February 1, 2021 • 50 mins
LeAnn is joined by bestselling author and spiritual teacher Matt Kahn to explore the life-changing benefits of following a personal path based on heart-centered awareness and wisdom.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello Loves. I am so happy to welcome
you to today's episode because you're about to meet one
of the sweetest, most insightful humans that I know. Matt
Con is a best selling author and spiritual teacher and
(00:21):
healer focused on a message that is definitely close to
my heart and when the world could benefit greatly from
embracing love, love, love love. I'm so thrilled to have
him here to crack open our hearts and mind. So
care we go sing that say me, Hello, my friend
(01:07):
Matt Con. Welcome to the Holy Human podcast. Thank you well,
thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. Absolutely,
I'm so excited about this conversation because we when we talk,
I always feel like we have such beautiful conversations and
you have such deep wisdom to share. So I'm excited
for the listeners to get to hear you and and
(01:28):
here it comes out today, so well, thank you. It's
you know, it's funny because as I have been throughout
my career channeling and just letting it come through, um,
I get to hear everything for the first time as
everyone gets to hear, so it's always a nice little discovery.
That's interesting. I wasn't expecting to start here, but you
just said channeling, which I find so interesting. How would
(01:49):
you explain channeling to people? I think that channeling, you know,
for a lot of people as artists, because within every
being as an artist, so whether we have moments of
inspiration or the gut instinct of a parent, or I
just know something spontaneously and for me, um, and it
happens in a deeper way where I've discovered this ability
(02:13):
to where when I'm working with people are on stage,
I just allow the universe or my higher self for
my soul. However you'd want to call it to kind
of work through me and speak through me. You know,
for a lot of people when they first started doing this,
it feels like they're just, oh God, I don't know
if I'm even making sense. Does it resonate? And is
(02:33):
this nonsense? There might just kind of um, but really
it's it's a process where we allow our highest wisdom
to speak through us. And traditionally, in channeling, one would
put their personality aside and let something come through. And
for me, I'm I'm known as what's called an open
or embody channel where there is no moving aside. It's
(02:54):
just on a clear space in which the wisdom and
the love of the universe can pour through in the
words and and even as people hear the sound of
my voice, there's a healing energy that comes through. So
I just I kind of live as just this connection
between heaven and Earth and bringing um a powerful level
of healing energy to help people during this uh, really
(03:15):
uncertain time. I guess anybody can be a channel, and
I mean I know that I've channeled myself. I channel
my music all the time, and when I'm on stage,
like when I do move out of my own way.
It's interesting because it's the only time I'll ever use
the word perfection, because I feel like that's the only
time I ever touch it is uh when I feel
(03:35):
lost in not lost, actually I feel found in a
lot of ways. UM, But I feel like you're saying,
like there's no there's no separation between the gift and
what's moving through me and the experience and me as
a human being in the moment, like it all becomes
one unified thing and it's a beautiful experience. I wish
(03:57):
that experience for everyone do you feel like there's things
that act like block your channel Over the last many years, UM,
for the last twelve years, I've been living in this
state of connection where you know, for a lot of people,
they'll connect under certain uh situation circumstances, They'll bring it
through and they kind of go back to their personal
self to take their superhero cape off and then go
(04:18):
back to being, you know, just a person. For me,
I live in this space and I had to go
through a large amount of healing for many years to
be able to do that. UM. In the meeting of
my career, I was talking to someone and they said, oh,
well you have to you know, connect in and connect out,
and it just seemed like a lot of work. And
I thought, the universe, I'd rather just live in the
(04:39):
space and whatever I need to just embody this. I'd
rather take that journey. And you know, for all of us,
you know, this type of experience is happening, is going
to happen. A lot of types of people are channeling
and they don't actually know it. It's but it's really
just more about instead of thinking that what I need
to change in my reality needs to happen under any
(05:01):
circumstances or any means necessary. The real question is which
version of myself is doing the changing and the creating,
and so channeling and spiritual alignment is really about getting
to know and tuning in and connecting with the most
infinite and powerful You. And as you become more in
(05:22):
relationship with the most powerful You, that's when we start
to see our perceptions of uh, the perceptions we have
our circumstances start to change. And when we realize is
we don't actually need to change as much about our
life as we think. We actually just need to learn
how to perceive and relate to it from a different
level of consciousness. That's what I find that a lot
(05:44):
of your teachings, as I've followed them for the many
years now, have helped me to to perceive life from
a different perspective. And I would love to say that
I live in that place every day, but I'm just
saying that to my husband. I was like, Oh, yes,
all the beautiful teachings that I they, I do live
from that space every so often. And then all of
(06:05):
a sudden, I feel like, you know, you pop back
into old ways and habits and just old grooves. I
like to call them because I feel like those grooves
have been They're so they're so groovy, they're so like,
they're so ingrained, they're so ingrained in us. And I
know when I started on my healing journey, it was
like I would have two days that would feel really connected,
(06:27):
and then like eight days backwards, and then three days,
and then it kind of goes back and forth, and
eventually you start to the more the new grooves you know,
start to UH to take place and take form, Like
I started to live in those uh in a different
kind of perspective more often. And that's what your teachings
(06:48):
for me, I think have have really helped create new grooves.
And one of my favorite teachings that I ended up
sharing on stage because I found it so beautifully heart
ng was one where you had people UH say I
love you to themselves and which, by the way, if
you haven't done that, and I've I've watched people on stage,
(07:10):
um grown men like, first off, look around, like, what
the hell is Leon Rhymes having me do? I didn't
expect this at her concert? What did my wife dragged
me to? And then all of a sudden, as they
start saying it, they break down in tears, which moves
me to tears on stage most of the time. I
I just wondered if you could speak on why that
(07:30):
teaching itself, why self love is so important for our
evolution and how we find it amidst the shame and
guilt that we all carry. Yeah, what a great question.
And you know when I saw you leave the I
Love yous on stage, it touched my heart so deeply
and moved me to tears just to see you know,
(07:53):
that type of consciousness just permeating more of our world
and being a part of a concert we stop and
heal our hearts and just when you I just want
to thank you for doing that. When you do that,
it moved me. I actually thought about it last week
just I always think about that. I just go it
really really was was quite life changing for me. And
(08:15):
I think what you just to kind of simplify all
of this is that when we're on a spiritual journey,
we often want to know all of what the universe knows,
and we're on a journey of looking for insight. Why
did this happen to me? And all these kind of things,
which is wonderful and beautiful, but on a heart center,
path in which all my teachings come from. What we
(08:37):
notice is is not about knowing what the universe knows. Right.
The universe is a cloud and it knows it all
for you, and it brings you every file you need
exactly when you need it. The real key to spiritual
alignment is not do I know what the universe knows?
Have I begun the process of treating myself and seeing
myself the way the universe does. And so when we
(08:58):
are loving ourselves, because as the universe source whatever you
would call it, is made up of the energy of
unconditional love that we see as light. The more we
love ourselves, the more we are saying I wish to
know myself as the universe. I wish to receive all
(09:18):
the love and support the universe always has for me.
And I'm willing to make a shift to see myself
more as the universe and less as the character. That
is a reflection of my family's need for healing. And
as we love ourselves, we are literally giving permission for
the door of the heart to open, and any wounds
(09:39):
that are ready to be returned and cleared and healed
just come pouring out through an emotional release. And so
under and because of the laws of unity consciousness, because
we're all connected on the soul level. As we heal
our hearts by loving ourselves, those I love use are
planted as see needs of consciousness in every heart and existence.
(10:02):
So imagine you just loving yourself to be a part
of your healing journey, and grief pours out of your heart,
or guilt and shame pours out. In that moment, you
are not only sending love to every person in existence,
but you're also helping to heal all of what you're
healing in yourself just by loving yourself more, not less.
(10:23):
And as we continue to evolve under these most unprecedented times,
we're living in truly an incredible time right now, the
need for self love is only going to increase and
become more important because it's the more we love ourselves
that the more we're able to respond to others from
(10:44):
place of compassion instead of a place of opposition. And
this is really going to be the cornerstone of what
really helps turn our world around. It's interesting because I
remember when I first started the whole self love journey, which,
by the way I feel, is probably one of the
ife not the most difficult piece of our journey, because
I mean I still struggle with it depending on the day.
(11:07):
I was like, what does that even look like? And
what does that feel like? I know how to love
other people? Or do I? I was actually started thinking
or do I? Because do I really know what that?
What love is? How do people even know that they're
loving themselves? I mean, to me, what I've learned, I
guess along my way is that I give myself a
(11:29):
lot more grace. What is self love? Along your journey?
What does that looked like for you? And how did
you know that that was opening more and more? That's
a very interesting question. I think for me the word
that that I have found for a lot of people's
resident because love just as a just as a word.
Sometimes we grow up in families where people say they
(11:51):
love us and they do very hurtful things, or we
are trying to be loved by someone who is shut
down in their own lives, and as children we often say, well,
what do I have to do to earn their love?
And then if we don't receive that, we feel like
we haven't done enough to earn it. And there's in
so many levels of the subconscious mind there are so
many associations to love being a form of reward and
(12:17):
a lack of love being a form of punishment, And
with parenting and children, it can get very confusing when
you're trying to shape the lives of young, impressionable minds.
And so what I like to use as a word
is support. So you know you're loving yourself when you're
taking a more active role in supporting yourself. So, for example,
(12:37):
let's say you had a day and it didn't go
your way. From the egos point of view, it doesn't
want to love itself because it doesn't want to spend
more time as an unpopular character and its own perception.
But in our soul we say, my god, I've had
such a rough day. Isn't this the time that I
(12:57):
need more support than ever before? More so, we really
want to break the spell of love being a reward
for good behavior and the absence of love being a
punishment for inappropriate behavior. We want to be able to say,
as I support myself more, which could be I encourage
myself to pursue my dreams. As you said, I give
(13:19):
myself grace when I'm not my best and my highest,
and I always give myself words of encouragement, I show
myself gratitude for all that I'm doing right. Support for
me is is a more resident, practical term of of
of self love, because again we can rope in love
with romance and all these other things, and how do
(13:42):
people just lie there and love themselves? And it really
is just I am aspiring to be the most active
supporter and encourager in my life, and I'm here to
allow myself to know that things are going to be
okay because I'm here with me. I love that word
support in the place of it. Yeah, thank you. That
(14:05):
actually brought me so much clarity. I was like, oh,
what feels good. You know. One of the things I
love about your teachings is that you um you try,
you try and teach so that we are unable to
use the teaching itself against ourselves, which I find genius
and I'm sure, as you know, all of our human,
beautiful human minds can find a way, we will find
(14:27):
a way to use it against ourselves. Can you talk
about in what ways do we use these practices against ourselves?
And how can we grant ourselves more grace with these
practices and utilize them for our own healing instead of
our own self flagellation. Basically, yeah, that's a great that's
a great way of saying it. I think a lot
of times, you know, when people are meditating or doing
(14:48):
these things, I think it really comes down to our intention,
like why am I doing this? Am I really doing
this to heal myself? Am I doing this to deepen
my relationships with myself so I can be a better
partner in my relationship, a better supporter from my friends.
And I think, really what's amazing is, you know, these
really unprecedented times, As much as we can say these
are very unpopular times, I think it's really amazing that
(15:10):
it really puts us in a position to really focus
and clarify our intention, you know. And I think there's
a lot of teachings, and it's not the teachings fault
necessarily that we tend to use against ourselves. It's almost
like a punishment, like I need to whip myself into shape,
or if I'm not the exact version of myself, I
need to be what do I need to dig out
(15:31):
inside of myself? And it tends to be a little
bit of of a judgmental way to try to improve
ourselves where really what we're looking to improve is if
I can improve the quality of how I support myself,
if I can improve the quality of how I talk
to myself, if I can improve the quality of how
I embrace and honor all parts of myself right, not
(15:55):
to justify, but just to honor. You know, within all
of us are going to be strengths and weaknesses and imbalances.
And if I can start to have a more thoughtful,
loving relationship with myself, then the way I see others
is going to change, and that's going to cause new
experiences to enter my reality. And so I really think
(16:15):
that on a heart center path, one of the greatest
things we're learning is we're not punishing ourselves with spiritual work.
It's actually a gift, and we need to learn how
to approach ourselves. Like if we went to a spa
and you have some sort of a person that who
greets you with the soft voice and says hello, welcome,
(16:36):
this is your day of nurture. So if the work
you're doing on yourself doesn't feel like a day at
the spa, we're probably going in an unhelpful direction. Ah,
why we all just dream away at a day at
the SPA. At this moment, we'll take a break and
we'll be right back with more heart center, direction and
(16:58):
guidance with Matt on right up this Welcome Back Loves.
We were just talking about self kindness in terms of
self care. I know for my own self, that's the
(17:18):
way I was taught. We all have been. It's like,
you work hard, and you there has to be the
voice in the head that continues to tell you, but
basically brate you, so that you can prove to it
that you're doing a great job and you know, and
it's there's never the softness. How do we begin to
stay angered in the idea that everything is here to
(17:42):
help us? How do we lean into that wholeness and
the fullness of our our emotional experience and trusting the
universe in that way. I think it's a great question,
and I think you know, when we think about everything
is here to help us, I think people immediately jumped
to this perspective that says, well, if everything is here
(18:02):
to help me, then then that means the greatest atrocities
I've ever faced must be okay. And then people find
in themselves this resistance too. No, no, it's not okay,
And so I just want to be able to say
that when we're looking for everything is here to help us.
Where we're really trusting a higher level of intelligent order,
(18:22):
the universe, light, God, whatever work, consciousness, whatever resonates with
us that the characters in our lives don't. Even if
a character in your life said, land, here's why I'm
here in your life, it's still not the reason why
they're in your life. Right. People are wonderful, and I
love people, but we're all kind of these like little
(18:44):
wind up toys, right, And there's a higher order that
is putting wind up toys around other wind up toys
for the purpose of what evolution is going to bring
to the surface. So I think that, you know, the
really helpful distinction is knowing that as a ault of
everything we've all gone through and will continue to face,
we will always come out the other end better versions
(19:05):
of ourselves. But it doesn't mean that pain, atrocity and
abuse is okay. And I think that it's the same
way people get caught in forgiveness that if I forgive someone,
it means it was okay that this happened. And there's
an innocence in us that who experienced pain and abuse
(19:26):
and neglect and all of these things that says it's
not okay, and on a human level, it's not okay.
And in fact, right now the world is going through
such a massive transformation because the way things have been
is so not okay. We're evolving to a vibration where
this no longer has to occur. And so I think
that sometimes in the beginning, when we think, you know,
(19:47):
people think, I don't want to open up to the
benefit of an experience that I've decided was not okay,
abuse of and took advantage of me, And so I
think we just have to kind of approach it with
softness and say it's not okay that this happened. And yet,
no matter whether I like what happens or I hate
(20:09):
what happens, I'm always going to become a higher version
of myself down the road. And if I can learn
to love and support myself through these experiences, I'm going
to wind up becoming that higher version sooner, and I'm
gonna embody in a deeper level, and I can shine
a light that helps to heal other people so that
none of these things that are not okay continues to occur,
(20:32):
and in that evolution, there's a lot of death in
that evolution, and I think we're all going through some
massive amounts of of death in this moment in time.
I heard you speak on this a bit the other day.
I was wondering if you could speak on why it's
so important for us to come to terms with death
and dying um while we're still living. I think when
(20:54):
we face death before death finds us, you know, so
to speak, that's what awakening really is. Where you actually
experience the death of the old you, but you're not
leaving your body. You're not going to the afterlife quite,
You're just going through a psychological death. And some of
us experience that we change careers or when we become comparents, UM.
But you know, really we're always experiencing some form of
(21:17):
death because things begin an end, things are gained, things
are lost, Everything that comes will go. And and as
we really make peace with death, what we allow ourselves
to do is really see that death as a doorway
into rebirth and renewal. We are constantly in a flux
of change, and if we are going to find comfort
(21:39):
in needing things to be a specific way, whatever that is,
how we define ourselves. That's refined ourselves really clinging and
scarcity and really lost in survival mode. And what we
ultimately learn to do is we find our comfort in change,
not trying to find comfort while we change. And what's
(22:00):
amazing is the difference between someone who is scared of change,
someone who knows what needs to change, but is you know,
afraid of the daunting task of implementing it, or someone
who thrives in an environment of constant change. The difference
between all of that is simply how you treat yourself.
And I think as we start to really see and
(22:24):
and and unearthed, wow, like my perception of fear versus
excitement is the difference between how I love myself or
don't love myself. The difference between me seeing something from
one perspective or another is really determined by how open
I allow my heart to be. And so these are
really really crucial times we're living in because it gives
(22:46):
us a chance to practice this under the most incredible circumstances.
And we're all right now living in a world where
as a result of COVID and all these changes and
social distancings and shutting down, and we're all waiting for
the normal life to come back. The world right now
is in a collective grief cycle, and so we are
(23:09):
mourning the loss of what used to be, hoping what
used to be comes back, trying to negotiate what do
I need to do to get it that way? And really,
I think, you know, teachings like this give us a
chance to stop and say, something in me is unraveling,
something in me is dissolving, and it's my loving support
(23:31):
that's going to address and hold space for the healing
that I have a chance to be a part of.
And as we do that, the world starts to heal differently.
We don't have to have as much violence and upheaval
to distract ourselves from this rather uncomfortable unraveling. We can
actually just say it is my heartfelt support that allows
(23:54):
the healing of my heart and the transformation of the
world to unfold miraculous sleep instead of intensely. And I
think that's really the choice we're all starting to make
right now. Yeah, I mean, gosh, I definitely feel like
I don't think I realized how deep of a grief
this whole world was going through until for me personally
(24:14):
the other day and um. Yesterday, actually, I was was
on the couch for the whole day, and it was
the first time I recognized I was allowing myself to grieve.
It's not like if someone had to die for me
to feel grief. There's so much that's dying. There's so
many dreams that we've had a collective death that's happening. Um.
(24:36):
You know, all of these uh structures in the way
that we have created life on this planet are truly
falling away and in desperate need of it. Um. And
I I've actually was by the way, it's really small,
um exciting celebration for me, but I actually allowed myself
to lay there and feel it yesterday, And I remember
(24:59):
that end of the day, I was like, Wow, I
don't think I've ever done that. I don't think I've
actually ever fully tapped into that and will allowed the
love for myself enough love to have a day where
I didn't expect myself to do anything else. And I
think because of this go go go pace we've all
(25:21):
lived in. I know I'm not the only one that
feels like they can't they don't have the time to grief,
Like we don't have the time to feel these emotions,
and I don't think we have an option anymore, almost,
is what it feels like. Um. I mean, I guess
what you know, what you're saying, what I hear you're saying,
is that we have an option and we have a
choice in the way that we treat ourselves within that grief. Um.
(25:42):
But the grief is coming like, it's here, absolutely, And
I think it's a great I think it's a great
point to make when you talk. Where I get as
a vision is I get a vision of like a
swimming pool filled with tears, right, And this is the
swimming pool filled with tears is human entities, unprocessed pain.
And the more we love ourselves, the more we like
(26:05):
you so beautifully put find the courage and conviction to
give ourselves the space too, you know, not just hide
behind the masks of strength, but allow ourselves to go
into the vulnerability, to go into the difficult emotions, to
go into the spaces where you don't know what's going on,
where you don't have the answers, where you don't have control.
And if you imagine the world like this, this swimming
(26:27):
pool of tears, every tear that shed in the world
drains this pool of pain slowly. But as each of
us start to wake up in consciousness and love ourselves
enough to say, I'm going to allow processing my emotions
to be just as important as anything else I do
in the world. And you sat there all day and
just cried and let it out, let it out, that
(26:48):
pool drains faster, and we get to a point where
humanity heals faster, so instead of just a tear being
shed by infinite people and that process happening slower. So
many of us, as empathic, heart centered beings, are not
just purging our experience of grief, but really what we
(27:08):
are is we are purging the grief of the world.
And even as you wake up in consciousness in the beginning,
it's all about you are trying to heal your wounds.
And then at a certain point you realize, oh, it's
just my experience of humanity's wounds, and it takes on
(27:29):
a much more global process, and it's actually easier to
face your feelings when you realize what you're healing is
your history of experience, which is just your contribution to
what humanity is healing as a whole. I love that,
and I think it's the first time because I feel
like I've been healing my wounds for a long time, um,
(27:50):
and I'm sure a lot of us have. It's the
first time I'm really seeing and feeling into how deeply
we are connected to one another. When it becomes less
about our own solid you know what feels like such
a solid mass of our own pain, we realize that
it's not just this block that lives within us, but
(28:12):
it is something we are truly tapped into with one another.
The empathy grows and it's a beautiful thing. Well, and
I think you know, for anyone who's listening to this
right now, you know, as an experiment, notice how when
you think that what you're healing is yours, you're less
likely to face it. You have more in patience as
(28:33):
to how long you're willing to feel it, and you're
often distracted by who do I blame and what do
I need to fix in order to change this because
we're still perceiving like a punishment versus a reward of healing.
And then on the opposite side, notice that when it's
not necessarily yours, but your experience of what you're healing
for humanity, notice how there can be more of an
(28:57):
openness to feeling what we don't normally allow ourselves to feel.
Notice that we can actually go deeper into the feeling
when it's not necessarily mine, but it's our healing at hand.
And I think that's a really interesting distinction, because a
lot of us want to do the healing, but it's
(29:17):
just it's so difficult. And I think it's difficult because
the memories that these emotions represent were during times when
it was your life, your fault, your devastation, your heartbreak,
your resentment, you know, your neglect, all these things, and
(29:38):
and and as we love ourselves, it becomes strangely less personal.
And when it becomes less personal, we're able to be
more present with the intensity of emotion. And then when
we're interacting in the world, when we have a better
relationship with emotion, we can be there for other people
(29:58):
and take less personally the way or people may respond
and act as a result of not knowing the depths
of the healing journey they're in. M Yeah, And you know,
we talked so much about pain and grief on this side,
I want to talk about the opposite of it. And
I think you have such an interesting view on happiness
and I happiness. It's such a touchy word because I
(30:20):
feel like we've all been for our whole lives. We've
been told to, you know, chase happiness, and like happiness
is going to be the end all, and once we
get to happiness, like everything will be fine and you know,
there will be normal pain. And how we go about
looking for happiness in our lives has been, like I said,
it's been a chase. And I think you have such
(30:40):
a beautiful outlook on what true happiness is and how
do we start to tap into that joy in the
midst of all of this grief. It's such a great
question to ask. So we all have different ideas of happiness,
and a lot of us say, Okay, when I have
this career, when I have this in my bank account,
when I have this relation ship, I'm going to be happy.
(31:01):
And I think what's really funny about happiness is if
you really play out what you think needs to change
in order to be happy, you know, everyone would play
out different details. Maybe I'd have a different car, you know, whatever,
The tails are a different relationship out of all this stuff, right,
Imagine he had all the money in the bank that
you think you need and if people play it out
long enough. What I think is really funny is that
(31:23):
the fantasy of happiness is I would have all of
these things so that finally I could be left alone.
And I think what's really funny about happiness is the
fantasy of happiness as we all want the right to
afford being left alone. And yet when we love ourselves,
we're kind of no longer picking at ourselves, and we're
(31:47):
actually giving ourselves the actual fantasy we really want, like
kind of like someone who doesn't have a job and
then gets the career opportunity of a lifetime, and now
everyone's pulling at them and they have all these were sponsibilities,
and now they get to fantasize about going on vacation
and being left alone. Like everything comes down to what
we really want is the right to be left alone.
(32:08):
So we'll look at us though right now we've been
we're being left alone, like we are alone, like literally,
and nobody's happy, and the universe is looking down going,
why aren't you happy? That's all you wanted was to
be left alone. Now we call it social distancing, right,
and understand what you want. People. It's a really funny
thing that when you love yourself. It's both. I spend
(32:31):
more time saying nice things to myself and I'm not
picking at myself, so I really leave myself alone. Either
there's no inner critic and we give ourselves. What we
really want is we all want to be left alone
with the fantasy that nothing will be taken from us,
which you know, but it's it's a very funny thing
(32:51):
to think about. Um, you know what I have found
in my life as far as happiness and I've I
can remember since I started school and meeting other kids
and you know, all that kind of stuff. I remember
feeling the intense pressure of like everyone is working hard
to be the most popular kid in school, right. I
(33:12):
remember being a young, like little politician, like trying to
make sure everyone likes me and trying to make sure
no one's against me. And if I hear rumors about me,
I got to spread more truthful ones and all this
stuff and I actually found in my life, and this
happened spontaneously, that the nicer I was to other people,
especially if they weren't nice to me, the happier I was.
(33:35):
I found personally that my sense of happiness is determined
by my level of politeness. And it's not based on
what people are doing. It's it's based on my respect
for myself. And as I kept experimenting with this throughout
my life and kind of geeking out on politeness, like
I'd even meet like a little a little boy and
(33:58):
I'd say hello, sir, I am, and that's what I
do because it's just I find that being polite and
genuine has been this incredible force that is ripped my
heart wide open, and it has created this level of
power in me where even when the world is going crazy,
(34:20):
it doesn't lower the quality of my behavior. And that's
really when you're totally free, is when your behavior is
not determined by the behavior of others. Well, that's a
teaching that I feel like I could use against myself
for me because I feel like it's interesting because that's
(34:40):
it's almost when I feel like I've used against myself
and my whole life because you know, I'm from the South,
and it's like, you know, we were we were told
we say yes, ma, I'm and no sir, and it
was like but it was it was from a different place.
And I think you're going this circles back to your intention,
you know, of where is it coming from and why
am I doing it? And I what I love is
that what I heard you say is your own respect
(35:03):
for yourself. And I think that's key, um, because I
think sometimes we can hear things like that and be like, Oh,
I'm just gonna go around and be a lot nicer
to everybody. But then are you then taking your anger
and your all of the things that happened to you
maybe that you come up against, you know, you using
that against yourself, Because I think that's really as I
(35:24):
sit here and think about that, that's basically what I've
done my whole life is like, Oh, we were taught
to be really polite to people, but and that also
meant like not speaking up for yourself sometimes and all
of these other things. And I find and I agree
with you on this um that I have found for
myself to you know, being in this business um for
(35:46):
so long I've had I've had so many people say
about me and to me like she she's always so
kind and so and I really take pride in that
because I've and I've found, like you're saying them more
and the older I've gotten, I've learned to use that
for for the good of all instead of having it
(36:07):
come from a place where I feel like I can't
speak up and I always have to be kind or
else somebody's gonna think bad of me. I mean that's
how That's how I was raised, and it's um but
for me, it's I totally feel you on that is
that that's how I want to treat people like I
want to leave. You know, it's like leave the world
better than you found. It's like I want to I
want to leave people better than I found them. And
(36:30):
I think that's such a beautiful place to live from
all right, when we returned from break, we'll have more
thoughts on making the world a happier place for all
of us. Hello everyone, We were just us talking about
(37:00):
the transformative power of politeness and kindness, and it also
takes us out of ourselves, right, I mean, it takes
us out of our own quote unquote ego and puts
us into a connection with people absolutely. And I think
you know something that you pointed out or you know,
touchdo I think is really helpful is the difference between
(37:21):
politeness and subservience. Right when we're children, you know, I
was subservient to my parents demands, and my parents also
I wasn't raised in the South, but I was raised
in a very emotionally volatile Jewish family. Um, what I
learned from my parents, which was wonderful, is they still
to me like Matthew, you must always be polite. And
(37:42):
it was more taught to me in this very acoustic
way where um, the fear of what my mom would
say was worse than anything I could face. And my
mom was lovely, but it's a little judge duty badass,
and uh, I was less afraid if people are more
afraid of my mom. But what's interesting is, you know,
and then people project that parental relationship onto the universe.
(38:04):
And so subservience is when you're trying to do a
certain thing to avoid a certain amount of discomfort or punishment.
Politeness is, you know, even we have to speak up
for yourself. There's just a level of respect we hold,
you know, where as an adult, even if you're talking
to a child, you know, a child's experience is just
to be fully present with whatever in impulse and instinct
(38:28):
is coming up right. There's no think before you speak.
It's just all kind of running the show. And as
adults we kind of learned to be more mindful and
more mature in the way we handle things. Not always,
of course, but I think really politeness is just one
of those things where we remember, like, and I remember
from me what clicked about all this was actually the opposite,
(38:50):
was like, if someone was not nice to me and
I was not nice to them, I started to see
it as a form of manipulation, and I started to
realize I don't I don't want to be manipulated by
someone else's um experience, and that it wants to be
forced to just kind of have this ping pong and
reflect back to someone, well, they treated me bad, I'm
(39:11):
going to treat them bad. And it just kind of
woke up out of that, you know, spontaneously. And so
for me, politeness is just my way of being able
to say, we're all on our journeys. We're not always
gonna hit the mark, but I'm always going to respect
that there's a soul inside every heart, including mine. We're
always doing the best we possibly can. And if we
(39:33):
can treat others with more respect, we help others bring
to the surface more of their highest quality so that
more people can thrive and less people have to suffer.
And so I think for me. The politeness comes from
very deep awareness that I came here to help resolve
the suffering of the world, and it's and it begins
(39:55):
with myself and who I interact with, one person at
a time, despite the all I play for the world. Yeah,
I feel that so deeply, and if only we can
we can remember that on a daily basis. It's like
joy is found in that connection and into making for
me at least in making, you know, and helping others
to find that that light within themselves. I mean, this
(40:16):
is honestly why I started this podcast was like, how
do I how do I help people out of suffering?
You know, it's um how do I help people be
okay with with the wholeness of the fullness of who
they are? And you know, and what I have found
is my deepest joys are when I'm doing that, you know,
(40:40):
when I'm serving that role um or serving the role
that I'm here to play in helping to liberate people
and to connect people back to themselves and I and
it's funny that you you talk about intention earlier, like
that's been my my biggest practice has been coming back
to that intention. And once I got really clear on
(41:02):
what that was anytime I get lost, like wunning to mounting,
time I go down, like the dirt path that I'm
not supposed to be taking, I seem to be able
to connect back to that intention of of my why
has been such a huge anchoring piece, I guess for me,
especially during these times. And I love that because I
think the word service such a powerful word, you know,
(41:24):
And I think sometimes people limit service to what I
do at work, or we're having a canned food drive,
and I think there's ways in which we kind of
put service in a very interesting box. And I think
for a lot of people, we don't often think of
I speak as a form of service. I listen as
(41:46):
a form of service. I respond not because my ego
wants to have the final word, but because I am
in service to the person I'm in front of. And
sometimes it's easier to forget about that service when you're
around someone who's not acting in a way that is
serving you. And so I think that as we love ourselves,
(42:07):
and as we get more spiritually aligned, and we get
more quiet and go within and we we we start
to strengthen our ability to listen to the same degree
that we're also anxious to share. I think we start
to remember that what I'm choosing for myself, how I
speak to others, how I listen, what I do is
not just to fulfill my personal desires. It's a service
(42:32):
that I offer to all. And I think that the
words service helps us remember that there's a greater reason
why we're here, and there's a greater opportunity in every
moment when we remember the service that is really all
of us living for the well being of all. M hmm.
I love that I do something with every guest of
(42:53):
mine on the podcast called the Holy Five. Of course,
I love music, and I'm very much connected, and I
know I love that you music to which I'm is
excited to ask you this question. I just wanted to
dig into your playlists a little bit and see if there's, like,
there's five songs right now that you're loving, or five
songs that speak to your life. However you want to
play this game? What are your top five that you're into?
(43:16):
What a what a fascinating question. I love that because
I'm such a big music fan. You and I talked
about all the time, and you know, we just came
out of the holiday season and I was raised Jewish, right,
But I love Christmas. I love Christmas. Christmas for me
is the end all be all, Like my heaven will
just be Christmas every day. And I've also thought about
(43:38):
this over the years, and it sounds kind of morbid,
but I always think of like if I'm writing the
Escalator from Earth to Heaven, like what song do I
want to listen to? I like that, you know what
I mean. I don't know. I think about these things.
It's covid up at home, and you know, what else
do you think about other than why am I not
wearing pants? But the songs I would say that touched
(43:59):
me the deepest, so many different genres I love. Okay, so,
um Gabriel's song by Sting whatever album that was amazing.
So gabriel song by Staying, I think, is just like
this holy I'm in the presence of God and I
am writing this Escalator to Heaven and it's all good. Okay, Okay.
(44:25):
So I was a kid and I was in you know,
you have a school assembly, which is cool because you
don't have to be in school and you get to
go to the auditorium and you watch the other kids
who are in the choir singing the Christmas songs with
like a token Honakah song just to remind us that
(44:45):
Hanika's music program is so deficient. Can we really ride
on Adam Sandler for that long? Really? So anyways, I'm
watching these Christmas songs and and I'm like in fifth grade,
and I hear a song that elicits a reaction to
me that I'm literally about to explode into the most
(45:05):
explosive tears. And I had to go outside because I
didn't want to make a noise and embarrass myself, because
I'm the kid gos to be popular, right, so so
so this song and I went outside and I literally cried,
and it was this spiritual moment that I just didn't understand.
But um, I was just embarrassed that people would hear
me because I was literally about to scream. And the
(45:27):
song was do you Hear What I Hear? That song
touches me on a level I can't even describe. And
I've got like eight versions of it. I love that.
Here's your favorite version of do you Hear What I Hear?
My favorite version do you Hear What I Hear? Is
um Andy Williams, Oh cool old school hear what a
(45:53):
song song. One of my favorite songs of all time
dust In the Wind by Kansas Nice. It's just so random,
the great I think that's that. That's like the song
you Die Too. All they are is dustin. That's a
(46:20):
good one. That's a good one. That's a really good one.
Two more things to go. Yeah. As far as Christmas songs,
you know there's it's It's Christmas. Tree Farm by Taylor
Swift is one of my new favorite Christmas songs. It's
just there, there's a magic to it. My heart is
it Christmas to Farm where the people come to dance on.
(46:42):
Very good, but it's so good. He's still on the
Christmas music and I love it. I have actually had
Christmas music come on my playlist at the beginning this
year and I don't turn it off, so oh never.
And I will tell you the last one is anything
by Josh Broban because I like to cook. And it's
a little known fact that if you listen to Josh
(47:03):
Broban while you cook, everything tastes better. It's it's a
Josh Groban song. Have You Cooked the Best Too? I
will tell you that I've cooked remarkable levels of food
to Josh Groban's Noel Perfect Snow. I love it. And
(47:24):
I don't ever ask anybody this, but I know you're
a huge chef. Do you have a favorite thing to cook?
Do you prefer a recipe? I decided yesterday for some
reason that I'm going to make different kinds of guacamole.
That's what I did yesterday, master guacamole. Then I have
these little bowls and I would like to stir in
different things, so I did, like, you know, roasted corn
and green chilies is one of them. And one of
(47:45):
them had like dice grapefruit and crispy kale, and oh
my god, that sounds so good. Yeah. I recommend this
for anyone in existence. Like and as I'm eating it,
I'm realizing I think I'm now in analogamous relationship with guacamole.
It's the best kind to be in. During COVID, I mean,
(48:07):
I love guacamole. And then yesterday it was like this deeper.
I think I really think I like you, like you, Ga,
I love it. Oh my god, I'm gonna have to
do that very good. I love that. Thank you amazing.
This was so fun. Thank you so much. Thank you
for coming on this podcast. And oh, something I'm gonna
do at the end of this podcast because of the
(48:29):
I love yous, I am going to share a chant
of mine, so thank you so much for coming on,
and I'm we're gonna I'm gonna chant everyone out. My
ho my, it's my compass and my oh no way,
(48:51):
my hoh. It's connected to totally my heart, my heart,
my heart through little well blow this blowing my heart,
(49:15):
my heart, my heart, my hot leading me home to
my deep snowing, and that ties up this episode. Thank
you so much for being here as always, and please
forward this heart centered message to someone you feel could
benefit from hearing it, and of course I would always
(49:38):
love to hear from you, so please leave me your
thoughts in a rating wherever you're listening. Bye. On our
next Holy Human, We're going to dive into the interwoven
male and female energies that connect and comprise us all
with the wonderfully wise and super cool dude Rainier Wild
I love his name m listen and follow Holy Human
(50:23):
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to podcasts.
Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello Loves. I am so happy to welcome
you to today's episode because you're about to meet one
of the sweetest, most insightful humans that I know. Matt
Con is a best selling author and spiritual teacher and
(00:21):
healer focused on a message that is definitely close to
my heart and when the world could benefit greatly from
embracing love, love, love love. I'm so thrilled to have
him here to crack open our hearts and mind. So
care we go sing that say me, Hello, my friend
(01:07):
Matt Con. Welcome to the Holy Human podcast. Thank you well,
thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. Absolutely,
I'm so excited about this conversation because we when we talk,
I always feel like we have such beautiful conversations and
you have such deep wisdom to share. So I'm excited
for the listeners to get to hear you and and
(01:28):
here it comes out today, so well, thank you. It's
you know, it's funny because as I have been throughout
my career channeling and just letting it come through, um,
I get to hear everything for the first time as
everyone gets to hear, so it's always a nice little discovery.
That's interesting. I wasn't expecting to start here, but you
just said channeling, which I find so interesting. How would
(01:49):
you explain channeling to people? I think that channeling, you know,
for a lot of people as artists, because within every
being as an artist, so whether we have moments of
inspiration or the gut instinct of a parent, or I
just know something spontaneously and for me, um, and it
happens in a deeper way where I've discovered this ability
(02:13):
to where when I'm working with people are on stage,
I just allow the universe or my higher self for
my soul. However you'd want to call it to kind
of work through me and speak through me. You know,
for a lot of people when they first started doing this,
it feels like they're just, oh God, I don't know
if I'm even making sense. Does it resonate? And is
(02:33):
this nonsense? There might just kind of um, but really
it's it's a process where we allow our highest wisdom
to speak through us. And traditionally, in channeling, one would
put their personality aside and let something come through. And
for me, I'm I'm known as what's called an open
or embody channel where there is no moving aside. It's
(02:54):
just on a clear space in which the wisdom and
the love of the universe can pour through in the
words and and even as people hear the sound of
my voice, there's a healing energy that comes through. So
I just I kind of live as just this connection
between heaven and Earth and bringing um a powerful level
of healing energy to help people during this uh, really
(03:15):
uncertain time. I guess anybody can be a channel, and
I mean I know that I've channeled myself. I channel
my music all the time, and when I'm on stage,
like when I do move out of my own way.
It's interesting because it's the only time I'll ever use
the word perfection, because I feel like that's the only
time I ever touch it is uh when I feel
(03:35):
lost in not lost, actually I feel found in a
lot of ways. UM, But I feel like you're saying,
like there's no there's no separation between the gift and
what's moving through me and the experience and me as
a human being in the moment, like it all becomes
one unified thing and it's a beautiful experience. I wish
(03:57):
that experience for everyone do you feel like there's things
that act like block your channel Over the last many years, UM,
for the last twelve years, I've been living in this
state of connection where you know, for a lot of people,
they'll connect under certain uh situation circumstances, They'll bring it
through and they kind of go back to their personal
self to take their superhero cape off and then go
(04:18):
back to being, you know, just a person. For me,
I live in this space and I had to go
through a large amount of healing for many years to
be able to do that. UM. In the meeting of
my career, I was talking to someone and they said, oh,
well you have to you know, connect in and connect out,
and it just seemed like a lot of work. And
I thought, the universe, I'd rather just live in the
(04:39):
space and whatever I need to just embody this. I'd
rather take that journey. And you know, for all of us,
you know, this type of experience is happening, is going
to happen. A lot of types of people are channeling
and they don't actually know it. It's but it's really
just more about instead of thinking that what I need
to change in my reality needs to happen under any
(05:01):
circumstances or any means necessary. The real question is which
version of myself is doing the changing and the creating,
and so channeling and spiritual alignment is really about getting
to know and tuning in and connecting with the most
infinite and powerful You. And as you become more in
(05:22):
relationship with the most powerful You, that's when we start
to see our perceptions of uh, the perceptions we have
our circumstances start to change. And when we realize is
we don't actually need to change as much about our
life as we think. We actually just need to learn
how to perceive and relate to it from a different
level of consciousness. That's what I find that a lot
(05:44):
of your teachings, as I've followed them for the many
years now, have helped me to to perceive life from
a different perspective. And I would love to say that
I live in that place every day, but I'm just
saying that to my husband. I was like, Oh, yes,
all the beautiful teachings that I they, I do live
from that space every so often. And then all of
(06:05):
a sudden, I feel like, you know, you pop back
into old ways and habits and just old grooves. I
like to call them because I feel like those grooves
have been They're so they're so groovy, they're so like,
they're so ingrained, they're so ingrained in us. And I
know when I started on my healing journey, it was
like I would have two days that would feel really connected,
(06:27):
and then like eight days backwards, and then three days,
and then it kind of goes back and forth, and
eventually you start to the more the new grooves you know,
start to UH to take place and take form, Like
I started to live in those uh in a different
kind of perspective more often. And that's what your teachings
(06:48):
for me, I think have have really helped create new grooves.
And one of my favorite teachings that I ended up
sharing on stage because I found it so beautifully heart
ng was one where you had people UH say I
love you to themselves and which, by the way, if
you haven't done that, and I've I've watched people on stage,
(07:10):
um grown men like, first off, look around, like, what
the hell is Leon Rhymes having me do? I didn't
expect this at her concert? What did my wife dragged
me to? And then all of a sudden, as they
start saying it, they break down in tears, which moves
me to tears on stage most of the time. I
I just wondered if you could speak on why that
(07:30):
teaching itself, why self love is so important for our
evolution and how we find it amidst the shame and
guilt that we all carry. Yeah, what a great question.
And you know when I saw you leave the I
Love yous on stage, it touched my heart so deeply
and moved me to tears just to see you know,
(07:53):
that type of consciousness just permeating more of our world
and being a part of a concert we stop and
heal our hearts and just when you I just want
to thank you for doing that. When you do that,
it moved me. I actually thought about it last week
just I always think about that. I just go it
really really was was quite life changing for me. And
(08:15):
I think what you just to kind of simplify all
of this is that when we're on a spiritual journey,
we often want to know all of what the universe knows,
and we're on a journey of looking for insight. Why
did this happen to me? And all these kind of things,
which is wonderful and beautiful, but on a heart center,
path in which all my teachings come from. What we
(08:37):
notice is is not about knowing what the universe knows. Right.
The universe is a cloud and it knows it all
for you, and it brings you every file you need
exactly when you need it. The real key to spiritual
alignment is not do I know what the universe knows?
Have I begun the process of treating myself and seeing
myself the way the universe does. And so when we
(08:58):
are loving ourselves, because as the universe source whatever you
would call it, is made up of the energy of
unconditional love that we see as light. The more we
love ourselves, the more we are saying I wish to
know myself as the universe. I wish to receive all
(09:18):
the love and support the universe always has for me.
And I'm willing to make a shift to see myself
more as the universe and less as the character. That
is a reflection of my family's need for healing. And
as we love ourselves, we are literally giving permission for
the door of the heart to open, and any wounds
(09:39):
that are ready to be returned and cleared and healed
just come pouring out through an emotional release. And so
under and because of the laws of unity consciousness, because
we're all connected on the soul level. As we heal
our hearts by loving ourselves, those I love use are
planted as see needs of consciousness in every heart and existence.
(10:02):
So imagine you just loving yourself to be a part
of your healing journey, and grief pours out of your heart,
or guilt and shame pours out. In that moment, you
are not only sending love to every person in existence,
but you're also helping to heal all of what you're
healing in yourself just by loving yourself more, not less.
(10:23):
And as we continue to evolve under these most unprecedented times,
we're living in truly an incredible time right now, the
need for self love is only going to increase and
become more important because it's the more we love ourselves
that the more we're able to respond to others from
(10:44):
place of compassion instead of a place of opposition. And
this is really going to be the cornerstone of what
really helps turn our world around. It's interesting because I
remember when I first started the whole self love journey, which,
by the way I feel, is probably one of the
ife not the most difficult piece of our journey, because
I mean I still struggle with it depending on the day.
(11:07):
I was like, what does that even look like? And
what does that feel like? I know how to love
other people? Or do I? I was actually started thinking
or do I? Because do I really know what that?
What love is? How do people even know that they're
loving themselves? I mean, to me, what I've learned, I
guess along my way is that I give myself a
(11:29):
lot more grace. What is self love? Along your journey?
What does that looked like for you? And how did
you know that that was opening more and more? That's
a very interesting question. I think for me the word
that that I have found for a lot of people's
resident because love just as a just as a word.
Sometimes we grow up in families where people say they
(11:51):
love us and they do very hurtful things, or we
are trying to be loved by someone who is shut
down in their own lives, and as children we often say, well,
what do I have to do to earn their love?
And then if we don't receive that, we feel like
we haven't done enough to earn it. And there's in
so many levels of the subconscious mind there are so
many associations to love being a form of reward and
(12:17):
a lack of love being a form of punishment, And
with parenting and children, it can get very confusing when
you're trying to shape the lives of young, impressionable minds.
And so what I like to use as a word
is support. So you know you're loving yourself when you're
taking a more active role in supporting yourself. So, for example,
(12:37):
let's say you had a day and it didn't go
your way. From the egos point of view, it doesn't
want to love itself because it doesn't want to spend
more time as an unpopular character and its own perception.
But in our soul we say, my god, I've had
such a rough day. Isn't this the time that I
(12:57):
need more support than ever before? More so, we really
want to break the spell of love being a reward
for good behavior and the absence of love being a
punishment for inappropriate behavior. We want to be able to say,
as I support myself more, which could be I encourage
myself to pursue my dreams. As you said, I give
(13:19):
myself grace when I'm not my best and my highest,
and I always give myself words of encouragement, I show
myself gratitude for all that I'm doing right. Support for
me is is a more resident, practical term of of
of self love, because again we can rope in love
with romance and all these other things, and how do
(13:42):
people just lie there and love themselves? And it really
is just I am aspiring to be the most active
supporter and encourager in my life, and I'm here to
allow myself to know that things are going to be
okay because I'm here with me. I love that word
support in the place of it. Yeah, thank you. That
(14:05):
actually brought me so much clarity. I was like, oh,
what feels good. You know. One of the things I
love about your teachings is that you um you try,
you try and teach so that we are unable to
use the teaching itself against ourselves, which I find genius
and I'm sure, as you know, all of our human,
beautiful human minds can find a way, we will find
(14:27):
a way to use it against ourselves. Can you talk
about in what ways do we use these practices against ourselves?
And how can we grant ourselves more grace with these
practices and utilize them for our own healing instead of
our own self flagellation. Basically, yeah, that's a great that's
a great way of saying it. I think a lot
of times, you know, when people are meditating or doing
(14:48):
these things, I think it really comes down to our intention,
like why am I doing this? Am I really doing
this to heal myself? Am I doing this to deepen
my relationships with myself so I can be a better
partner in my relationship, a better supporter from my friends.
And I think, really what's amazing is, you know, these
really unprecedented times, As much as we can say these
are very unpopular times, I think it's really amazing that
(15:10):
it really puts us in a position to really focus
and clarify our intention, you know. And I think there's
a lot of teachings, and it's not the teachings fault
necessarily that we tend to use against ourselves. It's almost
like a punishment, like I need to whip myself into shape,
or if I'm not the exact version of myself, I
need to be what do I need to dig out
(15:31):
inside of myself? And it tends to be a little
bit of of a judgmental way to try to improve
ourselves where really what we're looking to improve is if
I can improve the quality of how I support myself,
if I can improve the quality of how I talk
to myself, if I can improve the quality of how
I embrace and honor all parts of myself right, not
(15:55):
to justify, but just to honor. You know, within all
of us are going to be strengths and weaknesses and imbalances.
And if I can start to have a more thoughtful,
loving relationship with myself, then the way I see others
is going to change, and that's going to cause new
experiences to enter my reality. And so I really think
(16:15):
that on a heart center path, one of the greatest
things we're learning is we're not punishing ourselves with spiritual work.
It's actually a gift, and we need to learn how
to approach ourselves. Like if we went to a spa
and you have some sort of a person that who
greets you with the soft voice and says hello, welcome,
(16:36):
this is your day of nurture. So if the work
you're doing on yourself doesn't feel like a day at
the spa, we're probably going in an unhelpful direction. Ah,
why we all just dream away at a day at
the SPA. At this moment, we'll take a break and
we'll be right back with more heart center, direction and
(16:58):
guidance with Matt on right up this Welcome Back Loves.
We were just talking about self kindness in terms of
self care. I know for my own self, that's the
(17:18):
way I was taught. We all have been. It's like,
you work hard, and you there has to be the
voice in the head that continues to tell you, but
basically brate you, so that you can prove to it
that you're doing a great job and you know, and
it's there's never the softness. How do we begin to
stay angered in the idea that everything is here to
(17:42):
help us? How do we lean into that wholeness and
the fullness of our our emotional experience and trusting the
universe in that way. I think it's a great question,
and I think you know, when we think about everything
is here to help us, I think people immediately jumped
to this perspective that says, well, if everything is here
(18:02):
to help me, then then that means the greatest atrocities
I've ever faced must be okay. And then people find
in themselves this resistance too. No, no, it's not okay,
And so I just want to be able to say
that when we're looking for everything is here to help us.
Where we're really trusting a higher level of intelligent order,
(18:22):
the universe, light, God, whatever work, consciousness, whatever resonates with
us that the characters in our lives don't. Even if
a character in your life said, land, here's why I'm
here in your life, it's still not the reason why
they're in your life. Right. People are wonderful, and I
love people, but we're all kind of these like little
(18:44):
wind up toys, right, And there's a higher order that
is putting wind up toys around other wind up toys
for the purpose of what evolution is going to bring
to the surface. So I think that, you know, the
really helpful distinction is knowing that as a ault of
everything we've all gone through and will continue to face,
we will always come out the other end better versions
(19:05):
of ourselves. But it doesn't mean that pain, atrocity and
abuse is okay. And I think that it's the same
way people get caught in forgiveness that if I forgive someone,
it means it was okay that this happened. And there's
an innocence in us that who experienced pain and abuse
(19:26):
and neglect and all of these things that says it's
not okay, and on a human level, it's not okay.
And in fact, right now the world is going through
such a massive transformation because the way things have been
is so not okay. We're evolving to a vibration where
this no longer has to occur. And so I think
that sometimes in the beginning, when we think, you know,
(19:47):
people think, I don't want to open up to the
benefit of an experience that I've decided was not okay,
abuse of and took advantage of me, And so I
think we just have to kind of approach it with
softness and say it's not okay that this happened. And yet,
no matter whether I like what happens or I hate
(20:09):
what happens, I'm always going to become a higher version
of myself down the road. And if I can learn
to love and support myself through these experiences, I'm going
to wind up becoming that higher version sooner, and I'm
gonna embody in a deeper level, and I can shine
a light that helps to heal other people so that
none of these things that are not okay continues to occur,
(20:32):
and in that evolution, there's a lot of death in
that evolution, and I think we're all going through some
massive amounts of of death in this moment in time.
I heard you speak on this a bit the other day.
I was wondering if you could speak on why it's
so important for us to come to terms with death
and dying um while we're still living. I think when
(20:54):
we face death before death finds us, you know, so
to speak, that's what awakening really is. Where you actually
experience the death of the old you, but you're not
leaving your body. You're not going to the afterlife quite,
You're just going through a psychological death. And some of
us experience that we change careers or when we become comparents, UM.
But you know, really we're always experiencing some form of
(21:17):
death because things begin an end, things are gained, things
are lost, Everything that comes will go. And and as
we really make peace with death, what we allow ourselves
to do is really see that death as a doorway
into rebirth and renewal. We are constantly in a flux
of change, and if we are going to find comfort
(21:39):
in needing things to be a specific way, whatever that is,
how we define ourselves. That's refined ourselves really clinging and
scarcity and really lost in survival mode. And what we
ultimately learn to do is we find our comfort in change,
not trying to find comfort while we change. And what's
(22:00):
amazing is the difference between someone who is scared of change,
someone who knows what needs to change, but is you know,
afraid of the daunting task of implementing it, or someone
who thrives in an environment of constant change. The difference
between all of that is simply how you treat yourself.
And I think as we start to really see and
(22:24):
and and unearthed, wow, like my perception of fear versus
excitement is the difference between how I love myself or
don't love myself. The difference between me seeing something from
one perspective or another is really determined by how open
I allow my heart to be. And so these are
really really crucial times we're living in because it gives
(22:46):
us a chance to practice this under the most incredible circumstances.
And we're all right now living in a world where
as a result of COVID and all these changes and
social distancings and shutting down, and we're all waiting for
the normal life to come back. The world right now
is in a collective grief cycle, and so we are
(23:09):
mourning the loss of what used to be, hoping what
used to be comes back, trying to negotiate what do
I need to do to get it that way? And really,
I think, you know, teachings like this give us a
chance to stop and say, something in me is unraveling,
something in me is dissolving, and it's my loving support
(23:31):
that's going to address and hold space for the healing
that I have a chance to be a part of.
And as we do that, the world starts to heal differently.
We don't have to have as much violence and upheaval
to distract ourselves from this rather uncomfortable unraveling. We can
actually just say it is my heartfelt support that allows
(23:54):
the healing of my heart and the transformation of the
world to unfold miraculous sleep instead of intensely. And I
think that's really the choice we're all starting to make
right now. Yeah, I mean, gosh, I definitely feel like
I don't think I realized how deep of a grief
this whole world was going through until for me personally
(24:14):
the other day and um. Yesterday, actually, I was was
on the couch for the whole day, and it was
the first time I recognized I was allowing myself to grieve.
It's not like if someone had to die for me
to feel grief. There's so much that's dying. There's so
many dreams that we've had a collective death that's happening. Um.
(24:36):
You know, all of these uh structures in the way
that we have created life on this planet are truly
falling away and in desperate need of it. Um. And
I I've actually was by the way, it's really small,
um exciting celebration for me, but I actually allowed myself
to lay there and feel it yesterday, And I remember
(24:59):
that end of the day, I was like, Wow, I
don't think I've ever done that. I don't think I've
actually ever fully tapped into that and will allowed the
love for myself enough love to have a day where
I didn't expect myself to do anything else. And I
think because of this go go go pace we've all
(25:21):
lived in. I know I'm not the only one that
feels like they can't they don't have the time to grief,
Like we don't have the time to feel these emotions,
and I don't think we have an option anymore, almost,
is what it feels like. Um. I mean, I guess
what you know, what you're saying, what I hear you're saying,
is that we have an option and we have a
choice in the way that we treat ourselves within that grief. Um.
(25:42):
But the grief is coming like, it's here, absolutely, And
I think it's a great I think it's a great
point to make when you talk. Where I get as
a vision is I get a vision of like a
swimming pool filled with tears, right, And this is the
swimming pool filled with tears is human entities, unprocessed pain.
And the more we love ourselves, the more we like
(26:05):
you so beautifully put find the courage and conviction to
give ourselves the space too, you know, not just hide
behind the masks of strength, but allow ourselves to go
into the vulnerability, to go into the difficult emotions, to
go into the spaces where you don't know what's going on,
where you don't have the answers, where you don't have control.
And if you imagine the world like this, this swimming
(26:27):
pool of tears, every tear that shed in the world
drains this pool of pain slowly. But as each of
us start to wake up in consciousness and love ourselves
enough to say, I'm going to allow processing my emotions
to be just as important as anything else I do
in the world. And you sat there all day and
just cried and let it out, let it out, that
(26:48):
pool drains faster, and we get to a point where
humanity heals faster, so instead of just a tear being
shed by infinite people and that process happening slower. So
many of us, as empathic, heart centered beings, are not
just purging our experience of grief, but really what we
(27:08):
are is we are purging the grief of the world.
And even as you wake up in consciousness in the beginning,
it's all about you are trying to heal your wounds.
And then at a certain point you realize, oh, it's
just my experience of humanity's wounds, and it takes on
(27:29):
a much more global process, and it's actually easier to
face your feelings when you realize what you're healing is
your history of experience, which is just your contribution to
what humanity is healing as a whole. I love that,
and I think it's the first time because I feel
like I've been healing my wounds for a long time, um,
(27:50):
and I'm sure a lot of us have. It's the
first time I'm really seeing and feeling into how deeply
we are connected to one another. When it becomes less
about our own solid you know what feels like such
a solid mass of our own pain, we realize that
it's not just this block that lives within us, but
(28:12):
it is something we are truly tapped into with one another.
The empathy grows and it's a beautiful thing. Well, and
I think you know, for anyone who's listening to this
right now, you know, as an experiment, notice how when
you think that what you're healing is yours, you're less
likely to face it. You have more in patience as
(28:33):
to how long you're willing to feel it, and you're
often distracted by who do I blame and what do
I need to fix in order to change this because
we're still perceiving like a punishment versus a reward of healing.
And then on the opposite side, notice that when it's
not necessarily yours, but your experience of what you're healing
for humanity, notice how there can be more of an
(28:57):
openness to feeling what we don't normally allow ourselves to feel.
Notice that we can actually go deeper into the feeling
when it's not necessarily mine, but it's our healing at hand.
And I think that's a really interesting distinction, because a
lot of us want to do the healing, but it's
(29:17):
just it's so difficult. And I think it's difficult because
the memories that these emotions represent were during times when
it was your life, your fault, your devastation, your heartbreak,
your resentment, you know, your neglect, all these things, and
(29:38):
and and as we love ourselves, it becomes strangely less personal.
And when it becomes less personal, we're able to be
more present with the intensity of emotion. And then when
we're interacting in the world, when we have a better
relationship with emotion, we can be there for other people
(29:58):
and take less personally the way or people may respond
and act as a result of not knowing the depths
of the healing journey they're in. M Yeah, And you know,
we talked so much about pain and grief on this side,
I want to talk about the opposite of it. And
I think you have such an interesting view on happiness
and I happiness. It's such a touchy word because I
(30:20):
feel like we've all been for our whole lives. We've
been told to, you know, chase happiness, and like happiness
is going to be the end all, and once we
get to happiness, like everything will be fine and you know,
there will be normal pain. And how we go about
looking for happiness in our lives has been, like I said,
it's been a chase. And I think you have such
(30:40):
a beautiful outlook on what true happiness is and how
do we start to tap into that joy in the
midst of all of this grief. It's such a great
question to ask. So we all have different ideas of happiness,
and a lot of us say, Okay, when I have
this career, when I have this in my bank account,
when I have this relation ship, I'm going to be happy.
(31:01):
And I think what's really funny about happiness is if
you really play out what you think needs to change
in order to be happy, you know, everyone would play
out different details. Maybe I'd have a different car, you know, whatever,
The tails are a different relationship out of all this stuff, right,
Imagine he had all the money in the bank that
you think you need and if people play it out
long enough. What I think is really funny is that
(31:23):
the fantasy of happiness is I would have all of
these things so that finally I could be left alone.
And I think what's really funny about happiness is the
fantasy of happiness as we all want the right to
afford being left alone. And yet when we love ourselves,
we're kind of no longer picking at ourselves, and we're
(31:47):
actually giving ourselves the actual fantasy we really want, like
kind of like someone who doesn't have a job and
then gets the career opportunity of a lifetime, and now
everyone's pulling at them and they have all these were sponsibilities,
and now they get to fantasize about going on vacation
and being left alone. Like everything comes down to what
we really want is the right to be left alone.
(32:08):
So we'll look at us though right now we've been
we're being left alone, like we are alone, like literally,
and nobody's happy, and the universe is looking down going,
why aren't you happy? That's all you wanted was to
be left alone. Now we call it social distancing, right,
and understand what you want. People. It's a really funny
thing that when you love yourself. It's both. I spend
(32:31):
more time saying nice things to myself and I'm not
picking at myself, so I really leave myself alone. Either
there's no inner critic and we give ourselves. What we
really want is we all want to be left alone
with the fantasy that nothing will be taken from us,
which you know, but it's it's a very funny thing
(32:51):
to think about. Um, you know what I have found
in my life as far as happiness and I've I
can remember since I started school and meeting other kids
and you know, all that kind of stuff. I remember
feeling the intense pressure of like everyone is working hard
to be the most popular kid in school, right. I
(33:12):
remember being a young, like little politician, like trying to
make sure everyone likes me and trying to make sure
no one's against me. And if I hear rumors about me,
I got to spread more truthful ones and all this
stuff and I actually found in my life, and this
happened spontaneously, that the nicer I was to other people,
especially if they weren't nice to me, the happier I was.
(33:35):
I found personally that my sense of happiness is determined
by my level of politeness. And it's not based on
what people are doing. It's it's based on my respect
for myself. And as I kept experimenting with this throughout
my life and kind of geeking out on politeness, like
I'd even meet like a little a little boy and
(33:58):
I'd say hello, sir, I am, and that's what I
do because it's just I find that being polite and
genuine has been this incredible force that is ripped my
heart wide open, and it has created this level of
power in me where even when the world is going crazy,
(34:20):
it doesn't lower the quality of my behavior. And that's
really when you're totally free, is when your behavior is
not determined by the behavior of others. Well, that's a
teaching that I feel like I could use against myself
for me because I feel like it's interesting because that's
(34:40):
it's almost when I feel like I've used against myself
and my whole life because you know, I'm from the South,
and it's like, you know, we were we were told
we say yes, ma, I'm and no sir, and it
was like but it was it was from a different place.
And I think you're going this circles back to your intention,
you know, of where is it coming from and why
am I doing it? And I what I love is
that what I heard you say is your own respect
(35:03):
for yourself. And I think that's key, um, because I
think sometimes we can hear things like that and be like, Oh,
I'm just gonna go around and be a lot nicer
to everybody. But then are you then taking your anger
and your all of the things that happened to you
maybe that you come up against, you know, you using
that against yourself, Because I think that's really as I
(35:24):
sit here and think about that, that's basically what I've
done my whole life is like, Oh, we were taught
to be really polite to people, but and that also
meant like not speaking up for yourself sometimes and all
of these other things. And I find and I agree
with you on this um that I have found for
myself to you know, being in this business um for
(35:46):
so long I've had I've had so many people say
about me and to me like she she's always so
kind and so and I really take pride in that
because I've and I've found, like you're saying them more
and the older I've gotten, I've learned to use that
for for the good of all instead of having it
(36:07):
come from a place where I feel like I can't
speak up and I always have to be kind or
else somebody's gonna think bad of me. I mean that's
how That's how I was raised, and it's um but
for me, it's I totally feel you on that is
that that's how I want to treat people like I
want to leave. You know, it's like leave the world
better than you found. It's like I want to I
want to leave people better than I found them. And
(36:30):
I think that's such a beautiful place to live from
all right, when we returned from break, we'll have more
thoughts on making the world a happier place for all
of us. Hello everyone, We were just us talking about
(37:00):
the transformative power of politeness and kindness, and it also
takes us out of ourselves, right, I mean, it takes
us out of our own quote unquote ego and puts
us into a connection with people absolutely. And I think
you know something that you pointed out or you know,
touchdo I think is really helpful is the difference between
(37:21):
politeness and subservience. Right when we're children, you know, I
was subservient to my parents demands, and my parents also
I wasn't raised in the South, but I was raised
in a very emotionally volatile Jewish family. Um, what I
learned from my parents, which was wonderful, is they still
to me like Matthew, you must always be polite. And
(37:42):
it was more taught to me in this very acoustic
way where um, the fear of what my mom would
say was worse than anything I could face. And my
mom was lovely, but it's a little judge duty badass,
and uh, I was less afraid if people are more
afraid of my mom. But what's interesting is, you know,
and then people project that parental relationship onto the universe.
(38:04):
And so subservience is when you're trying to do a
certain thing to avoid a certain amount of discomfort or punishment.
Politeness is, you know, even we have to speak up
for yourself. There's just a level of respect we hold,
you know, where as an adult, even if you're talking
to a child, you know, a child's experience is just
to be fully present with whatever in impulse and instinct
(38:28):
is coming up right. There's no think before you speak.
It's just all kind of running the show. And as
adults we kind of learned to be more mindful and
more mature in the way we handle things. Not always,
of course, but I think really politeness is just one
of those things where we remember, like, and I remember
from me what clicked about all this was actually the opposite,
(38:50):
was like, if someone was not nice to me and
I was not nice to them, I started to see
it as a form of manipulation, and I started to
realize I don't I don't want to be manipulated by
someone else's um experience, and that it wants to be
forced to just kind of have this ping pong and
reflect back to someone, well, they treated me bad, I'm
(39:11):
going to treat them bad. And it just kind of
woke up out of that, you know, spontaneously. And so
for me, politeness is just my way of being able
to say, we're all on our journeys. We're not always
gonna hit the mark, but I'm always going to respect
that there's a soul inside every heart, including mine. We're
always doing the best we possibly can. And if we
(39:33):
can treat others with more respect, we help others bring
to the surface more of their highest quality so that
more people can thrive and less people have to suffer.
And so I think for me. The politeness comes from
very deep awareness that I came here to help resolve
the suffering of the world, and it's and it begins
(39:55):
with myself and who I interact with, one person at
a time, despite the all I play for the world. Yeah,
I feel that so deeply, and if only we can
we can remember that on a daily basis. It's like
joy is found in that connection and into making for
me at least in making, you know, and helping others
to find that that light within themselves. I mean, this
(40:16):
is honestly why I started this podcast was like, how
do I how do I help people out of suffering?
You know, it's um how do I help people be
okay with with the wholeness of the fullness of who
they are? And you know, and what I have found
is my deepest joys are when I'm doing that, you know,
(40:40):
when I'm serving that role um or serving the role
that I'm here to play in helping to liberate people
and to connect people back to themselves and I and
it's funny that you you talk about intention earlier, like
that's been my my biggest practice has been coming back
to that intention. And once I got really clear on
(41:02):
what that was anytime I get lost, like wunning to mounting,
time I go down, like the dirt path that I'm
not supposed to be taking, I seem to be able
to connect back to that intention of of my why
has been such a huge anchoring piece, I guess for me,
especially during these times. And I love that because I
think the word service such a powerful word, you know,
(41:24):
And I think sometimes people limit service to what I
do at work, or we're having a canned food drive,
and I think there's ways in which we kind of
put service in a very interesting box. And I think
for a lot of people, we don't often think of
I speak as a form of service. I listen as
(41:46):
a form of service. I respond not because my ego
wants to have the final word, but because I am
in service to the person I'm in front of. And
sometimes it's easier to forget about that service when you're
around someone who's not acting in a way that is
serving you. And so I think that as we love ourselves,
(42:07):
and as we get more spiritually aligned, and we get
more quiet and go within and we we we start
to strengthen our ability to listen to the same degree
that we're also anxious to share. I think we start
to remember that what I'm choosing for myself, how I
speak to others, how I listen, what I do is
not just to fulfill my personal desires. It's a service
(42:32):
that I offer to all. And I think that the
words service helps us remember that there's a greater reason
why we're here, and there's a greater opportunity in every
moment when we remember the service that is really all
of us living for the well being of all. M hmm.
I love that I do something with every guest of
(42:53):
mine on the podcast called the Holy Five. Of course,
I love music, and I'm very much connected, and I
know I love that you music to which I'm is
excited to ask you this question. I just wanted to
dig into your playlists a little bit and see if there's, like,
there's five songs right now that you're loving, or five
songs that speak to your life. However you want to
play this game? What are your top five that you're into?
(43:16):
What a what a fascinating question. I love that because
I'm such a big music fan. You and I talked
about all the time, and you know, we just came
out of the holiday season and I was raised Jewish, right,
But I love Christmas. I love Christmas. Christmas for me
is the end all be all, Like my heaven will
just be Christmas every day. And I've also thought about
(43:38):
this over the years, and it sounds kind of morbid,
but I always think of like if I'm writing the
Escalator from Earth to Heaven, like what song do I
want to listen to? I like that, you know what
I mean. I don't know. I think about these things.
It's covid up at home, and you know, what else
do you think about other than why am I not
wearing pants? But the songs I would say that touched
(43:59):
me the deepest, so many different genres I love. Okay, so,
um Gabriel's song by Sting whatever album that was amazing.
So gabriel song by Staying, I think, is just like
this holy I'm in the presence of God and I
am writing this Escalator to Heaven and it's all good. Okay, Okay.
(44:25):
So I was a kid and I was in you know,
you have a school assembly, which is cool because you
don't have to be in school and you get to
go to the auditorium and you watch the other kids
who are in the choir singing the Christmas songs with
like a token Honakah song just to remind us that
(44:45):
Hanika's music program is so deficient. Can we really ride
on Adam Sandler for that long? Really? So anyways, I'm
watching these Christmas songs and and I'm like in fifth grade,
and I hear a song that elicits a reaction to
me that I'm literally about to explode into the most
(45:05):
explosive tears. And I had to go outside because I
didn't want to make a noise and embarrass myself, because
I'm the kid gos to be popular, right, so so
so this song and I went outside and I literally cried,
and it was this spiritual moment that I just didn't understand.
But um, I was just embarrassed that people would hear
me because I was literally about to scream. And the
(45:27):
song was do you Hear What I Hear? That song
touches me on a level I can't even describe. And
I've got like eight versions of it. I love that.
Here's your favorite version of do you Hear What I Hear?
My favorite version do you Hear What I Hear? Is
um Andy Williams, Oh cool old school hear what a
(45:53):
song song. One of my favorite songs of all time
dust In the Wind by Kansas Nice. It's just so random,
the great I think that's that. That's like the song
you Die Too. All they are is dustin. That's a
(46:20):
good one. That's a good one. That's a really good one.
Two more things to go. Yeah. As far as Christmas songs,
you know there's it's It's Christmas. Tree Farm by Taylor
Swift is one of my new favorite Christmas songs. It's
just there, there's a magic to it. My heart is
it Christmas to Farm where the people come to dance on.
(46:42):
Very good, but it's so good. He's still on the
Christmas music and I love it. I have actually had
Christmas music come on my playlist at the beginning this
year and I don't turn it off, so oh never.
And I will tell you the last one is anything
by Josh Broban because I like to cook. And it's
a little known fact that if you listen to Josh
(47:03):
Broban while you cook, everything tastes better. It's it's a
Josh Groban song. Have You Cooked the Best Too? I
will tell you that I've cooked remarkable levels of food
to Josh Groban's Noel Perfect Snow. I love it. And
(47:24):
I don't ever ask anybody this, but I know you're
a huge chef. Do you have a favorite thing to cook?
Do you prefer a recipe? I decided yesterday for some
reason that I'm going to make different kinds of guacamole.
That's what I did yesterday, master guacamole. Then I have
these little bowls and I would like to stir in
different things, so I did, like, you know, roasted corn
and green chilies is one of them. And one of
(47:45):
them had like dice grapefruit and crispy kale, and oh
my god, that sounds so good. Yeah. I recommend this
for anyone in existence. Like and as I'm eating it,
I'm realizing I think I'm now in analogamous relationship with guacamole.
It's the best kind to be in. During COVID, I mean,
(48:07):
I love guacamole. And then yesterday it was like this deeper.
I think I really think I like you, like you, Ga,
I love it. Oh my god, I'm gonna have to
do that very good. I love that. Thank you amazing.
This was so fun. Thank you so much. Thank you
for coming on this podcast. And oh, something I'm gonna
do at the end of this podcast because of the
(48:29):
I love yous, I am going to share a chant
of mine, so thank you so much for coming on,
and I'm we're gonna I'm gonna chant everyone out. My
ho my, it's my compass and my oh no way,
(48:51):
my hoh. It's connected to totally my heart, my heart,
my heart through little well blow this blowing my heart,
(49:15):
my heart, my heart, my hot leading me home to
my deep snowing, and that ties up this episode. Thank
you so much for being here as always, and please
forward this heart centered message to someone you feel could
benefit from hearing it, and of course I would always
(49:38):
love to hear from you, so please leave me your
thoughts in a rating wherever you're listening. Bye. On our
next Holy Human, We're going to dive into the interwoven
male and female energies that connect and comprise us all
with the wonderfully wise and super cool dude Rainier Wild
I love his name m listen and follow Holy Human
(50:23):
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to podcasts.
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