Michael Bernard Beckwith Asks “What’s Your Assignment”

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot.

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Pivot Podcast, our Conscious Pivot radio podcast. And today I am so excited as I am almost every day. In fact, I want to check that I am excited every day because it is just beautiful to be alive, to be breathing and to be awake. So what a blessing that is. I truly love my life. I hope you love yours. And you are about to love it even more because I have this blessing I get to share. Somebody who is really a gift in the world, has been a gift in the world for many, many years. In all transparency, he's a new friend to me. I've been watching and following his work and I've been, I guess, in his flock for a while now, which is wonderful. But now I get to spend some time with him and more importantly, I get to share his message and his gift and his wisdom with all of you. So his name is Michael Bernard Beckwith and he's a minister, best selling author, he's the founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center. He's done so many things in his life that are just in service. I think, you know, people that are in service don't, don't necessarily want to have all their accolades kind of paraded around ahead of them. But I think it's important that we commit when we're committing so much of our time and our energy to, to following our hearts and doing beautiful work in the world that they're acknowledged. And so I want to start with that acknowledgement and welcome him to today's podcast. So, Michael, may I call you Michael?

Absolutely.

Awesome. Thank you for being with us today.

It is my joy to be with you and it was wonderful spending time with you in my office a couple of weeks ago, getting a chance to just dialogue and speak and I echo what you just said. I'm very enthusiastic about being alive. I'm very grateful that I exist. Every single day is another day of being in service to life and in service to love and peace and harmony. And I just feel, I guess the word would be just grateful and thankful that I'm awake to who I am at this moment and always being available to. To what's seeking to emerge, even in this moment, for the next moment. So I just. I echo those sentiments that you opened up the program with.

Thank you. It's interesting. I was invited to speak this morning at a friend's business conference, and I had an outline of the things I wanted to talk about, you know, was leadership and how to create great teams and what that's all about. And I've been blessed to be a CEO of a big company with a lot of employees. And so I was going to kind of come at it from that perspective of management, but I allowed myself, as I often do, just the space to be guided. And I explained that to them. I said, look, I have an agenda. I've got a kind of a syntax of things I want to cover here. But I'm being guided not to deviate from it, to not get to it, but to follow another path for a little bit, and we'll just see where it leads, and hopefully it'll lead somehow back to center. I said, but I have absolute 100% faith that it will, because I trust, I trust in the process. I trust in God, I trust in myself. I said, and that's really the essence of leadership. Because, you know, to be a great leader, you must have people trust you, and people will never trust you if you do not trust yourself. And I just don't find that I can trust myself or that it's possible to trust oneself if we're afraid and if we can't deal with our fear. So that's where I started with this talking. It was a business talk, but I started with the need to deal with fear. And I was thinking as we were getting ready to have this interview, that pivoting this idea of changing, changing direction in life, reinventing things, is so difficult for many people. It's been difficult for me too, because we fundamentally fear change. And right now, this is. We're living in exponential change time. So, Michael, what's your thoughts on that? And you've guided so many people around fear and around change. So I would love to get your thoughts on that.

I'm certain, as you already know, that change is the only constant in life. In the world of phenomena, things are always changing. It's either stagnancy or it's evolution or unfoldment. And there's nothing that's standing still. Everything is energy, so everything is always moving. So it's interesting that individuals want to hold on to that which is known when the. The real Goodies that we're seeking is always in the realm of the unknown. It's the next stage of our unfoldment. And so I think that when we look at it from a spiritual point of view, the emergence of more good within us, the emergence of the activation of talents and gifts and resiliency and entrepreneurial ship and creativity, all of these qualities that are emerging from us when we engage it, that's called heaven. When we are stagnating and seeking to hold on to the known, that's called hell. And so I think when individuals are basically taught that change is going to happen. And to be in front of that change, to participate in that change through vision, through articulation of what kind of life you want to experience, through articulation of how you want to serve and what qualities you want to share, you get on top of change. You're participating in your own change. I always counsel people that every month, every six months, every year, you want to look back and realize that you're not the same person that existed at the beginning of the year. And if you are, that's stagnation and that's hell. And you don't want to just change for change sake. Change must be evolutionary. It must be a dimension of unfoldment. You must become more of your essential self. So when we're operating primarily from survival, only then we hold on. We don't want change. We want to stay within the paradigm in which we're living. But we begin to operate from. I want to grow. I want to magnify my gifts. I want to extend myself. The universe responds to that song and gives us new dance steps, so to speak. Because the nature of our song then provides different music from the universe, different dance steps. And it's all about change. So I don't want anyone to be the same person they were six months ago or a year ago or three years ago. Change is the constant. So let's participate with it rather than fight against it.

Utilize what is absolutely the law of utilization. It's interesting. I remember reading in an Emmet Fox book, I have this around the year book of his. It's kind of daily, daily readings. And I remember seeing in there that he said that change is the. Is the cosmic law for manifestation in the universe. And that's what you. I mean, I think that's what came up when. When I was listening to you just now is that that's. It is the only constant. But it's also exactly what you said. How it is that we create something new. How do we manifest otherwise? Things that are stagnant become stale, they become rancid. They eventually become death itself. Right. So it's like what's known on some level. This is a bit extreme, but I want to see if you buy. If you buy into this too. To me, what. What is known gives us our. It gives us our identity, it fuels our ego. You know, so I've got my 10,000 hours in this thing. I've got my degrees, I've got, you know, all that. And that's wonderful. And yet everything that's known is dead.

Yeah. Everything that we can see and taste and touch. I call that the past. It was originally a thought, an idea, and then it manifested. And once you can see it and it's known, it's the past. So it's already dead. People are seeking to eke out their existence from something that's already happened. When the all original thinker, the presence of, is full to overflowing with new ideas, waiting for those ideas to take shape through people who are receptive and people who are ready to manifest them. And so they become those kind of individuals, stay eternally new. They stay vibrant because they're not living on their laurels. They're living for that next original idea to take shape. And as you live at that level, you literally become impervious to the thought forms of fear and doubt and worry that plague the human condition. And so you're not running around trying to protect your life. You're waking up, trying to extend who you are and become more yourself. So I'm with that. That which you can see can say it's dead, or that which you can see is the past. And the unseen is where the juice is. The invisible, the inaudible, the intangible. That's where the juice is. And as we expand our awareness, we're able to see the invisible and hear the inaudible. And then we become the individuals that can literally do what was used to be called the impossible because we're living in a different space.

It's an alchemy.

Right. And interesting you use the word alchemy because every alchemist knows, I mean, that the metaphor is changing lead to gold. But in order to change lead to gold, you have to have a little bit of the frequency of gold existing already to transmute the rest of the lead to gold. And so we are alchemists, we have to have a little bit of faith, a little bit of vision, of joy. We have to have a little bit of it, and we have a little Bit of it. The grain of a mustard seed, so to speak.

I was just gonna say the mustard seed.

Then we can alchemicalize the rest of our life. So instead of focusing on that which appears to be obstacles or hindrances or adverse, what an alchemist does is take the little bit of good that exists and places the full attention there. And then the rest of it begins to vibrate at that level. And then what was leaden becomes golden in our life. So we're invited to be alchemist.

And that's. That's an art form. Yes, the art and the science of living successfully. Because everybody's, you know, kind of focused on, or most people are focused on successful. You know, you want to be successful financially and otherwise. And it's really. That mustard seed is the mind. I mean, it could be just that seed in the mind. The science of mind is. I know, something that's been very important to you. I came upon that, that work, that metaphysical work later in life. But, you know, what's your thought on that? Literally on the thoughts that make what you're talking about possible?

Well, we have to remember that a thought is a unit of mental energy that now we have the wherewithal to measure it. You can actually measure thoughts. Some thoughts oscillate at a higher frequency than other thoughts. A thought that emanates from an awareness of love and connectivity is way more powerful than a thought form that's emanating from a sense of separation or fear. So they'll all have a tendency to manifest or, I would say, transmute. Just as ice can transmute itself into water and water can transmute itself into gas, a thought transmutes itself into perception and experience and manifestation. So when we talk about the science thought or the science of mind and spirits, we're talking about becoming adept at real thinking and thinking ness, or the regurgitating of the same habits or perceptions or opinions that we've had over the years. That's not real thinking. That's called mentation. That's just a regurgitation of thoughts and opinions. But real thinking is putting ourselves in a position where we're catching a new thought. It's called inspiration. And being breathed through by the spirit, something is breathing through us. That's real thought. And when one can operate at that level. As a matter of fact, in the Japanese language, the word to think is called kamkuru, which means literally to return to the realm of God. And so when we combine that with the English definition of thinking, which is to create, you create by returning to the realm of God, which is inspiration. And so what we're inviting individuals to do is to do some real thinking, to stop bracket their previous thinking nests and opinions and points of view, put it to the side for a moment and begin to be receptive to a new thought. What do you want to experience in your life? Not what do you want to not.

Experience.

Not what you're resisting, not what you're fighting, but what do you want to experience? And begin to allow those thoughts to flood your awareness until they become more real to you than the present circumstance.

Starting in this very moment. Right. I mean, just the second. What do I want to experience? Is such a powerful question. How am I experiencing myself in this moment?

Absolutely.

Yeah. It was so wonderful to be with those folks this morning and to start in that place because I was saying so I'm just curious. I'm curious where this is all going to lead. You know, it's like coming at it with a beginner's mind and a child's perspective. And I think a part of what we're talking about really is about perception. How are you perceiving yourself in that moment? And what else are you able to perceive in that moment which gives you this heightened, heightened sensitivity and awareness to what is actually happening, which is fresh, is new, is going, you know, the next moments unknown, which could bring up fear, puts you right up against your, you know, the wall of your box and your growth edge. And that's life.

That's life. And I think you in talking about perception, I've been teaching this month that, that your context determines your perception. So if your context is merely human, or I'm merely the son and daughter of my parents, or merely the school I graduated from or the neighborhood I grew up in, then your perception is limited. But if your context is, I'm living, moving and having my beingness and divine intelligence, I live and move and have my beingness in a field of love and infinite good. If I expand my context, then my perception changes. I'm not just a little incy wincy, insignificant human. The context says I'm loaded and coded with infinite potential. So now that perception changes and now I'm able to draw and obtain new thought from the expanded perception, the inspiration happens. And so I think this is very important because you're either drawing thought forms from what is called the sea of mental garbage, or you're drawing inspiration from the ocean of love intelligence. But it all depends on your context. You know, like you say you woke up this morning and you, you're thankful for existence. You're thankful for being alive. You're thankful for the great possibilities that can happen in your life today. Well, you've expanded your context. So now inspiration can come from the ocean of love, intelligence, and move you in ways that you couldn't be moved if you woke up saying, oh, I'm just a little human being and my mother didn't love me and I didn't know who my dad was and this, that and the other. Then I shrink my context and then I prevent the higher order of thinking to take place in my life. And so we get to choose that we get to participate in. And whether we're operating from the sea of mental garbage, thought forms emerging from a sense of separation or from the ocean of love intelligence, great inspiration arising from a sense of connectivity. It's right here based on our perception, based on our context.

So I was born. This is particularly relevant for me when you use that metaphor. I was born under the sign of Pisces. I'm a swimmer. I was a lifeguard. It sounds as though when we approach the sea of infinite possibility, infinite intelligence, everything we cannot see, we can come to that sea with sort of a thimble and dip a thimble into the water. That thimble being represented by the context. Or we can come with a five gallon jug or something much larger and decide what the size of that container is. And the size of the container is what determines what it can hold inside.

Right. We can actually jump in and swim in it and realize that we are oceanic with unlimited possibilities and then actually be inspired. We can actually be pulled by great vision, motivated if necessary. But yeah, many people are going to the ocean with the thimble and keep going back with the same thimble over and over again rather than going back with a much bigger container until they can just leap in and just swim in that bad boy and practice the law of buoyancy, you know, float in it.

Oh, man. You know what? That's an image. I'm gonna meditate on that later. Yeah, that's a beautiful one. I know. It was in, I think in one of Deepak chopra's books, the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, like 1994. So. And I didn't read it then. I wasn't, I was practicing law. Getting, getting just, just kind of.

You were practicing a different kind of law?

Yeah, it was a different kind of law, but really just grinding at that point in my life for many, many years. I didn't, I didn't have any, any sort of Time, even I didn't make any time. Should say to. To think about these things. But in that book, I remember Deepak talked about going into the gap. And I'm just thinking now that some of what you're describing here rings. Rings of that idea that, you know, we can deal with our circumstances. And three, the way he described it, in three ways, we can suffer. That's the path that most people choose, actually. The path of least resistance. In some ways.

Right.

As painful it is to acknowledge that. But so you can suffer. You can. You can transcend, you know, that difficulty. You know, the mother. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is the result of transcending an awful. Awful, you know, thing and making it a gift and a service to other people and then transmuting it all together. Going into that sea, you say, floating around in that. In that infinite gap of. Right. Yeah.

We're invited to actually transmute, to actually change the frequency of the thoughts and the experience. And we have the capacity to do that. You know, going back to what I said earlier, Thought is a unit of mental energy. It's not stagnant, it's oscillating. And the moment we look at something differently, it changes. We look at something from a perspective of what lesson am I learning? What blessing can I give from this? It changes the whole dynamic of what we're looking at. You know, the observer effect. Everything changes at a subatomic level based on observation. But if we observe something with an intention, that's putting the observer effect on steroids. You actually are shifting something, but you have an intentionality behind it. And you're able to take any circumstance. And instead of it becoming a tombstone, it can become a stepping stone to a greater experience of good through the shifting of our perception and the establishing of intentionality.

This situation every day. I am as well. Everybody is. You're seeing them through some lens.

Yes.

So, for example, if you're looking at it through the lens of love, then even someone who is giving you a hard time or, you know, sort of trying your patience or just whatever it is, right. That you can see them, see them through a lens of love. What I'm hearing you say, if I'm getting it right, is that that changes. That changes the picture entirely.

It changes the picture. And because we're all at one with each other on a subatomic level, or we can say we're at one with each other, even on a spiritual level, as I change what I'm looking for and I get in touch with what I'm looking with, it changes the whole dynamic. It can happen in an instant. If, like you said earlier, if you realize you're awake, if you stay awake and not get caught in the undertow and the turbulence, that which is trying to pull you into the human condition, and that's practice there. To be able to maintain a level of gratitude, a level of high observation in the midst of seeming conflict, in the midst of confusion or embattlement. And that's how we become masterful. The old metaphor is a sailor doesn't become a master sailor by sailing in calm seas. The master sailor becomes a master by ultimately navigating rough turbulence. And so when we're in the world and there's rough turbulence there, we're not wishing that the turbulence goes away. We become masterful in the turbulence. We use the turbulence to maintain equanimity and seeing things through the eyes of love until we become a master. So whether things are calm and beautiful, or whether things. Plans don't go our way that day, or if there's turbulence in the world, we're able to still maintain. Looking at life through gratitude and asking the question, what do I want to experience? And looking at it through the eyes of love, we become masters. You're not going to become a master in your little harbor.

You're not going to become a master in sailing without wind, and maybe a lot of it, right? So I couldn't think of anything that's more appropriate right now to chat about than the disruption that you're describing, because it is definitely with us and without the details meaning the granular discussion of politics. It's that people are disturbed, they're perturbed in many ways. And what an amazing opportunity we have, as you were describing as this opportunity in that experience to be more. To be better, to be our best today than. Or just better than we were yesterday and better still tomorrow. And you use the word practice, and this is a fundamental principle of pivot. And also something that I am endlessly fascinated about in writing a book that is going to come out soon about rituals. And I think of rituals as conscious practices, things that, you know, there are habits, the things that hopefully we've developed good habits. And Stephen Covey wrote a book about the kind of habits that you want to have to be effective. But for most people, I think they don't have great habits. They don't have those. Those habits, which is why that book was helpful to me. Rituals have a sacred quality to them because they're very much conscious master habits that we create for a better life. So would you share some of maybe the practices and those master habits that you have to be as awake as you are in the midst of the turmoil that is every day around us?

Absolutely. Like yourself, when I wake up in the morning and I put my feet. As soon as my feet hit the ground well before I do that kind of breathe, and then I wake up and I stand up and I put my arms up and I proclaim that I am grateful to be alive. What's my assignment? I invite an assignment for the day, but I do it from the consciousness of gratitude. And then I walk over to a place in my bedroom that's established itself as a place where I do spiritual work. And I have two big magnets there that I practice qigong on. I have a bench there that I meditate, have a couple of notepads and some books, and I'll do some variation of meditation, breath work, study and writing very briefly, not a long time. I get ready, put my sweats on, I go to the gym, I work out for an hour, then I come back and I have a greater extended period of time in which I'm in meditation. And then from that space, how do I want my day to go, what I want to experience today, and I kind of just kind of peruse what I kind of know on the surface I'm going to be doing. I know I'm going to see you today. I know I have another interview later. I know I have a couple of meetings. There's some things I bless that all that I open myself up to spun what I call spontaneous goodness that beyond what I can see, beyond what I know is planned, I'm available to spontaneous goodness that the unknown has permission to take over my life and bring into my life good that I've never experienced before, blessing that I've never experienced before, or someone that I am to serve that I don't know about yet. So I leave all of that open. And then I take my shower. I get ready, I come to the office, I have my staff. We get together and establish intention. And throughout the course of the day, just checking in. So then we go back to the evening. I'm going to bed now, so I have a brief sitting. But before, while I go to sleep, I do one of two things I invite, even as the body is sleeping, if I can be used anywhere, take me there to be used as a force of healing, a presence of encouragement, or teach me even as I'm sleeping, whether it's spiritual guides, aides and helpers, whether it's the presence. That's never an absence, you know, so that when I wake up, I have a ritual. And when I go to sleep, I have a ritual. I don't waste. I tell people, I told people recently here at Agape, you don't waste when you're about. Don't just fall out and go to sleep, you know, don't do that. That moment. Actually establish some kind of intention before you go to sleep. So that the subconscious is operating on your behalf. Even while the body is taking a deep rest. Because you go into a unified field when you sleep. So you might as well use it. You might as well give it a signal, give it an instruction. And so that's kind of how it rolls. And then sometimes some days more intense than others, you know, there's more time to practice than others. But I don't let a day go by without some level of practice. It'd be akin to going a day or two without taking a shower. You're not gonna. You're not gonna go into the world and not clean yourself up. So I believe that. I call it a social contract. That just as you have a social contract, you're gonna go into a meeting, you're gonna meet some people. Everybody's assuming that you showered that day, you brushed your teeth, you know, you washed your hands, you know, it's a social contract. It's kind of given. So I extend the social contract and teach that. That also includes taking care of your interiority. Have you connected with the presence today? Have you connected with the high intention? Have you opened yourself to an assignment so that you're not just meeting people with a bad mood or with some unresolved conflict, you're actually meeting each other fresh. So I believe that just like we don't want stench from that shower, we don't want the inner stench from not doing an inner shower.

Yeah, it's cleansing. Very much a cleansing practice in some ways for me believe it's vigilance that we'll have the rest of our days if we're lucky. That ever. It's a response, a self responsibility. It's a self authorship.

Yes.

And our own unfolding, which is just so beautiful. I love you, brother. I'm listening to you and I just. I had to say that because all I got filled up in my heart was with this love. Thank you for that.

And we haven't even talked about. I mean, we talked about before we got on the air together. I mean, you had a green drink that you were drinking. Include the habits that I Have around my nutrition, my hydration, my green drinks, the supplements that I take. I mean, you know, I take care of the body temple, the mental body and the spiritual body. It's a part of responsibility.

It is. I mean, how to serve, in order to serve. Serving is not easy. Serving is a humbling task. And I said this to our leaders this morning in that meeting. I said, you've got to be at your best because, you know, there's a lot of things that'll take you out, right? You got to be at your best in order to be humble at the same time and resilient in that humility, right?

And humility is the fulcrum for power. You know, the more humble you are, then the more there's an availability to the great power of the universe flowing through you. You know, once you yield and surrender and you're humbled and the power really flows through you. And if you try to take total credit for that and lose humility, then you're cruising for a bruising. There's going to be a fall at some level because you've cut yourself off and you think you're doing it all by yourself. When there's a power back of us, you know, there's beyond Niagara Falls, there's Lake Erie, you know, Niagara Falls started, was doing it all itself. Well, look how great I am. You know, I'm rolling, you know, but behind Niagara Falls, you know, before it was polluted and everything, you know, there's Lake Erie that was actually feeding Niagara Falls. So we may be looking like Niagara Falls at times, but behind us is a gigantic ocean of infinite potential that's using us to express itself. And it just brings us to a deep sense of humility. And then the more humble, the more power. Yeah.

Wow, that's beautiful. I just have a couple of other things I'd love for us to touch on. I mean, there's so many. This, this is magical where we could take this. I, in listening to you also was thinking about this book by Michael Singer. I love his book, the Untethered Soul. But the surrender experiment was one that took me, you know, really took me to some, some wonderful places for several months. Where was this, this idea of what you were saying, Surrendering, you know, that creating an opportunity for spontaneous goodness. Spontaneous. Right. Thinking. Spontaneous inspiration is in many ways a surrender. It's our better way of thinking, right? Our. Our way of thinking. You know, I hate to say my way of thinking gets me in trouble. I read like I check out a while ago a friend gave me Chapter 30 of a course in Miracles, to look at, you know, rules for decision, the new beginning, and how to create the day we want. And one of the first things it's kind of saying is, are you making decisions by yourself or with. Or with your Creator? Right. I mean, you're making decisions all the time anyway, so it's just a question of whether you're making it with. With the Creator or you're making it with. With fear, love or fear, you know, God or the devil. And. And that. That just blew my, you know, blew my socks because to surrender to a. Another possibility other than the one that my ego mind or my, you know, my. I know that mind is both humbling, fills me with humility, and it also fills me with awe because it is a path that's dark and unknown and scary on some level. And I think there are a lot of people right now that are in some pretty dark, scary places. You know, it could be that they're concerned about what's happening in the world. They're concerned about the planet, they're concerned about their kids, but they're also concerned themselves about, you know, how will they serve, what would their life, what's their right livelihood in a world that's changing so rapidly, rapidly, and where the rhetoric is so divisive. I love the fact, you know, I'm sort of shamelessly promoting my book Pivot, but I wrote it for the kids originally out of my own pain and my own having come to a bit of a roadblock in my own life. And rather than having a midlife crisis, I had a calling. And I know you've pivoted in many ways in your life to create new things. And it was an unknown, dark road. And you had to have. You had to show up in a particular way to navigate that territory to the point where you've helped a lot of people. Would you share a little bit about your own Pivot experience?

Well, of course, there's been many. You know, I've been teaching for 40 years, and Agape has been in existence 30 years. And so it's just hitting me over the last year because you never really start something and say, well, I'm going to do this for 30 years. You know, you just do it in the moment. And so I remember a number of Pivot experiences. There's a whole bunch of them coming to mind, but I'll start with an original one. As a young man attending college, I was pretty much agnostic, and I was a psychobiology major at usc. I was on the Path to go to med school, actually. And I began to have a series of inner experiences that at the time I labeled pathological because I hadn't done any study on these kind of interior awarenesses that was happening through me. And anyway, it culminated with me being killed in a lucid dream. And the pain was excruciating physically on the heart and emotionally. And I died. When I woke up, I could see that I was, we're all surrounded by this presence of love and beauty and intelligence. And so that sent me on a path to discover what had happened to me. And so it totally changed the direction I was going in life. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to finish school, I was going to go to med school, etc. Etc. And I thought that was the thing I should do. But I always teach as a shoulder do. And there's a meant to be. And the should dos come from external authority figures. You know, our parents think we should do something. Our society says, you should do this, you know, but we all have a meant to be. And so in studying what had happened to me, I realized that my menta be was actually to teach and to uplift, to inspire and to help people lift their consciousness. And so it totally pivoted one direction. I was going into another direction. And so then you fast forward. A lot of things happen fast forward. I'm the director of training of a prayer ministry. I'm teaching at a university, at a faculty, teaching spiritual programs. I have a private clientele. I'm doing seminars. And the inner prompter was guiding me to actually start a community of which, on the surface level, I didn't really want to do that. I liked my life.

It was.

It was a good, successful life. And the inner prompter was like, no, we have more work for you to do. And I resisted it. And so things began to become stagnant in my life. I used to have a crook in my neck in which I could not turn right. I didn't have full mobility. And every time that I would go to a chiropractor, it would become adjusted. I'd be fine. I could turn left and right. And then after a couple of weeks, it would start being stagnant again. And a number of things happened that we won't have time to go into right now. That ultimately I caught a vision of agape and it was for real. And I went back to my place of employment and I said, giving you my resignation. I'll train the people behind me to do what I'm doing, but I'm called to start a new work. And one of the individuals said, where are you going to start the work? And I said, I've been guided to start in Santa Monica. And she said, well, why don't you start something for your own people? And I said, short people. And she said, oh, I didn't mean anything. I said, I'm not going to take offense to what you're saying, you know, but I'm being guided. And so that pivoted me from a secure situation that I was in regular paycheck, seeing clients every day, doing workshops, teaching at the university, to going into this unknown where I had to pull together a vision group.

So you had a safe, secure situation that a lot of people would say was an enviable place to be?

Absolutely. I had paychecks coming from numerous places. I had my weekends off.

Say goodbye to that one.

Goodbye to that one. And I was pulled to leap into another expression of what was trying to emerge through me. And the joy that I have is quite awesome and profound. The number of people that I get to serve in, the places that I get to go and the places around the world I get to travel and new people I get to meet and the evolutionary collaborations I get to be a part of are all an extension of the work that I do at Agape. And the ways that I get to inspire individuals and work with individuals is beyond my imagination. I can remember a couple of years ago, I was facilitating meeting with world leaders and spiritual leaders at the behest of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and I was the facilitator. And I'm sitting there next to the interpreter, and the Dalai Lama is sitting next to the interpreter. And I just thought went across my mind, you know, how did I end up here? You know? And I saw this through line of this young boy growing up sitting in front of a tree at my father's house, looking up into the sky. And I can remember saying, you know, I want to help. I want to make the world better. I remember that thought and that through line, created all of these experiences and insights. And some things happened in my life that were tragic and seemingly negative at the time, and some beautiful and wonderful all the way up to that moment. Here I am sitting with His Holiness, being a part of this group, facilitating the synthesis dialogues. And so there was a lot of pivot moments that occurred to get there. And ultimately, the yes factor has to be stronger than your no, has to be stronger than holding on, has to be stronger than I'm afraid even if you can't see how it's going to turn out, if your yes is strong of taking on your assignment and activating your gifts and sharing, then paths of righteousness will open up, doorways will open up that you can't even see. You can't even see the doorways. Now from this present paradigm, you can only see him from a higher point of view.

Exactly. You created. Well, when you were. When you're eight years old, looking up at the sky, you had. You created a bigger context. There was a greater context.

Yes.

So you fast forward a few years later and a couple of strands of hair, and it's just. It's just the fruit that grew from that seed, from that, you know, that small seed that you called context earlier, that's a beautiful circle, circular expression. But yet it's still unfolding now because again, there's just more. Right. It's infinite.

I feel like even a couple of months ago, I feel like I was going through a rebirth, and I symbolized that when I came back from Egypt, I had a powerful. Took about 87 people to Egypt, went through all the temples, prayed and meditated and visioned, did a lot of inner work, and I felt like I was going through a rebirth. So the day I got back from Egypt, I cut off all my hair. And it just was symbolized of releasing the past, regardless of how good and glorious the past has been and how negative some things have been, just releasing all of that and being available to the next step of my own evolution. And I still feel that I'm in that kind of an initiatory vibration. Yeah.

So in essence, you're pivoting even as we speak.

Even now, there's a pivot happening that I can see to a degree, and a lot of it I don't see.

And that's the part that I think is really empowering for others, because I think it's a tendency. You know, we're very much a voyeuristic world in some ways. You know, watching celebrities or people who've created great success and seeing them in their present state and going, oh, man, they're all that. They've got all that, you know, things I want and all this. But the truth of the matter is that where you stand now is no different than where anybody is potentially at in that pivot, which is. It's unknown. And it's also where all life is. So it's where it's. It's. It is the unfolding of something that we know is divine, and yet still it's still.

It's a great mystery. And, you know, I don't know how it's going to shape up. There's certain things I don't know. But you used the word trust earlier. But I do trust. It's like the old statement goes, you know, I don't know what the future holds, but I know what holds the future, you know, and this presence that holds the future. And so I have to trust and I have to let go. I have to surrender, as we were talking about earlier. And surrendering isn't waving the white flag and giving up and acquiescing to negative circumstances. Surrender is embracing the next stage of your own evolution and letting go to it. Even if you don't know where it's going to take you, you know, you let go to it.

I'm so glad you said that. Surrender. And that's. Yeah, the surrender is not a waving of a flag. It's not a resignation of any kind. It's an acceptance. It's a letting go. It's a trusting that we're, you know, we're all cared for and on. On a beautiful path that's leading, where it leads. But in that greater context of how is it that we want to serve in the world, where it leads will only be a reflection of that. If our. If what we are thinking about is scarcity of how, you know, how to survive, it'll be a reflection of that. And I again think this conversation is so important now because again, the rhetoric is very much scarcity rhetoric, you know, where there's haves and have nots and divisive language that's being used on both sides. And it's troubling. And that's why I think the conversation is important, very important right now.

Right. The human condition is laden with fear and worry and separation and blame and shame and fault finding against each other. And we have to lift that conversation because our conversation determines our perception and our experience and it determines the world we're living in. And so two people can be standing on the same spot on the earth. We live in two different worlds based on the inner conversation that's going on. Some people can be living in a world of fear and doubt and worry. Another person is living in a world of possibility. And so I think our conversation is about lifting people to the world of possibility. And with all of the rhetoric, negativity that's going down, I think one of the main things that we can ask is what is my assignment here? Because we're not here by chance. We're here by choice. We chose to have this incarnation. It's not accidental. We chose to be here at this time in human history where an old paradigm is decaying and falling apart and a new paradigm is being born, and there's a lot of chaos and confusion as one is emerging and the other one is dying. And so we have an assignment. We all brought an assignment. So I think we have to ask, what is that assignment? Rather than, oh, those are bad people, and they're doing bad things, and they disagree with me, and, oh, my God, we have to ask, what is my assignment? And the assignment coming from the oversold, coming from our depth of our being, is going to carry some level of peace and love and inspiration and genius and activation of talents. And so if we all bring our assignment to bear, the world's gonna be different. It's gonna be better. But if we all stay, stay in regret and shame and blame, the world's gonna be different as well, but it's gonna be different in a downward spiral, which.

Which is why the practice that you start your day with. So one of the things that I really enjoyed about that is just the. That the similarity. Because I have problems, you have problems, we have challenges, for sure. And yet the way we begin our day, when our mind is so fertile, when the soil is so fertile, coming out of our unconscious state into a conscious moment, I start my day with that acknowledgement that this breath I'm taking in that moment, regardless of what's going on in my life, a blessing. Because as I'm taking my first conscious breath, there are people all over this earth who are taking their last breath.

Oh, yes.

Yeah. And so in that, when I'm present to that, which is every morning, thankfully, I can be grateful then for that breath and stand up, put my feet on the floor, which is a blessing by itself, that I know people cannot do that, stand up of my own free will and declare, I love my life. And those are the words that begin my day. And I think what's really amazing is a Jewish Hebrew prayer. I think it's called the Mode Ani. And the last line in that prayer is in essence saying to the. To Creator, your faithfulness is great. And I didn't understand that line until a friend kind of unpacked it for me and said, what it means is, when you're saying your faithfulness is great, it's the Creator's faithfulness to give us another day, meaning when we put our feet on the floor, as you were saying a moment ago, we have Work to do. What is our assignment? That's the only reason our souls were restored to us in that begin the Day is because we actually have powerful work to do. Yeah, thank you. That.

I like that. I know there's a. There's a hymn called Great is Thy Faithfulness speaking of the Presence. And I like to say that this Presence has so much faith in us because it put infinite potential within us. It didn't leave anything out, didn't say, well, I'm going to give you a piece of it to see how you do.

No extra parts, nothing with too few.

It's like we got the whole enchilada, we got the entire cosmos loaded and coated within us. So the faithfulness of the Presence put everything within us so that we could discover it, activate it, cultivate it, and ultimately express it according to our unique pattern. Because one thing that this Presence does in its creation, it never repeats itself. It doesn't do do overs, and it doesn't make mistakes. So every being is significant, worthy, precious.

And.

The Universal Presence has so much faith that eventually that being is going to wake up to the gift that has been given, unwrap it, and share it.

Yes. Thank you for the reminder. I have felt the Presence throughout this, our podcast today, and I. I have a feeling that there'll be many, many people watching, listening that will also have experienced that presence. So share it. That's the bottom line. We're here to see, to see the expression of that presence in everything we see, everything we think, everything we speak to, and it's been a blessing. So I want to thank you so very much, Michael, for your time and, and for the wisdom and more. More the guidance that you've given us today. So thank you.

Well, thank you for the invitation and we're streaming at large from Agape International and appreciate all the good work you're doing and the work you did with Pivot, and that continues to touch so many, many people. And it's my joy to be with you.

Can you share where people who may not be, you know, sort of share where you would like people to find more about Agape or anything else that you've got going on you'd love people to check out.

They can go to agapelive.com a g a p e l I v e.com that's our website that's even now emerging into another expression of itself. But it'll share the address where we are. But they can also live stream my teachings Wednesday nights and three times Sunday mornings. They can actually Watch it live. I'm having my annual meditation retreat at the Royal Way Ranch in Memorial Day, May 25th through the 28th. People come in from around the world. And this, as a matter of fact, the theme of this meditation retreat is Whole Soul Devotion. Navigating Through Vibrational Turbulence. How to Navigate Through Vibrational Turbulence.

So that's appropriate. Yeah.

So the meditation. So we're inviting people to come to the retreat and then come to Agape on that particular Sunday, to cap it all off. But this classes, there's a bookstore. There's so much happening in Agape that. So if they're in LA, they can just come to 5700 Buckingham Parkway in Culver City. If they're not in Los Angeles, they can go to agapelive.com they can pick up my book, Spiritual Liberation or life visioning or 40 day mind fast, Soul Feast or Peace Manifesto. There's a number of books that I have out there and next month I'm going to write another book. It's going to be quite different. So that's all the news fit to print right now.

That's great. That's where I checked you out. Your friend took me to Sunday service and it was magical. Changed my perspective in so many ways and really opened me up. So this has been nothing but a joy. It's the Conscious Pivot podcast, folks. You can go ahead and go to AdamMarkel.com to read. There's blogs there. You'll get some transcription of what we did here today. And of course, just keep listening and following the podcast. And if you'd like to, I say if you'd like to start your pivot. But I know from being with so many people today, everybody seems to be reinventing some aspect of their life, whether it's their health or their relationships or business. So starting my pivot is kind of almost a redundant statement. But you can go to startmypivot.com startmypivot.com and there's some gifts there for you. Six questions to kickstart your pivot wherever you're at, creating some clarity and momentum and then ultimately making better decisions, purpose driven decisions. So been a blessing to be here with all of you. Michael, again, thank you so very much for your time. Thank you. And everybody will say ciao for now and peace and love and harmony is what we wish you all. Bye bye everybody. Thank you.

Bye bye.

Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@admarkel.com podcasts for more for tips, strategies and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.