Interview with Phil Stutz and Elise Loehnen on Tapping Into a Higher Self and Co-Creating Our Lives

Actor Jonah Hill felt so compelled by the effective, action-oriented approach of his psychiatrist, Phil Stutz, that he created a hit documentary, Stutz, where we learned that Pain, Uncertainty, and the Need for Work are some of life's most unavoidable pillars. Now, Stutz and co-author of True and False Magic, Elise Loehnen, take these ideas a few steps further, and show us that with the right tools, we can flip them into levers for unlimited potential.

Truffld: In the film, Stutz, you mentioned that you have pity parties quite often when it comes to navigating your Parkinson's journey, but that you've essentially learned how to get out of that state quickly nowadays. How do you pull yourself out of those tough moments, and is it through use of the The Tools?

Phil: Rudolf Steiner, one of the guys that I studied, he says at the moment of death, real death, physical death, you see the you that you thought of as yourself – it's now spread out in front of you, so you're now seeing yourself from the inside out. What you think you're seeing out there now is the whole world because it looks like something that's starting from the inside and then ending up outside, so it's only natural that you think of it as the entire world, but that's not really the case. What's truly the case is what you thought was the whole world was really just you seeing things from a completely different angle. So what you become capable of is taking something that you think is outside you, and once you realize it's inside you, that gives you the power to change your opinion of yourself and of what you're going through. It gives you a familiarity and connection, and that's what I'm working on for myself now. 

Truffld: You talk about the power of continually co-creating with higher forces, and tapping into our own Life Force – a process with which we engage through connection to our body first, then connection to others, and lastly, connection to self. Tell me more about how we can integrate this pyramidal concept into our daily lives.

Phil: Life Force is a training ground for your intuition. Self-expression is one way that works well to help people connect to self. I tell people this (Life Force) is not a fortune teller. It won't tell you what you'll be when you grow up, but it's a directional indicator, and that's more important because really finding out who you are and connecting to yourself takes like 5,000 steps and then you're just getting warmed up.

Elise: What it attends to is this desire we all have that's like, 'Tell me what I'm supposed to be doing here, and I just want to know that I'm going in the right direction and I want to know the right next step.' Like, if I just knew, then I could move into my life and conquer the world. I just need to figure this out. And Phil reverses it and effectively says that you don't know anything until you – I see it as an engine revving – get yourself in motion and attend to this material realm and your body and your relationships with other people, because you don't create anything by yourself. You have to get your energy going before you have any chance of communing with some higher part of yourself that holds information that you need. Then it's, OK this feels good, I'm moving, now I'm ready to see what happens, what doors open, and whatever is supposed to happen or emerge in my life. But we instead, operate from this manual of: give me the map, tell me the destination, I'll put it in my GPS, and then I'll go. But it's not an effective way to live your life, that's for sure. It's disempowering. 

When I was in my 20s, I had this realization that no one's gonna save me; no one's gonna pluck me out of obscurity and make my life happen for me. Nobody's gonna recognize my talent – the Star Search model doesn't work. And that's the advice I give to other people who say they don't like their career or what they're doing. Get yourself in motion. And I like that Phil makes it so concrete and simple: pick up a pencil, go on a walk around the block, call your mom or your college roommate; whatever it is, you gotta get it going before anything will happen.

Truffld: In True and False Magic you show an illustration of curlicues that represent an individual's growth, and I wondered how many people in the world would persevere with something, with their dreams and goals, if they just understood that the curlicue pattern – opposed to a linear one – was all a natural part of the process.

Phil: The Life Force – you're not touching it or feeling it or understanding it unless you've seen it as something that just went through death. So, the Life Force is a post-death state. Whatever feels like it's post-death, is really the beginning of life. And that's what the curlicues illustration in the book is about. Life isn't linear or up and down, it's the curlicue. Those are things that help me. Life is a post-death state. Whoever created the universe was death. The universe was created by death, and in the recovery phase of that, at that point, you've actually connected with real life. 

Truffld: When I think about Universe One and Universe Two – Universe One representing the material world, and Universe Two, one of more meaning, depth, spirituality, etc. – I feel like as a human, while I gravitate toward Universe Two, and that's where I'm most content, I'm also pulled into Universe One. How do we comfortably break out of this sort of tug-o-war, and stay more in Universe Two?

Elise: I personally feel tethered to Universe One every time I try to break out of this belief of safety and security and money. I get slingshotted back in. I'm going to read Phil's words on this subject: 'It's impossible to fully avoid Universe One. Something that's impossible can also be very useful. In fact, sometimes the more impossible it is, the more you get out of it. There's a dynamic here that upsets people – it's a complete commitment to get out of Universe One, simultaneously knowing you're never going to get out of it. You live every day with the goal to live in Universe Two and hopefully you gain the faith that that will benefit you and everyone else.'

So, yes, I get it. We're constrained by Universe One, but as long as you fundamentally understand that the real value is Universe Two, then you can live in this sort of in between world of the reality of our material world and the promise of something different. I think our job as humans is to live in that third space where we're bringing the two together, and to try to constrain yourself to one of them isn't doable or realistic. 

Phil: Rudolf Steiner says that the universe is perfect because it's imperfect. What that means is, if all there was is wholeness, and nothing else, then you'd be included in the wholeness, and you wouldn't know that you exist. In other words, your sense that you exist comes from loss of wholeness. There's no real wholeness until you fail to capture it. 

Elise: It's like absent opposites. Like perfection. The whole thing falls apart if it's complete. Light doesn't exist without darkness. 

That's what Phil's genius is, too. It's turning this ephemera into concrete action steps, and then you have to repeat it over, and over, and over again. It's not a cognitive process. You gotta live it.

Phil Stutz graduated phi beta kappa from City College in New York and received his MD from New York University. He worked as a prison psychiatrist on Rikers Island and then in private practice in New York before moving his practice to Los Angeles in 1982. He is the bestselling co-author of The Tools, Coming Alive, and Lessons for Living.

 Elise Loehnen is the bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior and host of Pulling the Thread. She has co-written twelve books, five of which were New York Times bestsellers. She was the chief content officer of goop, and she co-hosted The goop Podcast and The goop Lab on Netflix. Previously, she was the editorial projects director of Condé Nast Traveler. Elise lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

Purchase True and False Magic on Amazon and Bookshop.