The Resilient Mind - Connecting Thoughts with Purpose - Michael Beckwith

Episode Date: August 25, 2024

Michael Beckwith is the founder and spiritual director of the Agape International Spiritual Center, a transdenominational community established in 1986. Through Agape, he has led extensive community outreach programs that provide support for the homeless, incarcerated individuals, and at-risk youth, while also advocating for environmental sustainability.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Four Keys to Effective Communication with Jim Rohn. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. When circumstances and situations are pressing in upon us, the only way we can overcome them is to go within, to actually begin to ask very empowering questions with the awareness that this universal presence and its law will answer any question that you ask.

So if you're in a situation that is pressing on you, and you ask, what's trying to emerge in my life? What is my gift to share? What is my purpose? Why am I here on the planet? Not just how can I pay my rent, not just how can I stop the pain, which aren't bad questions.

You ask empowering questions, the universe will answer these questions in a language and in a way that you can understand. They'll be interprompted. There will be intuitive hits, nudges, signs, symbols, dreams. It'll come in the language of the individual's soul and heart. The difficulty is that when people are in tough situations, they ask disempowering questions. They say, what's wrong?

Who's to blame? Why me? Those are the disempowering questions. So the universe will answer those two. It'll pull on the database of human experience and say, you were born on the wrong side of the tracks, or you were born on the right side of the tracks, or this happened, or that happened,

it will give you a bevy of excuses. But if you ask an empowering question, you'll get an answer to rise above the muck. So it's all about the question, the sincerity of the question, and then the ability and the willingness to really listen, to really be available. That's where the juice is.

Whether an individual is in prison, whether an individual is imprisoned by circumstance, imprisoned in their own mind about an event that happened in their past, it doesn't matter. Once you ask, with sincerity, the universal answer. That's the way it operates.

You can only be in communion with something that you're similar to. Water and gasoline can't commune because they're different substances. So we can commune with God because our life is the essence of God. So we can commune with God. So if I'm communing with God,

And you're communion with God, we can communion with each other. We commune with the deepest part of each other. It's a very intimate and personal relationship in prayer and in meditation. So the essence of communion is oneness. And so as we go forth from that place in a deep sense of communion, then when we go out into the world, we have the privilege and the capacity to see that same beauty in other individuals, the same love, the same potential.

We greet each other differently. That is the only way that we're going to actually build a kind and just global society from that sense of communion with the presence. Absolutely. That's never an absence. But it also goes back to understanding that the presence of God has never made a mistake. Yeah. Doesn't do do-overs and doesn't repeat itself.

Therefore, each of us are unique expressions of the infinite. Therefore, the way the infinite gets to express its infinite nature is through its uniqueness. Therefore, I have a mandate to discover myself, find out who and what I am, what my purpose is, and to express it. So, and that idea within us is infinite and is always unfolding. So it's not a one and done. It's not, I've arrived. It's I'm always on a journey of unfolding. You grow where you're planted. You grow where you're planted.

And then you ask, what's trying to emerge? What's trying to unfold? And you'll start to get hints. You start to take baby steps walking in that direction. As you take baby steps, inertia becomes momentum. And then possibilities start to reveal themselves. Potential starts to be activated. And you find yourself, as you look back,

wow, I'm changed. I'm different. When did that happen? You have to be in alignment with it. You have to have a level of practice. You have to give up your resistance. to the circumstance. In other words, you're not arguing

and resisting with the circumstances. I know this person said, I prayed, I did that. God hadn't answered me yet. This is the deal. God is always answering. But are we receiving? Are we listening?

Are we available? Yes. So prayer, meditation, life visioning, it attunes us to become an alignment with that vibration. So we actually can hear it. We can actually feel it and then move in that direction.

Many people, if their prayers would be answered, they couldn't even receive it. They're not vibrationalally ready. You know how people do wishing wells? They throw a coin and they forget about it. And then the thing shows up because they had an intention, then they let it go. They didn't even think about it anymore.

And once you release your grasp, then you give up your resistance. And then that which is for you will come to you. That's the aha moment. Yeah. Because when you want it, want it, want it, want it, it doesn't show up. Yeah, your message to the universe,

at that moment is, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, which is translating into, I don't have it, I don't have it, I don't have it, I don't have it, I don't have it. So you can't receive it. Victim consciousness is where many people live. Yeah. Somebody did it to me. The reason why I'm not happy is because you just make, you know, my ex-boyfriend, my boss.

The world isn't fair. The world isn't fair. They're doing it to me. The reason why I'm not happy is somebody else's fault. God did it to me. The devil did it to me. My astrological sign did it to me. The numbers did it.

Numbers did it to me. My karma. Yeah. Okay. That's the victim stage. Every victim has a victim's story. You ask somebody, a victim, what's going on? They'll give you a list of complaints about what's wrong and who did it. Fannie Yulahemers once said, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yeah, one of my favorite quotes. So when you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, something happens.

And you start to open up to a possibility that maybe I'm in my own. way. Maybe there's something more than what meets the eye. You need, you're going to need something that is not within your little mind and your little perception. And that's where prayer comes in. That's where meditation comes in. That's where life visioning comes in. So if you just said, help, I'm open. I'm available to something new. Now you're on your way. Yeah. Help is a prayer. Help is a prayer. I say when I use the word help, I say hello eternal loving presence. That's what help means to me. Yeah. Hello eternal loving presence. Wow, that's a good one.

And then things start to come to you. I can remember walking into back in the day when the Bodhi tree existed and a book fell off the shelf. I walked in and the book just slammed on the floor off the shelf and it was exactly what I needed to read at that time. And so I learned about manifestation. I learned about the second stage, which is how to manifest, which is, which is, establishing intention, beginning to see visually the kind of life you want to live, beginning to have conversation about that kind of life. I tell people you have to talk about it more than you talk about your problems because at the end of the day if you're complaining more than you're talking about your vision yeah then

you're in inertia. So there's a shift that takes place where you're actually talking about the possibilities more than you're talking about your issues You don't deny the issues. Bad things have happened to people. We're not denying that those things have happened. Energy goes into those lower frequencies, doubt, worry, fear, now you're in that sediment. You're in that dynamic.

But if you start talking about possibility, even if you don't know how to get there, then your energy starts to go up. You know, what if, you ask a what if question? You know, what if all my needs were met? What would I be doing in my life? What if everything is really working together for my good? What if all the bad things that have happened in my life

are leading me to activating some great potential in my experience? What if God really is on my side? You know, you ask what if question, and you start to notice little tiny miracles happening in your life. Things start to manifest. You don't know how they got there. The Dark Night of the Soul is a couple of stages to it.

The primary dark night of the soul is when you're losing your identification with your previous identity, but you don't yet have an identification with what's new emerging. You're in the dark. You don't know. You knew this is who you used to be. But you're not that anymore. But who you're becoming, you're not that either. So it's dark.

It's really, and sometimes it's excruciating. Sometimes it's a lot of fear, a lot of disconnect. And I tell people that when you're going through that, tell them to ask this question. If this experience were to last forever, what quality would have to emerge for me to have peace of mind? So if you ask that question and you say, oh, if I, if I, is this, if this particular experience was going to last forever, I would need, I would need some strength. I would need some peace. I would need a little bit more, you know, name whatever quality.

And what happens is, when your attention starts focusing on that quality rather than resisting the dark night, then the process is speeded up. Pain pushes until the vision pulls. So life is progressive, and it's pushing you until you get pulled by a larger vision. And that's a principle. Potential is always bigger than the problem. potential is always bigger than the problem.

Your potential is infinite and is always bigger than whatever problem you're going through. You begin to have a vision about the possibility. You start to be pulled by it. And then once you really sincerely embrace it and your life begins to be, okay, when I wake up this morning, I'm going to walk in the direction of my purpose.

I'm going to walk in the direction of my vision. Now, it doesn't mean you're not going to have challenges. Of course. We're not praying to live a challenge-free life. We're praying that the challenges that come activate latent potential. Pain pushes into vision pulls, ask what if questions. Yes. Begin to see, visualize the kind of life you want to live.

Begin to talk about it. Begin to write it down. Begin to dream about it. And then what I teach is you talk about it. It doesn't mean you talk to everybody because everyone is not trustworthy. That's right. You talk to selected friends. About it.

about it, you talk to it. You actually talk to the vision, talk to the possibility, talk to love, you talk to peace, you talk to prosperity. I see you everywhere. I see you prosperity in the lawn. I see you abundance in the grain of the sand. I see you everywhere. You talk to it.

And then after a while, you're talking from it. If you put anything under a microscope, an intense microscope, you can ultimately see that everything is vibration. And as the scientists are not telling us, there's information there. But it's not solid. It's always moving. So we're vibrational beings.

So as you were just saying, when we lift our vibration to what we want to experience, it happens first on a vibratory level. And then it shows up and manifest in our life. So people who are holding on to rancor, animosity, they're slowing down their vibration. Another way of saying is you cannot have what you're not willing to become vibrational.

If you do get it, you'll lose it. This is why people will win the lottery, they lose everything, or they'll finally get the person they think they want to be with. They can't keep the relationship, or they'll get a modicum of success but can't hold on to it. Because inside, they weren't vibrational aligned. They really hadn't become it. So you can temporarily manipulate and get things. But to have it completely, you have to lift your vibration and become it.

that in vibration. You're not really attracting things to you. You're really radiating. Yeah, you're radiating it from within out. It's like if I become the vibrational frequency of love, harmony, peace, you have to like yourself when you're by yourself. You have to like yourself. I mean, when you're by yourself, you have to look at those thoughts, the beautiful thoughts, the crazy thoughts. You have to embrace yourself. You have to forgive yourself. You have to love yourself and when you can fall in love with yourself and like yourself when you're by yourself, now you can be with others. But if you don't like yourself when you're by yourself, then you're pulling on others to make you happy. The purpose of human experience is that we're at a stage of

our evolution where we can think about what we think about. We can actually think independent of a circumstance and choose. We can choose and let our soul unfold. And this is very important. because either people are in reaction or they're in choice. Choice comes when you expand your awareness. Reaction is if you have limited awareness. So in other words, we both know this. You take somebody like His Holiness to Dalai Lama or Dr. King, who chose to love in the face of hate.

Where many people would react in the face of hate Through prayer and meditation, they expanded their awareness and they could choose. So here in this human dimension, we learn to choose regardless of conditions. Now we're participating in our own unfolding. I can actually choose to be better. Visualization, that's stage two, that's manifester level. That means I actually see the life that I want to live. I see it visually.

I feel it. I have an emotional bond with it. until it manifest. Visioning is different. Visioning says there's something within me that I can't see, it's beyond my imagination, I want that to come forward.

It's my unique pattern. Okay. It's beyond societal fantasy. It's beyond parental fantasy. In other words, your mother may have had a dream about you and wanted you to be a doctor. The society wants you to act a certain way. But there's something that's been placed there by God.

And when you go into the visioning process, you're actually opening yourself up to that which is unique to you to express. You're actually becoming in tune with your purpose. Yeah, being a channel as the third stage is, I realize that I am a place through which the infinite expresses. I'm available. So we use words like surrender, yielding, allowing, letting. I'm surrendered. Now, what happens, we come into frequent encounters

with the zone or the flow. You know, we used to get in the flow. And you didn't plan something, and it's not a part of what you tried to do, but if something takes you over, that's stage three. You're in a flow now. It's like, what happened?

What did I say? How did that turn out so well? Because beyond your imagination, something took you over. So stage two, you cut our teeth, on stage two, you visualize, you say what you want, you do your affirmations, you set your intentions, you have to do that. And as you become a master at that level, then you start to find yourself in a moment you think not something happened. In a moment you think not, you become available,

it become a channel for such beauty and greatness and love and giving and creativity. Thank you for tuning in. mind by listening to our other episodes.