Brandon: Welcome to this special version of the Leaders Way podcast, our special episode that we’ve entitled Within, which convenes conversations with writers and artists and healers and musicians all around spirituality and mental health and all that it takes to heal our world. And I’m really, really excited about this conversation with Elise Luenen, author, Yale graduate, podcast, podcaster extraordinaire, and author of a wonderful new book, a relatively new book called On Our Best Behavior.
And what’s been coming up for me lately is just the reality that you really don’t know anyone. I mean, you think you know someone, but you really don’t. You’re constantly evolving moment by moment. And what triggered this awareness for me is that I just dropped both of my daughters off at college upon recording this episode. So it’s late August and there’s been two road trips to bring Sophia, my oldest, who’s a senior, and Ellie, my sophomore in college, off to school. And it’s just been a profound time of reflection. As I look back in the ways in which they’ve evolved and changed over time, I mean, I remember times when one of them hated cheese and then they loved cheese and then they hated tomatoes, but then they loved tomatoes… It’s just like a superficial example, but these human beings that I’ve been entrusted with are changing so much. Or my partner Susan of almost 26 years now. What does it mean to know someone? And they are moment by moment changing.
And I think one of the most important things that we can do as human beings, as parents, as partners, as teachers, as learners, is to keep the flame of curiosity alive. That in some way to know something is to admit that you don’t know. There’s this phrase in Zen Shoshin that the Buddhist monk Shunru Suzuki taught. He was the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and very instrumental in my coming to Zen practice. And of course he said famously, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the experts, there are few.”
And so I’ve always tried to keep a kind of curiosity alive, even with the folks that I know really well, to be continually curious about who they’re becoming. And especially as we start the school year, I just have so much curiosity around who these new students are that we’ve been blessed with, who my children are becoming, who I’m becoming. And one of the things that my guest, Elise Loehnen, I think exemplifies is this extraordinary radical curiosity.
And she just embodies this in her wonderful podcast “Pulling the Thread,” where she’s interviewing some of the most brilliant spiritual luminaries on the planet, her writing, her book with Phil Stutz, True and False Magic, or her exploration of the seven deadly sins and the way they’ve been weaponized against women. That book is On Our Best Behavior.
And aside from being just such a powerful writer, a clear writer, such lucidity in her writing, I think what I most appreciate about Elise is her ferocious curiosity, to unlearn, to relearn, to not know, and to go through that cycle over and over with her guests, but also as she interrogates a culture which produces a kind of predictable exhaustion, especially for women. So let me just read you her bio, just in case you don’t know, Elise’s wonderful work. She’s the host, as I said, of the “Pulling the Thread” podcast. She’s the bestselling author known for her work on the book On Our Best Behavior, which delves into the societal norms and human behavior that often suppress women’s voices and bodies. Her writing is distinguished by its profound exploration of the intersection of culture, psychology and spirituality. She’s a noted creative leader, entrepreneur, well-respected for her contribution to wellness, holistic living. She brings a wealth of experience from her work in media, having previously served as chief content officer at Goop, where she played a pivotal role in shaping the editorial voice and content strategy there. Her work collaborating with Phil Stott’s on True and False Magic has been a gift to my life, to my family, to humanity. I just can’t say enough. I’m super thrilled that Elise was gracious enough to spend a few minutes with us within, from the leader’s way. Enjoy this conversation with Elise.
Welcome to Within, a contemplative segment within the leader’s way podcast that explores the convergence of mental health, art and spirituality through authentic conversations across wisdom traditions about personal and collective transformation. We welcome artists, musicians, spiritual teachers and healers to reflect on the sacred wisdom needed to heal the world’s deepest wounds. Within examines the inner path to wholeness, not through quick fixes or spiritual bypassing, but through courageous engagement with life’s profound challenges.
Elise Loehnen, we’re so excited that you’re here on Within, this special edition of the Leader’s Way podcast. Welcome back to Yale.
Elise: Thank you. I mean, we’ve already had a real romp down memory lane for me where I guess my memories are gone. But that’s okay.
B: I wish we could like scrunch some pizza through the interwebs. That’s really, if I were a good podcast host, I would have like delivered pizza to you.
E: Yeah, pizza. Is that Ethiopian restaurant still there?
B: Oh, it is still there.
E: Okay, I would appreciate that. Some of that spongy sourdough crepe. Can you do that?
B: Oh, I can do that. So, so you must come and give a talk, give a book talk at Atticus. You remember Atticus?
E: Atticus was my, essentially my cafeteria. I spent most—all– of my money that I made working at the psychology department at Atticus. And Naples.
B: And Naples, right? Which doesn’t exist, which means…
E: And Toads, if I’m honest.
B: And Toad’s –Oh my gosh. So some great luminaries came through Toads … Madonna. So about maybe 10 years ago or so, when the Rolling Stones were coming off of a hiatus and had decided to tour again, they decided that they needed to practice in front of a live audience. But they knew it would be mass hysteria if they announced it. So they set up and like an hour beforehand just made a little announcement, and they filled the club and the Rolling Stones played it. Toads Place in a hoot.
E: That is amazing. I was never there for that. I was there for like the Saturday night thong song, you know?
B: This is a first on the podcast.
E: Whatever that song was. Yeah.
B: The floor is still sticky. It’s like a fly trap in there. It’s as gross as ever, but as popular as ever.
E: Yeah. It was pretty fun.
B: So at least I’d love to read you some of you. The part of your book On Our Behavior, the Price Women Pay to Be Good, that was most intense for me as a guy, but also as a father to daughters, as a partner to my beloved who I’ve seen paying the price of what you’re describing here in this paragraph. And you write, “I was trying to be good. I had always been trying to be good. I ran myself ragged, cared dutifully for my family, friends, colleagues, punished my body so that it stayed a certain size, kept my temper in check. What would happen if I just stopped?”
Oh, and I wonder if you could tell me the story of what led you to those words. And even today, like how does it feel to hear those words echoed back to you?
E: Well, I’m still doing this work. Let me be clear. This is a lifetime of work to unwind that type of cultural programming. And I landed there. The book was a culmination of a lot of different attempts to figure things out in my own life. I consider myself to be a cultural therapist. I like to understand what’s happening around us and why we do what we do. And so on one level, the book started percolating in my mind after 2016 and that election.
And watching that election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and all politics aside, when I would have conversations with friends who would say, “Obviously, you know, Hillary’s going to win,” it was like, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t think that women will get on side with other women.”
And as I was even saying those things and stating what apparently I held, I was surprised to hear it. And yet I knew that it was in some level true, in part just from going around and talking to other women and at events, etc., and always hearing mostly about the way that they felt victimized by other women: friends, coworkers, bosses. A lot of women are carrying a lot of anger and hurt that’s been levied at them, not from men. Although I’m not letting men off the hook, particularly in this moment in time and in our patriarchy, but I think so often we’re instructed, “Look out there. It’s there. They’re the problem.” And sometimes the call is happening within the house.
So that was one big question that I was wrestling with was, “How am I internalizing patriarchy? What am I doing that’s encouraging the system or inspiring it in my own life?” So that was a big thing that I was wrestling with. And then simultaneously, I was coming to grips with what you read, which was that I felt this pressure to perform these roles, these personas, these ideas of what it is to be a good woman. And it was exhausting and killing me in some ways. That’s an overstatement. And yet I think a lot of women listening will understand. And let me tell you what a good woman is. A good woman is never tired. She needs no rest. A good woman doesn’t really have any wants. She subjugates what she wants to service other people’s needs. We love the selfless woman. We don’t really talk about selfless men, right? A good woman needs no praise or affirmation or attention. She’s happy to channel her work through other people or to stand behind other people in power. A good woman, as mentioned, constrains her appetite and her body. Her body is disciplined, a good body, small, et cetera. She would never be sort of unruly or out of control or a tax on the healthcare system. A good woman doesn’t talk about money. Money is for other people. There’s definitely not enough. And if she gets more, someone will get less. And it’s base and unspiritual and unseemly to talk about money. She’s focused on curtailing her spending and balancing that household budget, right?
Even as she’s responsible for keeping the economy afloat with her spending. A good woman is sexy, but not sexual, desirable, but not desiring. And a good woman is never mad about any of this. And as I looked at that list, I was like, this actually maps to the seven deadly sins, which I’m not a Catholic. I was raised in Montana by … my father’s culturally Jewish and my mom is a recovering Catholic. I didn’t know the sins. I didn’t learn them. And yet they were in me. And so that’s really how I arrived at, oh, this is a map; and women, and there’s a fascinating history, which I’m sure you know, and I’m sure probably listeners of this specific podcast might know too about how those sins came to be and how they were assigned to Mary Magdalene. They don’t appear in the Bible, but I realized I was like, oh, women are conditioned, are expected to perform goodness, whereas men are conditioned and expected to perform power. That’s why when men do terrible things, we don’t care, as long as we perceive them as powerful, but to be weak or feminine, not acceptable for a man. That’s a type of death. And for women to be called bad– toxic coworker, bad boss, unloving mother, selfish friend, whatever it is, that’s enough for a woman to be banished. Truly, you just watch women disappear, disappear themselves often.
B: Oh my gosh, thank you for this. You know, I want to tell you that my mother-in-law is reading the book. In fact, just finished. She’s 79. She’s like, her brain is exploding. Her heart is growing. It’s fantastic to watch. So shout out to Blanche. And she said, “Oh yeah, the seven deadly sins from the Bible.” It was amazing how this has entered the stream so much so that we think it’s sacred. And I wonder in those, as you moved from exhaustion to research and scholarship here, where were your first moves? I mean, what texts were you uncovering and what was that journey like? I mean, were you just blowing up in rage or was this sort of a relief? Like, oh, here’s the map. Here’s the line.
E: Yeah, it’s more the latter. And one of the things that I hear about the book that makes me laugh is that women will say, oh, this is so obvious as though that’s, you know, an affront. And I’m like, well, it’s super obvious, but it has been invisible. I’m the first person as far as I know to say, actually, here’s the system of patriarchal sort of control that we’ve all subscribed to unconsciously. And this is how we’re playing it out in our lives. And of course, it’s obvious, right? Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So in that way, the chapters of the book wrote themselves, like I just… there’s so much cultural proof and I have my own stories which are not particular, not exceptional. And that’s sort of the point. They’re not exceptional. They’re common. But where I really needed to start and where I spent a huge amount of time is on the beginning of the book. I wrote this brief history of the patriarchy, which as you know, it’s easier to write an academic book in many ways than to write something that’s fun and accessible about patriarchy, right? And I wanted, I knew I needed it to be bulletproof. And so I went deep, in part because as I started on this project, I would hear the word patriarchy. I would throw it around. My friends would throw it around. And then it’s, I had this revelation of like, what is it? Is it, you know, Mitch McConnell behind a … is he the, is he Oz? Like what, what is this? What gave it its shape? What’s its structure? Why are we perpetuating? How does it perpetuate itself? Is it how it’s always been, which is the way it was sold to me? Is it our destiny? Is it nature or is it culture? Because I think these things are conflated. Is culture defining our– driving our behavior or is our behavior more responsible than culture?
Those are questions that I knew I really needed to grapple with along with where did these, these ideas of goodness come from? Why are they associated with women specifically? Because my husband is not constraining his appetite or these things just don’t resonate. He has no problem with sloth. I can tell you that Brandon. So that was a big part of my work was proving this, making this the case for this to the reader.
B: You know, I’m seeing this right now. I mean, maybe you’ll go on the trip down memory lane, but like your first days here at Yale, it’s orientation and it’s beautiful. It’s wonderful. It’s rich, right? The banquet table of learning is like nearly infinitely long here at Yale. And the shadow side of course is that there’s just shame everywhere. Everyone is, you know, to use Brenè Brown’s phrase, hustling for their worth and trying to outdo one another and how brilliant and how wonderful and in these orientation days there can be this like, let me read you my resume and tell you how wonderful I am. And because I, you know, I’ve read your book and I was so touched by it and really trying to be aware of these systems, I’m seeing the way in which places like this or just our culture in culture in general are placing this extra burden when women have to show up in spaces, right?
And I’m just, we’re in first 48 hours of new student orientation and I just feel the tension and the burden and the anxiety and the exhaustion already. And I’m thinking, Oh my gosh, we haven’t even assigned, you know, a thousand pages to these poor people to read this week. So it’s … all that just to say it’s really reverberating and I’m seeing the work you’re doing in front of me and how important it is for you, for your voice here to translate a lot of what like our feminist theologians and culture critics are doing here at Yale. And I’ll just tell you, honestly, like often when I have them on the podcast, I love them, they’re brilliant. They’re not always adept at speaking language that ordinary people can digest and metabolize. And somehow you’ve managed to be that bridge where you’ve done some really serious intellectual work and research and yet it reads in a way that that’s accessible, that helps me to see, it helps my mother-in-law, 79, not a college graduate, instantly be able to connect those dots. Is that something you do naturally? Are you trying to write for the ordinary person or is this just kind of your gifts?
E: This is a rich question. And I think back to the beginning of my time at Yale at the end of the 90s and what I was really struck by at the time was, you know, we were, let’s be fair, mostly a bunch of dorks, right? And I grew up in Montana, but I went to a competitive East Coast boarding school. And so I had had years of academic virtue being revered quality and an expectation. And so that gave me a lot of space where I didn’t feel like I was defensive about being a nerd, right? But what I sensed coming to Yale was that you had a bunch of 18-year-olds who were looking for an opportunity to redefine and reinvent themselves. And so that was very palpable to me. This like, it felt more social. I’m sure some of it was, was an academic drive, but also this, like, I get to be the king of the dorks if I play my cards right. And so it felt to me like a lot of identity flexing and like, I’m this and I’m this and I like lots of labels, which won’t surprise anyone at this particular moment in culture. But to me at the time I was like, this is wild. I mean, we didn’t have the language even remotely that we have now, but I can only imagine how much that has accelerated.
And throughout my life, I have been somewhat of a insider/outsider and I have played in these pockets of culture and been part of scenes and yet not a joiner. I, you know, I write, I wrote a newsletter recently on my sub stack about never belonging to a club except for Costco, which is true. You know, I wasn’t in a secret society. Is that what they’re called? I don’t even remember what they’re called. I’m just not that person.
B: They’re called senior societies now.
E: Senior societies. I wasn’t in a senior society. I definitely wasn’t in the sorority. You know, like I just didn’t participate in that way. I pretend I prefer to observe. So all to say that everything that I’ve ever tried on has felt like a little bit of an uneasy fit and writing. And, you know, it’s like I look at my, of course, I look at my thesis. I was a double major in English and fine arts and I look at them and I’m like, that’s hilarious because my English thesis was about Andrew Marvell and John Milton and Paradise Lost and the loss of childhood innocence. It has a title that I can actually translate for you because it’s so I’m like, I can’t understand my own prose.
And my own thesis was about archetypes and fairy tales. I’m like, of course I’ve been actually working on these same things throughout my whole life, even though I’ve made so many weird turns. So all to say that I find myself as an odd figure where I don’t know how to classify myself and what the work that I do because I don’t belong in any, I’m in a bit of a no man’s land, which to your point I use, I think to the benefit, my benefit in culture that Blanche and you could read the same book and get something out of it, but it’s a weird place to be because I’m not an academic. I’m definitely not a theologian. I’m not a licensed therapist. I’m just a woman who worked in journalism, but I’m not a journalist in a traditional sense. I did service journalism. So anyway, this is what the thing that I play, but it’s left me kind of in an amazing place, which is with the people– but my book wasn’t reviewed anywhere. The New York Times wrote a profile after my book came out that made me laugh. I mean, it was a really lovely piece, but it was like, “Women find this woman really interesting. Why?” That was actually the thesis, like what’s happening here? This is odd. It wasn’t a takedown at all. It was lovely, but it was like, huh, who is this? What is happening? And that’s the space.
Now to your question about writing like that. And I have many friends who decided to become academics and I thought about it. I lament the fact that I don’t have a PhD or multiple PhDs. I love, love the academic process, but they write books that very few people read, but are revered by their peers. I’m going to say something maybe a hot take that’s controversial. It is a lot harder, Brandon, to write a book that’s really deep and well-researched, but that’s accessible by the, by any consumer. And that’s, that’s the spot that I try to hit. And it’s hard. I spent a year revising this book and just grounding it, grounding it, finding examples, making sure it moved because I wanted it to be a book that women or people who read nonfiction and, or like would read an academic book would say, this is fun. Like this was fast and fun and I learned some stuff. And that for a lot of readers, it would be the hardest book that they’ve read that year. Maybe they’ve never read nonfiction. And so that’s this sweet spot, no-man’s land place. But doing it is, it takes a lot of extra turns, extra readers, like where am I losing you? Do you understand this? Like what do I … you know, it’s an extra, a lot of extra rounds of translation. And it’s a lot faster in some ways to just put on your academic hat and bust out the thesaurus and just be confounding.
B: I mean, it’s so clear that there’s so much behind this. Thank you for taking us like behind the scenes because it, it has a kind of ease to it. Right? You’re never asking folks to jump too far. And yet you’re taking folks on a rich intellectual pilgrimage. You know, I was just speaking to a faculty member recently, recently, we were having lunch over the summer and he was really heartbroken about the language that academics use to do their work. And heartbroken that almost no one reads his books that he spends five years and thousands of hours of work on. And he said, “We have to do better and finding a different language to communicate because we’re in an echo chamber.” So I love, I love the path you’ve chosen. And I wonder, I mean, this is sort of a, because another language-specific question before we maybe take another turn, butyou take us in the book on a journey from goodness to wholeness. I wonder if you can say a little bit about how you landed there. Was it a conclusion you came to pretty early or were you sort of discovery writing and just sort of following the breadcrumbs?
E: Discovery writing. And I just published a companion to On Our Best Behavior that’s a workbook with this friend who’s a coach named Courtney Smith called choosing wholeness over goodness. That was in response to readers saying like, okay, now that I can see this, what do I do about it? And I think making things conscious is the primary step to be honest. So once you can see it, there’s a lot you can do about it. But we did a structured workbook and that was the goal–wholeness rather than goodness, because what I realized after I published the book, despite seeing a Jungian therapist for, I don’t know, five or six years and reading a lot of Carl Jung and reading a lot of Marie-Louis von Franz and reading a lot of his other collaborators and co-conspirators. One of the things I love about Jung is that most of his collaborators were women, Tony Wolf, etc.
So a friend who’s a Jungian therapist had said to me, “You know, you wrote a book about the cultural shadow of women.” And I was like, I can’t believe I didn’t see that. And yes, that’s exactly what I did. So when we decide that our sexuality and our desire for sufficiency and having wants and ambitions and hunger and all of these very human impulses and drives go in the shadow trash bag, that there can’t be part of our acquired personality or ego because we would risk social alienation if we don’t perform to the standards of goodness– they’re still part of us. They’re just repressed and suppressed and ultimately, you know, projected onto other people. And that’s where you get this–it’s part of the envy chapter, but–you get this mechanism of projection, shaming, putting women in their place, criticizing them for the very qualities that you refuse to own in yourself.
And this is actually the subject of my book I’m writing next. So it’s very top of mind. But ultimately, you know, Carl Jung has a million quotes, but he has a quote essentially to the extent of, “I’d rather be whole than good.” And wholeness is this pursuit that’s very familiar to people who read Jung or listen to people like Father Richard Rohr. You know, it shows up in every sort of wisdom tradition, this idea–it’s yoga, right? Like it’s this oneness, this wholeness, this return to self where you’re making all of these unconscious urges and appetites conscious. And accepting that we can say, “I would never lie, cheat, steal, berate someone.” You know, “all of these bad qualities are not part of my personality. I am above this” and yet I’ve probably already lied twice today, right? Butler lies. “Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I would love to.” No, I would not love to. And yes, I could do it. I don’t want to, right? But like we just, we’re unconscious, we’re oblivious to our own hypocrisy and the way that we’ve disowned these things that aren’t desirable.
So wholeness, getting people comfortable with, “Yeah, you’re human. You have sexual desire and needs.” And, you know, this is a whole other conversation, but the refusal in our culture, particularly as people have more influence, spiritual leaders, when we don’t do our shadow work, when we don’t own those parts, we create incredible damage in our communities. I mean, look at the Catholic church, right? Oh my gosh.
B: You know, I had, I’m going to connect dots that you might not have thought were connected, but I had breakfast with Richard Rohr in Atticus.
E: Oh my God. I’d die. I just went to see him.
B: Oh, your conversation was so sweet. I’m so glad that he’s still around and I hope he’s healthy for as long as he can be. But he reminded me that it was Augustine who said that the desire that we have in ourselves for anything is simply a vestige from the Latin word footprint. It’s a footprint of the divine. So the desire is not, you know, to be eliminated as you’re describing. How could we do that? It’s a sacred desire planted in us for God. And so it’s sacred, and it’s sacred when we can have desire in the world.
There is a kind of, and I wonder if we could talk about maybe the ways in which the trolls have shown up in response to the book. Is there sort of a stereotypic critique around, well, I mean, this is the end of goodness, right? The Western philosophical tradition, right? We’ve just flushed Aristotle down the toilet and Elise is advocating for like anything goes. Yeah. And just follow any old desire all the time.
E: Do people say that? I don’t read my reviews, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
B: No, that’s not a fruit of any sort of research, but the fruit of me wondering about.
E: Yes, that is valid. Yeah, I definitely would hear that. It’s like, you know, it’s striking. It’s like shocking when I talk about, and I put it in, I put “goodness” in air quotes, but yes, people are like, “What are you talking about?” And “rampant greed is destroying the world.” And, you know, like, “Come on, lady.” And that’s all, of course, acknowledged in the book. And when I was first shopping the book to editors, you know, some editors were like, “It’d be really funny, actually, if you did a whole year of living lustfully.” You know, sort of a, not a prank book, but like a stunty, some stunty stuff where you like, you know, go and become a madam or whatever, you know, I’m like, “No, thanks.”
So there’s sort of two things operating. One, I’m not talking about what I think of as our inborn goodness. I really think that people, as drenched as they may be in shadow and as distorted, corrupted, etc., as they may be, I really think that people are good, that there is, if not a lot of light, that there are moments of light in every single person. And that that’s not something that can be adjudicated or determined. And so what I’m talking about is this idea of goodness that is adjudicated, that’s determined by priests and professors and parents and culture at large around these cultural ideas that have been mostly made up and then passed down to us as a morality code. So there’s that. And then there is also within the book, and it goes to that beautiful moment that you shared with Father Rohr about the footprints, that hymartia, sin, that it’s about missing the mark and that these appetites and desires are really GPS points and that it’s about letting them come up so that you can realize them, you can balance them, you can come in relationship with them and use them as a guide toward what you want and engaging in the world and being in your body and honoring your appetites without overextending or harming or being completely tipped off the scales of balance.
But we can’t do any of that work if we’re like, “I don’t have any of that. I’m only good.” Right?
B: Right. So thank you for that integration and speaking to anyone who might have any nervousness.
In terms of where you’re leading us. I wonder if we can transition, I mean, we could talk about this book all day, but I wonder if we could talk about your work with Phil Stutz who came into in my awareness a number of years ago. And I don’t know. I mean, I’ve probably given True and False Magic, literally given or recommended true and false magic between my wife, Susan and I to like 50 people in the last month. So thank you for this work. And I know ghost writing has been a part of your life. I don’t know if you consider this ghost writing. It’s very clear that you have a co-collaborative role in this. But tell me about how that book came to be. And for folks maybe who don’t know a lot about Phil Stutz, maybe you can provide a little call.
E: So a great place to learn about Phil is in a Netflix documentary called Stutz that was made by Jonah Hill, who’s one of Stutz’s patients. So Phil Stutz, he’s in his mid to late 70s. He has Parkinson’s disease. He’s had it for a long time. Most of his career really. And he burst onto the scene through a New Yorker profile that Dana Goodyear wrote. Did Dana go to Yale? I feel like Dana went to Yale. Shout out to Yale. And it was about sort of this secret-weapon therapist who was sort of creative gold for writers who were stuck in the process of trying to make things. And it really put them on the map and they wrote a book. He wrote a book with Barry Michaels, who has been his longtime collaborator and protege.
And Phil was very unique at the time because he’s a psychiatrist. He used to work on Rikers who became a therapist. And I think he wrote sort of a minimal number of prescriptions, which already you start to get these sort of schisms where psychiatrists aren’t necessarily doing therapy. But then he’s like in some ways a coach in the sense that he would really get involved with his patients and challenge them. And he became very frustrated too, which I think any good theologian feels, which is how do you take these vertical concepts about tapping into, he calls them, he calls it the life force or the universe. He is very … quite almost religious, although he doesn’t sort of like fall into any one school. He’s a big Rudolf Steiner.
B: Especially in his last book, right? True and False Magic. He’s getting so theological. I saw it. I was there. I loved the first couple of books, but there was something missing. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it.
E: Yeah I think that was maybe the publisher or Barry’s anxiety about alienating people with too much God talk. But Phil is deeply spiritual, which is why I’m so incredibly attracted to him. And I think what draws so many of us to him, but he takes this ephemeral, like how do you get into flow, this vertical? And then he translates it into these very horizontal tools about embracing fear. That’s reversal of desire. And how to become a really potent creator. And he has all these just like, whoa, moments where he talks about how the antidote to evil is not goodness. The antidote to evil is creativity and that God doesn’t care what you do as long as you create. And he’s not even talking about writing a screenplay. He’s talking about making motion, moving forward in your life.
So all of his work is about getting people in touch with and expressing their gifts. He wouldn’t use that language. So I had throughout my career done a lot with mostly Barry because Phil is just never been in great shape and doesn’t do a lot of public speaking, et cetera. He shakes a lot and sort of can lose his train of thought. I interviewed him. He published a book a couple of years ago that are essays from early on in his career called Lessons for Living. And I interviewed him on the podcast. And of course I was as smitten as ever. And…
B: It’s such a sweet conversation. Everyone listens to it. Yeah. They’re pulling in this red podcast with you.
E: Yeah. And we have the same agent. And so she was like, “How did it go with Phil?” And I was like, “Yeah, I mean, I’ll edit it. He can lose his train of thought, but I know how to cue him, et cetera.” And she was like, “Would you want to do something with him?” And I was like, “Yeah, with pleasure.” As you mentioned, I’ve ghost written for… I have ghost … for, I don’t know how many books, 15 books. Oh my gosh. Although at this point, I’m very choosy, fortunately, about who I work with. And it can’t be my work. I don’t give my work to other people. It has to be sort of like something I can learn from. I was like, I would do that for him as like a tribute. I think his work is so important and life changing for people. I would be honored.
So we met to decide if it would be a fit. And it was. And so we started this process. And originally they wanted this workbook for the tools. In fact, that’s in the title because they really want to take… There’s like so many tools workbooks. And so they wanted to claim the official tools workbook category, but it’s not a tools workbook. It’s an entirely new book. And Phil had no trust in a tools workbook. He wanted to express his full philosophy, which as you mentioned is very filled with God. And so we just went for it. It was the craziest process in the sense that we just started where we were, wherever he wanted to go. And then I would, with his amazing assistant Sarvai, it was capturing it, recording him, and then pulling it all into this sort of exegesis, this whole model that people will recognize. He talks about these three domains; uncertainty, the need for constant work, and pain, as these undeniable realities of life that you have to contend with. And you have to contend with them throughout your whole life. You never get over them. You never get through them. And they are often simultaneously arising, but it’s this way of getting to sort of the Y, but not WHY, but the Y. There is no why. There’s no answer to the why.
So anyway, so as we worked, it was originally just a Phil Stutz book. And then as we came closer to publication, and I think it’s actually really meaningful that I haven’t really worked with men. I mostly write for women, not just because that’s how it’s worked out. But Phil was like, “You have to go on, this is a co-creation and a collaboration, and you have to put your name on this with me.” And that was such, I mean, he really, he could– legally, he just needed to acknowledge me in the back of the book. Um, and yeah, I just thought that that was so generous. It’s very Phil, like the book is very Phil, although I agree with him. And I would say my part, besides structuring all of it, was like bringing it to complete clarity as much as possible, even though they’re heady concepts, but being like, “Explain that to me again. Like I don’t understand this. Explain it to …” you know, that act of … sort of that revisioning and revisioning and revisioning until these ideas are really clearly articulated. That’s mostly my contribution.
B: I was just going to say the word clarity was coming to mind. And I’m so appreciative of that. You know, I feel like I have several different spiritual vernaculars. You know, my mother tongue is kind of mystical Christianity and Richard Rohr. I sort of spit out Rohrisms all the time just by virtue of you that are having listened to him for so long, right? You know, I spent some time studying Buddhism and Buddhist monasteries. And so, you know, I’m happy to kind of speak Zen. It’s not my mother tongue, but I, you know, I can, I’m conversational. And I feel like Phil Stutz has given me a kind of spiritual language to speak with folks who have not grown up inside a church or encountered some kind of religious trauma, be it in Christianity or some other tradition in a way that I can speak with total integrity, but in a way that’s like discernible and understandable to folks who don’t necessarily have the lexical, like the Christian lexicon that’s so comfortable to me. And so like I do a lot of work with, you know, in spiritual guidance, spiritual direction. And so this is my go-to recommendation because it’s so profound and deep and the language is so accessible. So just like so, so much gratitude, at least for that work.
E: Well, what I think is so important about what he stands for, and I think what people like Rohr stand for too, which is this … a practical, like a landed, let’s say an applicable Christianity or spirituality that for, I think for most people is lost, which is like, you go to church and you hear this stuff and then you go away and then you come back and you confess and you hear this stuff and then you go away. Whereas it’s like, how do you bring these things together in your life? And what I love about Phil is he’s like the opposite of proof. He’s like, the only thing that matters is like, are you in touch with your life force? Are you moving forward? Are you creating? This isn’t about getting to a certain destination. He talks about that as the realm of illusion, this idea that so many of us are trained on, which I was as well. It’s hard to get out of the realm of illusion. If I just, then I’ll be exonerated again from these three domains, everything will be certain. I’ll have everything I need. I won’t encounter any more pain or suffering, right? It’s so insistent for us. And he’s so good at this. It doesn’t matter. This is a process, a continually unfolding process. You’re never done. You’re never there. And it’s like you just, you got to just stay in the process. There’s no trophy coming.
B: There’s no trophy coming. Oh my gosh. Tell me about how the podcast is going. Pulling the thread. I mean, you have how many episodes now with some of the most amazing.
E: 250.
B: 250. Congratulations.
E: Thank you.
B: I’m still working through the back catalog. I mean, it’s sort of a who’s who of some of the most profound teachers.
E: Thank you. I’m just going to hang out with you all day.
B: Oh my gosh, come here. I’m such a fan. Yeah. Thank you. Can I ask about the evolution of your voice throughout the podcast? Because, I mean, it’s one thing to just sort of like fire off questions at someone. Yeah. And yet you’ve started doing, maybe from the beginning, I’m not sure, solo episodes as well. You’re kind of sharing your own path as well, right? You’re not just sort of like the removed interviewer. You’re clearly on the path learning and we get to see it in real time. What is that like for you?
E: More light, more shadow, right? I just like, I really take my own work seriously in a way that I didn’t realize I necessarily needed to do early on in my career. And it’s interesting, even with On Our Best Behavior, I initially pitched it as this looking at culture and explaining it to people. And then my editor made me write myself into it. And it was an important move, both in terms of grounding people in my experience, which we share many stories. I think most of us come to realize we’re fed this idea of rugged individualism, but the reality is most of us have had the same experiences or sort of a patchwork, but also because I needed to be honest about the fact that I’m not over this work. This is in me too. So to that end, writing my newsletter, which is also a great practice for anyone who’s like, how do I transition from an academic voice to something more accessible? Start writing a substack, even if no one reads it. It’s just like building this muscle of like, can you follow my, am I making sense? Do you get this? So on the side.
B: I feel like all of our divinity students should be assigned this for credit writing a sub-stack.
E: Writing a sub-stack. Now I’m like, should I try it? I want to write a course on moving from academia to anyway. It’s central and it’s worth double clicking on that I think part of our cultural woes comes from the way that we defend and protect ourselves through language. Doctors do it, lawyers do it, academics do it. It’s like, you can’t talk to us. Meanwhile, it’s like people are getting their … they’ll find a way to get an information from anyone willing to translate. And sometimes those translations are very poor. So it’s like an essential skill, I think, for anyone who cares about their ideas, to learn how to communicate them in an accessible way.
But you asked about the podcast. So, but the solo episodes, I haven’t been able to talk I haven’t been doing them for that long in part because I’m so known as an interviewer. And of course I prefer that seat. But I find, and my solos are not as popular, but I find that people who are along for the ride, like the solos the best, because I’m really trying to work through what I’m learning real time with people and synthesizing and doing some of this processing. Like this is how you bring some of the stuff that you’re hearing on a Thursday, I’m pulling this red into the horizontal or how it’s showing up for me.
And mostly like I book my show based on … I sort of play like a weird synchronous game with the universe around bibliographies and encountering people and other people’s books and like doing this sort of scavenger hunt where suddenly I’m like, who is this person who I’ve never heard of, who’s clearly one of our greatest teachers. And so I’m just sort of like have my antenna up and I’m listening for the wisdom, which often comes from spiritual elders. Some may not be old, but they’ve learned, they’ve suffered, they’ve worked the wheel, you know, the crucifixion wheel before; they’ve been there, and have something to share in their return. But it’s so fun. And as you know, the best part about any podcast is that like people are willing to give you their time. It’s always shocking to me. I’m like, you’re going to talk to me? Okay. Great.
B: Well, I hope you’ll talk to me again, but next time in person and what we’re going to do is we will like recreate Naples Pizza.
E: Bring me to Yale. Yes, let’s do an immersive Naples/Toads night out, but like with spirituality.
B: Right. All right. We have a rapid fire ending that we sometimes call holy cow because we will be so amazed about the things that we learned about you. Our final five questions that people want to know. What do people most misunderstand about you or what you do?
E: I think people think I’m an extrovert because I’m public and I share, but I’m deeply introverted.
B: Oh, what’s your go-to comfort food?
E: Macaroni and cheese.
B: All the time.
E: All the time.
B: What’s a bad habit that you’re willing to share?
E: I realize in the sauce chapter that, you know, I love Love Island. I love just like completely unplugging and watching crappy TV. I find it nourishing, but I’m like, I’m terrified of my own laziness and admitting that this is a piece of shadow work we’re doing live. Love Island. In real time.
B: Okay. I think we need to do a reality TV episode of the Theatre’s Way podcast. I’m here for it. What life lesson are you still learning?
E: What life lesson am I still learning? I think I’m still learning how to express my anger in really clear boundary setting ways and moving past my fear of losing relationship in the process of standing up for myself and not betraying my own values.
B: Mm. And what keeps you going when you’re inner critic, when your part X, to use Phil’s language, tells you to give up; to cease and desist.
E: A long walk.
B: It’s all solved by walking.
E: It is.
B: That’s what Augustine said.
E: Yes.
B: Yeah. Oh, Elise Lunan, thank you for the light you shine. Thank you for doing us proud here at Yale, and we look forward to you coming back sometime soon. Boola Boola.
E: Boola Boola. Thank you.
B: Thank you for listening to Within, the contemplative segment of the Leaders Way podcast. We trust this conversation has provided nourishment for your own growing and healing. Until next time, may you find deep peace and courage in all you do.