The Four Ways To Handle Conflict | Episode 4

Conflict doesn’t just test relationships; it tests our relationship with ourselves. We dive into a practical framework you can use in the heat of the moment: suppress, react, consciously communicate, or transmute. Paired with the classic choices—leave it, change it, or accept it—you’ll learn how to stop repeating painful patterns and start building trust with yourself and others.

We explore why suppression equals self-betrayal and how each broken promise erodes inner credibility. From there, we connect integrity to momentum and karma: every choice pours fuel on one fire or another. If you’ve struggled with habits or addiction, this reframe helps explain why “one last time” makes the next time harder and how the only real time to stop is now. Then we walk through conscious communication with practical phrasing that avoids blame and invites empathy, showing how “I feel” language defuses escalation and actually builds intimacy by solving problems together.

Sometimes the most skillful move is silence—not avoidance, but timing. We talk about transmutation, trusting the right moment, and using three questions to decide whether to speak: Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said now? Does this need to be said by me? Finally, we clarify boundaries as a personal art: when to set external lines, how to start with internal boundaries, and why directing your attention is the cleanest form of energy management. If you’re ready to handle conflict with more clarity, compassion, and courage, hit play, subscribe, and share this conversation with someone who’s on the path with you.

We map four ways to handle conflict—from suppression and unconscious reaction to conscious communication and inner transmutation—then link them with Eckhart’s leave, change, accept framework and the role of timing. Along the way we unpack self-betrayal, integrity, momentum, karma, and the art of boundaries.

• suppression as self-betrayal and loss of self-trust
• addiction and integrity through aligned words and actions
• momentum and karma shaping habits and outcomes
• unconscious reactions vs emotional identification
• conscious communication using clear “I feel” language
• intimacy built by resolving adversity with care
• transmutation, timing and when silence serves
• three timing questions to guide speech
• personal boundaries, tolerance and discernment
• internal vs external boundaries and directing attention

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Transcript

Conscious vs Unconscious Conflict

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Cause when you're in a situation of conflict in an unconscious reaction, you're not really able to discern what course of action is going to be the best to take. But if you can consciously be in a situation of conflict, then you can have conscious communication, or you can consciously leave the situation, or you can consciously try to change a situation. It's much better to consciously leave a situation than to unconsciously run away from a situation. Because most likely if you unconsciously run away, what's gonna happen? That same situation is gonna present itself in a different form until you learn to handle it with consciousness.

Framing The Three Options: Leave, Change, Accept

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Welcome to episode four of the Eternal Faith Podcast. I'm Jaden here with my brother Dylan. This week we're talking about the four ways to deal with conflict. Eckert says you have three options when it comes to any situation. And Eckert here is is talking about situations that you don't like or situations that you're not comfortable in or situations that you wish that they could be different. And he says you have three options. The first option is you can leave. If you're in a situation and you don't like that situation, then leave. Number one. The second option is you can try to change the situation. Right? If you don't like a situation, you can't leave, the next thing you can try to do is try to change the situation. The third option that you have, and it's basically the third and the final option, if you can't leave a situation, you can't change a situation, what's your final option? Fully accept it. You have to fully accept the situation. And a lot of times when people would get to number three is when they're dealing with family members. Because a lot of times you can't change family members, you can't really leave family members. So your last option is you have to learn how to fully accept them. And that's why you chose your family, because they're the perfect teachers who can wake you up and they can make you more conscious because you can't change them and you can't leave them. So you're basically left with the only option, which is to learn to fully accept them. And that is a really great teaching and a really beautiful teaching that our family offers us. They present to us the need to have to fully accept a situation that may not be comfortable for us. One thing that we were talking about, which I thought was very interesting, was what do you do in a situation with conflict? So it's talking about a similar thing, but specifically in regards to when you have conflict, what are the four ways to handle conflict? And what were the four ways again that we said?

Introducing The Four Ways To Handle Conflict

SPEAKER_00 2:44

The first way we said was to suppress it, not do anything. And then we said the second way was to unconsciously react. Right. The third way was to consciously communicate to whoever the conflict is with. And then the fourth way was to fully feel the feeling and transmute it within yourself. Right, yeah, that's beautiful.

Why Suppression Is Self-Betrayal

SPEAKER_01 3:13

And it's good you explained it in terms of like worst to best, because the worst thing that we could do in any situation if we're having conflict is to ignore it, to suppress it, to pretend that it's not there, any of those things where we are ignoring or disassociating from the feelings that we're having, and life keeps on moving on with us never really working through or feeling fully what was there and what was present. And it can stay in the unconscious. And after enough time passes, it may eventually bubble up and erupt into a huge reaction or some type of inaction that ends up leading to a lot of harm in your life later on. So the suppression, the disassociation, the pretending that it's not there, the letting it bubble underneath the surface, that's probably the worst way that we could deal with conflict.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

And I like what you said, how when we suppress it, we completely abandon the self. We completely disassociate. That's maybe you could talk about the harm of abandoning the self.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, I had a session with this woman the other day, and she was telling me how the worst thing that we could do to ourselves is self-betrayal. And that's something that I've also heard Gangaji say before. There's this topic of self-betrayal. That is one of the most harmful things that we can do in this life is to abandon ourselves or to betray ourselves. And in Aryaurveda, it's interesting. The number one cause of disease is not doing the things that we know that we should be doing or doing things that we know we shouldn't be doing, which is the same exact thing as self-betrayal, right? That would be a good definition for self-betrayal. We are doing things that we know are not good for us. That's the number one cause of disease in our Yurveda, and probably the number one cause of suffering in our life. And all of us do it all of the time. So, yeah, self-betrayal is extremely harmful to us because we lose that trust, we lose that confidence with ourself. We are unintentionally damaging the relationship with ourself in a huge way. You can imagine in a relationship between two people, right? If I have a friend and I keep telling my friend, hey, I'm gonna do this, and I don't do it after enough times, that would really damage the relationship. The friend would never trust me anymore. So each of us, we have a relationship with ourself. And every time that we do something that we know deep down that we shouldn't be doing it, it's a form of self-betrayal or a form of self-abandonment. And it leads to so much suffering and so much disease in our lives. So the woman I was having a conversation with the other day, who's a healer and a very powerful woman, she was explaining that to me that self-betrayal is the worst type of betrayal that we could have in our lives. It is just so damaging and harmful to the self. And the only way to repair it is to start doing the actions that are good for ourselves. You know, learning to parent ourselves, learning to coach ourselves, learning to lead ourselves into more light and into more truth.

Addiction, Integrity, And Trust With Self

SPEAKER_00 6:47

And a follow-up question: when we continue to make decisions that aren't good for us, for example, an addiction, like let's say I'm addicted to the vape and I'm hitting the vape, and I keep telling myself, okay, this is the last time, and I continue to rip the vape. Why does it become or why does it feel that much harder each time that I continue to betray myself? And I know that the vape has nicotine, so it has that component, but I feel like that is true across any type of addiction. Yeah, there's a lot of different ways to answer that.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

I I think that there's two main points. The one is kind of what I was talking about, where every time that you tell yourself you're not going to do something, and then you do it again, that's a form of self-betrayal. And every time that you do that, you're damaging the relationship with yourself and you're losing that trust in yourself. So even though your willpower, your higher self, your mind, whatever it is inside of you that's saying, I'm not gonna do this again, even though that part of you is saying that, there's another part of you that doesn't even believe you anymore. So that other part of you knows, yeah, it doesn't really matter what you say, we are gonna end up hitting that vape again anyway. You know, versus the person who they have a lot of integrity, which for me, integrity means that your actions and your words are aligned. So someone who has a lot of integrity, they do what they say that they're going to do. You know, they walk the walk and they talk the talk. So someone who has that relationship with themselves, a good relationship with themselves, and when they say things, they do them, they follow up on them. You learn to trust yourself and you learn to hold yourself to a higher standard. You learn to hold yourself accountable. So if I'm someone who has a lot of integrity and I say I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna meditate every day for 30 minutes, and I wake up and I do that, that's really nice where I'm building a good relationship with myself, I'm learning to trust myself, and in that relationship, everything starts working in more harmony because I am going to do what I say I'm going to do. So when I say I'm gonna do something, my whole body, my whole system, it all starts working together to make sure that I'm able to do what I said I was going to do. The other way to answer the question of why does it get so difficult every time, it goes back to what we talked about with karma and it goes back to what they said in the Mahabharata of giving into your desires is like pouring ghee onto a fire. So if someone says, This is my last time ripping the vape, and then they rip the vape, is that gonna be their last time? No way. That's the same as them saying, I'm gonna pour gasoline on this fire, but it's not gonna shine brighter. You know, it doesn't make any sense. It's like, no, if it's your last time ripping the vape, then stop and don't do it anymore. Because the only time that you can stop is right now. So if you do it again, all that you're going to be doing is you're adding more ghee or you're adding more gasoline to the fire, the fire shining brighter, and that fire of desire is going to be even greater, and the chances of you ripping the vape again in the future are even greater because of that very

Momentum: Habits, Karma, And Consequences

SPEAKER_01 10:20

time that you ripped it when you said it was the last time. And the way that I like to explain that and that we have explained that is with momentum, because I think it's like the momentum triangle that we've explained. And you know, the tip of the triangle is the decision that you're trying to make, and whether you do it or don't do it are the other sides of the triangle. So let's use a different example. If someone says that they're gonna wake up at 6 a.m. in the morning, and the first day they wake up at 6 a.m., guess what? That's good momentum. They're going down one side of the triangle, but it was only one day, and it was only one action. So they don't have a ton of momentum. They moved in the right direction, but we can't say that they've picked up enough momentum there where that's going to be the standard. So then the next day, they wake up, 6 a.m., and they hit snooze. Guess what? Immediately they go all the way to the other side of the triangle. Like immediately they're back to the other side. And then if they keep hitting snooze, they keep hitting snooze, then they wake up at 7, then they wake up at 8, then all of a sudden they're not even setting alarms, right? All of a sudden that person who said they're gonna wake up at 6 a.m., now they're waking up at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., and they're going to bed super late, which makes it even harder to wake up at 6 a.m. So they have a lot of momentum that's bringing them into a negative direction, and the momentum gets faster and faster, steeper and steeper, to the point where it's gonna be very, very difficult for them to climb back up that triangle and get to the other side. Right? So that's the negative momentum.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

I saw this meme on Instagram, and they said that the longer you're on the wrong train, the more expensive it is to get back home. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

That's a really good way to put it, too. So then the other way is okay, then that person, they wake up at 6 a.m., they start moving back up the triangle. You know, they're moving in the positive direction, but it's gonna take them waking up at 6 a.m. a lot in order for them to get back in the right track. But the momentum, it goes both ways. So I would say if you're going home, the closer you get to home, the more expensive it's gonna be for you to start going the other way, too. Because once you're starting to wake up at 6 a.m. every day and you have a routine, and that's your routine, anybody who does that will tell you that they can naturally start waking up at 6 a.m. They don't even need an alarm anymore. So for that person to then sleep in becomes difficult. So the momentum, it works in both ways. So, and it's a good example of you're betraying the self versus you have a good relationship with yourself, and that becomes the norm. And then the hard thing for you to do is to betray yourself in that situation. So the more that you choose yourself and you have that integrity, the harder it becomes to go against yourself or to break that integrity. So a lot of life is just about momentum and it's about doing the right action or the appropriate action at the appropriate time, doing the right action in this moment, because that's going to start putting me on the right track of positive momentum. And again, it goes back to karma because one example of how karma could play out is I get rewarded for all of the good merits and all of the good deeds that I've done in my life. Well, if I've done a lot of good actions and I have a good relationship with myself and I'm doing the right action at the right time, it's gonna be very difficult for me to go off track or to do the wrong thing, you know, at a given time. Because I've established a certain way of being and a certain way of living where that karma is gonna carry me through, and that is my support. That is my foundation, all of these good deeds, all of these good actions that I've done, that can propel me forward in moments of difficulty or in moments of unconsciousness.

Unconscious Reactions And Emotional Identification

SPEAKER_01 14:23

So the worst way to deal with conflict is to disassociate, to betray yourself, to suppress the emotion, and then to just go on living as if nothing happened or to go on living as if there's no conflict. Eventually, most likely, that will bubble up and you either will feel miserable or it will get you into a lot of trouble later on.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

And I see that, especially in any type of relationship, but particularly a romantic relationship, say that there's something that bothers you and you don't you just suppress it and it keeps happening again and again, that's when those huge fights blow up. That's when everyone goes crazy and bad stuff happens.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Mm-hmm. Very true. Number two. Number two, the second way of dealing with conflict is to have an unconscious reaction when conflict appears. I actually don't know which one is worse. Suppressing it or having the unconscious reaction. We could say that they're definitely bottom two, both of those. But if one is worse than the other, I guess it kind of depends on what the unconscious reaction was. But the reason we had it as number two is because at least in an unconscious reaction, you're not suppressing the feeling. You might not be conscious of the feeling, but at least it's coming out and it's having some kind of effect in your life where you are going to be more aware of what feelings were actually there. Right? Because if someone is angry that someone else is doing something and they push it down immediately, they may not know that they're angry. It may just be very unconscious for them. But if there's a situation of conflict and someone feels angry and they respond in anger of, hey, you shouldn't do that, or blah, blah, blah, then at least in that situation, the person had a reaction, they had a response to life, life will respond back to them, and they can at least have some level of consciousness that that person did that and it made me angry. So it's not an ideal way for dealing with life. You don't necessarily want to live that way. But I would think that somebody who had a lot of unconscious reactions and it just never worked would eventually start to suppress them. So that's why we have it at number two. And yeah, it's not a great way to live your life, just unconsciously reacting to what is around you. But maybe there are some seeds there that could eventually grow into some plants or flowers of consciousness. And number two is how I would say most people handle conflict in the world today is they have an unconscious reaction to whatever is going on and kind of just move on from it after that. Would you say that's true?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah. And I feel like a lot of the times it stems from emotions. Like a lot a lot of people are very emotionally reactive, where when they when an emotion comes, they completely identify with it and let it take them over, and then they will unconsciously react.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Yeah, they identify fully with whatever emotion comes up, and they believe that they are that emotion, so then they react or they respond from the place of that emotion, feeling like it's life or death. They need to say this thing, they need to do this thing, or they need to prevent someone else from doing this thing because it feels like life or death for them. The third most common way that people deal with conflict, or the third way, unless you had something to say.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Yeah, you say it feels like life or death for those people. Can you uh further elaborate? Like they feel like they're gonna die if they don't let it out. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Think about it in your own life, and you tell me if that's true, but that has been my experience, and that has been what I have seen, you know, with all of these ego deaths. You know, we've been talking about death in general, and there are these micro deaths or these mini deaths that happen when you identify with a certain emotion or a certain belief, you're living that emotion out. You're living that belief out. But what happens if you don't live out that belief, or you don't live out that emotion? In that situation, it's a death of that belief. It's a death of that emotion. You're not giving it any energy. And when you're not giving it that energy and you're not identifying with it, you're dying to an identification that you had, right? You're dying to who you thought that you were, or you're dying to how you thought that you had to act or respond in a situation. So you're dying to the pattern, you're dying to the habit, you're dying to all of it. So when something happens and someone else feels like they have to do something, right? Well, what happens if they don't? That's why it's life or death. Because if they don't respond that way, then it's like a death of how they would have responded, how they would have acted. It's a death of what they thought they had to do, a death of what they believed they had to be like, all of those things.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

And is that I know jumping ahead a little bit, but is that the transmutation, the fourth way that we recommended?

SPEAKER_01 19:55

It's part of the transmutation, because let's go to the third, because It's part of the third way. So the third most

Conscious Communication And “I Feel” Language

SPEAKER_01 20:03

common way of dealing with conflict and the second best way would be to Top two. Yeah, it's top two is to have a conscious conversation. So if someone's doing something that bothers me, the first step that I would have to do in order to have a conversation, I would have to feel into how it's making me feel. If I don't know how it's making me feel, if I don't bring whatever is annoying me, bothering me, nagging me into my consciousness and look at that feeling or event consciously, then I'm not going to be able to have a conscious conversation about it. Right? Mm-hmm. So the first step is feeling it fully and not reacting. We cannot react. We have to learn how to respond. So the third way of dealing with conflict is really responding to life. You're moving past the initial reaction. You're looking at a situation consciously, you're feeling what has to be felt there. And then you find a way to respond in order to clearly articulate your needs, your boundaries, whatever else is there. Does that make sense? Yeah. So yes, you were asking if that life or death situation and you choose the death, meaning the death of the reaction that you would have had in the past. So it's the death of who you thought that you were. Yes, that's an essential part. If you don't move past the unconscious reaction, you can never get to the conscious conversation to begin with. Right? Because if someone's doing something that's bothering me and I have the unconscious reaction, there can be a conscious conversation later, but if you already had the unconscious reaction, it's not really going to do the good that it could potentially do. The better way is to not react unconsciously when someone does something that bothers me, to feel into it fully, to observe it, to study it, to look at that within myself, ask yourself, why is this bothering me? What can this teach me? All of those things. And then if a conversation needs to be had, I go into the conversation consciously, not blaming the other person, but explaining to them what I was feeling. It's learning how to communicate properly. So instead of me telling somebody, hey, you really pissed me off when you did that, in that situation, I'm putting all of the blame on them, and I'm saying that their acting that way made me feel a certain way. And I'm not even correctly identifying the action. I'm saying, you really pissed me off. The better way to have a conscious conversation about it would be to say, hey, when you were playing music really loud when I was trying to study, I noticed that I was feeling very frustrated and annoyed within myself. Right? I'm not blaming the other person for making me feel a certain way. I'm identifying that I was feeling a certain way. So I'm consciously communicating to them how I was feeling given the actions that they were doing, but I'm not saying what they were doing was wrong. I'm just correctly identifying the action. When you were playing music loudly, I noticed that I was feeling blank. And then I'm having a conversation where they may be able to have more empathy or more sympathy because I'm not attacking them. I'm not telling them what to do. I'm just letting them know how something they did made me feel, and they're gonna be much more likely to respond in consciousness of, okay, I understand that you were feeling that way. Maybe I can turn the music down, you know? Or maybe then they can explain to you, well, I was playing the music really loudly because I was hearing a lot of other sounds that were bothering me.

Intimacy Through Resolving Adversity

SPEAKER_01 24:01

So maybe instead we can find a song or something that we both like to listen to so that we can both study effectively. You know? But if you go to that person and you say, You really pissed me off when you were playing that music loudly, they're gonna be like, ah, you know, you and you know, they may feel attacked, and then the ability to have a conscious conversation basically goes away. And it's gonna be very hard to figure that situation out. Or let's use a better example. Yeah, if if you responded with the second way, which is the unconscious reaction, that person's playing music loudly, you go down there, you yell at them, you tell them that they're playing music too loud, they're pissing you off, all these things. That person's either gonna play the music louder to piss you off even more, or you know, they could have the opposite type of reaction where they stop playing the music and then you made them feel really bad, right? It's not about what you say, it's about how you say it. You made them feel really bad, you took on even more negative karma. And let's use the other example where okay, that guy turns off the music and all of a sudden you hear all of the other sounds and you hear why he was playing the music in the first place. And then you go, oh man, I wish I really had that guy's music back. It was a lot better than what I'm hearing now. But you didn't deal with it consciously, so you didn't understand, you didn't bring the sweetness there. That's why, you know, this third way is a lot better than the second way. The conscious communication is a much better way than the unconscious reaction. Then there's the fourth way of dealing with conflict or situations, which is what Eckert said is to just accept them. If you can't leave a situation of conflict and you cannot change it, and actually that's a good addition to say, with what Eckert was saying of a situation when you're not happy with it, and he talked about those three things, you can leave it, you can change it, you can accept it. The leave it or the change it basically go with number three. Because when you're in a situation of conflict in an unconscious reaction, you're not really able to discern what course of action is going to be the best to take. But if you can consciously be in a situation of conflict, then you can have conscious communication, or you can consciously leave the situation, or you can consciously try to change a situation. It's much better to consciously leave a situation than to unconsciously run away from a situation. Because most likely, if you unconsciously run away, what's going to happen? That same situation is going to present itself in a different form until you learn to handle it with consciousness. So we'll add those two that Eckert said into that third method of you can consciously communicate, you can consciously leave the situation, or you can consciously try to change the situation so that it's a better fit for your needs.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

And number three, consciously communicating builds intimacy as well. That's the beauty of it.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

You want to explain that? How does the conscious communication build intimacy?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Because intimacy at its basic form is just connection.

Accepting And Transmuting When Timing Isn’t Right

SPEAKER_00 27:10

So when you are able to consciously communicate with someone, you are connecting with that person, you are understanding where they are coming from, they can understand where you're coming from, and from there, you are able to connect and come up with a solution. Through that connection, through that interaction, it brings you guys closer together as well.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

And one of the ways that we get the closest to other people is by overcoming adversity with them. One of the ways that we get the most connected, that we feel the best and closest to other people is when we overcome adversity and we overcome these challenging situations with them. There's nothing that brings you closer to someone and in more connection with someone than going through something challenging with them at your side and you make it through together. So also a relationship, it's like when two people are dating, you know, wait until they have the first big fight, and then let's see how they respond. Because before the first big fight, it's honeymoon phase, everything is good, chillin'. After the first big fight, we have to see how do they handle this, how do they respond. And that situation will either bring you closer together or it will completely break you. Mm-hmm. Break you apart.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

And I I love how um I don't know who specifically said it, but they said that you don't really know someone until you live with them. And when you're living with someone, yeah, probably mom or yeah, could have been mom or dad. Mom or dad, yeah. Good advice. I mean, it makes sense. Like when you are when you're living with someone, there are constant adversities, constant fights, and there really needs to be a willingness to make the relationship work. And if you guys don't really love each other that much, then it's not gonna feel worth it to continue to fight for it.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Yeah, it's one of those things. In every relationship, there's going to be conflict, and the conflict is either going to bring you closer together because you were able to consciously deal with the conflict or it's gonna pull you apart. And consciously dealing with the conflict is going to bring you closer together, whether that means that you become closer friends or you become more distant, right? I may have a conflict with somebody, and what we decide is that we need to hang out less or that we need to do things less. But if we unconsciously have that happen, there's no intimacy building. But if we consciously say to each other, hey, this is how I'm feeling, this is how I'm doing, how are you doing, even in a situation where we feel like we need to separate or be apart from each other, we were brought closer together by the intimacy of connection. Or a relationship where both people are staying in the relationship, even though they don't really feel like they should, because maybe they're afraid to be apart or whatever the reason is. If they were able to consciously communicate that they don't want to be together, they would most likely be able to be closer as friends than they were when they were together, because at least they had the honesty of intimacy and they had that honest, conscious communication versus staying in a relationship out of fear of not being close. So it's a funny thing there. And let's go to the fourth way. So the fourth way, maybe arguably the best way of dealing with conflict is when something happens, is to fully accept it, to feel it, and to transmute those feelings within yourself. There is a nuance here because sometimes we need to say something, we have to speak up for ourselves, or we have to draw a boundary. I guess what I would like to say is that there are definitely situations where we need to draw a boundary. There are definitely situations where we need to consciously communicate

Masters Of Timing: When To Speak Or Wait

SPEAKER_01 31:20

our needs to somebody, and learning to communicate our needs is a very valuable and important part of life. But there may be other situations where the best course of action, and by best, I mean the course of action that causes the least amount of suffering and it creates the most amount of peace for me in my life, is the situation where I learn to not say anything and I learn to transmute whatever I'm feeling within myself to accept the situation, to accept the other person as they are and to move forward in my life. And let's use an example to make this one, to make this one more concrete, right? If I have a family member who I'm worried about because they are working too much or because they are not on the right path or whatever, right? If I have an unconscious reaction to them, it's not gonna go well. If I suppress my feelings about them, that's not gonna be good for me. The unconscious reaction that I have is probably not gonna be good for them or for our relationship. If I consciously communicate with them, if they are a conscious person, then in theory, they would be able to have a conscious conversation back with me. I would be able to understand more and we would move into more intimacy, as you said, from that conversation. I would understand more about them, they would understand more about me, and both of us would have good things that we could go and then reflect on. But if you're dealing with someone who is not at that level of consciousness, then even if you go and you communicate to them consciously about how you're feeling, they could have a reaction that makes them feel judged by you. It could make them feel less connected to you, and you may genuinely not be judging them, they may just be judging themselves, right? But it could still lead to them feeling like you are judging them, and then it creates less intimacy in that example, or it could be where you have a conscious conversation with them and they have a reaction to you, and really it's a reaction to the conscious part in themselves, as we said. Most likely, there's a chance that that's not the case, but they could have a reaction to you, and then it makes them feel not close to you, they don't feel like they want to go talk to you anymore, etc. And a lot of that is about timing. And what I've seen for myself is that I want to be a master of time. The best teachers that I've ever seen, their timing is so precise. Masters in spirituality, masters in business, masters in athletics, masters in music, it all comes back to timing, right? The people, the masters, the experts, they are experts at timing, knowing when to do things, the appropriate action at the appropriate time, meeting the need of the hour. Even if you consciously communicate with someone else about what you're feeling inside of you, if they are not at that moment the most conscious individual, they can still push you away, they can have a lot of resistance, they can feel judged, they can feel attacked by you, and none of that may be happening at all, but they could feel that way even if you're conscious. So, what may be the more effective solution in that moment is to feel whatever you're feeling from the way that they're acting, from the way that they're being. You feel it fully within yourself, and you're able to transmute it or you're able to find some type of genuine peace with it, right? Some type of genuine acceptance in that situation and accepting everything as temporary, knowing that life is never permanent, the only thing that's permanent in life is change. So you see the situation, you may not like it, but you find some place of acceptance of it within yourself, some place of peace within yourself, some place of understanding within yourself. And when you find that and you're able to be still with it, you're able to find a peace with it, then you can move on and you can let life move on, and you move on without having to say anything. So, why is that solution the better or the more effective method? Because if a few months later that person who they were doing something that bothered me, if I didn't say anything back when I was feeling those feelings and I transmuted it in self, that person never ended up feeling judged. They never ended up feeling less intimacy with me. So we were able to continue a good relationship and an intimate relationship together. So then when later on they're having struggles or they're having doubts or they're having whatever they're having in their life, there's no hesitancy for them to come and to talk to me about it. And then I can have a conscious conversation about that same topic with them. So it's not necessarily that not saying anything is the better solution. It's more about timing. There's a timing for everything. There is a timing

Boundaries: Personal Lines And Tolerance

SPEAKER_01 36:38

about having the conscious conversation. And part of being conscious is learning when is the appropriate time to have a conversation. I remember my friend Nick once told me there were three things to ask when you were about to say something. Does this really need to be said? Does this really need to be said right now? And does this really need to be said by me? And I thought that that was really beautiful. Does this really need to be said? Does this really need to be said right now? And does this really need to be said by me? And that is a great way, you know, to consciously ask yourself, is this going to cause more peace or is this going to cause more conflict? So that is why we have the fourth or the first. The best way of dealing with conflict is to learn to transmute it within yourself, to feel it within yourself fully. And then when the time comes, you can have a conscious conversation. And that's also what I've seen the wisdom keepers do, right? The people who I consider the most wise, the people who I think have the most wisdom, what they do is they know certain things, they know information, but they don't say it until the time is right. And usually the time is right when the other person asks you to say something. So if someone's doing something that I don't like, that they're doing it, and I have a conscious conversation with them, again, it can lead to them feeling judged, them feeling like I'm watching them. They could start hiding things from me, or it could create less intimacy, less closeness with that person. But if I see what I don't like, I transmute it within myself. I don't judge it, I just accept it as that's what it is, and I hold on to it. There's a much better chance when that person needs help later on. They come to me, they say, Hey, I'm dealing with this thing. And then I can speak to them about what I've been seeing or what I've been feeling, and their receptivity is going to be much higher. So a lot of times it's about timing. And when we're able to transmute things within ourself and we're able to ask those questions, is this the right time? Does this really need to be said right now? If we're able to just feel within ourselves what's coming up, there's a much greater chance that in the future, when the time is right, at the appropriate time, I will have everything locked and loaded and ready to go, and it will hit home.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

Yeah. I remember um Uncle Schoke, he said infinite patience yields immediate results.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Yeah. Infinite patience yields immediate results. If you wait long enough, if you're patient enough, eventually the result you were waiting for will happen.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

And I do think it's important that we discuss boundaries a little bit. And it seems to me that a boundary needs to be established when you've repeatedly been hurt and you need to form some type of space to protect yourself. Is there, in your opinion, when when is the time? Is is there a clear signal or anything that uh gives you the light switch, the on-switch, that a boundary does need to be set?

SPEAKER_01 39:57

I mean, there's probably a few. But everyone's tolerance is going to be different. So boundaries are an extremely personal thing, and everybody has a different pain tolerance. You know, for example, if I'm talking on the phone with someone and they curse at me, that for me is a boundary. I'm done. I'm not talking to them. My conversation with them is over. For other people, they may be cursing back and forth with somebody, and that's not a boundary for them. Right? For some people, physical violence is a boundary. If that happens, they're gone. For other people, they that might not be the case. You know, for certain other people, there is a boundary of if this person cheats on me, I'm leaving them. There's other people where they don't feel that way. You know, so boundaries are very much associated with our belief systems of what is okay and what is not okay, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. And that's going to be different for every

Discernment: Patience vs Separation

SPEAKER_01 41:05

person. But at the end of the day, each one of us has to feel into our bodies, we have to feel into our emotions, we have to feel into everything that's coming up inside of us, and we have to decide how do we want to live? Does this make me feel good or does this make me feel bad? Does it make me feel miserable, sad, afraid, all of it? And we have to learn how and when to draw boundaries for ourselves. But I would say it's a very individual process, you know.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

And just stepping away from all of this for a second, it's really interesting to see how the worst way, which we said is suppression of whatever we are feeling, is self-betrayal and leads you away from the self. And the best way, which is to fully transmute it, brings you fully in tune with yourself. And so if you look at it like linearly on a on a scale, one side is completely abandoning and the other side is completely bringing you in.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Yeah, 100%. That's a beautiful way to put it. And that's always what we see every single time. It's that spiritual progress comes from a deeper connection and a deeper remembering of the true self and of who we really are. And the disconnection comes or the ignorance comes when we forget that one simple fact. What do you think about boundaries? Do you see that there's a specific time or a specific marker when we need to draw one? Or can you give an example?

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Boundaries for me are interesting right now because I've always been extremely protective of myself. Where if something doesn't feel right, I'm immediately creating the boundary. Nope, that can't happen anymore. And that served me very well. And recently I have been practicing patience and more compassion. And sometimes setting the boundary can, well, it's exactly what it says. You are creating the boundary. You're creating space, you're distancing yourself in some type of way from the other person. And what I'm working on now is practicing patience and compassion. And to me, that means not needing to create separation if it's not fully necessary.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

Yeah, I think that's a very smart way to go about it. And that makes a lot of sense because there could be some people who are so quick to draw a boundary or who are so quick to create separation. And what is that keeping you from? Is that preventing you from entering into that deeper intimacy we talked about when you overcome conflict with somebody? And I think there's a good chance that for people who are too quick to draw a lot of boundaries, yes, that is preventing you from having that type of intimacy that comes when you're in a relationship with someone and you start working through conflict with them, which is an essential part of life, is learning how to have these relationships where we learn how to compromise, we learn how to understand, and we're pushed into a deeper understanding of life and of people's feelings and emotions and all of it. So I think what you're describing is very good. Learning that that's the level of discernment that all of us want to work to and that all of us want to have. That discernment of when do I need to draw a boundary? And when should I push through and have patience and look within myself. And that's what each of us need to be asking ourselves on a daily basis in all of our relationships in life. We're working towards learning how to bring these relationships, these situations that we're in into balance. And if we run away, we're not going to learn that. If we draw a boundary and walk away, we're not going to learn that. At the same time, we don't want to stay in situations too long that are not good for us. So that's the dance that all of us are playing and we're learning to play is how do I live in harmony and in balance with all of life and with everyone around me.

Internal vs External Boundaries And Energy

SPEAKER_00 45:20

And another thing I notice, it goes back to a talk we had so long ago, but the two types of boundaries, internal boundaries and external boundaries. And internally noticing no internally, I can change my energy in a way that is more closed off or more protective so that I don't get I don't feel hurt again in future situations. So I have been practicing creating more internal boundaries instead of having to make an external boundary where the other person might feel hurt or confused or any type of way.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

Yeah, I love that concept. I actually have not heard it before, really, but I love that idea of internal and external boundaries. Because if I have a family member who annoys me and I'm at Thanksgiving, and I walk up to them and I say, Hey, I have a boundary with you. I need to set a boundary. Yeah, I need to set a boundary with you. I don't want you talking about me anymore. I don't want to talk to you anymore. It's like, okay, that's gonna be super awkward. But if I make it very clear in my energy that I don't want to talk to this person, I don't want to be around this person, I have that very clear inside myself on that, and I'm not really giving them energy, I'm not really giving them attention, there's a good opportunity that naturally they will just leave me alone anyway. And I don't have to make it into a drama, I don't have to make it into a whole thing, I can just kind of move on. And if they do come up to talk to me, I can be honest with them. Hey, yeah, I was just feeling like I need some space with you. And if they make it into a bigger thing, that's on them. And then maybe you are clear about your external boundary. But it's always great to try the internal boundaries first. And I've seen that they work extremely well. In 90% of cases, all you need is an internal boundary. And then for the real people who are persistent and not going to leave you alone and in deeper levels of unconsciousness, then you may really need to draw an external boundary to just make it very clear for them and no hard feelings, but just to make sure that you have the space that you need in your life.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

And to add on to the internal boundary, I like how you said that you don't give them attention. I had recently heard that where your attention goes, energy grows, energy grows, energy flows. Oh, I heard grows. Yeah, energy grows, energy flows. That's great. And then, but then it also ties in to that other quote I had: what's the best way to kill a fire? You don't give it any oxygen. And when you just contain your energy to yourself and you're not releasing or opening your energy to whoever you are creating the boundary with, then automatically it's going to create that space that you need.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

Mm hmm. 100%.