294. Mapping the Psyche to Integrate Psychology and Spirituality - Matt Cooksey

Kara Goodwin: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the meditation conversation, the podcast to support your spiritual revolution. I'm your host, Kara Goodwin, and today I'm joined by Matt Cooksey. Matt helps people find their light in their darkness. He believes we're all running from parts of ourselves we've deemed unlovable, incompetent, or unspiritual.

As a therapist, writer, and speaker, he's on a mission to help us see our monsters as the misunderstood geniuses they really are. His popular monster mindset guides offer a powerful into the innate goodness of our bad parts and the wholeness at the heart of life. 

You're gonna love this illuminating discussion with Matt who joins from Bali. He has such insights on the [00:01:00] role of surrender and how useful the dark parts of us are. That we often don't want to engage with. We also talk about how big lessons we came here to learn as a soul can show up again and again, even when we think we've learned them for good. He does a beautiful job with his work of taking a more holistic approach to therapy. Which includes the soul perspective. So often therapy's stopped short of taking our soul into consideration, which really keeps us from having a complete view of our psyche. So i know you're going to get a lot from this episode so let's dive in But first be sure to to check out my website Karagoodwin.com. I've got a wonderful retreat coming up in January. What better thing can you do in the dead of winter than to join me on the sacred grounds of the Tibetan, Mongolian Buddhist cultural center in Bloomington, we're going to have meditation workshops that will strengthen your connection to your higher [00:02:00] self. There will be sound experiences and so much more. This is going to be a deeply enriching experience tickets are going quickly so please go to cara goodwin.com and select retreats to find out more and now enjoy this episode

Kara Goodwin: So welcome Matt. I'm so excited to be connected with you here today.

Matt Cooksey: Me too. It's just immediately a meeting of our shared single being, the moment we came onto this connection, I just felt such a, just a presence here. And I think you just said, Oh man, I wish we had actually hit record like three minutes ago. And it feels like one of those conversations.

So it's a joy to be here and thanks so much for having me.

Kara Goodwin: Yes, I know. We, I was saying I regret we haven't recorded this part because it was such great stuff coming through already, so I'm sure that's, that, is a great foreshadowing. Wait, [00:03:00] foreshadowing I think is inherently dark, right? Which we'll get into. 

Anyway, 

Matt Cooksey: This conversation.

Kara Goodwin: it's a great prediction of where things will go. right. So can you tell us a little bit about your backstory and particularly how you've come to blend psychology with spirituality?

Matt Cooksey: Oh my goodness. the story for me began with a very early midlife crisis, I would say. and if you're going to have a midlife crisis, I recommend getting it out of the way early in your life. And that's how it happened for me because, I hit 30 years old and I will never forget the day I was, at my house.

My mom came over, I opened the door and just burst into tears. And she said, what's wrong? What's the matter? And I hadn't, I truly had no idea. I really didn't know. And the great irony is I took myself off to this gym and I was very good at, picking myself up and [00:04:00] dusting myself off.

And, at that point in my life, I had all of the symbols that are meant to make us happy. The car, and the house, and the holidays, and the money, and all of those things. And yet, here I was, miserable, and I was at this gym, and I was running on this treadmill, and I literally tripped and fell off this treadmill.

And in retrospect, the funny thing is, I look back on that, I'm like, oh my god, a treadmill is a road to nowhere. And that's exactly Where I was at that point in my life, I'd fallen off Literally the road to nowhere and I think sometimes the universe is So not subtle about the message, and yet Um, so I, I, I got, I got off this treadmill and downstairs in this gym, they had this huge jacuzzi and I got into that jacuzzi.

The most depressed victim, like, woe is me, but also just so lost, so frightened. I think I'd ever been in my life. [00:05:00] And then suddenly. Out of nowhere. And by complete grace, it was like there was this parting of the clouds. and I think retrospect, what I heard for the very first time consciously was we could say like the voice of the universe or your highest self or God, or how are you? think about that. And I heard this voice and it said something so basic and simple and it wasn't, it wasn't grand in any way. It just said, you don't have to do any of this. And I instantly knew that gave me the permission. To let go of this orientation to life, which was all about symbols and things and all of the stuff that I'd been, like most people conditioned to believe were the essence of what would make us happy.

And so I set about completely changing my [00:06:00] life and I went to live in South America for a while and really got into this question of what am I? What am I? Who am I? And as I moved into that space to go back to your question about psychology and spirituality, what emerged was changing careers and becoming a therapist.

But interestingly, as I trained as a therapist and got to know myself at a very deep psychological level, I reached the point where I felt like psychology and therapy could only take me so far that there was there's this kind of thing like, your therapist wants you to leave your spirit in the waiting room and your spiritual teacher doesn't want to talk about your trauma.

And what I noticed is that actually, as I then expanded out of the psychological world and entered into a more spiritual. contemplation of who am I? What am I? I realized that there was this incredible interrelationship [00:07:00] between our spiritual intuition, knowledge, experience, and our messy mental and emotional experience that often doesn't get, spoken to in a cohesive And so for me, what I love is to sit with somebody who is in this sort of process of expansion and to really be able to look very fluidly from a psychological and a spiritual perspective. perspective. because what I find is that really is when things start to open up. Sometimes, like my teacher Adi Ashanti says, we need to do growing up work. We need to do the mental and emotional work to develop a strong enough ego that can be actually time to let go of the Growing up work and it's time to do waking up work.

And so for me, those two are so symbiotic. And yet for most people, I think they're quite detached and they're doing them [00:08:00] in a siloed way. And I think there's a lot of value bringing them together.

Kara Goodwin: That's really profound. And I love what you talk about where the silos. Right, because we see the, those silos of like, okay, if I'm going to work with you spiritually, then I'm not going to really be, your psyche, your ego, that's all stuff that, your trauma sometimes, like when we're dealing with spirituality, they don't want to know that it's like, that's not really who you are, so it doesn't matter, but, We are complete holistic beings, but likewise, we've got that, when we're trying to overcome trauma and we go to a traditional therapist, like you say, there's not this.

It's acknowledgement of there being this higher part of us or an eternal part of us, the soul. It's, very mirroring of holistic medicine, right? Where you might have a traditional doctor who's like, here's what your physical body is doing. It doesn't have anything to do [00:09:00] with your emotions. It doesn't have anything to do with your thoughts and it doesn't have anything to do with your soul.

And in fact, Let's the soul is just a hypothetical anyway, so let's not waste any time with that. Whereas like more and more I feel that you know as people are Advancing themselves. There is this understanding and acceptance that we are these multi layered multifaceted beings and all of the parts of us are interacting with the other parts and in Fluencing the other parts, even of course, when it

Matt Cooksey: Yeah. I think people, uh,

Kara Goodwin: So that's really beautiful.

Matt Cooksey: easily swept into. the benefit of the transcendent when you have an awakening experience. after years of suffering and pain and so on, I often say to people, sometimes we need to like take a year off and hang out in the transcendent and pretend that the world doesn't exist, even though, drop a stone on your [00:10:00] foot and it hurts.

But sometimes we just need that break from what for a lot of people has been a traumatic. Very painful experience, but I'm always trying to encourage people to, to recognize that this awakening is not a tool to enable us to hide away from our human existence, that actually we can find unity, we can find what we really are also in our human being. Incarnation as well. And, that that seems to be a very implicit movement of life. Life doesn't seem to want us to just hang out in a cave and close our eyes to this beautiful existence. that's what it seems like to me anyway. So, know that's hard, it's a, it can be a challenging place to come back to the world, to, so I get why people don't want to do that sometimes, but it can get, it can get a little dry when you're just sitting back from life,

Kara Goodwin: yeah, and I think that's where that spiritual bypassing. I feel like we hear a lot [00:11:00] these days about the warnings of spiritual bypassing, and it took me a long time to even understand what that meant, like, what are we talking about when it comes to spiritual bypassing, but it's exactly that. It's being these wounded, Humans who still have some integration to do who need where we need to reconcile and, integrate our shadows as you help people to do, and integrate our traumas and to really kind of face and allow those parts of us to be part of us instead of saying, Nope, I'm a spiritual being that stuff doesn't matter.

And we don't allow it to be part of our conscious existence in the human form, or not even participating as a human and just seeing ourselves as spirit or as a starseed or whatever it is, and feeling that all of my moments of my life are going to be lived from as a galactic consciousness without out.

Caring for my human aspect. [00:12:00] It's like, you've been given this human technology, this, the technology of the human being, this human incarnation as part of your soul growth. So if you're not in it and you're not working with it and through it. Then you're missing an opportunity there.

Matt Cooksey: I, 

yeah, I 

think that's such a vital point you're making

Kara Goodwin: 

Matt Cooksey: I think there's a big worry that stops people from engaging, I think, with their humanity. And I think it's the fear of getting lost. In the Psyche because the Psyche is a vast amorphous, ever changing, shape shifting place and one of the things that I've recently developed in my work that I think is making a huge difference to make these journeys into our kind of darker parts more feasible for more people is, The ability to develop a map because what occurred to me is who goes anywhere out in the Outer [00:13:00] physical world who goes to any wilderness who treks anywhere into the unknown without a map Yet we are faced with this Constantly shifting and changing psyche and we're not given a map.

We have no idea You know you go to a new city in some foreign country, and it might be unfamiliar, but if you go on Tuesday down a particular road, you can fairly Sure, rely that same road will be there on Wednesday and Thursday, and over time you will get to know that city. The Psyche, you go down this road on Wednesday, and it's really helpful, and you get some spiritual insight that helps you emotionally with some problem that you're facing. And then the next day you're like, Oh great, I'll go down that road again. And that road has disappeared entirely. And you're in this place of like, how on earth, if I was to go into these unknown, uncharted parts of myself that I intuitively sense and know hold wisdom and part of [00:14:00] the puzzle that I'm here to put together, how would I go in there and not get interminably.

lost. And so for me, that's what led me to develop this idea of let's create like a Google map of the psyche of each person's psyche. And that's what I'm actually doing right now these days to actually make these journeys a much more realistic prospect. And when you can map somebody's psyche. And you can put it on a single piece of paper, and you can say, Here you are.

This is you, your psyche, on a piece of paper. And they go, Oh my God! For the first time in my life, I can see all of the different parts of myself. Their capacity to actually now go on that journey into those uncharted places is dramatically higher because they're not so scared of getting lost in there. 

Kara Goodwin: wow,

 so how would you even go about mapping somebody's psyche? How, where did this [00:15:00] Intel come from? and how do you go about doing that for each individual client? 

Matt Cooksey: it is,

 such a intuitive process for, anybody, once they understand the principles and then underlying how the psyche is actually structured. And so in my own journey. As a therapist, as a spiritual seeker, I've been so blessed in being exposed to such a vast array of different philosophies and approaches and so forth.

And so I've just, I think kind of gotten lucky in being able to pull together a whole kind of suite of different, approaches that have helped me to create this process where I can sit with somebody. For probably about 90 minutes and I actually decided to make my own map public Record so that if people want to actually if people are hearing this and they're like what the hell with us a map of the Psyche look like you can actually download My [00:16:00] map so you can actually see what I'm talking about like I give a like a guided tour of my psyche which is kind of funny to invite people Into my inner world in that way but what I find is that there are a number of elements that people quite quickly Can grasp about how the psyche is structured for example? and you've spoken about this in other episodes of this, show, we tend to think of ourselves, our psychological self as a singular me. We say me or I, and in that, what we miss is that actually. In our common kind of language, we'll say, part of me really wanted to go for dinner and part of me wanted to stay home and save some money. Actually, this psychological me is not a singular entity. It's usually fragmented, very naturally actually, into a number of parts. And each of these different parts has its own [00:17:00] identity, essentially. And what so often is holding spiritual seekers back when they don't realize this, is that you may have a part of you Who is totally and utterly enrolled in your spiritual search, a part that is so ready and willing to let go and relinquish control and surrender a part that's willing to feel all your messy, difficult emotions, all of that stuff. And yet if the other parts of you that probably have, been very focused most of your life on all of the opposite things, controlling. everything that happens, avoiding difficult emotions. If those parts of you are not enrolled in the spiritual journey, then what happens is people are going on this journey in a divided, state.

And by mapping this all out, people can really start to see, like, I like to play in my own map. A part like a sequence of events of what happened when I was [00:18:00] trying to surrender, for example, and why I wasn't able to surrender. And I actually show in the map exactly the chain of events between all of the different parts and what that led to was the opposite of surrender, surrender that's desperately Trying to surrender.

I'm surrender that's trying to control the surrender, so once people can start to see that. If we can have a more integrated approach to spirituality, all of a sudden the resistance that people face along this path starts to really diminish. And in that quietness, what I've found personally and with clients is you hear, life, you hear God, you hear the universe, however you want to put that. The noise just reduces, and I think so much of our job actually as seekers is simply to identify the sources of noise, and one of those sources of noise. It's just not realizing that the psyche is [00:19:00] fragmented and needs to be integrated as a whole.

Kara Goodwin: Wow. That is really beautiful and profound and we've kind of touched on. The role of the monster, the shadow, we've, we kind of have been skirting around our conversation. but I know that is in addition to the mapping, the psyche mapping, but another big part of your work, as I understand it is the integration, the facing of the monster of the darkness.

Can you talk about. The importance of this and the role that it's played in your own, 

Matt Cooksey: time I'm asked that question I'm transported to a particular moment in my life where really everything fell apart. It was a real dark night of the soul. I was sitting at home one day. And my husband came home and he just went pale and said, I don't want to be with you anymore. And this is a man who I had on a pedestal [00:20:00] for most of our relationship.

So much of my own, identity and sense of self worth was actually driven by being with him. And so when he said those words, it was like the worst. thing had happened and he left the house and I heard that voice again that I'd heard several years prior when I fell off the treadmill unceremoniously and it said go to the spare room.

And sit on that couch and do not move until you have felt every excruciating emotion, every feeling of terror. And I sat down and somehow followed this advice and I was probably sitting there for like half an hour and I felt horrific and I just sat there and it was like I was, being burned up. And I don't know if you've personally read the, the untethered soul by Michael Singer, but there's a line in, that book where he says that we all have in our heart, a layer of pain [00:21:00] that is so. Utterly challenging and difficult that our whole lives and our personality revolves around avoiding that layer of pain. And in that moment, I finally sat with that. that. I'd been spending my whole life avoiding and it was literally like it felt like I was having limbs ripped off me Emotionally and energetically and I just somehow stayed in it and then after maybe about 30 minutes It was like I popped out the other side of this agony into this unbelievable piece. And as I sat there, I had this sudden, bizarre impulse, this intuition that was so shocking to me. I was like, Oh my God, either, either I'm about to go completely crazy or something very interesting is happening because I heard, I started hearing this voice, the voice of life. And it said, Go to [00:22:00] a nudist beach and I was like, this is preposterous go to a nudist beach and I was like, you know what?

Everything's going completely haywire in my life. Why not? Let's just do it So I drove to this nudist beach, right? And then and I'm this guy who spent most of my life with a lot of hang ups about my body feeling Ashamed of my body and all of this stuff and now I get to this nudist beach I've never been to one before and I'm like I'll just strip off then and I ran down this beach completely nude into the water and I've just broken up with my long term partner and I'm in the water and I am just Feeling like I've just completely gone home.

I felt whole, I felt joyous, I felt this sense of unity, and my mind was trying to catch up with this, hence my interest in both the psychological and the spiritual worlds. Because my mind was like, [00:23:00] how is it possible that you could be feeling this amazing feeling in this set of circumstances? it didn't make any sense.

Hence, and that. was part of the wisdom of that moment because my mind had to actually just stop almost in awe of what was happening and I drove home from this beach and I then had another kind of impulse and it was the impulse that said You've got to go and move to Bali for a while and I'm driving along. I'm like, Oh my God, this is getting really crazy now. And I'm like, I'm so sorry, universe. if this is really true, if I really have to go and live in Bali, then I need a sign. I'm sorry for being like such a poor student. I'm still, I'm a, novice. I'm still learning, and I was driving along and I looked to my right and emblazoned on this big office building.

was the company name that was Ego, E G O. And I instantly [00:24:00] knew that the only reason I wouldn't follow this guidance to go and live in Bali was because of my ego. And I got home and I loaded up flights to Bali on the computer and I'm hovering over the book button. And it was like, my heart was racing.

And I was like, Oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing this. And for me, when I look back on this moment, it was a real indication of my readiness to surrender, to really let go. Into some, kind of intelligence to run my life, to take over my life that I had, struggled to run myself. And as I sat there, I was like, University, you're going to hate me, but I need another sign if I'm going to do this.

And as I'm sitting there at the desk, I look over and there's on the desk, there's this, this hand cream. And the hand cream, I looked a bit more closely, it just caught my eye. And it was manufactured by the same company, E. G. O, E. G. O. [00:25:00] And I looked at it, and I was like, Oh my god, like, this is, crazy.

I just instantly 

hit 

book. 

Kara Goodwin: Really? Oh my God.

Matt Cooksey: three weeks later... I had gone to Bali. Yeah, it's nuts. and I went to Bali and to cut a very long story short, what I knew when I landed in Bali, and Bali is known as the island of the gods. And when I arrived in Bali, and funnily enough, today, I am speaking to you from the island of Bali, five years later.

But when I first arrived in Bali, like five, six years ago, I knew having broken up with my longterm partner that I was in Bali to get into an intimate relationship with God, like no more texting another human being. If I was going to text anyone, I was going to be texting God. If I was going to be emailing anyone or sending selfies, I was going to be sending emails and selfies to God.

And I was really here on this island to [00:26:00] know God. To know the universe and holy guacamole that, that determination opened up so much, but that's really, that's what really prompted me to realize the power of meeting our monsters. in that moment, as I sat on that couch and kind of retrospectively, what I see is that our suffering.

Our, the parts of ourselves that are in terrible pain that we routinely avoid are actually gateways to the very awakening that the spiritual parts of us are seeking, but in some ways too frightened to, to actually go, in search of, so it was an amazing experience.

Kara Goodwin: Wow. Well, thank you for sharing all of that. It's a really profound and beautiful journey. I would love to just, if we can explore one last Part of that because the surrender was a big part of your journey and [00:27:00] that kind of checking in but really that letting go of your Control and we've talked about this a lot in our conversation too, but again, like everything has balanced, right?

So I'd love to explore with you that surrender balanced with action and I think your journey like really encompasses that really beautifully of how it did take action. The ego had to get involved in order to click that button. To book the trip and to drive to the beach and all and to follow the orders to go and sit and do nothing and get itself out of the way.

about that balance of surrender and action?

Matt Cooksey: Oh gosh, I think that's such a good question. I work with so many people on this topic, because it's probably one of the most confronting for people. And, it's very fraught with difficulties, because of course the person who is [00:28:00] trying to surrender is actually really underneath that, controlling. The process of surrender, which is not surrender at all. So, I think the wisdom is such that very often we mature, spiritually we can start to notice That when we're taking action, when we're following an impulse, when we're forcing something and we arrive at a point where, of kind of crisis, let's say. When we're a little further down this path, in a way, I think the crisis itself. Can be recognized as the signal and the signal, and I just had this just a few months, just a few months ago, I was working something kind of tirelessly, a work project and I was working away and it was feeling really forced and the more forced it was, the more I knew that's not true, but [00:29:00] I needed to dance that dance out to your action to a point. Almost to become wound up to such an extent that I could reach a point of failure. And in my experience, failure is a really, underrated condition because when we completely fail at something, whether that's spiritually or something more worldly, really what we're saying there is that, I don't know.

I don't know what to do about this anymore. I'm lost. I don't know. And if we can take action in our lives, not hang out in this transcendent cave but really be out there in our lives and taking action and then recognize The signs that we're really running into failure, we're, and allow ourselves to just fail.

That's the moment we can recognize that it's time to [00:30:00] Actually stop and switch and what I did that day was I remember I was sitting in this cafe a few months ago and I felt so uptight and so anxious and so tense and my little these little monsters inside me was so unhappy and I tried to work through it and work through it and it wasn't going anywhere and I recognized it for what it was and I got on a There's a little electric rent, rentable scooter outside the cafe and I jumped on this scooter and drove my life home because I knew that what I had to do was what I did 10 years before.

I had to just sit in a chair and surrender to just the pure energy and emotion of what I was feeling. And I sat there, I just let it all come. And I felt myself having completely failed. at working this out. I don't know. And then in that moment, my ego just kind of stopped. [00:31:00] It was like, I'm out. I'm out. And then this clarity popped.

Oh, of course. And there was a whole new orientation to this work. project that then just allowed me to move again and I'm not going to say that was like the end of the story because then there was another moment of like getting tense and getting confused and disorientated and the same cycle again, but I was actually talking with a client about this.

Just today I was in the ocean this morning in Bali like in these huge waves and I was having fun Jumping in these waves and it feels more and more to me that surrender is becoming like a more fun enjoyable Exciting process and not so long ago. It felt terrifying and scary and painful and all those things.

So I hope that's a kind of practical way in which people can start to marry the in

Kara Goodwin: [00:32:00] Wow. Thank you for that. There's so much wisdom there and it's, and you make it sound very easy and to recognize it and to do the surrendering. And of course, it can be difficult to do that. So I really appreciate the example and the role modeling of,for one thing that this was recently, just within the last few months, so it's.

It's like you've had these transcendent experiences in the past and still we're all works in progress. I see this in my own life where, I feel like I've overcome something or I've learned that lesson. Let's say, you know, in this case, surrender or something. Yes. I remember when I had to learn surrender and it's like you've got this beautifully framed story of how that happened.

And then I believe that, I don't remember if you said this now, but you're. After all of that with, I think it was six years ago, you and your partner then came back together, didn't end up

Matt Cooksey: right? 

Kara Goodwin: Separating, right?

Matt Cooksey: We did. It was [00:33:00] amazing

 the only reason it happened was because, he was actually coming to Bali and he had no idea I was living in Bali at that time and he knew that I knew Bali well, and he sent me a text message and said, Oh, hey, I'm going to Bali for a holiday. And I was just wondering if, You've got some recommendations and I said, Oh, I'm actually in Bali and I'm going to be in Bali when you come and he was like, Oh my God, that's so exciting to me.

Can we have another try? And five years on, we've got three kids, we've been married for five years, like it's just, and it would never have happened if I had

Kara Goodwin: yes. Oh my goodness. and so that's incredible. What a beautiful bow on the, on that to put on that lesson. But we might look at that and be like, oh, okay, you learned, you mastered surrender and the big gift at the end was it all worked out and you got to have your partner and your independence and the lessons and all of this.

and so, yep, you did it. Now, next lesson moving on, now you're a master at surrender, but it's like these things, [00:34:00] like they keep. showing up and we keep getting these opportunities to really, continue mastering it.

Matt Cooksey: Cara, one of the things that I love about the work that you're doing and the conversations that you're having is moments like these, where you keep it so real and you don't, deny the bow and all of the beautiful, very true. experiences that we have along this journey, but you're also so continually real about it.

And I so appreciate that because one of the things that I can't bear is to create any impression that, that I have ever experienced any kind of arrival. With any kind of finality at any kind of, place on this journey, just as you're describing, it feels like an endless process. And [00:35:00] in a way, I think I was, really, When I was listening to my favorite teacher, Adi Ashanti, and he said that at some point we reach spiritual maturity when we become more interested in the truth than feeling better. And that most of us have spent a lot of our spiritual journeys trying to use spirituality to feel better. Which is not actually putting our interest in the truth as the first thing and very often the truth hurts People have this idea that the truth is going to be just all Fluffy and rainbows and sometimes the truth cuts you to the bone And I love that you are so real about that here because I think if people are not prepared for that then it can really Take people by surprise then and so to know that life loves us in Straightforward ways, but also very fiercely graceful ways I think is very important as we journey here and thank you for what you're [00:36:00] doing To help 

Kara Goodwin: Oh, well, thank you. That means so much. I really, really appreciate that. and. And I feel that in my own life too, where, coming, putting so much work, so much energy, so much effort in my own consciousness expansion, my own spiritual work. And then when I do get faced with things where I would love to say I've transcended.

Some sort of suffering that I've put so much effort in and then it comes back or it, a new opportunity comes in and it's, it can like the ego that we keep talking about, the pride, the determination, it can, it's, you do have to keep recognizing that. And I appreciate you just.

Highlighting that as being part of the journey because it can feel like either. Oh, I didn't do it. Right. I didn't do it completely. I haven't reconciled this part of me or whatever, but it's [00:37:00] kind of like. so many ways that it might, and reasons that it might be showing up again, even if it's just, hey, you might be on a podcast in six months and you may, somebody really may get a lot of value after knowing that you had to find, you had to come back to your surrender.

You had to remember this. And it was going to show up again, even though you already know how to do this, it's going to come back again. And that's going to help somebody that you will never hear from who hears your words and your story. And it gives them that remembrance within them and that. kind of confidence and the like, Oh yes, it is a

Matt Cooksey: image for this, like he, he, talks 

about how in a way this is like a spiral staircase. And actually, it can feel like on the spiral staircase that we're going around in circles, but actually we're viewing it from a more elevated [00:38:00] perspective, each time we. Loop around the spiral staircase and for me, that has given me a great deal of comfort in those moments that you've just described when it looks like I'm just right back where I started and to realize, actually.

No, I'm looking at the same thing, but I'm looking at it from quite a different perspective now and where this goes, I don't know from here, but

Kara Goodwin: Oh my gosh, that is amazing. Thank you for sharing that. And I wonder too, just as like a thought experiment or just thinking out loud. That we all come in with our own lessons or like the big things that we're working on as a soul, like from a soul perspective, where we come into this human form and there might be, maybe there are 10 things or five things that are the big kind of boulders in our lives that we have the opportunity as a soul to address and learn about in, [00:39:00] in an accelerated way through this human form.

Experience and maybe for you, like surrender was a big one and maybe for somebody else, it's, it's like healing, maybe there's like this, physical healing that. Keeps showing up for them or it could be, a relationship thing where they're too domineering or they're too passive and they get pulled around by the nose.

And again, and so that keeps cycling and they keep seeing it come up, but that's such an important. Way where it's like, even if you don't feel like surrender is something that keeps showing up, because we've talked a lot about that in this particular episode, but it would be a really interesting thing for every listener to look within themselves and be like, gosh, are there big things that I have done my spiral staircase that [00:40:00] I keep seeing and how has that shown up where I'm addressing it from a higher and

Matt Cooksey: to get out of any kind of, Shame or self judgment that you might be feeling as we so often do as we're going on these healing Awakening journeys, you know the seeker the doer of deeds feeling like they're not we're not doing it Right. We're not doing it well enough and if it's someone then said to me on top of this whole spiral staircase thing Yeah.

It's not just a spiral staircase. It's an infinite spiral staircase with no ending, which I think really pulls the rug on from under the, parts of our own ego that really want this spiritual search to get to a point where it's where we can say it's done. And I think what you just said so beautifully is like, What if this is your Dharma or your life's work to basically have this, whatever this [00:41:00] thing is that keeps repeating in your experience.

It's to look at it from this, these endless different angles and vantage points and, really see it and know it and recognize. it for what it really is. And, so I think the spiral, the infinite spiral staircase really takes 

Kara Goodwin: Okay, so Matt, can you tell people then how they can connect with you?

Matt Cooksey: Absolutely. So you can go to my website, which is unmystical. com. And if you go to unmystical. com slash meditation conversation, you'll find there a link to be able to see. My Google map of my psyche, which I mentioned earlier that I'm making public record Because I think a lot of people will hear this and you know If an alien came down from another planet and you tried to explain Google Maps without showing them [00:42:00] They'd be like what is this?

You need to see this to actually grasp what I'm talking about. So if you come to my website, I'm mystical. com slash meditation conversation. Then you can access my map and actually get a sense of what I'm talking about there. And I actually play out on the map, the example that we were talking a lot about today of surrender.

And I show on the map exactly how it was getting stuck, exactly how surrender was. Becoming so difficult psychologically, and you'll get to see that actually play out along with two other big common challenges that, spiritual seekers face along this journey. So, that's probably the best place to, to find me

Kara Goodwin: Oh, wonderful. thank you so much for being here today. I've just really loved connecting with you and thank you for all the work that you're doing to help people to bridge, and to heal in a, in such a more complete

Matt Cooksey: and [00:43:00] thank you so much too. It was a joy to, to talk with you today.

Kara Goodwin: Thank you.