8AM Podcast with Arlin Moore
Welcome to the 8AM Podcast with Arlin Moore. In this podcast, Arlin explores the stories of people who used their mindset to carry them from a place of hardship into a place where they are happy and fulfilled. Guests include celebrities, multi-millionaires, social media stars, artists, and everyday people who have found their internal happiness and created a life they perhaps at one point never thought possible. The hope is to provide the listener with actionable advice and inspiration to inspect their own mindset to make the changes they need to achieve success and fulfillment in their own life. If you'd like to support the show and learn more about 8AM, go to 8AMhouse.com or simply share an episode with a friend!
8AM Podcast with Arlin Moore
Touching The Unknown: My Story of Spiritual Re-Alignment
Corny Ai description: Ever wondered how a clothing brand could spark a journey of gratitude, creativity, and personal growth? Join me as I drive to the 8 AM warehouse and reflect on the transformative moments that shaped my consciousness and entrepreneurial spirit. From the humble beginnings of my YouTube channel to making my first $4,000 with the 8AM brand, I share candid stories that reveal the intricacies of my path. You'll also hear about the profound peace and spaciousness I experienced after attending an Eckhart Tolle event, a pivotal moment that left an indelible mark on my journey.
But my quest didn't stop at material success. Feeling an inexplicable emptiness, I was driven to seek deeper spiritual fulfillment. This led me to "Autobiography of a Yogi" and daily meditations at the Self-Realization Fellowship temple in Malibu. Despite achieving a dream-like lifestyle, the persistent stress nudged me towards an alignment coach named Alan, who helped illuminate my path further. Wrapping up the episode, I express heartfelt gratitude for your support and contemplate ways to make the Tribe Accelerator program accessible for everyone. Tune in to explore how spirituality, business, and community intertwine beautifully in my life.
Connect with me on IG: https://www.instagram.com/arlin
www.8AMapp.com
I am driving to the 8 am warehouse right now in my 8 am t-shirt at not 8 am it's 1.29 pm in the middle of the day, but you know what? It's 8 am somewhere right, I'm wearing my 8 am t-shirt, my 8 am hat, recording the 8 am podcast on my way to the 8 am warehouse where I'm meeting my 8am video creative, and I'm just excited to talk to you about the state of consciousness that I found myself in and possibly some points along the way that will help guide you along your path to a place of serenity and peace and beauty and harmony, because that's where I really feel like I am right now. I haven't been this well in quite a while. I would say in the last it's been like six or seven years since I felt like this good um in terms of my creative expression and my overall flow of the quality of my life and just the each moment. You know, it's really overwhelmingly beautiful how it's been unfolding and I'm just so excited to come from like such a genuine place at this moment of of like gratitude and of of of just awe of what's, of how everything has been unfolding, just awe of what's of how everything has been unfolding and I've done a lot in the last six months to get to this point, which I will go into in this episode. I've got a 42 minute drive, so this will be a 42 minute podcast. Perhaps, perhaps oh, my goodness, sorry, I just had a kombucha, sip of kombucha and I hiccuped. Perhaps it'll be a little bit shorter. We shall see. The moment will tell.
Speaker 1:But I think I want to start off with a little bit of an anecdote from when I was starting my YouTube channel. I was about six months into my YouTube channel and I had about 6,000 subscribers 7,000 subscribers or so and I was, you know, I hadn't been making money from it yet. I was just making videos every day, really happy and excited to just be creating every day while at college, eating every day while at college, and finally I decided that it was time for me to start a business and sell something to my followers, and it was. It was really at the point where I had delivered so much value to my following that people were just in complete gratitude of all the content that I was making and they wanted. They wanted some clothes, you know. They wanted some merch, they wanted some Arlen t-shirts. But being, you know an artist and, growing up with artist parents, I wanted to make it, you know, really, really cool. So I wanted to make a brand name and and I was also I'd also just done a year in business school.
Speaker 1:Actually, people don't really know this, but my first year at college at least first semester I forget if it was just, it might have been just one semester my first semester I was in business school. So I did one semester of business school and I dropped out. I didn't drop out, I transferred, but I basically dropped out of the business school because I hated it and I transferred into the film school, but I was simultaneously learning a lot about how to do business, because I was trying different businesses. I bought a Shopify course with my money that I earned from caddying which I immediately had to refund because my mom was upset that. I bought the course and I tried to start an app. I tried to do some social media marketing stuff. This is way back this is like 2016 when this was happening, and so, and so I basically was in this very creative mode for for six months, without focusing on all that business stuff, but I had a little. I knew what. I knew what I was doing.
Speaker 1:I had also done a six month or, yeah, probably about six month internship where I was doing customer service for the Shopify brand, and that was really pretty useful because when I decided to launch my clothing brand, which I decided to name 8AM, I knew what to do. I knew what to do, I knew exactly how to brand and and, uh, I knew exactly how to run a brand. So I started this brand and I made $4,000 in my first drop, my first drop. I made about $4,000 in a week and, man, I was just overwhelmed with gratitude. Overwhelmed with gratitude for the support and for, for, for what people you know, for what people had done. You know they had literally spent 50, 60 bucks on these t-shirts and it was my first ever successful business venture. I made about four thousand dollars, which was about I don't know two thousand dollars or so in in um profit, and I took that money and I went and I bought. I was, I was filming my videos on a cracked iPhone 5, and so I took all the money and I went straight to Best Buy and I bought a camera and I remember this. There's a video, this is. I may unlist this one on YouTube just for now, maybe put it in the notes of this podcast. I buy this camera 2017, with my money that I had earned from YouTube, from my clothing brand 8AM and, by the way, 8am I was uploading videos at 8 am. My initials are am.
Speaker 1:I liked the number eight because it was like my videos and my content was always about shifting your perspective. You know, it was like you look at eight, it's a finite number, but you turn your head a little bit and it represents the infinite, and so and by the way, if I pause during these episodes, I've just gotten back from Eckhart Tolle, not really, but a little while ago. I would say what was it? Maybe 10 days ago I was in Eckhart Tolle and so I. When you go and see a spiritual master like that, their energy can sort of, in a way, be transferred onto you and you, just like I, have this like profound spaciousness. You could probably feel it as I'm just speaking, like I'm not really thinking about much, I'm not worried about much, nothing's really of concern, I'm just kind of flowing and I I'd never mean I would just absorb a lot of Eckhart from the audio books, but being there live in person was truly amazing and I was so grateful to have experienced that.
Speaker 1:But back to the story. I get this camera and I am just overwhelmed with gratitude. You can see, I'm like guys. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much, thank you so much for supporting so that I can get this camera, so that I can make you guys more videos. And I was reflecting on this moment. Um, last night made me want to bring it up here because, you know, nowadays it's like when, when I'm selling stuff, you know when I'm selling things, when I'm selling 8am now I'm selling 8am clothes you know there's you don't, you don't want, I don't want to say I get jaded to it, but I've been doing this for so long that that original sense of gratitude you forget about it. But I think it's so key to just connect At least it feels key to me to connect to that, that original feeling of gratitude. Gratitude is so easily overlooked, especially the more success you have, because success starts to feel normal, which, on one hand, is good, because if success is you're just your average, you know it's good. But when success is new, you especially feel grateful because previously, you know I was, I had nothing, yeah, so I was just reflecting on that recently. But the main thing I want to talk about for the next 30 minutes or so is about how I got to this point At the beginning of this year.
Speaker 1:At the turn of the year, I was in a very funny place in life. I was doing something that would be hard to explain to someone who's completely new to following my brand. I was literally selling a product called how to Be a Dumbass Fruity Travel Hoe, and this was a. I mean, it sounds absolutely ridiculous and it was, but it was generating a lot of attention, but it was generating a lot of attention and it was generating a lot of revenue. The product was basically how to sell. It was a sales training using Instagram, using social media platforms, and the platforms themselves reward memetic content stuff that's viral stuff. That's funny stuff. That's viral stuff. That's funny stuff. That's stupid.
Speaker 1:And so what we did was we created this meme. This was myself and Nick Cosman. We created this meme travel hoe. Everyone wants to be a travel hoe. Right, get flown around the world, money shows up in your account by some random people and it's just. Life is just. You know, eat salad, you order room service, you live in hotels, you ride on jets, and that was my life for the past two years. And so we made this program how to be a travel hoe and we were selling it. It's like $5,000 just left and right and um, that was fun. You know that was very fun, but it wasn't. It wasn't what felt like something that was, uh, at the core of my essence. You know what I mean it. It was definitely like a fun project to work on.
Speaker 1:I had a lot of fun projects the past couple of years. I had tribe accelerator. Hundreds of men around the world went through this training. Hundreds of men went through the week three on how to build your Instagram, how to brand yourself, and I taught everything from lighting to color theory to you know the fundamentals of photography, but specifically how to do it by mixing in psychology and what I call neuro branding, you know, which is a way in which you take photos of yourself that will make anybody attracted to you. So I taught this to hundreds of guys. You can see the blueprint all over the internet. You can see a guy who's been through tribe accelerator. It's very clear, and so that was a fun project. Then there was Maxie, who's been through Tribe Accelerator. It's very clear, and so that was a fun project.
Speaker 1:Then there was Maxi. Maxi was something I began in 2020. I actually had the initial idea for Maxi when I was probably around when I was around 2018. So I was about 21 years old. I think I first had the idea maybe 20 years old to do to create this app that would essentially bake in all of the practices that I had learned that had gotten me out of darkness. And in 2020, which was, you know, several months after one of the darker, darker moments of my life, after a really dark breakup, getting cheated on and all that I built Maxi, and this was also in the midst of the pandemic, so I was just locked in my room building this product and Maxi went on to help thousands of people around the world. Thousands of people changed their lives using this tool. But as I started building Maxi in 2020 and Tribe Accelerator in 2022, and then doing some other side quests with Travel, ho and crypto and you know I made a lot of money in crypto. I lost a lot of money, but I also made a pretty good chunk of money in crypto I just started to feel like something was missing. Also in 2022, and I've made several podcasts about this that you could go back and listen to.
Speaker 1:I went through a period of exploration, re-exploration into religion, where I started to just think a little more in. I would call it like outside inside the box thinking, because I was just open to the idea that maybe, maybe I was missing something with my spiritual understanding of the world that had really come to crystallize. When I was in college, you know, and I was studying philosophy as a concentration and I was reading Eckhart Tolle and I was reading spiritual texts and debating religious people and reading you, you know, it was reading scripture, various scriptures, islamic scriptures and Jewish scriptures and Hindu scriptures and Christian and I I was. I reached a point around 20, probably around 2019 really, when I just felt like I understood the world, I understood truth and I operated from this place of truth from about 2019 to 2020, 2022, midway through I got a little bit lazy. I knew that meditation was important, but I had gotten a little bit lazy with the meditation and then I started to wonder maybe there's something more, Maybe, maybe Jesus is the only way to salvation, heaven and hell, and and the Bible is true. What if the Hasidic Jews, the Orthodox Jews, have the real truth. What if the Islams you know, the, the devout Islams, the Orthodox Islams have the real truth and I just was born in the wrong city? I was born in the wrong place. I was like you know what I'm going to explore. Maybe you know, I was raised Jewish right. Maybe I was just born Jewish and I have to learn about Jesus, you know. So I dove deep and I spoke to countless people from all, from various faiths, who I would consider to be incredibly intelligent. I respect them, I still respect them, and I learned and I absorbed and I got to a place of of understanding of where, where these people are coming from, who, for example, truly believe that you must acknowledge Jesus Christ as your savior savior, or you're going to hell. I understood these people. I got to a place where I really fully understood that frame.
Speaker 1:Then, around November, october, november 2023, after a year or so of exploring, I opened up a book by Sam Harris who, if you read philosophy, you probably know who he is. I opened up a book by Sam Harris who, if you read philosophy, you probably know who he is. But Sam Harris is a famous new atheist and he is very prominent in tearing down religion as dangerous as unnecessary for determining moral values. He has an amazing book called the Moral Landscape that I was reading, where he says that there's a way that science can determine human moral values. It's really good read, so I picked that up.
Speaker 1:Within a couple days of reading Sam Harris, I was right back down to the ground. I was like, okay, I don't know, I forget what the truth is, I forgot, I didn't know how to determine what was really true about God, about the universe. I had no idea what to believe in, and that made me feel pretty lost and I was looking for things externally to grasp onto. Well, maybe it's Christianity, maybe it's this Sam Harris moral view, maybe maybe it's this, maybe it's this thing, this new course, this. Maybe I'm just not selling the right program, maybe I'm not just maybe I'm not making enough money. You know, I really started to question how to get fulfillment and I I would try it a lot of different things, tried a lot of different things. And then I picked up this book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.
Speaker 1:I had read this book in, probably around 2017. I picked it up for some reason it was just in my parents' house. It's around Christmas time, pick it up, start reading it and I'm like, wait a second, wait a second Like this is resonating. This makes sense, this makes sense, this is like this, this is real, this is the truth. And I really I I didn't just feel it, I knew it, I knew it to be the truth. And you know, there's a quote in the Bible that says um, speaking about this with my friend Jesse, there's a quote in the Bible that says and I'm paraphrasing here, but something along the lines of you know, you either have a yes or you have a no. Everything else is total confusion, and confusion is of the devil. And so what this means, to me at least, is that when you know right, when you are rooted in the kingdom of heaven, when you are rooted in clarity, when you're rooted in God consciousness, there's no wondering, there is no thinking about it, there just is truth. You just know that something is true. So I began reading this book again.
Speaker 1:And then Chloe and I, and then Chloe and I my beautiful girlfriend Chloe we get this apartment it's in Malibu in California we move in, and the first week we move in it is beautiful. You know, it really is like I was just beside myself. I mean, this was like a dream to have a place like this, overlooking the ocean, near hiking trails, in California Three bedrooms, 3,100 square feet. Just I mean just wondering how this all even happened. You know, how did we get to this? This is just so beautiful.
Speaker 1:The first week that I was there, my friend Milan, who is a very successful entrepreneur you can look him up his name is Milan Ray. He's a co-founder of this company called Parker, and Parker is a software product for e-commerce businesses Some might call it a digital bank and they've raised over a quarter billion dollars. Milan's like 24, 25 years old. You see in his co-founder is 28, 29. These guys are very impressive. Milan is a monk. Milan meditates four or five hours a day and he came over after we did a workout one day.
Speaker 1:We're driving back to my new apartment and we drive by this temple. We look out the window, see this temple. I'm like, oh my God, wait a second. What is that? Milan looks at it, he goes. I long looks at it and goes I. That's SRF. I'm like SRF, what is SRF? He goes. That's Self Realization, fellowship. That temple is Paramahansa Yogananda's headquarters in the United States. I'm like whoa, wait, a second, yogananda you mean the author of the autobiography of a yogi, which I was reading exactly a week before I moved into this place has his founding headquarters that he built in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, whenever it was and you're saying, I moved in next door to it, literally within walking distance, and Milan says, yeah, and sure enough, we open up the book and you can open up. If you get the book Autobiography of a Yogi, you will see the Self-Realization Fellows in there. It's truly amazing. It's, it's, it's right there. I moved in next to it. I didn't even know. I'm like that's god, that's fate, that is the hand of god guiding me to something, some truth here.
Speaker 1:So I start going to sunday, attending the meditations in the evenings, and I start meditating every single day, every day. Once again, I had gotten off of it. I'm reading spiritual book after spiritual book, but still I felt pretty empty. I felt I was really feeling like I was looking for something and there was pain and there was stress and struggle and I was selling this program on my Instagram. But it didn't feel right. Didn't feel right, and so I'm selling this program on Instagram.
Speaker 1:You know this course, which is basically my mentorship group, arlen's group and I just had to take a pause and I was like I can't, something isn't right here, and I felt this stress in my chest. I would wake up in the middle of the night, my chest would be hurting because I was so stressed and I didn't know why. I was like is it Chloe? Is it money? Is it business? Like what is it? And I just kept following the path, kept going to the ashram, kept meditating every day, and then I got this mentor.
Speaker 1:This mentor's name is Alan and Alan is an alignment coach and he basically he was recommended to me, actually through Yasin, and Yasin said this guy, he can pull that knife out of your chest that you're feeling, because that's what it felt like. It felt like I had a knife just inserted in my chest and it was causing all this pain. So I get on with Alan, we do a few calls. This dude is really locked in. I mean, he really helped me to face some of the emotions that I was experiencing, helped me to face some of the emotions that I was experiencing and the thoughts that I was experiencing, and to process them and to get to a, you know, a place in my, my body that I felt. I felt started to feel better, started feeling more clear.
Speaker 1:What I realized is that I really wanted to make music. I had been telling myself for really over a decade that I was going to make a lot of money, and then I was going to make music. I pushed the ultimate end goal over the $20 million mark horizon. I told myself I'm going to make $20 million. After I do that, then then I will make music, then I will make music, then I will make music. But of course, that cognitive horizon doesn't work like that, because what I realized with Alan is that the thing I needed to do is make the music and that's how I'm gonna get to the 20 million. So so I start making music.
Speaker 1:First song I make is called wait for it. It's, it's a hit. At some point in the song I just heard I just kind of like downloaded it from the ether Chloe's voice saying welcome to 8am. Right, open your eyes, wait for it, there's nowhere to go. Wait for it. Welcome to 8 am. Right, open your eyes, wait for it. There's nowhere to go. Wait for it. Welcome to 8 am.
Speaker 1:And I realized actually about a month after I had no idea I made this song, if you listen to it it's Wait For it. It's on Apple Music, it's on Spotify. Listen to this song. You will see that this song is really what opened up. It was almost like I was channeling a divine revelation of what I needed to do. And what I needed to do was to bring back the heart and soul of what I did from the beginning, where I was overwhelmed with gratitude when I sold some t-shirts to my fans and I was creating every day and I was designing and my mom's a painter, my dad's a designer and a photographer.
Speaker 1:I grew up with this. I grew up playing piano from the age of five and all of a sudden well, not all of a sudden, it was pretty gradual as I was just exploring, I realized that every project that I had been building and working on all over the past several years all was the whole time could have been an extension of 8am. So I have 8am clothing. Now I have the 8am app, which is on the app store. 8am app features maxi. Maxi is like the Siri to the iPhone for the 8am app. 8am app has community. It has a productivity tool which is maxi.
Speaker 1:You can rewire your brain, change your thinking patterns to make them more successful. Thinking patterns, shape your reality using your thoughts, meditations of surrender and, of course, there was tribe tribe accelerator. What about tribe? Well, that brings us to this point the show where I realized that I didn't really want to teach people how to take photos anymore of themselves. I didn't want to teach guys how to travel. I didn't want to teach even men men specifically, you know how to be more socially calibrated using, you know whatever social dynamics stuff is in tribe. Although that stuff's very useful, it just wasn't aligned with what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:What I wanted to do is to help people reach a level of transformation that I had reached, and so I decided to reposition my school into the school of 8am, the school of the unknown, and in this program, what I'm doing is I'm taking guys through this process of touching the bedrock of the kingdom of heaven within themselves. It's nothing external, there's nothing external that you can get that will truly help your life. Everything external is fleeting, everything external is impermanent. Everything external is a model, some guru who is trying to sell you the school of unknown is how to go within yourself to bring something from the unknown into the known world. There's no model. There's no, there's not even a curriculum. It's going to be live, it's going to be out of the moment. There will be no plan, there will be no agenda, unless an agenda presents itself in the moment, as it's being created, and it's going to be a live group training, group school. So this is all under 8 am.
Speaker 1:8 am, at its core, is about bringing things from the unknown into the known. It's about art, it's about creative expression and I couldn't be more excited about it. So all of this, if you want to look at this, by the way, is on 8amhousecom. 8amhousecom. You can scroll down. You can see how you can get access to the School of the Unknown. There's three different levels. There's one-on-one, if you wanted to actually talk to me one-on-one once a week. There's also the group calls, which will be once a week. And then there's the lecture series where, if you just want the course itself, without the group or the training, you just want the course, you can get that as well. There's also the 8 am app if you're on more of a budget or if you just want to add that onto your cart, because I use the 8 am app to this day. I use Maxi to this day as a planning tool.
Speaker 1:And, of course, there's the clothing and the new collections coming out I'm very excited for, not to mention there's music. So there's so much. There's so much on the horizon, and I've come to this place of total clarity, total alignment. I've arrived. I literally feel as though I've arrived, and what's funny is if you listen to wait for it, it was there the whole time. It was there the entire time. Open your eyes. There's nowhere to go. Wait for it. I didn't even know what it meant when I recorded the song. I only know what it meant now.
Speaker 1:So I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I hope that it was useful to you. I hope that you got some Eckhart Tollean energy from this episode. Hope that it inspires you in some way and I will see you in the next episode. If you have any questions about 8am school of unknown, about clothing, you can simply message the 8am house Instagram account, which is 8am underscore house, or just. There's also the 8am house Instagram. I'm probably just going to switch up the usernames. Um, and that should be it. So I appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your support, appreciate everyone who listens to this. What also helps. If you do want to kind of help spread this message is just sharing this episode on your story. Or if you end up getting a t-shirt from the 8am store or a hat which I got my 8am distressed hat right here that I'm wearing, just getting some dope content. You know, I might even put tribe accelerator out for free. So you guys can. So you guys can really, uh, you know, those who couldn't afford it, you know could, could learn how to get cool content in your 8 am. So that's it, that is it. I wish you the best, have a great day and I'll see you in the next 8 am podcast.