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Today on The Alpha Male Coach Podcast we’re going to talk about the importance of presence and being in the ‘now’. For many people, the past is a limiting force in their lives. Many humans are living a life where they are unconscious of how much they are allowing their past to affect them in the present. Of course, we know that the past doesn’t really exist. Because it feels real, it drives that suffering so strongly. Today we are going to talk about how this illusion that creates suffering comes from the beta condition.
The past and the future are constructs of our own minds. The construct of how we imagine time has to be in a capacity to serve us when we learn from our past and set goals for our future. It can also hinder us when the beta condition escapes from the ‘now’ for an illusion of expectation around comparison or drives us into unconscious repetitive limiting beliefs. Today I suggest that the beta condition is a function of escaping the ‘now’ and the mind can only be in the ‘now’ when the alpha state is elevated. The mind wants to search backwards and forwards to make meaning and to seek for problems through the comparison of time. This is its primary function. We will discuss how this leads to the functions of escape and belief and how there is no place for the ‘not self’ in the present. Who you are not, cannot exist in the moment.
Today I will talk about the importance of being in the now and developing the skill of cognitive mastery to prevent misalignments between the mind and the moment that result in a form of suffering and escape. I will also talk about how the present moment is the doorway to self-discovery, and how we discover the truth of who we are in two forms, the conscious and unconscious self. There is no greater outcome for developing the skill of cognitive mastery than living in, existing with, expressing from, and being a part of the oneness of the present moment. Tune in today as we discuss this topic that is so important in the process of self-discovery.
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What You’ll Learn from This Episode:
- The illusion of the past can be a consciously limiting thing in your life.
- The beta condition is a function of escaping the now.
- The mind functions to seek for problems through the comparison of time.
- We don’t want outcomes, we want the feelings we associate with them.
- Feeling bad results from a misalignment between the mind and the moment.
- The present moment is the doorway to self-discovery.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Enroll for the Elevated Alpha Society Spartan Academy here.
- Sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the Alpha mindset.
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:09] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach, and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.
[EPISODE]
[00:00:32] KA: What’s up my brothers? Welcome back to the Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud, and today we’re going to get into the importance of presence. Now, I’m going to tell you guys before we even begin. I’m going to tell you right off the bat that there is no way I can cover the vast topic, the very highly complex concept of the present moment, of presence of time in this podcast episode. I have done some episodes on time. We’ve done some episodes on the present. But I want to talk to you about why being in the present or why working on staying in the present, why cognitive mastery as a skill for learning to be more present will help you. Well, actually it’s so important for you in the process of self-discovery and to get through it all in 20, 30 minutes, this is why I have the academy, brothers.
Understand that the reason why I have the academy is because this whole process, this whole skill of cognitive mastery and energy mechanics, it takes time to develop. It takes a skill to practice. What I offer you guys on the podcast is just a sliver. It’s a fraction. It’s very, very – It’s like it’s just the tip of the iceberg, as they say. So let’s get into it because, again, there’s so much content. There’s so much information. In July, the entire month of July in the academy with the 1.0 students, we focus on the past. We focus on the past as a theme, as a curriculum. For many people, the past is a consciously limiting thing. It is something that humans, that people, are aware of as a limiting force in their lives.
Of course, we know that the past doesn’t really exist, and this is the illusion. This is why there’s so much frustration because we know that the past doesn’t really exist. In this illusion that creates the suffering coming from the beta condition, it drives that suffering so strongly because it feels like our past is real, like our past is actually affecting us today. We know that this isn’t the case. We know that the only thing affecting us right now in the present moment is our thoughts about the past. Many even more humans are conscious of the negative stories they tell themselves about their past. But many, many more, many, many more humans are living a life where they are unconscious of how much they are allowing their past to affect them in the present.
Like I say, although this is an illusion that creates suffering, it is still something that feels very real for most people because it is their mind that brings memories, that brings them memories of their past to trigger stories that can create emotional pain in the moment. So we work on the stories we tell ourselves about the past as a practice of cognitive mastery. However, however, there is no greater outcome for developing the skill of cognitive mastery than living in, existing with, being a part of the oneness of, and expressing from the present moment.
We measure time through a series of manmade constructs and existential experiences, right? Like you guys know that our manmade constructs are minutes, right? Minutes, hours, seconds. These are things that we’ve created to measure our time. We’ve created an hour. We created a minute. We created a second. But we also have these experiences of time, right? How we extensively, as human beings, as a species, we experience this time existentially and we experience time through the present, as well as what came before the present, which is the past, and what comes after the present, which is the future. So that’s our existential experience. There is never anything happening outside the moment, outside the now.
This is the great struggle, right? This is the human condition. This is the great struggle that we still deal with as humans, even with the addition of emotional vibration to add more chaos to the mix. If you think about it, what’s really creating the chaos as humans, what’s creating the suffering in our lives is our cognition and our emotion because we don’t understand these things. We don’t understand the struggle of the mind and we don’t understand the struggle of the vibration that we know scientifically is a chemical reaction occurring in ourselves. But spiritually, as a vibration, we haven’t learned to allow those vibrations, to allow that emotional wave to flatten out and calm.
Instead we’ve added chaos to this mix. The mind is always searching backwards and forwards. It is rarely in the moment. It can only be in the now when the alpha state is elevated because the beta condition is a function of escaping the now. The beta condition is a function of escaping the present. So the mind wants to search, right, brothers. The mind wants to search. It wants to go backwards. It wants to go forwards. This is its primary function. It wants to make meaning. It wants to solve problems. Now, of course, we know how to use the tool of the mind for us when we’re in our alpha state, which is, again, to inspire, to teach, to motivate, to learn, like to collect information and so on. But there are no problems in the moment. There are no problems in the now. There is only a problem that the mind creates when it compares the now, when it compares the moment to the past or the future. But that’s its function, right? To seek for problems through the comparison of time.
This is something that I mentioned last week. We have a function of the not self-mind that will seek one of two structures to fill the varied content. We will fill this structure with so much content, infinite amount of content, right? It’s all based on conditioning but it will seek to fill one of two structures. The first structure is a function of escape, and the second is a function of belief, right? So the former, when we’re escaping, we’re escaping into expectation. In our function of belief, the latter, this is memory, right? So we have our memories that create our beliefs. We have our expectations that create escape.
Now, our expectations are future-focused and our beliefs or our memories are past-based, but there is no place for the not self in the present, in the here and the now. Be very careful in understanding this. Really understand what I’m saying because I want you to understand that the ‘not self’, who you are not, cannot exist in the moment. Who you are not is like a shadow that only exists in the ‘not time’. The not self exists in the not time, right, which is the past and the future, which is these don’t exist. These are not times. The only time is the present, so the not self doesn’t exist in time. It exists in the not time.
When you are in your not self-mind, the stories of expectation, the stories of comparison, the stories of self-deprecation, which include anything with the framework of I am not, right? So self-deprecation doesn’t necessarily have to be I’m so horrible. It can also include I am not. I am not worthy. I’m not good enough. I’m not capable. I’m not strong, right? All of that, that’s also self-deprecating. But all of these, when you’re not in your self-mind, all of these stories cannot exist in the present moment. If these stories exist in the moment, then you are not in the moment. You are in your mind. When these stories are running in your mind, you’re not in the moment, my friend. You’re in the beta condition.
Now, there can be value in both the past and the future. I am not saying don’t pay attention to the past and don’t pay attention to the future. There can be value in both. The past can be a great teacher. You know what? We can look at our individual past and see places where we’ve grown. We can find places of massive growth. We can find lessons that taught us more about how to develop and evolve. We can do this when we look at the history of our species. You know what? I’m a big fan of reading history. You know what? When I read, I read a lot of nonfiction, and probably half of what I read is historical. It’s very easy to see a cyclical pattern emerge from the behavior of our species. The universe will continue to offer us the same lesson in a new form until we learn and grow from it, which we have and continue to do unconsciously.
But it is only looking backwards. It’s only looking into the past that we can become conscious of this pattern. We don’t see the pattern in the moment. We only see the pattern as we look backward, and that can be where the past becomes a teacher for us. We can begin to see where these lessons from the universe are coming over and over again so that we can be more present in them and observe ourselves through them. The future is equally if not more amazing, while the past is dead, right? You guys know that. I’ve talked about the past a lot. The past is dead. The past is behind us. The past is unchangeable. While that’s all true, the future offers us so much potential in the form of infinite creation.
I’m a big fan of future focus thinking, and it is something I teach in the academy. I teach to have a plan. I teach to have a blueprint that you can execute daily to achieve through and live into your future. This is a strategy for manifestation through cognition. However, for as much as I teach future focus thinking, and I’m a big fan of it, I am also aware that it can become a form of buffering. You guys know this, right, brothers.
For those of you that have worked on creating a blueprint, anytime you’ve created a calendar or done any type of imagining or dreaming of your of your life, like you know that by doing that, by thinking about your future in an ideal way, for thinking about your future and this place where everything seems perfect and amazing for you, your brain is going to release a lot of dopamine. It’s going to release a lot of pleasure. It’s going to feel real good to imagine yourself living in the islands of the Caribbean, right? Out living on some boat with tons of happiness and joy and all that. You’re going to flood your body with dopamine, so it’s going to feel real good, right? So it can be a form of buffering if you’re constantly daydreaming, if you’re constantly living in the future.
So I want you to know that I only use this future-focused thinking and I only teach it for planning purposes. Imagining and dreaming is important, and it is a special gift given to humans, right? The ability to create our future from our imagination and the ability to remember our past and learn so that we can grow from it, this is a special gift given to humans. But the execution of our dreams only ever happens in the moment. It only ever happens in the present because this is all we have. This is the only time. We understand time this way. We have a misunderstanding of time and we have a misunderstanding of self, and so we suffer from our own ignorance. We believe. We strongly believe that we will even try to convince each other. I’ve had people try to convince me and I’ve even tried to convince people when I’m in that lock of, “Oh, my gosh.” Like there’s this “future” or some sort of “better” exists, right? This is the cause of so much suffering, so much procrastination, so much buffering, so much dream killing.
Time is never in three places, brothers. There is no past, present, and future. That is the way we as beings having a human experience understand time. We understand it in three places. But time only exists in one place. It only exists in the present, which is the here and the now. The past and the future constructs of our own mind, of the human mind. The construct of how we imagined time has to be in a capacity to serve us when we learn from our past and set goals for our future. It can also hinder us when the beta condition escapes from the now for an illusion of expectation around comparison or dives into unconscious, repetitive limiting beliefs.
Now, that’s past and future. The importance of presence, the reason why it’s so important to be in the present moment to really just be here and now is twofold. Each reason relates to the training that we do in the academy. The first reason, presence is important, has to do with the academy 1.0 fundamentals training, which is that everything happens in the now. Brothers, everything happens in the present moment. Nothing happens in the past and nothing happens in the future. You will find everything you are looking for in the present moment, everything. You know something? I will guarantee this, and I will teach it to you as a logical fact and a practical experience.
The reason this is has to do with one of the alpha male tenets, and that alpha male tenet is that we don’t want an outcome. Remember this one. We don’t want outcomes. Human beings don’t want outcomes. We only want the way we think the outcome is going to make us feel. Now, this premise basically says that all circumstances, all circumstances, all results, all outcomes, whatever, all of these are neutral. Anything happening in the world, anything happening in that world of form is neutral. We’re not after a neutral shifting of molecular or cellular data. I’m not looking for some human being to behave differently or some molecular object, whether it be a car, house, or money, to be in my life. This is all neutral. What we really want is not the thing. It’s not the result. It’s not the outcome. What we really want is the experience. What we really want is the vibration. We want the feeling. We want to feel a certain way. We also know that our feelings come from our beliefs, usually unconsciously.
So we have unconscious stories that create feelings that we chase the outcomes of these stories in order to achieve the feeling that we want, based on the way the story has determined the experience to be. Do you see the lunacy of this? Do you see how backwards and upside down this is? Because everything happens in the moment. Everything happens right here, right now. Nothing ever happens in the future. When we look at the future and we feel bad now, it’s because we’re comparing the present to the future and seeing only lack, what we have or what we want and don’t have, right? That’s what we see when we see the lack. The feeling isn’t coming from the present. It’s coming from the not having. It’s coming from the thoughts around wanting and not having. It’s coming from the comparison of what is to what is not. This is an escape from the ‘what is’. This is an escape from the present.
Now, the really wild thing is that you might say back it to me. It’s like, “Okay, coach. I hear what you’re saying. Logically or intellectually, I get it. But here’s what I don’t understand. I still want $10 million and I don’t have it. Here’s what I want, coach. I want this sum of money. I want $10 million and I don’t have it and I feel bad because I don’t have it. If I look at my present moment, like you told me to be in the present, you told me to be in the here and now, which is the only time there is, I still don’t have it. I want this money and I don’t have it. I don’t have it and I won’t have it if I look at where I’m at.” Of course, I said, “Of course, you won’t.” But the question is why do you want it?
This is the cognitive mastery, brother. This is the mind management because the truth of the matter is I will bet the answer to why, if I asked you why do you want $10 million, you’re going to tell me as either a feeling or a different activity, and the answer to why you want to be doing that activity is also a feeling, right? For example, the answers usually that I get when I asked students why do you want this sum of money, why do you want a million, why you want $10 million, why do you want $100 million, the answers that I get are either going to be freedom, happiness, success, right? I want to feel confident. I want to feel freedom. I want to be financially free. This is a feeling. I want to feel free. So the answers are either a feeling. I want to feel a certain way, or it’s because there’s an activity, right? Because I want to buy a boat, because I want a vacation to Bahamas, because I want to drive a Maserati. That’s an activity.
So then I ask again, okay, so why do you want to buy a boat? Why do you want a vacation to Bahamas? Why do you want to drive a Maserati? Then I get to the feeling, right? Then I get to “Because I want to feel confident, because I want to feel happy, because I want to feel powerful or successful,” or whatever. It always comes back to that. That’s alpha male tenet. It’s not the outcome that we’re looking for. It’s not the thing. It’s always that we want a feeling, and we have the power to have that feeling in the moment. But when we don’t feel that way in the moment, we try to escape from that feeling by telling ourselves that we want to have this thing, and it’s this thing that’s going to make us feel this way. So we then we escape from the moment into the future and feel better by dreaming or imagining ourselves with that thing so that we can have that feeling.
That is an escape. It’s always right here when we allow it to be here. So it always comes back to escaping the moment through a comparison in that lack. We’re escaping I don’t have and I want, so I escape with my mind into that place where then it can become very easy to buffer.
You see, it’s never going to happen in the future anyway, brothers. I must say it becomes very easy to buffers because of the dopamine, right? You start thinking about having the Maserati or having the $10 million or having the thing. Then you’re buffering in there because it’s never in the present. It’s just constant living in the future, right? So now, we’re buffering there.
But it’s never going to happen in the future. You see that? Nothing ever happens in the future. When it happens in the future, it’ll be the present. It’s only going to ever happen in the present. The present is the only thing that ever exists. You will never be a millionaire in the future brother, right? Think about that. When you’re a millionaire, it’ll be here and now, right now. The way you feel when you are a millionaire will be in the now. You can feel that way without the outcome, simply by understanding what it is you really want and asking yourself why you want it and cultivating that vibration in the present.
Look generally, brothers. Very generally, not always, but in general, when we feel bad, it’s because we’re not in the moment. Everything we seek is right here for two reasons. Logically, because this is all that exists, right? The past and the future don’t exist outside of our individual minds. So right away, what we seek must be right here because it can’t be anywhere else. There is nowhere else besides right here and right now. But practically, we are only seeking the experience anyway. We’re only seeking the vibration, the feeling, which is created by our own thoughts. Now, when we engage with our mind, we are usually not in the present because we are thinking about the past or the future. When we are observing our mind, this is different. Not engaging with our thoughts but observing our thoughts, then we can be in the present while watching the conscious mind and when we are feeling bad or vibrating out of frequency.
Feeling bad is a subjectivity around certain vibrations. Or feeling bad or vibrating out of frequency, it is highly likely that there is a misalignment with the mind and the moment that the mind is in the past or the future. It is not here and sending out out of frequency vibration into the body, which feels awkward. It feels weird. It feels uncomfortable because you’re not here. When we use the universal truth and become aware of our feelings and our thoughts, we can realign with the moment by allowing the vibrations and observing the mind.
An amazing teacher, a very great teacher said, “Why is man unhappy? No animal is so unhappy. No bird is so unhappy. No fish is unhappy as man. Why is man, why are humans so unhappy? Because humans desire happiness.” The birds are happy right now, and the trees are happy right now. Man desires happiness. He is never happy here and now. His desire for creates a thought around not having. He always desires it and goes on missing it because happiness is here. It is happening all around you. Allow it to enter. Be part of existence. Don’t move into the future. Existence never moves into the future, only the mind does. I love that teaching because it offers us the truth of how our desire for what we already have yet fail to recognize in the moment will always create a form of suffering and escape.
That is one of the reasons the present moment is so important. Because it is all there is and It’s all that is ever happening through the universal truth. What our feelings, what you are feeling, and how you are vibrating is coming from what you’re thinking in the moment, not the past or the future. I can go deeper into this. However, I want to introduce the second reason for being in the present moment and why it’s so important. If you want to go deeper into the effective use of the past and the future, enroll in the academy and start practicing these skills right away. There’s nothing stopping you. You can gain access right away, especially before September 1st.
Now, the second reason why being in the present moment is so important has to do with academy 2.0 training, which is energy mechanics. This is because you will only discover yourself in the present moment. You only exist in the now. Brother, I cannot say this enough. It may seem obvious, right? This may seem so obvious to you, based on what you heard earlier in the podcast that the present moment is all that exists. So, of course, you can only discover yourself in the present moment because there’s no other time that exists for you to discover yourself outside of the only time that is.
But I’m saying that self-discovery requires a certain attention. It requires a certain stillness. It requires a certain calm so that you are observing yourself in mind and form. We can’t discover ourselves in the past or the future. We are expressing ourselves constantly in the moment and we can only find truth through expression. The future is yet to occur. The past is only a fragment of mind. It’s a memory at best. The present moment is the doorway to self-discovery, and we discover the truth of who we are in two forms, based on a differentiated self. The first form is your unconscious form, the unconscious self. Through observing the mind in the present moment and watching the movement of the vehicle as it passes from each snapshot of presence to the next, you will begin to recognize what you are attracting to yourself through your unconscious energy mechanics.
This is the law of attraction and the law of cause and effect, and I’ve discussed this in several podcast episodes. You are attracting constantly as a function of who you are. This is unconscious and can only be discovered through careful attention to the moment. Looking back will not work, brother. Looking back will not work. Looking back into the past reveals only what your mind has coded as important based on the belief system you held at that time. You must be keenly aware of the now, as it unfolds right now perfectly for you always at how your body moves and what it attracts. This is your unconscious self, which generally operates the vehicle and manifest results through the universal truth when you are living through your individual energy mechanics.
The second form is your conscious form, your conscious self. So you have your unconscious self and your conscious self. The conscious self, the way to access your conscious self through the present moment is by watching the movement it takes while you are in relationship. This can be very, very tricky, and it does require practice. It requires training, right? That’s why it’s a part of the academy 2.0 program because it requires you to have an understanding of the fundamentals already. The mind outside of relationship wants to flee from the moment. I just discussed this, right? I just talked to you guys about this because watching how it runs when we are alone is great work for discovering the conditioning and the not self. Even when approaching, even when approaching a human, even when approaching a woman or approaching another human being, there will be a lot of not self, right? There’s going to be a lot of conditioned thinking.
You notice how things change when you’re in a relationship, and maybe you don’t. Like maybe things don’t change. If you are engaged in relationship and you’re still in your mind, your mind is still running stories, then there is more conditioning to work on. There’s more 1.0 curriculum to dive into. When you get to where you can be talking with another human and you weren’t just really engaged at their level, you’re truly listening. You’re listening from the inner self, which I talked about in transformation, the previous episode. When you’re fully present and intimate with this person, engaged as one with your energy and their energy, then you will see your conscious self in action, what you can be aware of and the expression of how you are in observation.
Now, both of these elements of self-discovery only happen in the present, both the unconscious and the conscious. One is in relationship and one is in the awareness of the vehicle. But it’s only going to happen in the present, and this is another reason why the present moment is so important. The present moment is the gateway to self-discovery because it is the only actual time that exists, because it is where you will find the vibration you seek or the experience that you seek, and because it is where you can observe the energy of your conscious and unconscious self.
Now, check this out, brothers. I know I’ve laid a lot of complex concepts on you today. We’re talking about time. We’re talking about the present moment. We’re talking about energy mechanics. We’re talking about being in the moment, observing the mind. So when you are ready to enroll in the 1.0 academy curriculum and begin your training to remove the conditioning of your past, to learn how to express your true self and live the life that you’re meant to live, then head over to thealphamalecoach.com and click the link in the menu at the top for the academy. I look forward to working with you. Until then, my brother, elevate your alpha.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:26:56] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset at thealphamalecoach.com/unleash.
[END]
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