Know Thyself - E98 - Michael B. Beckwith: STOP Sleepwalking Through Life, The 4 Steps To Activate Your Highest Potential

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

This week we are joined by world-renowned spiritual teacher Michael Beckwith, who guides us on a deep journey of awakening and becoming a conscious creator of our own destinies. He illuminates the power of intention as a guiding force in our lives, and explains how by aligning our human will with the divine will we can unlock our greatest potential. He then explores the process of eliminating self-limiting beliefs and seeing through the illusions that hold us back, teaching practical methods to shift any negative thought into gratitude. Michael reveals what most people are missing in order to truly manifest their desires, outlining the 4 crucial stages to become a conscious creator of our lives. He also emphasizes the importance of clarifying a strong, compelling vision for your life, while addressing the common challenges that arise on the spiritual path. He encourages each person to recognize and harness their own unique gifts, which he says have the power to change the world. Throughout, Michael masterfully weaves the theme of participating in the unfolding of our destiny, and the transformative power of prayer. André's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 1:50 Waking Up & Becoming a Conscious Creator  4:30 This is Keeping You Small 7:05 The Power of Intention As a Guiding Force In Our Lives 8:32 Aligning Our Will to the Divine Will 11:29 Eliminating Self-Limitation & Seeing Through the Lies  14:40 Shift Any Negative Thought Into Gratitude 17:05 The Law of Attraction: What You're Missing 24:38 4 Stages to Become a Conscious Creator  33:44 You’re Not Losing Your Mind, You're Waking Up 37:59 Navigating the Dark Night of the Soul 45:32 Clarifying A Strong Vision For Your Life 47:53 Agape & Actualizing the Service of Unconditional Love  50:47 The Challenges of Spiritual Work  52:20 Participating in The Unfolding of Your Destiny 56:59 Your Own Unique Gifts will Change the World 59:40 Harness the Power of Prayer 1:03:52 Michael Shares a Prayer for Transformation  1:08:34 How to Pray & Live Your Life as Prayer 1:11:40 Working With Michael Jackson & Other Powerful Individuals 1:15:14 Emerging From Introspection to Make Greater Change 1:16:18 Seeking Guidance from Something Greater  1:20:33 UAP Phenomenon  1:21:48 Conclusion ___________ Michael Bernard Beckwith is the founder and spiritual director of the Agape International Spiritual Center, a transdenominational community in Los Angeles. He is the founder of the University of Transformational Studies and Leadership, and an international speaker and teacher of meditation. Beckwith is a featured teacher in the film The Secret, and also appears in the films Pass It On and Living Luminaries. He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live. Beckwith's books include Inspirations of the Heart, 40 Day Mind Fast Soul Feast, and A Manifesto of Peace. Website: https://www.michaelbeckwith.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelbbeckwith/ Books: https://www.michaelbeckwith.com/books ___________ Looking to Start a Podcast? Podcasting Course: https://www.podcastpurpose.com/ Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg Listen to all episodes on Audio:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927 André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ Meraki Media https://merakimedia.com https://www.instagram.com/merakimedia/

The soul has such infinite capacities, and we want to set that free. So many people on the planet are like bystanders to their life, and they live as a reaction to circumstances or situations. People become habituated to their limited self. We must consciously participate our own unfolding. You're supposed to not conform. You're supposed to transform. Once an individual established as an intention, your spiritual senses start to open. You're living more intuitively. You're living more from your soul.

you can begin to affirm a different reality. It's inner work. But everybody has access to this. You have to actually go in and do two things. People that are in the victim state live in the question of what's wrong, who's to blame? When you ask a different kind of question, you'll become receptive and you start to get guidance.

It goes back to participating in your own unfolding. There is no one like you. You sitting in your room, liberating yourself is affecting so many people. And so you have to ask, where's the gift I'm here to give? And sit with it, that talks to you. Hey everyone, welcome back to know thyself. I am really looking forward to sitting down

today and having the honor to sit with a new thought minister and founder and spiritual director of the Agape International Spiritual Center. He's been a guiding light for millions of people for decades now, the one and only I go back with. Thank you for an invitation. Good to be with you. The honor is mine. It's such a privilege to have you here on this platform. I've been really loving your work and it's been impactful even for my own journey way back since like I can remember the secret like 2007. Yeah, 10 years ago probably for me and you know, I think that opened up a lot of doors for so many people in terms of just breaking, being a pattern interrupt for a lot of people and introducing a new paradigm. What does it mean to you to be a conscious participant in the evolution

of your own soul? That's a good question. So many people on the planet are like a bystander to their life and they basically live as a reaction to circumstances or situations, people, places, and events to consciously, we're at the stage of our unfoldment where we must consciously participate our own unfolding. We have, you know, we're made in the image and likeness of God. What that means to me, I mean, God is formless, it's a presence, it's a love, it's beauty, it's not like a man somewhere. But what that means to be made in the image and likeness, it means you have the,

the capacity to think independent of circumstances. So you actually can pull your attention away from circumstances and have a new thought, an inspiration. So to consciously participate in your own unfolding means that you can actually participate in this evolutionary urge that's within you and set it free and become better versions of yourself. You don't have to wait for a circumstance to change or another person to change or you don't have to wait for a government to change.

You can actually participate in your own unfolding. And that's where we are as a species to participate at that level, rather than to wait to see what's going to happen. It feels like more now than ever society pulls us into a slumber because we have so much more comfort and convenience than ever before, which is beautiful. Would you say that there's more things you have to guard yourself now to be able to really be in the participation of paying attention

to how your life wants to unfold? in that way? It's a combination. One, there's a lot of distractions. You know, the world is full of distractions. And also, I believe, we're on the verge of more awakening that's happening now. So on one level, it's more difficult because of distractions, but on another level, it's easier because you have more and more people that are articulating some way, shape, form, or another that you can participate in your own growth. I mean, you go back 30, 40 years ago, Some of the things I was teaching was woo-woo. Now it's science, you know.

So because of that vibrational footprint of so many people participating, meditation, life visioning, yoga, chigong, you know, so many different things, that that's creating a vibrational footprint for more people to come into that frequency. So in one level, it's difficult because of the crisis we're facing. On another level, it's easier because there's so many. more people involved now. How do you see the process then of us habituating into our smallness? If there's this infinite light within us that wants to express creatively in service to the world, but we have these ideologies, dogmas' belief that shrink us down into a mold that is conforming

to society or fits the economic machine, but that, you know, holds that light in, how do you see that happening and how do we guard ourselves from that continuing to happen? I think when you look at the propaganda, you look at the media, which is like nefarious hypnotism, the whole media, and this is with all governments, pretty much, is to shrink people into being consumers pretty much and to fit into a mold that can be controlled. So once you know it and you see it, you see it operating, that it has less power over you. But people unconsciously like to conform. They don't want to be outliers, you see. So they'll conform into a kind of a group think about a particular thing. You know, nations will think alike, you know, for two degrees.

And now we're in great polarization, which I think is kind of good for the evolution of the species. But so we have nefarious hypnotism that's trying to habituate us into those smaller versions of ourselves. But once an individual established as an intention and their main intention, intention is to become, I want to grow. I want to be a greater version of myself. I want to contribute to the planet. When an individual establishes that kind of intention, they become available to inspiration. They become available to guidance.

They become available to wisdom from their soul that comes in in a language and in a way that they can understand and begin to act upon. Now, interestingly enough, most people come through that door through a crisis of some kind. You know, many people come through it,

like inside, they'll have an aha moment, of Satorium, oh my God, you know. But many people come through it because they're sick and tired of their life, you know, and then they become available. But you are correct. People become habituated to their limited self. Habits are good if, in fact, it's a habit for transformation. But just run-to-the-mill habits keep people small.

Yeah. I remember one of the first impactful audios that I listened to was by Earl Nightingale. which is the strangest secret that talks about how the opposite of courage is not cowardice, but conformity. And living in a society where it's so easy to conform and it's painful to stand out in many different ways. It's upon us more now than ever to have an intention and vision for our life. And I really love how you speak to that intention deficit disorder.

Absolutely. Well, that's where many people live. People will wake up in the morning and they really don't have an intention. you know, they're just going to react to whatever's going on at the office, whatever's going on with traffic, whatever's going on. But without an intention, you know, you're just kind of being buffeted around by the world. So most people, I don't like to use the word most, but in this case, so many people walking asleep that have an intention deficit disorder.

And until a crisis happens, then they say, well, I should have had a V8. I should have been doing something else. But yeah, we want to establish an intentional life. You know, you want to wake up with intention. You want to be specific about your intention, you know, whether it's the healing of your body, whether it's what gift you're going to give to the planet, how can I activate the gifts that are within me and share them.

You have to have an intention above and beyond consumerism and just buying stuff that's going to be in the landfill in 10, 20 years now. anyway, the soul has such infinite capacities, and we want to set that free. And it's the only way to fly for bliss and joy and ecstasy, actually. Yeah. Have you found in your own path, in your own life, in your own evolution, that there is an effective way

to merge your own intention that you consciously create and also, like, the divine intention for your path's evolution? like the divine will and your will, how they can kind of merge into being one and find alignment within that. Your heart's desire and the divine will are the exact same thing. They're not separate.

So the idea is people sometimes live from immature wanting that they inherited from the world, maybe from their parents, religions, the society, and they think that's what they want, but they don't know where they got that from. It's just, oh, somebody told you,

this is what you're supposed to do, but your heart's desire, that which is coming from your soul and the divine will did the exact same things. The divine will wants to individualize itself as us and we want to universalize our individual self. So it's inside the glass and outside the glass. You can't have one without the other, you know?

So the universal wants to individualize and the individual wants to universalize. So it's the same will. The smaller will is something that we've inherited from the world. You should go be a doctor or, you should, you know, people, you should do this with your life. How do you know whether that's you or a parent telling you what you should be when you grow up, you see? So you have to listen. And the difficulty is that most people live from the censorium, the five senses,

which is just to help you navigate through 3D, and the spiritual sense of which the five senses are, there are prosthetics of the internal sense, of seeing the invisible, hearing, the inaudible. So when you begin to ask certain questions and begin to be sincere about the divine will flowing through you, your spiritual senses start to open, and you start to live more intuitively.

It still compels you into action, but you're living more intuitively. You're living more from your soul, living more from, you know, this path that I'm walking in is a path that no one else has walked in exactly like me because there is no one exactly like me. But as we talked about earlier,

people want to conform, you know, you're supposed to not conform, you're supposed to transform your life, you know. I'm really fascinated by, you know, transformation, not just change from one form to an end. but to go beyond the current form that you're actually at, I've heard you share how a lie once believed becomes a law of our life until it's neutralized.

Absolutely. And so we're going to dive into, you know, opening the spiritual centers and like clarifying that our ability to pay attention to our heart and whatnot. But first, the conditioning is so ingrained. We live in such an overly identified with our intellect society that it can be tough to navigate and discern sometimes what's us, what's not us? It's so deep. So how do we begin to break up the callousness of that?

That's a part of our spiritual practice, actually, to be able to tell the difference between the egoic version of yourself and the real version of yourself. Many people are living by lies that they believe is true. So it does become their law. So I think that in the process of meditation, introspection, you can actually look at the lies you're telling yourself.

is what I believe does it correspond to the universal presence. Now, the universal presence never contradicts itself nor compromises itself and it's unlimited. So if you're telling yourself

something that is limited in scope, you're lying to yourself. You see, you've overly identified with your personality and not the presence. We all have a personality, but the personality was forged by time and experience.

Whereas, as your real self is eternal and indestructible, incorruptible as well. So if you just, let's say you're having an issue and you write down, you have an issue with, let's say, prosperity, let's say. And you just write down, you know, I am full to overflowing with all of my needs being met

or something to that effect. And then you have a column called ego talk. What will come up will be the lies. oh, you'll never be prosperous, you've come from a family that's always been poor, or there's not enough good to go around. The ego will start telling you the lies. You can actually look at them, and you can say, that's not true. That's not true about God.

That's not true about life. That's just what my personality or my ego believes. So what do you do with that? Now that you are aware of it, you can begin to have a different kind of inner self-talk. You can begin to affirm a different reality until you feel differently. and then that will begin to clean up that whole subconscious tendency, those particular laws, those particular lies that have become laws. It's inner work.

It's not just happy talk and just saying something and it happened. You have to actually go in and do two things. You have to actually disagree, opt out of the lie, and at the same time feel your way into the feeling tone of that which is true until it becomes a practice, you see. It's like I wake up in the morning, I put my feet on the ground, and I open up and I become tremendously grateful for my life.

So my whole field is gratitude. And then I'm thankful for my existence. And then I open myself up for my assignments for the day. And I ask for strength to do the assignments. But I generate a field that has nothing to do with the world. You understand. And then I watch as that field unfolds and the things happen. I love that you spoke about starting your day with gratitude

because I've heard you share about the three levels of gratitude and the three different stages of how you can have, you know, count your blessings. And do you want to share what those three stages are? Well, the first level of gratitude, you just be grateful for anything at all. You know, be absolutely thankful and grateful. You've done a lot of good homework over here.

We try. So you're grateful for what you have? And then what are the other ones? You have to remind me. Yeah. To count your blessings. Yeah. That's one.

Challenges. Yeah. You're grateful for your challenges because the challenge are activating latent potential. You know? So instead of trying to run from a challenge, when a challenge emerges, you know, there's something about to be born in you that's activated. because of the challenge. Do you think that just takes life to be lived to see how previous challenges

or maybe even just the challenges of others birthed something incredible? Absolutely. You look back on your life and you can actually see the thing you hated most at that time carried a seed of who you are now. And once you've gone through that a few times, then when you're in the middle of a challenge

you can say in substance, I can't wait to see what's born out of this because I really don't like this, you see. But because you're in, entering into that feeling of gratitude around it, then the blessings come faster. And in the third level, you're just grateful for nothing or everything at all.

You're just in an attitude of gratitude. It becomes a way of living. Which, what does that do? It opens up so that you can receive more of the blessings from the universe because there's an eternal broadcast that's always happening. It's never, it's not intermittent.

It's always happening. But are we receptive to it? Are we available to it? So when you're in the vibration of gratitude, then more good can flow into your life because you're not hindering it. You know, parents used to say to kids, you know, if you don't stop being,

if you don't stop crying, I'm going to give you something to cry about. The universe is saying, if you don't stop being grateful, I'm going to give you something to be grateful for. It's a whole different frequency. But it takes practice until

you have a smile in your face most of the time. People wonder what you're smiling that, you know. It's kind of interesting to flip it on its head when so much of us, and I fall prayed at this at times, to live in a future-based proposition thinking that when I get something, or if I get something, then I'll be happy one day, you know, or it'll, there's going to be some sort of experience or sensation or feeling of joy that is going to be lasting once something happens.

Right. And it's just so, so much so the opposite, right? So can you speak about flipping it on its head that if you can embody the, you can embody the the energy and emotion and vibration and feel attuned to that, that is the pole, that is the magnet that is going to draw it to you.

And that is the inner work. You're not going to be happy when. You establish the joy and the happiness now is the frequency. You live in that. And then two things happen. That which you're holding for can manifest.

But generally speaking, it's generally bigger than what you're holding in the field because it's beyond your present paradigm. So it's beyond your, the imaginal realm you're holding because there's more good that we can't even see because we can only see from the paradigm we're living in. So if I hold a state of gratitude and thanksgiving now, it's greed of happiness, grief of joy, then outside where all the blessings are, all the good

is outside of my paradigm, I get to be shocked and surprised by the opportunities that show up for me. So, but you're right, so many people live, you know, when I get this, when I get that, I'll be happy. You're happy for a minute, you know, you get a new car, you're happy until the smell changes. You know what I'm saying? It's all counterfeit temporary happiness. But you can actually sit and actually strike the mystery cord of memory or imagination and feel a degree of happiness, a degree of joy. you can feel that frequency and then train yourself to hang in there

you know while you're doing what you call to do in the world and then that vibration will reveal itself as doors opening it will reveal itself as blessings and gifts and things of that particular nature. It's all vibration, you see. So it's not you're not just attracting something to you. You're actually in resonance with it and then that field of resonance allows for radiation to take place.

You're radiant, and then there's emergence. So it goes attraction, resonance, radiation, emergence. The law of attraction is a linguistic convenience for resonance. And so if you hold the resonant tone, you start to radiate. So you're not attracting, you're actually radiating the answer vibrational. And then after, then something emerges. you become a condition for the emergence of good, the same way that if you plant a seed in the ground

and the conditions are right, the seed doesn't attract a rose bush, that rose bush emerges from the seed. So in the same way, we have infinite potential, infinite possibilities within us. And as the right condition happens, then the next level of us emerges from that. It's already here.

It's not out there. It's here. It's right here. It emerges. from us. And people will say, oh, you attracted some good stuff. Yeah, but it was in here. It just became visible. You see, it's me, becoming more me. And then because I'm living in this dimension of time and space, it condenses itself and shows up. It's form. You see, slowed down vibration. It feels like there's so much power and the detachment from that preference,

because I think the Western mind can really love to latch on to what we're talking about here as a tactic to get things instead of if I source and realize that I am, you know, the source of my own joy and happiness and kindness and grace and envive these virtues, then I've become successful in that way because it doesn't really matter, I guess, what the external circumstances are as much because you've anchored that within your own being. Yeah, it's just easy to view it as a tactic to get things versus like, no, you got what you want, which is the feeling behind the thing in the first place. Right. And then the things,

show up. Right. But they may be better than what you even imagine. That's what I'm always. Or it'll be legitimate. Like there's legitimate needs and there's just things that we want. Right. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's not, you know, it's not, you know, it's not, I can go to hell because you want things. You know, but, but you don't get cluttered with illegitimate needs. It's not necessary, you know. Have the best of whatever you can get and and, and, but your happiness, as you said, is already here. You see, and this has been proven by many people who've been in dire situations. And they had an attitude of joy, even though they were in horrific situations.

And then when they got out of that horrific situation, they realized they determined their own attitude. And then that carried them further in life. It feels like the desires or dreams that we have can only be recombination of our past memories. So, like, you know, if I had a certain car, I want a really nice car, or if I had an experience of certain, you know, circumstances happen. It's always informing what our dreams possibly are. And I just really love the understanding of if you're going to live in the surprise and mystery of life and the beauty and joy of how it's going to unfold, then it has to unfold greater than you could imagine. Absolutely. You reenchant the imagination so it doesn't get in your way.

But you, but the really great stuff is beyond your imagination. When I look at a lot of things I've had the privilege of being a part of for the last number of years, none of those things are on my vision board. All the stuff, some of the great things I've had an opportunity, the great people have had an opportunity to work with. I didn't imagine that, but it came as an outpicturing of who I was in the gift I wanted to share and how I wanted to be in the world. I look back on it, I said, wow, that was really beautiful. That was fantastic. I didn't even know that existed. I didn't even know I could hang out with the Dalai Lama, or something, you know what I mean?

And we kick it and work with them three or four or five times, you know, or calls me and say, I need you to be an aspirin. Can you come today? Okay, sure. You know, I mean, that was never a part of, you know, a vision board, but it was a part of my life, you know. Yeah, it's some good stuff here. So you were saying something about being affected by your past experience, you know.

and we want to live in a place where we're catching ideas from the ideas sphere, but it's also within us. So this is why I teach people to ask what is it that's trying to emerge through us in the vision process, just to ask. And then your spiritual faculty would get ignited, and the universe answers every question you ask. And you'll start to get parts of yourself that want to be set free. You'll hear it differently.

You'll hear it with your awareness, you know. And you can trust it. You can trust your soul. Yeah. Arriving at that place where you're in this self-realized state, when you truly know yourself, your living life has an expression of that kind of divine imagination and creation seeing what wants to emerge from within you.

Can you walk us again just through the four stages as the baseline level is like the victimhood consciousness that life is happening to me? and, you know, so much compassion for everyone who's going through difficult things in life. But this framework, I think, is really empowering. Yeah, that came to me a number of years ago. But, yeah, the first stage is the victim stage to me. Something's happening to me.

The devil, God, superstition, circumstance, situations, people I was born to, you know, and it's also not my fault. Whatever's going on, it's not my fault. And many people live in victim consciousness. You have a conversation, and they will basically speak about who's to blame, whose fault it is, why aren't they happy, this happened, that happened. And we're not denying that bad things haven't happened to people, but that's the consciousness that they're living in. And then through some way, shape, form or another, grace, being sick and tired, or being sick and tired, however it happens, we start to go to a deeper level of understanding. that is called the manifester stage called by me.

First one is to me, something is happening to me. The second stage, something is happening by me. I begin to learn the metaphysical laws of the universe. My thoughts are units of mental energy. They transmute and produce experience. They produce perception that produces experience. There are certain laws. What I believe, as we talked about,

even if it's not true, I'll experience it. I used to do a, when I was going to college, I did a experiment. We used to do experiment with people where we would take a book of matches, we'd light the match, blow it out, and then touch a person really fast with the cold match, and they would form a heat blister.

And they said, why are you burning? He said, you know, we touch you with a cold match. And they follow me, and then we go to the next person, and they would see. So they were actually experiencing something that wasn't true just by their thought. So in stage two, you learn about the power of thought. You learn about right conversation.

People use affirmations, things of that particular nature, visualizations. It's all happening by me, by my mind. And then stage three is through me is a power that is everywhere, a presence, a love, a beauty, and intelligence, It's everywhere. And the work that I've done in stage two to begin to clean up my perceptions,

my thoughts, my beliefs, et cetera, something happens and this begins to flow through us more easily. It's feminine. So stage two is masculine. I declare, I decree, I visualize, I see it. I'm going to make this happen with my mind.

Stage three, I'm allowing, I'm letting, I'm being used by something. I yield. I surrender. And it's not surrendering to a negative circumstances. It's surrendering to life.

It's surrendering to the next great version of yourself. And then stage four is, it's a state of being, I'm it. The line of demarcation has dissolved. So when you move to those four, and those four stages aren't linear because you may be feeling like a victim in one area of your life, but you may be a genius in another area of your life.

So when you're coming on a victim stage, the power of forgiveness is very important. Victims that feel, people that feel victimized have to go through forgiveness, or they'll stay stuck. And then once you have a modicum of control in your life, then to go from stage two to stage three, you have to give up control. You have to realize this is an intelligence here

that's beyond my intellect. And we start to yield. and then as we're more in flow motion, we're more in flow, we're more being used by life, then the last thing we give up is that sense of separation between us and life. Which again is difficult because in the Western world, primarily,

we place the deity and God and all that way out there somewhere. It's like, I'm going to pray to God, you know, I've got to send my thoughts somewhere or something to that effect. So there's a sense of separation. but after you practice you have meditation, introspection,

something you have pinpricks of awareness where separation dissolves, ooh, you're it. You know, the wave is never separated from the ocean. It can exist without the ocean. You cannot be separated from this presence. And so people have a tendency at this level to move back and forth between three and four,

you know, but you still have the tools of two. You don't get rid of those tools. You know when to bring them in. But you don't live primarily from those tools. In the beginning, you do, because it gives you good feedback as to the laws of the universe that this is really happening.

This thought is really producing this experience, you see. And then after that, you live primarily in three and four, but you still have the tools of two to use whenever you need them. What's an area of your life where you really, felt the power of the fourth stage where you really felt life is happening as me. Well, when I first woke up years ago, I wasn't on a spiritual path. I had a death experience where I was stabbed in the heart in a lucid dream, died. When I woke up, I could see the entire full spectrum of presence of love and beauty.

The beauty was just beyond description. the love I felt was something that I've never experienced humanly before. And so I was at one with his presence. And I had to discover what had to happen to me. That put me on the path. It was an insight that put me on the path. So there had been moments of that that continued to guide my movement. Last January, I was about to do a podcast or Zoom or something,

and I was sitting and I was meditating before. And when I opened my eyes, I was blind. I couldn't see. It was just, the light was overwhelmingly around me. So I had to call in Lee and Reverend Kathleen and say, I can't see, I'm blind. I can't do the class right now. I don't know how long this is going to last.

But I was in total bliss, total ecstasy, but the light was so bright I could see nothing. And then little by little, I could start to see in this dimension, the light was still blazing, And then Reverend Kathleen was to my right and Lee was on my left. And when I looked at them, I could see this filament of light moving through them, like a fountain. And that was their real identity. I could see that we are the light.

We're really light beings, for real. People like to use that phrase, but that's our real identity. We're pure consciousness. We're light. And I say that to say, I've had those particular moments, but that was the first time that that happened publicly. I've had them alone. But it had never been with people around me, you know. So they were a little worried.

And I was like, you don't need to be worried about anything. I just don't know how long it's just going to last, you know. And so it's a moment where the demarcation dissolves. And you're at one with everything, you know, everything. You know, the lint in the rug is glimmering and glowing with the presence. The everything is alive. It's, it's, I don't even know, afterwards, no words about it. You just feel, you feel in love.

I remember speaking in Tacoma, Washington. And when I got off the plane, I was in one of those states. And I actually thought, this was many years ago, I thought I knew everybody at the airport. I was just so, hi, you know, give me a hug. And I was in the elevator. And Bill said, what are you doing? I said, what are you talking about?

All my friends are here. he said Michael, you're having an experience. You don't know anybody in the airport. And I said, oh, I just kind of clamped up a little bit, you know. I mean, now I know when it's happening. You know, I don't go out and try to hug everybody, but I do a little bit, you know. But everybody has access to this thing about it is.

A lot of people are doing it now having pinpricks of that through plant medicine. They're doing psychedelics and things like that, you know. But eventually, you have. have to be able to have a level of practice where it becomes stabilized, integrated and stabilized. I think that certain remote viewing experiences and experiences where you can really validate your intellectual mind and feed it as, okay, this is really real because other people are witnessing it can be a really powerful thing. I think unfortunately a lot of people that have these kind of transcendental altered state, you know, awakening experiences don't have

context and it doesn't make any sense logically and they feel like they're becoming schizophrenic or they're losing their mind. And I think it's, yeah, it's really sad because there's maybe a lot of really valid experiences. Sure, some I'm sure just schizophrenic experiences. I know that you had many experiences that you didn't have context for at the time. You felt like you were losing your mind. I did. Yeah. So can you share a little bit more about that in your own journey, but then also for people that are listening that either have had that or know people that are going through that, like what to do, how to help them. Yeah, I gave you the short version of that initial story, but during that time I did think

I was going crazy. I was in a psychobiology department at USC. And I was keeping these experiences to myself because I wasn't going to tell my psych teacher, you know, that I'm leaving my body and seeing things and hearing voices and seeing visions. And it wasn't until I was stabbed in the heart that I realized the validity. of what was happening. But I read a book many years ago called The Natural Depth in Man

by Wilson Van Dusen. He was a psychiatrist. It helped me a lot because he had studied schizophrenia. He had studied all these pathological states. And he was also a student of Emmanuel Swedenborg.

And so he was able to discern that these people that appeared to be schizophrenic were actually authentically going into other dimensions. They just didn't have the necessary corridor capacity to bring that consciousness into this dimension. They weren't strong enough emotionally or something to that effect.

But he proved that these dimensions that they were describing were real. And then some of them, their ego would snatch it and they thought they were special. You know, I'm Napoleon Boland, I'm Jesus, or something to that effect. That helped me a lot to realize, oh, okay, I'm not crazy. You know, and then I discovered Walter Russell. Walter Russell was probably the greatest mystic to emerge out of America. He was, so he taught, he was one of my teachers on the other side. And he was a magnificent being, scientist.

He invented the duplex. He showed the elements in the empirical, the charts. Periodont table? Yeah. He showed a lot of those before science proved it. He's a multimillionaire. He raised horses. He was an ice skating champion. He's 69 years old. He was a Renaissance man. He went into cosmic consciousness and wrote his books without any editing, like 12 volumes called The Secret of Light. And so when I, I don't know how I even bumped into this guy, but I bumped into him. I mean, his, his, teachings. And when I saw some of the experiences he had, I was able to relate to it. I said, oh, because I had lost my friends. People thought I

just freaked out, you know. And I said, oh, so he became a grounding point for me. Natural Dept of Man became a grounding point for me. Then when I studied the mystical teachings of Jesus, mystical teachings of the Buddha, they became grounding points. Matter of fact, back in those days,

my name was Paramatman. I changed my name. You know, because I was at these very high ecstatic states. And so I changed my name because as I was studying the Apanasiaz, that name lit up. I said, okay, that's my name. And I kept it for a couple of years. I did some writings around it.

But then I wanted my Michael guy to evolve. So I wanted him to evolve. I didn't want to be like way up here and him, like I'm channeling something. I didn't want to do that. And so I embraced Michael and let him to evolve. into the higher states. Would you say that was like an area of a dark night of a soul for you?

That wasn't a dark, that wasn't, but I'd been in a dark night. Yeah, I would love for you to share what that was for you, but then also what do you feel in dark night of the soul actually is? Dark night of the soul is a crucial bowl of transformation in which you are releasing a part of your identity that you're cherishing, that you really think this is you, but it's dying. and so there's ego blindness, meaning that the light is so bright,

it blinds the ego, and so you're in a period of no man's land, no woman's land, it's just you're, the new hasn't emerged yet, but the old is dying. You feel cut off, bereft, it's nasty, you know, it's, but you have to walk through that door.

Some people can do it dramatically, some people do it incrementally, incrementally. Like if you get on the spiritual path there's going to be parts of you that you cherish that are going to die. Because you,

they're not you. You inherited them. You created them to survive in the world. But when they begin to die and the new hasn't emerged yet, it's very dark. And in certain monasteries,

they won't even let you read about the dark night of the soul because they don't want you to use your imagination and conjure it up, you know, and have a false one. They let it just happen as it's supposed to happen. But the dark night of the soul is not what happens if you lose your job,

if your mate dies, you know, bad things that happen. That's not the dark night. It's dark. It's sadness. But the dark night is debilitating, you know, and you don't know how long it's going to last. But when you come out of it, you are different. You're more in tune with your real nature and being

and not the part of you that you've made, that you created, you know, from being in your family and the experiences that you had is totally different. When did that happen for you? Oh, let me see. I had a dark night pre-the-founding of Agape. I didn't start Agape until a number of years after I was on this path. And I can remember crawling, middlely crawling, to the place where I meditate.

I mean, I was so cut off from everything. And I remember a voice saying to me, saying really in my head, I don't want to be this spiritual. It was screaming out. I don't want to be this spiritual. And it was very dark and very dank. and then at a certain point it also made me focus on all my foibles

I was focused on every mistake I'd ever made in life and I remember at one point a light got turned and it was like a light went on everything lit up and it was like wow

and I realized I got a chance to see myself the way I was being seen by the universe which was light and magnificent. It was beautiful. An interesting thing happened. That was on a Wednesday.

All I always remember was on a Wednesday. And I'd been invited to speak somewhere. I didn't have a copy. And I just went, and this energy just flowed through me. I started speaking. It was like magnificent. And a part of my ego said,

wow, this is beautiful. I've arrived. The very next week it happened again. I went right back into the darkness. this same thing. And I realized it was a process I was still in. And eventually I passed through it and I was more me than before.

It really seems like at that time you're just in the depth of like the soil and a new seed is being planted but you can't see it emerging yet. You just have to have trust in that faith. It's dark. It's the void of creation. It's deep.

It's dark. But the sense of separation is so real. you know because you it takes away everything you believed you can't live on your belief but when you come out of it it's not belief

anymore it's like you know something you know if you're going to school and your professor says to you or your teacher says two plus two is four you believe yeah and you can two plus two two is four yeah you go home and recite it to your mother and everything but at a certain point you have to actually know what that means

beyond So when you go through the dark night, your beliefs get so challenged. But when you come out of it, you actually know something and it's unshakable. It's just, it's unshakable. The presence for me is, it's just real. It's not something I read about in a book.

You know, it's real. Would you say true wisdom born out of that experience is like completely different than knowledge that's accumulated? Like, you feel like wisdom really comes out of that time? Yeah, I mean, there's things that you, your memory can hold on to in terms of intellectual things. But there's two aspects of who you get wisdom from. One is going through an experience

and actually coming out and knowing something. It's actually three levels. The next level you get it from is there are people that have walked the planet that have impacted the new sphere, the mental atmosphere of the planet, that energy is still there. And you can catch it.

You can sit and you can contemplate and become inspired by it. And then third, you can catch insight. When you meditate, you can actually have an insight. An insight is an event that takes place in your consciousness

where you suddenly or incrementally know something you formerly believed. So you're actually sitting for an insight. So I'll tell people, I'll put people in meditation sometimes and had them feet go to the center of the earth and open up to all of the wisdom born from human experience.

And then I have them go through the top of their head into infinity, open themselves up, and catch the transformational knowledge and wisdom and insight just from their being as a spiritual being. It's like a remembering. You know, so you can get it both ways. Yeah. But you have to be really interested. That really rings true that you can become such a vessel, a hollow bone,

for the wisdom that is all around you, for that insight to occur and for you to know something that is, it's unlike a belief where a belief, I say, often as a pacifier for insecurity of not knowing, where we feel like we need to believe things. But you're speaking about like a deep gnosis that we can arrive at.

Yes, absolutely. I call belief a placeholder for knowing. You believe this until you know it. So what a true belief does, it gives you a direct, for practicing. So you practice your belief until insight occurs and then you know it. And you can't take it. You can't, it's there forever if you really know something. You said that pain will push us until a vision pulls us. Yes. I love that. Yeah.

How do we get clarity on what the vision is that's trying to pull us right now? You have to actually live in a question. You know, again, people that are in the victim state live in the question of what's wrong, who's to blame, why me. That's basically, that's their questions. So when you ask a different kind of question, like, what good is here that I presently cannot see? It starts to clarify your perception, but if you're talking vision, you can actually ask,

what is it that is trying to emerge in my life right now? What is the vision that the universal presence is holding for me? Which is really your real self. I mean, I'm using that language, but it's actually you as a distinct unit of infinite potential that is wanting to integrate with your incarnation. But if you ask the question, you'll become receptive and you start to get feeling tones, insights, wisdom, guidance, even in your dreams. it'll start to come. You know, years ago when I was very reluctant

about starting a spiritual community, but I asked the question. And I was in this dream, I was really small in the dream, going down the street, and there was this big building and all this enthusiastic energy was coming out of it. There was people hugging.

It was music. It was all kinds of people. And the inner voice said, this is what we want you to do. I'm in the small in the dream. I said, how am I going to do that? What are you talking? How am I going to do that?

And they said, you say yes, and we'll do the rest. They went at my yes, you see. And then when I gave up my reluctance and said, yes, and that vision of what I saw as a community started to emerge around me. The right people started showing up, and everything necessary showed up for that to happen. But I had to ask that question. then I caught the vision.

And that was a part of the vision that came to me in a dream. What does the word Agape mean to you and how, in that process of saying yes to creating that, what have you seen over the past many decades of you being such a steward for the spiritual community to come together in these powerful insights in prayer and meditation? Acape, it's the Greek word, it means unconditional love. You know, different phases of love.

There's familial love, friendship, mother love, You know, but agape is the love of God operating in the human heart. Unconditional, non-unconditional, no agenda. This is a total loving someone because they are the life of God. You know, you love people you don't even like, you know. And so when I was, I heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. give a speech on that many years ago. And you met him, yeah?

Yeah, I didn't meet him. It affected me. But I did meet him as a small child. and we shook hands and I said to my mother, his hands were so soft. And she said he does a different kind of work, baby. But it's interesting how that goes full circle because his oldest daughter, Yolanda, who's passed over,

joined Agape. And now his son and his son's wife and his daughter, Dr. King's granddaughter, are members of Agape. And I'm like the counselor to the family. So it's interesting that I met him as a small boy, and now I'm very ensconched in the family. We do work together. But, yeah, Agape is unconditional love.

So when I was starting my vision group for Agape, the center, we met every Thursday night for months and months and months. And the idea was for us to really learn how to vibrate at that level. So I taught the vision process. I didn't have a business plan as to, we're going to start Agape. We're going to get a building, we're going to do this. It was, how can we be the people?

How can we have the consciousness of unconditional love? And so at a certain point, when that was really steeped, then I went to the second phase was, okay, we're going to need to meet somewhere, we're going to need to send out invitations, we're going to do X, Y, and Z. But the idea was to establish ourselves as agape people first. So we can actually be that energy. And so I've seen tremendous healings over the years, miracles, manifestations. For people who aren't just window shopping, you know, but people who get in, you know,

and actually do the inner work. I've seen a lot of great things. Have you found any pitfalls on merging your career work and spiritual work into the same thing? Well, I don't even call it a career. I just call it a calling. Yeah. And it's obviously an incredibly beautiful way to like live your life. And for me also feels like the only way I want to live my life.

But at times, you know, have there been unique pitfalls or struggles? Absolutely. When you're dealing with a community, you know, you have every, just like the planet Earth is Earth school. You have every stage of consciousness on Earth. You have every single stage from animalistic people who would rob you in a moment all all the way up to individuals who are vibrating really high compassion, love, generosity, forgiveness. You have every stage. So the same thing is in a community.

People will come in and you have, you know, for the most part, you have people that have good intentions. They want to come in and grow. But you have every kind of personality there. So there's always growth. There's always a growing edge of working with people. And then you have all the financial considerations of running a community that's a business. You know, so I wouldn't call them pitfall.

I just call them this challenges, you know. And probably every now and then it's like, I'd rather just go sit home and just meditate. Have a few people come by the house and just give Dasha. You know? Yeah. What have you made of your own life and destiny? When you look at the word destiny and how we, you know,

you spoke to the four stages earlier, we still have the tools of the buy-me stage where we manifest and we can visualize and create. And as you grow, you start to see. see how it's not just what you want of life, but what life wants of you. Yeah. And how you start to, you know,

listen and pay attention to that more. How much of, do you see our destiny, do you see it's fully written by us? Do you see it's half, you know, there's a co-author in life? It goes back to participating in your own unfolding. You know, we are distinct units of infinite potential. No one, no one's like anyone else.

Everyone's unique. So everyone has a unique way of expressing the qualities that are within all of us. So everyone has a good destiny. Every single being has a good destiny of those gifts unfolding according to that person's pattern, that person's heart's desire.

But we have to participate with it. It doesn't just happen. The thing about human beings is that we are what you call endogenous, you know, as opposed to indigenous. Palm tree is indigenous to warm weather. It's not going to grow in the snow. We are endogenous, which means we create our own condition.

So it doesn't matter what's going on in the world. We can actually go in and create the condition for the unfolding of our destiny. You can be in prison. You can be in the midst of a recession, divorce, whatever. And you can actually create the condition for your destiny to unfold.

That's the power that we actually have if we can actually embrace it. So I ran away from doing what I was doing for a while. I mean, I was, you know, seeing people one-on-one and teaching classes and things, and I like my life. The weekends were off, you know. I wasn't carrying a community that way. However, I was told at one point, you know, you're doing your work well, but you're doing it halfway. And they said, you made a promise to go all the way.

And if you don't, we have no need for you to be on the planet anymore. This is like an internal voice feeling that you're having. It's internal, like it was like the ancestors were talking to me or something, you know. And they made some things very clear. Some things happened in my life to quickens. stuff. And, but today, I'm in bliss. Today, the joy I thought I had pales and significance to what I experienced today, even with the challenges. Even with the challenges. I wouldn't, I have no other skill in life anymore. So do you feel most of the suffering that we're experiencing

life comes by virtue of us ignoring and not paying attention and listening to what wants to emerge from us? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. People are unconscious of it. And they're caught up in the mire of three dimensions and trying to survive in it in all the ways that they force their personality to survive in it. It is caught in the muck of it. And then people are in agreement about it

and that agreement creates a world. The world is just the condensation of the thoughts, beliefs, opinions, points of views. that people agree upon that creates a world. It's not the same as a planet. The planet is different. And so people live in that world, you know. But that world is not real.

It's just a, it's called the world of appearances. It's just thought forms that have condensed themselves. And so people are caught in it until they wake up out of it. It's the Matrix. The Matrix was a documentary. Yes. So good. You know, I, I, my desire and goal really in,

aim with, you know, this show, and I know you have your own show, and much of the work you're doing is trying to support the liberation of light and self-realization within people. That's it. We can see darkness out there. We can see things that are happening in an unconscious ways, and we can judge it, we can shame it, which just continues to perpetuate it, or we can be the entrainment. We can go and we can actually embody the energy we wish to see. And it's like, you know, it's like walking in a crappy party, and you decide that you're

going to be the life of the party instead of just, you know, submitting. to the crappy party. That's it. You're behind enemy lines. Waking up. That's exactly. It's called the great work. You know, we're here for the great work.

You're part of it. You're part of the great work of waking people up in your own way. And once you see it, as you have seen it, you can't unsee it. You can't not see it anymore. You cannot go back and pretend that you don't know what the great work is. And we're all at different stages of development where somebody's maybe just a sprouting, budding, you know, flower and some are in full bloom right now, some are withering your way, going to the dark night of the soul.

Everybody that's listening right now, though, has their own unique piece of the puzzle, has their own unique gifts. And so I'd love for you to share a little bit about realizing and activating what our own unique things are because, of course, we oftentimes maybe want our gifts to be more like somebody else. You know, we see someone with a podcast or a public speaker or whatever it might be. We might really idolize that or put it on a pedestal.

But it also doesn't give us space to it. acknowledge our own unique capacity and beauty. We're incomparable. We're beyond compare. So people that you admire, you want to make sure that they are points of inspiration, but not points where you're going to just copy. You don't want to be them. You know, it's just if they're doing something beautiful,

that beauty inspires you to be more you, not to be more them. and that's what happens when people are walking asleep, dreaming they're awake, is that they'll want to be the other person unconsciously. But when people come to an understanding that there is no one like you,

as I have said over the years, if you don't do you, you won't be done. Because only you can do you. Nobody can do you. You can't do anyone else. So I think unique is our superpower. because there's no one in the multi-dimensional parallel universe, there's no one exactly like us.

And so you have to ask, what is the gift I'm here to give, you know, and sit with it until it talks to you. Talk to it, talk from it, and then it talks as you. It's, yeah. And it feels home, it feels like you're at home. What you just shared invites a lot of patience, what can often be in this comparative society,

in this comparative society, a very impatient, quick fix, right-of-way phenomena. Right. To, like, sit, listen, live in the question like you're speaking to. That's a really important just thing to, I think, double down on

because how else are you going to hear unless you start to get quiet to pay attention to what is speaking to you? If it's really important to you, you will sit and you will listen. But then what happens is your listening carries itself even into your work-a-day activities.

You know, so it's not just when you're sitting in formal prayer or meditation, that you're just in that field all the time. You know, you drive in your car, whatever it is. You're just available to hearing what else is happening besides what's on the surface of your mind. What do you feel like there are the different kinds of prayer? And what is true prayer in your eyes?

True prayer is whatever you're doing is to have a realization that what you're praying for, you already have it. That's just basics really, you know. So you're not praying for something. You're praying to realize that it's already here. We have intrinsic wholeness, beauty, intelligence, it's all here. So we're praying to have that feeling that it's already here.

So prayer, true prayer does not bring you the answer. True prayer is the frequency of the answer. And then that frequency condenses itself. And still it condenses itself beyond your imagination, you see. So if you look at the evolution of humanity, the prayer was always connected to their belief and to what God was. So in the old days, God was a man that had anger management problems. You know what I mean?

So people would come to appease this God. You know, I'm going to pray to appease God. Let me give him sacrifices. Let me appease God. You know, because that was their belief. But as we have evolved, we know that this presence is spirit. It's formless, timeless, it's life, its intelligence, its beauty itself, it knows itself everywhere. So the prayer is now communion.

You want to commune with it rather than trying to beg and get something from it. You want to commune with it. And unlike substances, can't commune. Water and oil, if you shake it, up, it'll be together for a little bit, but the viscosity is so different, oil will separate. So you can commune with God because your life is the life of God. So prayer ultimately leading you to communion with what you're praying for. It's already here. To be in the frequency of the thing, that's powerful. I think the church-fied prayer is often like asking for something.

You know, we desire something and so we pray for or we ask for it. But you're saying the prayer is acting as the vibration of the thing realized in which either brings it to you or something of greater value that you can imagine. Absolutely. It was an experiment done an organization called the Spin Drift Foundation. And they do a lot of experiments over the years on prayer and mind things. And there's one they do pretty regularly where they take three containers of seeds, all the same amount of light, nutrition, etc. The first seed group, they just planted properly, sunshine. The second group, they have people come in,

regardless of the religious backgrounds, and they visualize the seeds growing really, really strong. So the second group grew twice as fast as the first group that was just left alone. There was a third group that grew twice as fast as the second group. And they brought people in all backgrounds, and their prayer was, thy will be done. And the thy will be done prayer

moved twice as fast as the visualization prayer. The visualization prayer do twice as fast as the nothing prayer. So when you enter into a space of thy will be done or one with God, you take off all limitations. Because even in your visualization, you're still limiting. even though it's better than nothing.

If you apply that perspective to our own life in that perspective of thy will be done, often what gets in the way, possibly solely gets in the way, is our own ego. And I know I've heard you talk about the annihilation and transformation to the ego are the same thing.

Yes. Because it's both putting us in the unknown, right? And the ego loves to have the control of the known. And so I actually want to ask, would you be open to like sharing a prayer with myself, with our audience to give us the grace to surrender the ego's control and to transform? I just, I love that.

You're asking for a prayer to be transformed, actually. And the eagle does kick up. It gets fever pits sometimes, you know, when you're about to go into another paradigm. And another thing that happens is, The things that appear to attack us sometimes are actually our dreams that are too big for our present paradigm. So it scares us.

We wake up. I had a nightmare. But sometimes that nightmare is actually the next stage of our unfoldment, knocking. I call it the angel of transformation, kissing you on the cheek. You know what I mean? And later on you look, he said, oh, my God, that was another version of myself trying to come forward. Wow.

But it scares this little tiny version. You know, it's the caterpillar is saying to the butterfly, I'm not getting in that. What do you do? So shall we do it now? I would love that. Yeah. So we allow ourselves to turn within for a moment,

extract our attention from the world of effects and circumstances. We allow ourselves to get a real sense, have pure gratitude and thanksgiving and dynamic appreciation. I'm just so grateful to be awake, aware, and alive. That's becoming moment by moment easier in this beautiful consciousness of Know Thyself podcast and all those who are tuning in. To recognize the great presence that's everywhere in its fullness

and that by means of us is seeking to express itself more completely and more fully through each and every one of us, I recognize this presence. With every breath that I take, I feel so at once. one with the presence, I can proclaim I am with thou art and thou art what I am. No distance, no separation, no otherness, one power, one presence, one life, one love, right here, right now. The word that I am speaking is its frequency and it is its vibration for each and every individual tuning in right now, that they may allow themselves to be spiritually liberated, that anything that would hinder to lay, obstruct, or deny,

the fullness of life from moving through them is dissolved into the nothingness from which it has come never to exist again. The clutches of the limited perception called by millions of names that creates distractions has no power here. For there is only one power, and that is the power of life itself. not contradicting itself, never compromising itself, filling me to overflow capacity as the word that I am speaking for each and every one of us, something wonderful is happening. Now, and we are available.

We're open, we're receptive. Let the will of this love, intelligence, and the beauty take over our lives right now. In the core of our being, there's a mighty yes, a yielding, an utter availability, and more than we can even imagine good flows through it as us. And it's happening now.

The clutches of limited perception have no power here. We are free. I give thanks for this and more than words can say or convey. And I allow it to be so. Therefore I can say, and so it is. Now so be it. Amen.

Amen. And so it is. And so it is. That's beautiful. That level of power and presence that you bring to your own prayer, I think it's, I mean, I felt the power of that power of that. I'm sure the audience felt the power of that as well. Would you say that authenticity and sincerity in your prayer is what really charges it with that, with the power to bring that forth within you?

I'm just thinking, as everybody has their own way to meditate and pray in their own daily life or maybe morning practices. Yeah. Sincerity in earnestness. Sincerity means when you're truly sincere, it's a, when you're truly sincere, it's a, it's a focus, non-destractable. ability. And earnestness means that you do your practice, whether you feel it or not,

whether you feel like it or not. You have a level of earnestness about it. And when those two combine, you can just feel the power. Everybody's unique, so everybody's going to pray different. But that connection. And oftentimes when I'm doing my inner work, I'll be silent.

but sometimes I've used all of my senses so I get to hear my own, I get to hear the voice, I get to hear the frequency, you know. So I'll be silent and then emerge and then go back to silence. The translation to living your life as a prayer, I think is really beautiful. You have these moments of intense concentration

and sincerity and earnestness in those deep moments of prayer. And then the world tests us. Right. There's a moment where it's really challenging to harness that energy and show up in those moments. So when you find it difficult to live in alignment with those values and to live in life through sincerity with that kindness and grace, what do you do personally when it's tough to live your life as a prayer in that way? I come back to the fundamentals, the basics, just like an Olympic athlete or any kind of athlete.

We just come back to the fundamentals. you know, I just go and lock myself up, you know, and get away from the world until the connection is more real to me than the chairs we're sitting on. Yeah, and that can be done in many ways. Years ago, I used to go out to the beach and go to my power spot, take off my suit and tie, and just get with the ocean and feel the oceanic nature of life and do pranayama.

until I just felt connection, you know. And sometimes I go in my backyard and have my feet on the grass and just as a particular tree I look at and just kind of connect that way. But oftentimes I just get by myself. And then that becomes more real than what's going on, what appears to be going on.

That's powerful because I really feel like our life just consists of so many moments of those forgetting and remembering and coming back into that. Get remember, forget, remember, forget remember. Yeah. And, you know, you've been sought out for, you know, the best majority of your life for your own connection or ability to bring in that presence

and, you know, supporting others and teaching and sharing with others in counseling through books, writing, teachings, podcasts, one-on-one work. What was it like counseling Michael Jackson? Michael would fly me up to Vegas from time to time. and we're sitting just like this. That's funny, he's funny. He's a very bright dude, okay?

I remember telling him in the beginning, I said, you know, I don't think I'm here to help you get your next hit because you already know how to do that. You know, I think I'm here to help you grow spiritually or answer some questions or to help you find your own questions. And he was a very sincere guy.

And sometimes he would jump up, start dancing. Just in the middle of a conversation. It was just like you and I talking. He would just jump up, spin around, do this move, sit back down. And he said, oh, the move went through my mind. I had to lock it in before I forgot it. You know? And we just continued like, that never happened.

Like, that was just a part of the deal. I found out later, after he passed over, one of his producers said that he had some of my teachings that they would play before they would record in the studio. But I didn't see a whole lot of pathology in him. Yeah, he was a brilliant businessman. He had some fear. The people around him weren't necessarily good people.

Yeah. That happens with sometimes celebrities and stuff. They attract certain people that want from them so much that they kind of lose themselves to that. At that scale of impact, whether it's through music or teaching or whatever, oftentimes because of the magnitude of the scale that it grows, the people that you have around you can be tough to maintain oftentimes the purity of what wants to emerge through you.

Is there an individual that sticks out when you think of one of the most pure individuals or encounters that you've had in your life? Yeah, a friend of mine, he just passed over last week. A.T. A. A.T. A. A.T. A.R.R.R.R.R.R.R. He started the Savodia movement in Sri Lanka. He ended the caste system in Sri Lanka. many years ago. His depth of meditation and sincerity was just, he's a kind of person, you become a better person just being around him. So he flew me into Sri Lanka one year. They were having

a civil war in Sri Lanka. And we did a million person meditation in a small town. It was really a million, for real, a million. And you could cut the silence with the night. I mean, it was so, all these people meditating, and he spoke, and I spoke, and the power that went through my body with all these people meditating was amazing. But he, such a humble, beautiful, yet powerful man. I had him at the, we did a program at the United Nations one year, and he was one of the speakers.

The fire that came out of him was amazing, but then he was finished. He was just very quiet and sweet. He just passed. He was 93 years young. he was one that was beautiful. I mean, I could name others, but he just, because he had just passed,

he was just in my awareness. What chapter of life do you feel like you're personally in right now? I would say that, it's come to me recently, it feels almost like a reboot. It feels like I'm just getting started again. Because I've come through a period of introspection

and a period of, almost being tired a little bit. And then over the last month or so, it's like, it's like I just feel eternal. I just feel timeless. I don't feel any age. I just feel like, okay, what's next? Which, what, when, is I'm listening to what's next.

It feels really obvious to me, yet challenging to articulate in an intellectual way. But throughout our life, we're guided by invisible unseen forces. for you and your own personal journey, what do you feel like for the reality of being guided by these unseen, invisible, some, you know,

see and feel they're really connected to these other beings, they feel the power, even just their ancestors, you know. It's all very real. Those dimensions are very real. I mean, in my beginning, when I first woke up,

that was primarily where I got juice from, you know, dead people. And people around me, you know, they were more real than, I remember one time I had a teacher and would talk to me, but it would intrude on things I was doing. I could hear him.

I said, shut up. I'm trying to have a meeting. But, yeah, that's all very real. On the angelic realm, they're around, but they can't help you unless you ask for help. That's a rule. They cannot intervene in your life, but if you ask for help, then help can come. The ancestors are similar, you know. They're kind of more cheering you on and giving you inspiration.

but you have to actually ask, you know, you know who David Hawkins was? Yes. Okay, he was a friend of mine, and he was very sweet too. One morning I was going to a place where I meditate, and I said, which I say frequently, thank you, spiritual guides, aids, and help us seen and unseen for this beautiful day

and what I'm called to do. And then this voice said, thank you, Michael, I mean loud. and being kissed me on top of the head, and I was paralyzed for hours. I couldn't, the energy went to my body, tetany, my body was like this, I was on the ground. I was in bliss, it was in pain,

but I couldn't move the body. So it took a little bit of time for me to unfurl, and I happened to be with David Hawkinson next week who were doing a seminar together, and I asked him about it. I said, this is what happened to me. So he took out his little dowsing thing, and he started doing kinesiology on me.

And he says, you were kissed on top of the head by an archangel. He vibrated at 7,000. The body can only hold 1,000. So that's why you were paralyzed. He's changed the course of your destiny again, you know? So that stuff is very real to me. I talk about it more these days.

Before I would never talk about any of that stuff. It just seemed too far out. Yeah. But they're all around us. You know, they're all around us. Sometimes when I'm in speaking, I could see, it's hard to explain, but I could see sometimes as I'm speaking and prayers are happy, I can actually see this mist that comes and kind of just covers the congregation,

like this beautiful mist of prayer that's flooding everybody. You know, I'm just smiling and looking at it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But those realms are real. But the thing about it is I try to tell people, Don't get caught up in those realms. You know, keep going directly to source.

Don't get caught up, because you could get caught up in astral planes, you can get caught up in all kinds of phenomena, which might not mean a great shift in consciousness. It just means that you become adept at seeing certain things. It's like a person can train themselves to hit a fastball. It doesn't mean they're a good person. You can train yourself to have certain skills

at certain levels there. It doesn't necessarily mean you're making. a major shift in your consciousness. So keep going to source, you know, to, and then, but those are nice. I mean, I get thanks to my ancestors in the angelic realm all the time, but I'm not going to get caught up in that. Yeah, there's a lot of great yogis that would say that they would refrain from, you know, any displays of spiritual powers and that, in that context, because they could be distractions

on the path. Like you said, you could have the skill set of, you know, whatever city, you were, want to, you know, but really if it's not bringing you closer to realization of your consciousness and who you are, then it's driving distraction. Years ago, I made that choice. I was doing some things and practicing. I was younger, a lot younger. I was doing some things and practicing some things and, you know, got pretty good at some

things. And something happened. And then I remember Paramahansa Yogananda, who I was close with on the invisible side. And it made my total attention go to being about love. and waking up and not worrying about all that other stuff. Yeah. What do you, I'm just curious, I feel called to ask you about the UAP phenomena and like we're seeing more,

it's coming more and more to the light right now more than ever in terms of people seeing crafts and things of extras. I think it's a combination of things. I think some of it's governmental. Yeah. You know, they've retrofitted a lot of things and they're doing some things to distract people. And those things really exist.

I mean, we're not, this one planet with the own life. You know, there's a lot of beings and a lot of different solar systems, galaxies, universes. You know, it's all real. But at a certain point, we have to decide or become discerning enough to see what is distraction from our own government

and what's really real. Yeah. But they're there. And what I do believe is that they will not allow us to destroy ourselves. Yeah, because it creates too much of a ripple throughout the universe. Yeah, having thousands of nukes ready to blow ourselves up.

It's silly. Yeah. Humanity is silly. It's used to more money and build another bomb. We're a lot of things, yeah. You know, I just want to share some gratitude and just thank you for your path. You know, I've been feeling this so much more so, even just the past couple of weeks,

how our own liberation really is the liberation of others and the power that we unveil within ourselves, that light really becomes the conduit for so many other people to see that in like a really tangible way. It's true. You sitting in your room,

liberating yourself is affecting so many people. First of all, we're connected with everybody. We're all connected. So, you know, there was a quantum statement given to Jesus that says, as I am lifted up, I draw all unto me. When you're lifted in that frequency, you draw people into that frequency.

The highest vibration always wins, you see. So it's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. You sitting and having a realization is affecting so many people. Because on that token, you are, everything that you actually physically do will be infused with that consciousness that you just woke up to. So it's very tangible and energetic at the same time. And so, yeah, just the gratitude is extending to you for your path,

and your devotion to your own process. And I know you've had many ups and downs in thinking you've lost your mind to having epiphanies of how you want to share and cultivate spiritual community, to having dark nights of the soul, and ultimately coming back and choosing to show up every time. And so just really, like, thank you so much

for the work that you're doing and how you share yourself. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you for the great work you're doing. Yeah, of course. And yeah, as we start to wrap up, two things. One, is there anything else you want to share that's on your heart, on your mind with our audience,

anything that you want to share before we start to close out. You've covered a lot of material here. I jump all over. Well, no, we see it's all congruent. I try. I try to weave the thread. No, just, you know, I just want people to know themselves pretty much. So if they're in the L.A. area, come on out to Engapé and hang out a little bit.

Yeah, amazing. And so anywhere people can find more information about Agape and then your podcast and things you have going on? Sure. They could go to a GAPE. They can go to Michael Beckwith.com. My podcast is called Take Back Your Mind, which is very important. And I put something inspirational up pretty much every day on my Instagram page that's tied into my Facebook page so either one works.

Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much, brother. It's really great to connect with you and excited just to build the friendship and help. Thank you. Yeah, you got good vibes, man. It's good. Beautiful.

Well, everybody, thanks for tuning into this episode of the next. tuning into this episode of the Know That Self podcast, let us know in which way the prayer or anything that was said today on today's show uniquely impacted you. I'd be curious to see. And until the next time, be well.