Know Thyself - E143 - Michael Beckwith: Discover The Life You Were Designed to Live

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Michael Beckwith delves into the essence of a fulfilled life and how to manifest your soul’s true calling and potential. Beyond the outer conditions we face, he shares practical tools and insights for creating our destiny from the inside out. He opens up about navigating life's complexities, facing criticism, and the value of solitude. Ultimately, he inspires a journey toward service and embracing infinite possibilities for a transformative life.BonCharge Red light therapy:Go to https://BonCharge.com/KnowThyself and use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% Andrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro 1:55 Defining a Life Well Lived4:18 Life Visioning Process: Unlocking Your Heart’s Desire11:05 Moving From Lack to Abundance Mentality 17:58 The Gift Hidden in Your Challenges22:27 This Life is a Simulation25:12 Ad: Boncharge Redlight Therapy26:30 Michael shares a Poem31:06 Art as a Vessel for Truth 35:12 Harnessing a Greater Intelligence37:56 Balance of Skill Building & Flowstate40:27 Importance of Deepening Spiritual Practices45:44 Transcending Judgement with Understanding49:23 The Value of Alone Time53:53 Do This Every Night Before Bed59:10 Power of Forgiveness to Transform Your Life1:02:25 There’s Infinite Possibilities: Here’s How to Choose1:07:13 How to Handle Losing Friends as You Grow1:10:20 Navigating Criticism & Praise1:13:30 The Cycles & Seasons of Life1:17:38 Being of Service1:22:18 Conclusion___________Episode Resources: https://www.instagram.com/michaelbbeckwith/https://www.michaelbeckwith.comhttps://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcasthttps://www.knowthyself.oneListen to the show:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9lApple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate lunch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence. And accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. People have more power. then they can even imagine. We look at nature and we see when everything is in the right condition,

then the potential emerges. Now, the difference between us and a tree is that we have to consciously participate in that emergence. Now, many people will look to the world and say, oh, this is a bad time. But we create our own condition. And then that seed of divinity within us starts to emerge. You live in a field of infinite possibilities.

Why don't you choose a good one? People will say, where are some of the advanced teachings? And I'll say, well, not magic. is just practice. We all know about visualization. Visioning is getting in touch with your soul and asking what is it that's within you that really wants to be expressed.

It's a difference between making something happen with your mind to going to making something welcome. Because it already exists. And what happens? You bump into self-love and appreciation. You bump into the awareness that you have everything you need, but you activate it and start to walk in that direction

and life changes. Well, Michael, it's good to have you back. Thanks for coming back in the studio. Absolutely. When I found that I was coming, I had a smile on my face. I didn't know what my schedule was going to be. And they said, no, that else comes this week. I said, oh, yeah, I like that. It's my honor, man. It's so good to jam. And our community responded so positively from our last conversation. We touched on a lot of amazing themes from the Dark Night of the Soul to what it means

to live a purpose, vision, intentional, you know, driven life. And so let's keep diving in. We live in a wild time where we're fed so much information and we have so much access to so much, which is incredible. It's easy to fall into the comparative trap of seeing what our life should be based off of what we think is attractive in others. And I've just found this so much for me in my own personal life of like true joy has come from living in alignment with what my version of a life well lived is. So what is in your opinion for your life and what you feel like what you've seen as a pattern

in many people is a life well lived. A life will live is a life of service. It's that being of service to humanity, being of service to your own soul evolution, keeps you at a baseline of joy and happiness. And as you've indicated, there are people living on the planet and they get pulled by celebrity, fame, comparison of how much money a person has and things, that particular nature. And as we know, comparison is suicidal. You know, if you compare yourself to other people, you're committing kind of an inner suicide, or you're providing a context for your baseline of joy to go down. But if you're living a life of, you know,

how much can I give, how much can I serve, you come on what I call the right side of the law, meaning as spiritual beings, we've took an incarnation and arrived with everything. No one is missing anything. I mean the quality, I'm not talking about materialism, the qualities of the spirit, we have them all. So we're here to unpack that.

We're here to activate that. We're here to express that. We're here to give, share, shine, radiate that. So if you ask, you know, what do I have to give today? How can I contribute? How can I share? Now you're on the right side of the universal law that will provide for you.

Activate your own gifts of potentiality to share and to give. So you find yourself in joy more often than not. But if a person is living in, this field of a social media comparison. And as you indicated, they're being bombarded with all this information. You know, there's a difference between information that informs and information that transforms.

And most of the information flowing in social media is just information is my opinion. But if you start to ask, how can I serve, you become available to what it's called inspiration. That's not coming from time and space. That's coming directly from the heart heart-minded, the infinite. It's a whole different flow of information. Yeah. So I want you to walk us through a little bit of your life visioning process because you've

been supporting people really get clear on this. You know, I think success societally is thought of as just getting what you want out of life. Right. But taking it a step back and knowing what is worth wanting is even more important, right? Because we could spend our whole life going after what we thought we really wanted to come to find out it actually doesn't mean a whole lot to us. And so when you think of that. You mentioned last time you were on the show that your heart's desire and the divine will are the exact same thing. Absolutely. And so when you think of discovering what it takes to discover what is worth wanting and what our heart's desire and therefore divine will is, what comes to mind in supporting people with that? Well, there's wanting and there's immature

wanting. And the immature wanting oftentimes comes from what society gears us to want through the vast commercialism, commercials, marketing, there's all manner of things that people grew up in and they say, I want this, I want that. But they have no idea where that desire is even coming from. Is it coming from their soul? Or is it coming from society hypnotizing? I call it nefarious hypnotism, hypnotizing people

into thinking they want this. I saw a recent meme that showed, they were asking kids what they wanted. and one person was saying, I want a Lamborghini. I want a million dollars. Somebody said, I want a billion dollars. Then they asked people in poorer countries

what they want. And the little kid said, I'd like to see my father again. You know, I would love to have a taste of meat. I haven't had it in a long time. You know, I would love to have a quiet place to read a book that it was totally different based on the culture that the people came from

and the experiences they had in life. So when you talk about the life, visioning process, you know, we all know about visualization. You can use visualization to basically manifest things you want. Visioning is basically getting in touch with your soul and asking, what is it that you've come to deliver? What is it that's within you that really wants to be expressed? So at the end of your time on earth, you're not lamenting the fact that, you know, okay, you got six cars, but did you actually hit your potential? Did you actually give the gift you said you were going to give?

I firmly believe that before we took the incarnation, we made a promise to ourselves. The promise was we would come here, we would wake up, and we would contribute and distribute our gifts. Now, in any destination, you bump into turbulence. You fly from here to Seattle, New York, Chicago, the plane always hits a little turbulence, then you land, hopefully, most of the time. So when you come to the Earthplane, you come into turbulence. Society of the milieu, beliefs,

perceptions, superstitions, you move through the turbulence and the world that turbulence is creating. But ultimately, through some kind of way, you start to wake up. If somebody's listening to us right now, that means something is pulling them to be at this particular podcast. to wake up, to know themselves. So at some point you wake up and you realize, oh, I've been going through the turbulence, I've had some drama, I've had some trauma, I've had these belief systems, I have this religiosity, but now I want to wake up. And now I can begin to ask the question, what is it that's within me that really wants to emerge? What gift do I have that needs to be activated and expressed. Now, if I ask those questions sincerely in meditation, I am going to

activate my spiritual faculty that may have been dormant because I've been caught up in the world. I haven't been using my intuition. I've just been using my rational mind, my logical mind. I've just been using, you know, ways to survive. I start to get little glimpses and glimmers and intuitions and hunches about what is it within me? that I really want. You know, I do an exercise with people sometimes in which I'll put them into a meditative state. And in this meditative state,

they feel that all of their needs are met. They're healthy. They have harmonizing prosperity, ideal employment, right mate, all the stuff. And then from that space, I'll say, okay, what do you want? And now they have everything. What do you want? And if they stay in that long enough, they won't ask for a car or another house or whatever because they already have it in the feeling tone.

Now we start to emerge as what they really want, what their soul wants. What are they to contribute? What gift are they to activate within themselves that they are to express? Now they're living from, as you just indicated, their heart's desire and the divine world. will, it's the same thing. The divine will is a greater expression of life. A heart's desire is our unique way that we're to express the divine will, because everyone's different. There's no one on the planet exactly the same. Even though powers that be hate the word diversity, it's built into the program. It's nothing but diversity. Everybody's unique. And so that's what I'm seeking

to help people get to, you know. And what happens? You bump into self-love and appreciation. you bump into the awareness that you have everything you need, legitimate needs, but you activate it and start to walk in that direction and life changes. And you still get the stuff of the world. Whatever culture you're living in, you know, you still have what I call it harmonizing prosperity.

It's not just gluttony. Yeah. You know, it's your legitimate needs. As you said, getting back into the space where you discovered the joy in your being, then asking that question of what wants to emerge from within me, it completely changes your answer, right? Like, what comes off of a person who is in a state of joy

versus a state of anxiety, fear, and hard desire, like, those are two completely different answers. And I think it's a really important reflection, again here, is to have that practice that gets you into that state, then you can ask that question because so much of our life has been up into this point, I think for many of us asking these questions of what do I want, how do I get it from a state of inner lack? It's lack.

Oftentimes people are asking that from a state of lack, like they don't have something. And so then when they get it, they're still operating from lack, even though they have the thing, there's still a lack within them, which is why we see many people with a lot of stuff, a lot of money, but still acting as if they don't have. Greedy, manipulative, dominating, because they manifested from the consciousness of lack rather than from the consciousness of overflow and connection. So that's a very good point.

Where are you asking from? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So what else have you discovered in the, I guess, the texture of what emerges? Because I think it's so, spot on, right? You look at nature. Nature is emergence from the growth of a redwood tree to the

blossoming of a flower. As long as it gets what it needs and it's in the right environment, it naturally grows into its full potential. It's encoded within all of us. And so, yeah, what do you think about that process? Well, I think biomimicry is great, you know, because we look at nature and we see, as you just indicated, when everything is in the right condition, then the potential emerges. Now, the difference between us and a tree is that we have to consciously participate in that emergence. A tree, you just put it in the right condition, leave it alone. It has water, it has sunshine, it has all it needs. There's no no in it.

There's no maybe, oh, I want to be a daffodil. We have more agency to go in the opposite direction. Absolutely. That's why we're the image and likeness of God, because we have that kind of agency. So the inner work that we do is to participate in that activation of potential. I like to say we're not anticipants. We are participating in an energetic flow. What does that mean?

Ralph Hohler-Emerson had a word called endogenous, which means that, you know, indigenous means that certain things grow in a particular environment. Palm tree is not going to grow in snow. You know, it's indigenous to warm weather. There's exogenous, that which is outside of us. Indogenous means we create our own environment. we become the ripe condition. So if we're participating with our own visioning process,

our own meditation, our own high intention, et cetera, et cetera, we become a condition for the emergence of our potential. And it doesn't matter about the external conditions of the world. The economy can be up or down. Stocks can be up or downed. Presidents can be in or out. That's not our condition. We create our own condition.

And then that seed of divinity within us starts to emerge. Because we are the condition. Now, many people will look to the world and say, oh, this is a bad time for X, Y, and Z. So they're living from an ex-dogynist point of view. That is determining my destiny. But when we go within, we create our own condition. Potential is activated.

There's many people being healthy and secure. successful in all the stuff that's going on in the world, being happy. You know, that doesn't mean you deny what's happening, but you still create your own condition. So I always try to offer people understanding that you get to create your own condition. You know, not what's on the news, not what's in your social media, but you. And when the condition is right, emergence happens. When you have a right state, then the next stage emerges. If you don't have the state, you don't have the next stage.

So the state has to be normalized. So you have to, obviously people go up and down. Some days are better than others. But if you have a level of practice, you have that state most of the time. And then there's a natural stage that unfolds for that individual. People have more power than they can even imagine. They could just see themselves. Man.

No, it's great. I was just writing this piece the other day about the link between humility and intelligence. Yes. And it's a lot of what you're speaking to here, you know. We can look at it, you know, in the kind of gross or dense example of somebody who uses drugs, who, you know, is exogenously seeking for these state changes, right? Failing to recognize we have our own endocannids, right? And these endogenous chemical factory within us that allows the capacity for all of these states,

state experiences natural. And so making space for that condition like you spoke to for our natural emergence is one, a just really liberating perspective. And it kind of takes the pressure off of us because it's less of like us, of course there will be activity, but it's less us forcing to do something. And it's allowing and accepting something to emerge from within us, which feels way more effortless. Absolutely. It's like it's a difference between in what I call stage two when you're learning how to manifest, making something happen with your mind. to going to making something welcome. When you make something welcome, that's more feminine, it's more allowing,

more letting, and that is what happens when you become the right condition. You're making something welcome, because it already exists. Peace, love, joy, wisdom, harmony, abundance. You don't make that stuff. You don't make those qualities. Those qualities already exist.

You're making them welcome to be the activity of your awareness. When you're trying to make something happen, And oftentimes the energy of trying to make something happen is, I don't have it. So I'm going to make it happen, you know. And that's a stage of development. It's not a bad stage. It's just a stage.

But again, you run the risk of, one, becoming addicted to manifesting. And two, you run the risk of even when you get it, you're still not happy. You still think something's missing. But when it starts to be activated through allowance, it's a part of your business. It's a part of your being. This is who I am. You know, I'm not trying to get abundance. I am abundance.

You know, I'm not trying to get joy. I am joy. You see, it's a whole different identification that begins to be activated. It seems as though, especially looking back in hindsight, that the challenges that occur in our life are, in many ways, designed just sweetly for our own evolution, you know,

and it doesn't feel like it often in the moment. Right. But looking back, you really see. how this kind of life in this realm on earth is set up in such to where we're going to get to varying degrees challenges that are really can be viewed as opportunities for growth. Absolutely. Yeah. And so what do you, from that perspective, like, how do you see the challenges that come up in our life?

Because everybody who's listening right now has a version of something in their life that is maybe not flowing as effortlessly as they wish it to be. Right, right, right. But I think shifting our perception and what these things can serve, change our relationship to it. Yeah, that's the key thing, shifting your perspective and perception. I often say that the challenges are actually our gifts in work clothes. So they're actually coming to actually activate potential that's latent that cannot be activated without a challenge. Because sometimes people become lazy, you know, they're like not lethargic necessarily, but they're not

really activating potential because everything seems to be going okay. But when there's a challenge, What do we have to do? We have to go in. We have to activate potential. And we end up discovering things about ourselves or activating things about ourselves that before may have just been a belief, but now it becomes active.

You know, there's a seed in the forest, some kind of pine tree that when these seeds fall into the soil, they never germinate, except when there's a forest fire. They just stayed there for 50, 60, 70, 80 years. but a forest fire is the only thing that's hot enough to make the seed open, and then it becomes the new trees

for the next iteration of that forest. And I think there's qualities within us that are there, but the challenge becomes like a fire that breaks it open, and suddenly we discover things about ourselves and powers and energies that we didn't even know we had

until that challenge came. So I think challenges are built in for the soul's edification, And so we're not here. Teaching to live a challenge-free life. We're here to learn how to navigate and to transcend and transmute challenges so that we become the next great vision and version of ourselves.

We're here to constantly grow. And the universe is so progressive that if we get too comfortable, the... We get kicked in the butt a little bit. You know, wake up. Yeah. You're not activating your potential, you know.

It could be a symptom. It could be a financial thing. It could be a relationship thing. But the universe is always expanding and moving us forward. Yeah, it's like what you mentioned last time about people transforming either through insight or crisis. Yeah. You know, and I think we oscillate between both, most of us throughout our life. and those challenges that arise in our life,

whether they be relationship dynamics, dynamics, financial struggles, something inner with our mind or body or emotion, right? When perceived as opportunities for growth, what you resist persists in that thing, right? So like when you accept it as a challenge, when you accept it as an opportunity for growth, then like when you go to the gym and you work out,

you understand the challenge, you choose it, right? Right, right. I feel like when you choose it, it just our relationship completely changes and it allows us to have synergy with it instead of it's me versus life. I feel like so much of our time here often is like in this subtle but pervasive energy

of the way my life is right now is not how it should be. Right. You know? That's great. That's good, yeah. You use the word weights. I often like to say that imagine you're just in a big weight room. You're in density, time, gravity.

You're here lifting weights, you know. And this is, you got time and space, things that don't really exist. abstract mental concepts, it's not like forever, you know. But while you're in time and space, this is a wait room and it's actually a canvas by which you get to paint with the colors of your soul. And so you're here lifting weights. You know, sometimes you have to lift weights around love and forgiveness. Sometimes you have to lift weights around contribution and generosity or whatever quality that seems to be lacking. You actually have to go in and lift that weight.

You have to actually perceive it. You actually shift your perception. You have to actually change your conversation around it. And until that way it becomes easy. It's like, oh, yeah. So I think that's a great analogy. Yeah, it makes me think about, we just had Deepak on the show, and he referred this quote from Victon Shine about, you know,

our life is a dream and we're asleep. And sometimes we become awake. enough to know that we're dreaming. Yes. And it, you know, we have these moments of insight of revelation where we kind of get our head above the ocean, you know, tide. And we can see this life and how it's set up in these different dynamics. And then we come back into the wait room, so to speak, and live our life.

Those moments where we do kind of get our head above the water and we see how this is very much like a simulation. Yes, yes, yes. You know, it's like all these relations. It is a simulation. Yeah. It's a matrix. Because it's the condensation of thoughts, beliefs, perceptions,

opinions, points of view that have condensed itself into a world of appearances. You know, it's always changing. And once you, like you say, when you pop up and you see that your dream, you're having a dream of separation, but you're never separated from the divine. It's an impossibility what we dream we are. And then the world of appearances, the collective belief impacts us. So we have a whole collective superstitious belief about separation. Then you have all these religions that have their point of view,

and oftentimes religiosity takes over that locks people into a religion rather than into the transcendent. So people end up fighting about being a certain religion, which the religion itself was to take you beyond religion. It just becomes a whole dynamic of superstitious thought that creates a simulation of separation. It doesn't even exist. it's not even real. When I mean real, it's not eternal.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's that perspective and that balance of things can, you know, be real to us, but they're not in the absolute truth of how things are, you know, actually happening. Right. You appear to be separate from me right now. Right. But, and you appear to be over there, like a few feet away from me,

but the reality is this image is being inverted. We know the whole story, right? You're happening. We are phenomena appearing inside of ourselves within one another. Yeah. And that's why he, It's like in a moment of real healing, it just simply means that that which has never been hurt.

It's a revelation. It's a revealing of that which has never hurt. So then the body changes or the mental body changes. And then that's, I've had an opportunity to be a part of that a lot where it's like, you know, how did that happen? Well, you dreamt about this disease, you know. But now you woke up. to the fact that there's a part of you

that can't even ever be diseased. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, fam. We'll get right back to the show. But first, you probably have heard me talk a bunch about how when I meditate in the morning, I usually stack it with red light therapy.

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Back to Michael Beckwith. That's amazing. Did you, I heard from a little bird that you maybe wrote a poem. You told me on your way in about this. I'm curious, where did that come up? because you took a little hiatus this past month. Yeah, in the month of March, I didn't speak at Agape. I still had some work things to do, but every March I tried to take off.

Yeah. And so it was a woman's history month. So I just had all my women ministers just speak. And they did. Ministresses? They killed it. You know, and so I stopped shaving, as you can see. And I was sitting down.

And since I didn't have, what was beautiful about it, so I didn't have like a point. to go to most of the time, I had moments of longer periods of meditation. I didn't have to like, okay, I only got 22 minutes here, I got a half hour. I could just sit as long as I wanted to. And so I sat and I started laughing because I was thinking about people going into virtual realities and then not realizing they're already in one. So they're in a simulation, they're in a virtual reality of time and space and constriction. And then they put something on and they go into another simulation. It just made me, it was funny to me.

And I don't put down VR because you can use it to develop skills. You know, it has some very powerful benefits. So I said then I started writing, you know, about the simulated dream. It took me two day. I mean, I wrote and then I had to go somewhere. Then when I came back like three or four or five days later, I wrote the second half of it. And it was, you want to hear some of it? I'd love to hear.

You want to share? Sure. I love it. I used to write poetry a lot back in the day, and then I kind of got busy. Yeah. And then it's called The Simulated Dream. All right. That's a nice book you got out there, too.

Yeah, one of my assistants bought this for my birthday. That's a great gift. So I started it on 326. Great. And I completed it on April 4th. Amazing. So it says, it's called the Simulated Dream. Oh, beloved traveler, Seeker.

of the stars. Do you not see the cage within which you play? A theater of mirrors reflecting who you think you are. Yet the essence of you lies beyond the fray. This world, this simulation, this grand illusion is shaped by beliefs, perceptions, and imprints of the past. A mosaic of stories, a web of delusion, where shadows of truth are cast and recast. You've built a game within the greater game, virtual worlds to escape, which seems mundane. But how ironic this digital distraction when you already dwell in a scripted abstraction. Every thought, every fear, every fleeting desire weaves the matrix of the life you perceive. But deep within there's a soul on fire, whispering the truths the mind cannot conceive. Ah, the simulation is not the prison. It's the teacher.

A framework of lessons, a sacred disguise. Its purpose is not to bind but to feature the path to awakening, the opening of eye. But the ultimate game is not to win or achieve, but to wake up beloved to the eternal and the real, to shed the mask that your mind weaves and embrace the truth that no illusion can conceal. You are not the avatar, the role or the name, not the stories you tell or the titles you claim. You are the witness, the light, the eternal flame, the harbinger of love in this temporal game.

So play. Yes, play. But play with awareness, knowing that the stage is but a fleeting projection. Be the presence, the stillness, the boundless fairness, a beacon of truth in a world of reflection. for when you awaken the simulation transforms the false falls away and the real takes form

you're not here to escape but to create to anchor eternity in the tides of fate beloved rise be the harbinger of the divine a lucid dreamer in the landscape of time for the game was never to lose or to win but to remember the truth that has always been Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy.

Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip. Or that and enjoy. Via rail, love the way. Snaps. Snaps for Michael. Love that, man.

That was great. Yeah, I felt good because I was like when I was a little boy, I used to write in journals a lot when I was in elementary school. No one told me to do that It's just something that kind of emerged as a kid And I had stacks of them So one day my mother found them Under my bed

And she asked me what was wrong If something was wrong with me I said nothing's wrong I'm just writing my emotions And about two weeks later They had me in sport I was in baseball That football and track

It was like you know And I can remember Like kind of cutting that part of myself off. So then I'm a senior at USC, and I have this spiritual awakening. And then a few years after that, I had a, it was something like agonizing inside of my being. It was jittery.

I couldn't be comfortable. And I went to a place, I started writing. And this emergence of poetry just flowed out of me. I mean, volumes, volumes, volumes. So that which I had dammed up when I was a kid and went into the masculine sport thing, you know, track and all of that, got opened up again.

And so then I wrote a lot of music. And then, you know, I've been doing Agape now for 39th year. And so you get busy. So being off, I just sat and I said and it started coming out again. Yeah, poetry. I mean, talk about emergence, man, you know, getting quiet and really just allowing the words to flow is such an amazing practice. Yeah. The only challenge with it as I had to, doing it again, I had to see what my

handwriting said. That word weaves, I was trying to read it for us. What was I trying to say? Then it finally came, oh, mine weaves, you know, because my handwriting should have been a doctor. I think what art enables is a level of relaying truth. and I feel like more of its direct essence, right? Because we get so literal in our logical way of deducing and explaining reality through our intellect, that we lose the poetry of life.

Right. Yeah, poetry, music, directly hard connection. You know, it transcends the logical mind so people can actually feel something without having to tear it apart and think about it. Yeah, it brings it more into the feeling, you know, like some of those lines, what a scripted abstraction or a lucid dream and that landscape of time or you know there is some

that lines under that point to like the absolute truth of reality of like what this all is and this lila and this divine play right right right and i love both sides of it too because i love having physicists and consciousness researchers on the podcast and get into the you know into the nitty of the scientific process of it um but that balance is necessary you remind me that when i first woke up years ago, you know, I was balancing between this mystical awareness and science because UCLA at that time had a parapsychology department. And so like Mitchell May and Judith Orloff, a lot of those people and a lot of friends of mine were going through that because in this society they were deemed weird. You know, so I was studying a lot of the science of mysticism. And so I was very aware of vibration,

frequency, non-local healing, things of that particular nature, while I was exploring in my own consciousness. And that particular department doesn't exist anymore at UCLA. They were way ahead of the game years ago, but now, from what I understand, it's not there anymore. But in my own upbringing, I was always balancing between now what we call quantum physics and quantum entanglement and things of that, and the mysticism. It was always a nice bridge for me. Yeah, I think that balance is necessary. And activating those dormant potentials and possibilities within us. I mentioned earlier, I think Howard Gardner has this great framework about the frames of mind as one of his books, about the different types of intelligence.

He puts it into eight different categories from kinesthetic, bodily intelligence, a lot of athletes to musical, to linguistic, to logical, mathematical, which I think is very, put a little bit more on a pedestal societally, but it invites how intelligence weaves throughout all of our lives differently. Yes. And sometimes the resistance is simply because we haven't discovered and allowed to explore more of what

comes naturally to us. No one's going to disagree that Kobe Bryant or Steph Curry, you know, is an incredible form of intelligence, right? Absolutely. It's just different. Yeah. Because you see them, you see the intuition? Yeah. You see the physical prowess?

You see the non-thinking, suddenly doing something that they never planned before, you know? I remember the guard, Nate Archibald, I think, New York Knicks. You know, he was going down the court, and there was three people guarding him, and he did some kind of weird move and turned around and went up 360 and laid it in to win the game. And when the announcer asked him,

how did you know to do that move? He said, I didn't. He said, that move took me over, because it was the only move that could happen to get through three people. So it was an intuitive intelligence that took him over, the zone, the flow. So yeah, I think we're,

I know we're surrounded by divine intelligence, not divine intellect, but divine intelligence. And it uses the intellect, uses the physical body, uses the mind to, like, weave through whatever's going on to reveal a healing, a destiny, a slam dunk, a poem. a medical incision, you know.

A doctor was reading about a doctor who had to do a very intricate surgery on an infant's heart. And he said he prayed. And it was, the procedure took hours. But he said for him was like five minutes. And they were patting him down, you know, with the sweat. But he said he felt something. on his hand guiding him. And he was able to do this surgery.

So whether it's that or a slam dunk, you know, there's this intelligence of love just flowing through us if we allow it to take place, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I would like to get your perspective on that because allowing it to take place

sounds really nice and something that I think everybody wants to experience more of in their life. And yet there is this balance of developing the skills and almost the unconscious competency. so you, your body knows, and you can let the body intelligence, cosmic, divine intelligence, whatever word you want to use,

take over, and that's where you experience flow. Right. For example, on piano, there's the practicing of scales and different keys and chord progressions and voicings, and then you get out the way and stuff starts happening that emerges in ways you can't comprehend, right? So what do you feel like the balances of, like, doing the work, building the skills,

and then, you know, allowing something greater to take over? You have to have the practice on whatever, whatever you're working on. So that you say that, so the body is already in tuned to that and then something takes over. You know, and there are people that have natural ability

to say natural ability. Yeah, like more savants. Yeah. But a lot of times, people who have natural ability don't develop their highest capacity because it's come so easy for them. You know, I had a friend years ago

who's, he was a natural athlete, a natural yogi, but he never, would like do the practice. So as years went on, you know, I became better at, I wasn't naturally flexible. You know, he was taller than me, so he was naturally faster.

But as we went on in our life, you know, I ran varsity track. I was undefeated on my mildly relay leg. You know, I became very flexible in yoga. And he stayed pretty much the same. He was a natural, but he didn't develop the practice to actually activate his potential.

So I think that whatever skill we're trying to develop, you have to practice it. Yeah. You know, I like to practice meditation. You know, I do have a certain gift of I can open myself up and I can go speak. I can open myself up and I have this access to certain levels of wisdom and knowledge that sets within me. But I'm not going to skip my meditation. You know what I mean? I want to go, I want to activate that.

I want to be in tune with that. on a regular basis. So I'd rather, I'd rather give up doing, eating something at that moment. I'd rather sit, you know, and get in tune, you know, eat later. I'm just using this as an example. For sure.

It makes sense, you know, you take care of what you love, you take care of your gift, and then what you love takes care of you. Absolutely. You know, the gift takes care of you. Absolutely. But the word practice, I think, is important.

I think... That devotion to it? Yeah. It's like, like people will say, you know, what are some of the advanced teachings? And I'll say, well, theory is beginning. Practice is advance. So you study all the stuff, read all the good books, you read the Bhagabha, you read the Damapara, you read the Holy Baha. You read all the stuff.

You learn the mystical teachings. That's beginning. The advance is actually trying to practice that. sitting, you know, having some level of practice where it becomes, it dawns on your awareness. You have an aha. You have an insight. It's like, oh, I've heard that a million times. But now when I sat, I understood it at a whole other level.

But you don't get that without the practice. You have to have a moment where you think not. Yeah. Yeah, that's, it's so easy to live in the. abstraction or the thought of the thing rather than the actual thing. The actual encounter. Yeah. You have to have an encounter.

You have to have your own personal revelation of what you believe. You can hear a million speakers and you say, oh, that's beautiful. I believe that. Ooh, yeah, I'm inspired. But you have to have a personal revelation of that. And that's what you get. If, you know, you can be walking on the beach. You can look at the ocean.

You can be still. And then suddenly, oh, my gosh. God, I know that now. I actually feel that. That's absolutely true. I'm actually, I'm actually at one with that wave. I'm actually at one with the tree. I'm actually at one with all of life. Of course, before, you may have believed it. Right. You know, you read the quantum physics. You're one with everything. Have you heard of the parable of the cafe on the cliff? Do you ever cafe? Cafe on the cliff. Maybe. Yeah, it's, roughly speaking, it's that analogy of, of, you know, say you're on the edge of a cliff

and you're about to dive into the water, right? And metaphorically speaking, that's representing you into actually living into the practice of these theories, you know, actually doing the deep work and facing off with the parts of ourselves that are uncomfortable and really getting deep into the water, you know? And it's like the person that gets there and says,

hold on, like, you know, let me stretch a little bit before I jump in, you know? And then a friend comes by, be like, hey, I want to have a talk with somebody and just like, let's have a conversation for a little bit right before, we, right before I dive in. And he's like, you know, I'm actually kind of thirsty.

Would you grab me a glass of water? And it's like, okay, yeah, all right. I think I'm ready to go in. Actually, I'm kind of hungry. Would you mind grabbing me a bagel, you know? And it kind of keeps going and going where the more people come and they get a picnic table and they sit down and they have conversations and you end up building this cafe on the cliff.

Instead of diving in. Yeah. And you start living on the cliff edge, right? You build this restaurant and you get like right there, but you actually, you know, fail to have recognized the most important part, which is doing the work, getting into the water. And it's just like the story of Siddhartha, right? Yes.

That tension between being totally consumed by what we know to be true, you know, and living in the concepts of it. Absolutely. And, you know, we live in a world where we, as you said, put on a pedestal, the intellectual understanding of something, rather than actually having the encounter with it. You know, and I used to have a teacher that would say, say, he called it the

urah consciousness. He would say, he told, he would tell this parable of fish swimming in the ocean, you know, when turns, they all kind of do that. And then a big wave comes and knocks one of the fish on the sand.

And he sees a beach ball and he sees people having a picnic and he sees all this stuff. He has no language for this. He's looking, he's looking in the wave, knocks him back into the water. And the other fish say, what did you see? He says, we're a, uh, He can't describe it.

Because he had no reference to what he saw. And so, you know, when we begin to open up, we go into that space where we don't really have the language for it. You know, then later on when we use language, it's the same words we used to use, but they mean something different because the context has changed. And so we want to throw ourselves over the cliff, jump in the water, so we're living in our...

I don't really know how to describe this. but it's real. You know, and that's why I think there's the, the sages throughout time have had a unique capacity to, through the futility of what we have, the capacity for the human language, be able to describe as close we can, right? The words will never do it justice,

but they can get close. That's why we have poetry and poetry and parables and stories so you can talk around it. and talk about what it's not. But you can't talk about what it is because then that word right there is separating from the is and the of it, you just have to just be quiet

and let your light so shine. Oh, that's good, man. It's sweet. I was thinking, I was in the store the other day and the woman was so rude and just, you know, it was like giving me no any. I'm buying stuff, no energy.

It was just like, and part of my mind said, this person really shouldn't be with the public. He should be in the back room working, but she shouldn't be out here. And then I changed. I said, you know what? I don't know what's happened to this woman. She may have gotten a bad phone call,

may have to have some trouble with their kids at home. I just started just thinking, and then I started having compassion. It's like, she's having a bad day, I'm good. And then all of a sudden, she's changed right in front of my face. She started smiling and becoming really polite and extra helpful. So I think there was like this connection with us on the invisible side. And when I saw her as human, you know, and maybe just having a bad day and got curious as to why she was acting this way, she changed.

Then I thought about the fact that I was in a conversation with Rabbi Sharon Browse recently. And we were talking about the fact that tyranny and tyrants cannot exist in the field of love. That can only happen if people are separated from each other and have polarization and hates and live in their opinions. And so what if we all just started thinking about people who don't like us, but become curious as to why? Why are they acting like this? Why don't they like me? You know, why don't these men like women? Why don't these people like, don't like people with a lot of melanin?

and you start to have a level of compassion as to what happened to them that would forge such a limited perception and then in that moment of compassion we start to develop a whole other energy on the planet of which tyranny cannot invade because we're all in love. It's a trip when we catch yourself

in those moments of how we're seeing life through our own distorted perception of it and that actually is. And then you get those moments where you can sort of color the energy and you have that deeper connection. Right. And you recognize, oh, like, we're all one.

You see the humanity behind somebody. There's plenty examples where we could look online or see the things that are happening in the world and judge it and condemn it, hate it. Not to say that these things are right by any means, you know, but you're inviting, like, the deeper understanding of something leaves no space to judge it. Right.

Right. Once you go to the depth of it, you can see any things that impacted people. Traumas, dramas, unhealed issues, and that's what's running them. And rather than judge it, you can become a place of healing. I teach the practitioners at Agape that when you see a lot of calamity going on in the world, whether it's war, hate, whatever the case may be, that is the world inviting you for prayer. if somebody comes to you and says

I have a diagnosis of some kind can you hold me in prayer? You're going to say yes, of course. So when you see all this stuff erupting on the world that's the world inviting us into prayer rather than judgment. Like a planetary disease. It's like, yeah, it's like wars and rumors of wars and hate.

You know, it's like, oh, cancer, let me go into prayer rather than judgment. Because if everybody's in judgment, there's not going to be any healing. It's not going to be any forward movement, you know. It feels like a real litmus test and yardstick for seeing where our own growth is in life and our own development is how we feel with ourselves when we're alone. Oh, I love this.

Yeah. And I would love to get your perspective on this. And we can go into the tools that continue to support this. But, man, even in podcasting, it's easy to come on here and, you know, for people to put on a show for an hour or two. You know, it's easy for us to go to work maybe even and put on a face, you know, of different things. We cannot lie to ourselves. Nope. For extended periods of times, you know, it's going to show up and distorted energy in so many different ways.

So what comes to mind when you think about that? I have said over the period of time that if you're not in love with yourself, when you're by yourself, you're going to be hell with other people because you're going to become an emotional stalker. you're going to try to make that other person make you happy. So you have to learn how to be alone, not lonely, but you have to learn how to be alone and actually love this person and actually self-reflect, even on the areas that you don't like, to actually look at them square in the face, embrace it,

and be willing for that energy to change. So you have to like yourself with you by yourself, or you're not going to like yourself in relationship because you'll manipulate that relationship in some kind of way to make yourself feel better. But at the end of the day, if you don't like yourself

when you're by yourself, it's going to be a problem in the world. So it's inner work. So it's a wise thing to spend a period of time by yourself. I love my alone time. I love it. There's certain things that I do every day

in which I do alone. And nobody, I don't have to respond to anybody. I don't have to react. I don't have to make sure that person's okay. I don't want them to make sure I'm okay. I love being by myself. But then I'm better with people. Yep.

You know? And I've told people I was making a joke the other day. I was in an all-day workshop. And the person that was facilitating it, I was saying, well, normally at this time, I would have been at the gym working out. thanking my hydration, my water, my smoothie, meditation, then come here.

But since you start the workshop so early, psychologically, if I get mad today, it ain't your fault. I was joking around. I just didn't get my alone time, you know. But I have to have it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the more that we bring, like, sincerity into our practice

and bring heart into our alone time, right? Because there's a lone time on social media and there's a lone time being in stillness, right? And the being in the stillness and like in these deepening of practices, I think we start to really perceive to the degree in which we have, we're participating in the conflict

in our life, you know? Like the, in our relationships, like our role and the conflict that we bring and how so much of it is perpetuated just from self-conflict. Absolutely. You know? Most of it is.

Uh-huh. It's like without authentic self-love and appreciation, not egotism, but authentic self-love and appreciation, we set up energies that we were running into, we projected onto the world. We project our unheeled energies onto the screen of life,

and we ended up bumping into our lack of self-love. Now, we may put it on somebody, but it's actually we're creating our own hindrance, our own obstructions, our own delays. And so being able to sit and to work through without denying and embrace and actually like this person. That's what we carry into the world.

We end up liking people that don't like us. It becomes a whole other vibe. It's like, because you don't take as many things personally. You know, because you're able to separate, oh, that doesn't really belong to me. Yeah.

You know. Yeah, I feel like you really know what's meant for you and what's not meant for you in that space and that cultivation of self-worth. It's the antithesis energy to what would be like a self-obsession, right? where you're spending time to reinforce these beliefs you have about yourself,

but in the absence of a perception of who you even are, then you get to allow that other space to emerge like you're speaking to. I'm really curious what you think about, because there are many practices that we can have and, like, you know, things we can be devoted to that support the deepening of our experience, of our true nature. And I've found, and I've heard you speak to the really bedtime. And, like, the time before sleep, our mornings and our nights are some of the,

if not the most important times to guard because we're in a hypnagogic state. Absolutely. So if somebody wants to really take responsibility for their life, they want to cultivate vitality, they want to know their true nature, what would be an example of a bedtime routine or something like at nighttime that can really help us guard that space? That's so very important. When you go to sleep at night, first of all, there's a level of forgiveness of the day. petty annoyances, you don't want to go to sleep with any of that.

You don't want that to be a part of your subconscious. And why? Because it will create momentum of that perception. Fester. Yeah. And then become a part of your mood, your attitude, and your greater perception. So I like to scan and forgive.

And then... When you say scan, you mean like a body scan? Yeah. Scan my mind. scan my day. Okay. You know, so that I'm not holding on what this person said

or what I think they've said or what I think they met. So it's just like a forgiveness. Now, oftentimes people will talk about at the end of your life doing that. I say, do it every day. Don't wait until the end of your life and forgive all these people.

You know what? Just don't allow it to accumulate. Just forgive everything, every single day. And then, you know, a lot of times when I go to sleep, I will close my eyes and I will choose a timeline of a life that I want to live, the feeling tone of it. I choose it. I choose it that is happening now and then I go to sleep in it. Or if I'm dealing with something I need an answer, you know, I will choose, it's not the future, but I'm choosing that the answer and the issue is already solved, what do I feel like? And then what happens is like it retrofit

itself. It will give me a level of guidance when I wake up in the morning as to how to approach that situation. Now when I wake up, it's the same thing. You're still in hypnagogic state. So I wake up and I consciously go into a state of gratitude that I exist. It's not attached to I'm grateful that I have this. I'm grateful that I have that. I'm grateful that I exist. And then I will get out of bed. And I'll stand and I do this.

I'm so grateful to be alive, awake, and aware. And then I do this. I surrender to life. Sometimes I'll use the word God or love or peace. And then I open myself up and I'll say, I'm available to the energy and the strength to handle anything that comes into my life. my life today, my assignments for today, because I know I have assignments on my to-do list,

and then there are things that are going to come that I don't know they're going to come. Somebody's going to call, I'm going to have to respond to this. So I ask and make myself available to the energy of that. And because I've done it so long, I don't even, it's not even, I don't even think about it. It's like I'm able to articulate it to you now because you asked me a question. Yeah. But I'm not really thinking about it. It's just like, so grateful.

I surrender. What's my assignment? You know, like that. And so when you're in those states, it goes deeper into your subconscious. And then what happens is you have less worry. You know, people suffer from worry.

They suffer from anxiety, anxiousness. They're projecting their worst-case scenario onto what they call the future. And they're actually living in those chemicals. without the thing even happening. You know what I mean? So it's happening for them right now, physically, chemically, on the immune system.

But it didn't even happen. The thing hasn't even happened. But the body doesn't know it. So, you know, I like people to learn that they're a sovereign being and they can determine their own perception. It's not magic. It's just practice, you know. It really just sounds like utilizing,

whether it's 30 minutes or an hour before bed, to really transition your state, right? Because you're going to marinate in whatever that state you last, we're awake in. And that builds momentum in ways we don't even realize how much it builds momentum.

And then we wake up in ways we're not even purvy to, it's going to continue to infuse that energy, you know, and so it's like, if we want to live a life filled with joy and gratitude, then releasing, which is that forgiveness stage,

which you first said, those chains and ties we have to people, events, and situations in which we have resistance to throughout our day. I want to ask you a little bit more about forgiveness because in many ways it's almost like the last illusion because we always think it's like me, I am forgiving the other person, but really it's like this inner process of letting go. Right. And just not, continuing to not perpetuate, you know, the state of, of pain within us. Yes. So yeah,

what do you think about what forgiveness and that, you know, point really is? Forgiveness is one, all forgiveness, 100% is self-forgiveness. You are releasing the toxicity of resentment, animosity, blame, projecting it on to another person. Now, you're not denying that a person may have gossiped about you or stole something from you or did something. You're not denying that. Or you perceive they did something.

But the animosity and the resentment is in you. That's festering. That's speeding up the aging process. that's taking the... It's creating the immune system to not function as properly as it could. So you're doing this to yourself.

So when you forgive another, you're actually releasing the toxicity from your own self so that you're actually cutting the cord, the emotional core that you have with that being. You're not condoning what they did, if they did something. But you're not connected to it anymore.

So if an individual is living in a state of... forgiveness, you know, they're staying inside, they're staying clean and clear. And again, it's a practice, you know, and it's, you know, every, every path of heart has forgiveness in it. Every religion has forgiveness in it. Why? Because it works, you know, yeah. Amazing. So like, you know, scanning, scanning our minds, scanning our emotions from the day, what are the most prevalent things that come up, cutting those course, so to speak, letting them go.

Giving forth. Forgiveness is giving forth. You go the next step. Giving forth is, I am going to radiate love. I'm going to radiate peace. It's like there's an individual that I've known for a number of years

that I thought did something very heinous to me. It was just really weird. And so I know their birthday. And so whenever I notice that particular date as a time on my phone or something, I send them a prayer. You know, it's just like, I think just bless them. I hope they're living a beautiful life. I hope he's absolutely doing something magnificent.

So I just give forth instead of saying, oh, that person stole that money from me. I just say, I just hope they're living a baby. So I'm forgiveness. I am giving forth. an affirmative energy rather than a negative energy. So then that moves into the second part, which is essentially visualizing, energetically embracing the state that you want to see more of,

you know, come into your life. And so have you gone back and forth, whether it's like visualizing a specific scenario event with people in a situation, or is it really just the energy? It's mainly the energy. It's like, we live in a field of infinite possibilities. So I'll tell people to choose the possibility you want to live in.

So, you know, oftentimes I go to sleep. Infinite possibilities. So I'm going to choose this possibility of my life. And that's a feeling tone of abundance. It's a feeling tone of right action. And sometimes there are scenarios there if I'm working on a particular project. But the primary choice that I'm making is a feeling tone.

and then the feeling tone with an outpicture as whatever that's to look like. I'm not going to limit it by my visualization. Visualization may be a start, but ultimately the feeling is going to determine the outcome, not what I think I want, because I may be limiting it. Does that make sense? Yeah. So field of infinite possibility. I tell people, you live in a field of infinite possibilities.

Why don't you choose a good one? Yeah. and see what that feels like and live there long enough until that becomes your dominant feeling but it takes work yeah yeah yeah that's great

yeah i've i've more recently been experiencing with this um just like sleep in general man from from lucid dreams to the time before bed and uh yeah before bed like having a committed like 20 to 30 minute practice just to transitioning again like yeah any chains of the day if anything was up or whatever and just really reset the body, the nervous system.

I kind of get a bougie version of as I like lay on a pymph mat. I put my legs up against the wall and it's like vagus nerve device. I have my everything. Yeah. Put my legs up. Yeah. I like these binaural beats too from New Calm. And I just kind of stack it all together and just go into this practice with like some

breath. And man, it's it's amazing how that transforms your sleep and how you wake up. Absolutely. I use Soak, S-O-A-A-K.com, and they have 32 different frequencies. Oh, cool. You know, they have anti-anxiety, lack stress. They have whatever you think, they have the frequency of it. And I'll just, and they have a really, their main frequency is sleep.

Because people seem to have difficulty going to sleep. Yeah. So they have these little energetic things. You can just put it on. So I put one of those on and put my legs up and just, it's the frequency, just whips over me. And I'll go to sleep. it's amazing it's a good reminder i think you know because sometimes right use of technology yeah absolutely absolutely amazing man um that's that's great i think you know would you say is there is there

another predominant amplifier like in terms of i think sleep and like your your morning kind of you know ritual or how you feel when you wake up and how you get into those states are probably some of the most important um but for somebody that is in a phase where they realize they been constricting their own potential, you know, and as you said, the universe is in resistance to that in which we're constricting. What, is there, if you had, like, one other kind of practice that you've found really supportive. I think it's really important to, to kinesthetically, like, write the idea that's trying to emerge in your life. You just, you know, use your own, type, actually write it with your name and then read and say it out loud so that you're actually

physically writing, you're actually reading it, you're actually saying it and hearing it. So you're using all the senses to say, I, Michael, am living a powerful, magnificent life. And then you just got to taste it and you hit all five of them. Yeah, there you go. What does that taste like? Get some good honey in your mouth, you know. I think you write it three ways. I, you talk to yourself.

You talk about yourself. He. So you're hitting the voices. There are some voices where you're talking bad about yourself. There's some voices where you imagine other people are talking bad about you. And then there's the voice where you're talking to yourself. So I like to tell people write, I, he, you, or I, she, you. And whatever

feeling tone you want to have in your life, right? Don't write paragraphs. Just a short, pithy statement. Feel your way into it. And so you're getting the kinesthetics, you're getting the eyesight, you're getting the voice, getting the listening,

and it'll start to change your subconscious tendencies. Yeah. I feel like on the process of that, and the process of actualizing our potential from the formless into the you know, from these states of the imaginative and the feeling to the physical. It feels like inevitably along with that comes a changing relationships. People come and go.

They will just drop out of your life. I'm just curious, how do you feel like wisdom relates to this energy of people, you know, that maybe we're, you know, in your life or, like you better term for a season or a reason, but not for, you know, another leg time. Yeah. Well, that's the good news. and the bad news. I always tell people it was good news and the bad news.

The bad news, it appears that you lose relationships or structures in your life change. But the good news is that they build back up based on who you are now. And so I invite people to keep your heart open so you don't let people out of your heart even though they may have moved from a friend to an acquaintance.

You know, the structure may have changed. They may be in a friend for a while, but now their acquaintance, you don't put them out of your heart. They're still in your heart. They've been a part of your life. They'll, you know, quantum entanglement. You're still connected.

You're still affecting each other. But now you have somebody in your life that's more coherent with the frequency you're holding now. So therefore, when you understand that's a part of the process, you know, you don't demone the fate that you grew out of some shoes. They don't fit anymore. You've grown. Your body's bigger.

Clothes have changed. So these are clothes. These are external arraignment. of who you used to be. And now you're different. Think about it is, they may come back later. You know, I can remember there was a guy used to run within college, you know,

and so I had this awakening, and I always remember this. I could see it so distinctly. He comes by my house one day, and he opens the door. I open the door, I see him, and we look at each other, and we had nothing in common.

We're not the same people that would go to parties together, and we went to SC together, and we did this and that. We looked at each other and it was like, and he said, hey, man, I'll see you later. I said, okay, man, I'll see you later. He didn't even come in my house.

It was just like we both knew that we were on a different frequency. Didn't hate each other. It was not a fight. It was none of that. He went on with his life. I went on with my life. So about 25 years later,

his cousin wants to bring him to this spiritual community because he was suffering from a lung cancer. And she says, you've got to come to this community. I think it would be very beneficial to you. So he comes in, he waits in line to see me, and it's him. I ain't seen him in 20-something years.

And he sees me. And we look at each other, and we just hug. And then he kind of came into the community and took classes and got his body together. But it was like, he came back into my life. But at a different vibration. Yeah. Yeah.

For those of us that are in the so-called arena of life where, you know, maybe we're more in the public image, you know, we're utilizing social media and technology for our message to be amplified out in the world. It's inevitable that criticism and praise are going to be a factor that we have to relate to, right? Yeah. And again, how from your, because you've been in this game for a while, and you've also worked with some of the biggest names in the world. And you've seen how it can really tear down people if they don't have that connection with themselves. Right, right. And so what wisdom have you gleaned from how to navigate the praise and blame? You know, in one of my books, Spiritual Liberation, I write about the fact that there are two imposters.

Praise and criticism, they're impostors. And so you treat them both the same, you know. Somebody's praising you a lot. Thank you very much, but you don't get too much into it. If somebody's criticizing you very much, thank you very much, there might be a lesson in there. Maybe there's some place you need to grow. Maybe there's some real critique there. But I don't let either one of them get me.

Because I'm not out here trying to get praise, nor am I out here trying to run from criticism. You know, the depth of me just wants to be of service. And I'm living my Dharma, you know. And my Dharma, I didn't choose this from my ego, because I tried to run away from it. You know, I resisted being a public person. but that was part of the activation of my potential.

I'm called to do it. So praise, Chris, I'll sometimes see stuff online and kind of just laugh at it. You know, I said, oh, this guy, they don't know me. Yeah. I just say, they don't know me. It's not even true, you know. You wouldn't say that if you didn't know yourself too, right?

Yeah. It's like, I think for those of us that really do get swayed in an aspect, whether it's online in a bigger scale or, you know, our communities and local friend groups. Right. To the degree we don't know. ourselves, then we'll believe the lies other people tell, right? Because it's like, if I criticize you for something, or if I name call you or say something about your character, if there's a

part of you that believes it to be true, that's how we get offended, right? Absolutely. Right, that's right. You cannot be offended if it's like, it's like, it's like, it kind of just makes me laugh, you know, because I'm on all that every Sunday. You know, and sometimes people will say certain things and somebody would tell me, I just, really? Wow, that's funny. You know, it's, it becomes humorous. And oftentimes, I'm not even interested. It's like, I'm delivering a message. You know, if that's what you're getting out of the message, then, you know, keep listening. Yeah, it's just fun. It's just funny. Yeah. One of the last things I'm curious about is that, like, the more we live life, God willing, we have a long and bountiful life.

and we see that there's patterns that emerge. They're like these cycles and seasons of life where at different phases and different times, different things are required of us. And some of those might be more solitude times. We're spending a lot of alone time. Some of those feel like crisis and a breakdown moment. Some of those are a big building phase, you know?

And so in a society that views the most important timeline being the one where you have the most speed and you're the most urgent and you're, you know, accomplishing all of these things from, you know, society's success metrics. What have you really learned about the importance of honoring and acknowledging the cycle and season of life we're currently in? Yeah, well, I think there's just two levels to look at it. At the metal level, at the absolute, there's just is. There's no cycle.

When you come down into the manifest realm, there's cycles. And you learn through nature, you know, when it is time. to be still, when it's time to plant, when it's time to harvest, when it's time to prune. You learn that to the best of your ability without judging what cycle you might be in. And as you're saying, I think after a while you just learn it. Now, at the beginning, as we were speaking, we were talking about the fact that in society, there's a whole movement towards us being successful according to how we were talking about, however that's defined, you know, prosperous, however that's defined.

After a while, you pull yourself out of that. And you are aware of what I call is harmonizing prosperity. All legitimate needs can be met if you're living your Dharma. So you don't get pulled into all of that as much, you know. And you can look at it and you can say, wow, that guy is really being pulled into something, you know. at this stage of my development, I just happy most of the time, you know, and I live in what I call a get to.

I get to do certain things. I get to come here and be with you. I get to fly to Canada and speak at this conference. I get to go to India and speak at this conference. I get to do these things. So whenever there is an underlying, um, a lot of stuff on my calendar,

I switch it immediately. I remember a time when nobody knew me. I would never have gotten to do any of this. I said, oops, I get to do this, you know. So it just changes all the energy of it. But I think we should honor cycles, their body. We have to know when to fast, when to release, when to detox, when to eat, when to drink, you know.

And then there's a time when you get alone and you go beyond the cycles into a state. of homeostasis in harmony. So I think it's a balance between both. Yeah. That makes sense how you mentioned on the level of the manifest and the physical reality, like nature has its cycles where there's a pharaoh season, you know, or it's going to be the season

where you're reaping a lot of fruits from the seeds you planted a decade ago maybe, you know? And so I think that, you know, of course, from the level of the absolute, it's all one thing happening, right? There aren't these fragmentations of different things. And the level from physical reality, it does breed some compassion and patience

into acknowledging how, you know, thank God, our life doesn't all come at once and thank God it doesn't happen all the way we want to, you know? Absolutely. That's a definition of hell, God giving us everything we want. Oh, no! I wanted that. Oh, no. I mean, can you imagine if you got what your 16-year-old wanted,

you know, he just showed up, oh, I don't want that now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's great, right? And then they bring us, I feel like those illusions bring us to the place where we discover we want to discard them, and then we have a new idea of what a worthwhile life, a life well-lived looks like. Yeah, and that's the visioning.

It's like, what does my soul really want? Yeah. Yeah. Not what my mother wants for me. Not what the church wants for me, but what does my soul? oh, really want. Yeah.

Last thing that I would just ask is, because you mentioned in the beginning, a life well lived is one, we're in service, you know, and we have many different forms of intelligences and different careers and ways of expressing, you know, God's unique intelligence through us in life. But it does feel that the most fulfilling aspects of it come when it's in service to supporting others in some capacity, right? Right. some way in some form.

And so for those that strive to want to live in that, yeah, just if you want to share some more about the importance of that and living from service. Basically, the way it's set up is that every legitimate question you ask is answered. Every liberating, you know, we have to learn to ask liberating questions. So if we ask how to be of service, or if we just wake up and say, what is it that I have,

then our perception changes, and we start to see that we have way more than what the limited perception would say we don't have. Now we can just be of service. What do I have to give today? What do I have to share today? You know, in scripture, it says,

to he or she who has more is given. So if I ask that question, I'm going to get more energy. I'm going to get more insights. I'm going to get more revelations. He or she who has not, even that which they have, is taken away.

So if you're living in what I, if you're more focused on what you don't have, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough money, I don't have enough this, then that's what's amplified. So if we're going to, if we're in service,

obviously, it means we're living from an overflow of having, and service breaks down the separation between you and me. I'm only serving myself as you. We're not, as you said earlier, we're not separate. We are one emanating from the same source of all creation. So I get to grow and having more energy.

I get to break down the boundary of separation. I get to live in heaven now. Just by saying, how can I be of service? Now, I remember catching that when I was a little boy. My neighbor took me to, I think we were feeding the homeless or something. And I was maybe like eight or nine years old. And their family was going, so I went with them. and I remember I got so high

being of service and when I came home and the lady was telling my mother where I had that opportunity to do it just shifted my perspective of life I just want to be of service and it's kind of where I live yeah

hope I'm answering your question yeah no I think that that is like the living in the reciprocity of life right it's in collapsing the giver and the taker into just showing up and seeing what can I contribute to life today, you know? Karma yoga. Yeah.

And karma yoga, more energy flows through you and then the sense of separation dissolved. I am you, you are me. We are one. It's trite but true. It is. Yeah, man. It's great.

Yeah, just sincere appreciation for you, Matt. You've been in this game for so long. And when I say in this game, I just mean showing up in life from service. really, you know, desiring and actively supporting people on the path. And it's so helpful. You know, I think we've all had guys and teachers and individuals that have been wayshowers and they're so needed and so necessary. Yeah. It is my joy. I had a reflection a few days ago. When I first woke up, most of my teachers were dead teachers. You know, and in my lucid dreaming

and in my astro traveling and things like that, I was in contact with these people. You know, Walter Russell, different folks, they were very real to me. We were talking and things like that. And now a lot of my friends have passed over. A lot of other teachers that I've known, they're on the other side.

So in the beginning, most of my people were on the other side. And now, again, a lot of my great friends and people I've run with different spiritual teachers, they're on the other side. So I had this relationship with them. they're invisible. So I just had that reflection a few days ago. It says, wow, when I first started out, everybody was on the other side.

Now, most of my friends are another side. I'm still here. I'm happy about it, you know. But I do have really powerful relationships with the invisibles, people that are invisible, you know. And they're just as real as you and I having this conversation. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

They live in that energy field. Absolutely. You can tap in. I'm glad you're here in the physical. Me too. I don't feel any age at all. I just feel, hey, I'm healthy. Life is good.

What's next? Yes. Some more. Yeah, maybe some more poetry. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's going to emerge. It's got unplugged again. Yeah, I love it.

Yeah. I love it. Amazing, man. Well, do you have anything else going on that you want to share with our audience or what's coming up for you? Well, you know, I've always invited people to watch my podcast, take back your mind. And wherever they are in the world, they can tune in to Agape, gopee, gopilive. and see me speak every Sunday. And there are classes at the university,

and they'll also, if they go to Michael Beckwith.com, they'll see where I'm traveling around the world. Amazing. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, everyone, thanks for tuning into this episode of the Know Theyself podcast, Michael. Thank you so much.

Always a pleasure and joy. Until next time, Bewell.