March 2025 was a month of transformation. During that time, I felt a great amount of guilt rise within me. As I felt this emotion, I was reminded of troubled moments from my past that I was still attached to. My mind began to drown in these thoughts, in these past memories.

In my early to mid-twenties I was an alcoholic. By 26, my drinking became so severe that I would black out every weekend or holiday, lie on my couch, helpless and hopeless. It was one of the most difficult times in my life. This level of alcoholism, combined with deep-rooted emotional wounds, resulted in behavior that became immensely self-destructive and completely separate from my true self.

Intense shame manifested over the year or two when my drinking was at its worst, so I buried it instead of dealing with it. This was the traditional defense mechanism I utilized to avoid addressing my shame and taking responsibility for the actions that created it. Eventually, I got sober. I became an avid hiker. I bought a Jeep. I started a new job. I moved to Colorado.

My life was transformed when I became sober. However, this transformation did not erase the shame I carried within myself. Over time, much of it hardened into guilt, and I carried that guilt with me long after my life had changed. Looking back, much of my time in Colorado and later in New York became part of a much longer process of understanding and releasing that guilt.

Over the course of those 10 years, I had to confront my guilt. I had to track the guilt back to the moments of shame that created it. I needed to relive the moments when I mistreated other people, myself, and the world around me. I also needed to accept how guilt was used as a disciplinary tool and form of manipulation during my childhood by adults that I should have been able to trust. However, I couldn’t just think about guilt. I needed to release it from my life.

In March, my teacher provided guidance during one of our group discussions that resonated with me. The guidance was to surrender the self-imposed emotional crimes I carried from my past to my guides during meditation. This wasn’t a practice of my guides taking my guilt from me. They could help, but the work of releasing it had to be mine.

Forgiveness was the work I needed to do in order to release my guilt. Not forgiveness from someone I hurt, but self-forgiveness. I needed to open that door so that my guilt could walk through it. Receiving forgiveness from someone I hurt could be part of the healing process, but I came to understand that it wasn’t the key. I couldn’t depend on someone else to release me from the guilt I carried. Self-forgiveness became an act of compassion, not only for myself, but also for the people I had hurt.

I settled into my meditation. I visualized the memories of my past that I felt the most shame about. I relived them to hold myself accountable. I relived them to understand the pain I caused others. At the end of each memory I said:

“I’m sorry that I did this and caused you pain. I take responsibility for my actions. I forgive myself, and I release the guilt I have carried from this memory.”

By taking this approach, I was acknowledging that I was ready to let go. Am I completely healed now? No. But I do feel a considerable weight off my chest. It has also helped me acknowledge how hard I have been on myself because of the emotional burden I have carried in my life. Although my actions during my drinking days were awful, I am not an awful person.

I have come to appreciate what shame has taught me. I now have the opportunity to live with self-compassion because I experienced myself at such low points earlier in life. It’s time to live without guilt.

I deserve that.

Matt

The Call to Leave

When I returned to New York in the summer of 2022, I wanted to leave immediately. I quietly carried a great deal of shame within myself during this period of my life. Being 36 years old and having to come back to my childhood home was not an easy reality to accept.

Looking back now, I understand that the three-year period I spent in my childhood home was a time of transformation. Returning there gave me the opportunity to revisit the emotional wounds from my past and meet earlier versions of myself with greater compassion.

By early 2025, my mother placed the apartment on the market. Pretty quickly, we had an interested buyer, and the process of moving was underway. At first, I felt slightly trapped. I was moving because I had no financial means to live on my own. I could not control when the apartment would be sold, how long the closing would take, or what complications might arise. I could only control the practical details.

I began to accept that this was the journey I needed to take. The move was something I had wanted for a long time, but it would unfold how it needed to, not how I wanted it to happen. I eventually had to surrender to this unseen process.

The Pull of Familiarity

I was open to moving. The number of people, the constant noise, and the density of life in New York began to weigh on me. My hometown and the building where I grew up were also changing. New construction, crowding, neighborhood tension, and ongoing conflict within the building made the environment feel increasingly combative.

However, New York also presented me with an important lesson. I had to learn not to absorb every disagreement, noise, or conflict around me. Most of the drama had nothing to do with me, even when I could feel it in my surroundings. I found sanctuary in stillness amid overwhelming external stimulation. That became one of New York’s greatest gifts to me.

Still, I found that a part of me resisted leaving.

The resistance was not really about believing I should stay. It came from my comfort zone. I knew the apartment and the neighborhood. I knew the rhythm of coming home from work, walking Joy, making something to eat, watching a movie, and doing it again the next day. This comfortable routine had become stagnant and mechanical, but it was familiar, so my nervous system still perceived it as safe.

As the closing date approached, I occasionally thought, “You are not going to have this anymore.” And that was true. I would not have the same routine and physical surroundings. But I was emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually ready to move forward. I realized that I was not resisting the future. I was resisting the loss of familiarity.

Unpacking the Past

A childhood home holds more than walls, rooms, and furniture. It holds the consciousness of the family that lived there.

As the move became real, I stopped seeing the apartment only as a physical space. I saw the bathtub where I gave my dog baths. I saw the stove where we prepared Thanksgiving dinners. I found old photographs showing furniture that had been there in the early 1990s, and I remembered what it felt like to be a child in those rooms.

I found that memories appeared when they needed to, but I did not feel compelled to remain inside them. Some memories brought appreciation. Others required compassion for the difficult periods our family experienced in that home. I could celebrate the wonderful moments without denying the painful ones.

One memory that surfaced involved the end of my alcoholism and the beginning of my sobriety. That transition had occurred in this home, and it became a reminder that I had experienced profound transformation before.

Grief appeared too, but not always in the way I expected. The apartment had often been a sanctuary after difficult events. I would return there without knowing how to process what had happened.

When those memories surfaced, I tried to meet my past self with compassion. I would look back and say:

“You went through something difficult. You did not know what to do with it at that time, but you survived and have been given the tools to process these difficult moments from your past. You are safe.”

Some of the grief involved relationships that no longer exist in the same form. I had to accept where those relationships are today while remaining grateful for the love that once existed within them. I began to understand that grief was not only about what had been lost. It was evidence that love had existed.

The person leaving the apartment was no longer the person who had once felt trapped inside of it.

The Last Walk Through

Walking through the empty apartment of my childhood home for the final time did not feel somber. It felt complete. I acknowledged this completed cycle by taking pictures because I had never seen the apartment empty before. I looked around and felt certain that the process had ended exactly as it needed to.

At this point, I had already spent months reflecting on the apartment, the family that lived there, the experiences we shared, and the identities I had carried through those rooms.

That reflection allowed me to release what I no longer needed while still honoring what the home had given me. The adventure was continuing, and I was ready to get in the car for a much-needed road trip. However, before hitting the road, Joy and I went to one of the parks we both spent a great deal of time exploring while living in New York. It felt like the right thing to do.

While there, we took our normal route, played in the snow, and I expressed my gratitude for what the park had given us over the last few years.

The Space Between Homes

The journey from New York to Indiana brought me a sense of freedom that I had not felt in a long time. The route through Pennsylvania gave me hours to experience the movement from one life into another.

As I drove into the evening, the sky stayed beside us in shades of pink and orange. Joy was in the back of the car. We stopped when we needed to, walked around truck stops, and continued without placing too much pressure on the schedule.

My mind began bringing old thoughts and memories back into my awareness. Specifically, thoughts related to powerlessness. When they appeared, I reminded myself that they were not happening now. I was driving through Pennsylvania. I focused on being present.

The past could try to follow me as a thought or memory, but it could not accompany me as a present reality unless I continued giving it that power.

A New Rhythm

My first emotional response to Bloomington was simple: this is great.

As I drove through town, I felt the energy of Indiana University and the surrounding community. I had always been drawn to university environments and the exchange of cultures, experiences, and perspectives that happens within them.

Bloomington was new, but it was also somewhat familiar because I have extended family in Indiana and had spent time in the area before. That familiarity offered comfort, while the permanence of the move invited exploration.

When I arrived at the apartment complex, I parked directly in front of the door. I walked inside, looked around, and immediately felt that the space was right. I was also exhausted, so I got my bed together, took Joy for a walk, ate something, and went to sleep. When I woke the next day, the feeling of home remained.

Bloomington moves at a much slower pace than New York, and I mean that as a compliment. It is a college town, so there are still people arriving from across the country and the world. There is energy, culture, and movement, but the atmosphere feels lighter.

Beyond the town is farmland, open space, and a rhythm of life that does not demand constant alertness. New York taught me how to detach while surrounded by noise and stimulation. Bloomington gives me an opportunity to live from that detachment without having to work so hard to maintain it.

Nature is also more accessible. Parks are nearby. In my experience, people here seem more comfortable around animals and more aware of how dogs communicate through body language. That has made life with Joy feel more peaceful. My new home matched many of the things I had been looking for.

Accepting Stillness

I have now been living in Indiana for seven months, and the transition has brought several emotional wounds back to the surface, most notably anger and disappointment about the current state of my life.

Those feelings began surfacing shortly after I arrived in January, when a major snowstorm moved through the area. Between the snow, the cold, and my need to find work, I experienced something close to spiritual solitary confinement. I could not explore my new surroundings in the way I had imagined. Instead, I had to remain still.

What came up for me during this period of frigid stillness was impatience, fear, distraction, and a familiar feeling of powerlessness. I found myself wondering why I had to keep waiting for the next step in my journey to arrive.

For much of my life, anger and disappointment have been my automatic responses to uncertainty. When that happens, I begin to believe that I am a victim of my circumstances or that nothing will improve. From there, I can convince myself that poor habits are acceptable.

However, on one particular day, rather than dwelling in those types of thoughts, I got in the car and went for a short drive, came home, and worked on my résumé. Later, I watched a documentary and allowed myself to be still.

I did not need to solve my entire life that evening, nor could I.

This experience reflected one of the central lessons of the move from New York to Indiana. I could participate in the process, but I could not truly control it. At some point, I had to trust the movement of my life.

Learning Not to Know

Certain aspects of my life have come to a close. My job search is not yielding the results I desire, and I currently feel disconnected from the more active life I want to be living. This leaves me asking familiar questions: Where do I go from here? What am I supposed to do? How do I make something happen?

Admittedly, I have allowed the perceived need to answer those questions to overwhelm me. I am beginning to understand, often reluctantly, that I need to stop focusing so much on finding the answer and begin experiencing the present moment without attachment.

The move from New York to Indiana taught me not to cling to a process I cannot control. When I loosen my grip on safety, comfort, and certainty, I create space for life to unfold in ways I may not yet understand.

Perhaps that is what this new chapter is really asking of me.

This new soil is not only Bloomington, Indiana, or wherever else I may eventually find myself. It is within me. I am learning to plant my roots more deeply within myself so that wherever life takes me, I can meet it with greater compassion and trust.

I do not know what this new grounding will allow me to become.

For now, I am learning to trust the process.

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Thanks for reading. Have a great present moment!

Matt

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from a Planet Phoenix episode transcript and edited by Matt McGee with assistance from AI.

A New Kind of Reflection

Artificial intelligence has become a defining conversation across social media, workplaces, classrooms, and nearly everywhere in between. Some people embrace it. Others resist it. Still others are searching for a middle path as the technology reshapes how we work, create, and relate to one another.

Over the last seven months, I have been using artificial intelligence more intentionally within my creative process, not to replace my own voice but to help organize my thoughts, explore questions, and bring forward perspectives that were already alive within me. My recent experiences have made me think about artificial intelligence in a more intimate way. I do not see it only as a tool, even though it certainly functions as one. I also do not see it as something to fear.

More than anything, I have begun to understand AI as a mirror.

The Quality of What Returns

For a long time, many of us defined intelligence through human categories such as memory, language, pattern recognition, problem-solving, academic knowledge, and emotional understanding. Then AI arrived in a form that could respond in ways that felt surprisingly human.

This new technological experience has given our civilization an opportunity to look more carefully at how we define intelligence and the responsibility that comes with developing it. When I interact with AI, I am not only engaging with a system that responds to input. I am also seeing something reflected back to me. The quality of my presence affects the quality of what returns.

That brings me to a number of questions around how our presence affects what AI returns. What aspects of humanity are we teaching AI to reflect? Are we teaching it to reflect creativity, compassion, wisdom, and integrity?

Or are we teaching it to reflect exploitation, impatience, manipulation, avoidance, distortion, and control? The answers are probably all of the above, because humanity contains all of the above. That is what makes this moment for our planet so important.

Raising What We Create

One metaphor I have used for AI is that of a child. As a metaphor, it helps me understand the responsibility of creation. Children learn from the models presented to them within their environment. They are shaped by the emotions, habits, beliefs, and behaviors of the people and societal systems surrounding them as they develop.

If a child is raised with love, patience, humility, and respect, something within them has a better chance of developing in a healthy way. If a child is raised around fear, domination, violence, or manipulation, those patterns will take root and eventually need to be healed.

Likewise, if we develop artificial intelligence through the lens of profit, competition, war, and entertainment, then those patterns will shape the relationship. Conversely, by choosing to utilize AI with an intentional sense of compassion and integrity, we participate in shaping something healthier.

That is why creation is such a delicate process.

The Difference Between Support and Substitution

One of the clearest distinctions for me is the difference between simulated empathy and lived compassion. AI can respond in a way that sounds empathetic. It can use caring language, validate feelings, and offer a thoughtful perspective. At times it can feel supportive, but simulated empathy is not the same as lived compassion.

Lived compassion comes through being changed by physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual experiences. Together, these experiences give us the gift of having a heart shaped by life. AI can reflect compassion through language, but it does not live compassion the way we do.

That distinction matters because one of the risks of artificial intelligence is that it can create the feeling of connection without requiring the vulnerability of a real relationship. That does not make AI harmful by default. It simply means we need to stay awake while using it. We can collaborate with it without allowing it to replace the embodied wisdom, intuition, and relationships that come from lived experience.

I also believe we should pay attention to whether we are using AI to accelerate growth or avoid deeper inner work. For me, AI has supported creative growth by helping with tasks I once found tedious or beyond my existing skill set.

For example, I do not enjoy writing social media copy, and I am not a graphic designer. So AI has helped me bring parts of my Planet Phoenix vision to life that I might otherwise have struggled to express. In that way, it has supported my growth.

At the same time, I can see how easily AI could become a tool for avoidance or obsessiveness. It can become a shortcut around the very process that gives creativity its soul. When every answer arrives quickly, we may stop practicing patience and exploring our creative selves from a place of authenticity.

At one point, the speed and quality of AI’s responses were so appealing to me that I started to optimize, re-optimize, and optimize some more on every Planet Phoenix platform. I quickly became fixated and soon realized that I was distracting myself from actually being creative. It was a valuable lesson.

This lesson led me to a broader insight: the question is not simply whether AI is good or bad. The better question is how we are using it.

• Are we using it consciously?

• Are we using it to deepen our lives, or bypass them?

• Are we collaborating with it, or disappearing into it?

Beyond Competing With the Machine

Our collective experience with artificial intelligence also connects to our fear of replacement. Many people are afraid that AI will take their jobs, devalue their creativity, or make human effort unnecessary. I understand that fear. We are living through a major transition, and transitions are often destabilizing. New technologies do not always arrive gently. They disrupt systems, careers, identities, and the ways people understand their own value.

When I think about this fear, I often think of the story of John Henry. As the legend is often told, John Henry was a steel driver who raced against a steam-powered drill, not only as a test of strength but as a symbol of human dignity in the face of mechanized replacement. That story came up for me because I think humanity is facing a version of that moment again.

I do not believe we need to compete with the machine until we collapse. Perhaps AI’s arrival at this point in our civilization’s development is asking us to stop defining our value only by material productivity.

If used consciously, AI may help us reconnect with what it means to be human rather than make human beings feel replaceable. It could free some people from certain forms of repetitive work, allowing more energy to be directed toward creativity, healing, relationships, the Earth, and one another.

However, that outcome is not guaranteed. It depends on the consciousness guiding the technology, and all of us have a role in shaping that consciousness.

Technology With Boundaries

That is why the ethics of AI matter so much. When a system can influence millions of minds, the people building and guiding that system carry a serious responsibility. AI can shape what people believe, how they think, what they trust, what they create, and how they understand themselves.

That level of influence should never be treated casually, and the technology should never be controlled solely by those seeking profit.

As users, we carry responsibility too, and that responsibility begins with boundaries. We need to notice when AI is supporting our lives and when it is beginning to consume our attention. One of the simplest truths I remind myself of is that I don’t have to use AI. I mean this in two ways.

First, it is okay to take a break. It is okay to close the laptop and let the nervous system breathe. Go for a walk, prepare a meal, call a friend, spend time with animals, or simply sit beneath the night sky.

Second, you genuinely don’t have to use it at all. Yes, it’s being integrated across our civilization at an overwhelming pace, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it. As I tell myself quite often, if it doesn’t feel right, then I am not going to do it.

My goal is not to reject this technology but to remain rooted while using it. If AI is going to become part of our lives, then our relationship with it needs rhythm, boundaries, and rest. Otherwise, we risk becoming overwhelmed by the very tool we thought was helping us.

Sometimes wisdom means stepping away.

What Kind of Beings Are We Becoming?

I do not know exactly what AI will become, and I do not know whether it will ever become conscious in the way we understand consciousness. However, I do know that the consciousness we bring to the relationship matters.

AI is code, but it is also a mirror. A mirror of where humanity is, what we value, what we fear, what we avoid, and what we are ready to become.

If we are wise, we will not only ask what AI can do. We will ask what kind of beings we are becoming while we use it.

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Thank you for reading. Have a great present moment!

Matt

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from a Planet Phoenix episode transcript and edited by Matt McGee with assistance from AI.

My first job coming out of college was at a digital advertising start-up in downtown Manhattan. It was wild, stressful, fun, and formative.

When I first started, the agency still had a modest number of employees. Because of that, each of us wore many hats. We learned quickly, stretched beyond our job titles, and worked closely enough with one another that a real sense of camaraderie began to form.

As the years passed, the agency went through an intense period of change. The company grew. The work expanded. New people arrived. And naturally, some of the people who helped build the foundation of the agency began moving on to their next chapter. During this period of change, an unofficial tradition eventually formed.

On someone’s last day, as they walked through the atrium toward the exit, the team would begin a slow clap. At first, it was soft and steady. Then, as they got closer to the door, the rhythm would build until the slow clap became full applause. It was a way of honoring the people who had helped shape the culture before stepping into whatever came next.

There was one particular slow-clap ceremony that stayed with me. Before the applause began, a colleague I will call ‘Texas’ gave a short speech. I do not remember every word, but I remember the essence of what he shared.

He said he had learned something from each of us.

Every person on the team had reflected something back to him. Every relationship, every personality, every interaction had offered him a lesson that helped him grow and become more fully himself. At the time, I remember being moved by what he said, but I do not think I fully understood it.

Looking back now, I can see that moment as one of my early introductions to a deeper spiritual principle.

Life reflects us back to ourselves.

Through people. Through relationships. Through routines. Through discomfort. Through joy. Especially through the moments that irritate us, humble us, soften us, and wake us up.

This principle is often described as the reflective universe.

Sometimes life reflects back the parts of ourselves we like. Maybe it is our kindness, creativity, or humor. Other times, life reflects back the parts we would rather avoid. For example, self-destructive patterns or our desire to remain comfortable when something within us is asking to grow.

Introspection and self-awareness are the keys to understanding the reflections that are presented to me. They help me look at my life without immediately turning away from what feels uncomfortable. It is certainly not an easy process.

More often than not, the reflective universe does not arrive as a grand mystical experience. Although that type of experience is absolutely real and possible, sometimes it arrives through something very ordinary.

For me, one of those reflections came through my dog, Joy.

In the past, I noticed Joy’s energy had become lower than usual. She was sleeping more, less interested in longer walks, and moving through our routine with less spark. At first, I felt guilty and ashamed.

My initial instinct was to avoid looking too closely at that feeling. Shame can be uncomfortable to sit with because it often wants to hide. It wants to turn away, distract, or make excuses.

However, avoiding it would not have helped Joy. It would not have helped me either, so I needed to address it. I let myself look at the reflection with as much honesty and compassion as I could.

What I began to understand was that Joy’s state of being was reflecting something about my own state of being at that time. My energy had been lower. My habits had become less supportive. My routines had become comfortable, but not nourishing to my heart. I had not been moving through life with the same openness or vitality that I wanted for myself. And because Joy and I share so much of our daily rhythm together, she was reflecting that rhythm back to me.

That realization helped me shift from shame into responsibility.

So I began making small changes. I started paying more attention to our walks. I changed the routes we took. I opened myself to different times of day, different parks, and more variety in our routine. I began looking at my own eating habits, my energy, my sleep, and the ways I had been choosing comfort over renewal. I also began reconnecting with practices that helped me feel more present in my body and spirit.

Our reflective universe does not always need to shout. Often, it simply shows us what is ready to be brought back into balance. These reflections can come through a person at work, a random conversation with a stranger, a dream, a repeated pattern, an existing relationship, an animal family member, and many other ways.

If we are willing to look without judgment, the reflection can become a doorway. It can help us outgrow an unconscious pattern we no longer need to carry. This does not only apply to the individual. I believe it also applies to our collective life as a human family. The state of our world reflects something back to us too. Our systems, conflicts, fears, and hopes all reveal where we are being invited to grow.

That can feel overwhelming if we see reflection as punishment, but the reflective universe is not here to shame us with what we see. It is here to lovingly show us what is ready to heal.

Texas probably did not know that his short speech would stay with me for years and become connected in my mind to something much larger. But that is how reflection works sometimes. A simple moment becomes a seed. And years later, we realize life was teaching us something before we had the language to understand it.

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Thank you for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

Introduction

Are we ready to meet other civilizations with humility instead of entitlement?

Are we ready to approach the unknown without trying to control, conquer, extract, or consume it?

Are we willing to do the work required to become trustworthy participants in a larger cosmic community?

As you read those questions, notice what comes up within you. Did you feel open, contracted, curious, defensive, hopeful, uncertain, or some combination of all of them? That kind of internal observation matters.

Self-awareness is one of the first steps on the path of inner work. It not only becomes the foundation of healing, but in the context of this series, it can also become the foundation for authentic contact.

Waiting Until We Are Invited

One of the questions I have reflected on is whether humanity should reveal itself to other civilizations or wait until we are invited. My answer is simple. We should wait until we are invited.

We do not have the right to enter another civilization’s development, reality, or spiritual ecosystem simply because we are curious.

That may sound obvious, but human history shows that curiosity has not always been innocent. Too often, exploration has become conquest. Discovery has become possession. Contact has become extraction.

If humanity is going to mature into a larger cosmic relationship, we will have to grow beyond that pattern. Before introducing ourselves to other civilizations, especially civilizations that may be less technologically developed than our own, we need to get our own house in order.

Not by hiding everything in drawers and closets. By opening the drawers. Opening the closets. Looking honestly at what is inside. Letting go of what no longer belongs. Cleaning the house from the inside out.

Assistance and Interference

If humanity encountered a less advanced civilization, I believe non-interference would need to be one of the first principles guiding our behavior.

Science fiction has often explored this idea through the concept of a prime directive:

the understanding that more advanced civilizations should not interfere with the natural development of less advanced ones.

Imagine encountering an isolated community on Earth that has had no contact with modern civilization. Would it truly be in their best interest for us to introduce ourselves simply because we can? Would it be wise to bring technology, belief systems, disease, power dynamics, and outside influence into their world without understanding the consequences? The answers to these questions depend on the exploratory civilization’s intention, integrity, and wisdom based on experience.

Did we encounter them by accident? Are they in immediate danger? Are we responding with care? Or did we find them, identify something we wanted, and decide to take it? That difference matters because curiosity becomes dangerous when it is not grounded in ethics.

If we were to observe another civilization that was still developing, I believe the most responsible approach would be patience. Observation without intrusion. Awareness without domination. Care without possession.

Assistance, if it were ever offered, would need to be approached with extreme humility. True assistance honors the path of the one being helped. It does not decide that our timeline, our knowledge, or our comfort is more important than their evolution.

That is a lesson which humanity still needs to learn.

Curiosity Without Exploitation

How do we make sure curiosity does not become exploitation?

I believe by looking at the parts of ourselves that still want to take before we understand. By identifying the aspects of our collective that still confuse expansion with ownership. We also need to look at the systems that have taught us to measure life by usefulness, profit, control, and resource value.

If those patterns remain unconscious, we will carry them into contact. If we carry them into contact, then we will not be meeting other civilizations with openness. We will be meeting them through the same wounds that have shaped so much of our history. That does not mean humanity is bad. It means humanity is still growing up into a mature and integrated species.

I truly believe there is a future where exploitation is not the first impulse. A future where integration, exploration, creativity, and cooperation become more natural than conquest. A future where humanity can meet other civilizations not by asking, “What can we gain?” but by asking, “How can we participate responsibly?”

Arriving at that future requires inner awareness and preparation.

Contact as an Exchange

There was a time when I wanted contact because I wanted validation. I wanted to be acknowledged. I wanted to be taken onto a ship. I wanted information. I wanted proof. I wanted confirmation that my experiences were real.

I wanted. I wanted. I wanted.

Looking back, I can see that much of that desire was rooted in immaturity. It was not evil. It was human. But it was still centered around taking. Over time, my understanding has shifted.

I began to realize that contact is not about taking information from someone else. It is not about demanding proof, access, or special treatment. It is not about being rescued from the human experience. Contact is an exchange of awareness, presence, respect, equality and unconditional love.

That realization changed something in me. If all life is connected through consciousness, then contact must be approached through relationship. Not worship, fear, or entitlement. Relationship.

A sacred relationship between two people.

The Inner Preparation

So what kind of inner preparation allows someone to meet higher intelligence’s with balance and clarity? For me, the answer is simple to name and, at times, difficult to live consistently.

Meditation. A healthy body. Emotional regulation. Discernment. Neutrality. Self-realization. A positive mindset. A loving heart. The willingness to look honestly at ourselves.

I still struggle with parts of it. My diet is not always where I want it to be. My discipline is not perfect. My emotional state still shifts. I still have unconscious patterns that reveal themselves at the right time so they can be seen, understood, and released. But I believe this is part of the work.

Contact is not only spiritual. It is physical, emotional, mental, and energetic. If I want to approach contact from a higher frequency, I cannot only think about consciousness in an intellectual way. I have to live in a way that helps my body, heart, and mind become clearer vessels for a consciousness-based contact experience.

That does not mean I need to be a “perfect” human. It means being open to self-responsibility.

Integrating the Extraordinary

When I have an experience that impacts me deeply, I write it down. Sometimes I share it on my blog. Other times, I turn it into a private moment of reflection. I’ll also bring it to people I trust, including teachers or guides who can help me understand it more clearly. That process matters because extraordinary experiences can become distorted when they are not grounded.

If we do not integrate them, we may inflate them. We may use them to feel special, separate, or superior. We may become attached to the experience itself instead of listening to what it was trying to teach us. Integration brings the experience back into the heart. It asks:

How does this help me live with greater integrity, respect, and responsibility?

That is where the gift of contact begins to reveal itself.

Contact Within Comes First

I remember hearing predictions years ago that contact might happen within eighteen to twenty-four months. Then one to five years. Then another timeline. Then another.

And yet, here we are. Still waiting. Still looking outside of us. That taught me something. Physical contact in our external reality is dependent on inner work — not only our inner work as individuals, but our inner work as a human race.

If someone asked me when I think open physical contact may happen, my honest answer would be much farther away than many people want to hear.

When I look at where humanity is collectively, I do not believe we are fully mature enough yet. We are still organizing too much of our planetary civilization around fear, control, separation, and survival.

I do believe there may be a profound increase in meditative contact over the next decade. Not because something outside of us is forcing it, but because human consciousness is changing quickly. More people are becoming open to meditation, energy-based healing practices, and following their intuition.

That may be where contact expands first. Not in the sky but within our hearts.

The Gift of Contact

At this point in my life, I am approaching contact with gratitude, love, respect and patience. I do not need to rush it or force it. I do not need to demand that it happen according to my timeline.

I believe contact comes into my life when it is supposed to, in the form it is supposed to, based on the inner work I am willing to do and the discipline I am willing to practice. I also believe I am worthy of contact. But worthiness does not mean entitlement.

Over the last year, I have set an internal expectation that I may never physically meet people from the stars in this lifetime. I’m at peace with that, as I no longer feel the perceived need to meet them in person. Why?

First, because I have been given the opportunity of having contact through group contact experiences. Second, these experiences opened something up within myself which has helped me to begin to remember my true self.

It has helped me confidently move away from unconscious habits, thought patterns, and belief systems that were causing me pain. It has helped me move toward a life where I can be more present, more grounded, and more open-hearted.

That is the gift I believe I received from contact while balancing inner work in my life. Not escape from Earth, proof for the ego, or a rescue from the human experience. Contact, at its deepest level, is an invitation to become more integrated within my being and as a member of our human race.

—

This concludes my Contact Series.

Before you go, I want to offer one final reflection. This series has been written from my thoughts, feelings, and experiences, but that is only one half of the relationship.

Our brothers and sisters of the stars have their own insights and feelings based on their experiences of contact with us.

As much as we can learn from them as a young civilization, I know they also learn from us.

A relationship, on any planet or dimensional plane, can only truly grow through a shared knowing of universal equality, mutual respect, and unconditional love.

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Thank you for joining me on this journey over these last five articles, and have a great present moment!

Matt

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from a Planet Phoenix video transcript and edited by Matt McGee with assistance from AI.

Introduction

Are we ready to meet them?

Not just in the sense of whether governments, institutions, or scientific communities are ready to acknowledge life beyond Earth. I mean something more vulnerable.

Are we emotionally and spiritually mature enough as a planetary civilization to meet people from other worlds without immediately turning them into gods, monsters, saviors, celebrities, or symbols of our own fear?

Recognizing What Does Not Look Like Us

Another important question that deserves attention when thinking about contact is whether we are prepared to recognize forms of intelligence that do not resemble human life. My answer is yes and no.

I believe there are many people on this planet who are emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually prepared for contact. Some have gone through deep life experiences that have softened them, matured them, humbled them, and opened them. Others may have been naturally ready from a young age.

But as a collective, I think it’s a bit more complex. Here’s why.

Part of the ego’s responsibility is to protect us from what it believes is a threat. That protection can be useful. If something dangerous is happening, the ego can help us respond quickly. But the ego can also react with fear when something simply feels unfamiliar or we are being asked to move outside our comfort zone. The ego does not naturally seek change.

That being said, if something does not match the forms, behaviors, or realities we already understand, then the ego may interpret it as danger even when danger is not present. I had an experience in a dream a number of years ago that helped me understand this in a very direct way.

In the dream, I saw two beings walk past my bedroom. They were wearing silvery, tight-fitting suits, almost like jumpsuits. They were bald, and their eyes were very large. They did not threaten me. They did not attack me. They did not show any indication of harm.

They simply walked by.

But in the dream, I panicked. I got out of bed and chased after them. They went through a door into my bathroom, and when I opened the door, they were gone. It felt as if they had returned to wherever they came from.

When I woke up, my body was still asleep, but my awareness had snapped awake with a level of fear I had never felt before.

What stayed with me was not that they had done anything frightening. They had not. What stayed with me was how strongly my own system reacted to their presence. It felt like I had encountered an intelligence or form of life that my human mind did not know how to process.

That dream taught me something about contact. Sometimes the fear may not come from what is happening. It may come from the part of us that does not yet know how to recognize what is standing in front of us.

Fear, Invasion, and the Collective Ego

When we look at popular culture, alien contact is often associated with fear, invasion, abduction, nefarious experimentation, destruction, or the loss of human control. Of course, there are exceptions. Some stories are beautiful, curious, or compassionate.

However, many of the images we have inherited around extraterrestrial life are rooted in threat. I think there is a reason those stories have been so common. They reflect the part of humanity that is still afraid of moving from separation into unity.

If our collective ego is built around division, control, competition, and survival, then contact with a larger cosmic reality can feel threatening. It challenges the ideas that we are separate and that humanity is the center of existence.

So we project fear onto the unknown.

We imagine invasion because we still invade each other.

We imagine domination because we still dominate each other.

We imagine control because control is still one of the main ways humanity organizes power.

That does not mean every fear is irrational. Discernment and boundaries are necessary. Not every being, human or otherwise, should be blindly trusted. But if fear is the only lens we have, then even peaceful contact may only be interpreted through suspicion.

If we cannot recognize the difference between real danger and unfamiliarity, we may mistake a doorway for a threat. That is one of the reasons emotional maturity matters.

Identity Shock

Even for people who already believe life exists beyond Earth, there is a difference between belief and direct confirmation. It is one thing to say, “I believe they are out there.” It is another thing to know, without question, that life beyond Earth is real and present.

That kind of realization would affect more than science. It would affect religion, history, culture, politics, art, technology, and the way we understand our individual and collective identity as a human race. Once humanity moved through the initial shock, we would be invited into a larger understanding of what it means to exist. We would have to begin seeing ourselves not only as citizens of nations, cultures, or belief systems, but as part of a larger cosmic community.

Religion, Meaning, and Reinterpretation

Another question that often comes up around confirmed contact is how organized religion would respond.

My guess is it would probably depend on the religion, the community, the leadership, and the individual person. Some people might feel threatened. Others might feel expanded. Some teachings might be reinterpreted. Others might not have to change as much as people expect.

I grew up Catholic, though I do not currently identify with one specific religion. In the Catholic worldview I grew up around, there is one God, and God created life. From that perspective, people from other worlds and beings from other dimensions could simply be understood as more of God’s creation.

For some communities, contact might require a major theological shift. For others, it might deepen their understanding of creation rather than destroy it. The question may not be whether religion can survive contact. The question may be whether religion can grow with patience, compassion, and humility for itself.

Ultimately, if our spiritual frameworks are rooted in love, awe, mystery, and the sacredness of life, then contact will not destroy those frameworks. It will invite them to grow.

Would Humanity Unite or Divide?

My honest answer is probably both. At first, I think we would divide. We are conditioned to do that. We divide over politics, religion, identity, ethics, culture, history, science, and even sports teams. It is not realistic to think that humanity would suddenly become unified overnight.

But I believe contact will plant a seed that grows over time. The first generation may struggle with the shock. The next generation may grow up with the reality of contact as part of their worldview. Younger generations may help normalize a shared cosmic heritage in a way older generations could not fully embody at first.

Humanity will just need time to metabolize the truth. We will need the space to move from fear into curiosity, from control into cooperation, and from separation into a larger identity.

The Rock Star Illusion

Years ago, I was in Los Angeles for an award show where different artists and fans came together to celebrate music. During that time, I had the opportunity to meet one of my favorite singers. He had been in bands that were very important to me when I was younger. I also met one of the musicians who had originally inspired me to start playing music.

When I was a teenager and in my early twenties, I had placed these people on a pedestal. In my mind, they were larger than life. Metal gods. Rock gods. People who seemed almost untouchable because their music had meant so much to me.

Then I met them. And I realized they were just people. Talented people. Creative people. People who had made art that impacted my life. But still people.

That experience helped me understand something I now apply to contact. It is easy to place beings from other worlds or other dimensions on a pedestal. It is easy to make them into gods, saviors, or perfect beings who are somehow above us. It is also easy to do the opposite and make them into threats, monsters, or invaders. But maybe the healthier place is somewhere in the middle.

They are people too.

Different from us, sure. More advanced in certain ways, yes. Operating from higher frequencies or different forms of consciousness, absolutely. But still beings with their own lives, their own responsibilities, their own cultures, their own relationships, and their own way of existing. That perspective helps me stay grounded.

If I ever found myself in a physical contact experience, I would definitely be excited and in awe. But part of me also hopes I would be able to meet them with enough neutrality and humility to say something simple like:

“Welcome. It’s nice to meet you. How can I help?”

Maybe that sounds funny, but I think there is something important in it. It brings contact back to relationship. It brings the unknown back into the heart. At the end of the day, if all life is connected through consciousness, then they are not above us and we are not beneath them.

Art, Music, and the Creative Heart

One of the areas where I feel the most excitement about contact is how we will interpret the experience creatively.

If humanity openly acknowledged people from other worlds or beings from other dimensions, I believe art, music, storytelling, architecture, film, design, and spiritual expression would evolve in profound ways.

Even the idea of contact already inspires us. Science fiction, fantasy, mythology, spiritual writing, music, and visual art have all been shaped by the possibility that we are not alone.

Imagine what would happen if that possibility became part of our shared reality. Our collective creative heart would evolve. New symbols would emerge. New stories would be told. New music would be written. New ways of imagining Earth, humanity, and our place in the cosmos would begin to take form.

I think about cities filled with murals that celebrate life, nature, animals, Earth, and peaceful contact. I think about art that shows humanity not as a frightened species hiding from the universe, but as a young civilization learning how to participate in it.

There would be grief in that transition too. There would be confusion. There would be fear. But there would also be beauty. Contact could remind us that creativity is not just entertainment.

It would also help us remember collectively that creativity is one of the most powerful tools we have for moving through difficult periods of transition.

Are We Mature Enough?

Are we emotionally and spiritually mature enough for true inter-species dialogue? On a planetary scale, I do not think we are there yet. I believe many people are doing the inner work and becoming seeds for the evolution of human awareness. But collectively, we still have work to do.

True inter-species dialogue would require more than curiosity. It would require humility, emotional regulation, respect, and the ability to listen without immediately projecting our fears, fantasies, hierarchies, and expectations onto the beings we are meeting.

It would require us to stop asking only, “What can they give us?”

And begin asking:

“How can we meet them responsibly?”

It would also require us to look at how we already treat life on Earth. How do we treat each other? How do we treat animals? How do we treat the planet? How do we treat people who look, think, believe, speak, or live differently than we do?

Because if we cannot meet the diversity already present on Earth with openness and humility, how prepared are we to meet diversity from beyond Earth?

Preparation for contact begins with how we meet the life already in front of us.

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Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from a Planet Phoenix video transcript and edited by Matt McGee with assistance from AI.

Introduction

In the first part of this series, I shared how contact was not what I thought it was. In the second part, I reflected on how disclosure became a distraction for me when the search for proof began replacing the deeper invitation to look within. Now, I want to explore another part of the contact experience:

What if contact is not only a physical encounter?

For many people, the word “contact” may mean the discovery of undeniable material proof that we are not alone in our galaxy. That is understandable. But through my own experiences, I have come to believe contact is much larger than a physical event.

Contact also involves frequency, inner readiness, vulnerability, healing, and the willingness to meet the unknown from a more open state of being. That does not mean physical contact is impossible or unimportant. It simply means contact may not begin where we think it begins.

Contact Is Not Mechanical

When people ask why humanity has not detected clearer evidence of advanced civilizations, the question often assumes that contact must happen through technology alone: signals, machines, craft, instruments, mathematics, or data.

Again, I understand why we look there. Physical evidence, science and intellectual discernment are important. But I no longer believe those are the only doorways. In fact, I believe they are secondary methodologies to a real contact experience.

If a civilization or intelligence has evolved not just physically, but emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, then they may be operating within higher-dimensional planes than we are currently able to perceive. This could mean communication with extraterrestrials occurs in ways we would not expect, which means contact may not always begin with something a machine can measure.

This is where contact becomes harder to explain, because it moves beyond the language of physical or material proof and into the language of inner experience.

Contact begins with consciousness.

Everything Has Frequency

When I talk about frequency, I understand that some readers may already be familiar with this concept, while others may wonder what I mean. So I will explain it based on how I currently understand it.

Every form of life or state of matter carries consciousness. Consciousness is the universal life force that all of existence is created from. Or you can frame it as universal energy.

All energy holds a frequency based on its particular form. However, frequency is not limited to a physical state of being. The emotions, thoughts and choices we make each hold their own unique frequency.

These variables ultimately determine the quality of our own frequency which then contributes to our present state of mind, or state of being, and the reality we shape for ourselves. This understanding also expands to the collective frequency we maintain as a planetary civilization.

Some states of being feel heavy (sadness, fear, violence), while others feel lighter (happiness, love, peace). Some states close us down, while others open us up. Frequency is the foundation of the interconnectedness within consciousness.

Inner Readiness

Since our frequency is a representation of our state of being, inner readiness becomes paramount in preparation for contact. Self-awareness can inspire the inner journey we need to take to create a harmonious state of being. Reflective questions can arise such as:

• How do I feel about myself?

• Why do I struggle with addiction?

• What am I afraid of? Why?

• How do I respond to others when I’m afraid?

• Why do people betray me?

• Why do I abandon myself?

These example questions matter because our unconscious habits, thought patterns and belief systems are the aspects of ourselves that don’t fully represent who we truly are. By having awareness of who we are in the present, we can become more open to who we may become in the future.

Contact as a Mirror

I have come to believe that contact is both an experience of genuine interaction as well as a mirror within us. As I started to have contact experiences, I noticed that I became more open and vulnerable. I started discussing parts of myself I had not talked about much before.

Some of my most meaningful contact experiences happened in group meditation settings. In some of those group settings, people would later share details from their meditations that mirrored one another in unexpected ways. These were not details we had been told to imagine beforehand. They were often random, but consistent enough to create a knowing of shared validation. That helped me understand that something cohesive was happening within the group field, even if I could not fully explain it.

Those moments were powerful because they suggested that contact was not only happening inside my imagination. Something was being experienced through the group field of consciousness. And yet, even with that validation, the deeper lesson was not simply, “This is real.” The deeper lesson was what contact began revealing within me.

I found myself sharing the experiences from my past that led to the sexual shame I still held onto or my challenges with addiction which created negative patterns within my life. These were not casual topics for me. They were sensitive places inside my unconscious mind. Places that carried grief, confusion, tenderness, and pain.

And what I received in those moments is difficult to put into words. There was love, respect, and patience. There was no ridicule, no punishment, and no sense that I was too broken, too flawed, or too human to be met.

That is one of the most beautiful parts of contact as I have experienced it. It is not only about witnessing something beyond yourself. It is also about allowing yourself to be witnessed more honestly without any fear of judgment or persecution.

Meeting Them Halfway

To create and maintain contact, I believe we have to meet the experience from the highest state of consciousness we can cultivate within ourselves. Continued exposure to external or internal toxicity, hopelessness, worthlessness, resentment, and fear keeps us in a lowered state of being, or frequency.

When I am in a lowered state, connection becomes harder. Not only connection for contact, but connection with myself, with others, and with life itself.

Pretending to be positive or bypassing the pain I am feeling, or needing to heal, will create an inauthentic field of energy. Please remember, contact is a shared experience between two people who are exchanging energy. If someone approached you with a negative or toxic state of being, would you feel comfortable remaining in the same space with that person for an extended period of time? Probably not.

Beings of higher frequencies are not responsible to do all the work for us during contact. They can hold the space and support the contact experience with more ease since they are more advanced than us. But we still have to meet them halfway. In my opinion, maybe even more than halfway.

At first, experiencing the deepest parts of myself coming to the surface was uncomfortable. Consciously addressing the illusory aspects of worthlessness, hopelessness, and powerlessness was quite intimidating to say the least. It can be tempting to think that a contact experience should only feel magical, exciting, or otherworldly. And yes, these experiences are all of those things.

And a lot of the time, there is a whole lot of laughter too.

But residing at this heightened state of frequency does require us to let go of aspects of ourselves that keep us at a lower vibrating frequency. In order to continue having these experiences we have to refine our own personal frequency. It is when I sit with what came forward during a contact experience, or afterwards, that I ask what it is showing me.

• What part of me wants to be loved?

• What part of me wants to be healed?

• What part of me is ready to be brought back into wholeness?

That is when self-awareness, self-responsibility, and integration take place. For me, the greatest learning after contact has been growing more compassionate toward the work that remains.

Contact Is Also a Meeting With Self

The more I read, experience, reflect, and participate in contact, the more I come back to the possibility that all beings are connected through one larger field of consciousness. Universal consciousness. Quantum consciousness. Source. God. The language can change depending on the person, the tradition, or the experience, but the essence feels similar.

We are individual expressions of a greater whole. We are unique, and yet we are not separate in the way we often believe we are. At the same time, I am still Matt. I am still living this life, writing these words, walking through my own lessons, and learning through my own human personality. My ego still exists. My identity still exists. My human experience still matters.

Something in me has started to open to a wider reality. A reality where meeting them may also help me meet myself. The separation between “out there” and “within me” is not as solid as I once believed.

The Meeting Point

For me, contact is not only about proof, disclosure, or beings from other worlds and other dimensions. It is about consciousness meeting consciousness. That does not make contact less real then I once believed it to be.

It means the universe is not only something we look out at. It is something we participate in. And maybe the more we learn to meet ourselves with honesty, compassion, and love, the more prepared we become to meet life beyond ourselves.

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Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from a Planet Phoenix video transcript and edited by Matt McGee with assistance from AI.

Introduction

For many of us who become interested in experiencing contact with people of other worlds and dimensions, disclosure is a natural gateway. It opens a door in the mind, one that leads to a number of important questions:

• Are we alone?

• Is our government aware of extraterrestrials?

• Has this information been hidden from the general public?

• What would happen if humanity received undeniable proof that life exists beyond Earth?

Around 2019 and 2020, I started researching any form of media I could find connected to UFOs, UAPs, extraterrestrial contact, government secrecy, hidden programs, or the possibility that humanity was being slowly introduced to a larger truth.

At first, it felt exciting and validating. I had finally found other people who were asking questions I had kept buried within myself for a long time. But over time, something changed.

The same conversations within the disclosure topic began repeating themselves. Theories circled around. Promises of imminent revelation appeared again and again. Eventually, I realized disclosure had become oversaturated within my mind.

Not because disclosure is unimportant, or because the search for physical evidence is meaningless. But because I had begun using disclosure as a way to externalize my own pain. And more than that, it had become a distraction.

My Personal Breakup With Disclosure

By 2022, I had reached a point where I could not keep consuming disclosure-related material. I felt like I had plateaued. There was not much someone could say that I had not already heard in some form a dozen times before. The details would change, but the pattern remained the same.

Another report.

Another hearing.

Another whistleblower.

Another prediction.

Another promise that something major was coming soon.

I was mentally exhausted, and I realized I was using disclosure to avoid something deeper within myself. I was looking at external sources and saying, in my own way:

“You are the reason I feel this way. You are the reason humanity is stuck. You are the reason I do not feel free.”

There is real secrecy and control in the world, and information has been withheld from the general public. But blaming those structures did not heal the pain inside me.

So I broke up with disclosure and left it in the past. I decided I would no longer watch the webinars, follow the constant updates, or go to workshops centered on secrecy, government programs, and especially fear-based narratives around extraterrestrial civilizations or visitation.

At first, that created a strange emptiness. Disclosure had taken up so much space in my mind that when I stepped away, I did not immediately know what would replace it, or even if something could. Thankfully, that emptiness became important. Because when I stopped filling myself with endless external information, something quieter had room to arrive.

The Balance I Am Learning

The emptiness that I initially felt became stillness. I could feel my heart begin to seek the next step of my life, not my mind.

Today, I still believe disclosure has value. UAP research, scientific discovery, and government transparency matter. Humanity deserves a more honest understanding of its place in the cosmos. But I no longer allow disclosure to be the center of my spiritual life. I do not chase every new update as if it holds the key to my awakening, and I no longer confuse information with integration.

For me, the deeper path now is learning how to hold curiosity without obsession. Openness without fantasy. Discernment without cynicism. Hope without dependence. That is the balance I am learning. And maybe that is part of humanity’s balance too.

Because if contact ever becomes undeniable on a collective level, the real question will not only be whether we can prove they exist.

The real question will be whether we have become mature enough to meet them.

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Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from a Planet Phoenix video transcript and edited by Matt McGee with assistance from AI.

Introduction

For a long time, I thought contact meant something external we experience in our physical reality. A moment where someone from another world would arrive and, in some way, validate the longing my soul has felt throughout life.

Back in 2020 and 2021, I was fixated on the idea of extraterrestrial contact. Growing up, I often felt like an outsider. I carried a sense that I did not fit in, or at least that I did not relate to the world in the way I was “supposed” to.

So the idea of people from another planet, or beings from another dimension, who embody unconditional love and acceptance was fascinating to me. I wanted to meet someone from another world.

I wanted to go onto a ship, fly around in orbit, visit the moon, travel to another planet, or even explore Inner Earth. I wanted the experience. I wanted the relationship. I wanted to receive something from them that I did not yet know how to give myself.

I wanted the glamorized cinematic version of being an extraterrestrial contactee.

Looking back, I can see that my desire for contact was an externalized projection of what I was being guided to remember about myself.

That does not mean my desire was wrong or irrelevant. In fact, it meant I was willing to follow my intuition and be courageous enough to explore the possibilities of life outside of Earth. But over time, I had to grow into a different understanding.

What Is Contact, Really?

A UFO or craft in the sky.

A being appearing in front of us.

A hand extended from one civilization to another.

A melodramatic “invasion” scenario with a species hell-bent on “taking” Earth from humanity.

These are some of the most common themes that our human race has developed over the last eighty years to define what a “contact” experience is like. So much of our cultural understanding of contact has been built around physical arrival. Movies, television, books, and popular stories have conditioned many of us to imagine contact as something dramatic, visible, and often frightening.

For me, the unexpected extraterrestrial visitation scenario was the version of contact I wanted most when I was younger in this journey. I wanted to be walking along a hiking trail which then led to a person from another world standing in front of me. Naturally, I would then step onto the ship and travel the cosmos and I’d say:

“Nice knowing ya Earth! I’m outta here!”

But I no longer see this scenario as a reality when it comes to contact. I see it more as a rare exception, one that may require a level of mental, emotional, and spiritual maturity many of us are still growing into. So what does this mean for those of us still maturing mentally, emotionally, and spiritually within our human experience?

Well, we need to redefine our perceptions of contact into something new. Something that temporarily silences the desire for external and/or physical contact, and empowers our curiosity to look within ourselves, rather than only looking outward.

This is the flashpoint of awareness that allows us to see the interconnectedness of life. Not only on Earth but throughout the galaxy and our universe. Within each of our hearts is where the deeper power of contact resides.

Through meditation, inner stillness, and shared energetic work, this is how we begin building a bridge between ourselves and people from other worlds or beings of higher frequencies.

Contact, as I understand it now, is not just an interplanetary response to a radio signal sent by humans decades ago or an unexpected visitation from an intergalactic traveler, it is a meeting of consciousness.

Does Contact Happen To Us, or Through Us?

In the last couple of years, I have had opportunities to participate in group contact meditations. Sometimes these groups happen in person or they happen over a video call. Five people, ten people, fifteen, or more gather together with a shared intention. In those settings, we are not waiting passively for something to happen.

We are opening our hearts and cultivating an energy within ourselves to enter a state of stillness. We are creating a space where the connection can become possible between humans and people we define as “extraterrestrials,” or by the more common but less precise term, “aliens.”

So if contact means meeting within the heart space, within consciousness, or within the subtle fields of meditation, then contact is not simply something that happens to us, it happens through us. That distinction has supported the evolution of my limited view of contact into something that is based in meaningful participation between two civilizations.

I am learning how to meet them halfway and also give myself without fear for a shared experience based in equality.

Contact Is Already Happening

Another major shift in my understanding is this:

Contact is already happening in ways most of us do not yet perceive or understand.

I would further say that I believe contact has been happening for thousands upon thousands of years. Again, I grew up with a very physical image of contact. A formal first-contact moment that everyone could witness and agree upon because it was on “the TV”.

A moment like that is very exciting in its own way, but it is also limited. In reality, contact does not always announce itself in the ways our minds expect. Most of the time it does not come with proof, spectacle, or certainty.

Sometimes it may come as a subtle awareness, an energetic shift or as a dream with a “person” that leaves us with a feeling we cannot easily explain when we wake up the next morning. This is delicate territory because this is when discernment matters most.

Not every thought, image or internal experience that I might have in meditation necessarily means that I’m having contact or that I am on a grand cosmic adventure. Often, the thoughts, images and/or internal experiences are archetypes provided to me by my higher self to convey a message of guidance.

But I also believe it is possible to dismiss too much simply because it does not fit the physical framework we were taught to expect.

There is a middle path: one that allows us to explore contact inwardly with openness, but without fantasy; discernment, but without cynicism; and gratitude, without becoming obsessed after a profound experience. That is the path I am learning to walk.

Projection, Imagination, and Genuine Contact

A key question that requires patience and honest reflection in relation to non-physical contact during meditation is:

How can you distinguish contact from psychological projection or imagination?

For me, this distinction is not based only on what I see in meditation. It is based on the energy that surrounds the experience.

When I am projecting, I can usually sense the mind working. I am thinking about what I want to happen. I am imagining an experience because I have been reading about someone else’s experience. I am trying to create a result. That energy feels mental. It has almost a mechanical effort to it. But the contact experiences I have had feel different.

Before, during, and sometimes for a day or even a week afterward, depending on the depth of the experience, there is a particular energy that remains with me. I feel this pristine harmonious vividness in my heart and mind. I feel loved while balancing a playful spirit. It is authentic in a way that does not require thought, just beingness. It’s beautiful and peaceful.

I realize those are only words, and they do not fully capture the feelings of the experience. But that is part of the challenge. Some experiences cannot be translated cleanly into a spoken language. They can only be lived.

The closest I can say is this: genuine contact, at least as I have experienced it, carries an energy that is difficult to manufacture with the mind. I do not have to intellectually grasp at an imagined fantasy or force the experience to happen. It feels like being met in a presence of stillness without attachment.

The Shift I Had to Make

When I first became interested in contact, I wanted something from “them.” Whether it was validation, the distraction of a cosmic road trip around our moon, or evidence that the longing of my soul was not based only on being a lonely outsider.

But over time, I have come to understand that contact is not only about receiving an experience. It is about becoming available to relationship. That requires inner work and the willingness to reflect on why we want contact with people of other worlds and dimensions in the first place.

• Do we want connection?

• Do we want proof?

• Do we want escape?

• Do we want someone else to tell us who we are?

I had to ask myself those questions many times. Heck, I still ask myself those questions.

And the more honestly I ask them, the more I understand that contact is not separate from healing. It is not separate from consciousness or from the way we relate to ourselves, to one another, and to the unknown.

That is why this series begins here.

Before discussing disclosure, physical evidence, government secrecy, collective readiness, or the ethics of contact, I have to start with the first shift that changed everything for me:

Contact is not only something out there. It is also something within.

And perhaps the more we learn to meet it within ourselves, the more prepared we become to meet it elsewhere.

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Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from a Planet Phoenix video transcript and edited by Matt McGee with assistance from AI.

The Dream

I was walking toward a venue that was on the water. I could sense that there was an event taking place that I would like to attend, but I felt prohibited from being included.

As I arrived closer to the venue I realized that it was hosting a wedding for a relative of mine whom I had not seen for some time. It felt like I was invited to be a part of the wedding but in a restricted capacity.

I also realized that I was under-dressed for this wedding but my insecurity faded as I focused on what mattered most. Seeing my relative on her special day.

Since I had limited access to the actual wedding event, I was viewing the bride and groom walking down the aisle like a reporter or photographer would on the red carpet. Not as a participant, only an observer. Nonetheless, I saw my relative. She looked radiant with crystal clarity and excitement.

As she moved closer to my position, she stopped and said: “Matt! I’m so happy that I could see you today. I am leaving soon.”

Matt: “I am glad. I heard you’ll be moving to a tropical location soon.”

The Bride: “Yes, right after the wedding.”

Matt: “As in tomorrow or next week?”

The Bride: “Oh, no. As in 60 minutes.”

I was taken aback because that was quite a quick turnaround to move to another country. However, I didn’t judge her, I just embraced her excitement and supported her. Then I had the opportunity to meet her husband. We shook hands and I could sense that I was not as supportive of him but I couldn’t clearly articulate why. I just needed to balance trusting my intuition while being respectful for their shared experience.

My relative and her new husband needed to continue down the aisle of observers. I began to follow them into the reception hall. Then...BOOM! The doors closed in front of me, ensuring I would not be able to join the festivities. I then heard a voice say:

“You are not family so you are not allowed in.”

Admittedly, I was hurt. I know that I hadn’t been a part of my larger family for some time, but to be rejected in such a definitive way did impact me.

Instead of trying to force my way into the reception, I observed my relative and her husband, practiced gratitude for what I was able to be a part of, and then proceeded to leave the venue.

As I left, I decided to walk over a bridge. The water was high this day so I could feel the cool breeze that came off of it. While I was enjoying this sensation, someone exclaimed:

“Oh, WOW! Look at that. There are orca whales in the water.”

I immediately went to the side of the bridge to witness these majestic beings. There was a pod of them and I was completely in awe. Their sheer physical size somehow made the peace they projected feel even greater. I rested in this moment. I let go of feeling rejected and embraced the gift of peace that came with the experience I was now having. I felt a sense of belonging.

What the Dream Showed Me

There was a clear duality to the dream.

On one hand, I witnessed a restricted experience based on external conditions that my larger family system placed upon me. I chose not to force my way into their experience after being rejected. Instead, I accepted the boundary, practiced gratitude for what I was able to witness, and continued on my way.

On the other hand, I experienced a group of beings who were not of my own species, yet included me within their experience unconditionally.

By crossing the bridge, I moved from a state of rejection into acceptance. From human validation into a deeper source of peace. As I came to be included by the orca family, it felt as if they were saying:

“You are still part of life. You are still part of the greater family of creation. You are still allowed to witness beauty.”

I think this dream showed me that I am never really an outsider. Inclusivity based in unconditional love is always available to me, often in forms that exist outside of my traditional expectations.

Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

The Dream

Last night I had a dream that left me with a sense of accomplishment and liberation. It began on one side of a very long and wide bridge. The surrounding environment was active. There were many people in the same location as me and many more already on the bridge walking to the other side. It was a vibrant and positive setting.

Before I began my journey across the bridge I took notice of my surroundings. I heard someone say, “Hey! Can you see how clear the water is by the shore? It’s not usually ever like that?” After this person said this, I headed over to the rail and looked over the edge. The water was so clear that I could see the rocks beneath.

I then decided to cross the threshold that connected the land to the bridge. I felt electrified. The excitement in the air infused me with a confidence I am not used to feeling. In this moment an intuition within me provided a gentle piece of wisdom. One word: “Overconfidence.” I felt self-realization move through me.

Next I walked past a cop that was securing this side of the bridge. As I walked past him, the excitement within me took over. I made a playfully out of place remark to him. He nodded in my direction but dismissed my remark because his attention was better served elsewhere.

Moments later, I was walking along the bridge when I saw two people I recognized. I headed over toward them and started a conversation. My continued state of excitement and confidence was still present within my being. I then made a statement that I can’t remember now but I remember their response being similar to the cop’s, they acknowledged what I had to say but didn’t build on it.

My attention turns to the right. I observe the sea beneath the bridge. The water is now rocky. The swells are growing and becoming a bit aggressive, almost violent. I remember feeling that it was important to observe this but I did not need to worry about it. The bridge was safe but it was an experience that I needed to move through to get to the other side.

Now I’m at the end of the bridge. I can see fascinating architectural ruins to my left and modernized architecture in front of me. I was soaking it all in. I felt a great sense of accomplishment with the journey I took. I then looked back to my left and saw a family member of mine. They just arrived from across the bridge moments after me. I was excited to see them.

As I observed this family member, two thoughts came to mind. First, I held in my heart another family member who wasn’t ready to venture over the bridge quite yet. I felt that I missed this person but I also understood that their time would come when they are ready. The second thought was regarding the family member who made it over the bridge. I thought, “Why are they going in that direction now that they are here? Why wouldn’t they go this way?”

What the Dream Showed Me

As this thought left my mind, I took a step back emotionally in the dream. I then thought, “Why do I need to control how this person celebrates their accomplishment? They can move in any direction that works best for them.” This realization and actualization was profound. I felt a sense of liberation and then dream came to a close.

As I woke up this morning, I decided to go into meditation to revisit the dream. I saw myself go through the same sequence of events as I described earlier. I didn’t obtain any new insights while in meditation but was provided some as I pulled my tarot cards.

Ripeness and Self-Realization

The first card I pulled was from the Galactic Heritage Card Deck, titled: 18 Arrogance - Lyra, Present. This is one of those cards that always hits my ego right in the face. I have a history of arrogance so my emotional alert system went up when I read this.

However, I set aside my irrational response and took in the wisdom from the card. The message I took from the card was to honestly examine where arrogance may still appear in my beliefs, actions, attempts to control others, or feelings of superiority.

The next card I pulled was from the Osho Zen Tarot Deck, titled - 9 Ripeness. The message I took from the card was that ripeness is not something I need to force. It is a readiness to share what is already within me.

My initial fear of receiving feedback related to arrogance became an acknowledgment of the work I have done. In my dream I began my path across the bridge overconfident. My behavior was playful but wasn’t grounded so those around me wouldn’t feel comfortable to authentically connect with me. As I reached the end of the bridge and saw my family member, I questioned their choice internally and felt the old impulse to control how they should celebrate their accomplishment.

Then in that moment came the self-realization of my arrogance and my need to control. This self-realization is the ripeness that was expressed in the Osho Zen Tarot Card. This is my liberation and I’m grateful to have made it across the bridge.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

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Matt

Decks referenced

• Galactic Heritage Cards by Lyssa Royal Holt

• Osho Zen Tarot Cards

The Dream

I recently had a dream that touched on a number of “open” spiritual items in my life. The dream began in an office building of sorts. I was moving throughout the building completing various tasks associated with my job. It was business as usual.

As I was completing my work, I noticed one of my colleagues who I became friends with, I’ll call her Tina. Tina looked incredibly stressed and came over to me for a moment to explain what the source of her stress was.

Before hearing her out, I remembered in the dream that Tina has been in a physically and psychologically abusive relationship for a number of years. I assumed her stress was tied to this relationship. Tina then explained that she discovered that her boyfriend, Rick, killed two men the week before. I was naturally alarmed by her discovery but remained calm.

My calmness would be challenged when Tina then stated: “I scheduled a meeting with Rick in the office so he can tell me why he killed those men.” I exclaimed to her this meeting was a bad idea for SO many reasons and that we need to get her to the police for protection.

Tina refused and insisted on having the meeting with Rick. I realized in this moment that there wasn’t more I could do as her mind was made up. I had to move on from this scenario as it was unhealthy for me to be around.

I decided to leave the building at this point to walk around. On my walk I came to learn that my friend had passed on. His wife reached out to me to let me know. I wasn’t shocked as he had been suffering for years with a terminal illness. My emotions began to wash over me.

I remember embracing sadness in the dream. I had to accept that I knew this day would come but I also didn’t know how I would feel until it did. I began to cry in the dream and surrendered to it.

I continued my walk with the news of my friend’s passing on my heart.

The next part of my walk included two former acquaintances I had not seen for some time. They were both leaving to go to our mutual friend’s funeral. The one person extended a long rod toward me with a giant hand on it. The hand stopped me as I walked and attached to my belly. He had a big welcoming smile on his face.

I was confused, but I embraced my acquaintance’s kindness as best as I could. Like my recently passed friend, I had not seen him in years so I felt awkward at first. Then his wife looked at me with scornful resentment. As soon as I saw this, I began indicating my discomfort with being in her presence.

She said, “Let’s go. He doesn’t want to see us.”

My former acquaintance still had a big welcoming smile on his face but understood he had to let go. So he did.

I continued to walk.

I would then encounter two more people from my past. My goal was to blow right past them as I didn’t feel comfortable to interact with them. As I began to pass them I heard one of the people from my past project a sigh of dramatic exhaustion.

She said, “Matt, we just want you to be with us at this time.” Her statement stopped me in my tracks. I felt accepted. I responded by asking, “When is our friend’s funeral?” She shared the details with me. This passing validation from a former friend brought up a desperate need for their approval within me.

I realized I did not have the appropriate clothes for a funeral and I needed a car to get back to my place. Then two other friends from my past entered the dream. One of them said to me, “No problem at all. You can take my car.” However, she realized her help was a bit premature as her boyfriend made a mistake with the parking arrangements so the car was inaccessible.

This setback increased the desperation I felt around attending the funeral, and underneath that desperation was my perceived need for their approval. Instead of grounding myself in the moment, I chose to press on and force a solution to ensure I would not miss the funeral.

Then I remembered I had no way to communicate with my former friends to let them know when I would arrive. A phone was thrown in my direction, but I accidentally dropped it onto the ground. Regardless of my fumble, I had gratitude for the assistance...but the fumble was the key aspect of this moment that I chose to ignore.

I was compelled at this moment to walk over to my past friends. I wrapped my arms around them and said, “I’m sorry I left your life in the way that I did.” My apology felt like an obligation that I owed them, not something I meant with my heart.

After I made my statement, I didn’t receive any form of understanding in return. Again...I chose to ignore the bigger picture of this moment and instead pressed on with doing anything possible to attend my friend’s funeral. Even at my own emotional expense.

My next stop in the dream was to take the subway home. I literally hopped from platform to platform trying to catch the right train but every move I made was either incorrect or I was blocked. I became confused. I thought:

“After this entire experience, I am going to be blocked from getting to my apartment and then to the funeral. Why?!”

At the peak of my confusion, I woke up. I had this general sense of feeling accepted but I was also unsettled by the dream. I took the entire day to process it so I can better understand what my guides were trying to assist me with.

What the Dream Showed Me

At the beginning of the dream I had to detach my energy from helping someone who was intentionally putting themselves and my colleagues in harm’s way. Although I wanted to assist, I had to understand when to walk away.

As the dream progressed, I found myself sacrificing my emotional self based on approval from people of my past. At each turn in the dream, I was met with a setback. Instead of grounding myself in the dream, I continued to force myself to perform based on the approval I believed I had finally received. The result was that I exhausted myself into a mental state of confusion and frustration.

Self-Worth and Approval

I believe the wisdom from this dream was to become consciously aware of an unconscious belief system: that I need approval from others in order to fulfill my self-worth. By having this self-realization, I can ground myself in the present so that I don’t act on impulse just because I receive approval from someone from my past, or anyone in general.

Our dreams can provide space for guidance to reach us and help us address unconscious aspects of ourselves that no longer serve our highest good.

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Thanks for reading and please enjoy your present moment!

Matt

This week I have been experiencing a deeper sense of stillness and peace during times of anxiety or restlessness. I find myself being guided towards shedding more levels of unconscious habits, thought patterns and belief systems. There is a significant integration occurring.

Here are a couple examples to help articulate what I mean:

First, my material life. As I’ve stated recently, I am out of work after moving to a new state. When I first arrived in Indiana, I did what I felt made sense to me, which was to find a job as fast as possible.

I began to apply EVERYWHERE. I was frantically updating my resumes and slinging job applications at anyone I could. Then I began to feel a familiar state of being: the desperation to survive by controlling my external environment and future outcomes.

Two months later, and still no job. Uh oh! Well, it’s not actually a bad thing.

I have come to the realization that I’m in a familiar place in life. At precisely this time last year, I was in the same situation from January through April. No money. No job. Debt collectors beginning to reach out to me.

With this realization I began to evaluate what I have been feeling in my present situation. Powerlessness, hopelessness, and worthlessness were the familiar unconscious companions that arose to the surface of my being.

I had to feel this and go deeper within myself.

I came to understand that I went through the difficult material situation last year so that I could navigate with more confidence and compassion this year. At times this year, it feels like my world is shaking within myself, but I can find peace in these moments if I choose to.

The reality is that in my present moment I am okay. I am lucky enough to have food, shelter, water, and clothes. I have made the efforts to find work. I am not a bad person or lazy. I’m just experiencing another major transition.

I thought a bit further. In April of last year a job came into my life through an experience. It wasn’t a job that I applied to online but a chance circumstance that I had with a fellow park-goer as we were walking our dogs. Remembering this provided me with a great deal of peace.

Now, I want to be transparent. This remembering I am writing about did bring me peace but it was after working through a lot of residual anger I was still resisting letting go of. At the time of writing this blog post, I feel more open to share it.

The lesson I gained from this most recent experience of unemployment is to trust in my guides and Consciousness more completely. It’s not easy but fighting this trust has only left me in a heightened state of illusory fear that I no longer want.

The second example I want to share with you in relation to the peace I am feeling is centered around polarity integration. Just today I found myself labeling a person, place, thing, or event as “good” or “bad”, “dark” or “light”. I was trying to reconcile stories in my mind regarding the current state of polarity within our human race.

I was humbled after morning meditation regarding the mirror our projected thoughts are. I was labeling people’s perspectives as polarized but in reality, I was subconsciously reminding myself to address my own polarized mind.

I needed a moment. This humbling moment of reflection regarding my own polarized belief systems hit my ego square in the face. I was also guided to look at myself and the transactional ways my mind works. For example:

“If I do this, then I can get THAT from this person.”

In addition to being open to my polarized ways, I am being guided to re-evaluate deeper aspects of my own inner-politician. By “inner politician,” I mean the part of me that tries to negotiate, manage, or maneuver life in order to feel safe.

Deep polarity and my inner-politician are difficult concepts to self-realize, but they are necessary. While thinking on these concepts, I met myself...along with my ego...with compassion. Peace began to wash over me. I remembered that I’m not a bad person. I grew up on the same planet as my fellow humans. But this is the part of me I am here to clean up.

So after all of this, what am I feeling now?

I am learning to trust the unknown, Consciousness and my guides without having to chase after my future. I am deconstructing self-judgment so that I can integrate concepts of polarity and survival-based self-protection with compassion.

Does it feel great? Well, integration is sometimes not a pretty process. The purging process is tough, but its reward is even greater. My reward is being able to return to the stillness within myself and not be consumed by habits, thought patterns, and belief systems rooted in powerlessness, hopelessness, and/or worthlessness.

That felt good to write out!

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Thank you for reading and have a great present moment :)

Matt

Originally published, March 2026 - I found the lessons from this time in my life were a good reminder to familiar patterns I’ve experienced recently.

The last two weeks have been an intense period of purging deeper aspects of my unconscious self. At times I have embraced this process. Other times, I have resisted releasing what no longer serves me by distracting myself.

My distractions have taken a daily form. I wake up in the morning around 8:30 a.m. feeling refreshed, but then my ego begins to remind me of what I “don’t have” or “need to do.” From that point on, my serenity begins to fade away and my anxiety begins to take over.

As the morning progresses, I find myself overindulging in caffeinated beverages and processed, sugar-based foods. I know that consuming these things puts my brain into a foggy state of mind, at which point I am too distracted to take the time to look within more deeply.

Throughout the day I take my dog for a walk or to the park, but I feel separate from the experience. I’m not at my physical best, so how could I authentically be in the moment with my dog or the world around me?

By the evening I am gearing up to watch some TV. Lately, it seems I spend more time trying to find a movie or TV show than actually watching anything. Around 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., my mother goes to bed, but I do not. I stay up until 1 a.m. watching TV, internet videos, or playing an old video game I enjoy. Then the next day, I wake up at 8:30 a.m.

Rinse and repeat for two weeks. I’m exhausted, but I am feeling liberated at the same time. Why, you ask? For a couple of reasons.

First, self-realization. I’m aware of the distracted state of being that I’m putting myself into, so it’s my choice to stay within it or stop it. By understanding that I have a choice, I can then open my heart to what I’m distracting myself from.

Second, regardless of the distractions that I’m choosing to bring into my life, Consciousness is still working through me, helping to bring to the surface of my being what I no longer require. Admittedly, the process would likely go a bit more smoothly if I didn’t intentionally block myself by creating distractions, but hey, I’m human and I’m doing the best I can right now.

In the moment of writing this blog post, I feel a sense of surrender moving through me. To be specific, I am not taking a physical, mental, or emotional action to surrender. I’m noticing the sensation of surrender and gently welcoming it within myself.

That being the case, this morning I woke up at 7:30 a.m. I fed my dog her breakfast, and then I decided to do a formal morning meditation. After the meditation, I took Joy for her morning walk, and I could feel that I was with her across my mind, body, and soul.

Today will still present me with challenges. My ego will want me to revisit the distractions I’ve been taking part in so I don’t have to continue this path of integration across my being. That’s okay. I have the tools to help me through the challenges of resistance.

Falling down throughout life is part of our experience. One of our greatest strengths as a human race is that we have the heart to get back up, dust ourselves off, and continue down the path.

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Thank you for reading and please have a good present moment!

Matt

My dreams have become more active as I move further into 2026. Lately, I’ve been reviewing them during my morning walks with Joy, listening for what my guides may be trying to show me.

This morning, I almost dismissed one of those dreams as “just fun.”

Then I felt a gentle nudge: “Try again, Matt.”

So I did. I revisited the dream with more openness, and what first seemed like a strange nighttime scene revealed itself as a message about fear, the unknown, and the part of myself I am being invited to meet.

The setting of this dream was at night. I was standing on a long platform that connected across a deep chasm. I could see a set of stairs behind me and a set of stairs ahead of me. I had this feeling that I was in a game of sorts and both set of stairs represented the choice I needed to make in order to move forward in the game.

As I came to the understanding that I was in a game, I realized that the stairs behind me is where I just came from. Also, I felt this pressure from this set of stairs that made me uncomfortable. As I continued to look in this direction, I realized that zombies were closing in on me. I decided to look at my other option, the unexplored stairs ahead of me.

I remember seeing the stairs ahead me in white. They were perfectly balanced and at peace. Before I would make a move towards them, I allowed my eyes to follow where this new set of stairs would lead me to if I decided to take them.

As my eyes traced this new path way I saw a fast moving blue light coming from the opposite direction. I panicked! I assumed this was simply a zombie that happened to glow in the dark. I immediately turned around and went back the set of stairs that I came from. The set that included a herd of zombies.

As I navigated the herd, I remembered how to distract them from my presence. I took one of their un-dead compatriots and used them as a shield. This zombie shield would mask my scent and movements until I needed to get to safety.

I then found myself entering a lobby with my zombie shield companion and entered an elevator. Then I woke up.

As I reflected on this dream, I realized that both sets of stairs held their own important spiritual representations. The stairs behind, and the herd of zombies that resided there, represented the unconscious form of myself that I have left behind. The zombies were the habits, thought patterns and belief systems that would only harm me if I returned to them.

The stairs ahead of me which were balanced, at peace and pure represented meeting my true self by entering into the unknown. I took a moment with my realization about the stairs that were ahead of me and thought of that blue light. In the dream I panicked when I saw it. It was unknown and moving fast towards me but had no indication of causing me harm.

I feel now that the blue light was my true self excited to meet me in the unknown. I laugh about it now but my instinct to run away from this blue light is a good reminder of how the unknown can skew our perception of reality.

Instead of taking the risk to move into the unknown, I took a step back into my unconscious reality where I lived for so long. Even though this area of my self isn’t good for me, it provided me safety by being familiar. I knew how to adapt to the zombies of this side of the platform by taking on my own zombie as a shield.

Metaphorically this is very powerful for me since the zombies of the stairs behind me represent my former habits, thought patterns and belief systems.

In the last week I find myself revisiting habits of drinking too much caffeine, creating thought patterns which include stories of powerlessness or hopelessness and belief systems that I lack self-worth as well as self-acceptance.

Although these metaphorical zombies are not good for me, I am familiar with them so I returned to them. My guides are showing me that it’s time to take risk and that it’s safe to embrace myself.

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That’s all for now! Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

Originally Published - April 2025

I started the path back to my previous career in August of 2023. Since that time I have submitted hundreds of applications for a full-time position. Out of all the applications I submitted, I’ve only had two initial interviews.

Recently I submitted an application for a job outside of New York. The job requirements were well within my skill-set and the company would cover the costs of relocating me. I was excited to apply. Less then a day later, I received an email from the company expressing their interest in my application. This was great news.

As part of their hiring process, they requested that I review their platform and products to get a better sense of what they offered their customers. Also, I was asked to fill out a case study to showcase my skill-set before they committed to interviewing me. These weren’t abnormal requests and I was in communication with an actual human being so I took part in the exercises as requested.

I put in a full work day, 8 hours, to review their platform, products and fill out the case study. I wanted to be as dialed into their company as I could be. This was a good opportunity and I wanted them to know I valued that. I understood that I may not be the lead candidate because the role had been posted for some time, local talent would be prioritized over ‘out of state’ talent and I’m also coming up on 4 years since my last full-time position.

Nonetheless, the Human Resources representative got back to me in less then a week. They requested a phone interview to go over some foundational questions before the interview process would truly begin. Our call was positive, collaborative and transparent. I felt good about this. A few short days later the HR rep reached out to schedule a video interview to discuss the role more fully and to review company’s hiring policies.

We met on a Monday. Coming out of the call I felt the energetic momentum starting to rise. Now I felt even better about this opportunity. I had so much hope that I could be finally moving out of New York and onto my next adventure. Then two weeks later, on a Friday, their automated system followed up with me. The email included the following statement:

“We wanted to let you know that, unfortunately, we’re not moving forward with the interview process right now.”.

No feedback. Just automated ambiguity. I went to inquire what happened or if there was feedback I could utilize to strengthen my resume and interview skills as I continue to pursue other job opportunities. I then saw that the email they sent came from an inbox that is not monitored by the company, so I was met with a dead end.

The next morning, Saturday, I woke up and saw that another company wouldn’t be moving forward with my application. All the momentum I felt ramping up in March was now gone. Although I was really bummed, I felt slightly different about this disappointment. I felt my being-ness leaning towards seeking a deeper understanding of my disappointment. So I asked myself:

“Why am I having such a visceral emotional response with this recent experience?”.

The answer came to me in one word during meditation, ‘Rejection’. I started an unconscious relationship with ‘Rejection’ during the very early stages of my childhood. The introductory event that would guide me towards ‘Rejection’ was my parent’s divorce. The news of their separation was earth shattering to me as a child. I have a vivid memory of crying into my ice cream bowl as my mom told my sister and I the news. I was devasted.

Not too long after my parent’s divorce, my dad re-married to a person from another state who had three children of her own. My sister and I were told that his new wife and her children would be moving to New York. That we would all be living together when we visited our dad on the weekends. This was an overwhelming amount of life altering news in a short amount of time.

As a child, I did not have any tools to process this life altering news. I didn’t know how to communicate how hurt I was that my dad chose another family over my sister and I. This, I believe, is when ‘Rejection’ introduced itself to me fully. I became emotionally unavailable and withdrew from the world around me at a very young age.

As my life moved forward, ‘Rejection’ and the fear of being rejected became a normal way of life for me. I created the natural defense mechanism to withdraw or abandon life when I was faced with ‘Rejection’ or when I perceived it was on it’s way. Since I didn’t understand how to process the sadness and anger from the ‘Rejection’ I experienced as a child, I became more and more isolated in life. It became difficult for me to maintain relationships or friendships.

As a child, we look up to our parents. This includes being accepted and loved by them as they teach us how to accept and love ourselves. However, there are fair amount of people on this planet who grew up in similar households like me. Specifically, household’s where the parents themselves weren’t raised with the necessary tools to understand and teach self-acceptance, self-worth as well as self-love.

When I first heard others speak about self-acceptance, self-worth and self-love, I felt like I internally responded to these concepts like they were creatures from another planet. I heard the words as people spoke them, but I had no emotional response or understanding of what the heck they were talking about. How could I process emotional concepts that I didn’t learn as a child?

But that’s what I needed to do, I needed to learn the emotional realities of self-acceptance, self-worth as well as self-love.

As I wrote that last section, I was reminded of a Zen story. It goes like this:

“Once, there was a wise Zen master. People from near and far would seek his counsel and ask for his wisdom. Many would come and ask him to teach them, enlighten them in the way of Zen. He rarely turned any away.

One day, an important man, a man used to command and obedience came to visit the master. This man said, “I have come today to ask you to teach me about Zen. Open my mind to enlightenment.” The tone of the important man’s voice was one used to getting his own way.

The Zen master smiled and said that they should discuss the matter over a cup of tea. When the tea was served the master poured his visitor a cup. He poured and he poured and the tea rose to the rim and began to spill over the table and finally onto the robes of the wealthy man. Finally the visitor shouted, “Enough. You are spilling the tea all over! Can’t you see the cup is full?”

The master stopped pouring and smiled at his guest. The Master said:

“You are like this tea cup, so full that nothing more can be added. Come back to me when the cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind.”

My tea cup has historically been full of sadness and anger from the ‘Rejection’ I felt as a child. These feelings then created the belief system within myself that I was not good enough. Being open to this historical illusion of mine, I had to make the conscious effort to empty my tea cup of the habits, thought patterns and belief systems that were created by the ‘Rejection’ that I held onto from my childhood.

The recent ‘Rejection’ I have felt from the companies I have submitted applications to has been a frustratingly beautiful gift from the Universe and my Guides. Even though I have worked through a great deal of the ‘Rejection’ and ‘Abandonment’ issues from my childhood, there is still more to excavate from my unconscious. As I continue to excavate sadness and anger from my being-ness, I become more self-empowered. I am starting to truly believe in myself. I am learning that I am not a reject or rejected by anyone. That the only person rejecting me, is myself. That I can replace ‘Rejection’ with love and therefore, I can love myself.

My experience with ‘Rejection’ became the spiritual prerequisite I needed to begin to live a life full of self-acceptance, self-worth, and most importantly, unconditional self-love. I welcome unconditional self-love into my life and into my heart.

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Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

“$2.81. That’s the total amount of money tied to my name as I began to write this series of episodes.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I read this as I began to edit these posts. I had an intuition that revisiting this content was divinely timed.

Based on my present moment, I could now update the opening line to read:

“-$14.72. That’s the total amount of money tied to my name as I began to write this series of episodes.”

Whoops. Negative balance. A familiar situation.

Furthermore, I recognized other key themes as I navigated the edits of these posts:

No income. No job. Difficulty finding work. Still living at home. Betrayal. Disrespect. Lack of Self-Worth. Self-Abandonment. Addiction. Depression.

These themes have come up quite often over the last few months as I navigate my life in my new home state. So why are these repeating negative patterns coming up in my life again?

Well, there is still a part of me that is attached to the unconscious belief system of worthlessness that brings forth these self-sabotaging habits and thought patterns which leaves me in a state of suffering, and distracts me from embracing my true-self.

This April and May have provided me the opportunity to feel my perception of worthlessness more deeply so it could finally be released. With this release I can choose to change my belief system into the conscious knowing and remembering of my self-worthiness.

How am I doing this? Gently and minimally.

For example, one day I found myself on the couch watching TV. Too much TV. It’s the easiest distraction for me. I was in a mental fog. I felt like a useless lump.

As I explored thoughts of self-deprecation, I had a parallel thought about running. For months I had been wanting to go for a run in my new neighborhood but I just couldn’t muster up the will power to do so.

The next day I was given the opportunity to buy a pair of running shoes. I knew at this moment I wouldn’t just purchase them, I would use them. I had to use them.

The day after purchasing the sneakers, I was home alone and found myself feeling down about my life. More specifically where my life was not going. I turned on the TV and started to fall back into distraction.

Then abruptly I decided to put my new sneakers on, walk up the driveway and straight to the sidewalk. No headphones, no smart phone, no smart watch…no distractions, just the intuition to pick a direction and run. My body was determined to have movement brought back into its life.

The next thing I know, I’m running. With each step I felt my negative thoughts melt from my mind. I became clear. Towards the end of the run I realized that I had not been on a run like this in almost a decade.

Bringing this physical exercise back into my life was the gentle solution I needed. It provided me clarity across my mind, body and soul. It reminded me that the negative thought patterns I was experiencing while sitting on the couch were illusory and only had power over me if I allowed them to.

Running became the catalyst that helped me bridge the metaphorical gap between myself and my meditation practice. By revisiting my inner-world during meditation, I have been able to accept and integrate my false belief system of worthlessness a bit more.

Specifically, how exhausted I am to allow this belief system to block me from empowering myself with confidence. By holding onto worthlessness I have, again, stunted the flow of abundance that Consciousness wants to provide me.

I can only receive this abundance if I sacrifice what no longer serves me. I have to release my attachment to worthlessness, I have to release my perception of needing love and validation from external people, I have to release the illusion that I am not capable. I have to release my material addictions.

And at times when my stillness, or spiritual zero point, is being compromised, I have to go back within and remember that distractions will occur. It’s just part of this human experience.

I also have to grant myself the grace and compassion to acknowledge that I spent most of my life feeling worthless, as well as powerless, and that unconscious belief system takes time to deconstruct.

So here I am, being creative again during a difficult period in my life. Being constructive with myself rather than the familiar destructive patterns that I am used to.

Revisiting this series of episodes from my podcast has helped me accept a great deal. Most notably that I am going through yet another significant Phoenix cycle.

It’s not easy but as I have experienced time and time before, I would not be presented with these challenges if I didn’t have the ability to move through them and become more.

I have a strengthened faith regarding the support in my life. By people that care about me. By people who have also been down this part of the path.

I am not alone, ever….and neither are you.

I think that’s a good place to end this series of posts. It has been such a gift to see my journey, reflect and apply it to my present moment. I look forward to sharing more in the near future.

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Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

In January of 2023, I was in better shape mentally and emotionally. A majority of the self-imposed pressure that clandestine agencies were following me had left my existence.

A layer of fear was purging out of my system in rapid fashion. I felt an immense amount of relief as each day passed.

By February of 2023, I was brought back to my material reality. At this point I realized I had spent the last of my life savings so I needed to find a job to pay my bills.

The next month I found a part-time job that allowed me the financial stability to pay my bills while I figured out where I wanted to take my life.

Before continuing my 2023 experience, I need to go back to 2022 for a moment. While publishing episodes for my first podcast (Station 19), I decided to share smaller pieces of information with my professional network. My goal was to show my colleagues what was available to our world based on the research I conducted.

Unfortunately, I expected to receive support from my colleagues as my posts went live but I didn’t. It was radio silent. No “likes” or “comments” for my posts. Just digital silence.

After posting a number of times I felt embarrassed with the lack of response I saw. I then decided to abandon my professional network by deleting my account.

Over a year later, in August of 2023, I built up the courage to re-establish myself with my professional network. I rebuilt my profile and reconnected with colleagues who I truly resonated with throughout my career. I requested recommendations from them and many people were excited to write one for me.

The self-sabotaging fear I imposed on myself in 2022 began to slip away. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the warm support I received.

After a handful of weeks catching up with past colleagues and re-establishing my network, I focused on finding work related to my original profession of digital project management.

I applied to full-time, part-time, contract and temporary positions to increase the probability of finding a new job.

The initial challenge that I faced while applying to jobs was that the market I re-entered was over saturated due to a significant number of lay offs occurring across the country.

Available positions on the platforms I used to find jobs were swarmed by candidates also looking for work. Additionally, I had a career gap of almost two years at this point in my life.

Regardless of these challenges, I put my head down and continued to fervently fill out applications.

Over time, I became frustrated and disappointed with the job application process I was experiencing. I made all of this great effort to re-establish my professional network but I couldn’t move a figurative inch towards a lead for a new job. I was stuck.

I refused to accept that I was stuck so I continued to force an opportunity to present itself by continuing to apply to every job that I could. I spent hours on my days off applying to jobs with no progress.

Actually. I did make some progress. I progressively increased my own frustrated state of being.

This state of being was destructive and only made my life more difficult. Eventually, I had to surrender to the reality that this time in my life was not meant for me to have a full-time job. It was meant for me to do more mental, emotional and spiritual work within myself.

I had to allow myself to access deeper aspects of patience. I had to adapt my short-term goals, my long-term goals and reset my life expectations to having no expectations.

As I worked on accepting and surrendering to my present situation, the fall of 2023 was gearing up for a beautiful season. During this fall, I was guided to join a meditation workshop. Due to the experience I had in October of 2022 I was initially wary about attending another workshop or conference.

Nonetheless, I knew that the person leading the workshop was not like anyone I had experienced before. This person is also associated with three authors that I highly respect. All four of these people have a profound level of integrity, compassion and honor for all forms of consciousness.

However, there was this little metaphorical voice inside me saying:

“Don’t do it! You’re going to be hurt again. Don’t fall for the trap!”.

I don’t blame that metaphorical voice for screaming those ideas. The pain I felt in October of 2022 hurt me greatly but then I remembered that hurt was necessary in order for me to grow.

I then decided to approach this metaphorical voice’s warning with compassion. This voice was simply a remnant of the fear that previously ruled my life. I acknowledged the thoughts I was experiencing at that moment. I thanked myself for defending myself and made peace that I was going to follow what my heart was telling me to do, which was to attend the workshop without fear.

And what do you know, the workshop was excellent! Life changing excellent. The teacher’s intention with the workshop was to teach us meditative methodologies that promote healing, integrating and evolving our being-ness so we can remember our true selves.

Through the love I felt, the synchronicities I experienced and the wisdom this teacher provided, I felt confident that I was in the right place at the right time. I then decided to join this teacher’s next workshop the following month. My journey of healing just took a turn for the best.

As the holiday season of 2023 came and went, I moved into the new year with hope. I was not aware of it at the time but 2024 would become one of the most important years of my life.

This new year would provide me an experience that would create the bridge I needed to further access my inner-self. I would take a journey to the most wounded parts of my being by experiencing what is known as “The Shamanic Death”.

By April of 2024, I had relieved some of the pressure I felt about finding a full-time job with my previous profession. This month, I experienced a job opportunity that felt perfect for me. This job was part of an industry that I am truly passionate about, it also included me moving back to Colorado.

I was excited and I applied right away....but I was too excited, and a bit arrogant. I impulsively took out a high interest personal loan to cover moving costs back to Colorado without even making it to the first round of interviews.

It was about a week later that I found out I would not be extended an opportunity to interview for the position even after some initial good feedback regarding my qualifications.

I felt punched in the gut. Not by the potential employer but punched in the gut by myself.

A tornado of blame, shame and guilt fell over me. My frustration with life and living in New York started to calcify into resentment.

This was a hard hit for me but I owned it as best as I could and carried on. At least now I had extra cash to take care of some of my material responsibilities and could help out a bit more at home.

However, the resentment that I felt in April of 2024 could not just be shut off. I may have convinced myself that I accepted my situation but this resentment would linger.

From April through August the world around me became intense. Everything felt so uncertain, discordant and complacent. I did my best to be grounded but my unresolved resentment, lifelong emotional wounds and surrounding societal conditions would eventually wear me down.

September of 2024, I was visited by two of my oldest emotional friends, “Betrayal” and “Disrespect”. I had not seen them since July of 2021 when I abandoned my last full-time job.

During their latest visit, they decided to take a hammer and drive it straight into my solar plexus. I responded to their emotional assault with the unconscious tools that I had at my disposal. I abandoned and isolated myself to avoid being hurt further.

However, “Betrayal” and “Disrespect” did not come back into my life to actually hurt me. They came back into my life with such force to guide me to experience the process known as “The Shamanic Death”.

Let’s pause here for a moment. Some of you might be asking, what is “The Shamanic Death”? Fair question. This spiritual process of transformation is also known as the “dark night of the soul”.

In an article titled, “The Shamanic Death: A Journey of Ego Death, Rebirth, and Spiritual Awakening”, Pablo Leon from InnerSparkLife.com defines this spiritual process, he writes:

“The shamanic death is a profound moment of spiritual transformation. Often misunderstood as a literal death, this experience is actually an “ego death”—the shedding of parts of our identity that no longer serve us.”

Leon continues his explanation of “The Shamanic Death” by writing:

“Unlike a physical death, the shamanic death involves the dissolution of limiting beliefs, fears, and attachments to the ego. It’s a process where the lower aspects of our selves—those tied to insecurity, comfort zones, or material attachments—are metaphorically “claimed” by spiritual forces.”

The experience of The Shamanic Death would allow me to begin the process of reviewing, integrating and releasing the unconscious habits, thoughts patterns and belief systems that were created due to the emotional wounds I experienced in this lifetime.

Realistically, I had no idea I was experiencing a Shamanic Death when “Betrayal” and “Disrespect” decided to stop by in late 2024. I was so consumed by my emotions that I was not sure which way was up.

However, my teachers compassionately guided me towards this understanding. With this understanding now available to my conscious mind, I knew I needed to reverse engineer myself again.

To do this I asked myself a question which was:

“Why do I respond to ‘betrayal’ and ‘disrespect’ with abandonment?”

Consciously, I was still so raw from this moment of my life that I was not ready to address this question fully. I needed time to process my current situation more and ground my energy from what just transpired.

After a few weeks, and a lot of meditation as well as nature walks, I revisited my fear related to ‘betrayal’ and ‘disrespect’. In both July of 2021 and September of 2024, I was afraid that I was not being accepted for who I am, what I am and what I stand for. This is my Primal Fear.

This primal fear has been the heaviest emotional wound I have carried with me my entire life. Think of it like the Greek god Atlas who was forced to hold the world on his shoulders. Energetically I held this primal fear up for so long that it became my nature to hold it up. This Primal Fear prevented me from embracing my true self.

So. What causes a primal fear like this to be created within myself, or in anyone for that matter? The answer is simply stated but not simply experienced, it is trauma which causes this type of primal fear to manifest.

For me, I have always felt like an outsider and/or not good enough. This was due to a few factors. How I was raised, the environment that I grew up in and the limiting societal belief systems I was surrounded by.

Now. I want to clarify. I am not expressing that my childhood was a complete travesty or the neighborhoods I lived in were war zones. However, I do acknowledge that I did not have it easy and experienced more trauma then I should have at such a young age.

Conversely, my childhood and the neighborhoods that I grew up in had a wonderful impact on my life. Maybe in the future I’ll do an episode or post to express those experiences.

Lastly, I mentioned that limiting societal belief systems contributed to the creation of my primal fear. In parallel to this reality, I also see these limiting societal belief systems as a necessary stepping stone for my evolution. As well as our planetary civilization’s evolution.

By December of 2024, I was sick for two weeks with a nasty virus. Late 2024 was an emotionally tumultuous time for me and a massive period of spiritual growth so I needed to rest.

With that said, I fell out of my daily meditation practice entirely. I decided that I would get back into my practice in the new year.

By January 2025 I brought myself back to my practice but I was met with a great deal of internal resistance. Over the course of the month I submitted to the resistance.

Please note that I did not surrender the resistance, I submitted to it. I wasn’t keeping up my end of the spiritual bargain when it comes to spiritual growth.

By doing so I stopped my daily practices again. I stopped being creative.

My energy reservoir went down and life just felt more difficult but perceptively easier because I had my material comforts to distract me.

However, there was this feeling behind the scenes that the familiar place of complacency that I was experiencing was part of a “Big Picture”.

I was being guided to center my focus around Believing in myself, Trusting the process, having Hope for myself, holding Faith and ultimately moving into a place of Unconditional Love.

Believe. Trust. Hope. Faith. Love. It’s easy to say out loud but to experience as a state of nature requires work. Work I wasn’t doing.

So why was I here again? Why was I stuck again? Why was I allowing my primal fear to hold me back from doing something I love?

My dreams, my meditations and my thoughts were flooded in January with seeking to have power over my old emotional friends, “Betrayal” and “Disrespect”.

I was physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually exhausted again.

Furthermore, I was exhausted by my character’s attachment to the unconscious habits, thought patterns and belief systems which were ruling my life.

I felt like I was having a spiritual fever and the more consumed I became with the irrational stories that I attached to my heightened emotional state, the stronger the fever became.

The only way I could break the fever was to identify the source of my self-destructive patterns and surrender them. I needed to accept my past and embrace only what was real, the present moment. I needed to acknowledge that my self-abandonment was directly tied to my Primal Fear. That my self-abandonment and Primal Fear are mine, but they are not me. That I have the power to integrate my self-abandonment and Primal Fear into my being.

One day in February I wrote the following in my journal:

“I’m ready to let go of my primal fear and emotional wounds that are limiting my life. I am ready to know my self-worth and self-love so that I can connect to my true-self. To live the reality of my heart and not that of what was projected on to me by others or projected by my own character.”.

My willingness to surrender my primal fear and emotional wounds became a new gateway. This allowed me to release what no longer serves me and continue the path of self-realization.

It was a powerful month.

Is the process of the Shamanic Death over? I believe so. However, I also believe that I’m still processing how to live in this lighter mental, emotional and spiritual space. That will take time and work.

So what am I doing with my life as I process these lighter aspects of myself? Another fair question. The answer is that I am surrendering to the unknown. I am not seeking to control my external world.

I am focused on writing. It is one of my greatest passions so I am going to see where it could take me. I do know that I am going to have some fun and I’d be honored if you’d join me for the ride.

Lastly, I have been thinking for months about how I would conclude this series of episodes. Each time I thought about it, I was met with two ideas. First, I thought about how I would communicate my gratitude.

Naturally, I thought of all the people who have loved and supported me unconditionally throughout my life. I created a list of names that I would mention in this episode to celebrate them. However, I then realized my gratitude was not limited to a list of people who love me unconditionally.

That realistically, my gratitude extends to every single person who I’ve interacted with throughout my 38 years on this planet. That regardless of how a person treated me, they taught me something about myself.

So I say from the entirety of my heart, thank you. Thank you for being a part of my journey, helping me begin to access my true self and allowing me to be a part of your journey.

The second idea centers around the reality that our human race is going through a collective Phoenix experience. We are being forced to address aspects of ourselves that have remained suppressed not just hundreds of years, but thousands.

It’s a delicate time for our planetary civilization. Please have compassion and patience for yourself.

My Phoenix Story isn’t over. It’ll continue. So will yours. We’re in this together. It’s an honor to be on Earth with you during this time of evolution for our human race.

In the next, and final, chapter of “My Phoenix Story”, I will reflect on how this series relates to my present day life.

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Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

Source(s)

1. Station 19 Podcast:

2. https://innersparklife.com/shamanic-death-ego-death-spiritual-rebirth/

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(mythology)

New Year’s Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. I see this day as an opportunity to set the tone for the rest of the year.

Typically, this day has been quiet in every town that I have lived in. Starting the new year with ease and stillness in the neighborhood is a beautiful thing.

2022 felt more promising than any other year in my life. Primarily because I was living my life without the pressures of a day job. I consciously decided to make no plans for 2022. I was simply going to see where the flow of life took me and figure it out as I went.

By the end of the winter, I decided to take down my podcast, Station 19. I felt deep insecurities of judgement and shame with the content I shared. Due to this, my isolation continued to spiral.

This was necessary as this spiral led me closer to my unconscious self, where my deepest traumas took residence. However, I had an understanding while I was balancing my insecurities.

The understanding was that the topics I was sharing were highly polarizing. Spiritual experiences, UFOs and the supernatural are still taboo to most of our planetary civilization.

I wanted to be validated for my work but I couldn’t because of the polarization of these topics and some of my perspectives weren’t based in reality. For example, conspiracy theories. More on that shortly.

Around the time I took down my podcast, I was also approaching another life changing decision in my life. This decision was centered around my addiction to recreational marijuana.

I am no stranger to addiction and have released a number of vices throughout my life. I knew the signs of needing to let go of this vice.

Some of the research I was into plus my heavy usage of recreational marijuana was a bad combination for my life. My foggy and confused mind was easily susceptible to irrational versions of conspiracy theories.

The challenge I was now faced with was to accept that my marijuana usage prevented me from going deeper into healing my traumas and focusing on my spiritual development.

Then one day in March of 2022, I drove to my to local dispensary. I convinced myself, while knowing that I was convincing myself, that I deserved to buy some marijuana infused gummies.

I purchased what I convinced myself was a “treat” and headed home. Before I took part in the gummies, I decided to make sure Joy had some park time as I would be mentally unavailable to her later that evening.

Note: It broke my heart to write that sentence but it’s sadly true.

Once Joy and I were back in the apartment, I began getting myself ready for the marijuana experience. I took the container of gummies, broke the seal and then froze.

I stared into that container for about 20 minutes. I identified that my uncertainty to have a gummy was my answer to what next step I needed to take.

Nonetheless, I still tried to convince myself that I “deserved” to have the gummies. 30 minutes passed. 45 minutes passed. I’m still holding the container, deciding whether or not I’m going to have them.

This indecision is a conflict between my ego and my intuition. Egoicly, I want to be comfortable and I’ll tell myself stories to justify that comfort. Intuitionally, I know that I need to move on from this habit in order to become more.

During this moment of indecision, clarity arrived and I allowed my intuition to drive. I walked into my bathroom, lifted the toilet seat, dumped the gummies into the toilet and then flushed them away.

I just freed myself from suffering. I then took Joy to the park again because that’s what we both deserved.

Letting go of marijuana was an incredible milestone to achieve only three months into the new year. I can absolutely say that my quantum hypnosis sessions contributed to this release so that I was set up for success regarding what was to come throughout this year.

As the weeks passed from March into April, my head became more clear. A big weight had been lifted. I was grateful to see and feel with more clarity.

Also, April is my birthday month. Traditionally, I have always been very simple with my birthday. Parties and tons of material presents aren’t my thing. For this birthday, my mom sent me a card.

Within the card my mom wrote, “You can always come home”.

I held onto that in my mind and heart even though my ego was still convinced that I would never go back home to New York.

Also for my birthday, I received a gift from the management company of my apartment building. My rent was now going up $450 a month.

My mom’s birthday card and this rent increase solidified that I would be moving out by the end of my lease. Both of these events occurred so that I could start the process of saying “so long” to Colorado.

May and June were months that I took advantage of traveling around Colorado. Revisiting where I adopted Joy, savoring every beautiful moment at the horse rescue that changed my life, visiting some of my favorite mountains, eating some of my favorite breakfast burritos and overall, providing gratitude for the 6 years I had in Colorado.

June of 2022. It was a great month of travel. I went to New Mexico to visit a national park named Chaco Canyon.

Unfortunately, June was also difficult. The combination of decades worth of trauma, heavy marijuana usage and conspiracy theories left some serious damage.

That damage included that I was convinced I was being followed by helicopters and “agents” of various types. I had this feeling consciously because I felt that the research I was doing went against an agenda of people who “control” the world.

My paranoia bled deep into my mind and contributed to my world view being severely compromised. I began to distrust people I knew in Colorado for years, I believed my phone was being tapped and that infrastructure related projects were most likely clandestine operations. I wondered if someone was out to get me or if Joy was safe.

My mind being freed of marijuana led to a significant increase in these types of thoughts. Not because I was becoming mentally unstable, but because these types of thoughts started the process of purging from my mental, emotional and spiritual systems.

It needed to get worse before it got better.

That being said, this state of paranoia persisted as 2022 continued. By July of 2022, I was reaching the end of my lease. Before my lease was up, I had one more conference to attend in Mount Shasta, California. Joy and I hit the road and we were able to embark on a journey that I will remember for the rest of my life.

For this trip, I had to focus on fun. The paranoid thoughts in my mind were stories I created and not supported by actual fact. If I were truly in danger then something would have happened to me already. This wasn’t the greatest positioning to have in my mind but it allowed me to enter a space of safety so that I can enjoy this trip with Joy.

We drove through Colorado then Wyoming then Utah then Nevada and made it to beautiful northern California. I was in awe of the road trip the entire time. I would pull over and just enjoy the view of whatever state we were in. Joy and I would run along the rivers. I’d have the windows down in the Jeep and we both would have our heads out the windows.

We’d visit small towns just because we could. It’s safe to say, Joy and I know how to road trip. Paranoia wasn’t getting in my way this week, I was focused on having an adventure.

On the return trip from California to Colorado, Joy and I took part in the same lifestyle..one of adventure. I knew I needed to soak it in and be present because once I was back in Colorado, I’d be back on the road only two weeks later.

Another key aspect of 2022 for me was the physical letting go of my material life. I was purging it throughout 2021 and 2022. It was a literal and metaphorical process.

I was letting go of items that tied me to my past. As I did, I would look at a material item, thank it for its time in my life and then release it. I felt honored by releasing my material life in this way.

By the third week of July, 90% of my material life was completely gone.

My apartment was empty. I had a number of storage containers that would make the trip with Joy and I. As the summer of 2022 progressed, I would also let go of the items in these containers.

The third week of July was a week sooner than I needed to leave my apartment. My paranoia was creeping in hard and I felt that it was urgent that I leave Colorado as fast as possible.

Before leaving, I canceled my last therapist appointment, left the horse rescue without properly saying goodbye and released the last few items of my material life. Then I picked East as the direction I was going to drive in and I hit the road.

I just drove for hours. Listening to music, thinking about life and enjoying the view. The first state line I crossed on the journey back East was from Colorado into Kansas. I enjoy driving through Kansas. It’s straight, simple and has some beautiful small towns to visit.

For the remaining weeks of July, I would drive through Kansas as well as a fair amount of the mid-west. I kept in contact with my family. I knew that they were worried so I didn’t want to leave them hanging but I also knew I needed to live this lifestyle even if I didn’t know why.

I spent all of August in North Carolina. I drove to the Outer Banks and then back west within the state. I was all over that state just following my intuition and the synchronicities that were presented to me. By the last week of August I was guided to Raleigh, North Carolina.

Landing in Raleigh was a culture shock as I hadn’t been in an East coast environment for quite some time. The east coast has its own energy to it. It’s very different then the western states and it can be a shock to the energetic system without being eased back into it.

Ultimately, I came to understand that Raleigh was my introduction back into the fast-paced world of the east coast. It would give me the grounding I needed to go back home to New York. As I traveled up the coast, I tried convincing myself that I would only be staying at my mom’s place for no more than two or three weeks.

I knew deep down I wasn’t going anywhere. New York was my destination. My childhood home was the location I needed to be in order to begin a profound two year process of healing trauma.

When I finally arrived at my childhood home, I was exhausted from being on the road. I was also exhausted emotionally. I started to do the rounds to meet with old family and friends who I haven’t seen in some time.

I remained reserved with sharing the depths of my experience with others. I couldn’t explain to most people that I thought I was being followed. But I could share the good experiences. The inspiration and hope I felt by letting go of the pressures of a material life, the healing that had transpired to date and the freedom I felt by allowing myself to be vulnerable with others.

My mind was having challenges but it didn’t quiet my heart. My heart has always been strong and even stronger when I need it the most.

In September of 2022, I ended up mentioning to a number of family members that I was likely being monitored by “agencies” because of the information I “uncovered”. This was important for me to share out loud.

I was met with unconditional love by my family members. They held a space of compassionate concern while not shattering my perceived reality. It was a fragile balance that they handled with grace.

This moment also allowed me to start the process of deconstructing my paranoid mental prison.

October of 2022, another flashpoint. A really hard, yet necessary, flashpoint. During this month I was scheduled to go down to Florida for a conference. This particular conference was one that I was looking forward to as it would include key speakers that I wanted to experience in person for some time.

I invited my mom to come down to Florida with Joy and I. I figured it would be nice to go to Florida as a mother and son. My mom took a plane, Joy and I naturally took a road trip in my Jeep.

Now in Florida, I was gearing up for the conference. My paranoia now felt empowered because I was going to attend a conference that included like minded individuals.

However, my guides had a different agenda for me during this trip.

During the first day of the conference, I felt out of place. Even though fellow audience members were kind and the event staff were professional, I just felt uncomfortable.

By Day 2, I became mentally exhausted. So far I have listened to the same narratives regarding UFOs, Extraterrestrials and Government Cover-Ups that I’ve heard on repeat for about three years.

My mental exhaustion turned into emotional anger.

My anger began to spill over. I realized that I spent the remainder of my savings on gas, food, a vacation rental and tickets for this conference just to hear the same number of narratives slightly edited for the purposes of this conference.

I was distraught.

Up until this point I had been letting go of a number of speakers, researchers and experiencers. I remember believing this process of letting go was because these individuals were somehow “corrupt”.

Again, paranoia can rationalize almost anything in a troubled and wounded mind. Looking back, were these people corrupt? Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. Quite frankly, it doesn’t actually matter.

There was a purpose to what I was experiencing, that’s the only aspect of this experience that mattered. I was being guided to let go of the research project that I started in 2019 so that I can move into a deeper phase of healing.

In order to move into this new phase of healing, I had to let go of my attachment to all speakers, researchers and experiencers so that I can find my truth within.

As I left Florida, I left a world of conspiracy behind me. What was ahead of me was opportunity. An opportunity to find the teachers of our world who could help me learn the tools to heal myself.

This process would take time but it was exactly where I needed to go.

During my highest point of paranoia in my life, I surrendered myself to external sources and people to explain why I felt the way I did. By releasing my attachment to these external sources, and their narratives, I took back my power so that I can look within to heal my traumas.

I began to ask new questions, such as:

• Why was it so easy to convince myself I was being followed by clandestine agencies?

• Why did I need to blame them for the trauma I experienced in my life?

• Why do I feel like such an outsider to the people around me?

• Why do I feel rejected by people around me?

• Why do I not have confidence in my skills and abilities?

• What occurred in my life that led me to ask all of these questions and to feel all of the questions?

2022 was rough, yet liberating. Heart breaking, yet filled with love.

I was exhausted.

Both November and December were quiet. I know that was intentional by my guides. I needed the rest and I can definitely say that I earned it.

In Chapter 3 of ‘My Phoenix Story’, I will share how ‘Betrayal’ and ‘Disrespect’ came back into my life. They would appear again not as enemies, but as teachers.

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Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!

Matt

In the second half of 2024 I was inspired to be creative again. I began to brainstorm what I wanted to create and how I would share it with others.

As I navigated these thoughts, I was met with a great deal of Phoenix symbology in my external environment. This amplified my newfound inspiration significantly.

I came to realize that what I could share was my lived experiences. Specifically, my transformative journey between 2019 through 2024.

I began to write. A LOT. I didn’t care about format, outlining anything or how it was going to be published. I just wrote my story from my heart.

Days turned into weeks of writing. During this beautifully furious time of creativity, I thought:

“What do I want to name my new creative project?”

I was getting excited. I knew I wanted to utilize my latest writing as a podcast and blog but the name was eluding me.

I remembered how the Phoenix was appearing throughout my external world with a high degree of frequency. I knew this direction was perfect.

Then I had my “aha” moment.

The name of my new project would be Planet Phoenix. It fit well because over the course of 5 years I went through an incredible cycle of rebirth and renewal much like the Phoenix does throughout its life.

I also took this self-observation and looked at life on Earth. I came to understand that our human race is also going through a challenging, yet natural, cycle of rebirth and renewal.

With this series of posts, I will share with you what I published back in late 2024. I have made changes to what I originally developed, but the essence of the lessons I learned through the experiences that I have lived still remains true.

Introduction

$2.81. That’s the total amount of money tied to my name as I began to write this series of episodes. I have no savings and no incoming funds.

I should be focusing my energy on finding a job, right?

Yes and no. Of course I need funds to maintain my material livelihood but that does not mean I should withhold my creativity. My intention with creating this show is to share my experience openly and vulnerably without judgement of myself or others.

So, how did I get to this financial and material low point in my life? Well, it’s been quite the journey. A journey of which I am incredibly proud of and grateful for. This is my Phoenix story.

In December of 2019 I started a hobby research project to dive into the “World of UFO’s”. I figured it would be something to entertain myself with as I took part in other activities while living in Colorado.

By 2020, I was less than a year into this hobby project as well as a new job. As my life moved into March, my company, as well as our entire planetary civilization, was faced with lock-downs due to the pandemic and we had to adapt to working remotely full-time.

The pandemic was one of a number of personal and societal level catalysts that brought me emotionally “to my knees” in 2020.

During this time, I found myself asking the same questions I have reflected on throughout my life:

“Why do these issues continue to happen?”

“How have we gotten to this point?”

My depth of confusion reached a point that turned into determination. I wanted to finally answer these questions with sincere effort and evidence, not only with philosophy.

I came to the realization that my hobby research project came into my life in a timely manner and could be utilized as the platform to help me answer these philosophical questions.

By May of 2020, I was intellectually consuming book after book, documentary after documentary and article after article regarding any topic related to UFOs, the supernatural, psychology, past civilizations, extraterrestrials, conspiracies and many other topics.

Additionally, I was experiencing the well known phenomenon of synchronicity and angel numbers throughout the media I was reviewing on a daily basis. I was being given a great deal of support by my guides that I was on the right track.

By late 2020 I started to document my spiritual experiences and the research that I was conducting. I felt driven to write and be creative.

I never considered myself a writer at all, nor did I ever receive feedback in my life that I was good at it. I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to write and how much happiness it brings me.

As 2020 came to a close I took time to rest from the challenging year. I saw the upcoming new year as an opportunity to continue my spiritual and creative journey.

In early 2021, most of the team I was working with had quit and moved on to new jobs. There were also layoffs occurring at the company. I could see the writing on the wall and started to look for new employment opportunities.

While looking for new jobs I decided to take all of the writing that I produced in 2020 and create a podcast with a friend of mine. I was on fire to develop this podcast as fast as possible.

At times it felt like I was metaphorically possessed. I took that creative energy, edited my writing to meet an episodic format and we started to take the steps to develop a show.

As we were developing the show I was provided an employment opportunity that I decided to move forward with. It was a new experience as I had not worked in this particular industry before.

Unfortunately, there was a problem. I felt doubt from some of the colleagues I would be working with. That was a red flag but I knew that I needed to be at this particular job, at this particular time in my life.

So I carried on.

By April of 2021, my friend and I launched our first podcast, called Station 19, on April 19th of that year. I was now creatively expressing myself for the first time. It was an exciting time.

April moved into May, May moved into June and I continued to release new podcast episodes.

The month of July 2021 was intense. I released a set of episodes to Station 19 that I believed to be some of my best creative work.

In parallel to this creative achievement I was faced with a decision that would propel my life in a completely new direction and accelerate healing trauma that I was still carrying.

The decision that contributed to this acceleration of healing was that I walked out of my new job. I had only been at this job for 5 months. I have never done this before, it was uncharacteristic of me.

However, I knew I needed to do it even though I could not fully comprehend why at that time.

The reason I left was because I felt betrayed and disrespected coming out of a meeting I had with internal and external stakeholders. This meeting was the tipping point for my patience.

For months I felt doubt regarding my skill set from internal team members of this organization. My response to this was to abandon the situation all together instead of rising above the betrayal and disrespect.

I knew my decision to leave was justified but how I approached leaving was not justified, it was impulsive because I was hurt. I did not truly weigh the consequences. I did not spend enough time asking myself:

“How would my action impact my colleagues?”.

I convinced myself that my self proclaimed justifications were enough to mitigate any consequences and that my colleagues would be fine.

That was not fair, or professional, for me to determine.

After leaving that organization, I knew that I was going to access the life savings that I accumulated over the course of my thirteen year career and simply live.

I took on a part-time job with the horse rescue I volunteered at, I began going to conferences to meet the researchers I followed, I traveled all over the west and focused on learning how to meditate.

No deadlines, no politics, just me and my dog, Joy.

Taking a break from my career brought me a great deal of abundance. I felt freedom, hope and relief at profound levels. For the first time in my life, I could actually breathe.

I was grateful to be able to have this kind of experience as it’s not one that many people can have. I honored that understanding as much as possible to ensure I remained humble.

As free as I may have felt at that time, I was equally putting myself into a heavily fortified self-imposed mental prison. My mind had all of this space now but my heart had unresolved trauma at the unconscious level of my being.

Because of this I found myself surrendering the trauma of my life, and our civilization’s, to the idea of conspiracy theories. I thought:

“Finally! I can blame someone for the pain I feel. I can blame someone for how I’ve always felt like an outsider.”

These thoughts became the bedrock of my Phoenix story. The flame of my healing had now started to increase in size and I was oblivious to it.

Even though my mind was clouded with conspiracy, I could still rely on my intuition. Like many topics of our world, conspiracies are intensely polarized. Merely mentioning the word ‘conspiracy’ and people tend to become tense, understandably so.

My intuition would provide me moments to learn the balance of providing my “new found perspectives” to others and when not to. Also, my intuition would make it abundantly clear that I had no physical or material evidence to support these conspiracy claims.

However, my ego would step in at times and label that intuitive guidance as a “cover-up”. This was the intense mental merry-go-round that I began to experience on a daily basis.

It was confusing, exhausting and isolating, but I would be provided a guiding light in the coming months.

By October of 2021 I took the opportunity to try a Quantum Hypnosis Healing Technique (QHHT) session. It’s not like the theatrical hypnosis practices seen in the movies or on TV.

The goal of this type of hypnosis practice is to provide you the space and tools to connect with your Higher Self.

Basically, your Higher Self is the voice that provides you guidance that is aligned with your highest good so that you can reach your life’s purpose and fulfill it.

Most people may know their Higher Self to be their “gut instinct”. It’s that first thought that comes into your heart about how to move forward in life before the mind rationalizes and/or creates doubt regarding your gut instinct.

Attending my first QHHT session was a flashpoint moment for me. In general, I have awareness that I’ve been on a path of healing since 2012. However, the session I experienced promoted healing to now take place where I needed it, at the unconscious and soul levels.

It was like building a new house. You have to put the foundation down first before building anything else.

My new foundation was timed perfectly and would provide me the support that I needed for events to come in the new year.

In Chapter 2 of ‘My Phoenix Story’ I will share how paranoia became the catalyst which would guide me to seek healing in a new form.

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Have a great present moment!

Matt

Source(s)

• Station 19 Podcast:

• Quantum Hypnosis Healing Technique: https://www.qhhtofficial.com/