PNTV: Life Visioning by Michael Bernard Beckwith (#207)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, Life Visioning by Michael Bernard Beckwith. Life Visioning. Beckwith is one of our favorite teachers. We did another note, an episode on one of his books called Spiritual Liberation. He has a church, transdenominational church, here in Los Angeles. It's about an hour and a half away from us called Agape. Alexander and I used to go to that. And he also created a music album called Transcend Dance and Emerson. Whenever we're in the car, we'll say Beckwith, Beckwith. He wants to listen to Beckwith because we love his music. So check that out. Transcend Dance. I'll put a link to that below as well as Spiritual Liberation and of course, this book. So we've got a Philosopher's Note. Bunch of big ideas, five of them I'm excited to look at right now, plus some questions I'll come back to in a moment. But we first start with our authentic self, the Life Visioning Process. This book is about a process called the Life Visioning Process. LVP is all about helping us discover and express our authentic self. So when I think of the authentic self, one of the things I like to come back to is to remember that, that the word authentic comes from the same root as the word author. So to be authentic is literally to be the author of your own story. The author of your own story. You're able to see all the conditioning, all the shoulds and all the things you've been told you should do. Other people writing your story for you and you're able to say, look, I'm going to take some of that, I'll take all of it in, but I'm going to look at it and say consciously and deliberately, this is how I'm going to write my story. Some of that I'm going to integrate, some of that I'm going to let go, but I'm going to be the author of my own story. It's a huge concept and something that again, all these episodes are really about is to give ourselves that connection to something bigger than ourselves. There's the little afraid, fearful, unhealthy self. Then there's the plugged in, connected, authentic self. That's what we want to connect to. Enthusiasm comes from there. En plus theos. We just talked about that yesterday. That's the essence of the authentic self. That's what we want to look at. That's our first big idea. Second big idea. Well, how do we tap into the authentic self more consistently? Well, Again, Beckwith has his life visioning process. We talked about it a little bit in the note, some more details on the mechanics of it. And then of course check out the book. He has an audio program on it as well, which is awesome. But one way is to get off of the Internet. You have an Internet to spell it out so it's clear inter and then you have your inner net. All of us pretty much could benefit from swapping some energy from the Internet to the Internet in spiritual liberation. Beckwith tells us we need to unplug from the tyranny of the trends. All of the most famous cool people or all oriented. Not all of them, but most of them are oriented in the wrong direction. We're being marketed toward to consume and consume and consume absurdity. Unplug from that. Plug into your Internet if you want to discover and live from and express your authentic self more consistently. We talk about this all the time for a reason. All the great teachers come back to it for a reason. It's huge. You cannot consistently express the highest version of yourself if you're constantly paper cutting your consciousness with nonsense. Period. Hate to break the news to you. Third big idea. Another way to tap into authentic self meditation. Again, talk about this all the time. Beckwith calls this the most powerful transformational technology. Slow down, connect to reality, which is this life force, universal intelligence. Again, whatever you want to call it. So how's your meditation practice? If you have one, write on how do you dial it in just a little bit more and celebrate the fact that you've got it going. If you don't have a meditation practice yet, what are you waiting for? Get on it. It's huge. Affects everything. Your connection to your authentic self, your immune system, your epigenetic expression of your genes, etc. Etc. Etc. It's a good thing. We're going to do a class specifically on meditation called Meditation 101. All the basic reasons why and how to build a meditation practice in my membership. Little dealio next month. Excited about that. That's our third big idea. The fourth Big idea. Reach down to get the notes. Questions he has some extraordinary Beckwith has some extraordinary questions throughout the book that guide us toward a deeper connection to our authentic self as we craft our life vision. Here are a few really powerful ones you may want to contemplate. I've thought about these and journaled on these and reflected on these often. He says, what is the highest vision for my life? What is the highest vision for my life? What seeks to emerge in, through and as my Life, he says, or in the case of a project or a business, what is the highest vision for this project or for this business? Now, that may not sound like a huge deal, that question, and you might just hear it go, yeah, that's interesting. Or read it in a book and say, oh, yeah, that's interesting. What we need to do is stop and actually contemplate this stuff. Beckwith is the one who first told me, introduced me to the idea that that theory is rudimentary spirituality. The practice is the advanced stuff. Answering questions like this, contemplating them in silence or journaling them consistently, not just on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, but consistently throughout your days and weeks and months and years is a key practice. So take the time to slow down and to go deep into your little Internet. Not that hard to find the time. Just spend 10 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes or 60 minutes or 120 minutes less on the Internet and engage in these questions. Second one, what must I become in order to manifest this vision? What qualities must I cultivate? So what is that highest vision, and who do you need to be to manifest that highest vision? What qualities do you need to cultivate? Is it self discipline? Is it patience? Is it love? Is it kindness? What is it? Think about these things. Third question, what must I release to manifest this vision? This may include habits, mindsets, compulsive behaviors, things of that nature. Beckwith tells us one of the key things to optimizing our lives is to stop doing certain things. Teaching a class next week on Getting Stuff Done, 101, and one of the biggest ideas is, what do you need to stop doing? If you want to get stuff done, you need to stop doing other things. I was just hanging out with Steve Chandler over the weekend, spent some time with some coaches who are working with him, and he shared a Warren Buffett quote that I'd never heard of. He said that, quoting Warren Buffett, who said that the difference between successful and really successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything. They say no to almost everything. They focus their attention. And one of the things we need to say no to are our compulsive habits and our addictive behaviors, the big things and the little things that just don't serve us. So what are yours? Now's a good time to get rid of them. And then the fourth question here is, what talents, gifts, skills and qualities do I already possess that will serve this vision? He says, this moves you into a state of being and having, rather than trying to get something, you start from a place of wow. You already have extraordinary gifts. What are your extraordinary gifts? What are the things you're going to let go of? What are the things you're going to cultivate such that you can bring this extraordinary vision of yours into your life more consistently? Those are some beautiful questions I hope you enjoyed and and I hope that you explore them more than once. Fifth big idea, Blissipline. So Beckwith is the one who introduced me to the idea, the word blissipline. Bliss plus discipline. You bring a lightness to your discipline, but you start with discipline. You need to have discipline. Too many people when they're on a letting go spiritual path think that you don't need to have any discipline. You should just go with the flow and follow your bliss. And if it's not fun and it's not easy, then you shouldn't do it. Okay, good luck with that. Then there's the overly rigid disciplined, I've got to do this and I can't have any fun and I've got to grit my teeth and all that stuff. That's not it either. What we want to do is integrate bliss and fun and laughing at ourselves when we fall short, which we will again and again and again. Not take ourselves so seriously, but seriously enough that we do what needs to get done if order to be who we want to be. And Beckwith says paradoxically, it takes a good amount of doing in order to get to a state of being. We need to have both. We want to enjoy the process. Do that by cultivating bliss upline. Bring joy, bring laughter, bring bliss into your discipline. Those questions are worth contemplating meditation. Get on it. Cultivate your practice. Spend some more time in the Internet, off of the Internet. Get out of the tyranny of the trends and tap into something bigger than yourself, which is also known as your authentic self. Be the author of your story, make it interesting, make it awesome and hope you enjoyed. Alright, I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another great day and an awesome day as well. See you.