Playing Your Cards with Alexander Dunlop

[music] This is synchronous. This is synchronous. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. [music] Welcome to Synchronicity. My guest this week is Alexander Dunlop, and we're going to learn all about how to play the cards of life. This is a really interesting episode, especially for anyone who is a card player or has an affinity towards cards. The deck of cards, the regular deck of cards. Clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds, you know what we're talking about. Alexander has spent a considerable portion of his life learning about the hidden meaning of the deck of cards.

And you'll hear a lot about that in this episode, but suffice to say, is a really interesting stuff, especially when you consider that these cards are mathematically aligned with several different things in our reality. So, stay tuned for that. I don't want to give too much of it away. I'm not going to give any of it away. Go listen to the episode if you want to hear it, because it's fucking awesome. I assume if you're listening to this part you're probably going to get to the episode. I'm going to keep this intro relatively short. Let's talk about for Sigmatic. You may have remembered a couple weeks ago I did an ad where I said, people aren't buying the stuff.

Well, it's nice. Some of you are. And I really appreciate it. I wanted to talk a little bit about which products I use. Now it's been about two months. I have a pretty clear idea of what I like and what I use. I'm a big fan of the matcha. If you can get the matcha, you like matcha, you know what matcha is? Do it. It's tea. It's good. It's yummy. I also have shifted fully into a coffee drinker because of their mushroom coffee. Just to be clear, this has been a point of contention with my wife. She hasn't tried it to refuse this, but I swear, I swear to you on Scout's Honor. It does not taste like mushrooms.

It just has the added benefit of Rishi and Lion's Mane and Chaga. All these wonderful things you want in your coffee. So if you're drinking coffee, like I now am, it's a great thing to have. So if you go to foursigmatic.com/sync, you get 15% off your order. That's a really good way to do it. Let's say you've used another promo from another podcast or something else. You can still use this one. So there's time. You can consistently save 15% foursigmatic.com/sync. That's why I see. All right. I think we're going to keep this one super duper, duper short and get right into the episode. I had a marathon session yesterday.

We were recorded two podcasts. We got a lot of guests coming up. Let's just get right to it. Big thanks to Alexander Dunlop. If you want to find him, he mentions it at the end. You want to find out more about the cards. While you're listening, lifeelevated.life is his website. You can go find out your card right now for free. Go check it out. I think you're going to enjoy this one. And without further ado, here is Alexander Dunlop. I met you at an event we put on, I guess, a couple of years ago at this point in New York and we spoke off to the side and you mentioned several different things to me that I thought were particularly interesting, but perhaps the most interesting to me or what caught my attention the most, I should say, was this whole deck of cards being a map towards life in your soul's journey.

And it was very interesting. And then we've connected since then and I found out a little bit more. But I don't know that much about it. And I'd be interested maybe before we get into the specifics of that, hear how you kind of got onto the path of discovering that. Because I just know in your bio, you've done a lot of different things, a lot of really interesting things related to religion, philosophy and metaphysics, but I would love to hear the evolution and the connection between how you got to the deck of cards. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. So where do I start? So when I was 17, so I grew up growing Catholic and went to Catholic schools and then when I was 17, went on a retreat that was offered by my Catholic high school.

This was in South Florida and the retreat center was on the beach in Miami and it was three days to get out of school. And the retreat was run by a kindly old nun who let us do whatever we want. So I was like, yeah, sign me up. I'll go on this retreat. And on the last night of the retreat, a priest came to talk to us about walls around our heart. And it really affected me. And I was in tears and a lot of other kids were even the tough football players. And I was like, I want to talk to this guy. And I very sheepishly, quietly kind of went out into the other room where he was. And in Roman Catholic tradition, there's this idea of confession and the confessional.

And this was what would be called a face-to-face confession. You're just sitting face-to-face, which I always found terrifying as a boy having to do this thing. It's really nightmarish to go into a wooden box and tell the priest all the things you're ashamed of. It's really a mind-fucking thing. Hey, in this particular case, I wanted to talk to him. And it was actually the first time I had ever wanted to talk to a priest. And I'm sitting there chatting with him, talking to him. I don't remember what I said to him at this point, but when I was done, he got up to pray the traditional prayer that I had heard so many times growing up.

And he touched his hands to my forehead as he prayed. And the moment that he did, something went whoosh right through my body, like electricity, like water, in a split second flash from head to toe, and I felt washed clean. Like it washed me clean. And afterwards, my family recognized that I was a completely different person. I felt different. So that was great. And it launched me on my quest because I realized in that moment that there was something real behind all the rigmarole and all the dogma. I was like, whoa, there's actually something real behind this. And that propelled me to look for it, whatever it was.

And it is a long story. And we could talk for a long time about my journey. But to give you the highlights of what happened was I dove deeply into Christianity. And I thought, wow, let me explore this. And I had my experience in a religion, in a Christian context. So I became an evangelical Christian. I was a born-again Christian. And I was leading prayer groups and Bible studies, all of that. And got disaffected with that. And that too is a long story. But basically saw that Christianity was hurting people, my friends, my Buddhist friends, or my gay friends. That's just the feel right. And I went back to my Roman Catholic roots.

I thought maybe I wanted to be a Roman Catholic priest. And I went to seminary. But after two years, I left. And I have a master's degree in Roman Catholic theology. But I realized for many reasons that I did not want to be a priest. And what happened was I had gone to Harvard as an undergrad and studied philosophy. And then was able to leverage my Harvard diploma and get a job on Wall Street. So I went from seminary to Wall Street. That's a fun jump. Right? I mean, that's what everyone does. Yeah. Normal. But even there, I was searching. I was still looking for answers. You know, what does this all mean?

And what does corporate America have to teach me? And while I was in New York, I discovered the nightlife of New York. And I wanted to break out. I had been a good Catholic boy growing up. I didn't drink until I was 21. It was my virginity until I was 24. You know, I was a good Catholic boy. Right? And I was like, fuck this shit. I'm breaking out. I'm fucking loose. And I had money in my pocket now too. Right. You know? So I started going clubbing. And I started trying every recreational drug I could find. And exploring and looking into the dark side of my own shadow. And only much later realized that, for example, MDMA was developed to help heal post-traumatic stress disorder.

Right. I had a lot of that growing up coming from divorced parents. And, you know, who could not relate to me? And I felt very alone and tried to run away from home three times. Oh, wow. You know, I had a lot of emotional baggage from my childhood and come to realize that, oh, I was actually healing all that. I thought I was just having fun. It was dancing. You know, it's a T.S. Do or Sasha. I was actually-- Oh, Sasha. Right. I mean, I've had some very trends. I've had two transcendent experiences with Sasha, one in the later years and one, well, wasn't the early years, probably the middle years, but in like 1999 in D.C.

I was on no drugs for like, got there at like 10 p.m. Sasha probably went on at like 12, one, went to like eight in the morning. And I was like, yeah, I'm ready for more. I'm like, I didn't, I can't believe that was only, you know, that was how many hours? It fell as like 30 minutes, like a vortex. Incredible. It's cool, man. So I get it. I get it. Yeah, yeah. No, I know you get it. And so that was, it was profound. And I was having spiritual experiences on the dance floor. Yeah. That led me to want to explore that further. And I heard about this guy named Osho who taught dancing meditations. I was like, I want to check this guy out.

Meanwhile, dot com bubble burst, we all got laid off. And I took my severance and my savings. I went to India. Like I'm going to check out this guy, Osho. But also I was going to see about my ex girlfriend. So it's kind of a cliché thing to do, but I bought a one way ticket to India. Trying to go about a girl and trying to find myself, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I was 30 years old, sat in returns. And I was searching, still searching. What is it? And so it didn't work out with her. And then I went to the Osho Center and I was staying in Pune at the Osho ashram. And I was meditating eight hours a day doing all his various different dynamic meditations.

Yeah. And something happened to me there. It really shifted me. And I took initiation there to be a Swami. And I'd always been Alex growing up. And my full name is Alexander, but I didn't feel like I could own that. It felt too grandiose. I gotcha. You know? And while I was there, I was like, wow, I'm going to own the fullness of who I am. That means owning my name too. And that was scary. I came back eventually, you know, long story short, eventually came back from India. And it was telling my friends, okay, I'd like to be called Alexander now. Hope that's okay. Hope you don't mind. It was kind of this really awkward thing of that transition.

Yeah, sure. Right. So I didn't really know what to do when I came back from India. I was bumming around and I was basically homeless. I was living on the floor of a construction office in Long Island City and a mattress on the floor because I couldn't afford to keep my apartment anymore. But I couldn't imagine going back to corporate America. Something had shifted for me. I signed up for a juice cleanse because my health was really terrible. I had their blood in the toilet when I used the bathroom and I was like, all right, this is bad. Got to figure something here. Sign. Sign. Yeah. Right. Didn't really know what to do.

Doctors, you know, we don't know what to do. I had psoriasis all over my face and neck and they like something we can do for you. We can just give you pills to mitigate your symptoms. It's like F this. I'm not taking pills for the rest of my life. Right. So that was my awakening from the traditional allopathic medical paradigm and breaking out. So this is becoming a longer story than I'm. No, no, I love dude. I have heart kidding me. We're right on track. Okay. Okay. Cool. So I signed up for this juice cleanse and on the beginning of the cleanse, we were told that we can manifest whatever we want by fasting and all right, I want to meet the mother of my children.

That's what I want to do. The last day of the fast, we were upstate and I was driving a pickup truck and offered someone or I was like, don't even need a ride back to the city. One woman raised her hand. You know where the story goes. Gave her a ride home. She became the mother of my children. Not all in that. Yeah. That was fast, dude. Damn. I'm trying to compress the story, but yeah. And so she's the mother of my children. We started this holistic center together that had always been her dream to start and we did it together. I had my business background. I'm working on Wall Street and then what I didn't tell you is that I was also a director of marketing and sales for a software company after that.

Sure. Cool. So I had all that business background. So together we started this business and it went gangbusters. It was great. You know, we opened a second location. We're going really well. Meanwhile, I was also doing ayahuasca ceremonies with shamans and I became raw vegan. And I like this was still part of my search. Yeah. Raw vegan. That's it. That's the answer. Of course. And then doing ayahuasca ceremonies. That's it. That's the answer. Of course. And I was apprenticing the shamans and doing the whole thing. I go deep when I go. I was going to say I like your commitment. I mean, I also am prone to do those things probably a little bit more when I was younger, but like I definitely can relate to going deep when you resonate with something.

So I love it. Yeah. I'm all in. I'm like, oh, this is it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel you. I found the answer. Ah. And like my friends and family used to tease me and they're like, oh God. All right. Here it is. Now you found the answer. So fast forwarding again, business is going great, but our marriage is not so great. And goes the other direction. And then one day there's divorce papers on the table. And I'm heartbroken and I decide, all right, F this, I got to go out, you know, I got to go to a party. I haven't been to a party in years and make go clear my head kind of thing. So I'll go out to a party in Brooklyn and I see an old campmate that I knew from Burning Man.

So I used to go to Burning Man and he's like, oh, what's your date of birth? Keep in mind what's going on in my life right at this time. Right. He says, oh, what's your date of birth? Like August 30th. Why? And he's like, oh, okay. That means you're born to play the nine of hearts. And that means that in your life path, you're going to go through tragic endings of the heart. You got to learn how to let go and move on. I'm like, my knees actually got weak. And I had this kind of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Early on effect, deja vu moment, like, whoa, like, and that, of course, was exactly what was happening in my life at the time.

That was my first introduction to the real meaning of the deck of 52. So that's the context of all my searching. And I don't think, and I was still skeptical, really skeptical. I was like, you got to be kidding me, the deck of playing cards. And yet I had searched everywhere. And really and truly read every spiritual book I could find. I even hiked the proverbial mountain in India and met the guru. I learned arm reading. I know my human design. I know my gene keys. I know my side of real chart, my Vedic chart, all of it. I've done all of it. And the deck of cards has resonated most deeply for me in terms of giving me answers and guidance, clarity, about what this is, what are we living in, what is the meaning of our life.

And not all in that first night, but through frequent research and meditation, you know, now 10 years later, and starting a professional practice to share it with other people and starting a nonprofit organization to share this knowledge, this has been the culmination of a quest that started when I was 17 years old. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad I asked this question because it's, you know, in this day and age, so many, there's obviously, there's too many people pitching something and like you and me, it's easy to get very excited about various paths or modalities or systems, like it's just a natural response when you're not culturally kind of presented those choices.

So I get it, but there's also something that doesn't come with that sometimes, which is this like longer kind of patient trials and tribulation quest to get to something where you're actually like, you know what, this is something that really is the thing for me. Yeah. And you know, I luckily have the benefit of speaking to a lot of people because of this podcast who you can hear these stories, like they, you know, and the ones that seem to be the most kind of meaningful impactful for people I get that I get feedback on are are people like, yeah, like this, this, this adds up. This isn't something they decided, you know, five years ago, four years ago, they're all of a sudden into this and that's what they're doing.

Not that there's anything wrong with that and not that there can't be wisdom carried along with that. There can be quick ascent. It's just that it's important to take all this stuff into context and recognize people's intention and like your genuine quest to understand, you know, why you felt cleanse and kind of got like a little Catholic shock to put, you know, for back in the day, culminates with this car thing. My question is like, what, what is it about the deck of 52 kind of break it down for me and people listening that this structure, why, why it works for you, why you think it's so important and what about it is kind of the juice of it?

Yeah. No, great question. So mathematically, there's 52 cards in the deck and there are 52 weeks in the year. There's the four suits and four seasons, then you have the ace through the king. There's 13 cards in each suit. There's 13 weeks in each season. Add up the numbers of the ace through the king. That's one through 13. So you add them up one plus two plus three, et cetera. Add them up for all 52 cards and you'll get 364. The Joker is the fifth element, he's the 53rd card and he's the fifth element in this four part system and he's represented mathematically as a proportion of five over four or one and one fourth.

So you put him back in the deck and you get 365 and a quarter. So it's a exact representation of the earth going around the sun, right? It represents the seasons and cycles of our life on earth. And in ancient times, books did not have bindings. All right, books of the Bible written on scrolls, parchment, they were still called books. That was how they were known. So what I've realized is that this deck was known in ancient spiritual societies and it was known as the little book of life, the book of life. That's how it was known, the same book of life that the Bible references more than 20 different times.

And what's also interesting to me is the shared lineage with Kabbalah, that in Kabbalah the teaching is that the Torah is composed of 52 portions and there are 52 symbolic structures of life. It just so happens that the deck of cards is composed of 52 symbols. So this is ancient knowledge. So to answer your question, one of the reasons that it really grabs me is that it's ancient. It is woven into the tapestry of our religious heritage, but yet it was hidden in plain sight. It was persecuted. It was called the Devil's Picture Book or the Devil's Bible in the Middle Ages by the Roman Catholic Church, which is very interesting to me because I was going to use that.

Now I've done a 180 and now I'm practicing witchcraft according to the same church, right? The other reason it really speaks to me is that I'm a visual person and I like looking at these symbols and I had a deck printed with no numbers on the corner. And if you ever do that, just kind of take your thumbs and cover over the letter or the number on the corners and just look at the symbol. These symbols are encoded in our morphogenetic matrix and we know this in our physiology, these hieroglyphs, these symbols, they're very meaningful to us and they are to me as well. And it's such a simple tool also, that's also why it speaks to me.

And I've always loved playing cards too, that's the other thing. I grew up playing cards. We were a card playing family and with my kids too, we play a lot of cards. They love playing the real meaning of their cards too, so it's both. And then also, as to answer your question, the proof is really in the pudding. So far this is all theoretical and maybe it's fascinating, but it has meant for me personally. And so I want to offer, if you want, the same for you, which would mean asking you what is your date of birth. It is July 20th, 1983. Are you open to a little on-air reading? Oh, yeah, man. July 20th.

Okay, so you're born to play the aid of clubs that would be called your birth card. That's the primary pattern of your life and this is all based on mathematics. And clubs is the suit of the mind and the aid is the symbol of infinity. So infinite mental power, that's what you're born into. And the downside would be getting your mind tied up in knots, overthinking, overanalyzing, compressing. And the invitation for you is to open and expand the loops of your mind, which of course you're doing by interviewing me. But in a personal context, let's say in your relationship, there might be a lot of stubbornness.

And maybe your wife would be nodding along. Yeah, maybe just a little, a vigorously shaking her head. Yes. Right. Yeah. Because the aid of clubs, you may think you already have all the answers and then be stubbornly resistant to someone else's point of view, especially in that kind of intimate exchange. Do you want to be alert for that? Now the personality card for you, the second one in the sequence out of the 13 is the jack of spades. And I want to talk about this one for you because this is really interesting. The jack of spades, spades is the suit of consciousness. The spade itself is an acorn and the acorn is a symbol of the pineal gland.

And the jack is the prince is also the number 11, which is a master number. And so the prince of consciousness, you're here to play with consciousness, you're here to architect and create reality itself by the light of consciousness that you shine or don't shine. And if you're not aware, then you may have big blind spots because the jack of spades is represented that way. He's the one eyed prince or one of them anyway. And so you may have these surprising blind spots of things you don't see. And then you may get caught in ethical quandaries or you may get caught with people who don't have your best interests in mind, let's, you know, there's a dark side potentially.

And it would be important for you to be willing to hear alternative perspectives, again, which you are doing, of course, by talking to all these different people so that you can illuminate your consciousness so that you don't get lost in a fun house of mirrors. Right. Right. So that you have the awareness to really and truly envision the reality that you want. So it's informed reality. And then you get to be an architect of reality. So and are those the two components that you pull from just my birth date based on the math of what's going on? That's so interesting. Yeah. And then from there, we have 13 cards total.

And this is when I'm doing private coaching work, getting into, okay, what are your goals in life or why do you think you're stuck or what's going on? How can I show you how to break through whatever is holding you back by showing you exactly how to be in tune with your cards to play? And what I noticed and it really surprised me at first is that by helping people be conscious of their patterning, right, because you are not in eight of clubs. You are a soul for lack of a better word and you're here to play these cards. But if you don't know what those patterns are, you may be trying to follow advice that's contrary to what would really be, get ready for it, well suited for you, right?

To play your cards, right? That's the real thing. It's not to try to follow other preconceived notions or conditioning that you were brought up with. And this is what I see all too often that people are struggling and striving working against themselves. Right. Like square peg, round hole. Totally. Yeah. And so what I noticed is that by helping people consciously be in tune with their cards to play, it's this magical result of being in the right place in the right time in life, the right people showing up, the right doors opening by consciously being in tune with our cards. It's like being in the GPS coordinates of our life.

And I started to see that over and over again with my clients in the early days. And so to answer your other question, that's what really convinced me. It's like, whoa, this is accurate. This really helps people. So let me go with it and let me build on it. Yeah. And that's what I did. Yeah. I mean, when you see it working for other people, it's just, it's a little bit different. I mean, at least for me, I can always just like drill myself about, well, is it just your perception and what are the factors that are coming up, but when you see it over and over again and other people, you're like, oh, there's really definitely some power here.

So in terms of the lineage of it, to the best of your ability, where, where does this come from? Like you said, the pineal gland for the spade. What are the other symbols representative of and like, where is this kind of being drawn from them? I'm so fascinated with this. But it makes a lot of sense too, like it really does. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you. So a couple of things. To me, this deck is a book of sacred geometry. That's the first thing I want to say. And the jack is actually an icon that represents, well, let me say it differently, there are symbolic arrangements of the pips for the 11, 12, 13 as well, but they were covered over by these icons in the Middle Ages, for many reasons, to hide the meaning and also for pedagogical purposes.

But the 11 is represented as Meditron's cube, and the 12 is represented as the golden rectangle. And the 13 is the five symbol. So this is all sacred geometry. And this deck is revealing to us the sacred geometry of our existence, which is really like, whoa. And it's like, whoa. Well, it's, I, I, the only reaction might wasn't was because I am, I had a very intense period where it's really into sacred geometry. And just like, I didn't leave it because I wasn't, didn't think it was existed. I'm just like, no, this is happening. Like I, I believe this fully of grok that this is how things work. The, you know, the building blocks of reality are founded on this.

We see this not only from the esoteric traditions, but also just from like our physics and like most modern science and empiricism. So yeah, I, I, that's only reason I didn't say whoa, because to me, it's like, of course. Yeah. Whoa for myself. Yeah. No. And it's so true. It's so true. Like it's, it's really that's, that's interesting. So 13 is fine. I didn't know that interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. You reference science and here's a, here's a theory I have that string theory being what it is and speculating that our reality is composed of maybe 11 or 12 vibrating strings. Right. My thought is that as we develop our consciousness, we may very well become aware that our reality is composed of 13 vibrating strings and four quadrants.

Right. And that if you really want to bake your noodle is to think about who knew our reality well enough to then encode it into a simple tool that can be used to represent, be represented as a map of reality itself. Yeah. Exactly. So that's where I meditate. And that's what I went into is like, whoa, whoa, this is really deep. Yes. So anyway, well, yeah, it leads credence to the idea of, you know, beings, humans or otherwise that can tap into these frequencies and this knowledge and like it, I've personally had it happened to me for a long enough period of time where I was like, I could play around with it and be like, what the fuck is going on?

And it was like a very elevated state. So I wouldn't say that I had my feet firmly planted on the ground, but enough so that I was like, something is clearly happening. I'm not, you know, making this up. It's not. And then, you know, having let those experiences settle down and looked at them from afar in the future and looking back, you'd be like, Oh yeah, like, if you really understood what was going on with these states and you could get some clarification. You had someone to go to. This is why I think the grew lineages have persisted even amongst the rampant corruption that happens in this day and age with those is because like, if you can just level up really quickly and be like, Oh yeah, that's what this is.

That's what this represents. You can get put on a track where you can really start to understand like some basic truths about our reality. And once you understand them, it's not that you control them, but you recognize the malleability of it. And you can kind of, as you're saying with the deck as you're kind of your map, get in harmony with it, right vibrate in the right way, which is kind of what string theory is saying. Yeah, I'm with it, man. I'm with it. No, I know you are. And this just to give you a little context, this is by far my favorite podcast that I've done. I'm really enjoying talking to you because you are right there with this.

So okay, your question, the four suits, hearts are representative of the heart, obviously enough clubs to mind and diamonds is the physical layers of life, anything we can perceive with our five senses. So it's actually very similar to the classic separation of human beings and body, mind and heart, body, mind, soul, that kind of classical division of human being into three. And then the spade as the seed of consciousness, belief, and it's represented by an acorn, which is the symbol that represents, how can I say this, from the acorn, the whole oak tree grows. It's a great mystery. How does this whole big tree grow from this tiny seed?

And is similarly in our reality that we have this seed of consciousness, vision, this imagination, and from this tiny seed, our entire reality of ourselves grows. And it grows in this three part form. And what it also means then is that we ourselves are a holy trinity. We are three in one beings and we've of course projected that outward, but as a fractal as above so below, we also are a holy trinity and it's represented in these four suits. So there's a lot we can learn about ourselves just by knowing which suit we're born into. And that often is very helpful for people, each suit has its own love language, each suit has its own way of making decisions and its own way of relating to our matrix that is our reality.

So one thing that's often really helpful for people, for example, especially in our circles and new age type people, let's say I meet someone who's a double club, like they're born to play the three of clubs and then the seven of clubs is their personality, something like that, both clubs. And kind of as a joke, I might say to them, do you have a hard time being a heart-based person? And they're like, oh my God, I don't even know what that means. I go on these retreats and I hear these people talking about it, I don't even know what that means. Yeah, they're mind-based. And I'm like, exactly. And like, don't worry about that.

You can let that go. You don't have to judge yourself for that. You are a mind-based person, and that's okay, and you orient yourself to existence through logic, communication, analysis, insights, intuition, that's your way. And it's like, oh my God, that's such a relief. So even just something like that is so helpful for people. And then of course, we can get into much more detail around what do the numbers mean and what do all the cards mean. So I love this stuff so much, man. When you, going back to the point where you're going through the really tough time and we're bottoming out for lack of a better word, I'm sure it's not like that, and you go to this former Burning Man camp, which is always a nice synchronicity in any regard, meeting people outside of a context like that, what were the subsequent steps that kind of led to you pulling on that thread, you know, you had the powerful, oh, shit moment where everything kind of like warps and you get the crazy like, oh my God, well, it's like psychedelic experience of what the hell it just happened.

What threads did you start pulling on to kind of unravel the mystery of what this was or what it might mean? Yeah, great question. I'll tell you this, you know, as I referenced, I was really skeptical at first. Yeah, yeah, even though I had this massive deja vu spiritual experience to find the meaning of my cards, I had plenty of other spiritual experiences in my life as well, not just the one from when I was 17 years old. So I was no stranger to these profound religious encounters, so to speak. I was also very interested in the time at human design and human design and gene keys, very interested in both and digging.

What are those? I don't think I know either. Human design is another system of knowledge. It's a comprehensive tool that gives you the whole schema and outline of your human design. How are you designed as a human being? And it's popular, people know it and study it. And then gene keys is an outgrowth of human design. It's another popular tool to understand what are the keys of your life and what energy and frequencies are encoded in your DNA based on the etching hexagrams overlaid with astrology. You know, it's the whole system. Only reason I'm telling you this is because I was looking at all these different threats, simultaneously.

Right. And like which one and maybe I'll do all of them and I was looking at the deck of cards and there was actually much less at the time written about them than other systems. And that was kind of a turn off at first. I was like, oh, that's not much here. I can't find out what I want to find out right away. Yeah. Yes. Kind of flimsy. It's kind of hokey. What has been written about it is very soap opera digesty. And then it was in my own meditations and it was actually through Ayahuasca ceremony. So I was still doing that. That I started getting the downloads of like, this is much bigger and deeper than it appears and the way you've experienced it.

This is a whole deep thing. And that was when it was through an ayahuasca ceremony that I first got the download that it was once known as the Book of Life. This ancient knowledge woven in the fabric of our history and subsequently found out that we can trace it all the way back to Mesopotamia to the Sumerian myths. So in the earliest recordings of human consciousness, this knowledge is already present. See now that I love that you got the ayahuasca download that was then confirmed by the historical accounts of where this could have come from like that. Those are my favorite types of thinking, you know, someone can tell me, oh, well, I went, I studied it for 10 years and all of these things and I traced it back and I would still believe them too.

But the fact that you kind of, you know, got the little download and confirmed it afterwards. I personally love those things. I also like that you pointed out that you were, I think this is something a lot of people can relate to, you know, not weighing different systems against each other so much, but trying to figure out a way to integrate all of these different modality systems, paradigms. Yeah, like how to, like, especially in the new age scene, you know, and it's just getting more and more like this, it just can be overwhelming for people. You can get seemingly positive results from a system.

It's almost akin to, like, dieting fads at a lot of times, people and so this is something I think a lot of people can relate to, not in any way implying that what you were doing was like a dieting fad, but it's just like, what am I supposed to be doing and I think the answer is exactly what you did, which is you meditated, you did some ceremonies that make you go within and it's always looking at yourself for the answer rather than saying, oh, well, there's going to be some secret code that this guy is going to tell me and then I'll, then I'll know, it's like, that's just not really how it works and I, it just, it's not, this things can reveal these things to you and you can use things to help you, but it's not going to answer your life for you.

So I love that you pointed that out. That's really cool, man. Well, thank you. And I want to build on what you just said by saying that another thing I love about this knowledge, to answer your earlier question about why this knowledge of all possibilities is that this is open source spirituality. This is open source religious discourse. No one owns these symbols. No one owns this knowledge. It's spread throughout our consciousness. It's all over the planet. This is open source code that anyone can tap into once they know how to read these symbols. And that's my mission is to educate people about how to read these symbols.

It's a language, right? And we are almost entirely illiterate of how to read the meaning of these hieroglyphs that are printed on cardstock. And as we learn it, then we can read it for ourselves. Well, that's what I was going to say. So like how on a, on a regular basis, do you use the cards in your life? Great question. A lot. Imagine a lot and it is a fractal system. And so it is true on every level that we want to take it to. And it's mathematically precise on every level we take it to. So we have 13 cards for our life. So that's our life imprint. That's like our soul's blueprint, so to speak, right?

Every year based on our birthday, we're dealt a new set of cards based on mathematics. And so then we have yearly cards and we can look at our year and what are our challenges and opportunities for the year. We have cards for every 52 day cycle within the year. So we can drill down to 52 day cycles. Then we have cards for the week and we have cards for the day. So I write a daily blog that's a free daily blog on what are the cards of the day. So as of this recording, the card today is the nine of diamonds. And I write about what does that mean for us? And it's a little bit like a daily horoscope, but I do my best to make it a little more sacred and a little more reflective, giving us opportunities to reflect in our life.

And then not only is there a general card of the day, so that for example, anyone born today, this would be their birth card, they'd be born to play the nine of diamonds. So we have a personal card of the day as well that shows us our personal experience of the nine of diamonds. So we really can drill down and I do utilize this knowledge a lot in each aspect of my life and I would be totally remiss. And if my fiance were listening in right now, she'd be tapping me on the shoulder to talk about relationships, because this is her favorite part of this system and it's how she got excited about it.

Little backstory, we've been together for two years and she's very deep into her spirituality and her personal growth and has also done a lot and grown a lot. And she was very skeptical of this system. She's like, I do not want to be told that this is the destiny and this is how it's written. Yes, yes, yes. That's a very common kind of objection to this type of yes, totally, totally, she's like, I don't want to think that there are these cards that are in play and that's how it is and blah, blah, blah, and I get that I was, you know, I get totally get that. And the way I utilize this tool is as you said, as a map, nothing more, nothing less.

But at least we got the freaking map now. We don't have to bumble around fucking blindly. Yes, yes. You know what I'm saying? We got the freaking map. So that's it. It's a map. But then when she figured out that we could understand our relationship dynamics through this system, she was like, oh, the heavens have opened. And so she went back and looked up all her friends and ex-boyfriends and so on. And you can see the relationship that you have with your card to, let's say, your wife's card. She has her own birthcard to play, which is her own experience, but there is a dynamic relationship between the two cards, like the relationship between two musical notes.

And it plays a chord and there's an overtone. And then that will show you the clarity of your relationship patterns. So then you have the map to better navigate your relationship. And that has been game-changing for her and I. Yeah. Game-changing. I mean, how could it not be? Yeah. Because I think it's fair to say that anyone who is in a relationship for an extended period of time will have their challenges. Right. Martin Parcel, I always just think about people I see on Instagram who, you know, the really happy Instagram people I call them, it's like, do they ever fight? Like, of course, they have to, like, it's impossible to just be always thrilled.

Maybe, I mean, listen, you hear the stories of like the 80-year-old couples like, yeah, we've been married for 60 years and we never fought them like, man, you guys are psychopaths. Like, how are you getting through it like once in a while and God bless them. But yeah, man, I can see how the relationship stuff in particular would really, like, really, because that's what life is at the end of the day. Let's be clear, like, we can walk this path, like, very few of us are going to end up in a cave in the Himalayas meditating by ourselves for the betterment of everything. That's just not going to be many of us, especially born in the West.

So your life is this interconnected web of relationships, even if you don't believe it on a metaphysical sense, like, it is just in a practical sense. So having any tool, any tool to help you kind of gain some insight into your patterns and structures and those of your significant other or others, I mean, yeah, man, that's going to be desired. Totally. And what it does is it helps her and I to see each other's shadows. And so then we can start to name it and then we're not angered by it or triggered by it. Like, oh, there it is. There's that shadow frequency coming out again and then we can see it for ourselves also.

And it really diffuses those fights. And she and I have had fights, you know, there have been ways that we sharpen each other and challenge each other to your point about our growth. That's how we grow. We call each other out on our shit, you know, and then we have this tool that illuminates so we can see it clearly and it's so helpful. Can you use the deck? I mean, I'm sure if it's a fractal, it's applicable, but what are your thoughts about using it to gain understanding about where we are kind of culturally and historically? Not only is like a country, but just kind of as a civilization because it seems like we go through these very broad cycles as well.

And I know there's obviously so many breakdowns and it's primarily based on this year breakdown from there. But I'm sure, I mean, is it applicable to larger time cycles as well? It is. It is. We have seven year cycles in our life and we have 13 year cycles. And we know this kind of intuitively. Those are my two favorite numbers, just to, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And if you were to look back at your life, you would probably find that you had significant initiations or turning points at these seven year, 13 year marker points. And we can see that in the cards. We can see what each cycle is of our life that we're moving into and what we're moving through and the life lesson, let's say we're learning in this particular cycle.

So that's very helpful. You can also let's say anything that has a date of birth, like a country July 4th, 1776. So the United States is born to play the Jack of Diamonds. And the second card, the personality is the king of clubs. So I'll tell you briefly what these two cards mean and tell me if this sounds like our great nation. Sure. Sure. So the personality card, which is the king of clubs, that's the persona. That's how anyone or anything presents itself. And the king of clubs is the king of knowledge, noble truths, justice, peace, right? These noble, virtuous truths. Are you reading from our constitution?

Right. This is how we present ourselves. The Jack of Diamonds is the prince of wealth, right? He wants to make money. He wants to generate wealth and he would do anything for a buck, right? He can be the slippery salesman, unethical salesman that will do anything to make money. But over the top of that, there's this noble persona of we're doing it all for truth and justice. And that's our nation. You know what's so interesting is it's a fucking fractal man because it's not only applicable to the kind of genesis and history of the country, but if you look at right now, this very point in time, that is exactly what this country is positioning itself as and actually doing with it.

It's really, really quite amazing, man. It is. And we can even, and I haven't done a lot of this, but we can even look at corporate cultures by looking at the born on date of the corporate culture. It can be applied to anything that has a birthday. This could have saved me from being a Miami Dolphins fan. You remind me, I was a Miami Dolphins fan too. Oh God. Right figurative word there, operative word, or oh God, it's such a nightmare. Where did you grow up? I grew up in D.C. Right outside of Maryland. I grew up in the heyday, not the heyday, but like when Dan Marino was still really fucking good and Don Shula was still there, it was like, yeah, they were winning.

And then I was like heartbreaking. It's worse than the Boston Red Sox. My dad was a Red Sox man. At least the Red Sox finally won one. I was there in Boston when they won and then they became insufferable. It was, yeah, I know it's that my sports karma is very poor. It's very, very poor. I gave up on watching football all day on Sunday. You know, I have other things to do with my life. I used to be glued to the TV. I mean, my wife wouldn't want to hear that. I still am glued to it because I have the curse of being pretty good at fantasy football. So it's like, I mean, I'm not like earning a living from it, but it's enough that I can justify like watching football for four or five hours a day on Sunday.

But yeah, it's very rarely fun. So I don't know. It's some sadomasochistic tendency. Dude, I find this so fascinating how all of this stuff kind of fits together. Let's say someone's listening and they want to find out more about this and you. How do they go about that? Sure, so my website is life elevated dot life. And that's the name of the nonprofit that I started life elevated. And what you can do is you can come on the website and there's a free look up tool so you can put in your date of birth and you will get a free mini reading of your birth card. Nice. So that's a great way to get started.

I wrote a book about this, it came out a year and a half ago and went to number one on Amazon's Hot Me release list when it came out. So I was exciting. And then I recently made that available as a digital book for only $9. Oh, awesome. Yeah. So if it's really appeals to you after you read the mini reading, then you can download the book for $9. That's awesome, man. I am going to ask you some questions before we end, but I just want to reiterate. This is fascinating stuff to me, I'm definitely going to dive deeper into it because it's like that the country thing is very, I mean, the fractal aspect of this is what I like so much.

It's one of the things I enjoy about young stuff is that all of these things can be applied to the macro and the micro, which I think they can't. Then it's a little like, what is that going on there? So last few questions, what's your favorite color? You know, this is I pause because surprisingly, this is a difficult question for me to answer because growing up, my favorite color was always red. And I think it still is, but my favorite color to wear is blue. So I have two favorite colors. Is that allowed? That's totally what? No, it's not allowed. I have to scrap this whole interview, it's going in the toilet, sorry, but you failed the color question.

What's your favorite number? Wow. You know, I never had a favorite number, people tell me that. And I'll tell you something kind of funny as a side note, this happens more often than would just be coincident. I'll do a reading for someone and they'll find out, oh, your birthcard is the five diamonds or whatever. Oh my God, my favorite number is a five or whatever. Or I had cases where I do a reading for someone and their birthcard is in eight hearts, let's say, and they're like, oh my God, and they roll up their sleeve and they show me their tattoo. Open number eight, you know, something like that.

But I never had a favorite number growing up. What's the first number that comes to your mind? Seven. Okay, there you go. You're seven, whether you like it or not. What's your favorite animal? Oh, I think I've done this before. I know where this is going, but let's have fun with this. Let's say a dolphin. Dolphin is my favorite animal as it turns out. We're not going anywhere without this. Those are the three simple questions. I did have this idea at one point to kind of do like a matrix of like everyone's favorites because this is going to be like damn near 200 of these before I know it. Got it.

It would be interesting. I just ask the questions because it's interesting to hear what people say. Last question. What's a practical tip that's helped you in your life could be anything that you could share with people listening? Holy moly, one practical tip. One practical tip. Well, I guess at this point, I would say that it really is about learning how to play your cards right, that that is practically speaking the thing that has helped me the most. That's what it's supposed to be, my friend. While I started by calling you Alex, I will end by calling you Alexander. Woo-hoo! I've graduated. Thank you for coming on, man.

This has been awesome. Yeah, my pleasure. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you for having me. Cool. Let's talk soon. Okay, great. Peace. Bye. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Thanks for listening to that episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Like I said, we get a lot of other episodes coming up over the next few weeks. I might sneak in an extra one given how many recordings I already have. I don't want to get backlogged. I think there's something special about releasing an episode close to when it was recorded. Kind of the resonance of it can really be more impactful.

Go check out Alexander, really cool episode, lifeelevated.life. Go find out your playing cards. I know it's really interesting stuff, especially if you just kind of had, like I said, an affinity for the deck of cards. My family, my dad was a big proponent of cards. We played a lot of crazy eats, war, go fish. I'm a big poker fan. So if you find yourself resonating with any of that and kind of the more mundane aspects of the playing deck, you might be interested in kind of the book of life. Playing deck. So yeah, go check them out. That's it for this week. I will see you next week.