What happens when you've done 20 silent retreats, lived in a monastery for 7 months — and still can't stop being reactive with the people you love?
That's where Cenk Matalon's journey began. A dedicated Buddhist meditator, trained psychotherapist, and the creator of Sacred Monogamy, Cenk discovered that spiritual practice — as profound as it was — could not touch the deepest layers of his emotional life. The shadows were waiting at home.
In this episode recorded live in Bali, Indonesia, Ale and Cenk explore a question that most of the spiritual world avoids: what does it mean to stop transcending your humanity, and finally inhabit it?
In this conversation:
✦ The shadow of spirituality: what spiritual bypassing is, and how it quietly destroys intimacy
✦ Why your relationship is the most difficult — and most powerful — spiritual path available to you
✦ The mud of your becoming: why the mess in your relationship is not an obstacle, it's the path
✦ Sacred Monogamy vs. modern love: beyond codependency and hyper-independence
✦ Emotional cheating, plan Bs, and why full commitment is supposed to feel terrifying
✦ The real reason people cheat — and what fear of intimacy is actually about
✦ Why emotions are not problems to manage — they're your relational GPS
✦ Dearmoring the heart: what lives underneath your deepest wounds
✦ Your partner as a portal of consciousness
This is not a conversation about having better relationships. It's about becoming someone who can hold one — with yourself first, and then with another human being.
Find Cenk at cenkmatalon.com | @cenkmatalon
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If this conversation stirred something in you —a question, a memory, a quiet "that's me" —you're exactly who this podcast is for.
Create What Matters was built for the ones who are done living on autopilot.For the ones building a life from the inside out.Not performing it. Actually living it.
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