“That's just like the human struggle, is how is it that our interiority and the way that we're perceived externally, how do we live with that? How does it act? Like, how do those things influence each other? Like, that's maybe the human problem. And so academia puts another layer on that, disability puts another layer on that, being an artist puts another layer on that because there is this expectation I think in those spaces to both use your identity to flag something socially to the world, but also, if you do that, then you take on all the trappings, the preconceived notions, the stereotypes of that.”

So says Chloé Cooper Jones, the author of the truly stunning memoir Easy Beauty, which unsurprisingly, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Chloé was born with sacral agenesis, a rare congenital condition that impacts her gait and her stature, and makes it at times painful to move throughout the world. Her memoir is a study in the way her condition has kept her apart, driving her toward intellectual superiority as a defense mechanism against a world that doesn’t feel like it belongs to her. In Easy Beauty, she travels the globe, reclaiming spaces and her own body as she had always refused to make it the center of her scholarship. As she travels, Chloé probes big questions, like why do we gather at places where terrible things have happened and who gets to be a philosopher? She also explores the qualities of easy versus difficult beauty, beauty we have to work for. Chloé is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and an Associate Professor at Columbia University’s MFA program. This is one of my favorite conversations to date, so let’s turn to it now.

MORE FROM CHLOÉ COOPER JONES:

Easy Beauty: A Memoir

Follow Chloé on Instagram

Chloé’s Website

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"Part of what happens when human beings experience difficulty is the same difficulty, the same fact pattern, can resonate very differently for different human beings. And so, part of what happens when a human being encounters a challenge is not just, Oh, you hurt me, but it's how do I make meaning of the fact that you hurt me. Is it that there's something wrong with you? Is it that there's something wrong with me? Is it we should never have been involved in the first place? Is it that I need to fight and stand up for myself so that never happens again? Is it I need to make myself really small so that never happens again? So type is about how I made meaning of a challenge that happened to me early in life and because of the way I made meaning of it, that's how my adaptive strategies arose."

Welcome to the first part of a four-episode special on metaphysical systems. These episodes don’t build on each other, per se—you can cherry pick what’s interesting to you—but they all go together. In this first set of systems, we’ll explore the Enneagram, Asterian Astrology, Human Design, and Tarot. Today, we’re kicking it off with Enneagram, specifically as interpreted by my dear friend, Courtney Smith, who is, quite frankly, one of the smartest people I know. 

I heard Courtney might be one of my soulmates for years before we finally met—not only because we have the same taste in people (we have many dear mutual friends), but also because she’s an Enneagram genius, and the sort of person who is happy to talk about G.I. Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way at a cocktail party. Courtney has a robust coaching practice—individuals, executive teams, women’s groups—where she integrates the Enneagram, which she studies under Russ Hudson, along with trainings from the Conscious Leadership Group, the Alexander Technique, and the Work of Byron Katie. She also adds her own perception and raging intelligence. Courtney is brilliant, particularly at assessing systems on both the micro and macro level, and she’s also exceptionally warm, excavating all of our human foibles and patterns for the treasures of promised growth. My favorite part of Courtney though is that she plays against type: I love finding the mystical and metaphysical in a woman who has a degree in mathematical economics from Wake Forest, a masters in Public Health from New York University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Courtney also worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.

MORE FROM COURTNEY SMITH:

Courtney Smith’s Website

Further Listening on Pulling the Thread:

ASTROLOGY: Jennifer Freed “A Map To Your Soul”

ENNEAGRAM: Susan Olesek “The Power of the Enneagram”

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“You cannot differentiate when you never fight. Fighting is also a tool for differentiation, for having two people be able to breed and grow inside a relationship. If all you try to do is avoid any friction, any conflict, and merge into one, then there is a relationship of two halves, not of two holes, basically, to put it in simple terms. So some people find it very scary. Some people find it scary because there was uncontrolled fighting where they came from. And nobody could disagree without the whole thing going on fire. So there is good reasons for why people have learned not to fight or not to stand up for themselves or not to argue or not to say no, for some people simply saying no is experienced as a declaration of war. It's a continuum for those who are avoiding fighting and who are scared of it and reluctant to engage with it are basically said to themselves, I will never be like that person, my mother, my father, my grandparents, whoever it was, and then hold it in and hold it in.”

Esther Perel’s voice doesn’t need an introduction—nor does her work. Esther is inarguably one of the most important therapists working today, pioneering a much deeper understanding of how couples function—and ultimately how couples can thrive. While Esther has written multiple bestselling books, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence and The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, and made an excellent intimacy-creating conversation card deck that will liven up any dinner party, I am most smitten with her podcast, “Where Should We Begin?” which brings listeners into real therapy sessions with real people—people, I’ll caveat, who are not her ongoing clients. Not only do you get to hear Esther’s brain work, but you get to listen as couples engage in arguments and issues that will likely feel…familiar, meaning that the show is an antidote to feeling slightly less alone in the world. Esther’s newest project is something that we all need, in every sphere of our lives: She is teaching a one-hour masterclass in conflict, including what’s beneath the content that we fight about everyday. Hint: Our fights are not actually about the dishes, they’re about power, control, respect, and foundational questions like: Do I matter? Do you value me? Conflict is the substance of today’s conversation, which we’ll turn to now. You can find the course on turning conflict into connection on Esther Perel’s website, or in the show notes. Here’s Esther.

MORE FROM ESTHER PEREL:

Turning Conflict into Connection Course

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

Where Should We Begin Podcast

Where Should We Begin Conversation Cards

Esther Perel’s Website

Follow Esther on Instagram

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This is a channeled transmission of Yeshua, from Thursday, October 12, 2023. 

This was part of an online study group for my book, ON OUR BEST BEHAVIOR. Originally, Carissa and I were planning this for August—three days of discussion, no Yeshua transmission—but then Carissa asked to push it to these dates in October, and told me that Yeshua wanted to do a transmission about beauty. Who am I to argue with Yeshua?

And who, you might be wondering, is Yeshua? That was my question when I first met Carissa in January 2020. Yeshua is Jesus, or Christ Consciousness. Yeshua was Jesus’s name in Aramaic. Carissa is a forensic medium—one of the finest I’ve ever encountered—and in December 2019, Yeshua pushed into her channel and she became a full-body medium, which means that he knocks out her consciousness and uses her body and voice to talk. It’s strange, undeniably.

If you’ve read Jesus’s aphorisms or words in the New Testament, this is what you’ll hear: As one friend said, Yeshua is like a rapper. There’s word play, loop-de-loops, and so much wisdom, applicable to every single day. Sometimes he talks about history—his parents, Jewish law, the prophecies, Mary Magdalene. He was very much a Jew, which history likes to forget, though he frequently says that he came not to change Jewish law but to evolve it, to make it more accessible. 

He talks about shadow directly, but always offers that shadow is space, waiting to be filled with light. Typically, he talks about shadow versus light as unrealized versus realized—realized being what we see with our “real eyes.” 

He also talks a lot about the void. He talks about the Friday, when he was crucified, as the death day. Saturday is when you move from the tomb to the womb. And Sunday is the resurrection. We all do this all the time in our lives—when we die to relationships, jobs, beliefs. His point: You can’t skip the Saturday, the Sabbath. You must accept the full cycle of life.

You’ll also hear mention of the vertical and the horizontal: The vertical is our access to divine, spirit, the universe, however you perceive energy. The horizontal is our daily lives. It’s our job to spill the vertical into the horizontal.

In my experience, Yeshua’s words are always about breaking polarities and binaries—putting you in a position to re-examine what you’ve come to accept wholesale or believe. Because, interestingly, he’s not at all interested in telling any of us what to believe. He wants instead to open our awareness and perception so that we can love more deeply. He wants to give us new lenses through which to perceive the world, including the sacredness of both life and death.

The transmission begins with Yeshua guiding a 20 minute meditation. Please do the meditation, and not while you’re driving. Transmissions are mental exercises, certainly—I take pages and pages of notes—but often they can be a full-body experience, so listen with your feet on the ground.

One note from Carissa: “The Transmission is the copyrighted intellectual property of Sacred Spirit Illumination and not to be reproduced or used, in part or sum, without permission. However, folks are of course welcome to share the link to the Pulling the Thread podcast with any and all people. We welcome and honor discussion surrounding this important Transmission.”

MORE FROM CARISSA SCHUMACHER & YESHUA

The Freedom Transmissions: A Pathway to Peace

Carissa Schumacher’s Website

Carissa Schumacher Episode 1: “My Spiritual Teacher”

Carissa Schumacher Episode 2: “Why Do We Suffer?”

Carissa Schumacher Episode 3: “Understanding Spiritual Power”

On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good

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Yes, it’s a Monday and not a Thursday, but today, I’m announcing something special. Kicking off next week, we’re going to host occasional, short series that are focused on a tangly or complicated theme—big concepts that require multiple voices and perspectives to put them into proper context. We’re kicking off next Monday with a look at Mystical Systems, or you could call them Personality Systems: Enneagram, Astrology, Tarot, and Human Design. Some people might think of these ways of understanding the world as silly, while others will stake their lives—and sometimes every big decision—on them. I’m somewhere in between: I think there’s nothing more powerful than hearing about yourself, and how your life likely unfolded, from someone who knows nothing more about you than your birth sign. To me, it signals that there’s a much deeper plan at play. I’ll see you next week, meanwhile you can get started with the two episodes below.

ASTROLOGY: Jennifer Freed “A Map To Your Soul”

ENNEAGRAM: Susan Olesek “The Power of the Enneagram”

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“I just think that never being the one to say no to yourself is so powerful for so many reasons. One, the amount of yeses that you get will shock and surprise you. The idea behind the philosophy is that somebody else can absolutely say no to you. Like, you can go try to get a literary agent, you can get a million rejections, you can go try to get a job, you can ask for a raise, you can get a million rejections. But the amount of people, especially since I've shared this online, who write to me and say that they got yeses is so cool. Like yeses they never dreamed of. There's so many people I know who've gotten raises, who've gotten their dream homes, who've gotten their dream jobs, who've moved across the country, who've asked out people that they're now married to, which is so cool. And it's because they went out in search of the no.”

For the past decade, Liz Moody has been building a steady foothold in the world of wellness—first, for her work developing recipes. In recent years, her empire has expanded rapidly as she’s become a point of distillation for many of us who want to know…what’s what in a sea of overwhelm. Liz has a genius point for simplifying an onslaught of information to a few salient points—easy shifts that can lead to meaningful change. She does this on The Liz Moody Podcast, and also in her new book, 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success. She was only half-joking when she offered that this is an old-school bathroom book—the sort of guide you can pick up for a few minutes at a time and gain some insight, or return to time again, like why temptation bundling is wise, or it’s good to talk with your hands. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.

MORE FROM LIZ MOODY:

100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success

The Liz Moody Podcast

Healthier Together: Recipes for Two

Liz Moody’s Website

Follow Liz on Instagram and TikTok

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“We think that money is just going to solve the problem. We think that we can get rid of the fear by making more money. We can get rid of the fear by having more money. If only someone just gave me a million dollars, well, I mean, I wish that for everybody, but I would be lying if I said that that's going to solve everything. You have to also recognize some of the other resources that you have that I think are equally quantifiable as richness. These are rich things, things like your health, the measure of your health, the measure of your relationships, the measure of your time, the measure of your ambition. All of these things are assets and when you can remember that and start to put those things into play again and leverage them, that's when you realize that you've been focused on this fear of money of not enoughness and you've been focusing maybe too much on the actual money and not so much on everything else that plays a big role in your ability to say I'm wealthy.”

So says Farnoosh Torabi, host of the podcast So Money, and the author of numerous books, including the just-released A Healthy State of Panic: Follow Your Fears to Build Wealth, Crush Your Career, and Win at Life. Farnoosh got her start as a financial journalist, though she quickly came to understand that understanding money and investing was really just a cover for a desire to understand life…and all the animating impulses that drive us toward safety and security. When we talk about money, we’re talking about so much more than dollars and cents. Money is one of the most essential energies alive in our culture: It says a lot about who we are, collectively and individually, and what we value. It’s these types of underlying emotional states that are at the root of Farnoosh’s work, including her just released book, which is an exploration of all the different types of fear that guide and refine our days, whether it’s Fear of Failure or Fear of Exposure or Fear of Loss. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.

MORE FROM FARNOOSH TORABI:

A Healthy State of Panic: Follow Your Fears to Build Wealth, Crush Your Career, and Win at Life

When She Makes More: The Truth About Navigating Love and Life for a New Generation of Women

You’re So Money: Live Rich Even When You’re Not

So Money Podcast

Elise’s Conversation on Farnoosh’s Podcast

Farnoosh’s Website

Follow Farnoosh on Instagram

Subscribe to Farnoosh’s Newsletter

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“Everything we heal, we mature, we develop in ourselves, is never just for ourselves only. It's always also eco-systemically relevant. So if somebody becomes more open, it will affect all the relationships that person has in life. So all the relationships will begin to enjoy or benefit from the fact that I grow, everybody that knows me benefits from my growth because it will nourish all those relationships. So we are always ecosystemic and individual at the same time.”

So Says Thomas Hübl, who I’m thrilled to welcome back to Pulling the Thread—our first conversation, entitled “Processing Our Collective Past,” is one of my favorites to date, although today’s conversation doesn’t disappoint either. In Thomas’s new book Attuned: Practicing Interdepence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World he explores the idea of being present, or creating the internal capacity to host the experiences of others. He mentions this line from Fares Boustanji which sums it up: “To get in contact with the other, you have to be in contact with yourself.”

Thomas Hübl is a spiritual teacher, but his particular genius point is holding space for large groups, groups that can then begin to process and transmute dark, dense energy—energy that’s often held by traumatized culture and places. He has worked all over the world, because this stuck energy is…everywhere: And when we fail to acknowledge and move it, we’re stuck, repeating karmic cycles.

In Attuned, Hubl explains what we can all gain from getting in touch with our ability to host the experiences of others. As he writes: “When I speak to groups or before an audience at an event, it is not enough that I show up knowing what I wish to say. To be effective, I must be in dialogue with the whole, and therefore aware of the group or the audience as a dynamic system. Only noticing what is happening for me is not enough; I must be able to accurately feel with and adapt to the needs of my listeners. I need to clearly sense my participants’ degree of availability and curiosity. I also need to perceive whether and when I am being heard and received—or what else might be needed or present. The clarifying of the relational matrix comes with expanded awareness and offers an acceleration of our coming-into-relation. This is the leading edge of communication and leadership, and it requires deeper awareness of the intersubjective space from all.” This sounds like something we all need.

MORE FROM THOMAS HÜBL:

Thomas’s First Pulling the Thread Conversation: Processing Our Collective Past

Attuned: Practicing Interdepence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World

Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds

Thomas Hübl’s Website

Follow Thomas on Instagram

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“But it's also okay not to get it right. You know, people mistakenly think that they want perfection, say you're playing golf and you wish you could get a hole in one every time you swung the golf club. Well, no. There'd be no game there. You know, that if you want to do something where you're always winning, play tic tac toe against a five year old, four year old. So on some level we know we don't want that. And the problem is that much of school teaches us these absolute answers. We're graded. Most tests are designed to find out what you don't know rather than what you do know, which I think is a big mistake. So, we end up with a world where we think there are winners and losers.”

If you’ve heard about a fascinating study that explores the power of the mind over the body, most likely it emerged out of the lab of Harvard Professor Ellen Langer—in fact, in 1981, Langer became the first woman ever to be tenured in psychology at Harvard. There, she studies the illusion of control, decision-making, aging, and mindfulness theory. She’s responsible for the Counterclockwise study, published in 2009, where aging men recovered their youth, and Alia Crum’s famous study on chambermaids and their understanding of their own health and wellness, got its start with Langer as well. She has a fascinating mind, in part because she is always, always willing to question our underlying assumptions about where we have control and where we don’t. Now here’s an important caveat: Ellen Langer is the mother of modern mindfulness—but she is not talking about meditation. No disrespect to meditators, but Langer is focused instead on attention and the power of thought on the physical body, not so much on controlling or emptying the mind. She is a force, and I was so honored to invite her onto Pulling the Thread. Let’s get to our conversation.

MORE FROM ELLEN LANGER:

The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health

Mindfulness

Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility

On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity

The Power of Mindful Learning

Ellen Langer’s Website

Follow Ellen on Instagram

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“I think a lot of us embody this, what I call the paradox of the courageous coward, right? Like, we're capable of doing these things that are bonkers. Like they take a tremendous amount of courage or maybe experience, you could call it, but we'll call it courage, speaking in front of a panel, going live on television, you know, with me, swimming with sharks, going into the eyes of hurricanes, going to war many times, marooning myself in weird places. And yet we have this other side that is so fragile, so gossamer thin and on our level to tolerate anxiety that, you know, it can break and then snap at any moment.”

So says Matt Gutman, ABC Chief National Correspondent and the author of No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks. Matt is a new friend, and I’ve loved getting to know him and his deeply feeling heart, as well as the way he so perfectly captures this idea of being a “courageous coward.” He’s not afraid to step into a war zone, and yet he’s felt incapacitated by anxiety—taken out at the knees by panic—which makes him the perfect encapsulation of the binary of modern masculinity. Quite simply, the world is too much for any of us to confidently swashbuckle our way through. I commend Matt for saying it. He wrote this book because he suffered a panic attack on air during a heightened moment of news—one of those moments where all of our eyes were turned toward our TVs—and he ended up being put on a temporary leave. It was in that moment that he recognized he needed help and healing, as this panic attack—though public—was not a solitary event. It was happening to him all the time. In No Time to Panic he explains how hard he went to work at healing, at uncovering what was at the heart of his anxiety, which is at the center of our conversation today.

MORE FROM MATT GUTMAN:

No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks

Matt Gutman’s Stories at ABC

Follow Matt on Instagram

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