Love Wins: Matt Kahn’s Spiritual Teachings — Enneagram Point 2

This article is part of a series called The Illuminating Enneagram.

Love, in its fullness, exudes quite a sweet aroma, like a thousand roses blossoming in an idyllic garden. Truly, love is the gateway to experiencing heaven in this ordinary human life. Even if a person were to have no resources, no means to earn a living, no shelter, no place to rest their head, but they had love, they would be rich in spirit. Paul the Apostle wrote in a letter to the church in Corinth: “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” The love expressed in human relationships reflects a higher reality of boundless love emanating from our true divine nature. This is often referred to as God’s love. It’s an inclusive field of energy that some regard as a fairytale, though others would say this higher love surrounds and enfolds our entire life, and our brief existence here makes us temporarily forget the depth of a love we can never truly be apart from.

Whatever Arises, Love That is the title of the first book by Matt Kahn, a “new paradigm” teacher who has become well known in the spiritual community for his deeply heart-centered teachings. Whereas many spiritual teachings have a transcendental view that leaves the door open for dismissing, denying, bypassing, or detaching from the human experience, Kahn suggests the tender embrace of thoughts, emotions, parts of self and all aspects comprising our humanity. As a teacher that’s clearly familiar with the mystical dimensions from his own experience, yet doesn’t put down or invalidate the human journey, Matt has been welcomed into the hearts of many spiritual students, acting as a living reference point for awakening to a higher truth without losing his personality and sense of humor. His live, in-person events are perfumed with peace and contentment, while also being interspersed with hilarious punchlines never made at anyone’s expense. All the while, Kahn invites his listeners into an ever-deepening relationship with whatever is arising as their life, a relationship whose ultimate feature is love. As he likes to say: “In a world of endless questions, love is the only answer.”

In the Enneagram of Personality, Enneagram Type 2 is called “The Helper” and “The Lover.” Going clockwise around the symbol, it’s the first Enneagram point encountered in the heart center, the point that Richard Rohr calls “obvious heart,” since this person’s orientation from the heart or emotional center is obvious. In many ways the Enneagram 2’s life journey centers on love: from feeling their basic desire to be loved, to codependently seeking that love in relationships, to — if all goes well — embracing self-care and self-love as the healing agents their soul has been needing. People who have Type 2 as their core personality type are generally better than the other types at knowing what others need and helping to meet those needs, as well as being the best at nurturing others with love. In their healthiest expression, these are the warm-hearted “care bears” of humanity, the Ammajis and Desmond Tutus. However, 2’s are also known to struggle with getting stuck in codependent patterns, selling out and self-abandoning while playing out the survival strategy they adopted in childhood (“I’ll meet your needs to get my needs met”). When it comes to personal growth, some of the 2’s primary spiritual lessons pertain to ending the search for permanent, fulfilling love outside of themself, only to turn within and find such a source of infinite love within their own heart.

In the earlier years of his teachings, Matt Kahn became known as the “I love you” guy, for the reason that he taught a simple but powerful practice of putting a hand on one’s heart and saying “I love you,” as a way of providing oneself with care and nurturing, without necessarily expecting that love to come from an external source. While this example points to the congruence of Matt’s teachings with the high side of Enneagram Point 2, in fact the “I love you” practice is only one of the highlights of a prolific body of work Kahn has been developing for over a decade. His first book, Whatever Arises, Love That, was followed in subsequent years by Everything is Here To Help You, The Universe Always Has a Plan, and most recently, All For Love: The Transformative Power of Holding Space. Each title provides not only a different angle on the spiritual journey, but a unique viewpoint on how we can rise to our highest version of self and gracefully meet life’s challenges by becoming our own best supporter, advocate, and offering heart-centered attention to the parts of us in desperate need of love and understanding.

In saying all of this, I am doing my best to convey the essential elements of Kahn’s teachings with the vehicle of the written word. However, the most meaningful part of the teaching and the source of its value is not a piece of conceptual content or something capturable in a turn of phrase, but — to use an in-vogue, spiritual term — a living transmission of consciousness, felt and known by people who are ready to receive it. In the heart of this transmission lies a revolutionary breakthrough insight of oneness, or the awakening to the perception of all manifestations of life being the expressions of one and the same thing.

In his teaching of The Karmic Return (available as a video on Youtube), Kahn describes the arc of the soul’s journey as moving from unconscious identification with the ordinary self, followed by the enlightenment experience of awakening to the oneness of all things, followed in turn by the “coming down the mountain” phase of reembracing the ego and human incarnation with the perspective and compassion of a bigger view of life. Although there seems to be something in Matt’s teachings for everyone, he seems to appeal especially to people who have not only a deep interest in spirituality, but a sensitivity towards moving forward along their path in such a way that’s informed by the wisdom of love. His teachings are all about, as he phrases it in one of his online courses, “the way love would approach a spiritual journey.” And so, in contrast to other deep spiritual teachings which commend destroying the ego, transcending emotions, silencing the mind, and dis-identifying from one’s humanity, Matt actually holds space for the inclusion of all of these things within an expansive heart-centered consciousness. It’s not that we are limited or imprisoned by having an ego, having emotions, having a mind, and being in touch with our humanity but — to the opposite — we feel free enough, spacious enough, open and expansive enough to weave all of these aspects into an ever-evolving wholeness. And what is oneness in action, if not that? If not relating to each aspect of one’s experience as a manifestation of The One? That is, in other words, as love would relate to it.

In a parallel way to the other teachings in this series, noticing the congruity between Matt’s teachings and Enneagram Point 2 allows us to look at how Matt addresses each of the patterns or themes we find in Point 2 from the perspective of the liberated or actualized 2 energy. One of the most interesting examples of this is the pattern of codependency. Generalizing, people whose core Enneagram point is Point 2 have the greatest tendency towards codependency of all the types. In psychology, codependency is understood as a dysfunctional way of relating in which one person (the codependent) over-gives, enables, and/or depends on another person in such a way that is detrimental to themselves. What makes it codependency, and not simply being dependent on someone (which is normal and necessary), lies in a quality of detriment-to-self in the codependent style of relating. That’s the psychological meaning of codependency. The Enneagram, probing even deeper than contemporary psychology, identifies subtle inner dynamics and constellations of psychological patterns. The Type 2’s automatic, default mode way of putting attention on others while abandoning themselves — leaving themselves behind, so to speak — is how codependency expresses as the 2’s strategy to survive life. It’s a hardwired psychological orientation, a lens through which 2’s perceive the world, that has to ultimately be unlearned through conscious retraining of the self. The Enneagram beautifully shines a light on the connection between a codependent style of relating to people and other 2 patterns such as: loss of boundaries, low self-esteem, unworthiness, adopting the rescuer role, and abandoning the self.

If we conceive of the above meanings as being the psychological and Enneagramatic perspectives on codependency, we could say that Matt speaks to those aspects while also stretching out the meaning of the word to highlight spiritual and energetic aspects. He uses the words vibrational codependency to refer to the state of waiting for others to be a more enlightened version of themselves — whether being more loving, free, peaceful, or in other high vibrational states — before we give ourselves permission to be that. The overlap with the more conventional definitions of codependency is: vibrational codependency means depending on others for something — to be different before we can shift our energy — in a way that is, once again, detrimental to the self. It doesn’t serve us to stay in a lower vibration than what we have access to, while assuming others will shift their vibration first. We may be waiting on them forever. Choosing to anchor a higher vibration now, at the present time, without needing others to lead the way or even follow suit, breaks the cycles of vibrational codependency. In one live session, Kahn said: “We can live harmoniously in a world [where] we’re holding space for its awakening … and not waiting for the world to wake up before we are free. That’s what co-dependency is: I wait for the world to be free, before I can be free.” Reclaiming our natural empowerment goes hand-in-hand with resolving our unexamined, habitual tendency towards codependency.

At the same time, Kahn’s emphasis on self-love and self-care serves to uproot other variations of codependency. The “I love you” practice mentioned before is the simplest and most straightforward practice of self-love in his teachings. Although very simple, in application it proves to be powerful. Observant students of this teaching are wise to note that this practice is very different from saying “I love me.” As Matt has taken time to point out, “I love me” aligns with the vibration of ego, whereas “I love you” (said to oneself) aligns with the vibration of divinity or consciousness. Divine consciousness, once separated from identification with ego, can then be a benevolent presence to the ego. This also makes it clear that real self-love differs from narcissism, since love is being offered to the ego rather than attempted by the ego. Self-love actually gets us more dis-identified from the vantage point of ego, not more identified with it. All of Matt’s teachings serve bringing us into alignment with our true divine nature, and always in a very heart-centered way.

In nearly every video teaching he has released, Matt always makes a point of saying — no matter how many times he repeats it — that if we are ever in an abusive relationship or toxic environment, the right decision is always to leave. Again, in keeping with the codependent programming, Enneagram Type 2 can struggle and suffer acutely as they try to stay in situations that do not honor their innate worth and dignity. (Other types can too, of course, but 2’s are especially prone to these dynamics). It’s all too easy to justify and rationalize a decision to stay in an abusive dynamic, or even to misuse spiritual teachings to support codependent thinking patterns, such as: “I need to rescue people, I can’t let them suffer,” while conveniently overlooking the fact that remaining in a relationship in which toxicity has been allowed to enter in, is not in the best interests of anyone. The 2 person’s path towards healing and wholeness includes not only learning to take care of themselves and prioritize their needs and best interests in a self-loving way, but also, sometimes, making the hard decision to cut off relationships that become unhealthy. Self-love doesn’t let the self suffer needlessly, when something can be done about it.

Each Enneagram point is connected to other points by way of lines, and one of these lines represents a point’s integration or development towards greater wholeness. For Point 2, the integration point is 4, meaning that 2’s become more whole as they embody the higher aspects of 4: self-awareness, emotional realness, authenticity, attunement to one’s inner states, and emotional healing. The journey of 2 integrating to 4 is about healing. Matt Kahn seems to display these healthy 4 qualities himself. Yet, they also find their way into his teachings as the encouragement to be honest with ourselves about our feelings, however painful; as the eternal invitation to make time and space for self-care (whereas the less healthy 2 in all of us would avoid being alone); and above all, as providing ourselves with love, instead of looking for love in the hearts of others that always seem to have a limited supply. In one of his most powerful reframe teachings, Matt defines empowerment as: “Realizing you are the one who needs to say the things you’ve waited your entire life to hear.” This statement, paired with the persistent emphasis on self-love, brings our awareness to the recurring theme in Matt’s teachings of providing ourself with the love, care, permission and empowerment that we’d normally, unconsciously try to acquire from others, or wait on them to provide us with, while experiencing a diminished version of our light and a sense of our cup being less than full. In between the lines of so many teachings, Matt silently affirms the powerful spiritual truth: you are the one you’ve been waiting for.

On rare occasions, Matt will allude to a past life he had as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. He tells the story of how, when he was on the precipice of attaining nirvana (enlightenment), his physical life ended and he found himself out of body in the spiritual realms. In that new dimension, he was informed that the nirvana he was looking for could not be realized so long as he thought he was a monk searching for nirvana, instead of seeing that he was and is nirvana dressed up as a monk meditating. That was the moment of enlightenment. The clarity that moment revealed to Matt is a quality that breezes through his teaching, like a dharmic wind — the awakeness of consciousness that can be shrouded and obscured, but never completely forgotten. That conscious light, along with the peaceful stillness and silence that form a backdrop to the teachings — which become remarkably noticeable in moments of pause — are primary ways the awakened head center appears in Matt’s offerings. The head center, when aligned with presence, is not a marketplace where a thousand voices clamor and try to talk over one another; more so a holy temple in which footsteps can be heard echoing in a quiet and emptiness akin to outer space. Overall Matt places emphasis on heart-centered themes, however, spiritual seekers also find in his delivery a deep rootedness in the domain of awakened, lit-up consciousness — an energy that can literally be felt and sensed in the transmission.

A phrase that Matt uses to talk about how we can embody awakening is by becoming “a warrior of our highest ethics.” At times Matt will draw attention almost exclusively to the space of consciousness in which all phenomena are arising (head), and at other times, of course, inviting a softening into a space of empathy and compassion (heart). And yet, there are also points at which he’ll advocate for being confident, being fully committed, and making “a stand for the wisdom you’ve gathered.” He has gone as far as to say: “The Divine in you is already awake, it’s just suppressed by a lack of confidence.” And so, while there can be a profound expansion of awareness, and a beautiful expansion of the heart center into love for all — and this is common in the new age community — there also needs to be a descent of the soul into the belly center, where otherwise inaccessible qualities of confidence, personal power, groundedness, strength, and worthiness come online. Without this, the soul lacks the inner resources to really manifest and represent the virtues of the higher centers in the world. That’s why in various teachings Matt devotes time to speak to coming back to the body and even coming back to the ego (the karmic return). It all folds into a soul’s journey in which human life is transcended and the spiritual mountaintop is summited, only so that the soul can bring that light seen on the mountaintop back into human life, once again donning the clothing of body and ego. It is amidst the fuss and throng of human society that the spiritual warrior must uncover the courage to embody his highest principles, not isolated on a mountaintop meditating, but bringing the light where it’s most needed. And that is: to the people who are the very oneness he went away on a mountaintop to find.

One of my personal favorites of all of Matt’s talks is (now a bit older) one called “Life’s Eternal Liberator.” It doesn’t take a detective — just someone willing to watch a few videos — to figure out that Matt’s talks are generally very practical, and this is another way the belly center appears in these teachings. They tend to orbit around a core practice — perhaps a mantra, a question, or an invocation — to which the surrounding teaching provides context and identifies common misunderstandings and obstacles encountered in doing the practice. In “Life’s Eternal Liberator,” the core practice and question is asking “How may I serve you?” Certainly this question can be asked to others, leading to powerful results, and yet Matt suggests asking the question first to oneself (in keeping with the liberated 2’s way of being of taking care of ourselves, loving ourselves). So it’s the 2 energy having its ultimate roots in love, yet it melds into the adjacent energy of Point 1, as well, which at its best is dedicated to spiritual alignment, service, and principled action. In fact, in Matt’s body of work a lot of emphasis is given to maintaining alignment with Spirit or Source, and with sensitivity that commitment to alignment and to service can be detected in the energetic field of this work. In this way Matt reflects some attributes of the Angels and Guides he works with, in the sense that these nonphysical beings are perpetually being of service to others. All of us become more like them, too, to the extent we enter into the consciousness of service. This is not only one of the most powerful pillars of Matt’s work, but it’s also very congruent with the highest expressions of Enneagram Point 1, complementing the 2 energy.

When Matt Kahn’s teachings first appeared on the spiritual scene, many people had the experience — some even made memes about it — of both receiving a breath of fresh air, and breathing a sigh of relief. What a relief to come across a teaching that makes it ok to be human and ok to have an ego. What a relief to not be put under a spiritual microscope of judgment but to be able to laugh about your countless failures to be a perfect spiritual person. What a relief to find a teacher that can speak to your soul’s deepest yearnings in one moment, and then a few minutes later crack a joke that leaves you smiling from ear to ear. Many people had the experience of being deeply validated — and healed by that validation — just in receiving Matt’s unique take on the spiritual journey. It is possible to learn to validate ourselves, though it’s more difficult when there are so many teachings out there to make us doubt and question ourselves. It helps immeasurably when, among all those voices, there’s one voice that rings out like a bell chime, carrying notes of clarity and consciousness, confidence and courage, compassion and most of all, love. A voice that reminds us of our innate light, worthiness, and beauty. A voice that reminds us how it feels to surrender to love, saying: Welcome home, beautiful one. Welcome home.