First Love

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Well hello everybody. It is a brand new day. It is a Wednesday, and we are ready to continue our discussion on the old gate, its importance of returning to the ancient and removing the old. Hello, my name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I am privileged to sit across from the beautiful, radiant, joyous, and restful Dr. Robyn Kassas.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Hi guys, I'm back. Good stuff coming out of you, son. Very good stuff. Restful is good because we're learning how to rest, you and me, and bounce off each other. It's good, drawing each other out of each other. What a powerful thing.

Before we even start, can I just give a little bit of help, just to encourage them and a little bit of vision here? Look, if you don't understand what he's being said, just use the word blueprint and you'll understand, and you won't be blocked by the word schema. Just use blueprint.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So powerful. Well Dr. Robyn, in the last broadcast we got to quickly dive into the importance of understanding the biological as well as the neurological framework of schemas and how they operate. We left with a little bit of a clincher statement where we're going to go to today about if we go via our internal blueprints, aka schemas with an "A", then we will end up becoming schemers with an "ER" because our schema—

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Not schema but schemer, someone who will scheme instead of dreaming.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: You're going to get us to that place later in this series where we come into the original, which was God's dream over the man's scheme. I want God's dream. I don't want my scheme. My scheme ends up in pain and nothing but pain.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And it's a worldly scheme. It's a blueprint that's been used and it's old and it needs to be gotten rid of.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is where, "Behold I do a new thing, will you not perceive it?" I think that's an important thing to tie in here because even though it's an ancient thing, it's a new thing. It's just you haven't perceived it all this time.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's really ancient, but because we've just perceived it, it's to us new.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Scripture is coming alive like never before. So just to introduce this, this schema with an "A", this internal interpretation blueprint, it tells us based on our interpretation—here's the lie or here's the next step that the brain goes via—something needs to be done about what I've interpreted.

I'll give you a quick breakdown here. The schema interprets the situation, whereas the scheme attempts to control the situation. So I move from interpretation now to prediction, from prediction to control. This is where scheming is a result, the fruit of our schema.

Let me give you a daily example of how that would work and come into your everyday thought process because it's important that we tie it in practically as well as spiritually and even physiologically. The schema can eventually become a scheme. How does this work?

A scheme is the protective strategy that is built from the map. So the schema is the map, aka blueprint, but the scheme is the protective strategy that I develop based on where I think the map is telling me to go. So if the internal map is distorted, then the strategy produced becomes distorted.

For example, the schema says I will be abandoned. No matter what situation I'm in, I'm going to be abandoned. Here's the prediction from the brain. Eventually you'll leave me. I'm in a relationship. This is how I would do it in counseling. If that person has developed a personal schema about abandonment, then it doesn't matter what the other person does, how nice they talk, how many gifts they buy them, how many acts of service they perform. If they choose to believe that schema over the truth of what the person is doing, then that is what that person will live.

The schema says I will be abandoned, so I'm in a relationship with a friend, and the prediction keeps telling me this person is going to leave me eventually. They're always going to leave me. So here's where prediction now moves in a neuroscience way to scheme. What do I do? Because I have to do something. When I predict, the brain says always do something as a response, to either protect or to secure. So the scheme says, "Well, I'll control this relationship so that you can't leave me."

I'll be at the helm. I'll be at the ship's wheel. I'll determine how fast we go, how slow we go. I'll determine when you call me or when I call you, because what it's doing is it's actually coming against, or I should say supporting, the prediction.

Another one: schema. I cannot trust anyone. The prediction says, "Because I cannot trust someone, they're always going to betray me." So what is the scheme? The scheme is, "Well, I will not share all my information with everybody."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'll keep something back. I'll build a wall. I'll build a wall to protect myself.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is it. Another one: I would like to expose these lies. Please, in our comments, when you thread, let us know if these are the lies that have been scheming in your head as a result of a schema. The schema says I'm powerless. I've got no control. I've got no say. I've got nothing here that I can actually do. The prediction says, "Well, because I'm powerless, people are always going to take advantage of me." And it leads to the scheme, which is, "Well, I will manipulate circumstances so that I am never put in a vulnerable position." Because I don't want to feel vulnerable.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So your schema or your blueprint may explain your reaction, but it does not have the authority to determine your response. Your action is a different thing to your response because your reaction is you. You're supposed to have either reaction or response. One is you and one is the spirit.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So if I could just quickly tie in again, the schema tells you what you believe is going to happen, but the scheme tells you what you have to do to prevent it from happening in a negative way. Again, Sarah, let's juxtapose the delay of the promise. Sarah is looking at an internal interpretation. I'm too old. I'm never going to have a child. Abraham's going to end up leaving me because I'm barren, and he's going to go for someone younger. So what does the scheme tell her?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Do something about it. Make it work. Prevent what your schema says will happen from happening. Yes, your blueprint of yourself. You've got to go beyond this blueprint now and make it happen. How can I make it happen? Well, I can replace someone, and I can help my husband by putting her with him so that they can produce a child.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The schema was saying he's going to leave me for a younger woman anyway, so I'll give him a younger woman. Someone who is fertile. This is it. So the schema became a scheme.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, that blueprint really became a scheme, and it interfered with the dream.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The scheme will promise safety, but only obedience opens the door to real healing. Our schemes can't produce safety. We'll come back.

There are many, many schemes that I have been a part of. As I am listening to you and myself, hearing my own voice, I am going to need to repent. There are a lot of schemes that we cook up thinking that they are God's dreams and God's Rhemas, but they're really not. They're schemes that have been birthed from our schemas.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: This blueprint, again, don't get caught up on that word. That blueprint, that stencil, it's over your brain. God created it, but He created it to work the right way. So I'm thinking of a schema here and how a scheme came out of it, and that was Saul and then David. Saul killed his thousands, but David killed his tens of thousands. What did he do out of that? He let that mind go where it wanted to go, and then he had an excuse, a reason for chasing after David, because David was going to take his kingdom off him. He had to do something to prevent it.

So again, I said your schema may explain your reaction. It was explaining his reaction, but it didn't have the authority to determine the truth and determine the response.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's so powerful. And again, I just want to tie in in a physiological way what happens in the body when we go via these schemas and how it actually turns into from a schema to a scheme. What's happening here is called interoception, not interception. Interoception is the brain's reading of an internal bodily signal.

Here is how it happens. The schema says conflict means abandonment. So the trigger in the room, I'm talking and someone's tone changes. But because I live via a schema that says conflict means abandonment, that trigger then moves to a prediction. My brain says something bad is happening. Something bad is about to happen. So now it tells me to do something about it. It moves from that prediction into a threat response.

Sympathetic activation takes place. My brain braces my body for a threat. And so now my heart rate goes up, my breathing changes, my muscles tighten. Hypervigilance is engaged. Blood pressure spikes. And now something dangerous happens physiologically. The physiological response becomes evidence for the schema that caused it to be reinforced.

How does that work? I'm reinforcing a lie. My body is saying, "Well, here's the evidence of what is going to happen. See, I'm feeling like my heart's—" when people say, "See, I told you I was anxious. Look at my heart. My heart's pumping a thousand beats per minute."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Why can't you recognize this action? Why the response? Why can't we recognize that we've been told here, "this is not the norm."

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And again, I'm not having a go at anybody that goes through anxiety. This is to help you. When you say, "Look, even look at the evidence. Look, my hands are shaking. My heart is beating a thousand beats per minute." I have to say as a neuroscientist and as someone qualified in this field, you made your heart beat a thousand beats per minute because you believed the schema. Its lie has led to a prediction, its prediction has led to a result and fear.

Getting back to what we talk about, first love, this robs you of your first love. There is something that God wants to give you in place of the schema.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: His Rhema. The Lord wants to replace the schema with His Rhema.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's funny because the schema interprets the situation. The scheme attempts to control the situation based on its interpretation. But God's Rhema always introduces the truth about the situation.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And we want the truth because the truth shall set you free. Because God's Rhema brings back you becoming a dreamer. I love that God gives us these little statements that can land in people's minds with these even rhyming statements because it helps them to write it on their hearts and not just their brains.

So this schema works with your nervous system and it can predict yesterday while the spirit is calling you into tomorrow.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We don't need prediction. We need calling.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We are called. First we're chosen, then we recognize we are called, not predicted. Then we are commissioned. That comes as a response to the spirit.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: God doesn't only want to stop what you're doing. He wants truth to reach the place that keeps telling you why you have to do it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Can I let truth reach the place in my spirit, soul, mind, emotions, even body that keeps feeding the scheme from the schema saying, "I need to do this to prevent this from happening"? Everybody's going to leave me, so I need to cut them off before they cut me off.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's the action of what, but we've got to see this is our brain involved here. It's not something foreign or outside us. It's a part of the brain. It's a part of the way the brain is renewed.

Scheming is actually often an attempt to control an expected future. Psychology and Scripture intersect beautifully in this statement. Because I believe X is going to happen, I need to manipulate Y so I can produce Z. That's what scheming tells you.

It is future-oriented, scheming, but it is anxiety-based. It is predictive processing and it is control. I have to do Y because of X so Z will happen or won't happen. This is how I counsel people that have anxiety disorders. If I don't go wash my hands a thousand times, then the car is going to crash. What is that fear telling me to do? It's telling me to do something.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It doesn't make sense.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It doesn't make sense, but here's the key. Here's how you take the legs out from under the fear. You find what it's telling you to do because that's moving you to be a human doing, not a human being.

This is what people struggle with, like OCD. If I don't go and close the garage three times before I leave or put my belt on five times, then I know I'm going to have a car accident. But here's the key: what's it telling you to perform? It's a performance. It's pulling you away from intimacy into performance because it's saying you have to buckle yourself five times, you have to go and open and close the garage three times. Fear is always going to tell you, "do something to prevent this from happening."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: If I don't go and sit down and pray and I miss a day of praying, I'm going to be in trouble with the Lord. Jesus is King. And that's what the Christian will come under, that condemnation that they haven't prayed enough today. Therefore, God's not going to listen to them and if they get into trouble, that was because they didn't pray. They did not see there was more to it than that, that God was possibly trying to tell them so they didn't have to get into trouble.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Here's the problem. Sometimes when a person may be attempting to remove uncertainty or an uncertain factor from their lives, it means that some forms of controlling behavior can provide safety. So the brain, again, it learns to read control as safety. It's a reinforcement loop. The brain says unless I control everything, disaster will happen. So because I controlled something, disaster didn't happen and the brain goes, "See, because I controlled it, it didn't happen." So it reinforces—