Phil Stutz & Elise Loehnen Share Tools For Inner Well-being, How To Embrace Pain, Uncertainty & Constant Work As Divine Invitations, & Why Everything You’re Avoiding Will Transform Your Life

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39:36What struck me in the book is the fact that you define creativity so broadly. I mean, we think of creativity as like, oh, this is what you need to do to like, you know, make art or write a book or paint a painting. But you define it as like this essence within us that is fundamental to, you know, pursuing a life of meaning and purpose. And it's part X that gets in the way and quashes that. But, you know, creativity comes alive when we, you know, kind of indulge our life force and play with these higher forces. And it is creativity, you know, not in that, like, restricted definition, but in this broad definition that is what, you know, kind of what being alive is all about.

40:20Yes. It's almost the definition of it. Well, and you have a line where essentially you're like, God doesn't care what you create. It is ultimately, God's not interested in whether or not you write a bestseller. God is interested in you engaging in life. Mm-hmm. Every minute. Yeah. Tell them the biphasic fantasy, Phil. Oh, yeah. People love terms like that, too. I love it. This doesn't sound like a term you would do. Is that your idea, at least? No. Biphasic? Biphasic fantasy. All right, since you're breaking my balls, I will tell you what that means. The ego wants to become God, right? Control everything.

41:08But the only way he can do that is by lining up the bad guys on the other side of the field and defeat them. But if there's no bad guys, there's nobody for you to defeat, and you start to get the sinking feeling, oh, I didn't do it myself. I did it with help, and I'm starting to sink back into that cosmic glue or something. but it's a fraud. So the reason it's a biphasic fantasy is you can see it in people who seem to have the need to get thrust down into almost death. And some people, it is death. And the only way to get out of it is to go back to the first state. But if you do that, you may feel better, but simultaneously, you need an adversary to prove that you are God.

42:11And unfortunately for you, that never lasts. It can't last. And within the biphasic fantasy, there's a need, right, to keep that fantasy going, to continue to create adversaries that you are going to vanquish and beat. Because you need them. If you slay them all, then your whole frame is like, you know, thrown out the window, right? that would create its own existential crisis. Like you can no longer be the victim. You need those adversaries. So once you've slain them all, then you have to create new ones for yourself in this quest to become God. Yeah, and that's where you see public, self-destructive, unexplainable activities of whatever.

42:55You see in the path as you can see the most clearly. So that's called a biphasic fantasy. And it's the secret of the ebbs and flows of the up and down of human events. Would you say too that in the corporate world or in a relationship, it's that need to self-sabotage, blow things up, create chaos so that you can then solve the problem? Yes. Oh, that's interesting. That keeps you in universe one. Why does the successful person implode their life? Yeah. I bet you don't see any people like that, Phil. Here in Hollywood. Well, I think you say like all these successful people, there's like a 50, 50 % chance, you know, 50, 50 chance that they're gonna, you know, kind of sabotage their life.

43:44Blow up their whole career. That's been fine, but okay. Yeah, so you would, what is it 70, like in most cases, like they're sort of purposely stepping on landmines, even when, you know, life looks good. Yeah, but they don't think of it as life looks good. They think of it as I want more and more and more, and I want to go to the next battleground, fight the next army, and then supposedly I can get more of this stuff, which will start to erode the moment the last cycle is finished. Sure, but where does the self-sabotage part come in to that? Oh, there's two phases. One is the alienation phase, which that's where you need something fucked up always to be affecting you.

44:33And then there's the conquest phase, which is you can't have a conquest phase unless you have an alienation phase first. And why does that even matter? The reason it matters is it all goes back to human beings functioning as a group. And that would include functioning as a group in a marriage, like a small friend, or somebody totally unqualified becomes the president of some country. I just picked that out of thin air. See, and shrinks don't understand this. There's always two things going on at once. One level of this is called contextual level. It means like if I have somebody in a marriage and they're so angry at each other that they're not even talking to each other very much.

45:34Let's say you're the patient. I say your job is to create a context, even if you don't believe what you're saying. Even that doesn't matter. And the concourse is I'm always aware of the other person, and I'm always trying to support their view of the world, even though in a specific sense you may want to smack them in the head, and it's unbearable. So you have to do both. You have to say, hey, you're not available to me. You're not present to me. You're not helping me. You say this of your partner. But at the same time, you have to take action steps to give the person what they want. People don't believe they can do things at once.

46:17And they can, but part of the reason wants them to know that. So there's alienation and conquest. You need both of these things. You share an example in like a marriage dynamic, but I'm imagining, you know, the powerful, successful person. Is the alienation piece like the motivation of feeling like you're not, part of, or you're like, you know, I'm not being accepted by this group, I feel alienated. And so I'm motivated to like, you know, for conquest so that I can be part of the in-group. And then when you succeed, you then have to still feel like you're alienated from like, I guess the next level of that, right?

47:01And it creates this cycle. So those two things have to go together. Yes, that's correct. And it might sound extreme, but that's behind most of human psychology, is that because people need the context. I mean, the way you explained it, it doesn't matter whether it's the chicken or the egg. Neither person will allow the thing. Oh, I was hoping you were going to do this. He's going to draw. Oh, sorry. Well, maybe while he's drawing, you can share at least how you got involved with this project and like what your history and relationship is with Phil. Yeah. So Phil won't remember this, but I met Phil probably 10 years ago.

47:51Maybe it was even longer. He did an onstage session at an Ingoop Health. I think it was the very first Ingoop Health that we ever did. And it was stunning, I have to say. And I knew of the tools. I knew of the work. You worked with someone live. And I don't even remember the specifics, but I'll never forget watching. I mean, there's something so compelling about watching live therapy when it's done masterfully. And then I interviewed Phil for, similar to you, Lessons for Living. And he was drawing tools for me and sharing concepts that I had never heard of that weren't in the tools. I mean, more practically, we share an agent.

48:31but I was like, I'd love to work with Phil on something. And we were hired to write a workbook. But it's very of a piece with your other writing in the sense that what Phil is presenting is a feminine frame on like how to think about like, you know, emotions and what's important and painful. Well, now you cut right to it. I think what's so compelling to me personally, I love a framework. I wanna understand how all of these things fit, how you create a wide enough context to understand human behavior and culture and sociology. And Phil does that, I think, in a very masculine way and in a way that appeals to men that is somewhat of a counter to the way that I see the world, which is more feminine and more intuitive.

49:22And so working with him, I don't know, it felt, well, you would say you can't create anything alone. And you don't really, as much as everything comes out of your mind, you collaborate on everything. You're forced to collaborate on everything. And so, I don't know, it felt like an interesting pairing. And I love Carl Jung. And he says Carl Jung is too Teutonic and he doesn't like... No, I don't say he's too Teutonic. I say he's lazy. Oh, he's lazy. Sorry. Apologies. You heard it here. One of the most prolific, but he's a lazy sack of shit, guys. But you love, obviously, Rudolf Steiner, as you mentioned.

50:03But for me, it's just added, I feel like I'm good at the subtleties and the shadow, and you are so clear, actually, in the way that you perceive the world, that it's like catnip to me, personally. Well, I think where Phil really excels is, you know, taking all these very ephemeral concepts and like drilling them down, you know, into not just practical tools, but like languaging that allows you to kind of like in our limited minds, you know, kind of conceptualize what is fundamentally, you know, so difficult to understand. And I think maybe that's the masculine piece because on the surface, it's like, okay, you know, men are in their heads and women are in their hearts.

50:46And like, we've all heard that a million times before, right? I think there's a frustration with therapy. Like Jonah says it beautifully in the documentary. He's like, you know, look, you pay this therapist to give you advice and all they do is listen. And then you go to your idiot friends and want them to listen and they give you unsolicited advice. Like the whole fucking thing is upside down, right? and you've created a situation in which you are providing like actionable takeaways, which I think appeals to the masculine kind of sensibility of like, just tell me what to do. Like, I wanna fix this.

51:21I don't wanna spend 10 years talking about my bullshit and be in the same place. And how do you do that while also embracing that this requires kind of like a feminine heart opening approach that the masculine resists? Yeah, no, and it's true. That's so incredibly well put. And it's so compelling to me how I understand it. But for example, my husband loves Phil and I can't get my husband to go to therapy, period. But he, for whatever reason, you are a bridge for a lot of people into a world that's more familiar to me and probably more familiar to Julie. Yeah, what's interesting about Julie is that she's pretty therapy resistant.

52:08She's this, you know, she's very devoted to her spiritual practices, but kind of resistant to traditional modalities of therapy. And like Phil is like the only guy, she like loves Phil and she has a masculine kind of edge to her as well. But, you know, she couldn't, you know, she couldn't have been more enthusiastic to go see Phil. So Phil's playing both sides of the coin. Yeah, look at you. I'll take this as a tremendous compliment. Yeah, you should. You should. Well, I think the people who, and there are many who love you, are often quite admirable people too. Not all of them. Not all. Sorry.

52:48Name names. I was just about to say that. What did you draw? What did you draw there? I don't know what this is. What do you got? This is a dissection of the life force. Oops. I'll just put it out there because I'm getting lazy. so lazy, Phil. So this is what it looks like, those curlicue things. So what do you got here? You got a little curlicue line. On the far right, it says LF. This reminds you, it's the life force. The life force presents itself to you as if it just died. Now you might say, well, are you crazy? But no, because you just died, but we should be the down part of the circle. If I got this right, basically something happens in your life that shakes you up and you feel like you're dying and you think that's your life force that's dying, but actually this is the moment where your life force might be awakened.

53:48Yeah, that's correct. The life force has two phases to it. So the first phase is death or some kind of extreme failure or whatever. So that's when the curve goes down. And then it goes back up again. And that's the rebirth. So you have death and rebirth. But you don't have death without rebirth, not because you have such a strong will or you're so committed to therapy. The reason you can't have one without the other is because the cycling part, the death and rebirth, is built into the system. So, and that's where faith comes in. Let me give you that thing. It's also, I mean, it keeps, it continues to swirl, right?

54:44So, you can't have rebirth without death. You can't have death without rebirth, but it's not a one-time affair. No, not only isn't it a one-time affair, it doesn't even exist without it. Okay, so this one, the first thing I'm going to enjoy is the downward part of the cycle. So that's over here. And then it's going to start to come up again, which is the rebirth. So I'll put rebirth. I don't want to hear any shit if this didn't come out too good.

55:23I'm not gonna give you any shit. I'm gonna make you sign these things. A lot of shit. I want like the - She's keeping me the chocolate. Authentic artwork. Okay, so you have rebirth on these little curved parts of the spiral. Yeah, the downward part is death. The downward part's the death and then it comes around for the rebirth. Yeah. Right. And that's built in, it never stops. The need for constant work, right? Like the idea like, oh, I had my death, I've been reborn, that's in the past and now happily ever after, right? That's sort of the more kind of like traditional narrative. Yeah, that's what the devil is telling you.

56:03You know, stick with me and I'll teach you a way to avoid this altogether. And the resistance that like, this is just an ongoing process that's constantly looping is the source of our suffering. Yeah. Well, we live in a culture that wants to insist that growth is upwards and to the right. And essentially your model of the life force and long linear growth is that you are going to get cold. We write about it as sort of plant trauma. The plant persists and keeps growing, but it gets, it's going to suffer these curlicues as its potential is revealed. The death and rebirth is part of the healthy, it's not even part of a healthy cycle.

56:47It is built into the, it is a cycle. But we also misdefine growth. Like we think growth means, you know, the accumulation of material possessions and success and power and money and prestige and all of that, right? Like we're caught on that hedonic treadmill and, you know, then become disappointed when we feel our lives lack meaning and then we end up in Phil's office. Right, in the realm of illusion, which I think is one of the most compelling concepts, which is this idea that you accrue enough power and money and you're immune from life, right? Yes. That you're good. Here's the nature of the realm of illusion.

57:27I mean, we can be sitting here talking and we could be either in the realm of illusion or not. That's our choice. Okay. It was a lucky day. All right. There you go. More drawings. Needs to be a triptych. Let's not go crazy here. Just for a perfect life. So it's a sort of a line that denotes the ground, a little stick figure, and a dotted line to a square that represents the perfect life. Yes. Like a thought bubble. Yeah, that's probably pretty good. So we don't want that for obvious reasons. We don't want what? We don't want to believe in Santa Claus. We don't want to believe that that's even possible.

58:20A perfect life. Yeah, a perfect life. Usually it's like a perfect spouse or something. But it doesn't matter what the detail is. It only matters that whatever projection, whatever image you have is wrong. In a sense, it doesn't even exist. It's a representative of nothing. But you would say it doesn't even matter. All that matters is that you're cultivating your life force and, you know, in this process of like constant creation. Yeah, now look at the two together and tell me how would they fit. They don't really fit at all. Like the, you know, the curlicue lines of like rebirth and death, this is like saying, you know, it's about the journey, not the destination.

59:09It's just, it's a process, right? Whereas this perfect life is about going somewhere with a destination. Yeah. Static or snapshot. Okay. Give me that thing back here. Which one? All right. See, one says you can attain a state of perfection, which you can't. But the other one says, yes, you can't reach a state of perfection, but in a longitudinal way you can. The way we would have something to say it, it says it is the world is perfect because it's imperfect. So each one of those turds is an effort that's imperfect. As long as you can stay in that line knowing you're just piling up turrets, you're safe.

1:00:07And what you're safe from is from the devil or from part X. So it's paramount, pardon the expression. To see the events in your life, regardless of what they are, is all of them are failures. All of them are failures or? They have a turd in them. Mm-hmm. Is that a way of saying basically, you know, life unfolds exactly how it's meant to and everything, you know, that you experience is here for your growth and evolution. And it's a perspective frame as much as anything else. Like it is, the imperfections are its perfection, right? Yeah, yes, 100%. That's what he was saying, It's just the world is perfect because it's imperfect.

1:01:00There's more to this, but the point of the whole book, which, no offense to you, but Random House had a little trouble grasping this. The whole point of this is to give human beings the power to create something out of nothing. and a million different ways that Part X will try to convince you that that's impossible. And the ego says, don't worry about it because I got a better solution. You don't really have to ride these cycles and accept the inevitable failure or at least imperfection of the invention. You don't have to do that. But you got to pay. And in the old days, you just said the devil has your soul.

1:01:56But now it's actually worse. How so? Because some super rich billionaire and or. The industrial fill in the blank complex, the industrial defense complex, the industrial pharmaceutical complex, the industrial political complex, banking. Yeah. Right. All of it. These giant institutions. That's right. So institutional certainty, maybe for a while, more or less from 1920 to maybe 10 years ago, now all the institutions have broken down. So even the specious fake certainty that you can get from it, because the corruption is now out in the air. Right. This is our great opportunity. Yes. Because we're being confronted with uncertainty on a level that is sort of unprecedented in our lives.

1:02:49And what are we gonna do with that? Are we gonna wring our hands and be upset? There's lots of things that we can do, but can we look at it as an opportunity for our own personal growth and evolution? Excellent. Yeah, I like how you did that. Do that again. I feel very validated.

1:03:12Thank you.

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1:06:45Here's the thing, Phil. This is like a deeply spiritual, like sort of Tao Te Ching, like manual for life that's sort of costumed or kind of presented in this package of like, you know, psychological tools for better living. Like it's a Trojan horse on some level. And so I wanna know, like last time you were here, I was like, how do you have this x-ray vision? Is this a gift you've always had, your ability to like see right through people and get right to the heart of the matter? Like you have this uncanny, like preternatural ability to do that. But on some level, like there is a enlightened perspective on the human condition.

1:07:26And I wanna know if you had like a spiritual epiphany or some kind of occurrence, did you come out of the womb just wired with that level of sensitivity? How did you develop this expansive view? I developed them, probably not for the best reasons. I was always afraid of not having enough money. So therefore, I would both work really hard on each patient to help them because then they keep coming back. And also, I knew that I could feel myself developing these skills, for a better word. So, and because I needed the money, I kept working harder and harder. Finally, I reached the point where I think I was seeing like 70 people a week.

1:08:13Now, now I wouldn't even try to do seven a week. But I needed it. I thought I'd die. That's the real answer. And so that was a death moment for you. Yes. So what was the epiphany that grew out of that, like the rebirthing process from that? Well, when my brother died, the family fell apart.

1:08:44And this was not stated, but the responsibilities for holding the things together was me. And my father wanted me to go to medical school. This is what this fuck said. I loved him. He's a nice guy. He says, my friend fell down in an elevator shaft, the Metropolitan Hospital. Wow. And he lived. So we go there the next night. He's in the ICU. And whatever. He was conscious. So they were walking out of this hospital. And we're about 50 feet past the door of the hospital. And he says, he turns me around. He says, look in there. and what you see is the whole fucking city hospital. And he says to me, that's the only profession.

1:09:35And it was the most fucked up thing anyone, because he said it doesn't really matter what else you do in life. I'm telling you that's the only profession, which you could just add as an addendum, so don't even consider taking one of these inferior professions. So that held me back. But it wasn't, again, all these things are two-headed monsters. So it got me into this. So it wasn't that bad. And then the same thing happened with medical school. You know, at that time, like 1971, psychiatry was considered a loser. It was like a bucket of shit for losers. There was no, yeah. So I said, I don't want to do this.

1:10:26I was very good with my hands. To have small hands, I was very dexterous. And for a minute, I thought, okay, maybe I should do this. My father would be thrilled. Plus, he had a, he just had a child die, and my father and mother were without any kind of spiritual feeling, period. So for a minute, I said, maybe I should do this. I know he would love it. Surgery? Surgery. Yeah. Because of your fingers. And yeah, I got it. But luckily this voice sat on my shoulder and said, you'll have to do what you enjoy. And I remember the exact moment I had this. So I guess I have had an opinion. And I did, even though I was afraid of what everybody would think.

1:11:12The fucking dean of medicine there, he couldn't believe that I wasn't going to become, you know, some kind of big shot in the hierarchy. It's interesting. You don't have that at all, really. What do you mean? You're very competitive, but you don't, you're not that identified with it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that's true. Have you had a spiritual awakening? I've had a couple. Yeah, sure. You know, I've had to have my life shaken up a few times, you know, for sure. And I guess I find myself wanting to like lay on top of, you know, the life of Phil Stutz, like this sort of Joseph Campbell hero's journey.

1:12:02Like here's where he, you know, had his awakening and here's what happened as a result of it. You know what I mean? I want a very clean, you know, kind of narrative to the whole thing. And like, you keep coming back at me with this like, you know, hot mess, you know, and it's like, oh, but that's actually the profound answer because that's what life is. Our brains, my brain wants to be reductive, you know, and point to one thing as being the reason. And you're right on the razor's edge, by the way. You could fall off on either side. Yeah, I do that every day. Seriously? It depends on how well I slept.

1:12:45and by that you mean of falling into the sort of reductive rational like the universe one versus universe two yeah like i asked you earlier but maybe like define that difference because we didn't actually get an answer yeah yeah yeah universe one defines value mathematically nothing and i think that's the strength nothing that you can't um understand mathematically really is irrelevant. So, or if you want to say more simply, Universe 1 can only speak through mathematics. When you think about it, it's like dried up. The material world. Yeah. And the rules that we've created about how it works. Money.

1:13:36Yeah. Success. So that's Universe 1. and what it creates is not even purposefully, it creates a tremendous amount of conflict because once you can measure something and define it clearly as far as who's the winner or whatever, once you have that, you have a war. Universe 2 is different. Universe 2 does not value anything with numbers. Numbers means nothing, which means what's in your bank account means nothing. It's like it's a belief system that doesn't include anything. See, we all want to think about that as if we can only solve these equations or algorithms, what the fuck. If we could only do that, we'd feel secure.

1:14:30Yeah, that's the antidote for our deep-seated discomfort with uncertainty. Correct. But you have this great line in the book about universe too, that I think kind of distills it down into what you're trying to say, which is if you wanna know who you really are, ask yourself what you would spend your time on, even if you knew it would never make you money. Yeah, that's true. And then subsequent to that, God only cares that you don't quit. So maybe elaborate on that, Or maybe Elise can share her perspective on that. Well, and I'm sure you can relate to this, Rich. I mean, I feel this way about so much of my work where, well, it's a balance, right?

1:15:14Like I wanna believe that everything I do, I do for free. And this is probably true of every creative that you treat, right? And there's a monetary value to the work that we do as well. And it's hard to not, I call it my more masculine mind. And I find myself getting sort of sucked into the vortex of numbers and rankings and financial stability. But universe two, when I'm most alive, is when I'm co-creating or creating on my own. And yes, I would do it all day. I mean, it's flow in some ways, right? Now, there's one state or one emotion that will protect you from getting drawn back into the mathematical world.

1:16:00Do you know what that is? No. It's rage, hatred. Say more. Because all these battles are fought right here. This is where I find my capacity to sense reality is here, which means most of it isn't in words. There's no answer to your question, but what you can, as you develop this, you become more sensitive, and you trust your instincts more. Nothing's close to 100%. If you think you need 100%, then you're just wasting time. And the funny thing is, I mean, you probably studied this. If you study theoretical physics and subatomic physics and all that shit, think about it. It's pure movement. Even if I said I know what that, whatever these particles are, even if I know what it is and I can identify it, it's going to move.

1:16:56Yeah, when you drill down to the very essence of it at the subatomic level, like, you know, you can't really definitively like say what's like matter or energy or the position of a subatomic particle is dependent upon the observer or not. Like all these sort of weird like quantum physics things that come into play that are kind of offensive to our desire for certainty that math is supposed to give us. So, and the problem with that is you can't possibly feel God with that set of variables. Sure, but isn't that, that's where God dwells. Yes, exactly right. You said to stay in universe two, I need rage and hatred?

1:17:44Yeah. But wait, can you? Yeah, I don't know. I didn't expect you to say that. Oh yeah, we got two, two fists on the table. Is this when you tell me I need to be more of an asshole? Well, you couldn't be more of an asshole. But yeah, no, seriously, yeah. Because what you want to do is you want to overcome this, which thinks it knows what it's perceiving, and you want to use this, and this is the instinct system, so to speak. And is the way to get your instinct system online? to tap into sort of like a holy fire anger. All right. Yes. All right, another drawing. Yeah, this is sort of contradicting everything I thought you would say, because I thought you would say to stay in universe too, you have to be creating from a place of like joy and abundance.

1:18:39And love. And love, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anger and rage. Yeah, I'll show you one. There's a cool cosmic rage, I don't know if you've seen it. Now, there's certain kind of rages that aren't good, They're not good. They don't do anything for you. But this one does a lot for you. And the reason is, this is called the I Am Space. Yes, it's not nice to scream and yell. And a lot of times it won't work. But it's the life force demanding its own existence. See, out here... Is this like you're screaming at Pardex? Yes. So you're creating space for yourself, and part X is going to fight you on this to the death.

1:19:30However, now that you know that, if it drives you to the death, all that's going to do is reactivate the rebirth. So it actually can't win. So we have a circle here in the middle, and inside of it you have written the I am space, is that correct? and then you have arrows pointing out of it. And then outside of it, this is the cosmic - Rage. The cosmic rage. And then surrounding that, I guess these are like incursion forces that are trying to like come into you. And so while they're trying to attack you, you need to resist and push back against it, right? Yeah, you can't do that by thinking. And that's the cosmic rage that you're talking about.

1:20:15So I interpret this as like just to, you know, create an example from my own life. Like, for example, this podcast, like this is something that I would do for free and did do for free for a long time out of like joy and creativity and just like the incredible experience of getting to meet people like yourself. Like it's just like the coolest thing, right? And then at some point it grows into a commercial, you know, enterprise and that's wonderful. And I get to not only support my family, but provide livelihoods for other people. but that comes with these pressures. And then when it becomes this material thing, then you're just, it immediately goes from universe two back to universe one.

1:21:01So the cosmic rage is to like push against that and protect like that spirit that birthed it in the first place. Because I'm sure with all these amazing, kind of patients that you've had over the years in Hollywood, you have these amazingly creative people who just from a place of childlike wonder, you know, like, just imagine fantastic things. And suddenly, you know, a waterfall of cash falls on top of them, right? And, you know, with that, the blossoming of the ego, and suddenly they're a big deal in Hollywood. And then what was beautiful about that gets eroded and supplanted by this, you know, material pursuit for like, how do I stay at the top?

1:21:41How come that guy is getting, you know, the next studio gig when I should get it? This is what you're talking about, right? That's what I'm talking about. And it's not limited to show business. It's now occurring worldwide. So the best of what makes us human gets co-opted and then kind of like corrupted. Correct. One of the most, I think, powerful ways that you describe Part X, too, is that Part X doesn't want to kill you. Part X wants to conscript you, enslave you. Tell me more about that. Just this idea that I think we perceive it as outside of us and we perceive it as something to be vanquished or it wants to vanquish us.

1:22:21And your point is, no, Part X ultimately wants to sort of dole you and conscript you into servicing its agenda in the world. Yeah. You can think of it like, it's okay with part X to give you all these bribes and suggestions, as long as you know that ultimately you get nothing. And nothing goes back to the creation of the universe. It seems to me that the part X, this darker side of ourselves is one in which we either deny or pretend doesn't exist or compartmentalize to Elise's point, right? Like we just, we shove it aside because we don't really wanna face the fact that we have dark thoughts and like, you know, we're not good people and all that kind of stuff, right?

1:23:19Or we so self-identify with it that we can't tell the difference between like our life force or our higher self and that part X. And they become like the same thing and override our operating system and like drive all of our decisions. Yeah, now there's something about the life force that I forgot to tell you. Do you wanna hear it? Of course, that's why you're here, buddy. Okay, I accept that responsibility. I was trying to get another fist on the table with that, but I didn't succeed. Go ahead. There you go. I feel better.

1:23:58Okay. The key of the life force is relationships, relating, connection. What do you want to call it? That's very offensive to the self-made man idea upon which America was founded. Fuck you. Okay. You can, you label it. but these are this is the model for remaining connected it doesn't depend on how well your life is doing the classic thing is a guy comes into my office and he'll say I don't know why I keep getting fired from these jobs my friend makes much more money than I will whatever the universe wants stuff is and he says if I only knew where I belonged in the universe, if I knew that, I could act on it.

1:24:53And if I could act on it, I wouldn't conduct my life like a piece of shit. But I'm not going to just arbitrarily do that. I have to be sure I'm doing the right thing. Only then will I become disciplined. And what I always tell these guys, and a lot of them, first thing I say is, fuck you, you're ungrateful. That's number one. Number two, we're talking about something that has general meaning, independent of anything except the fact that you're human. And there's three levels of asserting your humanity. You were telling the story about a typical patient who comes in and essentially wants you to tell them what their purpose in life is so that they can become more disciplined.

1:25:44Correct. so that they can get the stuff they want that other people are getting that's making them so mad. Yeah. Yeah, and I think you have to pick the right job, high school, whatever it is. If they get it right, then all of this will flow to them. If they don't get it right, they get nothing. That is complete bullshit. Right, it's transactional. Like, yeah, I got you, Phil. I'll do all this shit as long as I get all these things that I want that I'm still convinced are the things that my life is missing and will make me happy. Correct. So you've got this triangle here, this pyramid, and it's divided into three layers, sort of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

1:26:24At the bottom, it's relationship to the body. The middle is relationship to others. And then the top is relationship to self. Right. And it's more complicated than you think. But the point of it is not reaching it, but even the act of trying to form a relationship with yourself on each one of these layers starts. This is the blueprint for the universal connection, because this whole thing is about connection. In order to take advantage of the situation, so to speak, you have to reduce everything down to the lowest possible level, which is broken up by the three things. and then every time you're not sure what to do, you feel lost, you're unable to gain the confidence that you're in the right direction, don't do that.

1:27:31Stop. Just to work on this much smaller but much more accurate, I would say. But the point is, this is universal. That's the key thing you have to remember. It doesn't matter who you are, what you are, what you do. So it's not a guessing game. We used to say this or that or this. I mean, you could try it, and once in a zillion years it works. But this is a pure study you're making, especially the top one, your relationship to yourself. Now, would anybody like to hazard an idea about how do you, what would that entail? The relationship to yourself? Yeah. Well, this triangle, right, is this is your way of activating your life force.

1:28:17Yes. And when people come in to you, sometimes titans of industry and everything has collapsed around them, they want to sort of start even above the triangle, right? Yes. And understanding, like, what's my God-given purpose and I don't want to deal with any of this other pedantic bullshit. That's excellent. Yeah, because I said bullshit. it. And so your instruction to all of us, regardless, is you have to reactivate your life force by invoking your relationship with your body, which is your world, right? Like, get up and walk around the block. Yeah. I mean, isn't that the initial source of activation?

1:28:54You know, and I think people are fundamentally disconnected from themselves in so many ways, but it begins with like, well, what are you putting in it? You know, and if you're just eating garbage and not sleeping and, you know, overstimulated, then how are you going to actually feel yourself? How are you going to connect with that life force? Because there's so much interference going on. And so you got to do that before any of these other things can take place, right? Correct. And you have to keep doing it some months or weeks is going to help you, others who won't but the whole point is you you solidify that relationship through the constancy of your efforts one of my favorite concepts in the book actually is the plane of will which is this idea that's similar to relationship with your body or this whole life force which is that you make a commitment to yourself and you show up and you practice the piano at 10 a.m.

1:29:51every day and that there's like a pre-cognitive momentum that you're generating where you're strengthening that relationship sometimes to your body sometimes with other people and sometimes to yourself and that that action alone is primary momentum yeah in your life and you don't again there's no exoneration from pain and the need for constant work and uncertainty. You don't get to the point where you get to abandon your body. Correct. So once you start this, you have to keep it going for the rest of your life. Yeah. That's the good news and the bad news, right? You know, before we complete this, like, I'm curious, Elise, like, what was your experience working with Phil?

1:30:37And, you know, are you, like, different on the other side of collaborating on this book? Like, what did you take away that has been helpful in your own life? Well, it's been a total honor and quite hilarious at times, as you can imagine, but in very nonlinear in a way that actually is, I think, quite magic, considering the title of the book. And we just talked like this, probably 30 times, 40 times. And I just asked questions again and again. And similar, I think, to probably your experience with Phil or your experience with the content, it wasn't always what I thought it would be. And so that to me was also really moving in a way to be surprised that like the answer is cosmic rage and not love, for example.

1:31:29But at the end of it, what emerged wasn't, we didn't sit down and write this book from beginning to end at all. but we just sort of built it in layers over time. And I've never had that experience actually of creating something in that way. Usually it's very tactical, chapter by chapter, story by story. And instead it felt like it emerged out of, we created something out of nothing. Well, it had to. Otherwise it wouldn't be, you know, in organically, you know, Phil Stutz production, right? It would not be. Yeah, if you had conjured it in the frame of your brain, like it would have fallen short, right?

1:32:09So that's like its own like sort of meta story within the book, which is really cool. It was so, and honestly, the assignment was to create a workbook for the original tools, and this is nothing like that. It's not a departure from the tools, but it's sort of an extrapolation. Yeah. And I think, you know, while this conversation may have come across as like difficult to, you know, get your arms around or a little bit too like ephemeral, I promise you that it's filled with actionable, practical things that you can do. Cause that's really what you're all about, Phil. Like you're drilling it down and like, here's some things you can do that will actually immediately change your life.

1:32:51And that's part of why you're so revered. But I think fundamentally to kind of end this, it's a very beautiful and expansive book that is really about our relationship with faith and the extent to which we as a collective have kind of divorced ourselves from ancient practices that came naturally to us. And so it's sort of a call to action to like reclaim this part of what it is to be human. And there's a quote in the book that I wanna read that I think really kind of encapsulates the whole thesis of what you're trying to get to, which is the most important tool for contending with life is freely chosen faith.

1:33:35This faith is chosen for no other reason than your desire to have faith. To deal with reality, you must accept the fact that reality is unpredictable and that you must act anyway using only the faith that you've chosen to have. Who wrote that? I don't know. Maybe Elise wrote it. I don't remember who wrote it. That's it, right? That kind of says it, doesn't it? I think that's kind of a nice landing place for this. Is there anything final you wanna say before we - Yeah, I wanna thank everybody, including the crew. It's like a privilege to do it with people who have goodwill. That's the best I can say.

1:34:17And there's not that many of them. Thank you. I mean, it's a real gift, honestly, to be with you. And I feel honored to have been able to spend some time with you. And I think you're a magical creature and what you offer everybody is meaningful and real. And I just want you to feel acknowledged for that. And Elise, for you to collaborate with him and bring the best out of him and bring your sensibility and what you have to offer into this book. I think it's really, it is a gift for everybody. Thank you, Rich. Yeah. So thanks, buddy. Come back. Give me my co-host. You wanna come in every week? I was hoping you'd like me.

1:34:58Yeah, all right. He needs his own show. All right, thanks, you guys. Best of luck with the book. You can find the book everywhere. Elise, where do you want to direct people for people who are curious? About my world? Yeah, about your world and your books and your podcast. I have a podcast called Pulling the Thread and it's similar. We cover some similar ground, although you've been at it for so much longer. You're a Titan. And my book is called On Our Best Behavior, The Price Women Pay to Be Good. If you like Stutz World, there's probably something in that for you. Amazing. Thank you. Good luck.

1:35:37All right, you guys. I love you. Thank you. I love you, Phil. Peace.

1:35:52That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment.

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