a little direction on custom post type

You’re not using templates correctly. You don’t use a custom page template to output custom posts or a custom post archive. There are dedicated templates you need to create to give your post type its own templates. Refer to the Template Hierarchy.

For example, if your post type is called event, you need to create archive-event.php as the template for the list of events that will appear automatically at /event (or /events, whatever slug you set when registering). Then you need to create single-event.php as the template for the single view of your post type. You shouldn’t be using pages to output archives or custom post types.