Summary
Joe Hudson distinguishes between epiphany and transformation. Epiphany is a recognition of a belief system that offers relief — a click and unburdening — but it’s “dead almost as soon as it arrives” because each epiphany can become the next rut. Transformation, by contrast, changes how you actually act. It can manifest intellectually (changing what gets done), emotionally (changing decisions by expanding what you’re willing to feel), or at the level of sense of self (the most disorienting but freeing shifts).
Integration is the process of moving from the unknown of a new epiphany or skill into the known, following three stages analogous to infant development: the initial “aha” moment of disorientation, recognition without mastery, and finally normalization where the new capacity becomes second nature. Joe emphasizes that healthy integration involves not rushing to find answers, embracing new sensitivity rather than blocking it, being gentle with the non-linear learning process, and recognizing that most difficulties during integration stem from resistance to what is arising.
The episode also addresses the importance of community over teachers, the risks of teacher dependency, the “three to five rule” for establishing new boundaries in relationships, and practical guidance for bringing transformation back into everyday life without missionary zeal. Joe recommends simply showing up differently rather than trying to convert others, and warns that 20-30% of relationships may fall away after transformation — but better-aligned ones always appear.
Key Concepts
- Each epiphany becomes the next rut
- Three stages of integration mirror infant development
- Transformation changes action, not just understanding
- Sense of self transforms through facing the abyss
- Community is more important than the teacher
- The three-to-five rule for establishing new boundaries
- Healthy integration means more mystery, not more answers
Key Quotes
“Epiphany is kind of a recognition of a belief system that offers you relief… transformation actually changes the way that you act.”
“Each one of these epiphanies is like the tender beginning of a rut.”
“The important part is the lifting away, the important part is the freedom from a constrictive thought by seeing through it — it’s not to attach yourself to the epiphany.”
“When it’s integrated you have complete availability to where you were before and you have availability to a new thing. It increases your flexibility, it doesn’t decrease it.”
“There’s far more wisdom to be gotten from a community of practice with a similar intention than there is from a teacher.”
“It isn’t a straight line and so what you think to be moving backwards might just be the way humans learn.”
Transcript
foreign [Music] it isn’t a straight line and so what you think to be moving backwards might just be the way the humans learn right kids go from walking to crawling and so to be easy on yourself about your learning process and be appreciative of those moments that you are learning this helps integration out more than anything else welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson Joe’s work chances are good that you will have a transformational experience you may suddenly recognize some pattern you’ve played out over and over again in your life and find the ability to step out of it these types of experiences have changed lives but we know that the moment of epiphany is not the end of the story when you return to your life after a profound breakthrough you may experience feelings of confusion being lost or even being unmoored from everything that once grounded you that’s why integration is so important when doing this work Joe what is a transformative experience yeah that’s a great question the funny thing is when I was listening to your introduction you talked about an epiphany and I think there’s um it’s really important to distinguish between Epiphany and transformation so with epiphany epiphany is kind of um a recognition of a belief system that offers you relief so it’s like you you understand something there’s this click in your system and there’s this relief that occurs transformation is distinct from that in the fact that transformation actually changes the way that you act right it changes how you do things and the Epiphany is a it’s a really important part of some Transformations not all transformations that’s a really important part but the thing to recognize about an epiphany is it’s dead almost as soon as it arrives right so you have this epiphany and you’re unburdened from a thought but pretty soon that Epiphany can become your next burden so maybe in some part of the development you’re hanging out and you have this Epiphany like oh I have will I have free will I can choose and that’s a really important thing to say get out of like a victim mentality or to see where um you can be more empowered in your life and then you’re like choice choice choice choice choice and then that becomes the next rut because being completely in Choice which was very important prevents you from seeing Grace it prevents you from seeing the fact that maybe you’ve never really been able to control any thought that you’ve had that they’ve all been gifts that every emotional experience that you have isn’t something that you can control you can repress it or not but you can’t control it and maybe you can’t even decide to repress it or not maybe it’s just instinctual so each one of these epiphanies is like the tender beginning of a rut and I think it’s really important to see that because the important part is the lifting away the important part is the freedom from a constrictive thought by seeing through it it’s not to attach yourself to The Epiphany it’s it’s to recognize that moment of Freedom that is created and to step into that moment of Freedom more and more often transformation is a little bit different than that transformation is I now can’t do things the same way and it’s not willpower right you can Will yourself into some Transformations potentially it’s it’s not an effective way to do it but you can do it but it’s especially transformation that gets especially confusing when you can’t choose the same way anymore you know we’ve had people in our work that all of a sudden they go into a grocery store and they just like can’t buy the same things that they’ve always bought I know that seems weird but it’s happened more than once where people all of a sudden are more in tune with their system where they just can’t eat the same old crap they’ve been eating and those are the ones that are a little bit more scary right and it’s why transformation can be a pain in the ass sometimes because it’s there’s some moments of feeling out of control because you don’t have that experience that you’ve relied on that habit that you’ve relied on for years and sometimes it happens in the weirdest ways so transformation is just the change of what you do intellectually it’s it changes what you get done and how it gets done but emotionally it’s changing your decisions right because you’re allowing more fluidity of emotions you want to feel more emotional things instead of repressing them I don’t even know it’s changing the emotional context like within which all your decisions are made that’s right yeah because you’re neurologically speaking you make decisions based on emotions as what you’re willing to feel and what you’re willing not to feel what you’re excited to feel what you’re excited to feel that you used to be horrified a feeling that will really change a lot of the decisions you make and then there’s another transformation that create that is created not from the intellectual emotion but from the sense of self and when that sense of self changes those can be some of the biggest shifts that happen and it’s a an experience of deep freedom because usually when the sense of self transforms it widens it grows it becomes less of a small thing more of a big thing and so there’s less to defend what’s an example of that like sense of self-changing for like what’s a common example of that in one of your courses that somebody might experience what would be somewhat common would be so let’s say there’s this a feeling of an abyss a place in their life or psyche that they don’t want to look a person doesn’t want to look and every time they kind of glance over at it they’re like I don’t want to look there then all of a sudden they see it for what it is and they see it as a direct path to freedom and they jump into it and they’re like oh that’s that’s actually where I want to go it’s it’s very much kind of the allegory of the cave or you know Luke Skywalker going into the cave where they just are like okay I’m gonna go and face that thing and oftentimes when that happens the sense of self collapses in on itself in some way particularly because we Define ourselves in contrast to other things right and so a sense of self becomes more Universal if you were to think about yourself just like in this moment and say okay what am I but I can’t think of it in terms of what I’m not right like therefore I’m a soul but what that means that you’re not Material or I am my thoughts but that means you’re not your body like if you think of yourself not in the terms of a knot every time one of those things that you think you’re not goes away and you find out that you’re that too then the sense of self changes and so oftentimes people avoid these big abysses and when they don’t when they go into them that sense of self completely shifts and then there’s like some really big shifts of sense of self that can happen and that those are the most disorienting Transformations what kinds of situation can trigger these breakthroughs and almost anything um deep depression often transforms people times of transition stress like where the sense of self or your ideas or your emotional Frameworks are not working and so they have have to change you know stress can change things sometimes just a truth smacking you in the face you know you just have that moment where you’re like oh that is not working you can also just change people’s contexts like uh you know like take a a wealthy highfalutin person and stick them in a ghetto with no money and they’re going to have transformation right or vice versa there’s going to be a switch right to change in perspective yeah the change of perspective and it also changes who you think you are because so much of who you think you are is based on and based on context and what people tell you you are and if all of a sudden year-round people don’t tell you you’re that it starts to shift I’m also emotional fluidity is a big part of how transition changes to have big emotional experiences neurologically speaking it allows you to kind of reprogram some of the behavioral learnings that you have big emotional experiences can do that so all of those things create can trigger breakthroughs and and transformation what does transformation look like in deep in the process what different ways can it show up literally almost any way you can imagine so for instance if we talk about like The Awakening sense in the in the Zen Buddha sense um of Awakening to everybody says Awakening and it can mean so many different things but we’re talking about that moment when the sense of self dissolves into Universal where you see that you are everything and everything is you that that moment of Awakening particularly is what I’m talking about here for some people they don’t even notice it it’s like such a gradual thing and it’s like months after it happened they look back and they’re like oh holy crap um for some people it’s like like people like Byron Katie or Eckhart Tolle it’s like they’re in the deepest depression and the next day they have this utter Freedom um for some people it’s it looks like Zen sickness where they have that epiphany does that have a word for it called Zen sickness where the sense of self shifts out of you so you it’s not you aren’t you anymore everything is you and you feel depersonalized and I was talking to a psychologist who was a meditator had some Awakening experiences and he was saying that a good percentage of what people call depersonalization disorder is like a Zen sickness of Awakening where you get that feeling of not being just you but you don’t like it let’s say you try to stop it and you’re like and that tension creates a tremendous amount of disease in your system and if you go on to like the depersonalization disorder websites and you look at people talking about when it happened and how it happened it is like exactly Awakening experiences that you read in religious texts it’s unbelievable like I mean to the letter kind of stuff and so it can happen every way it can be like a dark night of the Soul it can feel like the bottom fell out from underneath you like you have no place to stand anymore and it can feel like absolute Bliss and love so it sounds like transformation isn’t always a good thing then for sure um because is it a good thing to get into shape yes I would say is there going to be uncomfortable moments of getting into shape absolutely I would say so there’s freedom on the other side of it the question is how much resistance and fear is there between in the integration or how it looks and and they’re exactly correlated so if you get Zen sickness and you say oh okay this is normal this is Zen sickness this pass is no big deal like you have a very different experience and if you’re like what the hell is happening how do I get it to stop so it’s again putting it in context yeah exactly there there are moments that can be uncomfortable and those moments can be seen through in an instant okay and and I think a large part of my work when I work with people is that when they meet these states just to let them know it’s common just to let them know I’ve seen it many many times before and almost that often can transform everything because it’s really they just get scared that what they knew isn’t available to them anymore and the thing about integration is when it’s integrated you have complete availability to where you were before and you have available availability to a new thing it increases your flexibility it doesn’t it doesn’t decrease it so if you want to go be angry and Prejudiced and hateful or if you want to go be in the bad habit again or The Habit that you felt was uncomfortable you can you have that choice you can go back and eat this stuff it’s just gonna hurt more so then let’s talk about integration and um how to support the smoothest integration from these experiences what does integration mean to you and what makes it important integration it’s like I think it’s the integral people who talk about it as transcend and integrate and it and I think about it on those terms a lot like there’s a way in which you’re like if you go from walking to crawling you don’t lose your capacity to crawl you just walk most of the time and it’s like that it’s just like there’s a new flexibility there’s a new way of doing things and so that’s that’s what I think about when I think about integration and it’s that time of moving from um the unknown of a new Epiphany or a new skill set into the known so if you look at really early stage Child Development there’s the primary reaction the tertiary reaction it’s and it’s basically like a little kid a baby they have a hand and they don’t know that that hand is part of them so the hand hits them and scratches them and whacks them in the face and the baby’s surprise like what the hell is that thing and then all of a sudden they see that that hand is theirs and they know it but they don’t particularly know how to control it and then they learn how to control it and these are the ways that we develop in everything there’s the kind of the original Epiphany that happens and it leaves us in this kind of unknown like what the hell is going on and then the second stage is oh I see it but I can’t completely I haven’t completely mastered it and then there’s the Mastery of it and this can take you know many years for some epiphanies and it can take minutes for other epiphanies and or other transformation other experiences so that’s how I think of it there but there’s almost always those three stages that go on and the integration is getting from that first moment of like aha oh whoa to oh this is normal and the amazing thing is oftentimes when it’s normalized when you’ve mastered it you kind of forget it it’s there and the reason you forget it’s the hair is because you’ve confused the skill with the with the feeling of euphoria or Epiphany that you get when you first get the realization so like watching an infant walk for the first time and they walk and they’re like and they get super excited and then they’re not excited when they’re walking at three years old it’s just normal they hardly are conscious that they’re walking but they don’t confuse walking with the Elation but as you get into other stages of development you confuse the Elation with the new perspective because it’s all happening internally it’s not physical you can’t measure it or see it outside of yourself so what does it look like when this when this process is healthy it sounds like like that that story with a baby is like that’s sort of a healthy integration looks like you have the Epiphany you see yourself in a way that you hadn’t seen yourself before you’re not immediately sure what to do about this but you just start to find that your actions change your your words change and you start to kind of develop this relationship with your Fuller self until eventually it becomes second nature and then you stumble into a new Epiphany I would say that you know the choices that you can make in the integration that I think are really important that help for that healthy integration are things like not trying to find the answers like after a good integration you have less answers not new answers so it’s it’s not going from like oh this is the right answer to this is the right answer it’s going from oh I know Less in a way and I’m more comfortable with it there’s more of a mystery out there and I’m more comfortable with it and at the same time I know more of my own truth I know more of my own self so there’s a deeper knowing of self and truth but less of a knowing of kind of like having solid answers to things it’s also like choosing the sensitivity side instead of less sensitive often with transformation we become sensitive to new things because we’re not repressing stuff anymore and so embracing that new sensitivity and not trying to block that sensitivity so those are some of the choices that you can make and and also to to see as you’re moving forward it is in a straight line and so what you think to be moving backwards might just be the way the humans learn right kids go from walking to crawling and so to be easy on yourself about your learning process and be appreciative of those moments that you are learning this helps integration out more than anything else right these things the first time you draw a boundary of a particular kind or speak or truth in a particular way it might be messy yeah most likely it’ll be messy yeah that’s right it sounds like a lot of what you’ve just been describing is like as we transform and start to see ourselves more clearly we let go of some of our deeply patterned behaviors so that they may just become more like a little bit more ambiguous we don’t assume to know what’s going on in the world and we have more space for curiosity and wonder and to see the subtlety in things and that leads to sort of that I’m not knowing what’s going to happen yeah so there’s more flexibility in life it’s less patterned response I think if you’re look if you’re saying oh if you know the integration is going well if you want to look it’s not short-term it’s like you can’t monitor every minute and say is this happening but like over weeks or months the question is do I have more emotional fluidity does do emotions move through my body more smoothly do I take things less personally is my physical Sensations am I more aware of physical Sensations am I experiencing that world differently our patterns losing their grip these are the things that in pendulation going back and forth between the learning and the old Behavior and the new behavior these are the marks of of integration happening so let’s talk a little bit more about what can go wrong um you talked a little bit about like the Zen sickness type thing derulization uh what else can happen almost all of it I wouldn’t say all of it but almost all of what can go wrong is resistance to what is right so oftentimes when we’re transfer when when transformation has happened we have a deeper acceptance and love of ourselves and so the next thing that needs to be loved the next thing that’s been rejected shows up to be loved and we don’t see it as showing up to be loved we see it as showing up and with us oh my goodness I was just in this Bliss State now there’s anger instead of like oh there’s the anger it needs to be loved now too it needs to be integrated now too so when we start resisting the movement or start fearing the movement in particular that’s when things can go really sideways like I don’t want to feel this way I don’t want to have emotions this often I don’t want to be this sensitive I don’t want to see the world in a non-personal way instead of saying ah this is it and this is this is the natural flow of things it must be because I’m experiencing it and and being settled with it that lack of resistance is what makes everything go very smoothly so usually most of the stuff that goes wrong is really just people in fear of the transformation that’s happening that particular stage of transformation that’s happening and when I work with people and I just as soon as they find out it’s normal and they see that I’m not bothered by it and I’m like oh yeah yeah it’s yeah it kind of feels like you’re walking but you’re not entirely it’s not entirely you walking like that could be an experience or oh yeah your visual field changed or oh yeah you go to the grocery store that’s happened before then they can get curious about it and everything shifts some exceptions to this are things like some Kundalini energy Awakening stuff that it’s definitely impacted by how much you’re allowing of it but there you can push transformation through your energetic channels I don’t really speak about this very much um I think energy the idea of energy is misinterpreted by a lot of people I think that as soon as you say it you know anybody who’s who considers defines themselves rational can say energy you know like there’s no such thing or whatever they want to do I think one way to bridge that for anybody listening to this is looking for a rational bridge to this stuff would be just to think about it as like nervous system activity yeah there’s a lot of different ways that you can produce a lot of different nervous system type responses that can be described metaphorically with energy that’s exactly right yeah they’re you know somebody who I learned a lot from around it just called them like close cousins like they’re almost identical hard to see the difference between the nervous system and the energetic system and so I absolutely agree that’s the best way to think about it I think the other way to think about it that I can be very helpful is bodily Sensations non-muscular bodily Sensations is another way to think about it but anyways you can those things can shift in such a way that maybe they keep you up all night or you’re excited too much or you know something can go out of whack there and that’s kind of far more of a physical thing that’s happening it can be really exaggerated by certain breath work or certain um yogic practices uh and if if that’s happening and you’ve confused like oh that Kundalini thing is gonna set you free then I really suggest like going seeing a professional like a really good acupuncturist or something like that who can rebalance that energetic system or nervous system and then the other thing that can happen is people can go into traumas and um like relive a deep trauma and not be held in a deeply loving container for enough time for them to integrate that trauma and see that they’re not living it anymore that it’s it was something that was in the past and so that’s another place where it can go wrong somebody goes into a trauma and like they’re it’s it’s like they can’t be held in love they can’t be held in like unconditional acceptance and then therefore it gets stuck again it will move but it’s just not it’s not the skillful way to move through it and it’s definitely not the the most gentle way to move through it or the most efficient so those are the some of the places we can go wrong where someone can just like one person who’s not very skilled at holding trauma they’ve just kind of processed their own decides that they really know about trauma and somebody move some trauma because they know some of the exercises or things that can move that trauma and and but they don’t know actually how to hold it so that’s another place where it can go wrong so I really recommend if you’re moving trauma to move it with somebody who has some experience in that place to really dive into those places yeah along those lines I’m curious about a pattern that I’ve seen before in this in this type of work and this happens in all kinds of student teacher relationships where there’s uh like a mentor in the role of transmitting the wisdom of some practice or facilitating you know trauma release of some kind where the student walks away from an experience feeling transformed but also increasingly feeling dependent on their teacher or some other projected gatekeeper of the wisdom what do you have to say about that yeah in general avoid teachers who do that um is what I would say um but it can get a little confusing there too so the kind of teacher that I would recommend is a teacher who’s constantly pointing you back to your own truth who’s teaching you the skills that you need to be independent to be more successful and more self-aware more skillful in your means so to speak and and the way to get there most efficiently is to really teach you how to listen to yourself and to follow your own truth and encourage you to not take their word as solid gold or even wisdom but to take their words and experiment with it and find out what’s working for you and so that’s the that’s the relationship the relationship is where the teacher doesn’t see themselves as better than or worse than or equal to you but they see themselves what best can be described as you and that’s kind of the best relationship the most effective relationship maybe you need something else and and maybe you need you know to explore the depth of a dysfunctional teaching relationship or a a one where you you know decide somebody else somebody else knows better for you than you do but it’s definitely not anything I would recommend and if you’re doing it you know go into it consciously the confusion in this is that if I was teaching you physics you wouldn’t assume that you understand physics after I taught you two workshops you know what I mean like okay we spent four hours together um learning physics and you’re like okay I got it right so there’s things that the teacher should know because they have more experience in the in the work that you might not know you might not have spent the time on the landscape you might not have like been in the terrain as long so there’s something about that the teacher should hold some value but it shouldn’t look like dependency it should constantly look like you know it’s increasing your capacity as a person for the most part pretty consistently there might be some Strays you know there might be some backwaters that you get caught in right but sometimes you have students who are just like okay well I’ve now I’ve I’ve spent 16 hours with you I’m ready to teach it’s like they they always find out the hard way that teaching isn’t as sexy as they think it is well there’s also just like there’s there’s the contrast between the pre-transformation self and the post-transformation self where all of a sudden you just feel like you see the world so clearly and like there’s a part of you that just immediately comes in like the ego comes in it’s like okay now I see the world completely I’m ready exactly I mean that’s where like the the idea of a tradition holds power I mean it holds some things back and it gives really good things but like since we were talking about Zen today let’s let’s talk about it and you know somebody has a big Awakening in Zen and you know like a master will just smack him on the back of the of the back with a cane that it really hurts and they’re like okay who felt that then right where where they’re basically challenging that part of you that thinks now I get it the part of you that thinks that there’s a Finish Line that it’s not a constant Evolution that there’s some place where transformation stops and the tradition that’s one of the really beautiful things about a tradition and there’s other things that limit you in a tradition as well when you start thinking that the tradition is truth or that the writings are truth or the teacher is truth instead of what’s happening internally right being the truth I think I think something that happens that contributes to the uh sort of the starry-eyed teacher worship thing is that having a Transformer experience where what you described is like you’ve been de-patterned a little bit and you feel like there’s like a like sort of a 404 like you’ve described yourself sort of sitting the unknown and I think that can lead to sort of a fear of being in that unknown and a desire to kind of collapse that unknown down onto something like like a teacher or some particular belief that like gives us that sense of knowing again absolutely like we’re constantly trying to find some way that we feel like we’re in control or that we’re ground we’re on like okay I know this is real the truth is it’s like just the opposite it’s like the more you go the more you realize that it’s not real yeah and at the same time interestingly almost paradoxically you’re far more grounded you’re far more it’s far less likely that you’re going to be swayed from your love and your freedom and your truth yeah I think this this kind of speaks to the importance of community coming out of like the courses of yours that I’ve taken it has been really really helpful to have other people who have been through the same experience and deal the cross-reference with them how they’re doing in their lives um and not just be dropped back into my previous life and having a hard time contextualizing Community is that is far more important than the teacher I would say that they they really help each other out hopefully there’s so much more wisdom to be gotten from a community of practice with a similar intention than there is from a teacher if I’m teaching someone how to access their anger my capacity to do that is not as good as the person who just learned or at least they have some capacity that I do not have someone who’s just learned to release their anger like you know um in a safe way it’s just it’s just like it’s electric you know and so a community can do that because there’s people at different stages learning different things they can teach each other we see this learning math with you know third graders so that Community is incredibly important I think that that’s really important it’s also really important because there’s a kind of a relatableness that people going through the journey together can have and and so there’s less fear can kind of interrupt the transformation and and maintain the pattern so I think for that’s another reason the community is just so critical and to allow yourself to be a part of that community and be vulnerable in that Community is tremendous the weakness of a community is that a whole Community can decide that the teacher is special right and the teacher could buy into that and then the whole system locks in too yeah it’s a yeah that agreement between a community and a and a teacher or a facilitator or leader is a you know there’s there’s something in us there’s something natural just like there’s something naturalness that wants sex there’s something natural in us that wants somebody to know what the hell is going on to have the answer to know which way to go so that we can feel safe and it’s why when we do kind of the longer term courses one of the things we learned is that that wisdom is best found in the community it’s found in group intelligence which is really tricky to access and you need a lot of skills to get there but I mean that’s the far deeper wisdom and I teach that because I like to access that wisdom you know what I mean like I can sit here and talk blah blah blah I can play the role of the person who knows something but one of the places that I get the most Insight I learn the most is to watch a community access its deeper intelligence and and I love that I love working that way in business I love working that way with people it’s it’s where I learn and I grow the most and I find everybody learns and grows the most so then for for people that are coming out of courses and going back into into their world and trying to create or be a part of community or be doing this work with the people in their lives um I’ve I’ve experienced that it can be it can be really difficult to present the work how do we present what we’re doing to people in our lives when we say hey I just did this course it was really great it was transformational for me what’s the best way to to describe this to people I don’t really I say don’t um try to describe it to people um describe your experience to people don’t describe the work meaning just show up with more unconditional love for the people around you show up with more self-awareness show up with more but less patterned responses show up in a way that inspires them to to join you and meet you but I I don’t recommend missionary work or using the tools on people that um who have who are not in agreement to do it it it’s a form of like better than this you have to kind of think that you’ve just discovered something that makes you there’s a very natural part of it where you just discovered something to give you Freedom you want to share it with everybody and if you can even own that it’s just like okay I just experienced something that I really want to share because it’s giving me so much happiness and I realize that like I do not want to push anything on you and like how do you want to deal with that you know I think that’s a beautiful thing to say to somebody and see where they are with it but to do it without permission um to do it without like Consciousness just just don’t just be in your in your new world enjoy it enjoy them just as they are that’s that’s what I suggest and what would be a good line between to draw between the tools that are actually meant to be brought into the world like having a view conversation and how what questions um and some of the tools that are perhaps not ready to be brought to people who haven’t been exposed to the work like projection Reclamation or something like that yeah if you’re asking them to do anything then don’t do it so in view you don’t have to ask them to do anything or be any way you just ask questions and speak from a vulnerable impartial empathetic and space of wonder so you’re not requiring anything from them but as soon as you’re asking them to do something or you’re telling them about their experience or you’re trying to cajole them into a new way of being or trying to have power over them or feel in control or not feel the helplessness that you have being their friend anything like that then then don’t do that yeah it sounds like that just comes straight back down to to being in view like not being partial that’s right not trying to change them that’s exactly it yeah okay so do you have any more tips then for for those of us who just come from a course and are ready to present our new selves or transform themselves into the world and to the other people in our lives yeah so I think the main thing there is that there is a natural pressure from a society or a group or a marriage to have you be who you were it’s hard for people to see the new you it’s hard for you to see the new version of a person across from you and there’s behaviors that you’ve agreed upon you have an agreement like hey I’m Gonna Save you you’re going to be a victim or you’re going to bully me and I get to be resentful and no matter how healthy or unhealthy those Agreements are there’s a pressure to stay in those relationships and so I think about the three to five rule in this which is when you have a new Behavior you’re drawing a new boundary when you’re you should expect that the person is going to treat you like your old self three to five times and each time they’re gonna kind of up the ante on the behavior so let’s say you’ve got a husband who is a Yeller and you’re like oh okay well I don’t want to be with you yelling um but I really want to be with you so when you’re yelling I’m going to leave the house and I’ll come back in 30 minutes and if we can talk great and if we can’t then I’ll leave the house again for 30 minutes it’s going to take three to five times of doing that before that person the husband gets it and it’s like okay I got it like I yelling doesn’t work anymore and most likely they’re going to get even more they’re going to use a whole bunch of other tricks to keep you in so they’re going to up the ante three to five times and then the behavior falls apart so just that’s the expectation and and I’m really grateful that it’s built this way that you know Humanity seems to tend to act in this way because it really forces us to learn to keep that boundary it forces us to really learn to what what’s necessary to change this Behavior even under stressful circumstances so it’s actually quite a gift but it’s it’s good to keep it in mind that like you’re not going to go back into your world and everybody’s going to be like oh hey he’s different so now I’m just going to treat him like the new person that he is there will be resistance and it’s an opportunity to double down on doing the work that’s exactly it yeah yeah well said I think the other thing to know is that some people are going to go away you know if you transform there some people are going to be like I don’t like the new agreement that only happens I find like 70 80 percent of the times people stay in 20 to 30 people leave uh everybody’s very scared of it right so whenever somebody transforms one of the ways they kind of try to revert is to go oh my God I’m gonna lose so and so they’re scared of the result but it doesn’t happen as frequently as you would think you know only 20 or 30 percent of the time and it’s basically like hey this is the way I want to live hey this isn’t the way that I want to live and if you can see it that way it’s really beautiful it’s not personal it’s just choices that people are making it’s great to see it that way because it can just be really transparent that way too it’s like hey so I’ve decided that I want to live in a world where you know we show up in love instead of showing up in shame with each other do you want to join me do you want to support each other in that transformation like if the more transparent that articulation of your vision is then the easier it is for people to meet you and the less likely it is that they’re gonna decide to leave and some people are going to leave some people are just not going to want to live and have it the world that you want to create for yourself but it’s nothing to fear because better people show up you know or not better but people who want to live in those agreements they always show up and those who stay are getting a more self-aware version of you that’s right yeah and not only do they they show up you also start inviting people in who are also transforming and so that propels your own transformation so it really works out well and and oftentimes those people can’t show up if the space is filled by you know someone who’s abusive or doesn’t have the same agreements in this work you like we touched on a little bit earlier you often highlight the importance of staying in the not knowing after a breakthrough or seeing through some habitual way of perceiving things but integration necessarily seems to involve some kind of a collapse from that unknowing State into some new identity which becomes a new rut how do we stay the most in that Unknowing without collapsing it but still staying grounded in our lives yeah that’s a great question I think it’s not about trying to stay in the not knowing is it’s more about not trying to get into the knowing I think there’s like um you know some big thing happens in your mind’s like let me figure that out I kind of figured that out and your mind always figures it out I guarantee it if your mind at this moment hasn’t figured it out I guarantee you it will like have a little patience with it it might take a couple months but like I was talking about there’s like those three stages of development as far as like the baby’s hand not knowing it’s the hand hitting and scratching its face and then there’s the oh I know it’s my hand and then there’s the Lego I can control my hand those three stages are really important and if you cut any of them short like the full integration doesn’t happen it’s just like you know babies need to crawl for a while for them to get like solid left right brain cohesion so it’s just a really important thing to allow the not knowing to be there as long as it wants to be there meaning not forcing it and then then the knowing shows up just kind of like oh I get it it’s not figured out it’s just like oh I get it and then all of a sudden you can articulate it and that process is the smoothest and it and it creates the deepest integration if you like strive to put words on its drive to understand it then you’re limiting it you’re containing it in a way that doesn’t allow it to like fully transform you well thanks a lot Joe this has been a great episode thanks for talking to us about integration pleasure yeah good to talk to you as always thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate US on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com foreign