(Ep. 50) The Keys

What if one conversation, one workshop, one moment of desperation could quietly change the entire direction of your life?

For their milestone 50th episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise take a step back to look at how far the journey has come — and to bring the whole Compassion Method full circle for longtime listeners and newcomers alike. 

If this is your first episode, it's a warm and complete place to start; if you've been here a while, it's a chance to see how the pieces fit together.

They begin where it began: the January 2019 workshop where Laura and Brian first met, in the middle of what Brian calls his "great awakening" — and Laura's read on him then, that beneath the desperation she saw hunger and genuineness. 

From there they re-walk the heart of the Compassion Method: why shame is so debilitating because it says what you do is who you are, why chasing "good" traps us on the same hamster wheel as being "bad," and how the little daily judgments — a grade, a mistake at work, a snappy text — feed the knowledge of good and evil just as surely as the big ones. 

They revisit the three steps (awareness / comfort / discovery — or "feel your pain, get comfort, go play"), why "logic-ing" your way around a feeling is really suppression in disguise, and why healing is less a finish line than a lifelong practice of coming home to yourself.

In this episode: 

🔹 How Laura and Brian first met — and what she saw beneath his desperation 

🔹 Why shame is so debilitating: it says what you do is who you are 

🔹 The good/evil hamster wheel — why chasing "good" traps us the same way "bad" does 

🔹 Why the small daily judgments undermine us as much as the big ones 

🔹 The three steps revisited — and why "logic-ing" past a feeling is suppression in disguise

New here? This full-circle episode is a great place to begin. Other great resources below! 👇

📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868

🔗 Learn more:

https://triggeredandtrue.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Hello and welcome everyone to this episode of Triggered and True. This is an exciting one because this is our 50th episode. Can you believe that, Laura?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

50. That's exciting.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Does it make you feel old?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

It makes me feel so old. It makes me feel like we've had enough time to do 50 episodes. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah. But Laura is not Laura is not 50 years old yet, if anybody was not yet.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

I saw a couple years.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

A couple years. You got it more than a couple years.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yeah, that's true. I got, I don't even want to say we're just protect our age.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Well, I will say that I have less than a year to that point.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

So that's exciting though. That's a big one.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah. Uh it doesn't scare me yet. Yeah. You know, maybe it's a super trigger that we can work through after the call today.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Definitely. Maybe I'm just in denial. Yeah, but I can't see how you know getting older really is a trigger. You know, I mean, I can see it in my own life, and I can see how that could trigger having those kind of milestone birthdays can feel like a lot, but I think it really is a trigger. We were in our true brain. Getting older wouldn't feel the same way as it does from our triggered brain.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, today's exciting again because it's our 50th episode, and um it's a little bit of coming full circle. So we're gonna go back to kind of uh we're gonna recap, start off by kind of recapping how Laura and I met. And uh I didn't prep you for this ahead of time, but I want you to tell me what you remember about when we first met, which was in um we met in at a conference or a workshop you were leading in January of 2019.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yes. Was that in the steering? Was that where I was doing those just to get for yeah, because I had done a couple before that, but those were when I was doing kind of like the main ones. Um, so initially, obviously I didn't know that much about you. Um you had signed up, I think, for sessions ahead of time. So I had read like I do an intake form with everyone that signs up. And so I do remember I had read it, but not like extensively, just because I usually waited until like I was actually sitting down with a person to go over like details and stuff. But I do remember you had signed up before. Um, but I do remember seeing you at the workshop. And I would say, like, the biggest thing, like I know you probably felt more, you know, the emotions you were feeling at that time, the Great Awakening, you know, not knowing what to do. So all those big emotions. But I actually interpreted it a lot more as hunger than desperation, even though potentially you felt some desperation because of how extreme things were feeling. I saw it more as hunger. So when you were at the workshop, I felt the engagement, the hunger, the wanting to connect with it, feeling some level of hope, even though I kind of felt like the hope was like a little bit like we'll see, we'll see. You know, like I don't know for sure, but we'll see. Just because you already were in school and you're already trying a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

This is kind of spooky. I feel like you read people like a book, man. This is kind of weird.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

I usually do, actually. It's kind of strange.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Well, but yeah, definitely I would say I felt more desperate than and you felt you said hungry. That's uh that's interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

I can I think like if I really went down to discerning when I discern people, I usually discern more of who they really are versus kind of the smoke and mirrors that presents when we're going through circumstances or having really big emotions.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Going through it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

So, like, so to me, it's not, I mean, I don't mean to invalidate it, and I know how extreme and how difficult you were having, you're experiencing um your emotions at that time. So it's not invalidating it, but also to me, it's a lot more like a smoke and mirrors type thing where like it's gonna have this big show, but really behind the desperation, what I saw was hunger and a real genuineness. Um, I could feel the like, is this gonna work? Because when you're going through really hard things, you do you do get a hopelessness of like I've tried things or people have recommended things and it doesn't feel like certain things work. So I did feel that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Well, I remember asking a question during that workshop that was kind of like I was kind of like, Are you kidding me, Laura? Are you really it's kind of like maybe a little bit of a little bit of bite to that question? Like, are you for real?

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Is this really what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Because I don't I don't know that I fully agree with what you're saying here, Laura. But you know, it was kind of a passive aggressive question. That's what it was. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Like, I think you're like, I remember that too.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Well, I feel like edge again is like you just said I saw the desperation as hunger. I think edge is actually like our child self, you know, that you you wouldn't know at that time, but it's really your child self saying, can I trust something? Can I trust help? Can I trust that I'm gonna get what I need? You know, and especially when you go through a lot of your life, especially in your early childhood development and your coding, not getting what you instinctively knew that you needed, but not knowing the name of what you needed, it creates this kind of feeling of uncertainty and you know, it's hard to trust because you didn't receive it. If in your early childhood development you had received what you needed emotionally, when you went through a big moment like that, you would have had more of an openness to it because you would already, you already knew that a teacher would come, that affection would come, that you would be heard, that somebody would walk through this with you. But when you have no grid for that, because you didn't experience that in a consistent way of receiving your needs and getting the emotional, you know, education and experience that you needed, it's gonna create more disillusionment. It's gonna create more mistrust, it's gonna create that edge that comes with really a scared, frantic child saying, Am I ever gonna get the help that I need?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, no, I wasn't planning on this, but one of the things that is ringing a bell for me when you said that was I had kind of put my full stock in figuring out what was wrong with me from a spiritual standpoint. I'd put my full stock in that. And my disillusionment was that okay, that wasn't exactly how God had intended for me to walk my way through this, you know. Yeah. Often joined.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Which I think is a really great way to lead into this episode, too, of when we put it all into the spirituality without having it paired with our emotional um health and our emotional healing, it really isn't enough. And I know a lot of people would say that how can that be? You know, God's enough, spirituality is enough, but it's not the way God designed our brains. And if God designed our brains to only need spiritual healing and spiritual needs being met, we wouldn't need moms and dads. We wouldn't need each other. We would just have a spiritual relationship that was disconnected from humanity. But he likes our humanity because that's the way he created us. So he wants us to feel our humanness, our emotions, what we're going through, so that we can receive that intimacy, connection, attachment with him.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

I often joke with people and I said, uh, God did a bait and switch on me. I was baited to uh a ministry school because I thought that I was just pursuing spirituality, but the switch aroo was he's like, we're gonna do some soul work, we're gonna do some artwork and we're gonna, you know, bring it all together, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Yes, exactly. And that's the key. I'm not putting down our spiritual journey, I think it's an intricate part of this process as well. But I honestly do not believe that we can heal the way we were intended and be who God created us to be only in a spiritual context.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

But God well knew that I was not gonna move my family across the country for two years to go to a school silly emotions for for some emotional health training. Uh, that wasn't gonna happen. So that's the bait and switch.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

So I mean, come to this international school to learn about how to take care of your emotions.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

I never would have opened that advertisement. So, anyway, um, so but prior to that's really great stuff, Laura. Thank you for sharing that. And I love that it was impromptu because um I think it it had more a depth to it that way, especially as I received it. So prior to that though, prior to my landing myself, you know, in your workshop and eventually, you know, working in that room that you're in now in your counseling room. Um I had a dream. Okay. And this dream was not necessarily natural because in the natural, most of my dreams I don't remember particularly well. Yeah, you know, a lot of times you'll wake up, you'll be like, I had this dream, and you'll maybe even start to explain it. I'll start explaining to my wife or something. And as I'm explaining it, it fades away. Like, I'm like, it's gone. Yeah, don't maybe that's just me, but it's like uh, but this particular dream was very memorable. I still remember it. Uh, I can go back through that dream, you know, piece by piece. And part of that dream was I was given um a set of keys from a local businessman in this hometown where I live today, that uh a businessman that I respect and admire, that I always have. Well, anyway, at the beginning of this dream, he gave me a set of keys. And, you know, being in kind of a, and then the dream went on, and I won't go into all of the depth of it, but it was all very vivid, all very memorable. So it was not natural, you know, not like a natural dream. I'll just leave it at that. So being in a spiritual environment, I was like, okay, what do these keys mean? So I'm chasing after what the keys mean. And and I really kind of landed on that kind of maybe the key of where I was being led in that moment was towards becoming more childlike. And I kind of got that from uh Matthew 18, three through four, where Jesus says, Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Like, okay, so the key again, I'm just pursuing a spiritual journey. So the key to me to be more connected to God was to be more childlike then. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

So, and when you think about it, I mean, this makes sense logically. I mean, Jesus said a lot of things that require an incredible amount of humility. Yeah, like uh taking the lowest place at the table, like, don't take a place of honor. Actually, what he's saying is sit at the children's table. Yeah, like when I was a little kid, there was the big kid table, yeah, and then the kids had this little like card table and thing over on the side, you know what I'm saying? So Jesus is saying, like, just go sit over there with them little kids, you know. Um, he also says things like, Whoever wants to be the greatest amongst you must become your servant. Um how about uh loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you? That takes a lot of humility because you'd rather just want to blame them for all your problems instead of praying for them. Um, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, turn the other cheek. All these things require a tremendous amount of childlike humility, and that kind of runs contrary to how we think the world works and how we think you what success looks like here on planet Earth.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yeah. So even like maturity and responsibility, too. You know what I mean? Like I feel like sometimes it's our ego that wants to sit at the have the best of the best. But I think it's also sometimes that need to grow up and be mature and responsible.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yep, yep. And so then the more I got connected to the compassion method and what you were sharing, the more this made sense about the keys being childlikeness. And a lot of what that really hit me was when you talk about the knowledge of good and evil. So we have a whole episode on the knowledge of good and evil. Uh, it's episode number nine. But one of the great characteristics of being a child is that you are blissfully ignorant of the knowledge of good and evil.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Unfortunately, that changes over time. But that blissful ignorance um and being free from the knowledge of good and evil was so huge because you shared with me very early on in our meeting, and we talked about this on that episode, but we'll hit it again in a little bit right now. But you say the number one contributor to shame, anxiety, and depression is the knowledge of good and evil. So can you just expand on that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah, for sure. So when we think that it's who we are versus what we did. So shame says what you do good or what you do bad is your identity. It's who you are. And when we have conviction or we feel guilt because we made a mistake, it's different. So what ends up happening is if I've made a mistake, I can fix my mistake. But if it's who I am, it's unfixable because it's my identity. It's who I was created to be, was good or evil. And so I remember specifically as an example, working with that men's group that I originally started working with when I was first starting out, and the relief on so many of their faces when I shared about shame and shared about the process of healing shame was this relief. Because from very young ages, because the con the most um most sexual addiction actually starts between nine and 12 years old. So if you think about it, many people have been struggling with any addiction, but specifically in this case, it was sexual addiction since you know, between nine and 12 years old. So your whole entire life, now you're a 40, 50-year-old man sitting in a room trying to get whole, and you've been your whole entire life believing I am my addiction. So when they were getting the lights were coming on, and you know, they were like, Oh my goodness, it's not who I am. You could see the depression lifting, you could see the anxiety being calmed, you could see that the shame no longer had the same hold that it had had on these um men because they now knew what they did was wrong, but they weren't wrong. And that actually empowered them to have a goal and a vision to work towards something. So you can see how depressed and anxious we would be if we already were um before we ever started to try to overcome or to succeed in something in life, we already were destined to be evil. So why even try? That's when people become shameless, not shame free, but shameless, where they're just like, you know, excuse me, which was just like screw it, like I'm never gonna be able to be anything because that's who I am. Or you have the opposite side, which is usually connected to religion, where it's my destiny to be good, and I can be good for the rest of my life. But if you see the hamster wheel on both sides and you see that cycle on both sides, they're exactly the same. Frantic to be good so that I can be good, frantic to be bad because I believe I'm bad. And that's why I think so much depression, anxiety stays lodged in people's emotions because of that.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Well, and you talk about like our body wasn't meant to be processing this constantly. So what you're saying is that we're constantly doing, we're constantly judging ourselves in this regard.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

And then in turn, you can't not judge others if you judge yourself. And so you're just in this constant perpetual state of judgment, and not just judgment about what you did. It's okay to judge what we do. I make a mistake, it's okay to judge that that mistake was not a good that that that was a mistake, but it's the judgment of self that directly undermines our connection with ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah, yeah, who we are versus what we did. We judge what we did, but when we ascribe what we did to who we are, yeah, that's where the hopelessness comes in.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

That's where it becomes impossible.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Yep, and that's where the and if that's what you really think, you can see how that's gonna create a lot of anxiety, how that's gonna create a lot of depression. Because man, that's pretty high stakes.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Oh, it's such high stakes, and most people may not be living in every area of their life like that, but even if it's one area of our life that we're consumed by shame, it's going to handicap us in every area of our life.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Yeah. And I think, you know, you highlighted uh, you know, you're maybe what some people might think is more extreme, like a sexual addiction or pornography or prostitution or whatever the addiction, it sounds kind of extreme, but then let's let's just take it to maybe less extremes where it's what grade did I get on this paper?

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Definitely still is in the same exact category. If I don't get a good grade, I am stupid, I am less than, I am wrong, I am a disappointment.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Yeah, the mistake I made on the paperwork at work, the client upset.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

I actually think a lot of time, I mean, yes, obviously, big addictions and big areas of bondage and you know, where we get stuck is obviously a big deal. But I actually think it's the little things that we experience on the daily basis that really undermine our connection with ourselves and how we see ourselves, because it's just a little thing there, a little thing there. Because most of our audience, I think, is um faith-based. Most of our audience, I think, is trying to become healthier spiritually, mentally, emotionally. That's why you're listening to this podcast. So you may not have these major things, but don't underestimate how some of those small things can feed into the knowledge and of good and evil, because we really are feeding the knowledge of good and evil, even if it's just a little bit each day.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah. You know, and for me, it it um it's surprising how it can creep up on you. And this is why when we talk about the compassion method, you describe you, we both you and I both describe the compassion method in three steps, but you use different terminology than I use. And I think it's just how our brains work, and your right brain's definitely more developed. So um, the way I describe it is your first step is awareness, like being aware that you're triggered, yeah, being aware that your brain's been hijacked or that you're having this emotional or allergic reaction, and they can be so subtle. Like I had one, I had one a week ago where something happened at work. Um, I had to make a very difficult decision. I knew the other person was not gonna take it well, and they they didn't, and some very hurtful things were said, but I logic my way around and be like, hey, they're just upset, they're never gonna be able, they're never gonna be able to see it from my vantage point, and I can understand why they're upset. Okay, but yet what this text said, I read, I internalized, but I logic my way around it. I didn't let myself feel the sting of the text. Well, about three days later, my daughter says something snappy at me. Um, that's home from college right now. Yeah, and the next thing you know, I kind of I'm yelling, I like kind of lost it. And I was like, where did that come from? Oh, that came from that back there, and I wasn't aware. I wasn't aware.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Yep, I love how you brought that up because I think a lot of us manage our emotions with logic, which is actually a suppression of emotion, it's not actually creating the awareness and the felt experience. And then our brain says we're all better because we logic through it, and then sometimes people even try to do that, like when we talk about like self-compassion, they'll try, they think they're doing self-compassion, but they're really just doing self-logic. Yeah, and so then they're like, it doesn't work. But I would say because we're connected to our logic, but we weren't connected to our emotion.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

So, my first step in the compassion method, I describe it as awareness, you describe it as feel your pain.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

But I think they really go hand in hand. They do because you can't feel your pain. No, yeah, yeah. If I said you're in pain, but you're not aware of it, like you would have to be almost faking feeling it, being like, I even logicking, I guess I should be feeling something right now. But if you're not aware of it, you can't feel it. So I would really pair awareness and felt and feeling your emotions together, as I would comfort and connection. Because I usually the second step, I usually say comfort, but I actually feel like connection is also in part part of it because just because you feel comfort doesn't mean you felt connected to comfort. So I do think there's like two parts in each of those steps.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

So what I and our last podcast, number 49, was about feeling your pain. So if you missed that one, go back about go back on that one. So what I had to do practically was get alone. I had to let myself, I went back to that text message, I reread it. I had to let myself feel the sting of what this person was saying.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Yeah, I just had to do that. On that deeper level, not the knowledge of good and evil, not that it was a bad text, but how did it make you feel?

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Yeah. And it's not that um as much as I thought, you know, with my logic, there was still part of me that was grabbing the Shame of you hurt this person, no matter how logical it was.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

It really is like we have kind of two voices going on.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

You should be ashamed of the shame voice. You should be ashamed that you hurt this person, even though you had all these logical reasons for it and you tried to do it as honorable as prop possible. Um, you still hurt them. So, um, so yeah, I think that's really, really important. And the other thing you talk about with this is you know, we focus a lot on the bad, the evil. And that's what kind of gets the attention because you think, well, obviously, shame is a bad thing, but it can also be connected to when we're feeling good, definitely, and when we do good things. So, one of the things that was revelatory for me is when you talk about you know the knowledge of good and evil, we know that you know the knowledge evil is bad, but so is the knowledge of good.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Because that's what we're also we're it creates this standard we're always measuring ourselves against.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Exactly. And it's addictive, very addictive because you get a reward, and the reward says, Okay, I'm a little bit better. We get our point system. I remember being so mad in the beginning when I first realized that who I am is separate from the point system. I just like the point system. If you did good things, then you should be good.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

It's easier, right? Yeah, how many cool stars are on my chart?

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Totally. And I literally thought, why did I do good things if it doesn't even matter? If what I do matters, but I matter more, then who cares if I'm doing good or not? I remember being like, that was a waste because I thought it it actually fueled me. The more good things I did, the more it fueled my shame, of course, but also fueled me feeling better about myself. But that's a false sense of value if it's connected to what you do. Our true value cannot be connected with what we do. So if my value only comes from doing good, I actually don't have value in who I am.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things I had written in my notes from when we met when we were talking about good and mechanical, was I wrote in my notes, you know, to really think about how many things do I do just because of appearance.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yes. And I think there's so many more that we do consciously or subconsciously.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Well, I think the vast majority is probably subconscious. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah. I mean, even like when people are like, I would make my bed every single morning. I'm not saying that we shouldn't make our bed every morning, but why do we make our bed every morning? Like if you start asking kind of a curious why in a lot of things you do, I think you'll definitely get down that your true self is not motivating the majority of your behavior. The knowledge of good is actually motivating your behavior.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Yeah. How many things do you agree to do?

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Mm-hmm. Because it's the right thing to do, what you should do, you're supposed to do, what people expect of you, what people want from you.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

That's the hamster wheel.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Sure is. And it's unending, and it's everyone has a different standard, everyone has different expectations. Then you throw in that half the time people are triggered when they have an expectation for you to do something for them. And so you throw that in the mix, and it's a very unreliable source.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

But you know, when we think back to it from a biblical standpoint, you know, one of the things, you know, God did not want Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Like He didn't want us to have to live by this system.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

No, obviously, it's a disaster.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

It's a disastrous system because it it comes with it all the shame, the pain, the anxiety, the depression. I mean, everything, you know, living by that system is absolutely exhausting.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

And I've and I've said before, just a real small thing. It doesn't mean that Adam and Eve weren't making mistakes in the garden. It never says that.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

They just had no knowledge of it. So it's not necessarily that we're, you know, it's about making mistakes or not making mistakes, it's about the knowledge of what that means to us and the disconnection that happens in the process.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

And they evidently, before they ate from the apple, they were not um ascribing their mistakes to who they were.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

They were not.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

It's like they knew that they were I made a mistake versus I am a mistake. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Exactly. And that's exactly how it was. Because I guarantee you they were making mistakes. You know, it's not they didn't come into the world perfect, you know, they just didn't have the knowledge, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't actions.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

So another thing you say about it is as kind of detrimental as it is, you've talked about how the knowledge of good and evil is also a safety for us.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Mm-hmm. Definitely. I think when parents didn't give us our need, if our emotional needs weren't met in our early childhood development, the knowledge of good and evil creates a false form of structure, intimacy, approval, acceptance, being known. But like we've said we said multiple times already, you're being known for what you do, but you're not being known for who you are. So we feel safe in those parameters, but we're actually never being known.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Yeah. Yeah. Never being known. Yeah, because we're so covered up.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Yeah, exactly. But it feels safe because we're working within our society, our systems. We create a one gold star chart too. Exactly. We get the gold stars and we're gonna be okay. But if you've ever seen someone that doesn't have a proper emotional attachment with a caregiver, but that has perfect behavior, that frequency is intense. It's perfection, it's success at all costs. It's I have to. The franticness, anxiety, you know, physical um characteristics of that, mental characteristics of that, emotional characteristic characteristics of it are very, very disturbing because that energy is not okay. It's not clear-minded, it's not tenderhearted, it's not at peace. And and I'm not saying that we don't feel that when we make mistakes and do something wrong, but I feel like almost in a way, like when you be kind of come shameless and apathetic, kind of in like you're making mistakes, and you, you know what, I don't know how to figure this out. I'm just stuck in it. Yep, I'm a bad person. But then the flip side, that's why the knowledge of good is just feels so like a uh just a force that just kind of continues to fuel us into anxiety and perfectionism that I feel like is sometimes has stronger effects than making mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah, because it's uh the good is kind of reinforced with positive rewards. It's kind of like the dog that does the trick right and gets a treat. Yep. Yeah, so you can we're like that.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

We're like, that little fix, someone smiles at you, someone approves of you, someone says you got your A, you passed this thing, you made it. Yep, we get like that that high, that fix, that medication from it. But then a couple hours later, the next day, do it again, all the shame comes back because eventually we're gonna make a mistake. Eventually, our security will be shaken because we won't be able to be perfect forever.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Yeah, yeah. So when we get to a place where we're uh when we're truly being, we're no longer being led by this knowledge of good and evil. So we are free to be who we were created to be. We're not covered up, we're free to be our true selves, which is what the podcast is all about is helping you discover ultimately helping you discover your true self.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Let's go back to the dream at the beginning and the keys that I was given. So I feel like I I've got like an advanced understanding of that here in the last week to 10 days. And I texted you this. I thought, you know what, I really want to pull this into our next podcast. So, so this is what I kind of journaled from uh this last week. I wrote the main characteristic of childhood, or a main, or the main really characteristic of childhood is freedom from the knowledge of good and evil, which slowly dissipates as we grow older and is tragically lost very early for some. However, today I'm realizing there's more to it. Yes, it's childlikeness, but it is childlikeness that is fully aware of the knowledge of good and evil, but yet is free from it.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

So I said earlier in the beginning, with a kid, ignorance is bliss. Your brain has an your brain can't even comprehend good and evil yet. Yeah, so ignorance is bliss. You're like, little kids, hey mom, look at me, and they do some crazy dumb thing, and they're like, hey, this is just fun. You know, they they're just playing, and but then they get a little older and be like, Oh, that thing that I did, that stupid cartwheel that I can't really do, that's kind of embarrassing because I've seen other people do it really well, and I can't do it as good as them, so I'm not therefore I'm not gonna do it anymore. So now I'm starting to put parts of me away. Yeah, that's play that I'm putting away, that's all those other things. So, but the the real key then I think is the compassion method itself. In that dream, I think that the keys that I was given were the actual compassion method itself because it teaches us, shows us, helps us lead us to a place where we can live with the knowledge of good and evil, the awareness of it. Because our we're adults. Yeah, we see good and evil things happen all the time.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

But yet we can be free from the impacts that it can have on our soul.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Yeah, like and that's what the compassion method leads us to.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

And that's why I commonly use that quote of like, what you do matters, because we're adults. We do want to be able to see what's right or wrong, live a life that's lining up with the things that are healthy and good for us and good for others. What we do matters, we matter more. And that quote alone, I think, summarizes the compassion method in context to what you're talking about of it still matters, it's still the system we, it's still the world we live in. Until something changes, this is the world we live in.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

So awareness is actually necessary to live in this world. But like you said, the shame impact of the knowledge of good and evil is no longer how we're filtering and processing through our knowledge of good and evil, both for ourselves and others.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Yeah, we don't have to live by that system. It is the operating system of this world. It is, but we don't have to live by it.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

No, and we don't have to judge ourselves, condemn ourselves, shame ourselves, separate from ourselves, disconnect from ourselves because we can stay connected regardless of good or evil.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

You know, I've I've said this before, but Proverbs 423 always rings so strong with me where it says, Above all else, guard your heart. Yeah, or from from there flows the wellspring of life. Yeah, this is what we're doing with the compassion method is we are learning how to take care of our heart, how to guard our heart so that we no longer have to operate under this knowledge of good and evil system.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

We can be aware of it, we can be, what's that? How's that said? We can be in the world but not of the world.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

I just had kind of a an idea when you were sharing how you um logiced through that text message that you received.

unknown 34:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

How like underneath the current, the under the current underneath it was still pain. And so when you had that connection with your daughter, it came out because it was there and had been taken care of. That's kind of how I would like uh illustrate us accepting Jesus' sacrifice logically versus us accepting his sacrifice emotionally. That's I think how I would summarize what I was just trying to share. Because I know I wasn't fully making it clear, but that's how I would summarize it. Are we logically accepting the redemptive process of Jesus and what he did for us, or are we also emotionally accepting the sacrifice that Jesus gave to us?

SPEAKER_00 34:46

That's good. Yeah, and both are necessary, both are necessary because when I first was going down this road, I'm like, well, logic's horrible. It's the bad guy. I've been I've been leaning on it too hard. It's just that I've been leaning on it too hard. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

It's overworked. I always like to use the example of two different muscles. If you never used your right hand, you know, your right arm, and you only lift weights with your left, it's gonna be all ripped, you're gonna have a huge muscle, and the other one's gonna be so weak and not strong.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Yeah. So the the answer isn't cut off your, in your case, the left arm, you know, and just build up your right. It's to it's to build up your right and keep working out your left and right.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

So if we only connect with God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, in a logical way, but we haven't been able to fully connect to him in an emotional way, that would be homework. That would be something that people could work on to be able to apply these keys.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yeah, that's a great place to kind of lead us in our conclusion because there is some homework there. This is work. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

I know I always like to say it's not work, but the roots got work, but it takes work to get to the root.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

It's like work out your salvation. Like this is part of working out that salvation.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

And uh it's putting the tension on it consistently even when it's uncomfortable. It's like working out, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Like I had to, I had to take the time to let myself feel. Like I had to block off the space and I had to like clear the deck and be like, Yeah, time, intentionality, I gotta feel space, feel it, uncomfortable. Then I can work on bringing the comfort and all the other aspects of the compassion method process. So, so really the that's a great way to say it, Laura. I've never heard you say that before, but that the way you explain that, how of so many of us have probably just accepted accepted his sacrifice logically, we haven't accepted it emotionally, and the compassion method helps us accept it emotionally.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Exactly. And I think that's where so much disillusionment comes with God is we're going around logically, feeling great about our relationship with him, and then a storm comes, and then we're either blaming ourselves or blaming him because he wasn't who we thought he was, or we won't didn't behave the way we thought we were supposed to, because we didn't have an emotional connection with him. We only had a logical. I think the more logical we are, the more we have to have a relationship uh through the lens of the knowledge of good and evil. The more we're able to connect to the emotion of it is when we can connect more to who we were created to be versus what we do.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Yeah, I like that. I'm gonna have to go back and re-listen to this.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

I know it was like, oh, that was good too. I like when I could explain it a little differently. Sometimes like I have my idea, but then like the process of explaining it. So I do feel like that summarized it a lot more clearly.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Yeah, yeah, I like it. So, kind of like where I'd like to direct people, like your homework, I think, is really beginning your own compassion method journey. And what better way to do that than you know, after listening to episode 50? You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Yeah, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

So I think a great place to start on that journey is to go back to episode 44, because in that episode, we talk about how to begin your compassion method journey and the resources that are available and different podcasts that you know would be highlighted in that process. And I think that would be a great, a great next step for everybody listening.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

I definitely agree. And even if you've kind of been listening or you've kind of been scratching the surface and kind of getting it, um, I really encourage everyone that's been listening, especially you've been on this journey for some time with us, to really apply it. There's so much of the time we listen to podcasts and or information or concepts and we learn it, we learn it, we learn it. We might know it inside and out. But if you feel like you haven't been able to realistically, practically in your real life, real time, start practicing applying the compassion method, I would definitely um, you know, challenge you to start to apply, not just to keep learning.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Absolutely. Yeah, it's a fun journey, a painful journey, but a very, very, very rewarding journey.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

It really is.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

I feel like there's just so much more of life I'm able to live now. And I'm and I would say though, I'm still more if I look at if I look at the steps as I describe them, awareness, comfort, discovery. What I've getted, what I've gotten really, really, really good at, and I'm really feel great about where I'm at is the awareness. And I see this with my wife too, just in our marriage. Like we'll start to have a fight and then we'll be like, oh gosh, you know, like we can back up the bus and we can just be like, I'm having an emotional allergic reaction. There's exactly this isn't as big as what I feel it is. There's something else going on inside of me. There's a pain point that goes way back down the road that's bringing this up, you know. Yeah. Um, but where I want to grow for sure is in taking the time to feel and apply the comfort.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Yeah, I think that's really, really necessary. And we never know how long it's going to take to be able to apply those different steps. But whatever one that you feel like you need to emphasize, you personally, Brian, obviously myself, but also listeners that are listening, go through that. Where are you at in the process? If you've this, if this is the 50th episode that you've actually listened to, you know, where are you at with discovery? Excuse me, not discovery, but awareness. Where are you at with comfort? Where are you at with discovery? But where how can we see where we might need to grow? And it's not always linear, you know, it's not always that we like, yes, that's the process, but sometimes, like you said, we stay in awareness for a while until we really strengthen that and then we move to comfort. Sometimes we ping pong between them in order to, and that strengthens it as well. It just depends on how we process each of those things.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Well, and it isn't, I like how you said that it's uh it's not always a step-by-step process. I I in the marketplace, uh, with my uh with new hires, I just I just we just brought in a new hire uh today, and I was going through kind of onboarding and I walked through the life cycle of our business versus like any business. Yeah, and a life cycle of a business is survival, stability, professional, enduring. Those are the ways I break up the life cycle of a business. But here's what I've realized. I'm like, oh, I like to think we're in the professional or the enduring phase, but you might be in some areas of your business, but in other areas you're in survival.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

Yeah, exactly. It's not every single moment. Exactly. Exactly. And it's important to recognize versus disregarding certain steps because we've already figured those out. Sometimes we'll have to go back to certain ones, especially with certain wounds and certain triggers.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Well, that was helpful for me because that was uh that was where logic helped me because I felt like, well, we shouldn't be in survival mode. Why does this particular thing seem so hard? Well, in that area of your business, you have in survival mode, it's not developed, like we don't do great in the area of marketing, it's a very underdeveloped aspect of our business. Yeah, so in that area, kind of in survival mode, yeah. But in other areas, you know, where we're running more like a well-oled machine, I'd say we're professional enduring, you know.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

But yeah, yeah and the awareness to know the difference, and having grace for ourselves. Lots of patience. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

Well, thank you everybody for joining us on our 50th episode.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Yeah, thanks for being with us on this journey.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

Yep. And we are excited that you are going to begin your own compassion journey along with us.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Whether this is journey or not. Exactly. But if this is your first episode, we're happy to have you. And like Brian said, go back to episode 44.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

44 and begin your journey. We'd love to have you be even more involved.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

Yeah. Till next time. Thank you.