Conscious Life Journal: I love the way you go about what you do with love and an open heart. Tell me more about that.
Matt Kahn: After years of doing sessions with people I realized that the way people approached healing, awakening, and transformation sets them up for infinite success or inevitable failure. The greatest tool that a teacher can give someone is teaching them how to be on the spiritual path. How lovingly we approach ourselves and our spiritual journey is the single most important factor as to whether we evolve into our highest potential or just spin in circles forever. If the way they were approaching their journey wasn’t with the utmost humility and respect, if they weren’t rooted in their hearts, they become instantaneously tainted and just recreate another spiritual ego. It’s not what we seek but how we are seeking. Because when how is totally dialed in, the things that people spend so many years trying to micromanage spiritually within themselves are done by the universe for them. We just have to do the how; the universe does the what. We learn to connect with Divinity to become aware of how Divinity treats all of its creations so that we can, in turn, start treating ourselves and all of our creations as the Divine does. That’s the ultimate reflection of consciousness.
CLJ: That’s huge. Go further into that.
MK: People have all these experiences of the moment they felt separate from Source, but we are only as separate from Divinity as how we treat ourselves or others differently than the unconditional loving way that the Divine treats every living creature. The reason we have that moment of oneness or serenity is because we are remembering that we are always connected to the Divine. Once we begin to open up to that approach, the separation from Source or the rejection from love heals instantaneously.
CLJ: So all those blocks to love that happened to us as children are held in place by not being able to reach that level of lovingness?
MK: Absolutely. The core of abuse is neglect and we’ve all been neglected on some level, whether by ourselves or by our family. The core of our spiritual journey that unites us all is that all of us are learning how to develop the level of worthiness that allows us to see and treat ourselves as God always does. Once we focus on the worthiness, anything that needs to be healed that stems from that source of unworthiness collapses and clears on its own. Once we clear the source of it, all the periphery stuff just disappears on its own. What causes separation of Divinity is a sense of not feeling worthy of Divinity or not knowing how to be worthy of how the Divine sees itself in us.
CLJ: I know I’ve had profound healings and then life happens to me again and I forget. What is that?
MK: That’s a test. It’s our own Divinity testing our consciousness to see how unwavering our faith is. When “you know what” hits the fan, are you going to open up and say this is my next vision quest where I walk as one with the light of God, or can some outcome turn you away from the light of truth? As we become fully embodied, heart-centered, enlightened masters, we are celebrating the light of our divinity in all forms, and no matter what happens, it doesn’t turn us away or distract us from the light. It only turns us toward it in a deeper way.
CLJ: So how do you deal with those sticky things like people who are in relationships and don’t know how to get out. Is that a symptom of this core that we’re talking about?
MK: The level of stress or drama, whether it’s coming from you or others, is indicative of some degree of unworthiness. So if you are going about life, will you allow the light of Divinity to be remembered in every moment and not let anything distract you from that? A lot of people say they would fail that every single time. And that’s why the spiritual journey exists. We realize that the level of forgetfulness of Divinity, the level of being distracted by turmoil, the unconscious ability to continually manifest disasters, adversity, and drama and conflict is just showing us a level of unworthiness. Loving ourselves is becoming the messenger of Divinity that only reaches out to its creation to pull it out of the shadows and return it to the light that it always is.
CLJ: As a consciousness magazine we’re reaching out to people who might feel that these kinds of understandings are completely foreign to them. Where do they start to understand this?
MK: Victimhood is maintained by insisting on blaming the characters in your life who didn’t give you what you wanted. Redemption is turning towards the idea that “nothing in my life can change until I open up to the fact that only I can give myself the things that other people seem to withhold from me.” We will suffer for as long as we blame and we will heal as quickly as we are willing to love. We have to be patient with ourselves. We have to be foster parents to our own adopted inner children. The first step always feels too big because it’s a step out of the ego’s known reality. Even the feeling of “that’s too big for me” just shows the first one to be loved. When you let love lead the way, love can’t be confused by this. We have to see what shows up first, and that’s the one that we love as the child in our heart.
CLJ: That is so comforting. Does this way of thinking help those who beat themselves up about where they are right now?
MK: Of course. Regret is one of the last ditch efforts for the ego to say “my present moment is becoming more harmonious and stable so I can only look to the past to feel bad.” No matter how far you’ve come on your spiritual journey, as long as you’re in a physical body you’re on a spiritual journey. You’ll realize that as far as you’ve come, you’ve only just begun again. So the recurring vibration of awakened consciousness is just continuous realization of new beginnings. We only experience death until we realize birth is the only reality. If you take the word birth and the word death and you smoosh them together, you have the word breath. So it’s in the recognition of our breath that we realize the exhale only seems like a death just to bring about the new beginning of the next inhale. And if the inhale is a birth and the exhale is a death, that means the breaths you take in one 24-hour-period are the experience of endless resurrection.
CLJ: Everything you say has with it this underlying foundation of “it’s all okay.”
MK: People are okay when they’re okay and I allow people to not be okay with whatever they’re not okay with. For how many years on this journey have people known that the answer is love? You know “oh, I should love myself” but no one knows how to do that. Or you go to a yoga class and the teacher says “find your center,” and if you knew how to do that you wouldn’t be at a class. What I offer is to look at all the things that we all know are important and beneficial and to break them down into how do we actually do that instead of just talk about it. How do we talk as consciousness instead of talk about consciousness? How do we go from unworthy to one with Divinity? The most fascinating part of this entire journey is cracking the code. That’s what fuels me. How, for me, is the key.
CLJ: We’re talking about an inner transformation but do you have how-tos as to what that looks like on the outer?
MK: The inner work is taking the time to learn how to give ourselves positive, nurturing attention and that’s key. You can be “working on yourself” and because you’re not giving yourself positive, nurturing attention, you’re perpetuating neglect. So the inner work is learning
to give ourselves the time and space to focus on ourselves and not get lost in the roles we’re playing to seek validation from others. We give ourselves inner positive attention that helps us to raise the vibration of our consciousness so that we can perceive and respond to other people at their highest selves, whether they’re acting that way or not. And when we’re not able to do that, that shows us how much more love we need to give to ourselves. That way we have an inner journey where we can work on ourselves without neglecting ourselves, and then we also translate that into the love we cultivate in our hearts that becomes blessings of transformations for all of those we encounter.
CLJ: What you just described could be the death knell for lots of relationships.
MK: Sometimes people go their separate ways because one or both are not willing to step into a new paradigm. Or it could be the birth of a new relationship if both people are willing to grow and evolve. But the recipe for the healthiest relationship under the new paradigm is that two people spend time making it their business to show their partner how much love and respect they deserve to offer themselves. As you cultivate more inner love for yourself, now you have more love to bestow upon your partner as you then undertake the goal of “my job is to show my partner how much more worthy of love they are, as my partner shows me how much more love I’m worthy of in myself.” As we become loving autonomous beings we find our own inner wholeness so that we can celebrate that wholeness together—as one—instead of just relying on the actions of another person to try to make us whole.
CLJ: That’s exactly it! You won’t let someone love you more than you love yourself.
MK: Part of the problem is that if your partner is going through a process, it immediately feels as if they’re pulling away from you. But when we are loving ourselves unconditionally we can give our partner exactly what they need instead of making it about us. And if we can give ourselves what we need, we can love our partners from a space of freedom. And whether our partners should be loved over time and we’re together forever, or whether we were only brought together to be pulled apart, we can celebrate every moment of partnership, savoring the love that we receive without just waiting for the most fearful outcome to dawn.
CLJ: What’s next for you? Just keep doing this wonderful work? Do you have another book in you?
MK: My first book Whatever Arises, Love That was amazing. I love that people are getting so much out of it. I’m currently writing my second book, Beyond All Barriers, and ninety percent is brand new material that I’ve never taught before. It feels like the next horizon of spiritual evolution for the planet. It’s going to be published through Hay House, the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, and I can’t wait for the world to read this. When I’m done with this book, I’m starting number three immediately. We are going to “Wayne Dyer” this situation. I grew up watching him, but what I focused on wasn’t what he was saying, but how did I feel in my body when I listened to him? That’s how I learned to become who I am. Everyone has a way of sending their message to humanity, but the choice is how are you going to deliver the message and how conscious are you of people’s experiences while you deliver the message? You could deliver it harshly and directly if that’s what you’re called to do. But if you have the awareness that you can love and embrace, console and heal the deepest innocence of every being while you’re delivering what you’re destined to deliver, that for me is the highest obtainment. And that’s why it’s a cornerstone of my offering.