FLASHBACK FRIDAYS: Humanity's GREAT SHIFT Has Begun! URGENT Wake-Up Call YOU NEED to HEAR! with Michael Bernard Beckwith

Michael Bernard Beckwith is a renowned spiritual leader, author, and speaker, known for his inspirational teachings and profound insights into personal growth and spiritual transformation. Born on July 4, 1956, in New York City, he developed a keen interest in spirituality from an early age. In the 1970s, he moved to Los Angeles, where he became deeply involved in the New Thought movement.

In 1986, Beckwith founded the Agape International Spiritual Center, a trans-denominational spiritual community in Culver City, California. Under his leadership, Agape has grown into a vibrant and diverse congregation, attracting thousands of members seeking spiritual guidance and empowerment.Beckwith's teachings draw inspiration from various spiritual traditions, including Christianity, Buddhism, and New Thought principles. His philosophy emphasizes the power of self-realization, positive thinking, and the law of attraction to manifest a fulfilling life. He encourages individuals to embrace their inner potential and become active participants in their spiritual growth.

As an accomplished author, Beckwith has penned several bestselling books, such as "Spiritual Liberation" and "Life Visioning," which have touched the lives of countless people seeking spiritual awakening and personal development.Through his engaging talks, workshops, and retreats, Michael Bernard Beckwith continues to inspire individuals worldwide to live with purpose, love, and compassion, fostering a greater sense of unity and interconnectedness among humanity. His contributions to the field of spirituality have earned him widespread respect and admiration, making him a beacon of wisdom and hope for those on their spiritual journey.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the Next Level Soul podcast, where we ask
the big questions about life. Why are we here?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Is this all? There?

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Is?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
What is my soul's mission?

Speaker 1 (00:13):
We attempt to answer those questions and more by bringing
you raw and inspiring conversations with some of the most
fascinating and thought provoking guests on the planet. Today, I
am your host, Alex Ferrari. Now, before we dive into
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(00:36):
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(01:21):
begin today's episode.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Disclaimer.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those
of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views
or positions of this show, its host, or any of
the companies they represent. Now today on the show, we
have Reverend Michael Bernard beckwith now. Michael is a best
selling author, one of the stars of the legendary Secret documentary,

(01:49):
and the founder of the Agape Center in Los Angeles.
Michael and I had a very deep conversation about his origins,
how he became, who he became, and what is happening
in humanity today, the great shift and consciousness, the big
change that's happening to mankind and humanity, and much more.

(02:10):
Let's dive in. I like to welcome to the show.
Michael Bernard went back, Let's hy to Michael, I'm great man.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Everything you know. One of my favorite statements, regardless of
whatever's going on in life, is how can you get
better than this? And then the universe will answer that question,
whether you're in the throes of a challenge or whether
you're in the burst of an epiphany. How can you
get better than this? So right now that's where I'm at.
How can you get better than this? I'm with you, man,

(02:39):
life is good.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
I appreciate you, my friend. Thank you so much for
coming on the show. I've been a fan of yours,
probably since I was introduced to you back in the
olden days with the Secret.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Oh yes, that movie still has legs. Man.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Man, isn't it amazing?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
It's amazing. I go out into the world to speak
and then you have different generations, yes, starting to listen
to it or read it or see the video, and
it's just like waves. And then some of the old
timers are going back over it again because they missed
something or it's an interesting dynamic that I mean, I've

(03:15):
been in. I've been in more movies than any spiritual teacher.
I got an award for I didn't even know that
until somebody pointed out to me, and that one is
one of those that just really changed a lot.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Of lives, absolutely without question.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
So my first question to you today, sir, is how
did you begin your spiritual journey?

Speaker 3 (03:36):
My spiritual journey began. It wasn't a conscious situation. Even
though as a child I had certain spiritual awakening, certain
mystical experiences, but as a kid and growing up, even
as a teenager, I would quickly try to normalize myself
to be with my peers. So something happened. I knew

(04:00):
something happened. I didn't know what it was, and I
just didn't want to be weird, so I quickly tried
to normalize my awareness. I remember when I was eleven
years old. I was I was in Washington, d C.
I'm from DC originally but raised in LA And I
was back during the summer with staying with my grandmother.

(04:21):
And it was around my birthday and I had gone
to the store to pick up something for my grandmother.
And I was in one aisle and all of a sudden,
I could see that the individual who was stocking food
in the aisle next to me was about to drop
a bottle of baby food. I could see it in

(04:42):
my mind's eye. So I ran around there really fast,
and I caught it before it hit the ground. And
he looked at me and he said, how did you
know I was going to fall? I said, I didn't know.
I didn't I couldn't explain it. I said, I know,
I just saw it. So anyway, I'm walking home that day,
but with the groceries. My mother, my uncle, and my
grandmother are sitting on the stoop watching me walk in

(05:04):
their direction. They're smiling at me, you know, and I'm
thinking to myself, I'm not who they think I am.
My grandmother thinks I'm her grandson. My mother thinks I'm
her son. My uncle thinks I'm his nephew. But I'm not.
I'm something else. I didn't have any words for it,
and so I'm getting closer and closer to them. I'm saying,
what am I going to do? What am I going
to do? And I became what I thought I should

(05:26):
be for them. I literally became the nephew, the son,
and the grandson, and I just kind of quickly closed
everything down. So fast forward, I'm a senior. I'm at USC,
I've transferred from Morehouse College, and I'm in the psychobiology major.

(05:46):
Right before that, I had had an experience that catapulted
me to USSE but I didn't know what it was.
But anyway, I went. I went went there. I was
going to go to med school. And I'm giving you
a cliff note Virgeon here, I'm starting to have a
series of spiritual experiences. But the time I didn't know
that's what it was. I thought it was psychological pathology.

(06:11):
I thought something was wrong with me, so I stopped
smoking weed just to ensure that I wasn't going crazy.
But the experience is intensified, culminated with this lucid dream
that I had for a nice period of time in
which these three men were always on the horizon, coming
after me. But they were always in the distance, but

(06:33):
every night they were a little bit closer. So one
night they were very close. I could see the outlines
of their face, and I looked to my right and
I could see this small tent, thousands and thousands of
people trying to fit into this very small tent. But
I knew everyone in line, and I said, these guys
can't hurt me. I have all my friends here. And

(06:54):
one by one they turned their back on me. Two
of the men held me down, and another man dad
me in the heart with a serrated knife. The pain
was excruciating physically and emotionally, and I died. And when
I woke up from that, I could see that we
were surrounded by this presence of such immense beauty. My

(07:20):
name for this presence was love beauty. The love that
penetrated my being was beyond anything I'd ever experienced humanly,
and I never could fit back in the box that
I had been given intimations of as a kid. I
couldn't get back in my box anymore, and that changed

(07:40):
my life, and I went on to a research journey
to discover what had happened to me. And then that's
what I bumped into the mystical teachings of the Buddha, Jesus,
the Christ, the Lama Pada, the panishads, Shri or Bindhu.
While A Russell and I began to see there was

(08:02):
similarity in these awakenings that had happened, and my life
was never the same. Act that my trajectory of my
life became all about having a more conscious connection with
this presence. At the time, I didn't use the word God.
At the age of sixteen, I had left the church.
It didn't hold anything for me. I didn't believe all

(08:23):
of those religiosity around Jesus, and so I just called
it loved beauty. Later on in life, I was able
to use the word God again because it didn't mean
got the sky. God didn't mean a man in the
sky had no ethropomorphic qualities. It was all a presence
of love and beauty and intelligence. And that's the short

(08:46):
version of how you know. It took a number of
years to integrate, and then years later to discover that
there was actually a career called spiritual therapy because I
had been doing it without any licenses or anything, because
people liked being around me. They would get healings. I

(09:07):
would do counselings, and there's some wonderful stories around that
as well. And then I went to this metaphysical spiritual
community at the behest of my mother and a friend
named Lissa, and I had said to them, I'm not
going to any church church. There's no truth going on
in church. And they kept begging me. This is metaphysical.

(09:29):
This is not like a regular you know, you're going
to hell and fire and brimstone and any of that
kind of stuff. So I went and the gentleman was
named doctor Daniel L. Morgan, and he had started the
Guidance Church of Religious Science. And I was walking into
the sanctuary and I heard him say, Heaven and Hell
are not merely places. There's states of consciousness. And I said,

(09:53):
he's right, this truth being spoken in a church, this
is unheard of. Anyway. I sat down listen to him.
The next day I was in I was enrolled in
one of his classes. And then I found out there
was something called a spiritual practitioner, was a licensed spiritual therapist.
And I ended up taking that. I think at the

(10:13):
time it was a two year program. Wow, and I
took that. It became I became full time practitioner. I
did that. I saw sixty eight people every single day,
six days a week, had seminars before they were popular,
and and my and and then ultimately went to the
UH School of Higher Consciousness School of Ministry. Graduated. Took

(10:37):
me five years to graduate from a three year program
because I wasn't trying to graduate. I was just like
like joining me. I just I just liked being a
learner and hanging out with like minded people. And you know, so,
so that's kind of the cliff note version of of
what happened.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
And then little by little by little, you know, I
ended up starting a spiritual community and it took off.
It's continuing to grow even now. We grew exponentially during
the lockdown, and now I just I'm on full time.
I'm on full time service mode. How can I serve?

(11:27):
I should have never asked that question.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Be careful what you wish for my friends?

Speaker 3 (11:31):
How can I be of service? And the universe keeps
showing me ways that I can be of service, and
I keep saying yes.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
So, Michael, when you had some of these mystical experiences
and you were kind of questioning your sanity, what would
you what advice would you have for people who are
listening to the audience who might be having these kind
of spiritual awakenings within their own lives and they really
can't kind of understand it. There's much more information about
it now obviously with shows like this than it was
when you were having it, but still it could extremely scary.

(12:01):
What advice would you have for them?

Speaker 3 (12:03):
Well, first of all, today, as you said, you know,
you have classes in trans personal psychology that didn't exist
forty years ago. You know, this was all woo woo stuff,
you know, and so any good books on transpersonal psychology
will allow you to see that what looks like a

(12:23):
psychological crisis is actually a breakthrough. So I would say
one don't try Many people, particularly in the Western world,
when they're going through an inner crisis of awakening they
think many people still think it's pathological, and they'll get drugs,
they'll get some kind of pharmaceutical drug to kind of

(12:43):
stop it so they can have some kind of surcease
from the experience, and they're actually, in many cases stopping
the energy of their transformation. I'm not saying that that's
happening for everybody. Sometimes it might be appropriate for somebody
to do something to alleviate the inner turmoil and pain
they're going through, But in many cases there are openings

(13:06):
taking place, and people are afraid of it and instead
of leaning into it finding a good spiritual therapist to
help you walk through it. An authentic shaman, not the
fly by night shamans that go to Peru for two
months and call himself a shaman, you know, but a
real one ton't help navigate through this kind of spiritual awakening,

(13:28):
which I think at this time in human history is
happening more frequently. You know, it's in the new sphere
of the planet. It's it's it's it's vibrationally trending, and
so I would let people know they're not going crazy.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
You know.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
I worked with an individual a couple of years ago
who was having a full on Kundalini awakening, and she
was about to be put on a whole lot of medication,
and her husband was very, very, very nervous. And when
when I met with her, I said, oh, I could
tell this was not She was not losing her mind.

(14:06):
She was gaining her mind. And I worked with her
for a few days and she started integrating the higher frequencies.
She was actually bringing some very powerful knowledge through. Her
intuition was at an all time high, and subsequently she
didn't need any medication. She just got she got balanced,

(14:28):
and now her and her husband are really good friends
of mine that we're business partners now actually, and she's
doing great. She's tapped in some very powerful genius within her.
But she was about to be put on medication, you know.
Unfortunately I was able to step in and show and
to her and her husband this was not to be medicated.

(14:48):
This was to be embraced because the next version of
herself was emerging.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
You see, well you said that more and more of
these awakenings are happening now, and I would agree with you.
I've even in the last ten years the information that
is these conversations, you know, like when we're talking about
The Secret, you know, that was one of those movies
that kind of shifted consciousness in many ways.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
It dropped seeds.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, it was absolutely dropped seeds.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yes, it drops seeds.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
To start the bigger conversation, what do you think is
happening in this this kind of global shift that is
in consciousness that we're all going through right now, Because
if we look at the world, so many people are like, oh,
the world's going to hell. It's worse than ever. There
seems to be so much more uprisings and wars and
politics and all this stuff. It seems like everything's going

(15:44):
to hell. But in another perspective, it's not. It appears.
So can you explain your premier perspective?

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Well, first of all, that which was periphial years ago
is now becoming a part of the central conversation. So
you have two things happening on the planet that which
used to be woo woo. You now have Bruce Lipton,
the godfather epigenetics. You have quantum scientists using the word consciousness,
that we're all holographic expressions of a one source, so

(16:15):
one presence, you know, using the interchanging with mystical language.
You see, and this is all part of the gastalt,
the language, the information that's now flowing freely. You know
that a lot of the indigenous cultures prophesied that this
time all that used to be secret would now be
available openly everywhere, and that's we're living in that time.

(16:38):
So you have that combined with the fact that the
Earth itself is vibrating at a higher frequency. The Earth
is more alive. Whether you look at that from a
shaman point of view that speaks about the Earth being
alive and the mother being awakened, or whether you speak
about it from a scientific point of view. You watch
this human scale, or you watch the vibration of the earth,

(17:01):
it's actually going to a higher frequency. And so all
of that is combining to create an atmosphere of awakening
for those who choose it. I mean, it happens, but
you still have to do the inner work to actually
choose to break free from the status quo. So that's
going on now. Now it appears that things are going
to hell in a hand basket, and I don't know

(17:22):
where we get hand baskets from. But anyway, however, you
have something called the Internet, you have these news medias.
Years ago, it would take a few days before a
news item would begin to catch around the world. Now
it's instant. So if something negative happens at another part

(17:43):
of the United States, another part of the world, you
get the information. And most of the information we get
via the media is always the lowest common denominator of
the human experience. You don't get the resolutions, you don't
get the mediations, you don't get the truces, you don't
get the wars that are ending. I mean, we're all
time low in terms of wars on the planet, you know, historically,

(18:04):
Yet people would think that we're at an all time
high in terms of wars, but we're not, you know, So,
I mean, there are factors that are using food as
war and weather. It's for war and things to that
particular nature. That's another discussion. But so the appearance everything
going to hell is not true. And secondly, the appearance

(18:29):
also is actually what I feel to be more of
a birth pain of another dimension rising or another expression
of good rising. You have the the collective consciousness being
aired out, so to speak, that which was hidden under
the rug psychic in our psychic context is now becoming
visible and so and being reported on. If somebody's saying

(18:54):
crazy stuff, they're going on the news. You know. If
somebody is just a regular old guy sitting in the room,
meditating and not creating any havoc, they're not going to
be on the news. You know, Oh, Joe sitting in
his office today and he's meditating and he had a
tremendous insight about the presence and he decided to forgive
his family. That's not going to show up on the news,

(19:14):
going on CNN. No. But if Joe gets mad and
shoots up somebody, Oh Joe's going on the news, you know,
absolutely so. So we have a contorted view of reality
based on what we're presented by the status quo every
single day. And then I would also add one other thing,
and that is there's a difference between the world and

(19:38):
the planet. They are not synonymous. And I teach this
all the time because people will say, oh, what's going
on in the world, what's going on in the planet Earth.
They're not the same thing. The planet is Gaya three fourths, water, rainforests, oceans, lakes, rivers, earth,
and she's alive. And then and there's the world. The

(20:01):
world is an agreement that we all have with each other.
We have opinions, points of view, perceptions, positionalities, agreements. When
you agree upon something, you live in that world, you
actually create and end up condensing your beliefs into that
world experience. Two people can stand on the same spot

(20:22):
on the planet but be in two different worlds based
on their beliefs, based on their perceptions. So there are
many people living in a world of peace, a world
of harmony, inside a world of joy, a world of
thanksgiving and gratitude, And there are many people living in survival.
There are many people living in fear and anxiousness and anxiety,

(20:43):
all occupying the same space. You know. It's in quantum reality.
That's called the condensate. You know. It's like in Newtonian reality,
two things cannot occupy the same space, but in the
quantum field, many things can occupy the same space. They
vibrate at different levels, you know. And so there are

(21:04):
many people living in a different vibration, living in a
different world, and there are people living in another vibration
living in a world of fear and doubt and polarity
and hate, resentment, animosity.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
But what's being reported generally the lower frequencies, that's what's
being reported. Why the reporters don't live in the higher frequencies.
They are actors reading what they're supposed to report, So
they're not even they're just reporting from an old paradigm.

(21:44):
You're a reporter from the new paradigm. Individuals that have
these kind of conversations. We're beginning to report from what's
trying to emerge, whereas the old reporters are reporting from
the status quo. And if it leads, it leads. So
all of that allows me to be very optimistic. I mean,

(22:06):
an optimist is not a person doesn't see challenges. An
optimist is simply a person that knows there's a solution
to every challenge. So I live in that frequency.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, So is that why podcasts of certain frequencies are
getting more attention and more viewers and more listeners than
traditional media by landslides?

Speaker 3 (22:29):
I mean absolutely, it's not sanitized by sponsorship that say
you can't speak about ABC or D I was with.
I was at the Milkin Institute, I think was last
year speaking there, and Van Jones was speaking there as well,
and I went to a dinner with him and a

(22:50):
bunch of people with just me and him. He was
a bunch of folks and he was the speaker there,
and somebody asked him a question about, you know, his
position on the news, and I can't remember what the
question was, but he said this. He said, listen, the
news is curated. I'm on CNN, somebody else is on Fox,
somebody else is on They're all speaking to a demographic.

(23:12):
If I, he said, if I happen to agree with
a statement that a friend of mine is saying, and
he's actually a reporter on Fox, I'll get in trouble
if I say I agree with so and so because
I'm not supposed to agree with that, Or if he
hears something that I says and he says, oh, I
agree with man, he can't say he says. And Fan

(23:34):
went on to talk about that, but he went on
to say, you know, basically, if you want to get
really good information, he said, go to a podcast that
you trust the people that are doing real good research
and are really speaking. He says, that's where the new
territory is. It's in the podcast because the news that
we see, it's curated to a demographic, and that demographic

(23:59):
is going to hear what they already believe. They're not
going to get anything outside of their present paradigm, and
the sponsor's going to sponsor that. So I agree with
what you just said. The podcast is the territory where
people can begin to get new brown breaking insights and
revelations about spirituality, about science, about.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Whatever, right, because there's no quote unquote agenda that not
all shows, but some shows like what we do is
we try to bring up a their variety of people
like yourself and near death experience as a quantum physicist,
and in an ancient civilization story, and it's all of
it just to kind of start a different conversation. And
I never thought of it but that way. But we're

(24:38):
throwing out new ideas that just are not sanitized and
are introducing new ideas that you would have never even
thought about.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
So that's really fascinating.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
You're not going to hear it on NBC, buddy, no,
you UHO? Has this really carry into a very special
niche today, we're going to have the good news from
so and so. It's always at the end, at the
moment it gives you, like a two minutes of it.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
They stayed the cat out of that tree. Now back
to the war right.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Now.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
You've said a couple times in our conversation vibrations. Now
I understand what you mean by different vibrations at different
higher levels in the quantum field, both having something to
stay at the same place at the same time, but
at different vibrations. Is that why to kind of kind
of bring it down to earth for people who might
not understand that concept. Is that why people are attracted

(25:25):
to certain kinds of people like yourself, Like you said,
people like to be around you or you like to
be around other like minded people. Is that more like
you are being around people who are at the same
vibration as you are.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
It's simpatico. It's you know, birds of a feather flock together.
You know, if you are holding a certain vibration and frequency,
you're going to magnetize and radiate and discover those kind
of individuals. And oftentimes it feels like you know each other.
You know, it's like you're you're you're kind of coming

(26:01):
from a similar source. You've had different insights and revelations,
and you know, we have a body, but we're not
a body. We're we're more vibrational beings than we are
anything else, you know. We this is mainly water or
a certain special kind of water that's within us. And

(26:22):
then the rest is all frequency and vibration, you know.
And this is why if people listen, if they're, if
they're if their biome is clean, and they and their
gut is clean, they can have a gut reaction to something.
They can be around somebody and just feels like I
don't want to be around I don't want to go
into business with this person. No, he's sounding really good,
but I think there's some K nine teeth behind those

(26:43):
that tongue. You know. They can say no, I'm not,
or you can meet somebody else and it doesn't look
like the type of person you'd hang out with, but
you just feel like very close. This person can be
a partner, a friend, business associate. You know. The vibration
is simple, you know, and the frequency is high, and

(27:04):
if you listen with your being, you're generally right. The
first mind is generally right.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Now from your.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Point of view, How do you define a spiritually awakened
person all these awakenings that are happening, how would you
define that from your perspective?

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Well, when I first of all and finding the word
spiritual is not has nothing to do with the religion.
The word spiritual eternal. These are all interchangeable. So we're
all spiritual beings. We're all eternal beings that have emerged
from the eternal. So a spiritual being, an awakened being
is the one who has a who has awakened to

(27:43):
that they've come out of sleepwalking, They've come out of
the mass hypnotic spell of believing that they're separated from
their source, separated from the divine, separated from love, intelligence, beauty.
They're not living on an eye and thinking they're separated
from life. When you start to have an awakening, you

(28:04):
start to realize, oh, you're one with this life force.
There is no separation. The wave is waking up to
the fact that it's one with the ocean. The sunbeam
is waking up to the fact that it's emanating from
the sun. It's not a sunbeam can't even exist without
the sun. The wave can't exist without the ocean. We

(28:25):
can exist without being emanations of a presence that is
never an absence. So we wake up to that, and
it's startling to the ego because the ego lives in separation.
You know, it creates separation for survival. But then when
you transcend the ego perspective, you realize, oh my god,

(28:46):
I'm one with this flower. I'm one with all human beings.
I'm one with mother Earth. Let me take care of her,
let me be a good steward. I'm one with the presence.
And that's not blasphemy. What's blasphemy is to limit your
perception and to limit the presence in your life. But
when you open yourself up, oh, I'm one with all

(29:07):
of in life, capital l life. You know, I'm one
with life. We magnify it, we glorify it, we let
it flow through us and beings. That you mentioned near
death experiences, you know, I call them near life experiences.
You know that when people the testimony is always pretty
much the same. We're here to perfect our loving We've

(29:30):
never been separated from life, even though we may have
had the experience of separation, it was just the hypnotic
experience wasn't real. So when we wake up. We realize,
Oh my god, I'm one with this tree over here,
I'm one with the ground beneath my feet. There's only oneness,
there's only unity. Everything else is hypnotism. Everything else is

(29:51):
an illusion, and illusions can produce experiences, and experiences can
be suffering or painful, but they're temper. That which is
eternal is each and every one of us living as
a spiritual being. So we wake up to that. It's
a wake up call. Oh my god, I've been running

(30:12):
around in life anxious and afraid about something that doesn't
even exist.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Death right, Well, that's why near death experiences. Most of
them that I've spoken to, if not all, come back
completely changed with this exactly awakening when they get the
glimpse that go, oh, this is an illusion. We are
here to be one with everything it is, become transformed. Yes,
so hopefully we don't have to die to get this transformation.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Well that's the thing. I mean, the old religion which
you had to die and go to heaven. The new
spirituality is no, you die to your littleness and you
have heaven here.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Now we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show. Let me ask you, Michael,
when you had that lucid dream and those three men,
two of them holding it out, one stabbed you, did
you literally have to die and then come be reborn

(31:12):
to this new awakening of who you are?

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Now? That was my experience. It's not everybody, no, of course,
of course, but it was. It was very painful. And
when I woke up, a shift that occurred, and it
occurred so dramatically that most of the friends that I
had that particular time, I lost the friendships. I thought
I'd freaked out. And because they knew me more as
a revolutionary you know, change the world by any means necessary.

(31:39):
I was a part of, you know, different groups to
help change the world according to our particular perception. You know,
I was selling a weed at the time to fund
my way through USC and you know, and everything stopped.
It was like I never got high again. I didn't
drink any alcohol again. I wasn't a bigcoholic drinker anyway,

(32:00):
but I never smoked again. You know, it just fell off,
It just and so I lost my friendships and there
was a period of time where I was alone. I
wasn't lonely, but I was alone. I didn't have a
lot of friends. You know. I can remember this two things. One,

(32:21):
I went to all the people that i'd been running
with at that time and letting them know that the
spiritual world does exist. It's not a figment of my imagination.
The things I used to do I don't do anymore.
And then they fell off. Then I went over to
another friend's house. His name was Reggie. His wife was

(32:43):
sitting in the living room, standing in the living room,
and I walked in and I said, listen, I've had
this experience changed my life. There really is another dimension
of living. There are many, many dimensions of life. I've
been traveling. There are other beings. And de Wu's just
nodding at me, and Reggie's coming down the hallway, and
Reggie says, I believe you. I've been thinking along those lines.

(33:06):
So he became a running partner. And we were already
friends since we were childhood. And I thought I was
about to lose him too, because he was very revolutionary.
You know, he's working with the Black Panthers, and you know,
religion is the opening of the people, you know, And
he said, I believe you. And so he became my
running partner and we did. We went to every guru,

(33:28):
all the meditation retreats, we took silver mind control. We
did everything together, and eventually he changed his name to Nirvana,
you know, and he became a minister. He's passed over now,
but yeah, and then the other thing that happened was
I was sitting I used to work for the Mayor
of Los Angeles. I worked for Mayor Broadley Bradley. I

(33:48):
was the hand of all the senior citizens affairs in
the eighth Council Manic District. But I was by myself.
I was a weirdo, you know, and had this spiritual awakening.
I was weird to everybody. I was teaching metaphysics at
lunchtime to people who wanted to know about it. And
one day I was sitting at the field office. I
was having lunch outside and I looked up and I

(34:10):
saw this big ball of light with these beautiful colors
in it. And I was just staring at this ball
of light and wondering, what is that? And then my
eyes focused. It was a person and I was looking
at her aura Wow. And I went up and talked
to her. And she was a member of Self Realization
Fellowship and she was a meditator, and then that became

(34:32):
one of my first friends because we understood each other.
She was, you know, a novitiate of Para mahonsa Jobamanda,
and I was on my own, you know, practicing and
curating my own experiences. We became really good friends. So
that was like one of those two people were one
of my first couple of friends on the path that
I knew instantly from my heart.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
So, Michael, why do you think that these awakenings are
happy happening at this moment in history? Is a general
I mean, we've spoken about the vibration of earth, but
is that what is causing this vibe because I mean,
like we talked about forty years ago, thirty years ago,
there's nothing like this.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
There's no conversation.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
And let let alone a hundred years ago, you and
I would have been we would have been hung.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Up well the women. The women would have been burned
of the steak and the men would have been crucified.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
Very much, very much.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
That's that's the arc type.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Pretty much pretty much.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
So, well, what's.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Happening now is you have an intensity of necessity. It's
like with the climate emergency that we're facing the pollution,
the ocean that's being overly polluted and overly fished, the
rainforest that's disappearing. There are systemic issues, the prison industrial system.

(35:52):
Politics is nuts. You have junior high school people in
office just creating more and more polarity like they're they're
in junior high schoo know, he's to blame, he used
to blame, he used to blame. You know there there,
you know, so the ego it kind of people run
for these offices and you have a few statements statesments
in there, but you know, you know three fourths of
them have received money from pharmaceutical companies, you know, in Congress.

(36:16):
You know, so you have all these junior high school
people just trying to feed their gluttony. So you have
all this stuff happening on the planet, not just this
is not just America. You know, Great Britain is no
better than we are in terms of the politics and
other other countries. So I think that when there's a
there's a there's a crisis that's leading to a breakthrough.

(36:37):
You know, if you if you look at the often
used metaphor of the caterpillar going to the butterfly, you know,
the caterpillar eats, runs out of food, starts to spin.
It's you know, it goes into its cocoon, but it
becomes a liquid. The imaginal cells of the butterfly begin
to emerge. The imaginal cells are initially killed off by

(37:01):
the immune system of the caterpillar. It kills off the
new cells that are going to birth the caterpillar because
it's foreign, it's different. Then ultimately the imaginal cells proliferate
so fast that it overcomes the caterpillars immune system and
a new creature is born out of the crystalis comes

(37:24):
a different creature. It can fly, it's a butterfly. Well,
I think we're in the throws of an emergence of
something new. But the the the the the imaginal cell,
I mean, the defense system of the old is killing
off the new, you know, calling them crazy quacks, whack jobs.

(37:49):
There's no science behind the near death experience, you know,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Whether it's newness and
in health with alternatives of healing oneself, notice and education, whatever,
there's still seem to be on the skinny branches, on
the fringe, but it's proliferating. What it's called alternative, is

(38:13):
proliferating until, as Buck Minister Fuller would remind us, it's
not about destroying an old system. It's about allowing the
new system to emerge and making it so strong that
the old just kind of disintegrates because the new is
taking over. So I think we're in the we're at
the we're in the beginning stages of something new emerging,

(38:36):
and it will proliferate, it will magnify until there will
be a different kind of way we deal with each other.
Love will come back, will come back and be popular again.
Love is not popular right now. I always say, you know,
right now, the true revolutionaries on the planet are the lovers,

(38:56):
those who love, those who keep their heart open, those
that forgive, those that have compact and kindness that people
think that's soft. Those are the true revolutionaries. The ones
that are trying to fight and keep guns and shoot
people and rob people and and and be a macho
and you know the whole that's they're not revolutionary. The

(39:19):
revolutionaries are the lovers, you know. So I think that
this is what's emerging at this time in human history.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Now we've been talking a little a lot about the
individual awakening.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
What is your perspective.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
On humanity's consciousness as a collective and how we are
all either agreeing to this on a different vibrational level.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
To do all of this. Would you agree with that statement?

Speaker 3 (39:46):
There's different levels to that. Yes, that those individuals that
have said yes and are participating in their own evolution
are seeding the consciousness same way that Katama, the Buddhas,
ooreastor Jesus kwan Yin and other individuals hundreds of years

(40:06):
ago put into the newest fear the template of an
awakened being that's still here, that vibration is still here.
Now you have thousands of other people emerging that are
seeding the the atmosphere, the environment. Now, individuals still have
to choose that they're not just going to be pulled

(40:28):
into the next frequency because they're here at some point.
We have a level of sovereignty, we have a level
of free will. We have to say yes to it,
you know, we have to be interested in it. I
teach that, you know, we've all emerged from the atternity,
from the eternal, but we're made in the image and
likeness of God, which means that's a mean we look

(40:50):
like God. Because God is formless, so it's not like, oh,
I look like us. It means that we share a faculty,
and that faculties that we're able to think independent of
an experience. We can think independent of a circumstance or
a situation, so that everything that emerged out of nothing,
there was not a grain of sand. This infinite intelligence

(41:12):
birthed everything out of nothing but an idea. We have
the same faculty. We can birth a whole new life
out of an idea.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
So continuing with what I'm saying, we're at an old
stage of evolution where we we evolved because of adjustments
to the land mass and climate, to what is called
conscious evolution, where we are participating in our own evolution.
We are meditating, we are doing the life visioning process,

(41:52):
we're affirmatively praying. We're hanging with high minded, open hearted people.
So even though individuals are seeding, we'll still have to
choose to be interested in it. You have you have
to choose it. So I would say, yes, there's a
collective awakening happening, and more and more people are choosing
to be interested in the awakening, which then makes them

(42:13):
a candidate for insights and revelations as.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Your growth and my show's growth is a testament to
people are looking for this information. How long have you
had your church on your A.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Gope is in his thirty seventh year. I've been teaching three,
four or five years before I started Agape, so I've
been for decades in.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
So what was How has it changed.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
Now? The same people thought I was crazy, Now come
to a Gope.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
That guy's nuts, And now they knock on the door.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Can I come in?

Speaker 3 (42:47):
And now they're like, you know, can I meet with you?
Can you hold me in prayer? You know I'm going
to take a class, you know.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
So it's just it's just like the conversation is here now.
As you said earlier, you know, when the secret came,
you know, that was just a seed planting. You know,
there's a lot of things that people can criticize about it,
but you can't criticize the fact that, you know, you
don't criticize the model t you know, you develop a
new car, you know what I mean, So you don't
criticize the secret. It was. It jumped out there, you know.

(43:18):
So now there's there's more coherence around the ideas, there's
more understanding about action that has to take place, and
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But today there are
more and more people who are interested, who are listening,
who are going to classes, who are going on the
websites and studying and going to spiritual communities and reading books.

(43:40):
And it's a billion dollar industry. It wasn't a billion
dollar industry. I mean I used to say years ago
that people would read these spiritual books, but they would
cover it with paperbags. Nobody know that what they were reading,
and they would rather say they were reading porn that
a spiritual book, you know, right, it's a pornography, you know,

(44:02):
good for you, good for you, Joe okay, yeah, oh yeah,
you know. But now people will openly read you know, uh,
transformational books, you know, life visioning. Deepak Chopra might go
back with you know, Bruce lipped it. You know, they'll
read it now and not hide it. You know. So
the things that have changed and are still changing rapidly, what.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Do you think is the biggest challenge we have as
a species and on the individual level, where this awakening
to continueing to occur.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Well, people don't quite understand that their hate for other people,
whether it be color of the skin, sexual orientation, Uh,
what's what side of the allure are on in terms
of politics, They don't realize that their chain is being
pulled there. They are actually being hypnotized into that hate.

(44:56):
It's it's it's a part of how a civilization is controlled.
You you create that kind of atmosphere. There's the level
of self hate that's there, and then they train people
unconsciously to project that onto other people, so that there's
divisiveness in our society that keeps people from understanding how

(45:19):
powerful they really are. And if the individuals stood how
powerful they really are, they could change the status quote
in an instant. So people actually think that they hate
that person, that person they don't even know understand where
that hate came from. Somebody is a puppeteer actually controlling that.

(45:39):
And that's that's a big hindrance to evolution. People have
to wake up. And it's interesting. I was, you know,
I'm kind of a trekkie, you know, and I remember
seeing this old Star Trek with Captain the original Captain
Kirk and the Klingons and then we're fighting, you know

(46:00):
how they do? Sure, and they go to this planet
and the Klingons are trying to take over this planet,
and Kirk is trying to save this these people, and
they seemed totally unconcerned. They're unconcerned, you know, long story short,
these beings had already transitioned into living without a body.
They could manifest the body whenever they wanted to, and

(46:23):
they could be invisible, so they couldn't be hurt at all.
And then subsequently, there was an energy there that thrived
off of hate, that was creating the energy between the
Klingons and the Enterprise staff to be at odds with
each other. So as long as that was happening, this

(46:43):
other entity could survive and go strong and create havoc.
And once they figured it out in the Klingons and
the and the Enterprise staff started liking each other, so
they didn't want to be controlled by this other force.
You know that that happens right now. You know, there
are groups of people that I love the fact that
people don't get along mh and and and people actually

(47:04):
think they're thinking these thoughts, they're not. Their mind is
being hijacked, and their hate isn't real, you know. So anyway,
that's one of that, that's one of the obstacles. And
we already talked about some of the systemic issues in
our in our world culture that we're all facing simultaneously.

(47:26):
And then there's still individuals who are materialists, who if
you can't smell it and see it, taste it, touch it,
or hear it's not real. And so we call these
individuals dimensionally challenged. They're only living in three D. I mean,
living a whole life in just three dimensions. Oh, how boring,
you know. And uh, and then what happens is, either

(47:47):
through a crisis or a near death experience or something,
they begin to realize that there's something way beyond the sensorium,
way beyond which you can see physically or here audibly,
that's surrounding us. That's that's here, you know. So those
are those are some of the things that are hindering
are wider perception.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
It's it's so interesting how.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Uh Star Trek and for me it was Star Wars
as you can see have a Yoda behind me.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Yeah. I like Star Wars too, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Yeah, but it's so interesting that both of those and
stories in general and movies and books their seed planters
as well, and the seeds that were planted by Star
Wars and by Star Trek, yes, have been growing and
growing for I mean the concepts the Star Trek talked
about and the Wizard the sixties, right when the show
was originally aired.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Yeah, it was in It was in the sixties, and
they dealt with a lot of things, oh before it
was popular.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
The interracial the interracial kiss was the big one.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
It was it was it was, it was him, and
the two first interracial kisses were Perry Belafonte movies and
starts in Star Trek. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And people were upset,
well not everybody, I mean, you know, oh, I remember
when what's the lady's name, big actor put her hand

(49:10):
on Harry belaf It was her show. Yesna, she's saying down.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Yes, yes, yes, I said I saw that documentary.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, And they were they were going
to cut that out, and she says, the show is
not even going to be aired if you cut me
touching here a balafante, you know. And yeah, so they
start treking in Star Wars tuned everybody into the fact
that there was a force. There was right, there was
a field there's there's a rupture in the force. The
force is with you. You know that that planted a

(49:39):
whole set about a presence that's with us. You know,
you can get tuned with it, you see.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Yeah, right yeah, And that's what she is. Chea energy
or geek energy and all that. It's it's the same concept.
But it's fascinating how these ideas get dropped into the
mass media and how it affects really the world in.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Such a lot.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
I mean, I always use The Matrix as one of
those movies as well.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
That just absolutely I.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Love to me shifted perceptions of reality and the whole
the whole thing of quantum physics now with the simulation
theory and things, and this materialist that you were talking about,
quantum physics is throwing that all upside down and they're
fighting it and they're like no, no, no, no, that's not
like but here's the proof. Nah, but that's not real proof.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
But they can actually they have they have telescopes, microscopes
actually can see an electron, you know what I.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Mean, and between and between election.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
Between the space and show the movement of it based
on thought and and et cetera. But some people if
they can't see it and taste it, smell it, touch it.
Here it is not real to them, and they're living
life as an invalid. You know, they're living life on crutches,
basically because the sense, the sensorium are prosthetics of the sense,

(50:55):
of the spiritual sense, and they're living with their prosthetic
rather than the real sense.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Well, it's the galileto effect. It's the galile don't look
don't look through. I can't look through the microscope. I
can't look through the telescope and see that the sun.
This is our right.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Now.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
What would you suggest for someone who wants to consciously
participate in this shift. We'll be right back after a
word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
The number of ways to enter into One of the
quickest ways is to begin to become aware of what
question are you living in? And that is, you know,
we have questions that we ask all the times, consciously
and unconsciously, and some are empowering and some are disempowering.
So the average unconscious person asks questions like what's wrong,

(51:53):
Who's to blame? Why me, which puts a filter over
their perception so they can't see reality. If you ask
a question like what good is here that I presently
cannot see? Or what gift is trying to emerge through me?
If you start to ask empowering questions, the universal presence

(52:17):
via universal law will answer those questions, and you can
begin to walk in your empowerment. By asking what gift
is here I'm supposed to give, what power is within
me that's supposed to be unleashed, the universe will start
to speak to you in the language and in a
way that you can understand, and you'll start to walk

(52:37):
in the direction of your empowerment, of your awakening. Now,
of course, meditation is extremely important. Asking empowering questions is
extremely important. Any introspective exercises that help you curate your
questions or to notice what lies you're telling yourself? What
do I mean by that? Most people they live with

(52:59):
the of lies. Something happened to them. They've experienced some
kind of trauma in their life, and a lie happened.
I'm not supported, no one likes me, I'm unworthy, i
never will be good enough. These are all lies. Now,
a lie acts as a law until it's neutralized. The

(53:23):
truth is that each of us are spiritually heavy spiritually
merged from the eternal. All of us are unfolding perfection.
We're all worthy, we're all up to receiving more good
than we can imagine. Anything else is a lie. So
if you begin to watch your mind and the ego,
you can begin to see the lies you're telling yourself

(53:44):
that you've inherited from some experience that you were too
little to deal with at the time. And you start
to untangle those lies until you begin to tell yourself
the truth, and then you begin to see differently. Your
perception will change, and you begin to realize that you
were looking at life through those lies, the lens of
the lies rather than the lens of the truth. So

(54:09):
those are those are subtle ways that one can begin
to open themselves up to the field of infinite potential.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Yeah, and it is like our friend Bruce Lipton who
talked about those first seven years of programming, that's a
lot of those lies come in those seven years because
your parents are going to give you the same programming
that they got and they believed, because you're pretty much
almost an empty vessel.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
As you know.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
I always say, because I have kids, there's some programming
at the factory. There is some some programming in the
factory that come in and you have certain traits and personality.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, But the.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Belief systems and the beliefs of the world are programmed
in those first seven years and continue to be programmed afterwards.
But the real intense part is those first seven years, right.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
Yeah's you're the kids in alpha state, you know, and
just picking up on everything. Whatever the parents are listening
to on the news, the parents' beliefs, what they've inherited
from their parents in embryo, the conversations that were being had,
how they were imprinting when they first came out. All
that's imprinting our mind, imprinting our consciousness. But we're at

(55:18):
the stage of when we begin to wake up, we
begin to decide what goes in our awareness. You know,
we don't just allow the world to impress our mind,
nor are we trying to have a relationship with the world.
We're trying to have relationship with our real self, which
is eternal. Yeah, and then we begin to undo the imprints,
and that's called being reborn. You know, you had your

(55:41):
first birth coming through the womb, then you have your
second birth when you have an awakening. Oh, I don't
even believe that nonsense?

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Did I?

Speaker 3 (55:52):
Where did I get I was bad and unworthy and
not good enough? Where did that come from? It was
the sea of mental garbage.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Well, let me ask you this, then, how do you
reconcile traditional religious beliefs with this new consciousness shift? Because
I've from my own experience and from just being on
this show so much that when you rock someone's foundational beliefs,
if they believe in reincarnation and it counters what they've
been taught all their lives in a traditional or let's

(56:22):
say Christian or Jewish tradition or something like that, they
can't believe one idea that's separate from that because it
starts to starts to crack the foundation. And that's when
all this fighting and all this I have to kill
you and you are wrong and I am right. We
are the chosen people, not you, and all this ridiculousness.
So how do people reconcide if they are interested in

(56:43):
this awakening of consciousness but have this baggage of traditional
religious beliefs, how do you reconcile it.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
To Well, you know, and a person is in pain
or crisis, Eventually they start asking different questions, and they
eventually come to an awareness that, you know, the teachers,
whether you're talking about Gutama, the Buddha, whether you're talking
about yes who have been jealous of Jesus, the Christ, or.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Any of them.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
You know, what they spoke of is quite different from
the religion that formed around them. You know, so many
many people are are coming to an awareness that they
have been practicing the religion about Jesus rather than the
religion of Jesus, you know. And then and once they

(57:29):
do a little bit of study, they can say, oh,
I believe what Jesus believed. Now all this stuff built
around him, you know, all this stuff about hell and
salvation and nation and all that stuff that that was
man made. Men made that stuff up. There's anything with

(57:52):
the teachings, you know. And there's fundamentalism in every religion.
You'll find the fundamentalisms and Islam and Buddhism and Christianity,
you know. And so eventually an individual has to do
a deep dive and go back to the original teacher.
Wherever your culture is, you go back to the original

(58:12):
teacher and just study his or her words, not the religion,
just his or her words, you know, study the Bagavagita.
But meditate first, because it's metaphorical. You know, study dam
upon us. Study the Bible, but only the New Testament,
only the words of Jesus, you know, which is also
been curated to a degree. You'll come to a different

(58:36):
insight than if you study just the religiosity around it.
And so many people, I mean, the churches are empty
and out in drugs. These young people don't want to
go there anymore. They're not having a transcendental mystical experience.
They're they're being beat over the head about things. And
told I mean, I went to a church recently. There

(58:58):
was a young boy that was killed, that died. His
mother metaphysical. His father's father was a minister Baptist. So
that's where the memorial service was. And I had an
opportunity to speak there, but I forgot, I mean, went

(59:18):
he went up and he started talking about first of all,
women couldn't come to the pulpit, women couldn't wear pants,
women couldn't have it that, they couldn't wear hats. And
he started saying, well, we searched the scriptures, and we
don't think he's going to go to hell. By the
way he died. He's not going to go to Hell,
so we're happy about that. And then he just talked.

(59:46):
It was almost like it was a performance art piece
of the past, except that it was present and it
was really hard, and it was like, Wow, people used
to go to these kind of churches, and I imagine
some people still do. And I wasn't into heavy judgment
about it. It was just more of why this is
still going on? Hm hmm. Just blessed him, blessed everybody

(01:00:10):
and said, you know, got out of there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
The energy wasn't right. I get you, no, So how
did you navigate that? By the way, I'm just curious,
how did you navigate your You've spoke in front of them,
so yeah, I just generalize it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
I'll tell you a story, uh that that serves me well,
and that is doctor Howard Thurman, who was a great
mystical theologian. He was mystical and he transcended Christianity, met
with Gandhi brought the non violt teachings back to doctor King.
He was King's mentor and I met him. I went
I stayed in Thurman Hall when I went to Moorrow's College,

(01:00:49):
and I met doctor Thurman. He said. I heard him say,
one day.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
You know, you're going to be put in the places
where people may not understand you, or they may even
hate what you're saying. And he said, he said something
along the lines of, you know, just talk about your
best friend, which is the presence. Just talk about your
best friend, could be the teachings of Jesus. So my
grandmother had made her transition. This is a number of

(01:01:26):
years ago, and I was invited to give the eulogy.
And it was in the church that my great grandfather founded.
My two great grandfathers founded this church, Saint Luke's Baptist
Church in Washington, d C. So my grandfather, great grandfather
Arthur Chittister and my great grandfather Frederick Greenwich, they were

(01:01:48):
the founders of this church. So I'm speaking in this church.
The minister of the church at that time was upset
that he wasn't doing the eulogy and that I had
come from this weird religion. So I'm in the I
did a red eye to be there on time to
do the service. I'm in the back room meditating. This
is my grandmother. I was very close to her. I'm

(01:02:09):
meditating and they come in. I mean it's like six
or seven of these ministers. He says, what, uh, what
is your what is your what is your philosophy? What
is your theology?

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Sir?

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
And I'm you know, I'm shocking. I'm meditating. This is
my grandmother. I have some sadness moving through me. You know,
what is your theology? And why are you speaking? And
I say, well, you know, this is the church my
great grandfather founded and my grandmother was a member here,
and they want me to do the service, and my

(01:02:40):
theology is the teachings of Jesus. And they looked at
me really weirdly, you know, like we know that's not true,
you know. So anyway, I go out to speak and
they're sitting behind me, and they're just stoic. You know.
I'm this young guy. They're a little older. And I said,
and I remember Thurmin's words, and I said, I'm going

(01:03:03):
to talk about my best friend, and today my best
friend is Jesus. And I began to teach about the
teachings of Jesus. I began to teach that the Kingdom
of Heaven was at hand, the Kingdom of God was
within all the teachings. He is done unto you as
you believe upon the ground upon which you were standing

(01:03:24):
is holy because you're standing there. I weeded it all
into a eulogy about my grandmother and who she was,
and that these spiritual qualities that she emanated are still
alive because they're God given. They're not human, you perfect them,
but they're come from God. So she's still alive. Anyway,
I started teaching all of this, and little by little
they start to and they started Amen, brother, Oh my God, Amen,

(01:03:47):
oh go. You know, they went from being the sand
hindering and the Pharisees to an amen corner, you know.
So I pulled upon that vibration. When I spoke at
this Baptist, I just spoke about eternal life, the teachings
of Jesus encapsulated into this boy's life, and sat down.

(01:04:08):
I wasn't gonna not be me, you know, but I
knew where I was, so I knew I would curate
more of the teachings of Jesus. I didn't teach not
just about Jesus, but of enrolled into a brief eulogy.
And it's all good.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
That's a great story, Michael.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Now, Michae'm gonna ask a few questions, ask all of
my guests, what is your definition of living a fulfilled life?

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
Living a fulfilled life is being on the edge of
you're unfolding. It's a you're fulfilled. If you're growing, you're
fulfilled if you're becoming more yourself. And in growing and
becoming more yourself, you become a generative being, meaning you
are here to contribute, to serve, to give. That's a

(01:04:59):
radiance of compart and kindness, generosity, and whatever your gifted
area is. Everybody can't do everything, but everybody is here
to share and to give something. So you're not fulfilled
if you've just taken, if you've just lived the life
of acquiring stuff, you live a full life. You're living

(01:05:20):
a full life if you're circulating, if you're sharing and
shining and radiating and giving and being on the edge
of greater discovery of who you are. So the idea is,
you know, is to live on the edge. You know,
if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up
too much space.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Yeah, beautiful, my friend.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
Now, if you could get in the time machine and
go back in time and talk to little Michael, what
advance would you give him?

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
You know, you're you're asking me a question about something
that happened for me for real.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Okay, Well, first of all, where is the time machine?
And can I get a ride?

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
I was I was twenty this I was a little kid.
That was twenty six. Twenty six, twenty seven, I had
my spiritual awakening. I was three years into it and
I had been invited to speak at the Senior Citizen
Center in the Valley. I didn't have any degrees at
this time. It's just Michael. People just like me. They
wanted to be around me. They wanted me to come speak.

(01:06:17):
So I'm driving to the valley and I'm wondering, what
is my life going to look like? What am I
going to do with my life? I had this awakening.
People like being around me. People have called me for counseling.
They're sending me donations, but nothing had formulated. It was
just you know, and I had a job. I remember

(01:06:38):
always remember this. It had been raining and then the
rain stopped and the sun parted the clouds. It was
a very beautiful day and I had a vision. This
vision Michael, my future. Michael came to me and said, Michael,
don't worry about your future. Keep doing what you're doing.

(01:06:59):
I'm here, I made it, I'm good. Just keep doing
what you're doing. You'll be guided. And I came out
of that somewhat of a trance. I went to do
the talk talk when fine. People love what I had
to say. And so now fast forward. That was in
the seventies, late seventies when that happened, and so fast

(01:07:23):
forward we're in the late eighties, maybe in early nineties.
I'm speaking at a Wednesday evening service at Agapi International
and there was a moment of transcendence. This energy was
just flowing through me powerfully. I'm driving home and I
feeling very moved. I'm very conscious that I'm quote unquote

(01:07:46):
in an altered state. It's a real state of coherence.
And I'm driving, pulling into my driveway and I I'm
getting ready to do the clicker and go into my
driveway to my garage, and I have a vision. In
this vision, I see Michael. He's twenty six, twenty seven
years old. He's driving to the valley. He's asking the

(01:08:06):
question what am I going to do with my life?
And I say to Michael, Michael keep doing what you're doing.
I'm here, I made it. We're good, man. Keep doing
what you're doing. Don't worry about the future. You're taking
the right steps. Keep listening. I'm talking to him. And
so I've had the experience of being the young Michael
asking and then being Michael in the future telling him,

(01:08:29):
and I said, I've broke into tears. I just started crying.
I'm in my driveway just crying. I sat in my
car for a long period of time, just crying about
the meaning of it all. And then right above my
right side up and here there was a me saying
there's more to come through you like that, you know.

(01:08:52):
So I told Michael, it's going to be okay. Keep
doing what you're doing. I think if I could talk
to young Michael, i'd go to that eleven year old
and when he was having that awareness, and I say, hey, man,
you're waking up. Don't shrink for the world. Even though
don't shrink for the world, I mean, because I got.

(01:09:14):
What happened was I got closer and closer to my mother,
my grandmother, and my uncle, and I didn't know what
to do because what they were looking at was not
who I was I wasn't just a son, a nephew
or a grandson. I was something else. I didn't have
the words four days left. I didn't know what it was.
And I shrunk, and I acted like you know, Michael,
I acted like little Michael. I would tell Michael, don't

(01:09:35):
do that. Don't shrink, because he shrunk a few times
in life until until that opening in a college, I
shrunk a few times. Don't shrink. You're okay. Stay open,
it's good. I would tell him to stay open.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
How do you define God?

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
Love, intelligence, beauty? That's everywhere. A presence that is not
an absence does not come or go. You don't have
to pray for God to come because the presence is omnipresent.
This presence is everywhere. It's actually capital al life that's

(01:10:17):
conscious of itself.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
And finally, what is the ultimate purpose of life?

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
The ultimate purpose of us, what the universal presence is
up to, is producing an individual that can perfectly reflect
the entire cosmos as an individual. This is why we
love Buddha, Jesus and Zoiastri because in their culture and

(01:10:45):
in their time, they perfect reflected the entire cosmos according
to their particular culture and what they had curated in
language at that particular time. So our purpose is to
actually reveal the presence according to our uniqueness. There's no
two people to say, so we get to perfectly reflect
and what is that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
It's love, it's beauty, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
Intelligence, it's order, it's harmony, it's abundance, it's all of that.
That's what the universe is up to producing an individual
that can perfectly reveal that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show. And where can people
find out more about you and the amazing work you're
doing in the world, my friend.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
There's a couple of ways. You can go to the
website agape live dot com. That's the portal right into
the spiritual community. I speak every Sunday. There three services meditation, service,
into worship, celebration, fellowship services. You can go to my
podcast it's called Take Back Your Mind, and it's a

(01:11:54):
I have guests on there and we have great conversations.
Sometimes I do solo and just answer questions. You can
go to my Instagram page. I do something there every day.
I put some kind of up what I think to
be uplifting, educational, inspirational message I do. I still do
a few Instagram lives every Wednesday morning. My Facebook page

(01:12:18):
is up, so those are the ways you can go
to Michael beckwith dot com as well. Go straight to it.
It's being revamped right now, but it's still up and
it's being curated to go to another level of greater service.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
And do you have any parting messages for the audience?

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
I would say to everyone listening, I would say that
you are a unique emanation of life itself. There's nothing
missing in you. You're not looking for your missing piece.
The answers are within you. Do a deep dive within yourself,

(01:12:56):
find some level of spiritual practice that you're resonating with
right now, and you'll discover there aren't any closed doors
in this multi dimension universe. You'll be walking through your
own perception of a door into the bounty of your
own being. Be free, Be.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
Free, my friend, Thank you so much for coming on
the show. It has been a pleasure and honor speaking
to you today. And please continue your amazing work on
the planet and up in us. All away and my friend,
thank you again.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
This is my joy. Thanks for the invitation.

Speaker 1 (01:13:29):
I want to thank Michael so much for coming on
the show and sharing his knowledge with all of us.
If you want to get links to anything we spoke
about in this episode, head over to the show notes
at next levelsoul dot com Forward slash three zero five. Now,
if this conversation stirred something in you, there's more waiting.
You can listen to this episode completely commercial free on

(01:13:50):
next level Soul TV's app where soul meets streaming. Watch
and listen on Apple iOS, Android, Apple TV, Ruku, Android TV, Fire,
tv LG, and Samsung apps anytime anywhere. Begin your awakening
at next levelsoul dot tv.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
As I always say, trust the journey.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
It's there to teach you. I'll see you next time.