What a conversation this was! Matt Kowalski talks about how he went from being a homeless drug addict to a recovery coach and serial giver. Never a dull moment. You can also listen to the actual conversation.

Birju: Matt, thank you for your presence today.

Matt: Thank you, Birju, and thank you Kanchan and to your whole community.

Birju: To give you some background, Matt is coming from a variety of sharp turns in life. After running away from home at the age of 15, he spent nearly 3 decades struggling with an addiction and even homelessness and in 1998, at the age of 42, Matt dramatically shifted his life. He's now been offering himself as a vessel of service. He does that through art & writing, coaching and small daily acts of love, all of which we'd love to dive further into. Just to get us started, Matt, can you share a bit more about what happened at the age of 42 that causes a shift in behavior that's so dramatic?

Matt: Yes I can, Birju. The last thing I did to come into recovery was I wanted to give a squat house back that was in use by about 28 people and I wanted to give it back to the community, to the owner of the house. Most houses get burned to get squatters out, that's how it's done. I went to fix this house up and it was my last gesture in my world where I always believed in honesty and integrity, but the line kept going farther & farther away. After redoing this house with used materials... it took 2 years... and then I was taking a... it's kind of embarrassing ... I was using the bathroom and I went to notice my work and I noticed an albino stool. Hep C takes all the bilirubin out of your stool. I thought, "Hm, wow here I go. I've been shooting up drugs for 27 years and I finally have been compromised. Do I have HIV?". All of this that you welcome as part of your avenue of options. I finally noticed that I have Hep C in a bad way and I thought, "Oh wow, here it goes", and that's what really woke me up. That's when I finally said, "Ok, I'm ready for change".

Birju: So prior to then, I'm hearing you mentioning that this code of conduct - integrity and operating from honesty & trust - was there, but the line kept getting further & further away. Can you describe what that feels like & what that looks like from your own personal compass as you see the person that you want to be and the personal that you are start to separate?

Matt: Yes I can. First of all, in the context of the underworld, the netherworld - the caste system of the invisible nobodies, there is a code. For a person to believe in honesty & integrity... I would add a little context - in the world everybody has to do what they have to do to survive and thrive - smoking, rip & running, drug dealing... so when you believe in honesty & integrity what do you do? When an officer comes up to you and says, "Are you on drugs?", and you go, "Sir, I live an alternate lifestyle. I believe in honesty & integrity. Drugs are an inanimate object - they don't lie, steal or cheat - people do". Am I lying to the officer about being on drugs or am I living an alternative lifestyle? That's what I mean by the line in the sand. I'm not going to go to jail for your belief system which I don't believe in, so being able to hold both belief systems, I assure the officer that I do believe in honesty & integrity and yet I'm not going to be guilty by association of your belief system.

Birju: I see the way that that articulation can work as a logic and yet it's such a different place to be coming from then and the place that I hear you sitting in today. Are you able to put yourself in the shoes of who you were 20-30 years ago and what can you describe as being internally different?

Matt: I would always go out & help others. I would always do truth & justice in a world where we don't acknowledge that... their world has flowers, their world has neighborhoods and the moon goes over their neighborhoods and they're no different than us. This idea of stigmatizing... everybody has 3.2 co-occurring disorders in their lives. Everybody has something in their wallet. We all were given something to keep us equal with each other. I was in this space and I was harming myself. I was internalizing my pain, my low self-esteem from my father slapping and beating me, "Tell me the truth, tell me the truth!" I was just a child telling him the truth and then when I got in a chance to be authentic away from him I could hit back with my truth. But I always internalized my pain, and then this idea that my pain was mine alone is what really separated me from having interpersonal skill sets with any community. I hated my own race of white people as entitled, privileged, educated people who were running this responsible thing in a bad way, so I internalized everything. Now I buy lots of work, I've learned to love myself and my community of people that I come from, otherwise I'm just another reverse-racist hating my own kind instead of bringing love & equity. Now I'm living in recovery and see myself in others more clearly without those damaged perceptions.

Birju: I hear you saying that what seems on the surface level to be questions around behavior, be it drug addiction or homelessness, is really things that are much more deep-seeded - relationship with family relationship, relationship with ethnicity - how did that come out and what did you do to work on it?

Matt: Well, as a runaway I've always lived in marginal neighborhoods, if you call it living. I always walked around people suffering as I was suffering. Latin gangs in San Francisco or black gangs in the black neighborhoods, it didn't matter where you are. When I would be dealing with white people's trash I would find shells and bullets and they'd be yelling out the window, "I'm going to kill you" or something, so the idea is that it doesn't matter where you are, each of these people are in fear also. So if we're all living in fear, how can we move beyond this superficial pain-body of fear-based thinking?

Birju: What was that journey for you, to come out of that fear-based approach?

Matt: When I finally did get in recovery I found out we have a hundred things as a community of drug addicts... I don't like to... a community of suffering people who had been in prison, drugs, prostitution, guns, stealing, lying, cheating... but it's not legal in that world if you get caught... so I found out one in one hundred people make it in recovery; the others just get a little pat on their butt and go back out there and do it until they can't do it anymore, but really no long-term thriving mechanisms, coping mechanisms, survival strategies. I wanted a higher level of healing consistency with myself because I didn't want to go back. Then as I worked with others, I wanted others to have this. So my joyful exertion people call kung pow recovery because I come with it; fire hose recovery, because I bring a fire hose of a thousand things we can do - I never run out of ideas because abundance means abundance It doesn't mean there's two things I'm going to do with you and then you're branded, "Get out of here, I'm done". It never ends... it ends when your teacher becomes your friend & colleague & collaborator and you're working together. For me that's the idea, that's when the work is done. And then there's bodies everywhere, so go out and find the next teacher.

Birju: Matt, it sounds like you're saying this because it was your own personal experience, you needed it for yourself so to speak. Can you share some of what abundance you put on yourself to come through it?

Matt: My biggest & hardest always are failure to thrive, fear of success, fear of abundance, for me to accept others are suffering and for me to be happy, to accept that I may not show up in their world as a victor, and I don't want to, but I do want to feel the community through music, through art, through spirituality, through my neighborhood. I have this yearning for community.

When I was on Hep C, I did 11 months of ribavarin interferon treatment and it takes away suicidal ideation, other side effects, homicidal ideation and I always lived there. I decided to do service to others as my vocation while for 11 months it took away my ability to produce serotonin, neurontin, dopamine. I decided to do service for others while I was suffering at my deepest, deepest, deepest delusional... and not to mention the tractor trail of load of crap I carry to reinforce my negative emoting. While I was doing service for others I noticed that this threshold of pain that we all carry is varied - some people might have a broken fingernail and they go, "Oh look at my nail, it's broken, oh my goodness". It doesn't matter what people have as their threshold of pain; it matters that we're there for them and to be able to active-listen, loving kindness, unconditional positive regard, keep coming back to a beginner's mind and then once you're doing that you are awakened. For me, when I'm doing service, I have to check in with my pain-body every day. Right now I hurt my shoulder, doing service for my wife... my wife is on the phone, by the way. Her name is Katherine. We're both here - it's a we-thing, not a me-thing. So I check in with my pain-body - what do I have? The dog next door broke my nose rearing its head up violently coz he's just a crazy young dog. I hurt my shoulder doing care-giving for my father-in-law. He weighs 170 lb. He loses oxygen, he dead-drops - he pulled my shoulder out. And then I have 3 teeth out in the front of my mouth. So I always start off with that. Ok, I'm putting the oxygen to my mask, now what can I do for others to get out of self? I did extreme self-care, how can I help others?

Birju: I also want to share our collective gratitude for having Katherine on the phone as well. It certainly sounds like the lessons that come out of practicing service in such a warrior-like way really drives home - you don't even have the positive chemicals to make you feel good from doing it. Did that lead to specific insights for you, coming out of that process?

Matt: Yes, it brought to me that we need to bring everything to this party of life that we want at it. My main issues are control, being in acceptance, having expectations, wanting to manipulate someone else so that I feel safe, wanting to help them so that I feel like I'm the good one. So when I bring that tractor trailer of garbage to an event, I come ill-equipped, but if I come to the party of life with everything I need to make me happy already, I can do service for others. If I teach other people to bring to the party of life everything they need to fish for life and be fishermen of men, then we're passing this out like a chain letter of love that exponentially goes out. During World War II, even though India was subjugated by the British, the British asked Gandhi with the promise of independence. Even though Gandhi had to help the devil, the British, however you want to look at it, and yet they sought him out. So this is what is going to change this world. They are going to search out the Gandhis because they know the people are behind this. They know that this idea of a league of religions... if all the religions got together for their similarities, not the differences, this would change the world. If we worked on our spiritual ecology, our heat signature of our own personal lives, if we can turn that bright light of neediness and want down to "I choose to be happy right now" and then when we look at others "I see that this needs to be done, let me help you with this. I got this. I can see into the future of what would be very helpful to you". If I can help this other person feel good... A helps B in a recovery, A gets better. So if you're helping somebody, it doesn't matter if they get it, YOU get better!


Birju: It certainly makes sense intellectually. I heard you say earlier that if you come with this garbage truck of your own past, it's very hard to be of service or to shift inside. Of course, this is not something new from a "spiritual context", we have to empty ourselves in the moment, but I hear you sharing this with a community which has been marginalized, that really struggles from a mental balance place. Now personally when I think about operating with this kind of message in that kind of community, there's a fear response in me that people are not going to be able to receive it, it's too far away. What do you do to help people shift away from their own garbage truck when they're coming from a place of so much stuff in their garbage trucks?

Matt: Well, you turn the garbage into gold, of course! You value it, you value what is real for them, whatever it is - "I need toilet paper"... we had a neighbor walking up & down the streets, yelling & screaming N-word this, N-word that & killing and he was a crazy little man and when I moved here I was like, "Oh boy, here's the one guy I gotta watch". I watch him and he did little dumb things... stolen cars, breaking windows & just stuff. Finally I said, "I was homeless my whole life and I always knew that if I didn't shit in my own neighborhood I could always come there & feel safe. I want to be your friend here, I want to be your ally. It doesn't matter what problems you have, I've been there. I was double-psychotic, paranoid and schizophrenic, so I can relate to you. How can I help you?" He wanted a ride. So I get in the car and wasn't sure if he wanted me to ride him, I wasn't sure if he was pulling out a knife. I said, "Look, cut the shit, I've been doing this my whole life. Where do you wanna go? Let's get there". And I had to go beyond my superficial pain-body, "Oh my god I'm going to get hurt if I help somebody", and I took him and the benefit was that I found out where his grandmothers live. I developed relationships with them. I found out he was organically damaged from cracked mothers and fathers that are dead and he's just a wandering little person like I was on the street. So I found out that I was exactly like this caring, sentient being that I had fear of. You have to go through your fears to become sane with situational and peripheral distortions around you. Once you do, you can start making healthier mistakes, i.e he's stealing a car, he's breaking a window - that dangerous-looking people coming to light as fellow sentient beings.

Birju: This is so powerful to hear. I just have this mental image of you in the car with this gentleman. Thank you so much for sharing that deeply vulnerable story. To me it connects with what it is that you do now - service as a vocation. You're walking around looking for these kinds of opportunities and it seems like you offer yourself in a multitude of ways beyond just coaching - you're a writer now and you're into artistry - how did you come across those modalities?

Matt: My art is radical relief and when I was out suffering, walking around homeless all night long on speed and alcohol, wandering from sex-drug-house to sex-drug-house, whatever it was, I would dig through the trash... all of my life, I knew every bit of the night sky, I knew the moon, the shadows... I would look through the trash and find broken pieces of objects that had shapes and I thought I was double-psychotic, paranoid and schizophrenic; they called in bipolar, manic depressive with psychotic features. It doesn't matter what we're called. We are not our diagnoses, we are complicated people in an unpredictable world. I would find objects & art materials and I'd find paper in the trash at Kinkos, I would find inks at San Francisco Chronicle from their offset printing inks, I would take those and I would print them and it was the only outlet I had to express my feelings, it was the only healthy way. I called it radical relief because I was printing objects, and that's my art - radical relief art. So that's one way I turned the poison into medicine.

Birju: And what about the writing side? You've written a few books now?

Matt: I'm working on my second book, Spiritual Ecology. The first book is Riding Shotgun Through a Hurricane. I wrote it as a layman's book for beginning therapists, doctors, people who wanted to get inside on what really was going on in their clients' head, not just the... if the client says something, "Oh my goodness, I can't believe this happened, oh Jesus, wow, that's oh god". How are you going to upsell me with that? There's blood around, there's bodies everywhere, let's start picking up the bodies and doing triage. And do you really want to do this as service - be a doctor, a therapist?

Birju: I love the way you framed everything - coming back to serving others, focusing on the small, not getting caught up in the labels, and here you are living that truth every day. You walk the neighbor's dog every morning. Tell me about small acts of kindness - is this something that you're intentionally practicing? Are you offering it? How does this weigh in?

Matt: I live in a community where I have a beautiful house, because I made it beautiful with my loving wife. And then when you have a beautiful house and you notice others around you would like to have beauty also, whatever this beauty is... this branding we have as a society to keep up with each other... the way you can help others is... when we were sleeping we sleep with the windows open, we hear gunshots right outside our window, I became a community activist. So we walked up and introduced ourselves up & down the whole block. We live right next to where the most service culture in Oakland for violent activity has come in. We live right near that, two-eighths of a mile away. So we met all the neighbors, we said "Hello! Have anything we can do? We want you to feel safe here". You knock and you approach the door... "Hey, I'm out of here. Crazy guy wanting to introduce myself to you!"... and make community. First you look a little crazy and then you find out that people have plumbing, electrical, trimming... the old lady across the street was 92, she died; I started mowing the lawn because I didn't want it to look desolated and overgrown, so I started doing her lawn so that our neighborhood still looked good. Electrical problems with the guy up the street. Walking the dog next door and getting a bag of organic groceries for my stuff. One person around here has the idea of "Free: A Utopian Project" of where you repurpose your garage full of stuff that "I can't let go of"... we are a nation of storage facilities, so I made sure that I purged all of my stuff and gave it to these people. She collects this stuff, she creates a need for you to write down why you want it and she does art projects where you use stuff to create art, so you're not just giving stuff to people who are going to sell it for crack or cocaine. My neighbors next door raise two kids, they didn't get paid... well they get paid probably, but they're just raising two kids from a bad neighborhood. I made sure that I did anything I could to help them with the house while they're doing that, because they're doing service by creating two more kids that are going to college that would never go to college [otherwise]. So I want to support that any way I can.

I might preface all of this with: I had a baby in '96 with people that moved to Finland to get away from me, 13,000 miles because that's the guy I was. They made sure they got far enough away from me, they were smart. So I also have this as my inner compass, impetus to help others, because I was a danger to myself and others. I was the guy your mom warned you about to stay away from. So that's my inner compass.

I heard a drummer and I was like, "Oh my god there's a good drummer, I gotta meet him." I find out he's a little 15-year old kid. He's got 5 or 6 brothers & sisters living in their house. He comes over, he plays music at my house and we love each other because we can jam with each other and I have to go, "Hey, please let me feel safe in my own home and I'm going to let you into my home and you're going to have to be vulnerable, sensitive & share to create real equity".

Birju: I love what you're sharing here. In my own way of hearing it, there's a couple of points that stand out for me, one of which is being able to discern who's in a position to receive help, be it those kids that are going to college or this young person with a musical interest. The second point - being able to knock on the door the first time and stand there looking uncomfortable & awkward and making that first step even though it doesn't feel safe. That's hard and you do it constantly. How did that strength come in and how can other people develop that strength?

Matt: I was very, very lucky. Being a runaway, I noticed people pan-handling as a child and I didn't want to ask from others for anything, I wanted to earn my own way. So I always worked, I created my own revenue for my needs, my medicine. I would have to walk up in a new town from moving every minute to hell's angels and a bar and go, 250 lb. man in boots and say, "Hey, you probably don't believe me, but I'm going to be buying drugs from you in a couple of days. And you're not going to believe it, but you & I are going to become great friends even though you're looking at me like an insect and you're ready to dismember me. You & I are going to become good friends and you're going to trust me and you're going to give me drugs". That transferrable skill set can turn into goodness, so all these people that we think are downtrodden, destitute, they have transferrable skill sets that we need to acknowledge - the dealers are the businessmen, the hookers are care-givers and they create safety in the neighborhood by triaging these men with their needs. We have to look at what people are good at and just change that.

Birju: It's a shift in the way that you perceive others. What about falling off the horse? It's been over 15 years since you shifted your life drastically. I would imagine it's not easy and there are probably times when difficulties come up. How have you handled it and how have you offered support for those that go through those kinds of approaches where whatever addiction that we have in our lives, something as simple as potato chips on downwards, how do we approach it that it's healthy?

Matt: I'm so glad you said that. I want to put down that one of our biggest ones is spirituality - this healthy idea of spirituality. An addiction of I want this to feel good. So we're going to call it spirituality potato chips, just for now. So everyday I fall off the potato chip horse - anger, resentment - I have to puke and cathart my nasty self and then I go, "God, that made me sick", and then I gotta realize the chalkboard of my future, there's nothing written on it, it's spotless, it's clean, it's perfect. The idea of god, Good Orderly Direction is what I like to call it, did not pull me up on the shore to beat me up. This idea what the universe does not make trash. I am a perfect expression of this creation, but I come with my stuff. If I don’t deal with my stuff, I'm part of the problem, so if I am not good at dealing with my own stuff in front of other people making mistakes all day long... in our neighborhood I made 28 mistakes before I got and said, "Oh my god, I'm wrong again, oh shit I'm wrong again, oh my god I'm wrong again, oh god I'm wrong again"... if I don't deal with that and know that I'm wrong and know that I'm capable of great wrong and know that if it's my idea I better take a look at it. If I don’t come with my spirituality, with that idea, even though I'm the good one, I'm the helper, I'm human, I'm going to learn from all this and start again.

Birju: It sounds like the big place you would consider yourself falling off the horse is identifying with your new identity and getting too caught up in it.

Matt: Anyone being a helper to be of service has to take care of their own garbage removal and we all have garbage, it's not just me. I'm lucky, my wife writes me a note every morning, I'd just like to read this... this is one out of 7 years of morning notes. She hears my garbage pail and then she writes me a morning note the next day. So I will just show you my garbage pail and show you how I am lucky I have this wife that writes this stuff for me. So here we go: "As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it. I quote Eckhart Tolle"... she starts with a quote from people all over the world. Then she writes, "We delude ourselves into believing that we live with lack - lack of success, lack of esteem, of others, lack of money, things, relationships, stuff. We delude ourselves into believing that we do not have enough. It is also an illusion that we ourselves are not enough. Today I release the self-image of lack & less-than and instead I will embrace and nurture a self-image of more than enough. Enough ideas, enough inspiration, enough resources, enough acknowledgement, enough love, enough success. Today I will claim my true identity of healing, creativity, service, gifts, abundance in great riches of spirit. Today I set myself free to claim my success. Xoxoxo, Mrs K". So I get this every day, so I'm the lucky one.

Birju: Oh my goodness! It sounds like we need to be having Katherine on a future program.

Matt: She works with the monster and turns him into a happy...

Birju: Amazing! That ties into a point that I was hoping to get your feedback on. You've been amazing at sharing the vulnerable sides of yourself with us here and I was wondering if you'd be willing to go a little deeper in sharing what your own edges are right now, what are the things that you're working on personally?

Matt: Thank you, Birju. You know when I said I wanted to have that intro talk with you I was scared to pieces. I have this whole thing about vulnerability around being, becoming... and this whole idea of acronym graveyard for the have-nots, this whole idea what education has helped ever what we really need to do on the grassroots level. And me separating myself from the wisdom and accepting the acronyms... and the acronym graveyard is I'm a Ph.D in Plenty of Drugs and whatever it is for people who went to get educated. I feel separated from that when I use that as a separation. I am alone, so for me financial success, being a contributing partner in my relationship with my wife, belonging, deserving, these are my core issues and it's from the child getting beaten, slapping in the face, slapping the face, that is my core stuff. "You didn't get that right, you're stupid, you'll never be good enough, why bother, who cares, give up, fuck it" - that's where I came from. So I always work to stay in a place of trust because I've had some deep trauma.


Birju: I'm moved by what you're sharing right now and I want to apply it to where you're coming from and move to the lessons learned. I'm interested in the metaphor of addiction. I could make the argument, as you did earlier, we're all addicted in some way, you just pick the poison. And there's collective addictions on top of it. For instance, I would say that as a society we're addicted to ecological destruction. So taking the microcosm that you're walking through and the past baggage that you're spinning with, what are the lessons learned that those of us that are battling other sorts of addictions can take out?

Matt: Well, this idea of spiritual ecology is: if you air-condition the space around you, this need for whatever you need as spirituality - therapists, medical help, food, looking good at work, raising your kids right - whatever you have as your irritation, if we can air-condition the space around us... everybody's racist, everybody's brought up with some internalized racism, if we can say it out loud that "I'm a liar, I'm a cheat, I'm a prevaricator, I will do anything to look good, I want to win that conversation, I want to get that job", if we can all air-condition the space around us with truth, integrity, honesty and lower this societal branding of products - I need this iPhone I need this thing to look good, I need this shopping thing - we don't need that. It's a new form of slavery and bondage that we're all buying into. The biggest thing right now is Twitter. Instead of having something where we looked at each other in the camera and had a mindful eye-to-eye contact, we choose to have something where, "Oh I'm sitting on the toilet right now", on Twitter. Who cares? How are you going to help people? So we got to put the oxygen mask on ourselves everyday doing extreme self-care, doing first what keeps you healthy makes everything around you healthier, because you're contributing more peace and more clarity and you did the work, you didn't just come entitled, privileged showing up in your... high above in your ivory tower... you did some work, you got dirty you got dirt in your fingernails and you're showing up & saying, "Yeah i got some dirt too, let's get to work".

Birju: Thank you for that. Kanchan, should we shift into Q&A?

Kanchan: Yeah. I have a question to start with. Matt, firstly, thank you so much for sharing so genuinely and truthfully and I just feel connected like you're a real human being and I'm really grateful for sharing that side of you. I was just curious to know more about how you met Kat and something about your story. Kat is welcome to speak as well if she's right next to you. I would love to hear how you met.

Matt: Thank you, Kanchan. I love you so much, I love your whole community. Here's Kat, my wife, in her words...

Kat: Hello! Out from the shadows. We met at a spiritual retreat actually in the Santa Cruz mountains. It was on the very weekend that I was ending a previous long-term relationship, so I was kind of in a big puddle on the floor. He came at me with a kung pow recovery, as he was describing, so kind of a welcome burst of energy. After that we didn't see each other for a whole year until we both returned to the same retreat and then I was in a much better space. From there we... our thing was we each wanted to experience what a no-pressure, healthy, fun dating thing would feel like, so we started doing that and it just kept on blossoming and we just kept on showing up for the next stage and it just sort of organically turned into this lifetime commitment. Lucky for us. It was kind of hilarious because we're just coming from opposite ends of the spectrum - I was relationship-avoidant and he was the extreme opposite, shall we say? There's a book in there too, but I'm not sure... we might have to use fake names!

Kanchan: Thank you so much, Katherine. I love your idea of writing those notes in the morning. it's wonderful. Just curious, what part of his personality attracted you the most?

Kat: Gosh. The very first story I heard him tell was at the time he was working in a social services office where people who are in the end stage of street living and addiction, HIV specifically, would come if they didn't have mailing addresses. So they would have to come to his place of business to get their money every month. He shared about how he was just working constantly with people who were in their end time and looking death in the face every day and literally embracing it. After he finished telling that story he sort of jumped up and just did what he does in his daily life - did a little song and a little dance and was kind of the energy in the room. That was a pretty compelling introduction. You see that and you're looking at a life force in the face, so that was... there was that and then there was his endless willingness to try again, and try again, and try again. That's also a really attractive feature for anybody doing anything.

Kanchan: Thank you so much.

Caller: Hi Matt. Big hugs to you. Loved listening to you. Wonderful and it felt so real. I just felt so connected when you were talking about your father. I have seen in my own personal life my father just crumbling in front of his big bully father. Those memories... so tell me, how has your way of internalizing pain shifted now over the period of years through your experiences? Would love to listen to that. Thank you so much!

Matt: Thank you so much. I went to my father, the source of my pain, flying like a moth around a flame, trying to receive comfort. I went to him and I did my work and I did it for 6 years and I did all the stuff and I was going to meet my maker, meet my mythology, and all he said was, "I fucked up and you fucked up and so if you forgive me, I forgive you". And that helped a lot. He said it in his words, four-letter words. He's my best friend, the poison is the medicine, my teacher. He started listening to me, not because I was somebody, but because he wanted to listen and I had made myself into a person that was able to speak and not just mutter and grovel and shiver in fear of this guy who I was in fear of my whole life, who I hated. He just read my book and the part where he puts in a bullet and does the chamber and puts the gun to my head and then puts in another bullet and shifts the chamber and puts it to his head, he just read that in my book. So I was living in fear that he's going to come kill me again and for 6 weeks I was like "Oh my god, I'm going to die, I'm going to die". It's just so funny, he said to me, this is the curious part about fear, "Son, don't worry about that GD shit. I get in bed, I read that book and I have a couple of good laughs before I go to bed". It's so funny how we have this pain-body and the other person's just tra-la-la-la-la having a good day.

Birju: Matt, you're coaching people on what you call survival strategies and you've alluded in a couple of occasions today about how that's needed. One out of every hundred people that walk into an addiction facility actually benefit from that process. Do you feel there is something within society as a whole that is feeding into this way of being that it hurts and what can we as a whole be doing to be thinking and addressing that?

Matt: We create more dis-ease than the ability of a medical facility to reverse it. So we are creating... this is the whole idea of spiritual ecology - we create more things, more mysterious things, things that we cannot prove medically are happening - Lyme disease, myalgia - and nobody believes that it's real, right? And here we are, we have to believe because they are saying it's real and just I'm using those two as two that are hard to diagnose. As quickly as this discerning pestilence came into light from nothingness, from nothingness, being born as a sentient person full of love, life and happiness, as quickly as this discerning pestilence came that's how quickly it can return to nothingness... if we change and get right size appropriate and quit creating... we're in a community that has 750 million lawsuits in America, because we don't know how to say hello to each other and we're so thin-skinned we take offence. This idea of not being able to have difficult conversations, hold both truths, walk away and process your own stuff instead of making the other person... this dualistic system of right-wrong, good-bad, win-lose, somebody's always going to have to lose and until we change us-against-them, god-against-god, we're still going to be playing in the dualistic system. So you will never know what to expect when you reach out and help someone. Sometimes you find out you helped and sometimes you don't. But the point it just do it, go out there, make mistakes.

Birju: So yes, it resonates about moving beyond the dominant paradigm. We've heard you share about those emotional characteristics that you've developed to help allow a person to be both right & wrong, things such as joy & compassion & empathy & generosity. But these are the patterns that are so difficult to shift from within a corrosive system, so you've shifted pretty tremendously. What are those small patterns that as an audience today we can take out and start implementing in our own lives to walk in this different story?

Matt: Thank you. Accepting pain & suffering as your teacher. The teacher is here - pain & suffering - all around you. Becoming a death-eater. Not always winning and the first in the class and always the goodie, take a backseat, emulate others, let others be the good one, let others be the winner... by a society of goodness you create your own goodness and by being a death-eater, being able to consume death, you breathe in and, "Ew death, darkness, HIV, scary people". You breathe it in, but you don't swallow, it doesn't count unless you swallow, and you breathe out loving kindness, compassion, empathy, trust, you bring to that party what you need. But you're able to hold court with death when it comes to visit from time to time.

Kanchan: Did you say that even when you were going through all this truckload of baggage you were still serving? Usually for some people they reach a point where they think, "Ok, I am fulfilled and now I am going to start serving". How was it for you? I think you were always serving, right? Even when you were going through your personal stuff?

Matt: I tried to do service... they'd break out a toilet every night, I'd replace it every night at their venues. When digging through the trash, if you know a hundred people who need shoes, clothes, their kids need a toy, so here you are in an abundant society in San Francisco that throws everything away... when they throw out clothes they wash it for you before they throw it out. Glass, dishes, tools, anything that's broken I can fix if it's something simple, computers, so if you're able to transform waste into livelihood, then you're turning garbage into gold. What I wrote is, "If garbage is gold, I'm the metaphor". So whatever you're turning, this is metaphysical alchemy. You're changing your environment into goodness, just from the trash. And if we can do this from the trash, just think what we could do if we actually put some effort towards it.

Birju: I'm reflecting about how to implement your approach more deeply into my own life, Matt. I've just been deeply inspired by the fierceness with which you can respond in a space of service. I'm guessing a lot of us have felt those moments of awkwardness, at least I certainly do, when I come across people in need I don't necessarily know how to respond for a variety of reasons. You come across homeless people, people whose car doesn't work on the side of the street, there isn't necessarily a defined relationship there and there's no shortage of excuses for not engaging and here I see you basically choosing to engage every single time. What are some strategies that can allow me to change my behavior patterns and start to do things that are uncomfortable and I have lots of excuses not to do and no longer will I follow those excuses?

Matt: That's a very good one. When working with volatile clients, you always have your chair by the door so you can get out of there for safety. Whatever that turns into, if you're helping... I have a place that we go to here, it's Yemeni and Palestinian. Anyway, it doesn't matter, we love that community as our community and we support it. When I see people walk up to me and you've got 7-10 just trying to go to your car and you're worried about your groceries being taken or beaten up or robbed or ripped in the parking lot, I always dress for success, so I'm wearing ripped, torn, painted clothes, I don't mind if my hair is a little disheveled so I fit in and don't look like a mark, then when people are asking... a perfect example is, a guy complains in almost incomprehensible words I go, "Wow, I'm so sorry to hear that. You don't deserve that". Pull out the spiritual tiding dollar, grab, shake hands, don't worry about lice, scabies, and hug that person, give them that spiritual tiding, whatever it is, 50 cents, whatever it is, and share your profound vulnerability and sensitivity by reaching out beyond the superficial thing of trust and you're getting in the trenches, you're getting dirty, you're dressed for success. When we do ceasefires, we go into the neighborhoods where they're shooting each other with a group of people... you sign your life away at the church. "We're not responsible if you get killed", that makes you feel really good. Then you go into these communities where people were just shot and those people that were doing it are right there looking at you and you're right there with them and it's pretty darn scary with all this fear-based stuff we have from our media hype and 3 people were killed in Oakland this week, 1 ran over on the freeway, 1 shot in a Mercedes, babies are shot, so you're just like, "Gosh, how do I get involved?"

Birju: I love this phrase "spiritual tiding". Can you speak a bit more to that?

Matt: We have an abundance within each of us - an inexhaustible abundance of goodness... ah, I'm so full of it, god I'm full of it. Matt!... because poverty is a choice of the mind, because you can look at it that way and then you will believe that if society has conditioned you to be a Pavlovian dog and if you're in your Freudian slippers, you're gonna believe it. So if we don't believe that and we believe that my goodness is inexhaustible... I'll have my feelings and limits where I can't do it because of self-care, but beyond that abundance is abundance and it means abundance for all. There is enough if we all can manage what we think... again this ecology of our own microsystem. So it's rare taking care of us even though you may need a couple million, whatever it is, there's still that other 7 million you got that you just back up, maybe we can get some of that backup back into the system.

Birju: And it sounds like you're saying it's not just money, there's an abundance of all kinds of things that we have to offer and that's what we should tap into.

Matt: Right. The abundance... my neighbor... his mailbox... they have a dog so they won't deliver the mail. I have to move the mailbox that I bought for $10 and move it again to the front of this thing so that he can receive his mail. I don't want to do that, I didn't want to do it twice, I didn't want to pick up the mailbox. Then there's some brush from his fence and I realized I needed to do the same for my own yard and so sometimes service as a vocation is mistaken for mission creep. "Oh, I'm doing too much, I shouldn't do that, oh I should hold back on that", until I remember this is the mission, it's not mission creep. Help someone in the next way and the next way and then after 24 hours of doing this, I go to sleep. I wake up and I have a choice - I can do this or I can have my misery cheerfully refunded, my superficial pain-body misery and the spiritual thing is another way of saying doing service. If we all lived our lives as spiritual warriors there's no fiercer warrior. With limitless thinking, fearlessness, courageousness, it's just like growing old, it's not for the weak and timid.

Birju: There's a part of me that's so moved by what you're talking about and there's the fear side of me that's thinking about being taken advantage of. What about the guy who says, "Why don't you move my mailbox 18 times?" When is it too much and when do you start to feel like you need to take care of yourself?

Matt: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on me, shame on me, shame on me, shame on me. If we're going to do it in the shame business and shame-based faith is our religion, we're going to back up that and be willing to move it 18 times. People ask for simple things and move on to the next person, don't get stuck with one person. In property management, maybe there's a lot of things wrong with the apartment, but if you do the curtains that the lady wanted - a simple thing, wasn't anything to do with all the other stuff - the lady's like "Oh my god, I'm so grateful, that curtain really bugged me". And then you don't have all these lawsuits and you did this wrong and, "Oh my god this is bad", you just did what they wanted.

Birju: That's helpful. I'm trying to create a logic structure that allows for this kind of behavior to happen more and more frequently. One of the things that we do in the Service Space community is we recently went through a 21-day Kindness Challenge and the benefit of that it's an excuse to do something nice, so you go through for 21 days... and I had heard that it takes 21 days to build a habit, so I went and did a Google search and wanted to see if that was true. Turns out it's actually not true and the 21 days is quite a misnomer and instead what they talk about as being so integral to building a habit is community to practice with, so I wanted to get your thoughts on it. To practice service as a vocation, do you feel connected to others that follow that same approach and what does it take to build a community of practice who believe the same thing that you do so that you're not alone?

Matt: The whole idea is that they don't have to believe, they don't have to do. You are the one doing the work now that will be known in 500 years. There's no reward. Get to work. Create your own boundaries, create your own safety while you do service. "Ow, ow, ow, I'm going to pull back this week". Three "ows'". I'm not going to quit, but I'm pulling back. The idea is to be able to deal with this "ow" as part of your do's. It'll be nice if we could go do nice things and "Oh my god, I'm good, I'm good, oh I do good things", it's not like that. Empathetic compassion means you have to suffer with your suffering people to your ceilings and your limits, whatever that is, to create empathy, compassion, trust, integrity with the relationship. If you're not capable of feeling their suffering, not just go "Oh, sympathy"... sympathy is nothing, right? "I feel sympathy for you", no forget that. "I don't know how you feel, but when I do this, I get this". So... just a second my wife wrote something here: "It's ok if fear comes up when you reach out to help a stranger. 9 times out of 10 that person will be shocked and so grateful that you did. The 10th time, go 'ow', take a break and start again". So for me the idea of abundance means that there is no end to what your goodness is. There is no end to what you can do. In clinical psychology, the clinical moment is usually not in a meeting, not in therapy, not in service, the clinical moment is when you are leaving that facility and you pass somebody and you're ready and they're ready and if you don't engage, you don't engage. When it's the clinical moment for wherever you are, that moment is lost. The idea of being an awakened, conscious, willing, flexible, open, patient, teachable, with a beginner's mind means that you're looking for that clinical moment and, "Oh, there it goes. Oh god, I missed it again. Missed it again, oh darn it". It's like, "Oh gosh".

Birju: I'm thinking about how that clinical moment gets transferred over and you practice this with such regularity, do you have stories that illustrate how through your practice, be it once, twice, five times, etc., through offering yourself to another person they got it and they got that their greatest joy was in doing the same for others?

Matt: The greatest joy of doing it for others is a very precarious thing because then you'll want that high level of healing consistency and that will always let you down. My perfect teacher when I moved to this neighborhood was my neighbor next door. When we first got here we hadn't even bought the house. And he said, "I know your kind. You don't belong here. Go back to where you came from". I was like, "Oh my god he knows me! Oh he found me out". And he kept that, he came out in the front yard with an axe and I said, "Man, you better go get a gun, brother!" and all this stuff that we do when we get all excited. But the idea that the teacher is right there so I... you can tell that the teacher is always around me, right, if I'm able to engage. So it wasn't that he changed, it's that I changed. In fear of doing my house wall, is he going to shoot me in the head while doing my window near his house? What is he going to do? "Oh my god, is he going to kill me? I went through this whole life and now I'm going to die by a mad man next door". It's just like "Oh my god I can't believe I tried to move to somewhere safe and I'm still in danger". So it wasn't that he changed, it's that I changed. I give him fruit from my trees, I make it look so sweet & nice and I just keep coming with kindness, and it doesn't matter what he does. He's my teacher, of course he's going to do that. I don't even have to travel to find him! He's right next door!

Birju: That's such a beautiful perception to be sharing. I'm going to be taking that particular point with me as I go forward. I was hoping to ask you one more question: how can this audience be in service to your work?

Matt: Everybody has all the answers within them. We are already in service. The least amount of resistance for me to be is nirvana, we are all enlightened right now. This is the only moment we have on this planet for enlightenment - right here, right now. Let's get to work. That's all there is to it. We're already there, it's already ours. It's here, it's now. Engage.

Birju: Thank you so much, Matt. I want to share gratitude with you. There's a lot of gold in what you just shared and when I think about what I'm going to walk away from this conversation with, your intense vulnerability stands out to me. It's something that I wish to walk forward with in myself. You made a reference of transforming perceptions: what does it mean to see a prostitute as someone who is a triage for emotional needs and then allow them to live into that truth. Amazing that shift that you can will yourself into! And the third piece that struck out to me so strongly is how you've lost yourself in the service of other people and how we can all do that. I saw that as a beautiful invitation. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your presence with us.

Matt: Thank you, Birju. I love and wish you well. I feel like we've created a genuine and authentic experience and I was very, very scared when I first was walking to you, so thank you for breaking down all the walls and being vulnerable and creating equity with me.