Brothers, as Columbia is fully booked, many of you have been asking about the next retreat and when registrations will open for that one. Well, I can tell you, brothers, that the next retreat will be in mid-2024, and registrations will open early next year. But you can still visit awakentheoneretreats.com and your registration will automatically be transferred to next year’s retreat. Until next year, this is me, Kevin Aillaud, signing off from all retreat talk.
Today, we are getting philosophical as we dive into another thought experiment. And these esoteric explorations are just like listening to music because it’s the silence in between that’s the loudest, not the musical note itself – it’s the spaces in between our layers of existence that draw us closer to that universal truth of oneness.
When someone asks, “Who are you?” what do you say? You could say that your name is Kevin, and that is true. You may say that you’re a Taurus, or that you’re feeling nervous about something, or that you are the aching leg that’s been bothering you for the past month – all of those are accurate definitions of who you are because you are everything.
You are your body, you are your star sign, you are your name, you are the summation of your bodily experiences, and you are your emotions and feelings. But you don’t remember this because you’ve chosen to forget your inherent divinity, because seeking answers is more thrilling than knowing the truth. So when we project our thoughts and feelings onto others, we forget that we’re doing this because we see ourselves in them, which is only natural because, after all, we are all one.
So the work then, brothers, is to first realize that the answer to the question, “Who am I?” is simply: everything. And once you recognize that everything is layered, you can then begin the work of peeling back the layers and playing around with them, and being responsive instead of reactive as you unpack the essence of your existence. Because you are breath itself, you are life itself, and you are yet another step closer toward elevating your alpha.
What You’ll Learn from This Episode:
- The first thing we say when people ask, “Who are you?”
- The different layers of understanding who you are: body, emotional, astral, and energetic.
- Why the way we see others is the way we see ourselves.
- Peeling back the layers.
- Remembering our inherent divinity what we’ve chosen to forget for so long.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Awaken the One Retreats
- Remember to check out the new How to Live Your Purpose course.
- Enroll for the Elevated Alpha Society Spartan Academy here.
- Sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the Alpha mindset.
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:09.2] 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.
[DISCUSSION]
[0:00:33.3] KA: What’s up, my brothers? Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud, and I want to begin with the retreats very, very quickly, because you guys have really been hitting me up with this. Okay, so the next retreat is going to be early to mid-next year. That’s the first question you guys are asking, “When is the next one?”
The next question is, “When are we opening registration for that?” It’s going to be early next year because we have the retreat set for early to mid-next year. So, it will be early 2024. So, about three months, about three months, you guys will be open to registering. But here’s the thing, you can still go to the website, awakentheoneretreats.com, and fill out that application or that fill out that questionnaire on the website because we already have guys that have moved into registering for this next retreat because they were in this one and then they got moved to the next one.
So, if you want to, you can fill that out when you can, we can reach out to you and reach out to us, we can chat with you, we can talk about when and where that next retreat will be but the registration will open early 2024. And those are the big questions you guys are asking is, “When is it and when is the registration?” So that’s going to – I’m going to kind of end that now with the retreats. I’m going to open this back up again early 2024 and I’m going to start talking to you guys about it then but for now, I just want to leave it here.
If you guys have questions about this or if you want to put in some kind of early registration, you can still go to that website and me or one of the guys will reach out to you on that.
[0:02:04.4] Okay brothers, let’s jump into the podcast because it’s kind of a fascinating topic, it’s a bit philosophical. I want to tell you today we’re going to get a bit philosophical. Today we’re going to do a little bit of a – of like I say, a thought experiment similar to last week.
Similar to last week because this week, the idea here as you listen is to see if you can apply it into where you’re existing, where you are, and in the spaces of the podcast, kind of – it’s almost like listening to the rests in a symphony of music. You know, what makes the notes, what makes the sound so powerful is actually the space in between, is the rests in between, it’s the not sound, and it’s the same when we talk about philosophy.
It’s the same we talk about mysticism, it’s the same we talk about esoterica, and so in that way, this podcast like last podcast, I mean, the question of “Who am I?” It can be answered maybe in one word by saying everything, right? I could simply say everything to you. You are everything and that would complete the answer. That would be true and that would be sufficient.
Well, maybe not sufficient. It would be complete in its answer but maybe not in its understanding of that because what does it mean to be everything? “Okay, so I’m everything. So what? What does that mean?” Well, let’s compartmentalize. Let’s look at it in layers, let’s begin and say, “Okay, so I am.” Again, the question is “Who am I?” Right? And this is you, right?
You are as I am. So, as I talk about who am I, you follow this in you because I can say I am my body. We can begin with the layers of the body, it’s act on my body. Okay, so, somebody asks you, who are you? “Hey, hi. I’m Kevin, nice to meet you, who are you?” You may not even begin with a body, right?
You probably begin with the personality. That’s probably where you’ll begin. But if we begin with the body we would say, “Okay. Well, I’m a man. That’s my body, I’m a man.” And I can even go so far as to say, “Well, I’m a white man” and white is erroneous, right? There’s no white. There’s a few white, I guess, albino is a thing out there.
But white, Black, there’s all different kinds of human beings in their skin, in their melatonin, all different shades of colors, all different things. So to say white – but it’s still a part of my body, still a part of that, “I am’s,” We talk about the body and say, “I’m a bald man.” I mean, not really, I shave my head.
[0:04:49.4] I say, “I’m a tall man, I’m a short man, I’m a fit man, I’m an athletic man” right? These are all body things, you’re talking about bodies. Say, “Who am I?” We can go another layer of the body because when we talk about “Who am I”, we may not say this in the response to somebody asking you and you know, “Hey, who are you?” But “Who am I?”
“I am my skin, I am my heart, I am my lungs, I am my liver, I am my spleen, I am my stomach, I am my toes, I am my feet, I am my fingers, I am my blood, I am my bones, my muscles, my fats” You know, that stored energy, everybody wants to get rid of. I don’t want to be that, right? But that’s part of the body too.
I am my cells, you could say, “I am my cells” and that would be true. Say, “Who am I?” I am the cells of my body, I am those little drug addicts, right? They’re sending messages to my brain in order to get their drug, their emotion, those little drug addicts. “I am those cells, that’s what I am, I am those cells.” I am those cells, and I am the accumulation of those cells because I’m the organs that are made up of cells.
The bones that are made up of cells, the tissues that are made up of cells, and I am the hands and the feet, right? The body itself. So, all of those layers of who I am are all true. That’s who I am. But that’s not what you would say, that’s not what you would say. At least, that’s not what happens. That’s not what I would say, right? I would say, “I’m Kevin, nice to meet you” right? “I’m Kevin” because now we’re talking about some other part of “Who am I?”
It’s not the body. The body is not Kevin, know where my body is, is there a tag, a label, a tattoo, this is Kevin, right? The body’s not Kevin, right? We talked about the body, it’s the body is the cells, the hair, the blood, the bones, the hands the feet, right? All these different layers. I am Kevin. Okay, so, now we’re talking about personality.
Then we’re talking about thoughts, stories. And not to say that talking about the body is not story but we’ll get back to that, but the personality. So, I am Kevin, right? So now we start talking about his personality, “I am my hobbies, I am my likes and my dislikes, I am my past” right? “I am my education, I am my occupation, I am my political and religious beliefs, this is my personality.”
[0:07:21.6] These are maybe the things that we talk about when somebody says, “Who are you? Tell me about yourself” Because we wouldn’t say, “Oh, I’m hands and feet, I’m bloods and bone” right? We wouldn’t say that but we would say, “Oh, I’m a college graduate. You know, I have a master’s degree in XYZ” right? Or “I’m a level – E-rated tennis player.” I think that’s right.
E-rated, B-rated, C-rated, I don’t know, A1, or maybe we talk about occupation. “I’m an engineer, I’m a firefighter” but these are all personalities and these are also part of who I am, because it’s the part of the mind. It’s the part of the space. If the body is material, if we say the body is a part of the material form of who I am, then the personality is the non-form, you know?
It’s the polarity, in the yin-yang, brothers, what we have is the body and the mind, the mind and the body and the mind and the body, we have the form and the not form. The not form is the mind, it’s the personality, it’s all the not, right? The “Not” Body, the “Not” stuff, and then the body is all the stuff and just like, there’s multiple layers of the body, there’s multiple layers of the mind or there are multiple layers of the personality, right?
That’s what I mean, we can talk about hobbies, we can talk about occupations, we can talk about politics and religions, we could talk about the past, talk about all these things. It’s the personality and then, there’s another layer of who I am because have you ever said, “I’m angry, I’m excited.” You know, “I’m jacked up, I’m motivated” right? “I’m ready.” Well, that’s a little bit more body than it is personality, right?
It’s kind of both though, it’s fascinating, right? It’s kind of like, “Oh, like, where is this? It’s a weird hybrid.” You know, we call it emotion. It’s between T and A, right? It’s between the thought and the action, between the mind and the body. It’s this emotion, this conduit, this feeling, and that’s another part of who I am. I am my feeling, I am whatever this feeling is, whatever this chemical reaction that’s happening in the cells are, I am that too.
[0:09:33.4] So, if somebody says, who are you, I could say, “I am anxious” and that would be true. Maybe I feel in that moment, I feel anxious because I’m telling myself a story about rejection or not being accepted or something, right? “I’m anxious about something” or maybe I could say to this person, “I’m excited.”
It’s like, “Oh, that’s fascinating, is that your first name? Is that on your birth certificate?” But no, you’re talking about your emotion and why you’re excited because you tell yourself a story about meeting this new person about talking to this person and you’re excited. So, who am I is emotional.
I’m the emotional, you’re giving the emotional part of you. “I am excited, I am” right? “I am happy.” You know, it’s all that sense, people say, “How are you?” and then we give that, we have that answer. You guys had known me, I give one of two answers, right? I mean, they’re amazing or I’m grateful, that’s my emotion, right? You say, “How am I?” “I’m amazing or I’m grateful, thank you.”
But again, that’s a layer, that’s a layer. It has to do with the body, but then, there’s another layer, right? Because then there’s the astral layer. I’m going to just talk about the astral layer different than the emotional layer because the emotional layer is the feeling, right? That’s the chemical, that’s what our cells are addicted to, right? That’s why we come into the academy.
It’s one of the reasons why people come into the academy, emotional downregulation, to free themselves from – to release themselves from the emotional addiction, from the emotional patterning that’s creating the behavioral patterning of course, driven from the thought patterning. That’s really what’s standing in everyone’s way, your way, my way, our way, humanity’s way.
It’s our inability to self-regulate our emotional addictions. But then there’s another part, there’s the astral part, and that astral part is the horoscope, right? And now you’re like, “Oh, coach, come on, the astral, the horoscope, what are you talking about?” Well yeah, I’m Taurus, Capricorn, Virgo, right? There are things that go along with these signs based on when you are born, based on where the planets were, based on where the stars were when you were born.
It gives you a certain type of energy, it gives you a certain type of experience. That also is who am I because people will say that, “Who am I? Oh, I’m a Taurus” and if you don’t believe that that’s still happening, then you need to get out more because it’s still happening. This is not from the 60s, they’re not from the 70s, they’re not from the 80s. This is happening now because it’s true.
People feel this, people believe this. People believe that this is the answer to “Who am I?” “I am my astrological sign. I’m a rising sun or I’m moon sign” or whatever it is that they’re – whatever part of their consciousness that they’re engaging with in that moment of answering the question of “Who am I?” It’s another layer, and it’s true and then there’s another layer.
[0:12:34.7] There’s another layer, there’s the energetic layer, right? Which is the quantum physics layer. The layer of energy, the layer of neutrino, the layer of quantum. That layer where it goes a layer deeper than the astral because even though the astral layer is an energetic layer, an imprint based on the cosmos on your birthday, that deeper layer, that quantum physics layer is a layer one step, one half step closer to oneness, right?
Because now we’re not talking about the layer that is you in your horoscope, we’re talking about the energy that is you in everything. As Rumi said, “You’re not a drop in the ocean, you’re the entire ocean and a drop.” It’s the layer of the breath that we are the breath, that that breath as it comes in goes out as we – as our diaphragm raises and we note the inhale and your diaphragm drops and we note the exhale, that breath, that oneness that unites us all.
Not just you and me but all the animals and all the plants. But this energy even goes deeper, that’s why I stay away from the breath. The breath helps us to unite but it even units in the rocks and in the metals, because it’s in everything. And that’s the layer of “I am that”, that’s the layer of the deepest mysticism, that’s the layer of the mystics, of “I am.”
“I am that, I am” It’s the layer of the burning bush and all of these things. So those are different layers and they’re all true, every one of them is true. Every one of them is true, you’re the east side of the mountain, you’re the west side of the mountain but you are also the entire mountain, as well as the north side and the south side.
But you’re also the space that makes the mountain possible because the only way that the mountain can appear, the only way that mountain can be is to have space around it. There must be space around the mountain for the mountain to be informed, to be in existence, and you are that as well. You’re the space around the mountain, and that’s everything is true.
[0:14:46.2] It’s all true, every single bit of it. And brothers, here’s the thing, the way we see ourselves is the way we see each other because we are each other. That’s all true as well. Just as we see the different layers of ourselves, we see different layers of each other. We see each other as bodies walking around, right? And you could say, we could say that this may be the most “superficial layer” and that’s not a statement of judgment.
That’s simply a statement of categorizing or understanding because we look at people from that way, we get into – we’re looking at the surface, right? The most surface, the most superficial, the surface layer, the surface level and we say, ma’am, woman, right? Male, female, we say tall, short, we say blonde, brunette, redhead, right? We make all these different judgments about body types, big, small, fat, skinny, athletic – all the different things we could say.
We could talk about the sexual market value, for example, of rating from one to ten, the same way we do ourselves, you see? Because we do this with our own layers and so we do this with each other, with layers of relationship. And even there’s a relationship that we go to another layer and what’s that next layer? We do this with bodies as well because sometimes we see the outer layer of the body, all the aesthetics, right?
But other times, we wonder about, “Okay, so what’s this person’s health?” Does their body have an allergy? Does their body have an autoimmune? Does their body have a cancer? Does their body have a disease? And we look at that too and we make that true. We make it true, we say, “That disease is true. That cancer is true” and we do with all the different layers and then we get into personality, right?
We get into the personality, we say, “Oh, that’s person’s Brad, Brian or Betty. That’s Sue, that’s Jeremy, Josh, that’s Tiffany, Trisha.” This is the personalities of people and they like this and they like that and they like to play tennis and they like to go to fashion concerts, whatever you call it. Or they like to do this and that because that’s what they do. They do this and that or they have this and that education or from there.
[0:17:00.4] They’re from this place or that place, they’re from Brazil or they’re from India or they’re from Michigan, or Canada or they graduated from high school or they have a master’s degree in that or this. This is personality stuff, it’s a story. It’s a story, but we see this in people, right? We see this – think about this in your relationships, we see this, and this is all true.
It’s layers of truth, but as we peel back each layer we get closer and closer to unity. We get closer and closer to remembering because then we go into it deeper. We could talk about emotion. We say, “Oh, she’s angry” or “He’s agitated” or he’s frustrated or he’s happy or she’s bitter or she’s being a victim. Those are the emotions. We see those too but we see them in ourselves.
We see them acting out, we don’t see the body anymore. We don’t see the body, we see the emotion. We see what’s happening through the body but it is not the personality, it is not the story. It’s the performance, right? It’s the emotion, it is the energy in motion, and then because that, it’s of course the cells, right? That’s the cells doing their little dance and then we have the astral.
“What’s your sign? Oh, you’re a Virgo, I love that.” I love Virgo, right? Because I’m a Taurus and then there’s the quantum level, the breath, and that’s the magic. Because then – and here’s the thing, brothers, I want to tell you this because as you peel back these layers, as you really peel back these layers in yourself, of course, it happens in yourself through contemplation, through meditation, through thought downloads.
All the things that we do like models of alignment, through working with guides, through all of it, you peel back these layers, you go, “Okay, I am body but I’m not and because I am my body but I’m not, I don’t need to react to my body. I can respond to it as a part of my experience, as a part of me but not me. As a part of my shell, as a part of this outer layer that I’m noticing, that I’m caring for, and this human experience that I’m loving along the way.”
[0:19:19.5] That I am responding to as it needs things, as it needs rest, as it needs food, as it needs medicine, as it needs water. I’m responding but I am not reacting. I am not in a state of, “Oh my gosh, I am my body and I don’t eat right now I am going to die because I’m hangry. We have to find food and I am going to create this big C because everybody needs to know that I am hungry and if I don’t find food, my body is going to die” right?
Because again, that’s where we get into these layers, we’re in this outer layer. So we peel back these layers as we go deeper like, “Okay, so now I’m not that. I am not my body, maybe I am my mind, maybe I am emotion, maybe I am a deeper energy, maybe I’m my sign” right? Maybe I’m a Taurus or some of the things, some of the frameworks that we get into the Academy, right? Like maybe you’re this human design, generator, projector, right?
We get into some of these other things but again, this is just astral work. This just has to do with cosmology, cosmology, and genetics. It’s a horoscope work having to do with the unity of your genes with your astrology, right? So it is astral, but then we go deeper, and as I do this with you and myself, I get to this point where I realize I’m just the ever-present breath. I’m breathing.
I’m breathing and this person is breathing, we are one in that breath. The breath itself is no different in their body than in my body. The breath itself transfers between us, around us, through us, and permeates everything. The breath itself, the prana, the life force, right? I am the breath, I am that, and immediately we open up this mirror, the third eye, the Ajna chakra, it opens up and again, the veil is removed.
Did you see the truth? You see the mirror, you see that we are one, you see that we are standing in front of yourself, and you have always stood in front of yourself not as a body in front of a body, but as a breath in front of a breath, as the eternal wind that’s always been the eternal space. Nothingness, I am that and that is. That’s who I am and it’s true that we are all the things but here’s when we get into the growth.
Here is when we get to the evolution where people talk about movement, growth, evolution. I know two weeks ago I just did a podcast on better. I said there’s no better because you cannot be better because the truth of who you are, the core of who you are is that. Can the breath be any better? Can space be any better? Can nothing be any better? Can nothingness be any better? Can timelessness, can prana, can life force be any better?
[0:22:03.6] Of course not. And that was the podcast a couple of weeks ago. What I am offering to you now is that there’s an idea of who you’re not, that there has been a forgetting that you came into this knowing that you are this eternity, this God, this divinity of breath, this life force that is eternal and infinite and because of your own wanting to be surprised and be excited and have the duality of experience, that means you can’t know what’s coming next, you and your own divinity chose to forget.
You choose to forget and live in these layers and live in these different layers. And every one of these layers is a different era or different age of forgetting. We spent an age of forgetting that you were the breath and that you were existing as your horoscope, as your astral energy, and then you wanted to forget that, so you existed as emotion. You want to forget that, so you want to exist as personality.
You want to forget that so you want to exist as body and here we are incarnated on earth living that and we are all these things, all of them. All of them are true, they’re all layers of truth, just like the apple is the seed, the pulp, the skin, the stem, the leaf, the apple is all the things. The apple is even the tree because the seed needs to be planted to grow into the tree in order for the tree to Apple.
In order for the tree to fruit, to bear fruit and the apple is all those things, just as you are all those things. The essence of it is everything and nothing, is the oneness, is the breath, it’s the – it’s as you see, you see yourself. As you look, there you are. So, what does this all mean? It means play with the layers. I know brothers, here I am like almost into the 30-minute mark and I’ve come to this thing.
So, who am I? You’re everything, so what does that mean? What does this practically mean for you? It means, play with the layers. It means, play with them, have fun, have fun with the layers. Look, I’m a Taurus and a Tantrika, right? A Tantrika means I’m a practitioner of the tantric arts, right? So as a Taurus, I’m already imbued with a – attraction for the pleasurable things of life, the essential things of life, right?
[0:24:21.7] So, my astral energy as a Taurus has that. My astral energy has this attraction to sensuality, this attraction to pleasure, right? There’s some other things about the Taurus as well. You know, we’re highly sensual, sexual, we’re also very stubborn, and so on. So there’s that, and I play with that, play with that energy. I’m aware of that energy, I’m aware of my astral, aware of my human design, aware of my projector.
You know, I’m a projector, I have an open sacral, so my human designs is on projector. I’m aware of my being open for invitations, I’m aware of I’m listening to my intuition to respond to invitations. I’m aware of all that, but I’m also a Tantrika and I also love tantra. I’m also a tantra practitioner so I’m very much in my body.
I play with the layers of the five senses. I go very deeply into food. I love food. When I’m in a meal, I’m very grateful, I’m grateful and I’m blessed and I bless the food and I give gratitude for where it came from and all the people that brought it to me and I savor it and I put it in my mouth and I savor it, I smell it.
I love the way it smells, the way it tastes, and every moment I try to be present with it because that’s a part of tantra. It’s a part of tantra to be in that pleasurable state of the five senses and to listen to the sounds and the sights of the things and the touches so there’s a lot of tantra, it’s a lot of bodily sensation, a lot of bodily pleasure.
This is all, you guys know how I am with emotion, very sensitive to emotion. I believe in feeling vertically and living vertically, and living in the present moment as deeply as possible into the feeling that you’re experiencing. So that you’re not trying to move on from it, you’re not trying to get into the next moment, you’re not trying to get into what’s next, keep going, be busy, distract, try to avoid but you’re here.
You’re here and now in the present and living deeply vertically into that emotion. That’s another part of the layers, one of the layers that I play with. I love to play with the contrast of emotion, the depths of discomfort, right? What is sadness? What does it mean to have love and have loved and lost, right? What does that mean to grieve? But on the flip side, you have to have loved in order to have lost.
[0:26:36.0] So, that’s what I’m saying. Those are the layers you can play with those emotions, those emotions of depths and those are all the things but then practically, again, practically, “Who am I? Am I the emotion? Am I the discomfort of emotion or the comfort of emotion? The pleasure, the delight, or the discomfort, the dissatisfaction? Is that me? Am I the body? Am I the smell that I’m receiving from the food or the woman, the taste that I’m receiving from the food that the sound that I’m hearing? Am I the sound? Am I the touch?”
Layers. Layers, this is where we get into duality, brothers, because yes, I am the touch but I’m also not the touch.
If I am the touch, then without the touch, I suffer but I’m not the touch and I am the touch, I am both. I’m playing with the layer of the touch, I’m playing with the layer of the sound, I’m playing with the layer of the emotion. I am the emotion but I’m also not the emotion because I must not be the emotion in order for the emotion to fill the space.
The emptiness of not being the motion must exist within me for the emotion to fill the space and be there. I am both and that is the detachment. The detachment, the practical work here, brothers, is recognizing the answer to the question of, “Who am I?” is truly everything, but to recognize that everything is in layers.
And the depths of these layers, and to play with these layers and to look at these layers, and not to react to these layers but to respond to them from your core, from your essence, from “I am” from “I am the breath, I am the life, I am that” and that’s what I have for you today, brothers. Until next week, elevate your alpha.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:28:49.0] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoyed what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash your Alpha: Your Guide to Shifting to the Alpha Mindset, at the alphamalecoach.com/unleash.
[END]
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