Rev. Michael Beckwith | Living Awake: Meditation, Prayer and Purpose

The meditative portion of the prayer is we feel one with life. We feel one with God. We feel one with the essence of life. And from there we speak the Word. To have a realization of what we're saying is true. We're not trying to make anything happen, we're trying to make something welcome that's already happened. We're already one with God. We're already full to overflowing with abundance and joy and creativity and intelligence. It's already here, but we're speaking the Word in an affirmative prayer. To have a realization of what we're saying is so it becomes an inner feeling nature. And then we give thanks that it's already done. And then we release the word as a law, knowing that it can't come back void, it comes back fulfilled thereof.

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Have you ever wondered what it truly means to wake up and stay awake in a world full of distraction, division and despair? Today I'm joined by my dear friend and spiritual brother, Reverend Michael Beckwith, founder of The Agape International Spiritual center and and a global teacher of meditation, affirmative prayer, and awakened living. Together, we explore how sacred disciplines of meditation and visioning are not just personal tools for inner peace, but catalysts for global transformation. Reverend Beckwith shares stories from the front lines of his journey, from honoring Nelson Mandela with the Gandhi King Award to speaking before the United nations, offering us a rare look into how spiritual practice meets social action. We dive into the power of affirmative prayer, the role of community in spiritual growth, and the call to evolve from a paradigm of consumption to one of contribution. If you're seeking a deeper experience of freedom, purpose and compassionate service, this conversation is really for you. So let's begin.

My name is Dr. Fleet Mahl, your co host for this session. And I am thrilled to be here today with Reverend Michael B. Beckwith. Welcome, Reverend Beckwith.

Fleet. It's my joy to be with you, brother. Always.

It's so great to see you again. We had the opportunity to have a conversation like this some three or four years ago, and I've really been looking forward to connecting again. So, Dr. Beckwith, you know, I'm hesitant to ask you to try to encapsulate this in just a minute or two, since we have a lot to cover today in our conversation. But it would be great to start with a little bit of your origin story if we could. And you've been a leading voice in spiritual transformation, guiding thousands toward deeper awakening for many, many years. I'd love if we could start with maybe a personal moment. There was something that really shifted things for you, a challenge, an insight or breakthrough that propelled you toward a spiritual path and meditation as a central practice in your life and then the teaching career that you've manifested.

Absolutely. Thank you. When I think about origin story, I always have to go back to when I was a senior at usc, psychobiology major. My path I was go to Mexico actually, and I was having a series of inner experiences that at the time I labeled pathological. Hearing an inner voice, having vision, tremendous lucid dreams, astro traveling. It was a lot of stuff going on. And so at that particular time in my life, I thought I was losing my mind. And it culminated with a lucid dream in which I was killed. In this dream, it was very painful. A man, two men held me down and one stabbed me in the heart with a knife. And the pain physically was excruciating, emotionally was excruciating. And I died. When I woke up, I could see that I was surrounded by this such beauty. Everything was glowing and glimmering and the love that penetrated my being was beyond anything I experienced. And I could see 360 without my eyes. After that, I couldn't get back in the box I'd been living in up to that moment. And I went on a research to discover what had happened to me. And that's when I bumped into the mystical teachings of Jesus. I bumped into Gautama, the Buddha, the Panishads, Dhammapada, Walter Russell. A lot of individuals fueled my zest to discover what was going on with me. And so that's a very short, brief Cliff note of an origin story. And then a little while after that, I was sitting in my living room, and I said out loud, I said, okay, what do you want me to do? I was having these great expanded awareness. I said, what do you want me to do? Like that. And the phone rang, and it was a woman on the phone that I went to high school with. And she told me that she'd been thumbing through her high school annual, and she saw my picture with my phone number, and that the presence of God within her told her to call me because she was going through a lot of troubles in her life. She called me, and I began to. At this point, I didn't have any degrees. I wasn't a spiritual therapist. I wasn't a minister. I was just. People just liked hanging around me. And I began to counsel her, and she began to tell people about me. And people would call, listen to me, send donations. And then I discovered there was something called a spiritual practitioner, spiritual therapist. And I said, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do. And I began to walk that path. So I give you many years in a couple abbreviated stories of having insight and then integrating insight into a level of embodiment within my being.

I know that various forms of meditation have been part of your path as well and your teaching. And many people tend to associate meditation primarily with Eastern traditions, But of course, it's been a central part of the contemplative Abrahamic traditions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. And I know the New Thought movement that you're part of is not particularly associated with a particular denomination of religion, but it has some relationship there, too. And so it seems like some kind of practice to at least initially go inward and make a deeper relationship with ourselves. And our mind is central to spiritual journey. So you've created an incredibly robust transdenominational community at the Agape Spiritual Center. So I'm wondering, what are some of the ways that you've integrated the spiritual practices and meditation Methodologies from the various traditions you've explored into what you now offer at Agape.

Our foundational practice at Agape is meditation. Obviously what arises out of that is affirmative prayer and life visioning and things of that particular nature. But we definitely incorporate the deep mindfulness and the stillness that we get obviously from the Buddhist tradition, the yogic traditions, to open ourselves up to a deep sense of self awareness. They used to call us also the Sufi end of the new thought movement. Because of our celebration of joy and ecstasy and bliss in music and dance and movement. We also participate with pramayama. It's also a part of our spiritual practice at Agape. So there's been a nice weaving of the different traditions into the practice of meditation. I teach my own version of the Pasana meditation. And so every single service that we have at Agapa is always preceded by silent meditation before we go into the message and the music and the celebration and the fellowship. So it's very integral. So all of the different traditions in different cultures of the world have their particular entryway into the sacred silence and the sacred solitude and the sacred stillness. And I think based on my exploration, there's just been an amalgamation of them in a way that fits our community and very powerful, I think. I still believe that meditation is primary, is the primary transportation to true transformation. And so that underlies everything that we do at Agape International. I'm just in my last week of teaching a five week meditation class. Meditation Evolution of Consciousness 2.0. So every year I teach it for hundreds of people. A couple of times a year as well. Yeah.

So I want to explore the other methodologies you've developed. Affirmative meditation and life visioning. But first I'd like to explore our current topic a little further with you. As you mentioned, you know, the silence that allows us to connect deeply with sacredness, with the divine, or just with the depth of our own being. What is it about silence and entering into deep transformative silence that has such power to get beyond the superficial level of our experience, into the depth of our experience and really connect with something meaningful and even divine or sacred.

Yes, when we give ourselves permission to become still and quiet and go into the noble silence, we begin to be able to tell the difference between the noise of the world, I call it oftentimes the sea of mental garbage. It's the social milieu of thoughts and opinions and points of view and agendas that people have on us. Our mind gets hijacked by fear, worry, anxiousness, materialism. So when we go into the Silence. We're able to eventually observe all of that noise and realize that that's not who we are. That's a part of the content of our awareness, but it's not who and what we are. And when an individual is able to tell the difference between the content and their real identity, I like to say that's the beginning of waking up. You're waking up from the intoxicated sleep. That these thoughts, thought forms, beliefs, opinions, points of view are our identity. They are not. They're just things passing through our awareness. And so stillness, silence, introspection, contemplation, observing all of that, you know, allows us to ultimately break free from as identification. And then we're waking up and we're actually participating in our own unfolding. And I think that it's extremely necessary because there's so many things that vie for our attention. And many of the things that vie for our attention are not good for us. They're destructive. They keep us away from our real self. So stillness, silence, solitude. Extremely important.

So you mentioned how we tend to identify with the content of our experience. All the thoughts and storylines and emotions and narratives and so forth, all the things coming and going in the space of our mind and our sense perceptions. And that seems to be one of the primary obstacles to waking up, is our strong identification with that. And, you know, we all start off. The human condition is such that we all start off in a very vulnerable situation as infants, and we need to develop some kind of sense of self to navigate the world. And we build out of whatever's available to us, and we cling to it pretty tenaciously. Because if that's not who I am, who the heck am I? And so, as in your experience, as you guide students and they begin to maybe loosen up that a little bit, that can be kind of scary. Especially, you know, some of us are. Our overall sense of identity is a little fragile or tenuous anyway, sometimes due to life experiences. So how do you guide and support students to gradually sort of begin to let go of that, what they've known is who they are for, you know, decades or more, and begin to open up to something that's a little less defined and spacious?

And, yeah, you're absolutely right. From the time we were in utero, even before, you know, we're imprinted by the ways of the world, parental, societal, religious fantasies. And we had to develop a way to cope with all of that, all of these imprints and defend. So the ego obviously assist in protecting that limited, temporary identity. How we've humanized ourselves. And so what I seek to have people do is become aware that you are aware of the static or the content passing through. And obviously, in the scientific terms, there's something called, you know, the observer effect, that whatever you become aware of, you change at a subatomic level just based on observation. So I invite people to have an intention to wake up. We're sleepwalking. We're in intoxicated sleepwalking of content. Have an intention to wake up. And then as you begin to observe, the content begins to change. Because you're not resisting it, you're not fighting it. You're not trying to make it go away. You're just observing it with an intention to wake up. So then the content, which are thoughts and thought forms, which are units of mental energy, begin to change. They begin to disintegrate. They begin to become transmuted through observation. And little by little, an individual has a tremendous insight or it happens incrementally. Individuals become more aware that they are awareness. They're not their body, you know, they're not the experiences that they've had. They're not the content, they are awareness. And that creeps up on an individual. Sometimes it's dramatic, but oftentimes there is the letting go that which isn't so. So that which is so becomes more prevalent. And so that happens incrementally through the practice of meditation. For some people, there's a dramatic opening. And so the idea, as I try to teach people, you're not trying to become a good meditator. I mean, become a good meditator, that's a good thing. You know, learn how to meditate. But you're actually trying to wake up. You're really not trying to just be a good meditator. You're actually trying to wake up. Because people don't quite understand that there's really no good or bad in meditation. They're just different states of it. So that's kind of how I approach it.

Well, following up on that good meditator notion just for a moment, in terms of sort of meditation, I don't know, technology, if you will. You've been somewhat describing the path quality as well. And it's sometimes it's incremental, and sometimes people have major openings. And you had some fairly profound openings at the beginning of your life that set you on this path. I think when people hear about such experiences or even have glimpses of such experiences, and some guys maybe want to go right there or go right into sort of the fruits of Meditation without having really trained the mind or stabilized the mind somewhat. And I'm wondering at how you see that. And in your. You mentioned you teach you kind of your own version of vipassana, that training of the mind, such that the mind is stable enough to then go through that process you're already describing, however incremental or sudden at times it might be, but that there's a structure to have that experience, to hold that experience right.

I appreciate everything you're saying. It's absolutely true. Because everybody has a tendency to want to jump to the fruits or jump to some great awakening or something to that effect. And most of the time it's not like that. You know, I think in the Japanese language is the word kinsho, you know, which means it's the slow burning away, cleaning up the filters. And you have a transformation that sometimes is like a thief in the night. You don't even know you've changed until you start getting feedback from the world or other people or the fruits of love or compassion or forgiveness or patience start to emerge in you. And you realize, oh, I'm different than I was last year. And sometimes people do have a satori moment where it's like, oh, my God. But I train people basically to one, establish an intention to wake up, and then place your attention on the intention, until sometimes that intention actually can carry a feeling. And then I invite them to have simultaneous awareness. Of course, I'm taking them through this on their breath because it's impossible to breathe in the future or the past. So the breath becomes an anchor point for the present. So an individual is embracing their intention to wake up. They're aware of their breath, and then they step. Then we load in. This is the first time I've ever meditated. Whether an individual is a veteran or a newbie, it's always the first time. Beginner's mind, childlike nature, however you want to describe that. And then I invite them to go into deep, lowly listening, but not with your ears. Your awareness produced the ears, just like your awareness produced eyes. So we have a spiritual faculty of hearing the inaudible and seeing the invisible. So I invite them to go into a deep listening with their being so they're able to catch what I call the perennial broadcast of let there be life, let there be beauty, let there be joy, let there be abundance, let there be intelligence everywhere. So they're sitting with those things loaded in intention, attention, breath. This is the first time. And deep listening. And that becomes a place by which they're holding a Practice. And two things occur. Obviously, there's the letting go of the mental debris that happens. But also the subtle bodies are becoming more stable and more strong to carry more of the cosmic energy. More of the energy, it's becoming stronger, little by little. So if someone does have some kind of insight or an opening the temple that the subtle bodies can hold the energy, it's not going to fizz off. It's not going to. You know, a wire that can't carry that kind of energy kind of fizzes and, you know, it won't do that. You'll be able to hold it. You know, notice that you are becoming more you. It's not that some foreign thing is coming. You're actually peeling away the layers of content to see that who you are, you know, even before you incarnated on this planet. Yeah.

I love what you said about the primordial broadcast. Which is quite different, I take it, than the broadcast we offer in our ears. And the what about me broadcast.

Right.

And also, I really appreciate what you said there about the development of the subtle body. Such that it can hold this energy. Because otherwise sometimes, you know, we start to develop. Especially if we do any retreats or a lot of. We develop, you know, we start to accumulate some spiritual energy of us over. Then we usually. We just leak it off as fast as we can. Because we're not used to holding it. We don't have a structure for it.

Absolutely.

Even though, as you mentioned before, we're not just the body. But it seems like an embodied approach to practice can be helpful in that. At the body, mind, spirit are all on a spectrum. So as we connect with the breath, as we connect with an embodied kind of presence that takes us from gross body to subtle body. And we start to kind of build that inner architecture of the subtle body, the awakened subtle body that can then really be a vehicle for our continued development. I wonder if that resonates with you.

Oh, absolutely. Oftentimes what happens is in the. Some people may have, like, a tremendous opening. But as you said, it disappears really fast. Or it just becomes a memory of something that happened years ago. But they haven't embodied it. Now, a structured practice, you know, allows you to slowly be able to build up those subtle bodies so you're able to hold the energy. So if you have a moment, it doesn't just become a memory of something you tell your friends about. You know, three years ago, this thing happened, you know, and I saw the light or whatever it was. So it's actually like an it's like exercising, you know, and you're building up something subtly, but it's still being built up and you're able to hold it. You're able to hold more of the cosmic wattage, so to speak, because your filament, your instrument is stronger to hold it. And so it becomes ultimately a way of living. You know, it's not a destination to get somewhere called enlightenment. It's more of a way of life that has tremendous fruits of patience and kindness and compassion and love and generosity and creativity. And then if a tremendous magnificent moment happens, it gets integrated into your practice. It's not a one off, you know, it's integrated.

That's extremely helpful. You've really kind of laid out the classic path of meditation and meditative development so beautifully. And it would resonate across traditions in many ways. Within that foundation, then you've developed what you call affirmative prayer. And then also the life visioning process. I wonder if you could kind of walk us through both of those.

Well, obviously, when we talk about affirmative prayer, we are not talking about begging and beseeching some kind of reluctant deity to give us anything. We're beginning with the awareness that our life, of course, is never separated from the divine. You know, we're one, we have a. There's a real unity with us and the presence, by whatever name you want to call the presence. And so in prayer we're having, we're opening ourselves up through gratitude, being very grateful that we are awake and alive. Just being grateful is a prayer. But just being grateful makes you available to the grace and the bliss that's happening everywhere. You become available to it. So we become grateful. And it helps us begin to recognize that there is a life of beauty and a presence everywhere. The meditative portion of the prayer is we feel one with life, we feel one with God. We feel one with the essence of life. And from there we speak the word. To have a realization of what we're saying is true. We're not trying to make anything happen. We're trying to make something welcome that's already happened. We're already one with God. We're already full to overflowing with abundance and joy and creativity and intelligence already here. But we're speaking the Word in an affirmative prayer. To have a realization of what we're saying is so it becomes an inner feeling nature. And then we give thanks that it's already done. And then we release the Word as a law, knowing that it can't come back void, it comes back fulfilled thereof. And it happens immediately. I Mean immediately. The immediate ramifications are you start to produce tonic chemicals of the body. Your immune system becomes stronger. There's a greater coherence of the brain just in prayer and in meditation. So affirmative prayer, we're affirming that which is already true. Until we have a realization. And not just a belief, not just a philosophy or a hypothesis. But we actually are praying to have a realization. So that we feel that connection of whatever it is we're praying for.

So in the same way you talked about before, you talked about as we connect with the observer, consciousness with awareness. We get to identify more with that. And you said that we know that the observer, the active observer. Actually changes what's being observed. You mentioned before. And that gets kind of into quantum theory and so forth. So in this case, with affirmative prayer. The power of affirming our own divinity, our own sacredness. The reality of who and what we really are. Actually has real physiological power to it or subtle body as well as. I mean, it does begin to change our nervous system. And, yes, I wonder if you could talk about that. It really is transforming us at the subtle level. As well as sort of the grosser level of our neurophysiology. And changing who we are through the power of that intention, the word, the affirmation of these truths. I want to follow up on that because it seems so powerful, what you're describing there.

It's absolutely true. You're. I like to say you're recalibrating your nervous system. The nervous system holds thought forms of anxiety and anxiousness. And oftentimes people, they want to meditate or they want to pray. But their body and their subtle bodies are working against them. Because the nervous system is holding fear and worry and anxiousness and anxiety. So when you begin to pray affirmatively. And coming into a deep resonance, a deep feeling of your oneness with the presence. Whether that be love, beauty, intelligence, abundance, whatever the case may be. It starts to re qualify your nervous system. So that the nervous system starts to hold the frequency of love or unity or connection. And then, of course, that affects the whole body temple. And then that affects all of the subtle bodies. And so that effect in prayer is immediate. Now, the manifestation of some other things that a person may want to bring into their life. May take a period of time. But there's an immediate effect that's now obviously registered with brain coherence technology. And the measuring of Auric fields and that, you know, biofeedback and things of that particular nature. You can see scientifically that when One goes into prayer, you know, all of these different things change, you see, and if one can do that on a regular basis, then the body of their affairs begin to change as well. And how they relate to the visible world begins to change. Prayer is very transformational. It is not begging, pleading for something to happen. It is waking up to what's perennially happening. But we've cut ourselves off of it by having a limited perception of reality. So it's actually expanding our perception. So prayer is very powerful.

So before we talk about life, vision, just one more follow up question there. You know, you're describing this coherence that develops and it's like a palpable resonance and coherence. Heart, brain coherence, heart, gut coherence. Whether at the more gross level of our neurophysiology or at the subtle body level, which is all interconnected. So this is palpable and it seems one of the real struggles that humanity is facing now. So many people feel lonely and isolated and disconnect. There's so much anxiety and loneliness and even suicidality being an endemic. And so when you begin to experience that level of coherence within your own being, it's almost like you're not alone anymore. I mean, and some people might visualize that as a higher power or a guardian angel or a deity, and others might just see it as the more subtle and true reality of themselves. But there is a quality of having a home.

Yes.

By finally having a home and not being alone, I wonder if you.

Oh, absolutely. What happens is you discover you can be alone, but you're not necessarily lonely. You know, oftentimes people are addicted to excitement. And whether it's 150 channels on your television or being around people, even if you're not saying anything meaningful, you know, people become addicted to excitement and external. And when that's gone, people feel lonely. And so if you develop some level of practice, you end up bumping into an awareness that you are definitely by yourself, but you're not lonely. There's something else, another character, another frequency arises within you. You know, I like being alone. Personally, I love people too, you know, but when I am by myself, I'm not longing to be with anybody, or to go and speak to anybody, or stand in front of a crowd and teach or anything like that. I love being by myself. It's so sweet and wonderful just to be alone, to watch the thoughts pass, to see what it rises in terms of creativity, you know, and then I love people too. So it's not that I'M reclusive. I just. When I'm alone, I love it. When I'm with people, I love that. But definitely there is a kind of a pandemic of loneliness in the world where people are concerned. And a lot of that, a lot of the after effects of the pandemic, the lockdown of healthy people, the first time in human history that ever happened and people didn't know how to handle it. It created a kind of a scar tissue samskara of the soul going through that fear, doubt, worry, projection of worst case scenarios onto the future. And people are still healing from that. And then you have the language coming up about mental health being a very dominant language. And then you have contagion and people don't realize you're not just contagion, colds are just contagious, thoughts are contagious, you know, so you have large groups of people feeling have gone through this particular experience and then the anxiety around it. Those thought forms aren't staying in a person's house. Those thought forms go everywhere. So you have this contagion of people being anxious and worried and wondering what's going to happen next. You see? But there's also a contagion that happens when small groups of people are meditating together. You have spiritual groups like yourself, you know, that come together in community and meditate. That's contagious too. That changes whole neighborhoods.

Absolutely.

States and cities. And so I think what we're telling people right now is they can be alone without being lonely. But if you have some level of spiritual practice and intentionality, you have an insight into that, an event that takes place in your awareness where you incrementally or suddenly know, oh, I'm not alone, oh my God, I'm surrounded by such love, such peace. A presence is here, you know. Yeah.

Beautiful. As you were speaking, I was thinking of from the New Testament, two or more gathering together in my name and then there's sent to the Holy Spirit in that way.

Absolutely.

So another social malady that's epidemic today, both for individuals and societally, is a sense of meaninglessness and purposeless that leads to all kinds of tragedies and a lot of violence and things we're seeing. And so your life visioning process, as I understand it, has to do with helping people rediscover their life purpose or even their soul's purpose, if you will. So I wonder if you could talk about that now.

Right. That is a transformational technology. For that exact reason, because of what you just said, there is the appearance of so much meaninglessness in the civilizations of the world. You very rarely hear a visionary be president of the United States or run a particular country. They're basically always focused on the bottom line of the gross national product, some kind of level of materialism or power. And so people grow up in their particular countries, and there's no grand meaning other than we got to get more stuff, whatever that stuff is. And so after a while, that plays out in a person's heart and soul. So we are all shocked from the eternal presence called by millions of names, life itself, God, love, beauty, intelligence. And we have a purpose of reflecting and revealing that presence according to our uniqueness. Everyone, I believe everyone has the same purpose. To reveal the face of divinity or reveal the face of love or intelligence, whatever, however people want to describe this ineffable life. But we all have different missions. We have different ways of expressing that. Because one of the things that this vast presence does never repeats itself. There's nothing repetitive in the entire cosmos. Two rocks aren't the same, two blades of grass aren't the same, two flowers, two individuals, two animals. There's nothing the same. So diversity and inclusivity is built into this whole gestalt of life. So, see, we're all unique. So the life visioning process begins with going into meditation, cultivating a feeling of love, total love, unconditional love. And so I'll take people through that process in different ways, and then we're aware that this universal presence, called by whatever name you want to call it by law, answers every single question that you ask. If you ask a disempowering question, what's wrong? Who's to blame?

Why me?

You'll get a series of answers that will take you down the spiral of negativity, of excuses, of things that have happened and the woundedness and why you are the way you are. But if you ask a higher order of question, such as what is it within me that is seeking to emerge right now? What gift do I have to give to the world before I leave it? You know, what contribution am I to make? What is the vision for my life as this present sees it? If you ask questions like that, you're going to begin to get answers intuitively, subtly, sometimes very gross for some people, that will lead you into a path of participating in your own unfolding. So the life vision process begins with meditation in a field of love. And then I invite people to ask the question, let's use the word God for a moment. What is God's idea of itself as Me. That's a vision. You know, God doesn't make meaningless acts. This presence is full of meaning, of love and beauty and intelligence. There's no meaningless thing. What is God's idea of itself as my life? Or what is it that's within me that is seeking to emerge now as a contribution, as a gift to the world? Because we didn't come to the planet to get anything. There's nothing to get. We came to the planet to give, to share, to shine, to glow, to radiate, to contribute. We didn't come to get. There's nothing. There's nothing in the world that can make us happy. 0. Happiness and joy is intrinsic. We have to give it. We have to shine it through some kind of creative act or generosity or service. So we ask, what am I to contribute? Or what's trying to emerge? So we sit in that space meditatively for a while to activate the spiritual faculty. That's been stunted because we've lived so much in the five senses as. And everything we can see and taste and touch and hear and smell is real. People have actually forgotten that most of life is invisible. We're mostly invisible. We think everything that is real is what you can see. So when we ask that question and we go into deep listening, we start to activate the faculty of a real seeing and real hearing again, not with eyes and not with ears, but that which created the eyes and ears. And we start to catch insight. And then from there we ask the question, what is it that I must become in order to manifest the vision that's beginning to articulate itself? That's our growing edge. It's not a judgment exercise. It's an awareness exercise. Because we start to get guidance as to where we're called to grow. Are we called to grow to be more forgiving, to be more loving? Are we called to grow to develop certain skills, some talents that we've allowed to go dormant? You know, we start to be asked the question. And from within our own soul, answers will come as to what we must become in order to manifest the vision. Third question is, what do we already have that can be in service to the vision? Why is this important? There's a scriptural law that says to he or she who has more is given to he or she who has not, even that which they have shall be taken away. Now, that law is not personal. It's just saying that if you walk with the feeling of having and being, you open up door, more comes to you. But if you're walking around feeling that you don't have, then you're using the law in reverse. And then what you have is taken away. So we ask, what is it that we have that can be in service to the vision? And we start becoming aware of resources that we have that maybe we thought were inconsequential. They weren't important talents that we can develop. There may be all kinds of resources around us that we're not even thinking about that can be in service to this vision that we're now beginning to articulate. So now we're starting to walk with this feeling of having something. The next question is, what are we willing to let go of? It no longer serves us conversations, other habits. You know, we know these things, but sometimes we hide them from ourselves. And then we become willing to let them go. I mean, there have been things that we needed in the past. There may have been a certain defense mechanism that really protected us. When we were going through some abuse as a kid, we had to have a coping mechanism, how to survive until we could become strong enough to look at it in the face. But what do we no longer need right now? What can we let go of? It doesn't serve us. We ask that question, we start to get answers, and then we finally come into the feeling tone of willingness. Where there is willingness, there is a way. When there is willfulness, you create a vibrational wall. Willingness provides the way. Willfulness creates a wall. So you come into the state of willingness. You don't have to know how to do all this stuff yet. You just have to be able to describe the vision, notice where you have to grow, embrace what you have, become willing to let go of what doesn't serve you. And this prayerful feeling tone of willingness. We become the vibrational match to the unfolding of a vision. So it's transformational because, for instance, you know, the beginning stages of metaphysics, new thought, is visualization. Visualization says, you know, be very specific about seeing what you want to manifest, Describe it, feel that you have it. Walk as if you have it, and you will manifest it. Problem with that is oftentimes people are visualizing something that has nothing to do with their soul's growth. It's something they got from society or a commercial, I gotta have this kind of car to be happy or something to that effect. And plus, whatever they're visualizing is limiting. It's from limitation anyways. It's from the person's limited paradigm anyway, or something that's already been done. But it's a good step. It's a very good stage in metaphysics to learn how to visualize and to re enchant the imagination. But visioning is not saying what we want. It is asking what's within us and wants to be released. As Robert Browning would remind us, we want to release the inner splendor. It's a different focus. It's not I want this and I want to manifest this. It's what is it within me that wants to come forward. So that's the short version of the vision process and somewhat of the process of it that becomes a technology. You know, all of our ministries here have a vision group in which they are constantly available to what's next seeking to emerge in their particular department or ministry. And people use this process. Now it's crossed lines. It's in corporate America. Boards, trustees are using it, businesses are using it, individuals are using it. It's become a transformational technology. It's a part of the tools of growth and unfoldment.

Well, it's certainly a beautiful process. I wrote down the steps. Incredibly powerful. And I love the distinction you made, as you were describing it, between willingness and willfulness.

Definitely, because people can be willful. That's a lot of the ego strength. I'm going to make this happen. You know what I mean? And it creates a vibrational wall because with that willfulness, you're actually saying, I don't have it. I want to make it happen. I don't have it. So willingness, it's more feminine, it's more allowing. Yeah.

I know that your work is situated within a broader social vision. And I think very much you're within the sort of Gandhian, Kingian social vision. Neil, you and my last conversation, I think, early on is growing up as a black man in America, you touched in on, you know, the natural angry response to the injustice that was there, and you were led into a more transformative pathway. But I know you're still very involved in wanting to bring greater sanity and blessings and transformation to the world, not just to any individual, but a larger social vision. So I wonder if you could just touch in on it. That could be a whole nother conversation. But I wonder if you could just touch on that a little bit.

But, you know, we're definitely influenced by and embrace liberation theology, which is a dimension of Christianity, mystical Christianity, in which we're to be earthly good as well as heavenly bound, that we're to make a difference on the planet. That true compassion is oftentimes actions that you take around social justice or, you know, like, for instance, we're involved with the fires that just happened in Palisades. And we've had different groups in our community meet to help people move through that. But we also put them in the direction of where they can get help. We've also donated to places that are doing real work, you know, so whenever something happens, we always ask as a community, what is it that is ours to do, to be in service of humanity? We're not going to cloister ourselves up and say, and not see what's happening in the world. So we're always asking that question, what is ours to do in this particular event, tragedy or circumstance? So we carry on one hand, we're, you know, unity Vendatta, you know, absolute, non dual oneness with God. At the same time, all of that takes an action. You know, it's karma yoga, you know, where the true practice of unity is in actually doing service. So we have programs in our community like. Like Sacred Service Saturday, where we every year have a Saturday devoted to. We contact many of the nonprofit organizations that we can in Los Angeles and now other states and countries as well. But it started off just in Los Angeles, and we flood these places with volunteers. We have all of our congregation go to this place and sign up and do real physical work or whatever needs to be done in these nonprofits. Not to proselytize, not to get people to come to Agape, but just as an act of service. And then what happens is many of the people from Agape end up being permanent volunteers in these places. And many of those people in those places come to Agape. They say, who are these people? They're not asking for anything. They don't want anything. They're just coming to serve. So there's definitely part of our dharma is to be of service and speak. And we call, you know, in our ministry, we call a thing when something's going on in the world that's not right or not in harmony with justice. We talk about it not with a blaming vibration, but with an articulation of, this is what's going on. This is what's out of alignment, you see, and holding a vision for something better.

Beautiful. Reverend Michael B. Beckwith, the founder of Agape, the Agape community and the life visioning process and affirmative prayer. And thank you so much for the work you've been doing for many, many decades now and that you continue to do and really wishing you and your community all the best. I know many in your community have suffered from the recent fires and Los Angeles area and sending many blessings your way.

Brother Fleet thank you so much for all that you're doing to help expand people's consciousness. Thank you for the invitation to be here with you today. It's my joy.

Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present and stay true to you.

Take care.

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