Arnaud Saint-Paul, 53: Leading With the Heart

When meeting Arnaud for the first time, there are a few things that are obvious: he is French, he is wildly intelligent, he seems to have tapped into something cosmically huge, and he is quite happy, although I get the feeling that the happy part was not always the case. Here is a guy who worked in the not-very-spiritual realms of tech and finance, and now he wants to talk about my heart spirit. In my experience, people who come from the higher levels of tech finance tend not to be that interested in my heart, their heart, or maybe anyone’s heart. It is a numbers and outcomes world for them.

With Arnaud, I am faced with this very clear-eyed man who is interested in speaking about things like vibration, heart-centered living, and the spirit that resides within companies, organizations and individuals. He speaks with the calm assurance of someone who is seeing something obvious to him, but hidden to me. The message can be simple, or suddenly quantum mechanics comes into the picture. Clearly the person he is now has been on quite a journey to become who he is today. I also get the feeling that there is more to come; that Arnaud is not now, nor was he ever, fixed in place. I immediately like him. 

Having worked in the worlds he did, he has a considerable skill set and the network to go with it. His mission is befittingly large: to open 1 billion hearts to themselves. 

How old are you?
53 years old.

Where are you living?
In my heart 🙂. Physically speaking, I share my time between LA, Paris and, lately, Zurich.

What is your background?
My professional background started in finance and then I went into creating tech startups in Europe and the US. Following the path of the entrepreneur led me to discover so much about human nature, myself, and my relationship with my reality. Nowadays, I am following the path of the philanthropist looking to create a sustainable and planet-wide systemic impact.

“Helping 1 billion hearts to open to themselves”

What are you doing now?
Today I am dedicating my time and resources to one purpose: helping 1 billion hearts to open to themselves. 

Ten years ago, I discovered my life purpose and since then I have been putting in place the tools that would allow such vision to manifest:

• The GIVE Nation foundation is a platform where children learn how to become philanthropists by practicing a sustainable financial literacy. We believe that providing to the next generation the opportunity to practice more empathy, compassion, and altruism is key for the long term success of humanity, creating a long awaited systemic change. We offer a curriculum for schools about the UN’s SDGs and how to save money and give to charities. Also, to provide agency to children, we offer a mobile blockchain-powered wallet where they can take action. We are also working on an NFT-based card game that will enable kids to solve earth challenges and trigger donations to charities.
• In the past 30 years, through my experience and personal quest, I developed a method to lead in harmony through my heart which I now offer through Tapuat. The Heartful method unifies, in a visual map, difficult concepts coming from new vibratory physics principles like quantum physics to elemental treaties from Eastern philosophies and the main religions affecting billions of people. The Heartful Method™ helps individuals and groups to live in harmony with themselves and their surroundings, feeling supported by their life and at peace with themselves. Tapuat offers this visual method through group sessions (the Heartful Method Leadership Series), cruises on the Nile, workshops, books, and more.

How does your past work inform what you are doing now?
A few years back, I looked into the reason why I was born trying to understand what is the essence of my presence. I then took into account my past professional experiences. This introspection led me to consider using technology and finance as vehicles to achieve the biggest impact I can offer: helping a heart to open … at scale.

Rooted in our relationship with money is the one we have with success, self-worth, and impact but also with greed, selfishness, and more. Which life should we choose?

Likewise, rooted in our relationship with technology is the one we have with growth, abundance, and oneness but also with isolation, self-indulgence, and more. What experience do we opt for?

I started to understand and then live on a day-to-day that our reality (the one we are so fond of with all its intricacies, activities, situations, conversations, conflicts, moments of happiness, emotions, and thoughts) is not at all what it seems. As confirmed by quantum physics and all the major treatises our humanity holds dear, our reality is an infinite collection of overlapping vibrations all going through different frequencies and cycles (or patterns). And that happens in every moment! I explore this concept further in my latest book I:I is born.

“From a day-to-day perspective, each time we make a choice we actually choose to rebirth ourselves”

From a day-to-day perspective, each time we make a choice we actually choose to rebirth ourselves, navigating these patterns and frequencies, ready to explore the new world that such election has enabled.

Were these rebirths traumatic? What was your journey from the person you were to the person you are today?
Some rebirths were definitely traumatic but the majority of it not at all. Depending on the importance of the pattern affecting my life, the level of energy required to let go of it varies. Although it may seem daunting, it is actually not the case. 

For an unconscious disentanglement to happen, it is necessary to reach a certain critical momentum so that the release can unfold. When raptured in our daily lives, we live these unravelings through any illnesses, woes, accidents and situations. Traumas are amazing contrasts, in a short period of time, that enable us to crystallize the opportunity of a choice. 

We can always make the conscious choices that enable us to make a quantum leap and jump to a new octave of ourselves, a new version of ourselves that is not bound any more by such trauma (that is the core of the Heartful Method™, by the way).

And the more conscious we are, the easier it gets.

When you speak about values, you say that everything is a mirror, a reflection of one’s values. Do you mean that I see everything through my values, or that my actions are perceived by others that way?
Actually, the principle of reflection applies to much more than just values. Any belief you carry in this moment is mirrored in any situation or person of your daily life. 

For example, I had this high-performance executive coach whose belief was “women need to control me” (because of his mother’s very protective behavior when he was a child). Such belief was thus enacted through every single encounter with women as it was the ‘truth’ for him. Every woman he met (professionally or privately) displayed the same controlling behavior he already knew. No other behavior was allowed in his experience. This state of affair continued until we were able to make a new conscious choice on that topic. Now, even the women he interacted with prior to the choice act differently in his reality. Why? Because he is now matching a different frequency that is not conditioned anymore by the belief he was identifying to. 

I know it can sound otherworldly but this is the reality I live in and many others who have gone through my method. So, as you can see, our values and beliefs do indeed condition the very core of our experience.

“Our values and beliefs do indeed condition the very core of our experience”

What do you mean that a company has a spirit? I get that it has a culture and a mission, but what do you mean by a spirit?
As mentioned earlier, everything is vibration. Everything. 

Without entering into too many details, at its highest frequency, we can surmise that all is consciousness. It is on the screen of consciousness that we have this human experience. We do not see it but it is always there, like the love of our mother. To share with you a direct experience of this principle, when you say “I”, who is actually saying it? Have you noticed?

In other words, any creation or gathering of 2 people or more gives birth to a new consciousness with its own vision and mission, with its own life, much like a father and a mother give birth to a new life. 

So, when we look at management theories and the like, maybe there is a new paradigm that can emerge in continuity of the existing frameworks. Indeed we have profits, teams, culture each being a subtler form of the former. At its very core, as I have seen so many times in my own experience working with CEOs, there is an independent consciousness or spirit with its own flow. Founders, investors, employees, clients, etc are part of such spirit, enacting it every day. This spirit is looking to blossom and find harmony and balance as its flow grows further, entraining all its individual parts in a symphonic expression of itself. 

How do we align further with this spirit? By becoming ourselves more and more aligned with ourselves, transforming into a polished mirror without asperity and therefore being our own symphonic expression in unison with the company’s own expression. 

Through a work of alignment and balancing, teams, boards, etc can now evolve from a state of cacophony to a state of symphony and therefore fast track the manifestation of their vision.

The Heartful Method

What is the Heartful Method?
The Heartful Method™ is a very pragmatic, down-to-earth method that helps anyone to live with more harmony through their heart, their daily lives. It helps them face any situation with a sense of presence and inner peace. They can now accelerate their growth feeling supported and nurtured in tune with the flow of life.

Throughout the past 30 years, as I was experiencing life, a series of charts came together. They would help me understand how our reality works and how to live through my heart instead of my mind. 

As the set of charts grew, it slowly became a holistic approach that I could share with hundreds of people throughout the world to enhance their experience and their relationship (with themselves and others).

Throughout a constant practice of these laid out principles, a process started to unfold as well helping me to understand the language of life (you know these situations, these contrasts that populate our day-to-day), disentangle the underlying beliefs so that I could open myself to a new experience of myself, free from the self-imposed shackles I was living with previously.

It is this message of inner and outer harmony that I am sharing with the world through my different initiatives.

What does harmony mean to you?
According to the Webster definition, ‘Harmony’ describes a state of congruence, of accord and tranquility. Applied to our daily life, it is a state where life’s flow and my experience is one and the same. It is a state where my ego is no longer at odds with what is happening in my life but in total unison and in accord with life’s unfoldment. 

We are describing here an experience and a life where I am doing what I love to do, I am being what I am meant to be, in total accordance with my deepest essence, surfing the waves of my blossoming. 

“Through my initiatives, I believe it is possible to spread my message of harmony, empathy, and compassion to millions of people”

What is your ambition for the next 10 years?
Through my initiatives I believe it is possible to spread my message of harmony, empathy, and compassion to millions of people. This is my ambition for the next 10 years: to share as wide as possible throughout society these tools so that we can all live in more coherence with ourselves and the world we live in.

What sort of music are you listening to?
Hmmm, from medieval to Baroque music, from jazz to blues, from classical to lounge music, from pop music to Sufis or Indian music with a bit of merengue or bossa nova 🙂.

Being French, and this being harvest season, what are some of the foods you are looking forward to these days?
Yes, food. Quite important for a Frenchy :). A few days ago, I had some ceps from our forest in an omelet. The best meal ever for this period of the year. Some grapes for dessert makes it amazing. Throughout the day, some grilled chestnuts in season as well.

What are 3 non-negotiables in your life?
1. The opportunity to help a heart open; it is the most beautiful sight and experience I can have.
2. Time for meditation and introspection.
3. A good meal (no sandwiches!)

Connect with Arnaud:
Website