The Inner Wealth Podcast
Mike Kitko is the Founder and Creative Director of Inner Wealth Global, a personal and professional development company that helps business owners create aligned wealth, success, freedom, and deep fulfillment—without sacrificing themselves in the process.
As an author, speaker, podcaster, and coach Mike guides visionaries and impact-driven entrepreneurs to align their inner world with the life and business they are truly meant to live and create. His work helps you master your mind, energy, and emotions while building intense personal power so that wealth and opportunity flow effortlessly.
Through coaching, training, and transformational content, Inner Wealth Global helps business owners break free from unnecessary struggle, trust their path, and create a life deeply aligned with their soul.
The Inner Wealth Podcast
Ep228. Your Body Is an Animal—But You Are the Awareness Within Wearing the Animal.
In this episode, Mike shares a soul-rattling insight that dropped in during a moment of sacred silence with his dogs and cat: “We are awareness wearing an animal.” He breaks open the truth of spiritual identity, conditioning, and why most people are still being run by their nervous system instead of their higher self. If you’re done letting fear, survival, and programming lead your life — this episode is the next step into your spiritual evolution.
Key Takeaways
- You Are Not the Animal — You’re the Awareness Inside It
Your body isn’t your identity. It’s the vehicle for your soul. And it’s time you take back the driver’s seat. - Your Nervous System Has Been Conditioned by Pain
Most people are letting old survival-based programming decide their future. - You Were Born for More Than Fear and Avoidance
The discomfort is your path forward — not a reason to stop. - Your Soul Has a Purpose — But You Can’t Reach It Identified as the Animal
The more you release the conditioning, the louder your soul becomes. - You’re Wearing a Unique Animal, Designed for a Unique Destiny
Your design is not random. It was chosen for the purpose your soul came here to fulfill.
Notable Quotes
- “We are awareness wearing an animal.”
- “When the animal has control over you — the discomfort is your path forward.”
- “When you start the process of identifying as the awareness and begin to release the pain, the suffering, the anxiety, the survival, the conditioning, the programming — when you let go of this, the volume of your ego will begin to turn down and the volume of your soul will turn up.”
- “That animal that you're wearing is wrapped around a perfect — and I mean perfect — awareness.”
- “There's 8.22 billion people on the planet. You are one of one.”
Call to Action
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Spiritual warrior? Let’s connect.
📧 mailto: mike@innerwealthglobal.com
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Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends
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Mike Kitko is an executive self-mastery coach, speaker and author. He found external success through powerful titles, incomes, and material possessions. He ultimately fell into depression, toxic abuse of alcohol, and the near collapse of his family before he began a journey of internal happiness and success.
You ever wake up feeling like there's something missing in your life? You ever feel the need to escape your business? Are you running your life or is your life running? I might be a lot. Help you decide to create a life so authentic and align with who you really are. You'll feel excited just to wake up. Help you create real wealth, accepting freedom from the inside out. Welcome to the Inner Wealth Podcast, where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day. And I also know that there's there's some people that they'll they'll come in, they'll they'll experience an episode and they never show up again. I I understand this dynamic of podcasting and trying different shows and seeing you know if something fits, and and you listen to an episode and it connects, and you subscribe, and also people that maybe you know come in, they it's not what they expected it to be, and they don't return. And that's okay. I I understand that dynamic because I've done it before, to be honest. But obviously, all of us have. And that's that's kind of what I love sharing with the world, the the deep insights that I'm gaining on a daily basis, the the deep connections to new, deeper, more mystical wisdom that keep coming into my life and and building community, building tribe around that, and experiencing life as at the deepest level possible, not just playing on the surface. That's what the inner wealth mastermind, that's what the inner wealth community, that's what the inner wealth podcast, that's what the choose your destiny live intensive, that's what all these things are about. Is number one is reducing the the amount of of control and influence that fear and and anxiety and and pain has over your life, like unclenching the your insides so that you can live more free and harmonious. Number two is is to connect deeper with your design, your purpose, and your ultimate destiny. And number three is to expand circumstances, but it requires being really willing to get deep, deep, deep inside of spiritual mystical wisdom to understand who you are at a soul level and to get into alignment with what your soul chose to experience in this incarnation. Now, if you're anything like me, you do I believe in reincarnation. Maybe that you've experienced deja vu, maybe you've experienced dreams, maybe you've you know, you've done some uh when when you you you have experiences and it feels like you've been there before or you've done that before. Like this isn't, in my in my understanding, from my set of experiences and mystical experiences, this isn't our first go-round in on this planet and in in the human form. And for some of us, we're just getting started. For some of us, we're nearing the end of the reason for being here, which is enlightenment. And Dr. Wayne Dyer said, when when you're as you're nearing enlightenment, as you're nearing clearing out all of the karma that's that's been locked up and stored inside of you, as you rearrange your your identity and your self-concept, and you understand that your spirit having a human experience, not a human having a spiritual experience, when the last little bit of spiritual karma or karma is let go of, poof, pixie dust. There's no reason for you to be in form anymore. And that is what we're here to really witness, experience, understand, create. And it feels really, really spiritually fulfilling for me. The other day I was sitting on my couch, and I have a we have a sitting room that's in the front of the house, and I can see the dining room, they're right next to each other, and I've got a big couch and I've got windows, and and in the morning, when it's like uh live right outside of St. Louis, so it gets kind of kind of cold in the winter, but in the morning, uh, when it's not nice outside, I sit inside on a couch, and I have three, I have two boy dogs, and I have a boy cat, and we call it boy couch, and the four of us sit on this couch, and and we kind of experience a quiet and still morning together. And it's kind of it's kind of a sacred time for me. I love that. And we've got a little girl count, girl cat that, and her name's Andromeda Cassiopeia, my wife named her, and her name we call her Andy, but she she's allowed on boy couch, but she just doesn't come and participate for whatever reason. She's been up on my lap before, but then she makes quick work out of it. She she dives down. Maybe it's just you know too much testosterone or whatever on the couch. But the point is, we experience the sacredness of silence and stillness in a morning together, and it feels really, really good. And we've been doing this for years. In fact, when it's nice outside during the summer, and me and my two dogs are sitting outside. Since my my cat, my male cat is that well, both cats are house cats. You can see them sitting at the door, looking out the window, wanting to be out there with us, but can't do that because we don't know if we'll come back. But that is a sacred, sacred time for me. And I was sitting just a couple days ago, I was sitting on the couch, and I was looking at my cat at his name's Latte. He's uh he's a rescue, and sitting on there, sitting on the couch looking at at Latte, and it hit me because the cats, if what my wife has taught me, and she knows a lot about cats, but uh a lot more than I do. But when their paws, and if you can see me, you can see me doing it, but if their paws are under or tucked under, they and they're laying on their paws, it means they are in a complete state of feeling peaceful, safe, and and happy and fulfilled. They are super content. And the the the main part of that is they feel safe. That they don't feel like they they don't they don't need to be on alert, because if they needed to be on alert, they'd have their paws ready for action. But their paw, his paws were were tucked under them. So I could see he was sleeping and he was in a complete state of peace. And if you've if you've listened to any number of of episodes, I always talk about the meat suit, how we are awareness, we are the divine, the one divine awareness inside of a meat suit. And I believe this with every fiber of my being and every ounce of spiritual wisdom that I've I've accumulated. But I was looking at latte, and I realized this isn't new, but he's an animal, and he has awareness, and he is an animal, he has a a different level of awareness, but he just like me is awareness in a meat suit, and we just don't think about it that way because he's an animal, and then and then I realized this body that I'm wearing, it's an animal too. It has cells just like latte, it has blood just like latte, it has organs just like latte, it has it it has chemical composition just like latte, it has everything. This body has it all the same substances and genetic uh ingredients that latte has. The only difference is that our bodies, this human form that we are in as human beings, it's more complex, it's more advanced, it's more innovated, it's more evolved. Over millennia, over millions of years, the human body has evolved to a greater level of complexity than a cat, than a dog, which allows us to process life completely different and at a higher, more evolved level. That's it. And the the the awareness that I have in this meat suit is the same awareness that latte has in his meat suit, except his awareness is topped out at his level of of technology in his body, processing ability, and my awareness, the awareness that's that's in this meat suit, is topped out at the level of complexity and innovation and advancement and technology of the human form. And as the human form evolves and and becomes more technologically advanced and innovative, innovative, like it has over the past millions of years, then our level of awareness increases. And and that's that's when it hit me. Like as I'm sitting there, and this is the kind of stuff I do in the morning, this is why silence and stillness is so precious and powerful in my life, is because I'm I'm working through this, and this new insight, this wisdom is is coming through me and to me, and it's coming for me. And this is how I get new things to teach and and lead people through and help them understand, because the almost like the divine uses me as a as a conduit to deliver the messages that are required for us to raise the level of our consciousness, and it hit me that we are awareness wearing an animal, we are the one divine awareness wearing an animal. And and although, you know, if you go back to what ninth grade biology, we have a species, we are a species just like just like cats, just like dogs. We we have been assigned a species because we are an animal, because we are it's either animal, uh, what is it uh Jesus, mineral, vegetable, or animal, right? One of those three, they're they all they each have a species, and we are an animal. We're not a mineral, right? We're not only a minimal, mineral, we're not only a vegetable, so we are an animal. That's why we've been assigned a species, but it's not the awareness that's the species, it's the the body, the meat suit, the animal that we wear. We are wearing this meat suit, we are wearing this animal. Here's here's the the part that has been more liberating than me for uh more liberating for me is that when when I surrendered and I got to really dive into recognizing that I'm uh I am the divine awareness wearing an animal. The I'm looking at my cats and I'm looking at my dogs, and I I realize that my dogs, their name are their names are Wes and Finn, uh two cavalier King Charles Spaniels. I'm looking at these two dogs, and they are completely appeased to. And I've done this exercise with them in the past where it what if if I take my hand and pretend like I'm gonna hit them, they don't even wince because they've never been hit before. They that's not even in their awareness that the hand that I have can hit them because they've never been hit before. They don't their eyes don't even blink, they trust me that much because that has never been part of their experience. So they don't they don't know that possibility. A human hitting them? No, it doesn't happen. Humans love them, and that's why they're so happy and so joyful. They're not scared of humans, they run towards humans. In in the morning, yeah, five o'clock in the morning. If I were to walk up to Wester Finn every day for 10 days, and for no reason at all, kick them or hit them and just do that repeatedly, maybe that 11th day I walk up to them and they run and they wince and they cower and they get scared because they've lost trust in me, and because now getting hit and getting kicked is it it's a it's a an experience that they've experienced, but now they're operating from from some primitive response, from some reaction. They're operating from from their instincts, and and what it really is is the animal body that they're wearing has been conditioned with that pain. Their animal, the animal that they're wearing, the the animal that their awareness is wearing, has has now been conditioned and programming, programmed to fear being kicked or beaten. But since I've never hit them, since Angie's never hit them, they that's not even part of their conditioning or programming. Their conditioning or programming is when when mom or dad gets close, they're gonna pet me, they're gonna love me, they're gonna, they're gonna tell me I'm a good boy. That's their experience. That's what they've been programmed and conditioned for. So what what does this all mean? We have an animal, we are wearing an animal around our awareness. It's literally our uniform. It's it's our vehicle to move from experience to experience. It's it's it's our vehicle, it's our clothes, our cosmic clothes to for this awareness that is us to move around the material world. And Wes and Finn and Latte, their cosmic clothes, their animal, their meat suit is their uniform to navigate this material world, and their their awareness is tapped out or topped off, or or it hits a ceiling of their technology, the way their their their animal has been evolved, and our awareness is topped out and capped out at the level of our innovation and technology. So we experience life differently and we process life differently, but it's still the awareness that's in that animal. Now, when you talk about the conditioning and programming that's buried inside of the animal, the nervous system, the ego, when you talk about the accumulated conditioning and programming, that's how we experience life when we identify as the animal. When the animal has control over us, us being the awareness, when the animal has control over you, the discomfort is your is your path forward. And what I mean by that is you you will you will allow the animal to take you where it wants to go, to to hold back when it Wants to hold back. You allow the conditioning and programming inside of the animal to call the shots to lead the way to make decisions to make choices. But that's the animal that's leading the soul. That's the animal that's that's your animal that you're wearing leading the soul, leading the awareness. And if your body, if the animal that you're wearing, if the meat suit that you are surrounded by, if if you allow it to be the boss of your life, it will lead to a very, very painful, small, fearful, avoidant, attached life. And and true spiritual evolution is beginning to rearrange the identity, the self-concept of who you really are in this world. You are the awareness wearing an animal. But you can also begin to let go of that conditioning, the programming, and allow your soul by constantly releasing it, drill method, Sedona method, shadow work, meditation, whatever. When you as you release the conditioning, as you release the programming, as you surrender, as you release, as you advance, as you learn to trust, as you begin to reassert authority of the awareness over the animal instead of the animal over the awareness. As you get used to understanding that the discomfort leads to growth. Moving through the discomfort leads to growth. Instead of allowing the discomfort, which is the body and the animal, it's their resistance to the unfamiliar. When you move past allowing discomfort to call all of your shots, you can finally begin to live as the soul and not as the animal. And that is called spiritual evolution. There's 8.22 billion people on the planet. You are one of one. You are genetically, uniquely, genetically wired. You are built in a certain way with certain desires, with certain talents, with certain with certain ambitions, with certain dreams, with certain knowings of what you came here to experience. Only you are genetically wired for exactly what you're genetically wired for. And each of us has a unique destiny. It's who we're ultimately here to become in this world. And the more you identify as the animal, the thoughts, the emotions, the disturbances inside of you, the more the energy that's inside of you, the more you identify as those things, as the as the ego, as the nervous system, and allow it all to call to shots, your soul, the volume of your soul is going to be turned down. But when you start the process of identifying as the awareness and begin to or continue to release the pain, the suffering, the anxiety, the survival, the conditioning, the programming, when you as you let go of this, then the volume of your ego will begin to turn down, and the volume of your soul will turn up. And what as the volume of your soul turns up, you'll fall even deeper into a deeper awareness of your design, your purpose, and your ultimate destiny of who you're here to become and recognize yourself as. If you're a spiritual warrior and you want that depth, keep coming back. I'll always come back for more. Love you guys. If there's anything I can do to help you on your on your path, to understand your design, your purpose, your ultimate destiny, destiny, connect with me. Go to innerwealthglobal.com, reach out, put a contact form in. Let me know you're alive. Let me know you're exist. Email me, mike at innerwealthglobal.com. Somehow get in contact with me and let's make some magic together. All right. 2025 is closing out. 2026 is getting ready to take off. This year, 2025 was the Chinese zodiac year of the snake. It was the year of shedding. So if a lot of stuff has fallen away in your life in 2025, it's because you're in the year of the snake. But 2026 is the year of the horse. It's time to make bold moves. It's time to move quickly. And it's time to be strong and powerful and advance in a forward direction. That's what the world needs from you. Love you guys. See you soon. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to www.innerwealthglobal.com for more tools and resources.