Russ Hudson 0:00
You know, when we live inside a pattern, we don't know that we're living inside a pattern, which is why it's hard for people to type themselves. We just think that's reality, right? And we don't, we don't. It's like the Johari box. We there's what we don't know that we don't know, and I didn't know how desperately disconnected I was see that's the difference. It was like I didn't feel as a child. I was missing out on anything. I thought it was fine. I thought watching the ants was more interesting. Welcome
Josh Lavine 0:35
to another episode of what it's like to be you. I am Josh Lavine, your host, and I am very honored and excited to present my guest today, Russ Hudson. Russ is a legend in the Enneagram world. He's been teaching for over 30 years. He's the co founder of the Enneagram Institute and the founding director and former vice president of the International Enneagram Association. And he and his longtime former collaborator Don Riso, wrote a number of Enneagram books, including what is considered to be a modern classic of the Enneagram, the wisdom of the Enneagram, which is also the very first book on the Enneagram that I ever read, and it kind of had a huge impact on me. It changed my life. Russ has also spoken on national television, on a number of TV shows, including Good Morning America and CBS Morning Show as an expert in personality types. And he's also a very popular speaker around the world at retreats and conferences like the Esalen Institute, the wisdom 2.0 conference and the science and non duality conference. Russ is a social, sexual type five, and it's pretty hard to state in words how big of an impact Russ has had on the Enneagram world. His teachings are everywhere, and so many people have been influenced by him, and so many of the current teachers in the world of on the Enneagram were trained by some of his materials. And also, I want to say that just his transmission when he speaks is so clear. It's one of the clearest that I've ever heard. And on a personal note, there's this incredible program that he did with Richard Rohr called the Enneagram and grace, where he and Richard Rohr kind of trade talking about the Enneagram types. And it's I've listened to, like, 10 times, and it's just beautiful and very clear. I think Russ is one of the purest transmitters of the depths of the Enneagram and its usefulness for conscious transformation and personal growth that I've ever heard, and I'm very honored to interview him about his personal life. He tends to speak a lot about other people and the Enneagram in general, and the origins and history of the anagram and all that kind of stuff. He doesn't get a lot of opportunities to just speak about himself and his own journey. So I took this opportunity to ask him a lot of questions about that and to reveal his own inner world as a type five, and what the Enneagram has done for him in his personal journey of transformation and growth. So without further ado, I am thrilled to introduce my guest today, a teacher to me and so many others. Russ Hudson, you know, one of the things that's funny about interviewing you in this format is that you are obviously a renowned teacher of the Enneagram, and you talk about the Enneagram a lot, but I'm wondering how often you have an opportunity to talk about yourself and your own journey with the Enneagram, and kind of like discovering that you were a five and then understanding your life in retrospect through the frame of the Enneagram. And so I think what I'd like to do is start with a pretty open ended question of, can you talk about just your personal Enneagram journey? How did you discover that you were five? What did it make sense of in your life? And then we'll pull some themes out from that and go from there.
Russ Hudson 3:36
Okay, sure. Well, I think to answer that question, I have to take into account that I kind of backed into the Enneagram typology. Okay, I'm not yet like, unlike most people, I was doing the fourth ways teachings. First I was in the GIF work. Was working with the core lineage of the chief work. And we didn't talk about Enneagram types. There were not Enneagram types in that in that framework, but we did have teachings about what's called chief feature. And I had heard various rumors. I read that first article about each other's work that was in a book called transpersonal psychologies, which I acquired in the 1980s and it was interesting, but not it didn't grab me exactly. I was sort of curious that people were using this, any the Enneagram, in a very different way than how I had learned it. But then it was done Reese's first book personality types. With that I went through and read, and I thought, wow, this is, this is really something. This actually would be very useful to anybody doing inner work. And like a lot of people, when I. When I first read his book, it was thinking about, I thought it was a four and, you know, a lot of people, partly, I joke about that because, you know, a lot of times when people are seeking out a self help book, they're not usually in the best part of their life. You don't get a self help book because you just won the Lotter, you know, or you got it. It's a fabulous new relationship started is when you're down in the dumps and you're trying to figure out how to not, you know, spiral down that you you're in that part of the bookstore. And, you know, I was in a bad place when i i found Don's book, I was having a tough time, and I read it, and I read about what he was saying about the four gold man, that's me. I'm so I didn't really like a lot of people. I didn't think that that's not how I had always been, but it was how I was at that time, sure. But you know, me finding myself as a five was a bit of a process be and I always tell people, you know, you don't get a gold star for figuring your type out right away. And a lot of times you might be right, but you might not be, and you have to hold that as a possibility. But when I met Don Riso, his take on it was, you know, I I'm not sure that you're a four. I'm not sure what you are, but I don't think you're a four. And so I start working with him, and we're having, you know, day to day interactions. So he was having more of an opportunity to observe me, and I was learning it better. And partly, we started to see how something that I think is still an ongoing process in the field, how you set up the parameters for what defines type, you can make it too tight, and then it will usually strongly resemble you and your preferences. We when we're teachers, we tend to deify our own qualities and make that. This is the definition of my type. It's, it looks just like me, but there might be variations that don't look like you. And so the other side of it, it was, it's so loose and sloppy, anybody could be anything. And that's, that's not helpful either. So how do you work that in a way? And we what we saw was that the description of the five was a little narrow. So, you know, unless you had, you know, masking tape on your glasses and, you know, a pen holder and a slide rule, you know, you were in a five, yeah. And I thought, well, you know, there's a lot of things about this that do fit me and as we explored it over gosh, like two, three years, came to the conclusion that five was the central piece. It was also, I think, what helped me figure it out. And I when I'm teaching the Enneagram, I'll mention this, it was the inner lines. Like, if I was a four minor lines would be two, and should see a lot of two and one, and I should see a lot of one, and not really, I mean, once in a while, but that wasn't a main feature of my personality. Whereas then, oh yeah, there it is. Eight, oh yeah, there it is. And that really helped. And it was, you know, I I also went through a period of just trying them all on, you know, I said I'm going to be a nine this week, and it'll be a one this week and be a two. You see what I could see looking at myself through these different lenses, which isn't, I really think that's a good exercise, but when I hit five, I knew that it, I was hitting pay dirt because it was ouchy, right? You know? And I'm sure for you too, when you really get it, it's a relief, but it's also, there's a grief involved, actually. Oh, okay, I'm not familiar, yeah, seeing what this pattern has done for you, but you also see what cost you. Yeah, I Yeah.
Josh Lavine 9:07
So on that note, what was, what was the what was the Ouch?
Russ Hudson 9:14
The ouch was, how can I say, you know, when we live inside a pattern. We don't know that we're living inside a pattern, which is why it's hard for people to type themselves, right? We just think that's reality, right? And we don't, we don't it's like the Johari box. We there's what we don't know that we don't know, and I didn't know how desperately disconnected I was, how unclogged my I was. Now, I kind of had hints from the Gurdjieff work, because I realized it was such a struggle for me to find my body. I did, but it took a lot of conscious suffering, as they say in the Gurdjieff work. To really be able to land in myself enough, but I had to have a little bit of that before I could start to touch the emotional part of it in the the realization of my isolation. And I, you know, when I talked with fives about this, I said, you know, we are all safe and cozy behind our wall, but if you touch the wall, you actually start to feel what that wall has cost you, and it feels catastrophic. It feels like there's no way I can deal with this. And I always encourage them, yes, you can deal with it, but you know your grief and tears are there already. They're not going to kill you, and there's freedom on the other side. You know, it's, it's, there's certain parallels between the journey of three and five, actually, that, you know, I think in both cases, we've protected ourselves from a kind of how much we'd be overwhelmed by our feelings in certain Sure, so
Josh Lavine 11:01
I can relate to that. Yeah, yeah, um, this theme of isolation is really important for five and the I'm thinking about just knowing you a little bit and how people lead you are, how people how oriented to people you are. You like to, I know you like to go out to dinners and stuff like that. There's, you're a pretty people oriented person. And can you talk about that in relation to the word isolation? Or what is, was there a journey of moving towards people? What is ill? Yeah, yeah. How isolated? What was the nature of your isolation? And was there before and after?
Russ Hudson 11:42
Well, yeah, there is a before and after, and even now. You know, on one hand, yeah, I'm friendly, but I live alone, and I've lived alone almost my entire life. I have only cohabited with people who needed a place to stay for a while, and I offered them a place in my home, but I have never cohabited with anybody my my therapist teased me about that. He's I said, you know, I think I might be ready to have a real partnership. And he said he realized that might lead to cohabitation. We'd laugh, you know, but it's just like there's a way in which I spend most of my time alone. I usually, I do dine a lot, and from time to time, I take friends out who wouldn't be able to go to a nice place otherwise, but I three quarters or more the time I dine alone. I think, I think the friendliness came from the wish to connect with people and being interested in people, and not having a reflexive reactive belief that people were kind of stupid and have nothing interesting to say to me. Well, when I was, you know, as a child, and you know, my sisters would definitely bear witness to this. I was very alone as a child. I spent most of my time playing with my chemistry set, or, you know, toy dinosaurs or creatures and stuff in the basement. I didn't really play my mother would get so it freaked if my mother was an Enneagram eight, and it freaked her out that I was so alone, she thought there was something wrong with me, and so she would lock me outside of the house so that I'd go play with other kids, and then, in stubborn fashion, I would sit on the porch all day, doing nothing until She opened the door and let me in. And she would cry when she did that, which made me feel bad, but I also, you know, I just didn't want to go see that's the difference. It was like I didn't feel as a child. I was missing out on anything,
Josh Lavine 13:54
right by being Yep, hold it, yeah.
Russ Hudson 13:56
I thought it was fine. I thought watching the ants was more interesting than this play with it. Yeah, that
Josh Lavine 14:04
goes to your jahari box thing of not knowing what you're missing out on, not knowing what you don't know. Yeah, exactly.
Russ Hudson 14:10
Some of my some of my colleagues, used to love a story I told in the early days where I would my my dad was not around a lot, you know, my dad's a good old Enneagram six, and he would occasionally be around. He'd make kind of little efforts to get me to be quite more normal, you know. And then when he'd see they weren't having much effect, he'd, you know, give up, essentially. But I remember he was trying to show me how to play catch as a little kid. So he and his buddy were in the front yard, throwing a ball back and forth, playing catch, and I was just sitting on the porch, and I remember very well watching this and seeing it and go, Okay, so he's got the ball. I. He throws it over to the other guy. Now he's got the ball now he throws it back. And it didn't make any sense to me. I couldn't understand why anybody would want to do this. But you see, I wasn't in any way aware of the kind of kinesthetic pleasure that you would get from doing that. I was purely cognitive, and I didn't understand it. So I didn't do it. It was always the last kid picked for the sports teams or at gym class and everything there was. It was a girl who had polio and me who were always the last to be and I didn't mind, you know, I just, I, I had a certain detachment from any kind of feelings or shame that would have come up about that occasionally there it would be humiliating enough that it would get my attention. But it wasn't, you know, I had a few friends, but basically they would, they'd come over and they'd just play with my toys, or we'd play, maybe we'd play a game, you know, play risk, or something like that. But more often than not, I was on my own. I Yeah, it wasn't like I didn't want anybody. I wanted to have, you know, some friends, but I didn't have a sense of being connected to anyone, and it's still hard for me, you know? I mean, I love people, and there are people in my life I care deeply for people in my life I've made sacrifices for. There are situations, people that I'd probably give my life up for, and it doesn't always translate into me feeling like part of the family or connected to anyone. So I live in this kind of weird kind of state. Well, I'll tell you another thing about that. As you're asking me this question, I don't think it was in any way fixable on the level of personality,
Josh Lavine 17:05
I see, yeah, yeah.
Russ Hudson 17:06
There wasn't some way I was going to turn into this kind of friendly guy. There was not some way I was going to suddenly feel safe around everybody on a personality level. And a lot of it was just about again, 567, fear, right? I, I didn't feel safer out Yeah, and, and I'd sort of tentatively try to trust people. As I developed more presence and could be embodied more, it was more feeling the connection of everything, which is very different than being able to feel like I'm a welcome member of something, of a family, of a relationship, a partnership, anything. So you know, it was I had to kind of get to a very deep place, to be able to break out of the box of it and actually go out and engage people. The big breakthrough actually the one that I see as a kind of a huge turning point. I mean, I had some from the Gurdjieff work and from the embodiment, and from just developing a little bit of confidence at college and stuff like that, I had a certain narrow focus of friendships and so forth. But when I met Don Riso, we started going and doing certain work together. We started going to 12 step programs. No, I wasn't an alcoholic or an addict, but I realized I came out of that background. So I was learning about alcoholism and families and stuff like that. I got interested in the sort of CO dependency work that was coming out back then in the late 80s, early 90s. And we went to a John Bradshaw workshop that was held at the Jacob Javits Center here in New York. And we got and they were exercising things to do. And I went there with Don and with some musician friends of mine, which I won't name, I won't bust there in an image, but they're famous musicians, and we went there together, and there was a point at which we were talking about, it's not always that bad things done to You. It's the absence of ingredients that you needed, and how neglect can be, in some cases, as traumatizing or more traumatizing than certain other forms of abuse, right? So you know. And so I've been a little advocate of talking about that over the years, but in any case. We did an exercise where we took turns getting on the floor, and then we were surrounded by our our friends. In this case, they were, they really were friends. And we just kept saying to people these kind of things that little children need to hear, but that they generally don't hear. And I just cracked open. It was it literally felt like something breaking in my chest. It wasn't like a smooth it wasn't just some tears. It was like emotionally vomiting, almost, yeah, it was my chest cracked open and just all of this grief and sadness and need and all this icky, messy stuff that I did not want to deal with, just gushing out, and thank God I was with Don and these good friends of mine who were there holding the space, because I was a mess for days, but I lived, and it was just, you know, In terms of psychology, I mean, I could in hindsight, oh, that was schizoid detachment that you just passed the other side of, yeah,
Josh Lavine 21:10
yeah. Um, that's profound. I i have stories from my Enneagram journey that are similar, where I shared something, exposed myself for the first time, revealed something about myself from my past that I was a secret that I thought would take with me to the grave. And you know, things about deceptions and dishonesty is in the past and stuff like that, and, yeah, just the absolute, the breakdown and the cracking open and being witnessed in that state and being held in that state, that's that was really powerful and important for me. Yeah, were you able to were you able to receive other people's holding of you in that moment?
Russ Hudson 21:57
Yeah, I in that moment. Yes, I needed it. These were people I trusted, people I respected, and they had the the love and power and intelligence to let them both move it, nobody fix it, which would have been good, right, right? And they were and they were affected. I mean, they were all, they all had tears. You know, they were, my grief was so enormous. I think they just were carried on the wave of it. But I think that I was able at that time, I would say, it's always been, I don't think anybody really receives easily. I think everybody something we all have to learn. I There's no Engram type I can think of that says, Oh yeah, I'll receive nobody, right? All the terrified. We're going to lose our autonomy. We're going to lose our independence if we need anything from somebody, oh, my God, you know. But I think that you get smarter as you go along. I hope I'm getting smarter about, you know, just letting people be there, letting people offer something, you know, and we do get to say yes or no, that that's part of it too, that's but I think just receiving people, receiving their love, is a big deal for most people. And I think you know there too. I find that people have their intentions. They have, their motivations to connect, that are coming out of their own psychological needs. And a lot of times when people think they're loving, they're actually just in in that particular structure. But that doesn't mean that love isn't there? That's one thing I had to learn. The love is there in a more subtle way that they themselves not be entirely aware of, but that don't you know. It's sort of like when we're teaching or facilitating. It's not wise to throw away the message or the teaching because of the limitations of the teacher, right? Yeah, like, have my limitations, and I do my best to work with them and be aware of them, but it I hope that people will understand that despite that, from time to time, something comes through that is actually what's called for, you know, and I've learned that with other people, you know, when with me, their their efforts may be a little off center, but there's something there that I need to be aware of and respectful of. And. Yeah, conscious that that's there, because if we're not that, that just reinstates the cynicism and isolation and all that stuff. And Been there, done that,
Josh Lavine 25:11
right, right? I have a question. So my experience of five in general is that they're pretty stubborn about being interested only in what they're interested in. You know, it's hard to pull a five into an area of curiosity that they're not inherently curious about. Yeah, and what I'm wondering about is, why were you curious about psychology and the inner world? And I know you've mentioned before that you at a young age, were interested in wisdom traditions and spirituality and things like that. What? What was that?
Russ Hudson 25:51
Well, I think it all that for me, started with science, actually, okay, I very interested in as a kid. And we were in a period of time in the United States where there was some encouragement for that, you know, because we're in the space race and we don't want to lose out to the Russians, and so they any kid that had mathematical or scientific capacities that was encouraged, right? And I was, you know, very early on, identified as what folks called then, and probably still do, called a gifted child. I was in that, you know, and the end, very, very, very, very end of the bell curve. And so everybody that was on one hand, people were curious about it, but I also realized it scared people. I don't know. I think, in hindsight, people were afraid I would see something about them, and that's and I so I kind of go out of my way to not give people that we used to joke, that fives, you know, that nines gaze at people, and fives peer at people.
Josh Lavine 26:59
Okay, yeah, as I
Russ Hudson 27:01
I'm definitely, you know, making my family's story was this a child, they called me the little old man, because they'd go up to sort of play with me, and I'd just stare at them. And it freaked them out, actually. But I think the science interest I didn't know, I felt, and this may be something just in the soul of five, there was this question, What the hell is this that I've landed in? What is this world? Yeah, yeah, what is what's behind all this? How does this work? And anything I could learn about nature, science, the universe, animals, I was I wanted to learn about my mom used to tell the story of how I was in the bathtub, and I was, like, three years old and being very quiet. And then I looked up her and asked her what an atom was. And so she got me a book about atoms. But, you know, I it was coming out of that. But I think the spiritual thing came from a couple of things. One was I realized that science answered a lot of questions, but not everything. And I was interested, well, what is all this religion that people are into? And like a lot of you know, I grew up in my family was not very religious. My we didn't go to church or anything like that. We were nominally Christian, right, but nobody, it wasn't overt. I had friends who were in other religions as a kid, but I think that my family had a big one of those big Bibles, you know, with, with in the middle of it had all these color plates of, you know, Renaissance paintings and things like that, to illustrations of the stories. So that's a tree like, what? What the heck is this in relation to the science? What's, how does this all work? And it bothered me, and I wanted to know about this religion business, but I I try to find a nice way to say this, and I don't think I can, a lot of times when I go to these churches or religious groups, I go meet these people. And my impression, although I probably couldn't have put it so bluntly as a kid, was, These people are nuts, right? Yeah, you're trying to believe something that, you know, and and I, I but I knew there was something to what they were saying, but they were missing the boat. And I also felt the people in science had a lot of great stuff, but they weren't. They were missing a certain boat too. And I, I really struggled. I a lot of my early life was trying to reconcile these two distinct interests. It also, just like I liked art and I liked science, and which way do you want to go? And I knew I couldn't do both, or so it seemed. And so, you know, that's also, you know, you could reduce. That down and saying, Well, we wrote five with a four wing. That's true enough. But I'm not. I think that kind of question might come up for a lot of people, if they're and I'm not sure what puts that question in people. Maybe it's just there from the beginning. I don't know what it was. When I was very first in the Gurdjieff work. It was one of the first questions I asked. Why is it that a lot of people can have certain experiences and they just shrug them off and go on living the same way, and other people have a certain experience, and it busts them open to the kind of questions that we're asking each other here. And in a sense, to my relief, no one claimed to know the answer to that question.
Josh Lavine 30:48
Yeah, do you have an answer now?
Russ Hudson 30:52
Not anything that wouldn't be, you know, just a tad poetic, you know, it's just, I don't know, it's, it's kismet, it's, it's grace, it's kismet, it's it's God's will. You know, it's what. I don't know why, but I find it very interesting. I can see why it leads to some weird beliefs that I don't agree with, but I can also see that it's a mystery, and, you know, it makes me it's one of the ways I come back to a softening of my proclivity to judge people for not so much I judge people so much for ignorance, but for valuing their ignorance or defending it. That that really triggers me. But I've, I've softened that when I start to understand that you never know when the popcorn is going to pop. You just don't know there. There are people in my life that I thought, oh, boy, this one's never gonna, yeah, I'll never have a meaningful relationship or conversation. They're just going to be into their whatever. They're into it, and that's okay. They can be into that. And then one day, just they're they're there, and you don't know what happened. There are mysteries. There are non linear elements in life that become important. But I don't, I, and so I always assume that everyone potentially could show up and be in revealing something of their actual nature, always the potential. It's not for me to decide who can and who can't, who's gonna and who's not. My job is just to show up with kindness and see what happens. Yeah,
Josh Lavine 32:44
I want to eventually move into kind of what's the growing edge for you now. But before we go there, I I was fascinated last time we talked when you talked about being a kid and being physically very tight, not wanting to be touched, things like that. And this goes back to our sense of being isolated. But I think it seems like more than psychologically, there was a physiological thing going on that, oh yeah. Was part that was cementing your isolation at a somatic level. So do you have a sense of that?
Russ Hudson 33:20
Oh yeah, yeah. I was very touched. There's a really bizarre but moving film called Lars and the real girl. Oh, I
Josh Lavine 33:29
love Amy. It's incredible movie. Yeah,
Russ Hudson 33:31
that's good old Ryan Gosling. I think, I think Ryan, in real life, is probably a nine, would be my guess, I
Unknown Speaker 33:40
think so, Yep, yeah,
Russ Hudson 33:42
he's just got that everybody quality. Everybody likes him. He's pretty easy going. He's pretty diverse as an actor. But I think the character was supposed to be a five, right? Yeah, yeah. And so you get a kind of nine ish five in that portrayal. But the scene where Patricia Clarkson is the psychologist is working with him, trying to titrate his capacity to experience touch was very moving to me, because that's like that. I found touch overwhelming, and if somebody wanted hug me or touch me. I had to take a deep breath. I had to know that was coming. I had to see it. I had to, like, almost prepare myself, because I found the experience of touch, I could still get myself in touch with that sense, but it was, like, completely overwhelming. It was it and too much for me, and so I didn't like it. And my my sisters thought this was hilarious. Did they that one of my sisters is a three and the others either an eight or a counterphobic Six? She goes back and forth between those and but in any case, they thought it was very funny. They called me Mr. Flynn. She because they go up and just touch me, and I know just like a cat, I'd be practically on the ceiling, but I it was just a weird thing. And I remember this become when you get into adolescence, in teen years, and you're thinking about dating or sex and things like that. This becomes a complication. Show, yeah, yeah. It's like, how's this gonna work? I and I remember, before I went to Columbia, I went for a bit to the University of Connecticut, and I was there, and there was a dormitory near mine, which was where all the this was the 70s. This was all the kind of alternative community, post hippie, kind of interesting people were living in this dorm. And I would go over from my I was just in a normal dorm, but I'd go over to see what these people were up to. And one day I walked in, in the lounge of the dormitory, they were all sitting around massaging each other, and I and I saw this as, What in God's name, are you guys doing? And they said, We're doing massage. And so I said, Does it hurt? They go, no, no. It feels good. They said, you like it? And I said, No, no, no, no. And some really cute girls grabbed me, had me sit down, and they said, Well, just let us do just a little bit. Okay? And they were just and I thought I was going to fly out the top of my head. It was so intense, but I just kept breathing. And they said, just feel that we're doing something nice for you. No one's hurting you. This is just a nice thing. And after a while, I could sort of be with it, and and then I and then I was years before I got a massage again, but it sort of opened the door like a little crack, like, okay, maybe this isn't maybe there's a way I can get over this. But to this day, it's different now, and all that work in the Gurdjieff work of developing my belly center essentially changed it, but it's still physical contact is intense for me. It's it's never a casual thing. It's always a mourful thing for me, yeah, and
Josh Lavine 37:25
it's, it's a, well, the word overwhelm, I think, is particularly relevant to the entire five structure, and that's a very condensed and particular somatic expression of it. But the sense of being overwhelmed in general is that something that you relate to, like the the vastness and complexity and randomness of the world, or things like that that we read in five descriptions,
Russ Hudson 37:49
yeah, something I have to work on and and, as in this sort of corner of the Enneagram, the overwhelm always comes with the large wave of anxiety, right?
Josh Lavine 38:01
It's kind of like that, oh
Russ Hudson 38:03
my god, with this and and it's sort of like not knowing what to do, wanting to isolate, wanting to hide, wanting to get away, wanting to redirect my attention in some way. One day when I was younger, I used to do when I was feeling overwhelmed, I would go play a video game where, you know, I'm conquering the world, or some such thing to sort of, I can't handle this world, but at least I can conquer this world, you know. And it was just trying to to get in touch with some sort of confidence against the encroachment of, you know, the the chaos of the world. And you know one thing, the one thing some of my colleagues say that I really disagree with is that fives fear emptiness. No. Fives love emptiness. We fear the the overwhelm of being, right? Yeah, imminence of everything is like, you know, and so I it's like Edvard monk, you know. But this scream, that's very good image, I but what emptiness is, what we escape into, which is different than the nine escapes into being just hanging out being five, I just get rid of everything and just annihilate everything, just cessation. That would be fine, and so. And sometimes the other thing the I would either want to do that or I'd want to find some way of bolstering the part of me that was familiar with or had my own version of that chaos, and that leads to the sort of edgy side of five, like, if I was feeling overwhelmed, I'm not going to listen to John Denver. Gonna listen to night. Nails, an elicited tool, an elicitous, you know, some something very aggressive and chaotic and intense. And that was another way, I think, and in some way, I think that was like my subconscious line to eight, that that I couldn't get to just straight up the high side of eight, but just the lustfulness and intensity was a way that I try to balance out from feeling overwhelmed. Yeah.
Josh Lavine 40:30
Can you describe this feeling, the inner experience of escaping to emptiness? And how is that different from escaping to being
Russ Hudson 40:42
escape? Scheduling the being is sort of like, you know, I noticed nines could just be really happy with simple things. And people have a strong nine component, you know, just hanging out in the park, you know, sit sitting back, you know, watching it be show whatever to zone out in a certain way into being. And I see the nine in people can do that. I had a lot of trouble accessing that. I've got nine ish components, as we all do, but that part of it I just never could understand or get to I probably had a little contempt for it, to be honest. Sure, my mom had a lot of that. And so we're always got these object relations with our parents, and she just sit back with some booze and a cigarette and watch, you know, her soap ops or watch TV for hours and never do but for me, it's sort of, it's self negating, and it's different, and it's, it's often, and maybe this is my for when coming in, it rides in on a wave of self hatred, self rejection. But there's, there's a way of just wanting to just get rid of everything.
When I learned about it in in the spiritual circles, I always had a hard time relaxing into being. But I would almost relax through being into just voidness. Okay, yeah, and that, you know, one of my mentors who's no longer with us, she was a brilliant, brilliant teacher, but she used to say, when children have difficulty in their early development, or if there's trauma around they will often skip being and go straight into what in Diamond hair would call the absolute, just disappear yourself. You know this is too it's too painful. Let's just not be, as opposed to creating a a soothing trance as a defense against being, I could never muster that.
Josh Lavine 43:07
I am fascinated because it's there's this it's kind of like in the five there is this polarity happening at where on the one hand you escape into the absolute or the void. On the other hand, you whip up such an inner density of concentration on a particular topic, or at least that's my sense of how it works. For Inside five it's like you're either concentrating and there's there's an overwhelm of content, or just a hyper focus of content in your mind, or nothing,
Russ Hudson 43:45
right? Well, the nothing, well, this is resolved somewhat. Let's see if I gotta get a little metaphysical on y'all, nothing out of space, because the space is a something, and so you actually get closer to the nothing by concentrating to a point. If you go right to the point of consciousness, there's no extension, there's no time. And you almost like go through the point into the into the nothing. So, you know, people think of the nothing is just like outer space or spaciousness, but it's like spaciousness. Well, it might be in that direction, but spaciousness is a something. It's a feat. And I've always had a certain capacity for that, coming to that place of the point the singularity, where it all kind of, it's like if you could take the timeline and reverse everything back to the Big Bang, which is go, there's no space there, there's no time, there's no space, there's no energy, there's no matter. Boom and. And and it you actually get closer to it through focus than through relaxation, that it can go actually both ways in my experience now, but my way when I was younger, most definitely was by concentrating. It's almost like you You concentrate to the point that you bore through the present, the presentation of reality.
Josh Lavine 45:25
Sure, what are you concentrating on?
Russ Hudson 45:30
Well, different things at different times, you know, I learned, you know, to do that through meditation practice. I learned it by, you know, sticking to an inquiry, for example, into some I would, you know, Don used to call me an intellectual pit bull that, you know, we'd have a question, and I'd be sleepless just laying there trying to sort this out. You know, it's some of the things that we came up with. For example, we had this whole big, elaborate teaching called the Don, called the psychic structures. And he had this idea that there should be these visual models to show the psychodynamics of what's going on in a type this visual. And that was brilliant. And he had an idea that they should be different at different levels, but he didn't, wasn't sure what the mechanism would be that would shift them. And he had some, he had some ideas at the beginning, and they were, they were a good stab, but I just took that and wrestled with it was like a dog shaking a toy around. I just stayed and stayed. And one night, usually in the middle of the night, I just woke up and understood that what was driving the shift was what we now call the inner critic, or the super ego. And I presented that to him the next morning and and then we elaborated it from there. But it was, you know, I when you're seeking some kind of realization or understanding, when you're trying to see through your own misunderstandings. I think it functions a lot like that for for me, and I think for a lot of people,
Josh Lavine 47:18
yeah, this is getting to kind of the, you could call it the essential quality of five insight, or discovery, something like that. What's it,
Russ Hudson 47:27
yeah, yeah. It's funny. It's yeah, my glass sort
Josh Lavine 47:32
of like, what's it like for you when that happens? You know, when you discover something, when you have an insight?
Russ Hudson 47:42
Well, there are, there's the sense of illumination, you know, the actually, like things get brighter, you know, and there's a feeling of brightness. Now that I'm can experience it more in a kind of three day D embodied way, you know, happens where you would expect it to it's in what the Greeks called the noose. There's a point here in the head that just lights up, um, but I think I'd have to go back and see it was sort of like that piercing the cloudiness, you know, like the cloudiness of our usual perception. Yeah, you know, it's suddenly, you know, kind of, it's like you're on a cloudy day, and you're, you're suddenly, you see the moon or stars or something sort of shining through the clouds, kind of like that. I think now there's a I my station with that is such that it's more ongoing. And so there's a sense of of, there's nothing up here, like it's just playing nothing. And yet, there is a quality of of a dynamic outpouring production. Just the realization doesn't feel like an event. It feels like a flow. But that many, many years of practice and people teaching me and stuff to to get to that. That didn't happen overnight, but I could say that I was experiencing it early on, but just as little snippets of it, that is, is that capacity appeared through the density of my psychological structures. You know, they still assert themselves from time to time. But, you know, it's different once something like that is more established. And I think that people, and this is a place where the Enneagram comes in that are as we get more established in presence, the sort of gift of our type gets more established as a. Kind of function that's necessary for the whole thing, you know. And that is very clear to me, you know, like, if I again, look at the three part is just, it's like what I'm talking about, realization is happening around functioning, where there's it's not even a me that's functioning, just functioning is happening, and it's joyful and it's beautiful, and that's why we're here. Yeah,
Josh Lavine 50:33
one other question in this mental space territory, okay, so you know my experience of you is that, like I've seen you teach a number of times, and you have an extraordinary capacity to recall details. And there's a quality of, like, meticulous memory that seems to just be in you, you know, like, there's just, it's like you remember dates and names and the old terms and things that. It's like you don't lecture with notes. It's just Indian you know, what do you attribute that to?
Russ Hudson 51:15
I have no idea. I mean, I just endowed with that. No, I have a good memory. I have a specific memory. I think part of it comes from paying attention when those things are happening or when I'm learning them, so that they actually get retained, right? It's quality of attentiveness, you know, I think some sixes have that too. I'd say that the danger of it is that that can function so well is substitutes for the realization and the knowing. That's it there. Yeah, I could just get you're real off a bunch of interesting facts, but I'm not then transmitting a Gnosis or something that's occurring in the moment. It's a different thing. It's useful because I think if you have things in your memory to work with, it gives that quality of knowing material to communicate what is known. And that doesn't happen with me trying to do that. It just happens which is interesting. Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah, it's like when I was a musician for years, and there were some people who had capacities like that with music, where they could just do certain things with music. And I'd say, My gosh, how do you do that? But it's just, I don't know. They just had that endowment here.
Josh Lavine 52:47
Yeah. So back to this topic of the overwhelm of touch, and also the fact that you have lived alone your whole life and COVID. What is your experience, or what has been your experience with romance and relationships, if we want to talk about it.
Russ Hudson 53:04
Well, you know, I would say I was just a late starter. I mean, I had crushes and stuff when I was younger, but nothing that really would count as a relationship. I didn't really have my first real relationships till I was couple years in the university. And, you know, when I've in those days where I fell in love, I fell in love hard, you know, and just, was just, it was sort of all or nothing for me. And I, you know, a little, probably a little too grasping, because I knew how hard it was for me to to find somebody I could even hope to live with and and so in each case, when the relationship ended, I would largely blame myself and just go into a long period of isolation. So there was sort of intense relationship, two, three years ends alone for a while, and after going through that pattern, of course, each time I went through that pattern, I had the idea I've got it sorted out now, next time I make those same mistakes. But I saw that, that no matter what I did, I kept, I seem to keep going back to, I would say, merging with ambivalence. I wouldn't say that anybody I ever dated was a bad person. Nobody was hateful or, you know, anything like that, but they just they I wasn't there. Wasn't their agenda. Wasn't there, the way I put it, once and one of my exes, she got very mad about this. I said, I said, I'm not your choice. I know you love me, but I'm not your choice. You're not. Choosing me. And so I eventually just came to a couple of conclusions which weren't exactly cognitive, but one of them was, you know, whatever it is that people are looking to partner with, I'm not that. So does that mean I'll never have a partner? I don't know. It means it's going to be a long shot, and it will take a certain sort of extraordinary openness on both people's books. The other thing was that there was no point in playing out that pattern again. So should not rush into anything, to not be and to stop grasping that was, I guess what I'm saying, I started to realize how I was seeking a partnership to counteract or compensate for all that isolation, and no person could do that and and so I had to, one day, kind of wake up and ask myself, well, you live alone now. You lived alone most of your life, and here you are, and you're having your morning coffee and everything. If this is it this is enough? Can you be okay with this? And my answer was yes, I can be okay with this. And I felt Yeah, and I know every Of course, people would always say, Well, that means now you're ready. You could actually meet a partner. Well, maybe, maybe that will happen. I'm in no control of that. I'm not closed to having a partner, but I don't have any expectations, any and the a lot of what drove me to seek one is kind of burned out of me, you know. And I'm just, I like paying out with people. You're interesting. Okay, let's have another conversation.
Josh Lavine 57:04
Yeah, I was picking up, like these themes of the kind of unsentimental realism of five, and what I was thinking about is that there's a fine line between that and kind of the high side of five, which non attachment, that sort of stuff, which I think, was present your answer, and also a tendency towards nihilism and just, well, you know, whatever, uh, kind of eject from the world kind of thing. Yes,
Russ Hudson 57:31
they're all closely related. And yeah, and in depending on Yeah, I can tilt one way or the other, because they're not far from each other, right? But I just heard it keep coming back. Put it this way, yeah, my question is, do you feel love today? Do you feel love for other people? Do you feel other people's love for you? Do you feel the presence of love? Do you feel kindness? And if you're not feeling those things, that's a symptom that you're probably drifting into the cynicism and nihilism and so forth, which it's all too familiar with, with me, you know. But I think that, and a key word for me, which is very different than the way I grew up and how I was most of my life, is tenderness. There's just like no tenderness in my life. And I lived in kind of Spartan ways, so I'm kind of proud of it, you know, and, and I just, how can I be tender today toward others? How can I receive tenderness today? And I think as long as that part's flowing, you know, there, I'm not cutting out the reality of love and connection and things of that are very important for a human life. But I'm also not lost in the fantasy of a hopeless child,
Josh Lavine 58:57
right? Yeah, there's
Russ Hudson 58:59
and so then it is what it is. Because also, you know, you reach a certain age, you know, I'm, I'm not a young man anymore. I may think so sometimes in my mind, but I'm not, you know. And so what any partnership could be at this stage of life is not like, you know, starting a family is not the and the other thing, it's just true for people across the boards. I realized I was talking about this with my dad, of all people, that when you're younger in life, and you create a partnership, you're creating a life together. You don't have a life, so you're creating with this person. And that's so you pick a person, hopefully, with whom you can create a life. When you have lived as long as I have, you have a life. Your life is established. And whoever you might end up with, their life is already established. Right, right? And so it becomes a very different exercise to find some sort of Venn diagram where there's my life and your life, and there's this place that we intersect, because I'm not going to give up my life for you and you're not going to give up your life for me. And so how does it work? So once you're older and you have these things, it's a different exercise, what a partnership would mean, what it would be for, and what it would look like, yeah, yeah,
Josh Lavine 1:00:28
you know, I'm thinking about the sort of the the natural, you would call it, uncooperative stance of five. And you know, that was present early in your childhood. I'm thinking about how I mean just the image of you sitting on the porch or the step after your mom has locked you out of the house as a kind of statement or protest, like, I'm not gonna do that, you know, and just yeah, that kind of sensibility already makes five a kind of you could call it a a unique or rigid puzzle piece that like another, for another person to fit with you, they have to be a certain shape or be willing to adapt to you. And yeah, and now, with the accumulation of life, you have this life, it's like the puzzle piece has an even more definite shape. And I'm wondering, do you experience with certain people in your life a willingness to adapt or to cooperate in a different way, or is that uncooperativeness still presence? How do you work with that these days?
Russ Hudson 1:01:37
I like to think that I'm more cooperative, and I mean, I am and I'm not. I think there's certain things that, you know, I if I'm traveling and I want to do something and I'm with other people, I'll say I'm going to go do this today. If you want to come with me, I'm going at nine. And if you don't, that's okay, but I'm not going to play games with them and come to some sort of group consensus about what we're going to do. I know that that usually results in nothing happen. And and so I'm very same thing. I have certain rules, like, if I go to a movie and people make me late, if the movie has started, I will not watch the movie. Okay, I'll leave. Like, I'm not gonna, I said, you know, that's it. So I have my little nudgey things like that that I I do and have, but, you know, okay, when you're talking about partnerships, you talk, it's like, where you're gonna live and everything. So, like, people say, Oh, I'll never leave New York City. You'll never leave Manhattan. You know you're gonna. And I don't know that that's 100% true. I think that I wouldn't live just anywhere. But there are some other places on planet earth I could probably do okay and with the right person, that would be a worthwhile exploration. But there are places that, no, thank you. I don't think I could, I could thrive there. And you know, anybody I who'd be with me, the other, the other element of it isn't particularly five, it's just, I'm a public figure, right? And that comes with baggage. It comes with certain trappings. And if you don't want to deal with that, I'm probably not your man. You know, it's, it's, it's, and I'm, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to give up a lifetime's work so that you can feel secure it's not going to happen. So that could be an element of that, that stubbornness, but I don't think anybody who was a ready for prime time player would ask that of me, you know, and yeah,
Josh Lavine 1:03:51
I do, yeah. How do you relate to your own publicness, especially given the tendency towards isolation, I population.
Russ Hudson 1:04:04
Well, it's like, you know, I've, I have a number of friends who are a lot more famous than I am, and we, we joke about it. And I said, you know, there are benefits. I but, you know, I always feel I communicated this once on Facebook, I always feel like the new kid, yeah, I grew up. My dad was in the Air Force. We traveled around, and literally, I was often the new kid and a new kid who didn't have the sharpest social skills, who was not, you know, a you know, quarterback on the football team. I, you know, just and even though I've lived here in New York City since, gee whiz, the end of the 70s, yeah, I I still feel like the new kid here. And it's ridiculous, because people do know me. You. And when I go into the restaurants and places around town, I people, I become something of a fixture in New York City. Mr. Hudson, so good to see you. Come on in. How can we, you know, like that. And increasingly, even you know, the Enneagram is becoming famous enough that people will sometimes recognize me on the street, which is always a bit of a shock, but I think that it only becomes problematic for me when I'm in situations where there's a lot of people who know me, and then they're all coming up, and they're all either wanting to ask me that question and then another question, or they wanted to tell me some story about their journey, or what have you, and have me witness it. And, you know, I'd love to be there for each and every one of them, but sometimes I've got like, six or seven of them at once, and then that sitting there, and I have overwhelmed, yeah, I live to ground myself. And sometimes I have to set boundaries, you know, and that's just part of the deal. And I just, I think, like a lot of fives, I have a pretty good capacity to keep my life separate from my public work. I think of some of the people who are actors, famous actors, that are five, or at least have a strong five component, and then they're pretty good at that.
Josh Lavine 1:06:24
Yeah, I'm wondering about your experience of the withholding of self that we talk about in the context of avarice, and which also is related to the overwhelm that we're describing, is that, is that a thing that you still work with, and how does it show up?
Russ Hudson 1:06:47
Yeah, it shows up as a reflex of not wanting to be involved, even when it's stuff that's for my benefit, like I want to deal with this. You're like, I want to go back to whatever it is I'm and I not wanting to deal with people their needs, or even when they're trying to, as I said, help me. It's just an automatic withdrawal, withholding, no, I'd rather do something else and and gets realizing I have to, in that moment, practice and come back and say, Jocko, this is important. You gotta. You need to be here for these people and and it isn't. And if you are, you may even enjoy it so, so give it a shot. It's different than like, being low social for example. You know, because I can click in pretty much to awareness of people, and that where they're coming from and so forth, but that's and and I can, with presence, do things that help the connection. But on the other hand, that the fiveness is the the avarice is this kind of UN involvement, not interested, withholding myself. There are other elements. Sometimes it feels like not believing that there's anything significant I can contribute to this situation. So why don't I go do something that I could contribute? It can be kind of like that.
Josh Lavine 1:08:20
Yeah, and there's, there's a rejection piece there, like the identification with offering, or that's the template for relationship, is that I have something to contribute here, yes, yeah. And and people to receive it, yeah,
Russ Hudson 1:08:33
yes. And if they're, you know. And I think another way I experience it is sort of though once bitten twice shy. It's more like once bitten 10 times shy. If I've had some sort of kind of interaction with someone or with a group that felt unsafe, or whatever, my withdrawal is rapid, intense, and it takes me a lot of work to overcome it. And I do sometimes, for certain people or certain situations, it's worth it, and sometimes I write off people in situations, as you know, and I think that's okay. I think there's part of social instinct is realizing this isn't for me, that's social instinct, too. It's not just joining everything. What do you join? How do you know? Who do you play with? Right? So, but I have to work with the reflex. And you know, as I get older, I think when I was younger, I was more interested in seeing or experiencing things, and so that could cut that kind of sexual instinct part a little bit of the seven coming in, I was kind of more open to exploring experiences, so that will get me out. But now that I'm older and kind of feel like Been there, done that, and my body's getting creakier, you know that I have to work harder? To over because I don't have that other impulse in the same way as I once did. So I have to sort of convince myself and and I was on such a roller coaster for a while of teaching, just being always, teaching, teaching, on the road, teaching, teaching, teaching, now that I have more time, post heart problem, post COVID, and I can be in my hovel of an apartment with all my books and gadgets and media, you know, I I'm getting back into sort of enjoying being in my little castle, yeah. And when I do, I have to actually remember to go out and do things. So memberships in the museums. I go, I went to the met the other day. Just said I need to get my butt out of this apartment and go have some other impressions. So I'll just go look at some art. And I did, and, you know, and again, the back to the beginning, I have no problem going to the museum, going to dinner, going to a movie by myself, if somebody wants to come, great. But, you know, I, I don't require that.
Josh Lavine 1:11:19
Yeah, so what's, what's your growing edge now, what's, what's, what's present for you in your inner work?
Russ Hudson 1:11:29
A lot of it is around my my self press, blind spot. A lot of it is self care. Rod is treating myself better. A lot of it is remembering that I can't deliver my best to other people if I'm not in a good place myself. A lot of it is being smarter about who I spend my time with, and what I spend my time on.
And I think a lot of it is I'd say that at this stage of my life, I've had a lot of realizations and breakthroughs, and I've actualized certain elements of my essential nature, but I think that it's a question of developing more consistency, So I go off track less often.
And I'd say this, this sort of touches me to say my view of the world veers very quickly towards, as you said, nihilism, hopelessness, cynicism, darkness, and so I feel kind of comfortable in those realms in a certain way, when they're not like, you know, when they don't become parodies of themselves. But, and there's a certain point where I think it just gets silly and narcissistic, but I also think that it's a deal for me to keep a sense of belief, hope, keep keep a little candle fire burning. There's a lot of reasons in the world right now to just roll your eyes and go, Fuck them. That's there's a lot of reason to just say all this help that's been granted to humanity, and this is what all this technology, all this medical science, all these spiritual teachings, all this download and this is what human beings are doing with it. Maybe we should do and so, you know, and I wrestle with that, yeah, and I That's it, and I have to wrestle with that, and I have to and you know what it I find this goes to the human connection thing, the restoration of my hope comes not from any abstraction, but from meeting awesome people, meeting people who are parents who are not doing stupid things with their children, uh, meeting people who are actually trying to do something healing and good for the planet, and in many cases, beyond my capacity or understanding, I just like, wow, that's such a brilliant idea. How cool is that? So it's in that I kind of it's interesting one of my old acquaintances from my early days. Near it was David Byrne, and I'll readily claim him as one of of the in my Enneagram tribe. I think it's pretty likely that he's in the five tribe, but he's been through a similar journey, and he didn't like people touch it. We. Share a lot. When I was in his apartment, I was laughing. He said, What's so funny? I said, your apartment totally looks like mine. I guess I have all these floor to ceiling shelves, and I've got them all labeled and isolated. And I said, only you, he laughs, is he really do that? Do you have little shrines like this? I says, I do. So we had a lot. But the thing was, he's doing his music, but his big project now is he has an organization, and he has a program put out called Reasons to be Cheerful. And basically it's because he feels so like in the same way that he these aren't human interest stories. This isn't like the police in Toms River New Jersey rescued a cat on Wednesday. It's not that. It's it's him bringing light to people who are doing intelligent things that are helping the planet and reversing the negative trends and and he said, Where else are we going to find out about that. So I, I was very moved by him coming to that. I mean, he'd be the last guy in the world you expect to do something like that. But there it, huh, it's, it made me think I saw Nine Inch Nails. Pure marriage is the last time I saw them. It might have been, it was at Red Rocks in Colorado and and Trent Reznor, another one who I think probably is in my tribe. He's he got up there, he said, You know, it's really weird to play these songs now, because I feel pretty damn good. My life is good. I'm happy, I'm I feel like I've found what I was always looking for, he says. But I know these songs came from a real place. I know they're very meaningful for a lot of you, but I'm just saying it's weird for me now to to do these songs, and I understood what he was saying, you know, yeah, I think that that's another thing about the Enneagram that people will might say, Oh Russ, you know, you're awfully friendly for a five or Oh Russ, you do this. Or is it, if you're still, 40 years into the game, doing the same shit you were doing when you started, you've wasted your time, like if you isn't, you're still lost in that three stuff. After years of studying this, what was the point? You know, right? We still have to, as I said, you still have this similar devils to wrestle with. They're they're not going anywhere. But you get more successful getting a break from them. I didn't say that.
Josh Lavine 1:17:40
Are you still interested in the
Russ Hudson 1:17:44
Enneagram? That's a good question. I'm not. I feel like some of the stuff that I did in 1992 that people are just finding now, obviously I did that in 1992 and people think, Oh, God, what about this? And this said, Honey, I've been doing that for decades now, and glad you're joining the party. And it's funny to me how often people think they're making a new discovery at all point look at page such and such, and you might see something, yeah, we were thinking about we were working on this full time throughout the entire 1990s every day, nothing else. So he came to a lot. And so the part of it is just about teasing out new theories or structures or descriptions of the Enneagram type. Of course, obviously, sometimes I'll get a new insight into a type pattern, but they tend to be on a sort of deeper level. Now they're not just descriptors. I'm thinking about the mechanisms like you and I are talking about, and that still comes up, but I'm more interested in it in a broader framework of how it can help people, how it is part of a process of realization, things like that. I'm writing a book with my friend Catherine Bell about how can we use to help us be more creative. Things like that are more interesting. And I just it's sort of like, I don't know, at a certain point, when you really learn something, it just becomes part of who you are. You have to think about it so much, it's just there, and it becomes a support for other things that you might want to
Josh Lavine 1:19:34
do. What is it about the topic of creativity that has you,
Russ Hudson 1:19:42
well, I don't know, maybe it's, you know, that old dichotomy between art and science and so forth, and, you know, this is a way of just honoring my interest in art and creativity and so forth, and just a legitimate curiosity myself. Self like, what actually helps me be creative and what has messed up the process? So I think that will be the other thing about creativity is, I think that after years of teaching this, there are people for whom the idea of inner work is clear, self evident, and they get it. But there's a lot of people out there who've been wounded by religion, and so anything that smacks of spirituality, they're they think that's not for them. But most people are interested in creativity. Now, some people may have come to a conclusion that they're not creative, which I'll I'll talk them out of that. But everybody's creative, I said, Tell me your dream you had last night. All right, who, who came up with that dream? Where'd that come from? He was the author of that dream, that very interesting dream you had. But I think a lot of people are willing to look at a process of self development that supports their creativity. And for my money, creativity comes from the place that the Enneagram points to, that the spiritual work points to, it's the same place. So it's a way that a lot of people can, in a more secular and neutral way, get into the idea of of a work that will help them have a better life, too, and if we get more creativity out of the deal, that'll be awesome. Cool. Yeah.
Josh Lavine 1:21:41
That's a very practical. And, I mean, I'm resonating with that framing from, from, just from its pragmatism, and also I relate to, I mean, it's who doesn't want to be more creative. But do you have any interests that are just totally impractical?
Russ Hudson 1:21:58
Oh, yeah, lots of them. This is
Josh Lavine 1:22:02
one of my favorite things about five is that they just will follow their curiosities wherever they lead regardless. So, yeah, practicality.
Russ Hudson 1:22:08
Oh, really, well, I mentioned you I was just totally fascinated by insects. They have all kind of books about insects, and I studied everything about them. I took university courses in entomology and everything, and particularly social insects, just fascinated. Now, did I use some of that knowledge later on in about studying the instincts and so forth for the Enneagram? You bet I did. But that wasn't wise. I learned it just cool and interesting. I have a number of things like that. My musical I used to be a musician, but my interest in music continues, even though I'm not anymore, and movies and stuff like that. I can name you all the Beatles records and what year they were done, and what was the sequence of the song recording for each one, and the difference between the American and UK versions, the albums, all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of geeky kind of fun stuff that I get into that way. We used to know all the stars and and the constellations and things like that. Natural I stayed natural history, and I was fascinated by the development of life through the ages. This is some a lot of scientific stuff was and some of it's still around. I find that there's so much demand for me to know different things about the Enneagram that that takes a lot of my time. But I still get some brain relief by going into these, these other areas, you know his, I'm just a history buff geography. I just, I There's a famous thing in in Denmark. I, I went in to teach in Denmark, and there were people from all over Europe in this big thing. And I drew a map of Europe just spontaneously up there and and put a little red star where, you know where Copenhagen, because that's where you are here. But then the whole map of Europe as I was explaining the history and the transmission all this, but you like again, I that was for the Enneagram, but there was a guy who was actually memorizing all these geographical features in countries and their locations. And, you know, I just, I don't know, I enjoy that.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:30
It's like,
Russ Hudson 1:24:34
it's and again, sometimes, like when people have these meetings about my finances or my next work, and I, I'm wishing I could just go off and read a book about the Saracens or something. Yeah,
Josh Lavine 1:24:48
I love that. Yeah. So what's this been like for you,
Russ Hudson 1:24:55
doing this, this interview? Oh, it's been fun. Been fun. I mean. I think I've enjoyed talking. I mean, I don't usually get to talk about all these sorts of things as you were saying, and then you're just real easy to talk with. So it was, it was a lot of fun for me. Cool. I enjoyed it. Well,
Josh Lavine 1:25:14
thank you so much. I appreciate your thanks for your openness. And just on a personal note, I've learned so much from all of your content and teachings over the years, and it's really touched and transformed me. So thank you for that too. And yeah, I feel really honored to have had this conversation with you. So thanks a lot. Well,
Russ Hudson 1:25:31
thank you, Josh, and I do see you as somebody who's carrying the torch and taking this this knowledge forward, and very happy to know you and support you in ways going forward from here. So thank you.
Josh Lavine 1:25:45
Thanks, Russ. Thank you so much for listening to my interview with Russ Hudson. If you like Russ and you'd like to learn more from him or about his teachings, then everything is on his website, Russ hudson.com you can learn about his upcoming workshops and retreats, his books, as well as a year long certification program that he's doing that I've heard extraordinary things about everything. Once again. Russ hudson.com there will be a link in the show notes. If you liked this interview and or you have been a longtime listener of this podcast, then I invite you to like this video on YouTube or subscribe to our channel. It's a zero cost and very effective way to support me and my work and the Enneagram school. Or if you're listening to this as a podcast, then I invite you to leave up to a five star review and some words about what you like about the show. If you want to learn about what we're doing at the Enneagram school, you can go visit us at the Enneagram school.com and right there on the home page, you could subscribe to our email list, which is where we will announce all upcoming things, including live coaching sessions, upcoming workshops, and also, very importantly, John lakovich and I are almost done, and we're about to release our first ever introduction to the Enneagram pre recorded online course, and we'll be announcing that through the email list as well. So stay tuned for that. If you would like to get officially typed, then I recommend you go to enneagrammer.com and do their full typing service, where you submit a video and a collage of images that you select from the internet. Instructions are on their website. And if you get officially typed by them, and you think that you might be a good candidate for this show, or you know someone who might be a candidate for this show, meaning you have high resolution interiority and can speak very clearly about your inner world, then I would love to hear from you. So please reach out to me through the Enneagram school.com just go right to the contact form. Let me know who you are and why you think you're a good candidate, and maybe we'll set up an intro call. So that's it for me. I really appreciate you watching, and I will see you next time you