Confidence Classic: Awaken Your Highest Self & Reclaim Your Mind with Michael Beckwith

Behind every problem, there's a question. Behind every question, there's an answer. Behind every answer, there's an action. Behind every action, there's a way of life trying to be born. So, again, these are spiritual practices that, when done sincerely, change your life. They literally change how you identify yourself. Doesn't mean you become all highfalutin. You're so spiritual. You're not earthly good. It just means you're becoming more yourself. You're more comfortable with yourself. You're more at ease with yourself, because it's the real you.

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I hope you love this one as much as I do. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with me this week. I cannot wait for you to meet our guests this week. It is so exciting. Okay, we've got Michael Beckwith. He's a member of Oprah's Super Soul 100 group. This man has been on Oprah. Come on, people. And the founder of the Agape Center. He's a trailblazing figure in the realm of spirituality, something that I'm so big into later in life, and I hope you are, too. As a number one bestselling author and influential spiritual voice. His original teachings and ideologies have not only guided and influenced many for millions. I mean, he's literally impacting millions of people. He's got the most unbelievable podcast, Take back your mind. He's got new courses and classes coming out. I mean, it has super foods. I mean, Michael, what have you not done? Thank you so much for being here and enlightening us this week, Heather.

Thank you so much for the invitation. I'm just sitting here. Enjoy just being with you. Life is good.

Oh, my gosh. You're the best. Okay. I love your backstory. And for anyone who lives under rock and doesn't know who you are, I was hoping you could kind of walk us through. How did you become enlightened? How did you become the rev? How did all of this.

Well, you know, a good part of my backstory is I'm gonna keep it really brief. I could extend this, but I won't. While I was attending usc, I was a psychobiology major there, on a track to go to med school. And actually. And I was having a series of inner experiences that I labeled at the time pathological, because I was seeing visions, I was hearing voices, I was leaving my body and traveling. Now, at the time, I didn't have any spiritual practice, so I didn't know about astral travel and soul traveling and all of that. But it was happening to me spontaneously and to the point where I sometimes would leave and go see my mom. And I would come back to my body and call her and say, listen, do you have on a blue dress? She would say, yes. Are you cooking some chicken right now? Yes. So I knew what was going on was real, but I had no context for it. So the first thing I did at that time, I stopped smoking weed. I stopped smoking cannabis sativas because I thought that was contributing to this, whatever was going on within me. But the experience is intensified to the point where I had a lucid dream every single night. And in this dream, these three men were chasing me. And every night they got a little bit closer to the point where one night I could see the outline of their face. I looked to my right, and it was a small tent with thousands of people trying to fit into this small tent. I knew every single being in line. So I said to myself, they can't hurt me. I have all of my friends with me. And then one by one, everyone standing in line turned their back on me. Two of the men held me down and the other plunged a knife into my heart. A serrated knife. The pain was excruciating, physically and emotionally. And I died. And when I woke up, I could see differently. I could. I mean, even now, if I start talking about it, it becomes very spiritually emotional for me. I could see 360 degrees. The presence of God, love, the beauty was everywhere. The love that poured into my being was so profound. And I was just a part of everything. I would breathe in and out. The universe would just kind of move like that. I was one. And so when I came out of that, everything around me was glowing with luminosity. The lint on the rug was alive. Everything was alive. And I could never get back in that box again. Everything changed for me. And I began to go on a research to find out what had happened to me. And that's when I bumped into all of the mystical teachings of Gautama, the Buddha, Jesus the Christ, Zoroastri, Walter Russell, Emmanuel Swedenborg. There was a lot of beings that had similar experiences. That gave me an awareness that I wasn't crazy, that I actually was having some kind of an awakening. That was the beginning of me going deep into meditation. Now, this is years ago. I had no conscious desire to be, like, a public person to teach or anything like that. I was just so in love with his presence. At the time. I didn't call it God because I had come from a church. And the word God meant a man in the sky that was dictating rules and sending people to hell and heaven and all that stuff. So I knew that wasn't real. So the word that I used was love, beauty. Because the love that I was immersed in was beyond anything I'd ever experienced humanly. And the beauty was beyond anything I could describe. So my definition of the presence of God was love, beauty. And later on, it became love, beauty, intelligence. And then later on. Well, after that, I started using the word God again. But it has a different meaning. I call it the presence.

The.

That's never an absence. Always here. Life, capital L. Life and God are synonymous. So anyway, that began my trek to discover what had happened. And then there's been a constant over the years, an emergence of the real Michael from the revelation that I had over 40 years ago. And it continues. It's not like one and done. It's a continued unfolding. And so I've been immersed in light. I've been taught by beings on the other side, teachers from the other side. All of this was a part of my schooling and my education that number of years later. I eventually started Agape International Spiritual center in November of 1986. So we're in our 38th year right now. And that came with a lot of resistance. I didn't want to do that at the time. I was a spiritual counselor. I saw six to eight people every single day. I did my own private seminars. I was a director of training of a prayer ministry. I liked my life. But there was an inner compulsion to start a community. And I was told that the work I was doing at that time. I was only doing my work halfway. And that I had made a promise before I came here to do this. And that if I didn't do it, they would have no more reason for me to be on the planet. These are the ancestors talking to me. And so my life shrunk. Forced me into some deep introspection. I had a vision about Agape, and I started a vision group and began our vision group in late 1985. Beginning of 1986, we met every Thursday for months to become the vibrational frequency of the vision of agape. That's the story in brief. There's a lot of stuff in between there. So most of what I do is basically direct from source. And then I could pick up a book and I can say, oh, that's true, it validates. Or I can say, that's not really true, it's almost true. So that's Michael. I like the guy. He always has great intentions. And I've watched him grow and unfold to become more of himself over the.

Years, you know, oh, that's so beautiful. And that's so well said. That's all anyone could hope for themselves is to become more of themselves along the way and enjoy that. But what you're describing is like nothing I've ever heard. Is there anyone else on the planet that's had an experience like this like you have?

Yes, yes, there are a number of us. One of my great friends, Dr. Sue Mortar, who you may want to meet one day, had a similar cosmic awakening like that in meditation and changed her life. And when we met each other, it was like we met each other and we knew because she's been there, she's had that very expanded cosmic awareness. Then I met other people who have had near death experiences and come back. And when we meet, like my friend Anita Morgiani, and people like that, you can tell that they've seen something else, not just something they've read about that they actually had an experience of. And I think people don't have to have that kind of experience. Basically, if you have a little bit of a spiritual practice and good intention, an intention to wake up, and then you practice meditation on a regular basis, you will incrementally dissolve the blockages from seeing reality. Most people don't see reality. They only see their thoughts about reality, and they experience their thoughts about reality. But reality with a capital R is beautiful. Infinite potential, infinite possibilities. Everywhere is just so much beauty. Everywhere that's real. But what most people experience is just a sliver of reality, you know, and they think that's the reality, but it's not. It's just that their perception is small. But when you meditate, when you affirmatively pray, you're expanding your perception, expanding your awareness into this infinite field of consciousness, and you start to see life differently. Life really is good. So when I say that I'm not talking about people's experience of life because people are only experiencing their perceptions. But. But life, capital L, life Is beautiful. It's magnificent. I'm supercharged with it all the time.

I love that. I love that for you. Okay. And I love that you're going to be teaching us. So I want to start with this because what you explain is so beautiful and the way you do it and your energy is incredible. But for everybody who isn't living the experience that you currently are and is living in this tiny little sliver that most of us are, you say spirituality, you say positive prayer or positive affirmation.

Affirmative prayer.

Affirmative prayer. And then meditation. Can you teach us a little bit about what each of those means and how we can do that?

Absolutely. Meditation is key. It's foundational meditation. I call it paying undistractable attention to reality. Basically training yourself. You know, first of all, the way I teach it, everybody, there's millions of ways to meditate because there are millions of people. And every. Every technique is probably good. It's probably good for something. So I teach you have an intention. You establish an intention when you sit down. So let's say your intention is. My intention is to wake up to my glorious nature. Because most people are sleepwalking, they don't know it. I wrote a song one time and one of the lyric is, we're dreaming, we're awake. We're walking asleep, dreaming we're awake. That's the average person. They're walking asleep, dream, dreaming that they are awake. So you establish an intention to wake up. Then you take your attention and you place your attention on your intention. My intention is I'm sitting to wake up to my glorious nature. After a while, that intention begins to have a feeling within you. You can actually put your attention on your intention. Then when you sit, you realize you go into a deep listening. I don't mean with ears. You're listening with your entire being because there's a broadcast of let there be light, Let there be beauty. It's broadcast that's happening everywhere through all creation. So you're sitting with a deep sense of listening. You're placing your attention on your intention. You're saying to yourself, this is the first time I've ever meditated. Whether you are a veteran or whether you are a newbie, this is my very first time. I'm in beginner's mind. I'm like a child. And so now I sit and I can place my attention on my breath. Why? Because you can't breathe in the future and you can't breathe in the past. This breath is happening presently. And so now my attention, I'm present with my intention, my deep listening and my beginning consciousness. And now I'm available to what insight? Revelation from my intention. Because that's what I'm interested in. That will wake me up from my limited paradigm in that it's a combination of the pasta meditation and how I've designed it, as Beckwith. And so then if something comes up, you observe it, but you don't try to get rid of it or enhance it. Like if an emotion comes up, a sensation in the body, crazy thoughts, you learn how to watch it, because you're not those thoughts. You're the awareness, watching the thoughts. And then after a while, what you're watching changes on a subatomic level based on your observation. The scientists call that the observer effect. Anything you observe changes on a subatomic level simply because you observe it. If you observe yourself with the intention to wake up, you're putting the observer effect on steroids. So you're literally giving yourself spiritual therapy and waking up. And then sometimes there's a dramatic opening. Sometimes it just little by little by little, you're eliminating the false beliefs, perceptions from your perceptual window. And then you notice after a period of time that you've changed. But you may not know when you change, because it may not come with lights and cameras. You just notice, hmm, that used to bother me. It doesn't bother me anymore. I still don't like it, but I'm not bothered by it. What happened? Well, what happened is you've become more yourself. You become unbothered and unbotherable. So this meditation is key. And then what we call affirmative prayer is a prayer that you're not begging a God out there. Because as Ralph Waldo Emerson taught, the innermost God and the uppermost God is the same God, you know, that which is within you is the same presence that's around you. And so you're not reaching out there because you're losing your power. If you reach out there to God now, you're sending your power away. So when you pray, you're basically recognizing there's a presence everywhere. You start off with a deep sense of gratitude that you are alive, you're awake. And then you recognize it's a presence everywhere. You feel yourself one with this presence. And then you speak your word. From that sense of oneness. You can say something like, even as I'm speaking this very word, something magnificent is happening in my life. All of my needs are met. My body temple can heal anything. You begin to speak the word from the sense of unity. Then you give thanks that it's already done. Then you release it and go on about your business. So that's just a modicum of what affirmative prayer is, because a lot of people are begging and beseeching a reluctant deity, and so they're actually putting out into the universe that they don't have what they're praying for. Please give me this. Please give me this. So they're saying to the universe, I don't have this, I don't have this. So they're misusing the law. They're not praying right. So you have to pray, believing. This is what the teacher said. Pray believing that ye have, that ye may receive. So all prayers to move you into the state of believing and feeling that you already have it. And then you walk. And then the universal law responds to that frequency. Serendipity happens. Coincidences take place. You start to see things and opportunities that you didn't see before because your perceptual windows are getting clearer and cleaner.

It sounds too easy, like it sounds too good to be true. However, when you were speaking, what you were just saying to me is written in the Bible, right?

That's why we call it new thought, ageless wisdom. It's nothing new. The only thing that makes it new is when people begin to practice it and then it becomes new to them. And if it's complicated, it's probably not truth, because the truth is simple. It's very simple. If a person is bringing a whole lot of complications to it, it probably means they don't know it at the depth, because when you know it at the depth, it's very, very simple. What's difficult is practice and the consistency of practicing. Until I coined a word a number of years ago back in the 90s, and the word is blissipline. What happens is your discipline then becomes a blissipline. You actually love to practice. You love to become still. You love to pray affirmatively. You love it. It's not like, oh, I've got to do it. I should do it. Make yourself guilty because you didn't do it. No, no, no. You have a little bit of discipline every day. It doesn't have to be a lot, just a little bit. And then something happens and it's like, you can't live without it, you know, and it's joyful. It's like, oh, I get to connect with reality before I go out into this fitful world with all these different kinds of experiences out here. I get to connect with the real presence and then walk in the world. But of this higher frequency and then when that occurs you want to practice every day. That's when it becomes a bliss.

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I asked you to try to find your passion. Teach someone this. And you work with people, obviously millions of people every day. How long does it take someone to actually see results from approaching life in this regard?

Well, two things. One, as you begin to practice immediately and have an intention, the moment you do that, there's an immediate result in terms of your body chemistry changes. Your immune system becomes more enhanced, you slow down the aging process, the condition for disease begins to disintegrate. That happens immediately the moment you establish a new intention and sit within a level of joy and gratitude. And right there, the body chemistry changes. The tonic chemicals begin to flow and the toxic chemicals from worry, doubt, fear, hate, resentment, unforgiveness, they begin to stop being produced by the body temple. So there's an immediate effect. If somebody were to take your blood, you know, and analyze it pre and post meditation and prayer, they'd be different. Or if someone put you and measured your brainwaves, your brain waves would show a difference based on your meditation. So there's an immediate in terms of your physicality, in terms of your chemistry and then your life experience. And the world that we see is a condensation of thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, points of view, positionalities that have condensed themselves into the world that we see and the experiences that we're having. So that begins to unravel. So that takes a little bit more time. You know, you may change right now and you'll have immediate effects on the physical body and then the experience will begin to change as well. Sometimes it's dramatic for people. I mean, I've met with people and they had dramatic change and others, they call it like a slow burn. It just slowly, the life slowly starts to change and then they start to realize, wow, my life is different. I'm noticing more opportunities. I have a deeper sense of peace, I have a deeper sense of inner resiliency and regeneration is taking place. So there's immediate and then there's long term changes that show up in your real world, in your experience. Yeah.

So I have an interesting question for you. I just interviewed, ironically, another friend of yours from the Secret and from Mindvalley, Marie Diamond. Earlier today she was talking to me about a spiritual relationship, mental mindset, how you're managing your thoughts and then what you're doing in your environment. And the reason why I bring this up is there's so many similarities and many things you're saying, but, like, what is the level of importance on prayer, positive prayer versus how you set up your home? It can seem confusing sometimes when you talk to different experts.

Yeah, well, everything affects you. I mean, everything has energy. Everything has an energetic feeling. And so if you have a house that's full of clutter, then there's a hindrance in the flow of the qi of your house. So vibrational feng shui is important, you know, to have an environment that has a flowing of energy. I mean, I've watched a research where even homes built, like, on a dead end, women that live there have a higher rate of breast cancer because the dead end is stagnant energy. You know, so this feng shui in your home, this feng shui and how houses are built, what direction they're built in, whether there's a dead end or whether there's a flow of energy. Obviously there are ways of neutralizing that with water fountains and. And certain crystals and things of that particular nature. But definitely the mindset is important. And then you want to have an environment that has flowing energy. And people like Marie diamond are. They're geniuses in that area. You know, one of my offices that I had, we had a feng shui actually come in and found out I needed to have certain metal in one corner of the office and then a flowing water fountain in another part. Because the way the building was structured, it was creating a lot of stagnant energy. So we had to neutralize that with feng shui. Now your consciousness is the most important thing. It's like you can have all the feng shui. You can have everything and be helpful. But if you're not changing your mental mindset and expanding your awareness, then you're getting limited results from the other things you're doing. So consciousness is first, your consciousness precedes form. See, this is how I describe it. We are awareness, pure awareness in a field of infinite consciousness. Our real identity is awareness. Our real identity is not our body. It's not what we own. It's not experiences that we've had. Our real identity is that we are pure consciousness. And we can actually think independent of a condition or a circumstance and make new choices. That's who we are. And so as our awareness expands and becomes more and more purified, then we have a different relationship to the universal presence and the universal law that's matching who we think we are. If I'm walking around saying, oh, I'm unworthy, I'm not good enough, no one likes me, then I'm identifying myself. As someone who is less than I can do all kinds of things in the world to become successful and liked and all of that. But if inwardly I'm thinking to myself, I'm unworthy, I'm not good enough, then the law matches that vibration and keeps feeding that back to you. And you can try really, really, really hard, but you can never outrun the content in your consciousness that you haven't transcended. So consciousness is primary. You have to shift your awareness, expand it into coming to an awareness that you are a light being. You're magnificent. You, what the universe has created is so beautiful. You know, going back to what you said earlier about this is all found in scripture. I mean, the teacher said, who, by taking thought, could add one cubit to their stature. You can't add anything to this perfect self. All you're doing is eliminating the false beliefs so that the perfect self that's already been created can begin to shine unencumbered. You see? So your mental attitude is important. The thoughts you're thinking are important. Your perception changes. Your intention is important. And all of this, coupled with a little bit of meditation, goes a long way.

You mentioned vibration, and I know that you talk a lot about this. What are some of the things people can do to elevate their vibration when they are stuck in fear and upset and the hate and all these negative emotions?

Right. Well, one of the key allies we have is our own breathing. You know, you can actually, when you're nervous, when you're scared or whatever the case may be, you can actually ask yourself, where am I feeling this? And you can place your attention right there and just begin to breathe into it. And you're observing it and breathing. So what's happening? Subatomic level, you're changing the energy based on observation. You're breathing. The energy is keeping it moving. And you have an intention to wake up from that intoxicated dream. You can do that immediately. And there's different kinds of pramayana, different kinds of ways to breathe, to do that. Yesterday was just with Sue Mortar. Last night, Sue Mortar and Shawn Stevenson, and we had a masterclass, and sue was reminding us about the power of that in her particular presentation. That's true. I mean, before I speak anywhere, I sit down and I do connected, rapid breaths. Just connect it, clean out the psychic energy. Go speak the other way of doing that. You can actually ask a question. This is one of the things that I teach that came through me years ago. Behind every problem, there's a question trying to ask itself. Behind Every question, answer trying to reveal itself. Behind every answer, there is an action trying to be taken. And behind every action, there's a way of life trying to be born. So if a person is stuck in a problem, that problem is inviting us to ask a different question. So say a person is having issues with money, finances. That's the problem. The universe is wanting you to ask a question like, what is the nature of prosperity? Sincerely. What is the nature of prosperity and abundance? You ask that question sincerely, an answer will start to come. The nature of prosperity is that you're surrounded by abundance. You have to find a way to give something and share something and to be of service, to get things circulating in your life. So have bad feng shui in your mind and in your heart. And as you begin to give, you know, opportunities open up because the hands of the givers are never empty. And then that puts you into. That's the answer. Then it puts you into an action. You begin to ask, what can I give today? Not how can I get? What can I give? And then maybe you give a smile. Maybe you're going to help somebody if you don't have any money, but you're in the energy flow now of giving, and then that becomes a way of life. And then opportunities for prosperity show up. I'm just using prosperity as an example. Behind every problem, there's a question. Behind every question, there's an answer. Behind every answer, there's an action. Behind every action, there's a way of life trying to be born. So again, these are spiritual practices that, when done sincerely, change your life. They literally change how you identify yourself. Doesn't mean you become all highfalutin. You're so spiritual, you're not earthly good. It just means you're becoming more yourself. You're more comfortable with yourself. You're more at ease with yourself because it's the real you. It's not the mask of trying to fit in or hope people like you or trying to manipulate people to give you what you think they should give you. No, it's none of that. You're not into that. You're being yourself. And the universal law matches that. Blessings show up.

So how many people really live like that? Like the majority of people, I just don't think, based on what you're describing, are living that magical type of life. So where are people getting hung up?

You know, I have a podcast called Take Back youk Mind, because I'm reminding people that their mind has been hijacked. It's been hijacked by the news media and that whole spinning out of negative narratives about the world. So individuals are living in this world that is not really real, but it's experienced. What do I mean by that? Just because you experience something doesn't mean it's real. And I'm going to break this down. When I was attending Morehouse College, before I went to sc, we used to do a practical joke. I don't know why we called it a practical joke, but it was a joke. We would take a book of matches, strike a match, be hot, blow it out, and then we would touch a person with a cold match. They're thinking we're touching with a hot match. And they would create a heat blister on their hand and they'd get mad and we say, no, no, we touch you with the cold match. Follow me. Then we go to the next person, light the match, blow it out quickly, change it with a cold match, touch the person and they burn themselves. So they were experiencing something that wasn't real. What were they experiencing? Their thoughts. So the world has taken a nightmare pill, lack limitation, fear, doubt, worry, scarcity, wars, rumors of wars, hate, bigotry, homophobia, racism, you know, anti Semitism, you know, the world is experiencing something that's not real. So the average person is living in fear, anxiety, anxiousness, worry, doubt. And the average person has normalized those perceptions. And because of they've normalized it, they experience it on some level and then they have to figure out a way to have a recess from it. So there's pharmaceutical drugs, there's other drugs, there's overindulging in whatever name, whatever it is, just to have a moment of not feeling these emotions, but when in fact your mind has been hijacked. So we're inviting people to take their mind back through very simple spiritual practices, intentions. So they begin to witness the world, but they're not participating in it. The same way that you can witness crazy thoughts in your mind, but you're just looking at them. That's an interesting thought. I don't believe that thought. That's interesting thought. That's not me. Where did that thought come from? And so, little by little you're changing your inner world and you become a part of the energy energetic field that's changing the outer world. We are vibrational beings. We're more than flesh and blood. Everything is energy. Everything is energy condensed or speeded up. If it's speeded up really fast, you can't see it. If it's condensed, it looks like matter, but it's all energy. And so when enough people are vibrating at a higher level, it actually changes the world. Just as there's been many experiences about people, like the Transcendental Meditation. People have gone into places and meditated. The crime rate has gone down. Other people have done vipassana meditation. Same thing. People coming together in large groups and establishing, like Lynn McTaggart, good friend of mine, you know, does intention experiments where she gives large groups of people to establish an intention for a certain part of the world. Violence goes down. So these things today are now corroborated by science. Whereas 40 years ago was woo woo, you know what I mean? The stuff I was teaching 40 years ago, it was like, ooh, that's weird. Today it's proven epigenetics, quantum physics, biofeedback, brain feedback, heart coherence. Now all the science is showing these very same things. But we need a little bit of intention and a little bit of practice. So you don't have to go into the mountains and sit there for 40 days and 40 nights. You can just wake up in the morning, establish an intention, or just be grateful for your life. Establish an intention to have a beautiful day and just sit for five minutes in the silence. Obviously that will grow because you start to love it more. And you'll be 6 minutes and 8 minutes and 10 minutes, but you just have a little bit of practice. It'll change the trajectory of your life. Instead of going down the path that fear, anxiety and worry will take you now, you're going down a path where peace and love and these aren't, these are the most powerful forces on the planet. Even though when you say those words, people think, oh, that's not it. That's just love. That's just peace. No, peace is the dynamic of harmonizing good. It's a power. Love is a total givingness without any sense of withhold. That's a power. So when you desire to be peaceful and loving, you're having a desire to be so confident, not in your little self, but in the power that's around us. You become powerful. Mohandas King Gandhi wasn't a weak guy, you know what I mean? He was powerful in his peacemaking. And so we all don't have to be that, but in our own individual lives, we can make a big difference.

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I asked you to try to find your passion. You mentioned the power of the collective and you gave some great examples of some of these meditation groups. And when they fixate and have an intention on a certain area, they can have actual scientific results. If that is the case, and it is, you would think our world is so much more enlightened today as a result of teachers like yourself and the Internet and access to information. Why isn't the world such a better place today than it was a hundred years ago?

Well, it is getting better. We just not reported. When a person is on the news, they are reporting from an old paradigm. You in your program and people who have podcasts like this, we are reporting from the emerging paradigm. So the things we see on television, that's an old paradigm. So things are getting better. But you're not going to see that on television. What are you going to see? The latest assassination, the latest bombing, the drought, the hurricane, the tsunamis. Political backstabbing. People being arrested for all kinds of nefarious crimes. You're basically Going to be inundated by the most negative, lowest common denominator of the human experience. And every now and then you get a little joy thing. Oh, here's a puppy, you know what I mean? Oh, so and so the rescue their cat and isn't that sweet, you know what I mean? But 99% of it's going to be inundation of negativity. We're not seeing the remissions of cancer. We're not seeing the truces that are being made. We're not seeing people who are making amends. We're not seeing people who are growing and developing and unfolding and changing their lives. If we were to spot like that every single day, how many remissions did we have today of cancer? How many people spontaneously healed their diabetes? How many people actually fell in love with or did deep forgiveness and with their family members or friends or so called enemies. If that was focused on. If the news was actually the news and not the olds, because it's actually the olds, same thing every day just happening to different people, the world would change rapidly. Because where our attention goes is where our energy flows. So if we were all focused on all these great things that are happening like right now on this planet, right this second, not in the future, we have everything necessary to handle every issue right now. It all exists now technologically. We just don't have the will and the consciousness to bring it into expression. Those things are repressed so that the powers that be can continue to profit, offer an old way of being on the planet. We have technology to clean up the water. There's no water shortage. We have technology to have free energy. There's no energy shortage. We have all these things already exist, but the powers that be don't let that emerge. So if we pay attention to a world that works for the highest and best within us all, we will create the vibrational condition for it to emerge. As Victor Hugo once said, you cannot stop an idea is time has come. So when this becomes, you know, saturated in our awareness, the new ways of being in the world, which are ageless by the way, will emerge. And I see that I've been carrying a vision and be carried by a vision for years. So I stay joyfully optimistic. An optimistic is not a person that doesn't believe in problems or challenges. An optimist is simply a person that knows that there is a solution to every issue. And so I know that. So that's where I live.

So how do you advise someone who is bombarded with the messages from Media from negative people around them, from haters in their own life on the Internet. How do they shift their focus from that to look to the more optimistic messages when it seems overwhelming and consuming, being pulled down by the negative ones.

Right. You do a simple practice of finding one thing to be grateful for. You just wake up. Like when I wake up in the morning, I put my feet on the ground, I just say something along these lines. I'm so grateful for my life, I'm grateful that I exist. And what happens is if you come into a feeling of gratitude, your perception and your perceptual windows become clearer. And now you're able to see opportunities. If you don't believe in possibilities, the mind can't see opportunities. So when you open yourself up to gratitude, you start to see opportunities. You start to see things differently. Then that develops momentum and you become a grateful person, a grateful being, which then you begin to see things you've never seen before. You know, I remember years ago I was moved to become a vegetarian. So I'm driving down Crenshaw Boulevard, there's a store, I think it was Lindbergh store, health food store, back in the day. And I pass by, I said, oh wow, a health food store. I wonder how long it's been there because I've never seen it before. So I go in, it's been there over 20 years, but I never noticed it because my attention, that wasn't important to me. Eating good food, I never noticed it. It's been there in my neighborhood all these years, but I'd never seen it. So once our perceptual windows get clear, based on gratitude and high intention, we start to see things we've never seen before. We start to see people we've never noticed before. There's an old statement that when the pickpocket sees the Buddha, all he sees is his pockets. He can't even notice that he's the Buddha, that he's carrying enlightenment because he's only interested in the pockets. So when we start to become grateful and look for something to be grateful for, we start to notice a different world that's hidden in plain sight. And yes, the news will be still be going on, but after a while we're able to look at it. And what I teach people what to do with that is if a friend of yours calls you and says, oh my God, I have a backache, I have this bad diagnosis, would you pray for me? You would say, yes, of course, I'll pray for you. And you're going to go inside and you're going to see the best about them and hold. So the news is a collective prayer for from our society. It's a society saying we can't see clearly right now. We're in war, we're in hate, we're in scarcity, we're in lack. That's the diagnosis. So whenever I teach practitioners here in Agape that when you're watching the news, you're actually watching a societal prayer request. And just like you would pray for your friend if they had a diagnosis of some kind, negative, it's to call you into a deeper sense of gratitude and prayer. You're not caught up in it, you're doing something about it vibrationally. Does that make sense there?

Yes.

I love that. I absolutely love that. So I know that you're launching a new course tomorrow. Actually, can you talk to us a little bit about what the course involves and what people will get from that?

It's called Awake and Activate. It's going to be shining right here from Agape International Spiritual Center. They can go to agapelive.com to register. I'm doing a five week class and the reason is called Awake and Activate because I'm going to teach these universal spiritual principles, but it's also going to carry some inner experiences to activate the knowledge that's within us. Because it's one thing to like read a book and to have an intellectual understanding of what you're reading. It's another thing for that information to become activated within you, to have some level of embodiment. So we're not just walking filing cabinets of information, but we actually have the feeling, tone of the information in the five weeks I'm going to teach, but I'm also going to activate so that individuals at the end of those five weeks, they'll be able to see a noticeable difference in their own life, their own emotional life, their own mental life. So it's about transformation. Not just academic learning about something, but actually being transformed. So that's at Agape, agapelive.com, and we can activate, just go on the website and register for it. It'll be zoomed because people all over the world, like we had a masterclass the week before to prepare people for the class. It doesn't matter whether you got the masterclass or not, you can still take the class. But we had about 3,700 people on there holding this strong field for awakening and for activation. And many of them have already registered for the class. So it's going to be on Zoom. It's going to be powerful. You're going to be with people from all over the world that are tuning in. You know, there are many people that keep taking it. I teach it a little bit different every time because I'm different every time. But there are people who take it a lot who just keep taking. And there are other classes in our university as well that people can sign up for.

One of the things that you just mentioned and explained was this feeling, the sense of feeling. And when I heard you say that, it reminded me so much of going down this path of accessing information, as you said, like being a walking file cabinet, having all this information in my head, but not really feeling the way that is resonating with the messages. I'm grateful, I'm joyful. But then feeling, you know, like life is hard, is that some of what you're activating in people so that they can actually vibrate and feel that way?

Absolutely. The feeling provides the healing, and the feeling provides the revealing of the truth that's within us. I used to have a teacher that used to say, it don't mean a thing if we don't have that feeling. It's a feeling universe. You can have all kinds of words that's important, but it's the feeling and the energy behind the word that's really, really matters. So, yeah, I'm going to have exercises that actually coax people into the feeling tone. I'm going to have them being coaxed into the feeling tone of what does abundance feel like? What does prosperity feel like? You see, what does joy feel like? And then we'll learn to stabilize that. So you're living in that, and then you start to see demonstrations of that in your life. By law, it's not accidental. It's repeatable results based on your inner feeling. So it's good to have the knowledge, but you have to have the knowledge with the feeling that produces more viable results.

Oh, my gosh. That was a huge missing part for me for a long time. I defer to you on this, but don't you think there's something about a collective of people to 3,700 people, setting that intention together, that will help people elevate themselves to a level they haven't reached before.

Absolutely. And that's why I was prompted to start a community, Agape International, because what I teach is an authentic spiritual community grants you immunity from the lower frequencies of life. So when you're with a group of people celebrating and praying and chanting and listening to a message and having Good music that creates a field of all to itself, that neutralizes negative energy for thousands and thousands of people that aren't even in the assembly of people, you know, because a field can't be contained by a wall. You know, it's everywhere. And so absolutely, when you're in a community or taking a class with a group of people, what happens is you start to vibrate at the highest level of whatever insight anyone has had. So that if someone's having an insight and there's an aha about something and they're starting to feel it, it affects the whole class. The whole class starts to vibrate at that level. The highest vibration wins. And so taking a class with a group of people, being an authentic spiritual community, that's dogma free. You know, it's not about dogma. You know, it's not about capitulating to some man made rules, but it's about actually having a direct encounter with the presence of God, of love and beauty within you in that kind of a community of celebration, celebrating what's already being given. Yeah, it goes a long way. I mean, solitude and silence and being alone is important. And community and being with people like the 3,700 plus people that were in this masterclass, that's important. It's important. You know, can you imagine if we were to take these Super Bowls and all these great concerts that people have with Thousands of people, 18,000 people, 60,000 people showing up to see person kick a field goal, you know, it's sweet, it's wonderful. I don't put any of that down, but it's, you know, they're pulling for their team and you know, but you know, we get all these people, you know, like next year we're going to have a big moment of pulling all these spiritual teachers together to have a moment of silence and conviction and a dynamic sense of world peace for the world. But we bring that many people to really focus on what's possible for the planet. It makes a big difference.

So beautiful. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing. You're so incredible and I can feel, I love that you just explained you vibrated the highest level there. Highest level wins. Well, thank you for bringing my vibe up today. Thank you for bringing everyone's vibe up. Where can everyone sign up for the class? Where can everyone get your podcast and get a hold of you?

They can go to agapelive.com a g a p e l I v e dot com, that's the Agape website. And then within the Agape website is the Agape University, and that's where the class is being given from. So you just sign up for the class there. You can also see me speaking every single Sunday. If you're not in the LA area, you can just watch it on our YouTube channel. My personal YouTube channel. Or Agape's YouTube channel. Or Agape's Facebook page. Or my Facebook page. Or straight from the agapelive.com website, you can watch me speak. Every Sunday, I do a Way of meditation service at 6:45am I do another service at 9:00am and then another service at 11:30am so people all over the world are waking up at different time zones and tuning in to different services based on when they're waking up. But it's also archived, so if you miss it, you can just go to agapelive.com and just watch the service because it's right there. Take Back youk Mind is the name of my podcast, and that's on all the platforms. It's new, so we just hit like 3 million downloads because I have a guest every week. And then sometimes I do solo shows just teaching. So that's a wonderful thing. I love being of service that way.

We are so grateful for you. Thank you for empowering us, thank you for teaching us, and thank you for leading the way.

It is my joy.

I can so see that. All right, guys, check out the podcast. Sign up for the class. I will provide all the links in the show notes below. And until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.