How To Manifest ANYTHING Into Your Life | Agapi Stassinopoulos

This world is magnetic. World pulls you to the world. We have 70,000 thoughts a day. About 50,000 are supposed to be negative. To come to alignment with your spirit is not easy. It takes devotion, it takes practice, and it takes community.

I got to be honest with you. Normally, I would do this at the end of the show, but I'm going to tell you what. This book right here, I've only had a chance to dive into probably a quarter of it. And I'm going to tell you what. I've had happy tears. I've had happy smiles. There's a simplistic, profound beauty to every single word in here. You should be very, very, very proud. And every person on the planet should read this book.

Oh, my God.

From my perspective.

Thank you. Thank you so much. That means so much to me because I feel you caught the essence of the book. I wrote it completely from my heart. I got it. I call it. I got the download of the prayers during the pandemic. Stephen, I was writing this book during the pandemic when I was going through a very rough time, mentally, emotionally. The lockdown was terribly hard for me and millions of people. I happen to be a Greek, and I am an extrovert, but being a Greek extrovert makes you triple extrovert.

I need my dose of people daily, you know, or I shrink.

Yeah.

Oh, I. Can you imagine this agape in Los Angeles with my family, not being able to see my friends, zoom after zoom. I really thought I was going to have a breakdown. And I had this deadline for this book. So spirit, start giving me the guidance to go deeper, to go calm, silent. And when you said the simplistic, the simple profoundness of this, that's how I feel because it was so raw and authentic about. And my key, and I want to pass this on to our listeners, is that God and spirit meets us exactly where we are.

Yeah.

Not on our Sunday best.

Yeah.

Not. We don't have to put on the facade. Or I'm okay. Or I'm fine. If you, whatever you are, voice it, name it, write it, speak it, share it. And then, as your wonderful, beautiful Toure Roberts guest said in one of your podcasts, if you judge yourself, the moment you've judged yourself, you have stripped yourself from the ability and the gift of shifting where you are. State of a higher consciousness.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. Oh, man, we're gonna have such a good time. The audience is in for a treat, and I don't even know it yet.

I want to start off with one of the. So there's. I've already said there's. So there's 52 of these. These. These prayers and principles and teaching moments throughout the course of the book. I found myself wanting to dive in, like every five seconds in a different one. There was one that really touched me. And it goes back to, I think, one of your spiritual mentors that you had growing up, which was your. With your beautiful mother.

Yes.

And I've been marinating, if you will, which is a strong word in Yalls relationship, obviously with. With your work and then kind of just preparing for the podcast. But you talk about a. There's a story there called. That I refer to as the Pearl Necklace.

Yes, yes.

Yeah. That I just. It. It. And it's. I'll let you tell the story. But the title of this particular piece in the book, which everybody has to read, I'm telling you right now, it's a must read, especially if you're in the moment of transformation. This book is a transformative book from my perspective. And it says it's not a trade, it's an offering.

Exactly.

So talk to us about that story because I just. Oh, yeah, it gave me tingles.

It's a chapter three in the book.

And it's page 37:17. And I just want to read the quote in the chapter. It says, and still after all this time, the sun has never said to the earth, you owe me, look what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky.

Yeah, I love it. Gave me tingles.

Yeah. It just brings me. It just makes my heart swell. Because from the moment we wake up in our lives, we're all so accustomed to be transactional. We all have our agendas, Stephen. You know, it's a personal advancement agenda. And the world teaches us that. Our society teaches us that is like more of that. More. More success, more money, more education. Better be better at this, excel at that. Which is all wonderful and noble, but there is something that brings direct fulfillment and happiness, and that is a consciousness of unconditional giving.

Yeah.

So my mother, who lived and demonstrated that, has many, many stories demonstrating that. But one that I describe in the book here is as you refer, the pearl Story. We were in London. We were educated in London, Arianna, my sister and I. And we were, you know, 17, 19, going to. I went to drama school and Ariana went to Cambridge studying economics. And we were at an English cocktail party which is, you know, rather upper, upper, stiff upper lip, as they say.

Yeah.

Not your typical Greek. Oh, you know, come in, come in. It's more like, how are you? Hello.

Good evening. How are you? Wonderful. Wonderful weather, isn't it? I mean, they're all, you know, very. I mean, I love my English friends, but they're. They're proper, you know. So this woman said to my mother, oh, my goodness, I just love your pearl necklace. Where did you get it? It's one of the most beautiful pearl necklaces I've seen. So my mother said, well, it was a gift from my brother. And she takes off the pearl necklace and says to the lady, but now it's yours. It's my gift to you. Enjoy it. And the woman was flabbergasted.

Yeah.

What. I mean, you don't even know me. How can you give me your necklace? And at that moment, I mean, I was there, and I was sad to see my mother's pearls go.

Yeah.

But she taught us in that way that you just. This was just a small example of how she lived because she always made herself available to serve, to give, and in very royal way. You know, it's not. It wasn't a beggar's way. You know, she had this elegance about her that it was always.

Let'S have people. When we. And remember, there were times when we didn't have enough money to pay the rent. And she would invite everybody to dinner and make a feast.

Yeah.

Make us all feel that we had enough. And she raised us with this big philosophy, which was, trust your life. Trust yourself. And this offering is something that I speak a lot about. And I. And I encourage people when you are.

Stuck, as you, you know, teach to move to unstoppable. And. And I would say from start. From stuck to unconditional giving.

Yeah.

Because if you're stuck and you. You. I said to a friend of mine, literally four days ago, how do you find this commitment to work out every day? You know, and he's so religious. He does not miss a, you know, a day. And he's disciplined about his workout. And he said, agape, there are millions of people on wheelchairs, paralyzed, in hospitals who would give anything to move. Every morning I wake up and I said, oh, my God, I can move. So in a way, if you're going through a challenging time about anything, or if you're not going through a challenging time, even if you're having an incredible time with your work and with your career and you have what you want, I just ask you to take. To take a reflection, an action of what and where and how can I give more of myself? Because when we give of our Energy. It takes so little to say to people. Somebody said to me the other day, I'm having such a hard time with his co worker. She's just resisting everything I say and she's bitching. And I said, sweetheart, when was the last time you acknowledged her for who she is and what she does? This person wants to feel important. They don't feel important around you or the company, so they're sabotaging things. Go to them and say, can I take you to lunch? Can I take you for coffee? Can I treat you to something? Can we go for a walk? And flood them with appreciation? And don't focus on all the things they don't do. That is giving. My mother found constant ways to give. She would be in a supermarket at Whole Foods, and she would say to the cashier, the mother and the little boy behind me, I'm going to pay for them.

What?

They have dessert, they have cookies and things. When they come to the cashier, say the lady before you paid. It's just there's hundreds and hundreds of ways, as Rumi says, to kneel and kiss the ground.

Yeah. No, it's so beautiful. You know, I find that. I find that the very things that we crave are the very things that we can give. So we crave, all of us crave to be seen, value, heard and appreciated. And yet it costs us nothing to give that in advance. And somehow when you give it in advance, it finds its way back to you, you know.

But that's partly. Let's ask the question, why is it that we are like that? Because we have forgotten the relationship with the spirit. If I had a phrase that I could tattoo on my forehead, it would be, God is my partner.

Yeah.

So for me, when in writing this book, I always believe that. I believe that since I had my spiritual awakening when I was 23 years old.

That's about the same time I had mine.

Really? How was yours?

I was 22.

Where were you?

I was homeless and had just decided to surrender my life. And then everything after that changed for the better.

How did you do that? How do you do surrender?

You just wake up and you go, I surrender my life. Or.

No, no, it's. It's a long. It's a longer story, but essentially the short version of it is, is I needed money so bad that I. To clean my brother's litter box. Now my brother was living in my mobile home that I technically owned, but I couldn't afford to pay the. The rent, so he moved in to take over the payments. And he offered to give me 50 bucks. I had spent the, the previous five years at that point, really angry, really mad at the world because of my circumstances and family and upbringing and all this kind of stuff.

And as a result, I spent five years as a dedicated atheist, so to speak.

Yes.

And as I go up to clean this litter box, I. I start cleaning it and the handle snaps off the scooper. So I get. Put my thumb in the back of the scooper and start cleaning the litter box. And. And then after that, then the corner of the scooper catches the bag and rips a hole in the bag that I put all the stuff in.

Oh, wow.

It went everywhere. And I found myself throwing it down and yelling at the top of my lungs. Every obscenity, if you will, slash angry. Like every bit of anger came out of me in one moment.

Yeah.

And I found myself yelling at the top of the roof, staring at the ceiling at a God that I supposedly didn't believe in.

Yes.

But I found myself in that moment. This was completely like all subconscious, like subconscious explosion.

Yes. Yes.

And I had this moment where I was. I basically uttered these words, I said, well, if you're so blankety blank real, prove it to me. And it was like somebody took a baseball bat to the back of my knees and I was pinned to the floor. And in that key moment, all I heard was a little. It was the. It was the greatest presence of love I have ever felt in my entire life outside of any relationship that was romantic or family or even. I was super close to my grandfather even outside of that. And in that specific moment, this presence of love just said, if you will surrender, I will bless you.

Oh, wow.

And I, I. In that moment, I surrendered and I started crying. Like everything that I'd been carrying for a decade just like, was just falling away. And it was almost like somebody poured a hot of an oil at the top of my head that slowly dripped all the way down to my toes.

Yes.

And I don't know if it was a minute or 10 minutes or an hour that I was pinned to the floor. I just know when I got up, I was free.

That's unbelievable. I mean, it's not. Unbeliever. The grace.

Yeah.

What a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing it.

Thank you for asking. I don't get to share that story very often.

My God. I, I think we should do a book that says moments of epiphanies.

I'm down with it. I want to do that. I'll share stage with you. We can have a We can have a blast.

Let's just. Let's just get a book going that says. Because I feel.

I call those moments grace. And for me just to share with, with our wonderful listeners. I was 22 years old. I had left London to do a movie in Los Angeles. I was hired to play the lead in a movie. I arrived in Beverly Hills, staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

It is a scene out of a movie. I was living at a bungalow financed by a Greek financier which everybody thought I was sleeping with. But I met him three times in my life. He just. I don't know. God wanted me to be treated like. Like a princess.

Yeah.

And audition. Then met everybody. I was terribly. It's an amazing thing because I was both extremely innocent and extremely confident because being raised by a mother, my mother, with such gusto and such passion and such belief in. In ourselves, and gave me the confidence to operate at 23 in Hollywood and feel good about myself, you know, and going to Royal Academy and the movie didn't work out. And he told me one day, agape, we have your ticket. The financing fell through and I never forget it, staring at this ticket in my hotel room and not knowing.

Not knowing what made me say, I am not going back to London. And that huge decision that changed my life, Complete unknown. I had no money, I had no job. I had tons and tons of friends who loved me because I was always terribly charming and people always took care of me. And I decided to stay. I embarked on a yoga mission. I was doing three hours of yoga every day. I was reading every spiritual book I opened. The Autobiography of a Yogi. I was reading it and as I was reading it, there is stories of Paramahansa Yogananda, who talks about the yogis living their bodies thousands of years live in their bodies. They have mastered the physical. They go out of the body and they come back in the body and. And they're free. They're liberated. And I fell asleep on the book. I woke up that morning at six in the morning with a light coming in from my bedroom window, thrown on my knees like you, weeping and saying, I know I'm a child of God. I am a child of God. I didn't believe like you. I wasn't angry. That's the thing. I was lost. I didn't pray to God. I just. But your soul. And this is what I feel. We all long for the soul awakening and to me, why I wrote this book and why I'm in this trajectory to support people everywhere, people who are Going through things. People who are happy in their lives, people who are wanting more things, people who want to get rid of things. Meaning relationships, work. Make God your partner.

Yeah.

How you do that? Let me just spell it out for all of us. You wake up every morning and on your right hand side of your palm you have your human condition with your agenda, your personal ambitions, your children, your outcome, your homes, your vacations, your work, your unemployment, everything. Your angst, your anxieties, your worries, your good and the bad. Every human humanness is right here on your left side. You have the divine unconditionality, the presence.

The Presence.

Breathe it in. The presence.

Our job, my friends, as human beings, is to take a moment as we open our eyes and take the right hand of the unconscious, conscious, semi conscious human condition and take the left hand and put them together through prayer. That is the bridge. And say thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you for another day of breathing. Thank you for another day of my 36 trillion cells making me. And I ask right now that this miracle of life that breathes me, that lives in me as me today, be awakened and more of that presence and that consciousness be in my day and less of my human angst. I surrender today.

Make everything that I touch today have your touch. My conversations, my bank accounts, my lunch, my meetings, my taking my children to school, my beautiful husband, my beautiful wife, my family, my mother in law, who I cannot stand. The other day I want to kill my mother in law, my husband's mother, because she always there. Well, put her on the chalice, my friends. Put her on the golden chalice and maybe she'll go on vacation and leave you alone. You just don't know if you surrender. Take a minute, take two minutes. It takes courage. It takes vulnerability. It takes letting go of yourself. As you know, it's the habit of being yourself. As we say, I do that every day and surrendering. And then throughout the day, return to that place. Yeah, return to that place. That's how you do it. That's how you do it.

It is so then the crazy part, it is so simple, so true.

Hardly any of us do it routinely or regularly. In fact, you repeatedly talk throughout the book.

Which I think is the answer to every problem that basically comes in front of us. One of the things you talk about, this, the book, is this, this. The soul longs for that connection.

Yes.

We try to fill it with all kinds of other things, which it never works because your soul wasn't created for that connection.

Yes, yes.

But you can easily satisfy what the soul needs by doing. By just simply having spiritual communion.

Exactly.

You know, So I want to talk a little bit about the importance of prayer. You just, you just gave us a beautiful illustration of how simple it can be. Why is prayer the bridge? Why is that, that presence, if you will, that. That intentionality behind connection so profound?

I think, I think prayer moves us into the surrender that you talked about and the reverence. Because the ego and the personality are always, as I said, thinking about your to do list and your next thing. And, and if you. And why prayer is different than meditation. Okay, because meditation, you sit down and basically you tell your mind to. I mean, you know, you try to over go past your thoughts in your mind. And people who have meditated for a very long time, God bless them, they're. They've achieved that maybe, and they're having connections. But prayer is a direct connection to your humanness, to your agapeness, to your steveness, to that. That is real for you. So you take that humanness and, and, and you bring it to your presence, which is basically, you're talking to you. It's just that you're talking to a higher part of you. So that is the discipline, that is your bicep muscle that you do every day. And the more you do it, the.

More.

I have in the book, quick fix to God. Like, you're in the middle of a meeting and it's not going well, and you're dipping and you're feeling, oh, my God, this person across the meeting with me is negative or they didn't go as well. And you're starting to find yourself being drained of your energy because there is judgment, there is disappointment. And right there. And then you go, okay, spirit, here I am in my disappointment. Here is this meeting. Silently you say, please transform this meeting with your spirit. If you do not ask, the spirit won't come. If you ask, the spirit will open the door. And the asking is the prayer, but the listening is the prayer. I have this, this little technique that I do and I say, right now I'm having in my day a difficult moment or I'm feeling.

Something happened and I lost my balance. And I immediately take a pen and a piece of paper and I go. Spirit speaks to me and spirit just says, beloved, come back to your heart. Release that fear that surfaced in your belly. Just let it go. Yeah, Here nothing bad has happened. Yeah, come back to me. Whatever it's been say. But learning to be tender with yourself like that.

To me is like it's, it's an art form. It's it's being a lover. It's being a lover, your spirit. And so Kabir, you know, the mystic poet says, when you really look for me, you will see me instantly. You will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Yeah.

Says, tell me, what is God? What is the breath? He is the breath inside the breath.

Yeah.

So. And I have here a thing that actually says, my spiritual teacher says, and I'm going to read it to you because it blew me away when I read it. If you enter into the right consciousness of prayer. So. So it does take preparation of your consciousness to move into prayer. I mean, you can pray in the subway, you can pray while you're walking.

You should be still to get to a stillness.

Yeah. But come to presence. You can strengthen yourself, that you can lift above the physical body.

Transcend all physical limitations, and in your knowingness, be in the higher level of consciousness. You will know that you are there, and you will know who else is there. You will know it as fully, as completely as you know the lower levels. It will be your reality. You have your foundation, your base, that position. You come back to this level and handle your daily experiences. But I think we are sloppy. Yeah, we are sloppy with our presence, we are sloppy with our thoughts, and we let our thoughts consume us. And. And you know that. That story in the Bible.

You know, of course, you know it when Adam and Eve were caught naked and they felt ashamed. Right?

Yeah.

You know, it's very interesting because when I say to people, what is it that you don't pray? And people say to. Some people say to me, well, I don't believe in God. And I go, well, okay, let's just forget God, but let's go into your heart. Who do you love? And the person says, well, I, you know, I love my kids, or I love my. My husband, or I love my. My significant other, or I love my mother. And I said, go there. Go to your heart.

Yeah.

That is your God.

Yeah.

God is not out there somewhere. You know, I mean, he's out there. She or she or the intelligence is everywhere.

You just have to look at pictures of the ocean and the.

Kingdoms that are this planet Earth, let alone the other planets, to be absolutely transported by the transcendent, by the mystical, by the awesome universe. And then you feel so small, but at the same time, you feel part of that large.

Yeah.

So surrendering that those thoughts, surrendering the shame back to Adam and Eve, that. The shame. What is the shame about, do you think, Stephen?

I think the shame is feeling like you haven't measured up to some expectation, but you can't define whose expectation you're trying to live up to.

And the shame is also that the leaving, leaving your God and you are you separate and now you have to go back, make your own life.

You know, I'm making. You know how many times you hear people say, I'm making ends meet?

Yeah.

You know, why make ends meet when you are in the. You may make. When you are in the center of it all.

Yeah.

Oh, have we said enough about prayer? I mean, it's just.

Yeah, I mean, I, I think for me, I just, I think sometimes one reason I like to ask that question, especially with somebody who is as passionate as we are about the divine connection and the spiritual communion that is discussed, because I feel like prayer presence being, being in a meditative state to a degree where you're actually letting go of the world around you to kind of come create the inside world from within you. When you're in that zone, I feel like that's one of the most underutilized skills or superpowers or strengths on the planet.

Exactly.

And I feel like there's lots of reasons why people tell us why we shouldn't do it or couldn't do it or whatever, but yet just a few minutes ago, you literally just went into it immediately and it shows how simple it really is.

Yes.

You know, my, my mother in law, I've got a, a pretty sizable business deal we're trying to put together right now. I can't really announce much about it right yet, but I'm hopeful to in the next couple months. And in this part of this, in this sizable business deal, she's like, you're, she says you're pushing, let go. You're pushing, let go. You're pushing, let go. And then she said, here's, here's what, here's what I feel like spirit wants you to know. I said, okay, what's that? Spirit wants you to get on your knees and just say, I give it to you. And she said, and it will take a life of its own and it'll. And you won't have to feel like you have to push and pull. And as a result, I started doing that and trying to relinquish more yet more surrender over, over to present, so to speak. And lo and behold, it's starting to take shape without me touching it.

I love it. Okay, so here is a phrase I use and I have to actually use it again myself because I forget. And that is I give this business over to the light within. And I go free.

Yeah.

So let's say you have to decide about hiring a new person or not. I give this decision over hiring Joe Blah to the spirit within and I go free. So basically, any decision that, any burdens that we have, I give this decision over.

Moving ahead with this partner.

Raising this X amount of money. I've had so many miracles in my life happen when I do. And.

I use this technique all the time now. I go straight into my consciousness that is wondering about how to do that. I turn it around. It's almost like a visual thing. I take the switch and I turn it around and I lift it up. I go, hand it over. Hand it over.

Yeah.

And if I. This is. This is. This is like, again, for the people who are beginners and who might not trust God. And I love working with people like that because I go, okay, take.

A journal and start just writing down every day. Pretend that there is this. This presence there and keep evoking it. And. But people feel self conscious or they feel ashamed. Yeah, they feel. Whom am I to talk? Who am I talking to? And I go, you pray to the awakened part of yourself that is indeed the God in you. All we are asked to do is gently turn towards it and listen. Prayer, then, is the quiet focus that connects us to the inner knowing that we are not deficient in anything. You go about your daily life from a place of fullness, aligned with your higher purpose, your spirit led. Think of prayer as your inner compass pointing you to the direction you need to travel with a sense of confidence and strength. Deeper connection is available to each and every one of us 24, seven. Just like our breath.

Wow. Wow.

Like. And so it's all in the book. And part of the preciousness where I felt, I learned in this book is that I presented myself exactly as I was. Yeah, I had lost my joy when I had lost my connection when I was feeling bereft. And I have this beautiful chapter, chapter seven, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Have you ever seen the movie Charge of Fire?

I have not, but I'll have to watch it.

Oh, my God. You have to watch it. And tell me after you watch it how much you loved it. It's a story about two athletes in 1924 Olympic Games. And I think one is English and one is Irish. And the Irish one, Eric Liddell, which a true story, was also a missionary. So he's running at the beach. And this is incredible music by the Greek composer Vangelis. And they're running and he says, and his sister.

Has a meeting with him, and his sister is a missionary in China. And she says to him, eric, you have to give up this little hobby of yours, running and dedicate yourself to God's work, which is being a missionary. And he turns to her and says, but when I run, I feel his pleasure.

Yeah, because there is a created value. There is an absolute created value. I want to. In the time that we've got left, I want to touch on two specific emotions that I feel like leave people feeling empty, one of which is a very profound thing that has to be worked through. And, you know, I myself have gone in and out of it. I'm sure you have, as part of your journey as well. And I. And I see people, even today, especially with, you know, the. The. The current world environment, which says, this is going bad and this is going bad, and this is going bad, and just believe everything's going bad kind of thing. And that is the concept of fear. I want to talk about fear a little bit because I feel like sometimes, at least for me, fear has become, on occasion, a roadblock to have my spiritual connection. It's like I'm trying to get through the fear or get over the fear, and I struggle sometimes, and then when I have it, I have, like, a complete release. So talk to me a little about fear and how your work plays into fear.

I think in chapter 25, I have. The title of this chapter is, you're bigger than your fear. And so I think if we judge our fear or if we try to overcome our fear, or if we try to release our fear, we bring resistance. But if we embrace our fear, and you say, you know, there is a larger part in me that is. And that is not easy to do, especially when you are. You have an illness or someone close to you, it brings you to your knees, you know, of fear of the physical body, fear of losing a job, fear. I mean, if your family depends on you supporting them and suddenly you're fired and you. How am I going to make the rent? How am I going to make. And that's where I call it. And I've had many times I said, I don't only know fear, I know terror. Yeah, I know times where I had to move out of my family, from my family, moved to New York on my own, had a deadline to write a book. I didn't know how things were going to work out. I had. I was dating a man that. I had no idea if this was right or not or. I mean, there were so Many unknowns. And every morning I would wake up in absolute paralyzation, you know, and I.

Now that you've told us that, you also have to tell us the dream behind the dream behind that. By the way.

You mean. You mean the dream I had to say move to New York.

Yeah. And, and, and two months later, this guy is no longer part of the picture.

The picture I made. So many stories in this book were acknowledging them. No, I mean, it was like, this is the man of my life. And he comes in my dream, says, come, I'll take care of you. And then I moved to New York. And then two months later, he's out of the picture. I'm like, who set that up?

Well, here's the crazy part. So I'm a. I've been a novice dream interpreter for a while now. So the bedroom and a single family home always refers. Refers to the inner life. And then the typically the thing that you love in the moment that you love it is typically seen. It's almost like the divine takes shape and offers promises for the thing it's trying to give you. So to me, it comes in my grandfather a lot or things like that. So.

Oh my God, that's. I have to call you next time I have dreams.

Sounds good.

So, you know, coming back to my mother and why she raised us with that, because she fought the Second World War and she fought it through being a nurse in Athens, Greece. The Germans came and.

She was in a cabin with.

Taking care of patients up in the mountains. And three Nazis marched in the cabin and started to shoot and spoke German. And she got up and she said in perfect German, put down the guns. You cannot shoot. Here we are, Red Cross. And she said, I saw three machine guns go down and then her comb, she was coming, her hair fell and this German soldier picked it up and put it in his pocket. And my mother said, can I have my comb back? I need it more than you do. I mean, that is Greek chutzpah.

Yes, it is.

After that, my mother said, I never again felt afraid of anything. You know, my father was an amazing man who also was a concentration camp survivor. So they got married, but then he ended up having extramarital relationships. And he, you know, had work that would come and go and financial troubles and everything. And my mother said nothing faced me because I faced the Germans. So I just want to.

If we talk about fearlessness, it's always going to be there on some level. Your fear and coming into it and surrendering it. I give this over to the.

Light within. And I go free. Continuously giving it over, embracing it, and then telling that part of yourself which is. It's actually primordial. You know, sometimes it's. It's triggered by. By the job or it's triggered by circumstances, but it is in. It's a primitive part in us. It's a primitive part of the brain and educating that. And now just to return to also the power of the brain, there is so much neuroplasticity, there is so much information about how we can change those pathways. I go to prayer. I go to prayer because there is the part of me that is my life force, that is the 36 trillion cells that are making me, that is my breath. And I say, I ask to find the courage to move past my fear, knowing that the mighty spirit that lives in me is so much bigger than my fear. Show me how to transform my fear. Show me into trust and my insecurity into confidence. Show me how to transform my scared voice into my sacred voice. Let me walk this path step by step, holding your invisible hand, hearing the inner guidance in me. And although I might not feel it fully or comprehend it, I am willing to let my higher power take the lead. And it sort of goes on. And it says, as I move forward in taking the next steps, I see the sort of strength that clears my pathway. So you start to bring prayer to me. Is. Is your poetry. Is your love to the higher power, the higher presence in you? As I speak these words release the illusion that I am walking alone.

Yeah.

I receive the support that shows me in practical small ways that I can expand beyond my fear. So be it.

So good. I'm telling you, everybody's going to everybody this, everybody needs it. Everybody needs to speak with spirit. Every single person on the planet. I, you know, I don't always say that, you know. You know, I've always believed that books, certain books are good, you know, for certain groups of people. This is one that I think benefits anyone's life.

Keep it your bedside, you see. Keep it by your bedside and open it in the morning before you start it. It really is like, it triggers you.

Yeah.

Your higher power. And, And I wrote this prayer.

That's exactly what it did when I picked it up.

It triggers.

And it had been some time since I had sat down, been still been quiet, not been on go mode. And I was like, I haven't been connected. No wonder I feel overwhelmed. No wonder I feel distressed. No wonder I'm feeling anxious and these, these other emotions. And the moment I started reading I start all of it. Started lifting.

Exactly. I mean, I feel the same way. The other day I was going, having a hard day, and my sister said, read your book.

That sounds like something.

She say, hey, I'm having a hard day. And I'm going through this as Darling, read your book.

And every time I read it. But all of us have to exercise the trust muscle. And I, in writing this book and everything, I keep coming back daily to Agape write down one sentence in your prayers. And this book is also an audio. So I think people can download the audio because it's my voice and it's my energy, my soul.

I didn't know that. I'm getting that copy to get the.

Audio and listen to it while. You can listen to it while you're driving, you can walking while the treadmill, while you're hiking, on the subway, on the bus, you know, because it. Your brain starts to get into the vibration. The higher. All we need to do, it's all lifting to the higher vibration. God is not a being. God is a state of being accessible 247 to all of us.

Yeah.

And it's as simple as your breath. As you know, it's as simple as. But we all need to reaffirm the connection, to return to the connection. And I have two keys. One is, yes, read the prayers. This is the template. I wrote this prayer for every single subject, even from the God diet. How mine lost weight with God.

Yeah. Awesome.

It takes.

A commitment of love to awaken to that daily. And I would even say hourly.

Yeah.

Listen, Stephen, this world is magnetic. The world pulls you to the world, your thoughts. We have 70,000 thoughts a day, and.

About 50,000 are supposed to be negative. We have. The emotions are turbulent. To come to alignment with your spirit is not easy. It takes devotion, it takes practice, and it takes community.

Like, again, who are your friends and who is your community that you can pray together. You can come to remind each other. I have friends that I wake up in the morning and I have my coffee and I'll call a friend. And I said, darling, let's call in the light. Yeah, we go, Father, Mother, God, just ask right now for the light of the spirit to be with us, to surrender to anything that we do no longer serves us. And we send this positive wave into the day. We ask that our hearts be blessed, that our hearts be open, and that whatever it is you want to say and you say, well, I don't feel it. That's okay. Keep saying it.

Yeah, it will come. No, it will come.

Build it. It will come. Remember that movie?

Yeah, I do. I do. Oh, man. This is. We can talk for years and days. I'm loving it so much.

Give everybody my email. I send out my guided meditations agape at Unbinding theheart.com. and then I send you the meditations. And if you can. If you get. When you get the book, you know, write me. Let me know if you have any questions. A lot of people say to me, I don't feel I found my purpose. I have a chapter here of, how do you find your purpose? A prayer about your purpose. But let me just tell you right now, for anybody who doesn't feel they know their purpose, your purpose is not what you do. Purpose is not your bank account, your relationships, or your work. Your purpose is to awaken to the soul of who you are and be awakened to so that when you leave this earth, you are more enlightened, more filled with light, more awakened, and you can return to your maker.

That's so good. Can I have three more minutes of your time? Just three?

Yes, of course.

All right. There's one more piece of subject that I want to. I want to make sure we cover. And it's because I see so many people struggling with it. I see them making bad decisions, making poor choices, living in poor behaviors because they don't know how to deal with loneliness.

Loneliness. Yes. Okay. Here is how you deal with loneliness.

Loneliness is a human condition, and it doesn't matter if you are with people or alone. And loneliness is something that you have separated yourself from yourself. That's the real loneliness that you've forgotten that you are loved. Do you remember there is the story of this monk who is going around in the gardens in a seminary, and he's praying to God and says, God, help me, help people. What can I do to serve you? Can I feed the poor? Can I feed more? Can I plant more trees? Can we have more people who are sick in the monastery? Show me ways to serve you. And he hears God say, shut up and let me love you. If you are lonely, find the places you have judged yourself. Find the places you have exiled yourself. Find the places that you have abandoned yourself. Maybe your parents abandoned you. Maybe you have trauma. I know. And we all have childhoods that maybe were not ideal. You are not responsible for your childhood, but you are responsible as an adult to heal your childhood trauma.

Yeah.

Find ways, support, and come to a place inside where you say, I am lonely because I do not feel the connection with my spirit. I don't feel Loved. I don't feel I matter. I don't feel I am seen. So I wrote this poem I'm going to read to you. And this is from a book, the Hidden Gifts of Being Alone.

It's called Coming Home. And I wrote it. Overlooking the Mediterranean, the Aegean, you know, the gorgeous. And I say, I used to be so lonely. Lonely at my home. Lonely when I got back to sleep. Lonely when I was alone. When I was with people, I was never lonely. But when by myself, loneliness would hit my home. And then one day I heard a voice. Why don't you move in? I live alone, too. Like it here. Move in with me. I looked around and it was me talking to me. My home was empty. Wow. I said, I left that beautiful place a long time ago. Giving. Going out, looking for others to fill my home. And I left my house empty. Move in. Move in with me. You would like it here. You will never have to pay rent. I never evict you. You will be my beloved honored guest. I know you. Your likes, your dislikes, your little quintessential idiosyncrasies. I know you. I'll treat you nice and kind and give you lots of space. Move in. Come move in with me. I looked into my eyes, my heart, and saw the love for me. I surrendered. I opened the doors and moved in into my empty house that I had left a long time ago. It was exactly as I left it. It had just missed me. I moved in and never left and never felt alone anymore. For my house filled with love. Once I accepted such a kind invitation.

Wow. What a way to end the show. Oh, my gosh. I'm telling. I keep telling everybody. You're one of a kind. It's funny, you don't meet many people that live that are the embodiment of their name. And Agape is nothing more than unconditional all present, all knowing, all, all encompassing love. And you embody every single element of that.

God bless you, Stephen. God bless you for saying that. You know, my mother gave me that name, Agape, which means unconditional love, brotherly love. It's in the Bible. Yeah, she looked at me and my grandmother was Russian, duba means love, and said, oh, this is agape. And there I was, you know, and it took me years to find out that that was my calling. Love, love, love, love, love unconditionally, to be a vessel of love. So I am so grateful for this conversation. So you and for all the listeners and stay in touch. And the message is really, come home with you. That's the message moving with you. All of you. Not. Not the parts that are all good and you. You don't judge and you say, oh, this is. But the parts that hurt, the parts that want more, the parts that feel jealous. Compare that. The parts that you judge as less than your darker children. Take them all home.

Light them up. I mean, light them up, bring the light, feast with them and say, hey, you know why you're like that? You haven't had a good meal in a while.

Let me make you some moussaka.

Oh, my gosh, I'm loving it. All right, guys, you gotta go check out this book. Speaking with Spirit Agape, Sincerely, thank you so much.

And my Instagram is Agape Seas S E s. You can follow me there. Facebook and all that, but I gave agape@unbindingtheheart.com. send me an email. I'll send you my meditations. And yes, follow me. And just keep lifting each other up, reminding each other we need each other.

And I know you absolutely. Well, thank you so much again for joining us. I can't wait to see you in person and hang out with you some more.

Thank you so much, Stephen. God bless. Thank you.

God bless. I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here.

At the end of the day, you.

Need to make decisions that make you feel good and that are in harmony with your highest goals and your very best self.