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
How Meditation Has Transformed my Life
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Good morning everybody. Welcome back to the 8am podcast. I am just coming off a early morning, not so early, 8 in the morning, I guess. Well, of course, 8am, right, 8am spin class with one of my buddies that I grew up with in Boston. Just for a quick night here, boston, just for a quick night here. And it was really funny that my friend I was just who lives in Boston I was like I was like hey, I'm in Boston, I'm like what are you up to? And he was busy last night. But he was like, yeah, I'm doing this like spin class tomorrow morning with my girlfriend. And I was like oh, you mean like SoulCycle, like you know, it's like all girls and they play like dance music and they kind of you know, they sit up and they stand up and they sit down, and they stand up and sit down, stand up, and it's like this whole kind of you know, I don't know, it's just like a, it's a girl's thing. I'm like so it's like a SoulCycle class. And he's like no, no, no, it's like a soul cycle class. And he's like no, no, no, it's not, it's not. And it was a different thing. It was called bespoke or bespoke or whatever. Um, and yeah, I just got out of the class and it was the same exact thing as soul cycle. It was funny because my, you know, my friend, like he's, like yeah, he's, he's a manly guy and uh, you didn't want to, I don't know, it was just funny that you said it wasn't like soul cycle, but it was exactly. But, yeah, it was good, it was good. It's good to always good to see you know, my, my friends I grew up with and, um, yeah, the.
Speaker 1:The reason I'm actually here is because last night there was a Yogananda monk, a 45-year disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda, who's been a monk for 45 years and following the teachings of Yogananda. He was in Boston and I just by. I try to pay attention to the signs that life is putting in front of me and there was just a. There was a sign, um, in front of the old South church. I was, I was at a van go exhibit last weekend in Boston with my parents, uh, at the museum of fine arts. And I was, I was with my mom, we were walking by Copley square in Boston and we, uh, we, we passed by this, this uh sign next to the old South Church, which is built in 1660 or something like that, very old. You know Boston Church and we passed by it and it is beautiful and there's a sign in front that says there's a picture of Yogananda, who, obviously, if you've been following me a while, you know I've been following Yogananda's teachings for like quite a while now I guess not necessarily seven years, but I read his book for the first time seven years ago and now you know I do for the last like year now I've doing the uh formal like meditation technique lessons that yogananda came to the us to disseminate. Um, and he came to the us in 1920. He, his mission, which was given to him essentially by his master, his guru, uh, his mission was to unite Eastern and Western religion and spirituality and to show that they're all you know, that Christ was basically a teacher of the same thing that Krishna was a teacher of, which is, you know, uniting with God and divine truth. And so that's why I came here last night.
Speaker 1:I came to see that talk and to see one of the monks. Part of the reason I made the trek up from from Cape Cod, as I'm here for just a short time, visiting my parents part of the reason I made that trek was because, you know I was, I was going to Lake Shrine, which is like one of the sort of headquarter locations um of the world in and of the world. I was going there because I lived it's in the Pacific Palisades in California and I was living in the Palisades and I was going there pretty much every Sunday and they have these monks that wear literally, you know, orange robes and some of them been there for like 30, 40, 50 years and they, yeah, they give these talks every single Sunday, they host meditations, and so I've really been kind of missing that, to be honest, and it was really nice to tap in and to see one of the monks. Actually, a couple of the monks were there and they gave a free talk and it was really nice. The message was it was more of an intro talk for, like, newcomers and new people and getting people kind of interested in in Yogananda's teachings. And you know, maybe if someone had heard of him or read the autobiography of a yogi or heard that it was like Steve Jobs' favorite book or George Harrison's favorite book, you know they would have shown up and you know, just learned kind of about the intro, the ins and outs of the intro to meditation, which is cool, and it's always interesting how, like you know when you do a like, like when you do an intro class to something you know because obviously I've been pretty in-depth this like I do the kind of in-depth teachings um, it's interesting how, like a master can make it, like a master, like the guy who's who's who's talking, can make it relatable to people who are just beginning, but also people who've been doing it for you know, decades even, and I did find some really nice messages there. Plus, just being in the old South church in Boston, like 400 year old church, was really really cool.
Speaker 1:Right now, as I'm talking to you, I'm walking. I'm in the Boston seaport. I was in Southie in Boston, that's where the class was. And now I'm talking to you, I'm walking, I'm in the Boston seaport. I was in Southie in Boston, I was, that's where the class was. And I'm now I'm walking past what's called Fort Point, which is on the the channel here in the Boston Harbor.
Speaker 1:There's some people out in a rowing boat and there's actually a lot of people rowing. Rowing is a big sport in in Boston, so it looks like there's a couple row teams practicing um, which is cool. Actually, is this even oh, it might even be like a tourist thing? I don't think it's. Yeah, I don't. Is it a team? I don't know, I'm looking, I'm just looking at it. It might be a team. Yeah, it might be a team. Okay, there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on. Right now I'm looking at like another workout class to my right Looks kind of just like a that's to my right Looks kind of just like a Dude. Boston is a fit city. Everyone here is just like getting after it in some way.
Speaker 1:But yeah, anyway, let me try to stay focused and get back to the topic. So the topic is basically the meditation, right? Yeah, so the main topic, the main lesson or the main takeaway from the class last night was that it was basically about how meditation has transformed your life. So I thought in this episode I would kind of go into how meditation has transformed my life and and and maybe it can inspire you to take it more seriously or do it more, and I really can kind of test, give a testimony that the more seriously that I've taken meditation, the better my life has got, and that's because it's really the core tenant, the core thing that meditation does is, if you think about it every day, our energy is like coming from within our body and of course we're sustained by a lot of different things, like you know, different food, water, etc.
Speaker 1:But we're obviously sustained by more than that, like there's obviously like a universal current of of energy that's kind of animating our body. And if you, if you kind of sense into that that like there's, there's this energy that's animating our body, that energy, you know, throughout the day, is going outward. It's coming, you know, into our body somehow from like the ether, from from the universe, and, of course, you know, intermixing with, like the food and water that we drink and everything from the material world. But then, for the most part, like all of our energy is spent going out of our body, and so it's pretty interesting to kind of think about that alone. Like energy is just entering our body and going out, and what you do in meditation is you basically reverse the flow, so you know when.
Speaker 1:If you think about it, like most of the time, if all your energy is going one way, it's kind of like you know. If, if you are only ever doing like, uh, it's kind of like I don't. I can't think of a good analogy right now, like it's kind of like if you're only doing one like something one way your whole life and you never thought to do it the other way, right? Or imagine if you're only just exhaling your whole life and you never inhaled, or at least if you were exhaling like a lot more than you were inhaling, you kind of end up in balance, right. So meditation is about just taking 30 to 60 minutes a day.
Speaker 1:You know, I like to do like 30 minutes in the morning, maybe like 10, 15 minutes sometime in the middle of the day that's more rare, if I'm being completely honest, um, and then sometime before bed and you just basically see what you can do in the way of reversing the flow of energy back from going out of your senses, you know, out into the world, out into your work, out into speaking like words at your mouth and vibration, going out your mouth to reversing the flow and sending it more inward. So back through your body, up, you know, the back of your spine, and then up and even into your brain. So that's kind of like the main thing that meditation is supposed to do, and you can kind of imagine the effects of doing this are pretty profound. I've found the number one thing that I've picked up on, when you know, in my practice of meditation is, the more consistently I do it, I just I get like a very subtle but over time extremely tangible and and often sometimes you know, it leads to like kind of breakthroughs where the the energy you feel is actually less, uh, subtle and more like drastic, but over time it's pretty tangible that there's like a a very calm increase in peace and joy that you feel in your life and so like that that's kind of the biggest thing. You you move from operating from this like restless. You know I have to get this done and that done and talk to this person and make sure this person's okay and do this and that and like get all these things in order, and you go kind of from that to just reversing the flow and feeling a bit more inner peace, um, and you feel that more and more and more the more you meditate, and it increases. And then, as I said, sometimes you kind of go through a thing where you feel like a drastic increase, like you have some kind of a breakthrough, where something happens.
Speaker 1:Typically, I found that these breakthroughs, what happens is like you feel a buildup of energy because you know you need to do something and you've kind of been avoiding it for a while and then all of a sudden you decide to do that thing and that like, even if you've been putting it off for months or even years, and you finally do it, it's kind of like a. It's kind of like I've noticed that like 90, 95% of the time your life is about like surrendering to the external external maybe not 95, maybe it's. It's probably more 50, 50, but it feels like 90, 95 or you know, at least 80 of the time. You're more so just going with the flow of life. Like things kind of come up and you sort of just like respond to them and and, uh, like I think the more present you are, the more you realize like your life is kind of just this big surrender, um to like things that are kind of put on your plate in front of you. But a lot of the other time there's things that are boiling up inside you, things you you know you need to do. That like almost like the current or the flow of the universe is like telling you to do this thing and you just keep ignoring it and keep ignoring it and keep ignoring it and it's coming up, it's boiling up, and sometimes it's about releasing the thing that makes you think that you have to do something, but other times, I think, it's about actually doing the thing that keeps boiling up over and over again, and so that's been a that, that's. That's been the thing where, like, if we focus on that for a moment, like just doing the thing that you know you're supposed to do but you've been avoiding, like for a couple examples I can think of.
Speaker 1:Like one of that, one of those big energetic like unblock it unblocks, was when I started posting videos on YouTube and recording content in 2016. It was something that I wanted to do for like seven months, but I was afraid of what people would think, and you know I just I kept ruminating on it and avoiding it and procrastinating and coming up with excuses, and it just kept coming up, kept coming up. I was like I know I have to do this, I don't have to do this, and I finally did it and it was just like a whole new level of energy, like a whole different plane of reality, and you know I this was. I have to attribute a lot of this to meditation. You know there's it's like I I have been meditating and the thing is you, as you meditate you become more and more aware of these more subtle like kind of instincts and inspirations of things that you know you have to do, whereas before you know you're so distracted that like these inner pulls, like these inner kind of whisperings, they you're able to sort of ignore them because they're not that loud. But when you're meditating more and more and more you're able to tap in and those noises, like those subtle noises, just become louder because you're you're more internally focused. So that that's been like a big thing.
Speaker 1:I found a big uh, how meditation has transformed my life. Number one I felt like a drastic increase in overall peace and joy. That happens pretty slowly. I mean you can definitely notice it. Like if you do it for like a week, you know you're just gonna be more calm generally and more aware and less reactive. But I've also found that there's things where you kind of have the like it leads to these massive unlocks of different levels of energy and sometimes that like those unlocks can be, you know, they can lead to like massive outward success as well.
Speaker 1:Another thing I found is like sometimes you know you might have like discomfort or pain in your body, and the more that you focus on that through meditation and you kind of you bathe whatever pain you're feeling, whether it's like a discomfort in your chest or in your gut, like just a bad feeling, you can't really pinpoint what it is Doing. Meditation, you know, brings more awareness around it and it might not relieve the pain, could even be like an injury, you know, might not relieve it immediately. But I think this is what you know people mean when they talk about like healing, like healing of God. What we're really talking about with meditation is like the, the light of God that is within you, that Christ and all the masters have said is within you, and just taking that, that awareness and that light and shining it on whatever pains you might have in life and so, yeah, so that's that's like I guess I can give like a small testimony to the healing.
Speaker 1:Like I had this knee injury for a while and, um, I'm almost positive, I never I got in. I got it looked at at a doctor but they didn't see anything. But that was also after like two years of me intentionally trying to heal it. Um, I only went because my girlfriend and my mom actually were like begging me to go have it looked at because they just, I don't know, they just wanted me to have it looked at and of course the doctor didn't find anything and then, like a couple of weeks after that it was totally healed. So, um, but but uh, yeah, I mean I had this, like you know, torn meniscus type thing and it was super painful and, um, I just I just knew internally that I could just heal it with my mind and that I don't want to have this podcast be like your permission to just not go to a doctor ever again.
Speaker 1:But I do believe that you know, if it. You know, if you try to like heal stuff on your own at first, if it. You know, if you try to like heal stuff on your own at first, often you find that you're a lot more powerful than you think you are. So meditation has helped me like literally heal what I would perceive to have been a torn meniscus. You know, to the point where I'm not really limited to do anything Like honestly, I still feel it like a little bit. It's a little tweak here and there, but the doctors don't see anything in the scans and uh, yeah, it's, it's. I can lift weights, I can run, I can do anything, um, so, yeah, that's, that's been kind of, uh, that's been. That's been another thing. You know, um, divine healing, right.
Speaker 1:So let me see what else uh, I'm pulling up to my hotel right now, um, as I uh get back from my workout, I'm staying at a really awesome hotel. If you're ever in Boston and you have an Amex and you want to book a nice hotel for yourself, I recommend this hotel. It's called the Langham L A NA-N-G-H-A-M and it is like, uh, it's definitely a five-star hotel. It's a pretty, pretty solid area, right across the street from Equinox, but they also have a really good gym Um, uh, and they have like a techno gym gym in the in the building. Um, so I'm going through these revolving doors, um, and, yeah, I guess we'll just kind of wrap up the episode there. Uh, hope that you guys enjoyed this. If you did, send me a? Um DM on Instagram and uh, have a great rest of your day, all right, bye-bye.