it, to take the action.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why do you have to have action twice?
3
SPEAKER_01
And the answer is very simple.
3
SPEAKER_01
People tell themselves a million things they re going to do, but they don t do them.
3
SPEAKER_01
So this whole undertaking sucks unless you take it to its completion.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, its completion is station four.
3
SPEAKER_01
The key note there is taking the consequences.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not being right.
3
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t matter.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to be able to take the consequences and be willing to take the consequences of your decision making or of your commitments over and over.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, what happens if you do that, you might think, well,
3
SPEAKER_01
Somebody else seems to have better luck than I have or whatever it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
That doesn t matter because the reason it s called a cycle is it has to be repeated over and over and over.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the person who wins is not the person who s right the most times.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s the person who works the cycle the most times, which is totally different.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s just another version of the birthday cake.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I can see how it becomes a spiral and has forward motion as you re taking action at a higher and higher part of that triangle or mountain.
3
SPEAKER_00
So thank you for your book.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s beautiful.
3
SPEAKER_00
And thank you for all your work.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s an incredible contribution to the world of psychotherapy,
3
SPEAKER_00
to imagine a more active state because people need, as you talk about extensively, they need tools.
3
SPEAKER_00
They need to be able to move and not just rehash.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you know, when I first started in this very first year, I thought the whole thing was arranged so people wouldn t change.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was arranged specifically so you couldn t change.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s so easy to do that because
3
SPEAKER_01
If a patient comes to you with a diarrhea need, all you have to do is nothing and just sit there and you ve destroyed the person.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s not therapy, that s life.
3
SPEAKER_00
So as Phil mentioned, his newest book, Lessons for Living, is a series of essays.
3
SPEAKER_00
Many of these essays he wrote decades ago and then revised, as he says, only ever so slightly, which gives you a sense of how, I don t want to say classic, because I think that these tools are essentially, are quite dynamic, but that they continue to evolve and move as we change across time.
3
SPEAKER_00
Here s one moment from the book.
3
SPEAKER_00
Phil writes, the great paradox is that it is not winning but losing that reconnects us to higher forces.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is so antithetical to how we see the world that at first it seems insane.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if you focus not on what is loss, but on the state that loss puts you in, it makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
In an attached state, you ve made the thing you re obsessed with into your ultimate reality.
3
SPEAKER_00
Regardless of what that thing is, your attachment to it puts you into a world where there s nothing higher than a thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Attachment traps you in this world without higher forces.
3
SPEAKER_00
Only if you lose the thing are you freed from this empty world.
3
SPEAKER_00
Only then can you enter an alive world made of spiritual forces, not objects.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the secret of loss.
3
SPEAKER_00
It allows you to gain a whole world.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we didn t get a chance to get into it, but what I hear in Phil s work and when I ve engaged with the tools,
3
SPEAKER_00
It is this, I kept talking about a ternary system, meaning three parts rather than a two-part binary of good versus bad or right versus wrong, which is how our reality is often structured and keeps us stuck between two poles.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think the tools are so special and this idea of higher forces and Pardax, which is effectively the shadow or the unconscious, which is a pace setter to our progress and
3
SPEAKER_00
in many ways, slowing us down, I think, so that we can metabolize what wants to come through us.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what he s articulating are really tactical ways to navigate a system so that you don t get stuck in, is this right or is this wrong?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or who is right and who is wrong?
3
SPEAKER_00
Who s the victim?
3
SPEAKER_00
Who s the villain?
3
SPEAKER_00
And all of these scenarios.
3
SPEAKER_00
But instead, to quote Ken Wilber, are looking to transcend and include
3
SPEAKER_00
In the tools, there s this...
4
SPEAKER_00
third force, this ternary system of reconciliation so that you are meeting the friction and that friction is what compels you forward.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think it s quite beautiful and metaphysical and I hope for many more books from Phil.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you liked today s episode, please rate and review and tell a friend.
4
SPEAKER_00
You can find show notes and full transcripts of the episodes at EliseLoonan.com.
4
SPEAKER_00
While there, please sign up for my sub stack.
4
SPEAKER_00
I send a short note every Wednesday about topics that are aligned with this show and a deeper dive most Sundays.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or follow me on Instagram at EliseLoonan.
4
SPEAKER_00
And finally, if you haven t already, please consider picking up a copy of my New York Times bestselling book, On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good, available wherever you get your books.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s an exploration of how women have been conditioned for goodness, men for power, and all the ways we ve been programmed to police ourselves and each other according to these cultural ideas of what it is to be a good woman.
4
SPEAKER_00
I d also like to give a huge thank you to my sponsors who make this show possible.
4
SPEAKER_00
Please support them the way they support this podcast.
4
SPEAKER_00
This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studio.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you enjoyed this episode, please listen, rate, review, and follow Pulling the Thread.
4
SPEAKER_00
Available now for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.
4
SPEAKER_00
I want to give a shout out to Phil Svitek, Lauren Legrasso, Mary-Kate McDonough, Allie Brockman, and the entire Kden s 13 team for producing these episodes, and to Valero Deval for my key art.
4
SPEAKER_00
Take care of yourselves.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ll see you next time.