Know Thyself - E2 - André Duqum: The Journey to Knowing Thyself

Starting point is 00:00:00 I realized that achieving the comforts of life through a means of external or outward success, it's nice. But what became clearly more important to me was this process of self-realization. The spiritual path to me is the realization that you don't need anything externally to be fully in your joy. If you know thyself, then you know the world around you. And I don't have a PhD in XYZ, but I can tell you what I have and more than most is a genuine seeking. Welcome to the Know Thyself podcast where every single week we have the opportunity and privilege and honor really for me to sit down across from somebody that I really admire, really respect and somebody that can bring immense value into your life and mine to live a more liberated, joyful human experience. Today's episode is actually just going to be me. I'm going to be interviewing myself, so to speak. The whole purpose of this episode in particular is to give you guys a little bit of an insight into my story.

Starting point is 00:01:06 why I'm creating the show, what to look forward to in the future, my excitement for how things are going to be unfolding and to really go from there. So some of you may be familiar with various different parts of my story, maybe not. And we're going to be going over some of that today and the lessons that I've learned throughout the process with the aim to provide you with some value throughout this podcast. So getting to the point where I'm actually starting this podcast has been a beautiful culmination of many years, of many different iterations of my life and story and who I've been. And it feels really exciting to get to this point where I'm really starting to share a lot more because I have realized that I have a lot of valuable insights for the world. And also

Starting point is 00:01:45 not just myself, but my passion for asking questions and interviewing individuals can really support people unlock things that they didn't even know that we're holding them back in life or to give people a new level of insight that can really support them on their journey. And it feels extremely fulfilling for me to walk this path alongside you. So as we go on this journey together, hopefully you guys get to see that this isn't just another podcast to me. It's really my life. It's a culmination of my desires, my passions, my skill sets, all kind of boiling together to create this offering for the world, if you will. And that's what it really feels like to me. So when I say that this isn't just another podcast, what I mean by that is I have devoted my life to the

Starting point is 00:02:28 proliferation of wisdom to reach all walks of life. and to do my best to support individuals and be a guiding light for them to find their own truth and realize their own true essence. I've always been somebody that's been a seeker on the path and wanted to reduce human suffering. And this podcast is an amazing format for me to dive deep into topics in a world that is filled with 30, 60 second pieces of content and entertainment. I want to create soul food in the form of the show in the form of this podcast to people that can tune in and get real value that is applicable to your life that you can utilize to then grow on your own individual financial, spiritual, mental, physical journey. So how did I come to this

Starting point is 00:03:11 realization and why is it important to me now to be starting the show? I have gotten to this point in my life where I feel like my cup is overflowing. I feel an abundance to so many different areas in my life. And for me to reach the next level of impact that I feel like I can have on this planet, I want to use the medium of content creation and podcasting in this video and audio format to create a tool that can be useful for so many individuals regardless of where you're at in your path. So let's dive right in and reflect a little bit on my journey and go from there. So starting way back, I suppose, as a kid, I was always somebody that my mom told me. I was a very curious kid. I would always ask a lot of questions and I would always question authority.

Starting point is 00:03:51 I would be somebody that had a lot of energy and was a troublemaker at times for sure. One of my early memories, I think, was picking up a book at the age of 15. It was called Born with a Question in Your Heart by Oshow. And I think just the title really resonated with me. I've always been somewhat of a curious seeker just for life and not necessarily always spiritual things, but very inquisitive in trying to dig deeper into the appearance of what something may come off as. and I think that I really rustled with my own ignorance earlier in life than most. And that led me open to asking questions.

Starting point is 00:04:28 I heard early on that questions are the genesis of focus. So what questions are you asking yourself? That was what I was thinking at the time. If the quality of my life is really determined by the quality of my questions, then what are the quality of my questions? Are they good questions? Or are they questions that kind of don't really get to the depth of things? Do they not really move the needle in the sense of creating true transformation in life?

Starting point is 00:04:51 I started questioning the status quo. I started questioning the things that I was just kind of brought up to believe growing up in a typical Midwestern household. And that goes into every area of life, from money to relationships, to business, to mindset, to what's possible with what you want to create in your life. And I think very often in life, we grow up and we have our life almost cut out for us. We grow up in a household where we're expected to graduate from high school, go to college, find a degree, get a job, and work for 40 years of your life. And retire when you're 60 years old. The economy and life is moving at a much different pace than it used to. And currently the education system are really built to create workers in life. And I realized that I didn't want to play a part of that system.

Starting point is 00:05:36 At around 16, I got introduced to a few individuals that really started me on my growth mindset journey. Now, what I mean by that is I met a couple individuals ages 18 to 22 who were making anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 a month. Every single month. Like, that's a lot of money. And it really opened my mind up to an alternative lifestyle. And I started asking questions like, hey, how are you making that much money? You're living life by design.

Starting point is 00:06:02 You're like just graduating high school and you're getting to travel the world and do what you want, when you want, with who you want. It was very attractive to me at the time. So after meeting a few of these key individuals at this time in my life, I really shifted my lens on a reality that you have to listen to people who have what you want in life. And it sounds kind of obvious, but realistically, if I want to create a life of true freedom, joy, liberation, I'm not going to ask somebody who is miserable and depressed. If I want to make a lot of money, I'm not going to get advice from somebody that is broke.

Starting point is 00:06:34 It doesn't mean that you'd be disrespectful or not humble towards those individuals. But if I want to get in shape, I'm going to listen to someone. somebody who's in shape. It's as simple as that. And when it came to this period of my life, where it was really more so about achievement and success-oriented, money-driven desires, it put me down this path of becoming the best version of myself. I got obsessed with this idea that if I apply myself in life to the right things and do the right actions, I can keep getting better. Even if it's just getting 1% better every single day, at the end of the year, I've gotten 365% better. And so at the time, I got introduced to so many beautiful different

Starting point is 00:07:10 technologies and books and individuals and courses and different programs. I started reading individuals like Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie and this guy Kevin Trudeau at the time who's in jail now, but he had some valuable information. And I would literally come home from school and spend hours transcribing different audiobooks, read different books like how to win friends and influence people and the loss of success and think and grow rich. And this opened my eyes up to living life by design. and that there is so much more to life than what we've been told and what we've been taught in school. The traditional school system really teaches us what to think. And these individuals were teaching me how to think and that if I changed my perception on reality,

Starting point is 00:07:54 I will get a completely different outcome in life. So I became obsessed with learning. I went on this journey over the next four years of trying to become the best version of myself. From 16 to 20, I really became a student of life. It was just around this time I was coming home from school and realizing that I wanted to learn about the law of attraction and laws of success and manifestation instead of just calculus and biology, which are great, but it wasn't pulling me the same way that these other topics of life were. So at that time, at 16, I got involved with this network marketing business and it really

Starting point is 00:08:25 put me on this journey of self-development. It was a business disguised as a self-development course essentially because I was tasked essentially with learning interpersonal relationship skills, learning how to manage money, traveling, public speaking, a lot of these skill sets that are so valuable, like how to become an excellent communicator in work dynamics or various different relationships in your life. How important that is and how it applies to so many different avenues in your life. And to this day, I attribute a lot of my success to that period of time where I was really a student of the game of life. It was around this time where I traveled to Vegas over seven times before I was 19, and going to these various different personal development conferences learning from people like Bob Proctor,

Starting point is 00:09:08 Eric Thomas, went to multiple Tony Robbins unleashed the power within events. And yeah, I started applying a lot of the things that I was actually learning in my life and getting some pretty awesome results. So right after high school at 18, I moved out and moved to East Lansing, Michigan, where I went to Michigan State University for about two weeks and dropped out because I realized it just wasn't it. It wasn't it for me. I just was learning the same things I was learning in high school. all these prerequisites. And I just realized that for me and what I wanted to do in the path that I wanted to take in life, I did not need a degree. And I just realized that my time was much better spent

Starting point is 00:09:42 learning about these other things in life instead of what the school system was trying to teach me. So at this time, I was starting to apply a lot of these things to my life and started to get some results. But around 19, after I dropped out of school, I was splitting an apartment that was 800 bucks a month with three people and it certainly wasn't the nicest place ever. I was waking up and I felt like there was just more out of life that I wanted. I wasn't waking up super excited to be in the business that I was in at the time and I knew that there had to be more to life than the way that I was living. So I really was open to a big shift happening in my life and I didn't know what it would be, but my journey has unfolded so beautifully since then. I met this individual at that time who was a six ascendant

Starting point is 00:10:22 from the Shaolin Temple. And he did an energetic reading on me in front of, I don't know, about 50 people at the time that really blew me away. He gave this energetic reading essentially just like looking at me, standing next to me, and examining different things that were going on with my health, my mindset, even my dreams. And it opened my eyes up immensely to what's possible within human consciousness if you purify your system enough. And unknowingly at the time, it really sent me down this path of,

Starting point is 00:10:52 spiritual transformation. And this individual was somebody that had lived a life of purity, you could say, and had purified his consciousness enough to be a very bright light that allowed me to see parts of myself that I didn't realize were holding me back. I started asking him a lot of questions, like what was his diet, what was his mindset like, how does he operate in the world, his beliefs on various different things. And I realized that I wanted to raise my consciousness. And there's many different ways to do that. One was diet. I went on a completely whole food plant. based diet and started cutting out processed junk in my diet and cut out gluten. And there were some things that really allowed me energetically in my body to feel much more vibrant and alive. I also

Starting point is 00:11:33 started going on different meditation retreats and I went on a couple of opasanas, which are these 10-day silent meditation retreats. I did one in Michigan and one in Josha tree here in California. And that energetically really reset my system in a whole new way. I felt like a rebirth almost happened in my life because we live these lives filled with so much noise and it's like we are unconsciously just kind of sleepwalking through life. I saw this on many different levels viscerally where I felt that most of the decisions I was making in my life were simply being made because I had always made them. And if I wanted to experience a new level of vibrancy of life, then I would have to change who I am because our external reality as within so without is simply a match to

Starting point is 00:12:17 what is happening within. And so I went on this journey of purification, from my mind to my body, to my soul. There's this old hermetic saying that essentially says, you escape the pains of the lower planes by operating on the higher ones. And that if I could truly know myself, know thyself, I could experience a new level of inner freedom, and that would be reflected in my external reality. So I went on a beautiful journey thereafter. I realized that achieving the comforts of life through a means of external or outward success. It's nice. But what became clearly more important to me

Starting point is 00:12:52 was this process of self-realization. I realized that everything that I wanted externally on the appearance may have been the girl, the car, the house, the X, Y, Z, fill in the blank. But there was a deeper desire underneath that. And it wasn't that I wanted the quote unquote thing. It was what I thought the feeling of the thing would bring me. So I realized that it wasn't the quote unquote car that I wanted.

Starting point is 00:13:14 It was the feeling of enjoying myself or having thrill or excitement. Spiritual path to me is the realization that you don't need anything externally to be fully in your joy. And it's a very liberating way to view life. So when I was 19, I moved from Michigan to Los Angeles. And the reason for this was I just felt that there was a lot more out here for me than in Michigan. The people, the weather, the opportunity. I just kind of always envisioned myself being out here. And I had made some connections through the business that I was in at the time.

Starting point is 00:13:43 I had a couple friends. My sister was living out here and I moved in with her for a year. And this became a time of my life where I really focused on developing my skill set of videography. I found a passion at like 18 for taking photos and for taking videos. And I would do it just kind of as a hobby here and there. But I wanted to really pursue it more as a passion and as a potential career when I moved out here. There was something about the art of capturing that I really fell in love with. So I was really developing my capabilities and skill set with the camera.

Starting point is 00:14:13 doing video and photo for various different influencers, and a cool opportunity opened up to work with Logan Paul. Now, Spencer Taylor, who some of you may know, was a good friend of mine, and I had met previously, and he was living with me for a little bit. He got a great opportunity to work with him at this very pivotal point in Logan's career, where he was having kind of an ego death,

Starting point is 00:14:34 and he was going through a lot of public hate, and he came to this place of humility where he was really open to a lot of new ideas and humbled himself immensely. And I met him also around this time in his life where I felt that I could not just work with him, right, and do the typical vlogging video creator stuff, which was fun.

Starting point is 00:14:56 But I really felt a deep desire to impact this individual's life because I saw that he has millions of followers. And if I could impact this one person, the ripples that he could have and make a positive impact on so many different lives would be so big. So that was really my impetus to really work with Logan and to eventually move into the Maverick House. And that whole chapter of two years was so much fun. It was filled with such a variety of experiences, of traveling the world, of developing different connections, of growing my skill set,

Starting point is 00:15:32 of launching a podcast impulsive with them. And going on that whole journey really opened my eyes up to so much. And I think also just living with Logan for. a couple years, open my eyes up to playing at a big scale and to believing much bigger, much sooner. Seeing him play and making these big moves in his early 20s, making millions of dollars, having millions of individuals follow him and what he was doing at the time and waking up and just like doing whatever he wanted was very inspiring. And so, yeah, over the course of the next two years, I ended up moving in with Logan and Spencer and Mike and Evan and the whole crew that was in the house at the time. And yeah, I think that we were all in that house. We're all like misfits in some way.

Starting point is 00:16:15 We all had this like rebellious nature to some degree, even though you wouldn't say maybe objectively if you were to observe from the outside that we should all be friends. We all just really kind of fit and merged in a really beautiful way. And so yeah, during this time, I developed a great skill set to a much bigger degree when every single day we were doing a different video, a new vlog idea and the creative capability and the way that your brain works, also working with a group of individuals like that, was really beautiful. And I've then, since then, applied many of the things that I've learned to what I'm doing now, which we'll get into. Now, an important, I think, key moment also while I was living with Logan in that chapter was the launch of the Impulsive

Starting point is 00:16:57 podcast. So I was effectively a producer, a filmmaker, an editor for the show for the first 200 episodes. So really got to see it from the evolution of being nothing, non-existent, to being one of the largest, you know, podcast on YouTube and audio platforms with millions and millions of downloads. Since starting that podcast and the journey that we went on for a year or two, I learned so much of what it takes to create a successful show and successful podcast from all the things that go on from the back end producing to the video quality to the thumbnails and titles to getting guests on the show, to interviewing. And I got a couple really cool opportunities to bring individuals like Russell Brand on the podcast inside guru and got to weave my own magic and my own way onto the show. And it was a beautiful chapter for all the things that I got to learn, the connections I got to meet, the fun that I got to have. And that led me to eventually starting my own podcasting production company. So before we get into that, my impetus to leave the Maverick House and the infrastructure that Logan had built and everything was really a few things. To give you an insight of where I was at, essentially 22 years old.

Starting point is 00:18:03 living in a $7 million mansion with a chef, a maid one of the biggest YouTubers at the time, and everything was kind of taken care of for me. I was making good money. I got to travel the world. I got to meet cool people. But I eventually, after a couple of years, felt the need to leave. And a lot of people would maybe have a question that at the time saying, why would you leave something that is so secure, so safe, that you're getting a lot of benefits from.

Starting point is 00:18:32 And it's because I felt like there was a, my Darmic calling in life was not being met. And my comfort zone, which was within the walls of this quote unquote castle where everything was taken care for me, started to become my discomfort zone because there was more life pulling me in a different direction. And the more that I ignored that or put that off into something in the future, the more I started to suffer. And my heart wasn't fully there anymore. And I also wanted to honor the guys in the house and what they were creating to be on their path and to have somebody come and take in the role that could be fully excited and support them on their journey.

Starting point is 00:19:11 I just felt like I wanted to take what I learned and apply to supporting individuals that had a really strong spiritual mission or some way in which they were helping raise the consciousness on the planet. And so, yeah, I had to eventually make the tough decision to leave the house, leave the castle and explore into the unknown. So yeah, I didn't really know what was next in store for me. I just knew that something was. And I had to put myself in an uncomfortable situation, leave the house, leave the paycheck, leave all the things to explore what that would be. And I think that all of us in life are going to be faced with these different times where we have to make these tough decisions to follow our heart and follow our calling, even though we don't know what is going to be on the other side of the various different actions that we have to take.

Starting point is 00:19:55 And so I also, I felt a deep confidence in myself knowing that as long as you have a certain level of competency in the world and you have a skill set that you can rely on, you can lose everything tomorrow and rebuild it the next day. It's only when you get success by luck that you have to worry about protecting it. But because I felt like I developed my skill set at this point in my life, I had various different connections. And I felt that I would be taken care of by life and that ultimately I would be fine. So that helped me really make the decision to, all right, I'm going to step outside and explore what life has for me next. So over the course of the next few months, I then started my own production company, Maraki Media. Now, Maraki is a word that I found. Essentially, it's a Latin origin and it means to do something with absolute love and devotion and to leave a piece of yourself and your creation.

Starting point is 00:20:43 So the impetus to start Maraki Media was like, all right, I have this skill set of video producing. I also have the desire to help wake up the planet at a big scale. How do I combine them? And Maraki Media was essentially created from this purpose. I wanted to support individuals that had brilliant messages, wanted to spread wisdom and raise the consciousness on the planet, but help put professional frame around them, whether it's a podcast, a show, a documentary that they were creating.

Starting point is 00:21:09 So I took this deep desire to help activate conscious creators in a way that would help spread consciousness on the planet and also be able to leverage my time, right? Because I can only work 24 hours in a day. But if I have a team around me that can support many more individuals and if I can train them what I've learned with my skill set and the knowledge that I have, then I could all of a sudden impact way more people and make way more money. And so that was really this journey that I've been on over the past few years is stepping into a new level of financial freedom by virtue of leveraging my time, creating a system in place that can support many different podcasters and creators with doing their back-end

Starting point is 00:21:47 operational work, like the editing and the thumbnails and the titles and the producing and the filming of episodes. And we essentially do all that for creators and take the busy work out of creating. And it's a win-win because I get to really support individuals who are doing amazing things on this world and have amazing messages and are activating the planet in beautiful ways. And they get to show up in their genius and put the mic and cameras, in front of them and let them do their thing. And then we just do our thing. And it's a beautiful vehicle that feels like a very mutual win-win. And it feels very nourishing for me to know that I'm supporting individuals that are really doing cool things on the planet. And now the podcast man has

Starting point is 00:22:26 decided to come to the place to start his own. So know thyself, this podcast has really been a passion project of mine over the past few months coming up to the place of actually releasing it now. It really feels like it's coming from my heart. And the cool thing, about the show is I don't need it to be successful monetarily for me to keep pouring myself into it because I genuinely love interviewing individuals. I love to be able to sit down and have an excuse to connect with a brilliant mind for an hour or two and go through the process of revealing various different wisdom and advice and knowledge that can support myself and also you by putting these cameras and mics in front of us. And so I'm not doing it from the place where I need it to be

Starting point is 00:23:09 anything. And so I think with that in mind, it gets to be whatever it wants to be. If you know thyself, then you know the world around you. And I don't have a PhD in XYZ, but I can tell you what I have and more than most is a genuine seeking. And that genuine seeking has led me down a path of daily self-inquiry, of doing six days in complete darkness, of doing multiple silent meditation retreats, taking various different meditation courses, being deep in the study of Eastern philosophy, of my daily meditation practice in Saddana. And I've gone on this process of self-purification and developing enough clarity within myself to where I feel like I can be a very effective interviewer and communicator and be somebody that can really show up in this role as the host

Starting point is 00:23:54 of the show to support all the listeners with getting a lot of value from the show. So that seeking has brought me to a current place of clarity within my life that could have never been taught. to me or that I could have never picked up from a book. It's been more of a process of unlearning than learning. And I feel like I've gotten to a place with my life where I have a baseline level of peace and happiness and joy to where my cup does feel like it's overflowing. And I get to show up from that place on this show. I am very much still a student and seeker on the path. I definitely don't pretend to have all the answers. What I do have, like I said, is a genuine seeking. And I think that positions me uniquely with the work that I've done within myself to show up in a beautiful way

Starting point is 00:24:39 on this show for you guys as the host. I've realized that I've come to a place in my own life where I feel like my insights are valuable. And to stop myself from sharing them with the world at this point would feel like a disservice. Podcasting has been such a growing industry for so many years because it's really a beautiful format in order to intake information. It's been so pivotal for me and my own growth in my own journey, my spiritual path. I love podcasts. That's why I started a podcasting production company and now I'm starting my own. I just have fallen in love with the format. And my intention with the show is to give you my unique flavor and twist on it. I think that nobody could do it in the way that I would do it, how I would do it, and the types of interviews

Starting point is 00:25:22 that I would do. So hopefully, and I think that there will be quite a few individuals that resonate with the way in which I interview and the way that I can provide value and the clips that we can make and the production quality, I'm pouring myself into the show, and I hope that comes across to you guys as a viewer as I'm taking this seriously in many ways. I really do show up with the intention to honor the guests and to do my research

Starting point is 00:25:45 and to invest the time beforehand to prepare. And I think that you guys will feel that on the other side. At least that's my intention. So admittedly, it's a little strange for me at first to just be sitting in this empty room with a mic and camera and talking to individuals that I can't physically see. but I can feel. And I can feel the genuine seeking that I have within myself, the desire to live

Starting point is 00:26:09 a life well lived, to connect and create meaningful relationships, to create joy in our life, to realize and manifest a life of abundance. And I think that these common themes of just wanting to be happy and find peace in our life are common desires. And who wouldn't want that, right? And so I'm positioning myself uniquely with my desires and passions for this podcast to hopefully give you value and access to wisdom in a unique way that hasn't been done before. And I'm really looking forward to going this journey with you. So if you made it to end of this podcast, first of all, thank you. Thank you for investing your time into the day for checking this out. I'm just excited to get this journey started. So thank you for following the know they self podcast. If you're listening on Apple or

Starting point is 00:26:52 Spotify and not on YouTube, then please be sure to follow on that platform. And if you're on YouTube, definitely hit the subscribe button. Also, we'll be making clips for all the videos in the future on our separate Know Theyself Clips channel. Everything will be linked down in the description. Today, we really just scratched the surface of myself and my story. To be honest, it's not all that interesting for me, but I wanted to give you a little bit of insight in how I got to this point, my excitement for where we're going. I have a big vision for what the show will be and what it'll mean for the world. So hopefully you guys can feel that, feel that excitement. Thank you for coming to check out this episode. Without further ado, let's just let the magic begin.

Starting point is 00:27:27 And I will catch you on the next one. Blessings.

Know Thyself - E2 - André Duqum: The Journey to Knowing Thyself

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