Michael Beckwith CYL SOULFEST.Docx
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[Liz Dawn]: Hi there. My name is Liz Dawn and I am the CEO and cofounder of Mish ka Productions and Celebrate Your Life events and it is such an honor to be d oin g is a Celebrate Your Life online SOULFEST. It is our 25th anniversary. It is the first time we have ever rolled out anything online. Our Celebrate Your Life events have been going live for 25 years. So this is such a special treat to be able to do this live o n lin e . I do want to acknowledge our sponsor Un ity World Headquarters and Un ity Online radio. It is such an honor to have them sponsor our programs. And today we are here with Michael Bernard Beckwith and what an honor to have Michael here with us today. Welcome Michael. [Mich a e l Be ckwith ]: Welcome to you. Thank you. Congratulations on 25 years of doing such amazing events. [Liz Dawn]: Michael Beckwith is the founder and director of the international spiritual center located in Los Angeles where thousands of people join him every sin gle we e k for services, not only live and in person, but worldwide. You live stream, [Michael Beckwith]: Most of the congregation now is around the world. We have a few thousand on Sunday, but you have about 20,000 on Facebook live and you have thousands more on the website. So most of the people who are now out in the world. [Liz Dawn]: Wow. That's kind of amazing, right? What technology can do. Now, so I know a little something about all of these fantastic titles that you have, but would you share like you've been knighted, you've been all these like special things. Page 1 [Michael Beckwith]: Okay. I'm Reverend. I'm Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith. I have two honorary doctorates. I've been knighted. So I'm a Sir and I'm a chief in Ghana. So I have all these titles all in the name of being a servant of the light and the servant of love and to servant of expanded consciousness. [Liz Dawn]: So do we need to say like Reverend Dr Sir Chief Michael Bernard Beckwith. [Michael Beckwith]: Let's say Michael, the founder of Agape International. [Liz Dawn]: How long have you been running Ag a p e [Mich a e l Be ckwith ]: We're in our 33rd year. We just celebrated our 33rd year. [Liz Dawn]: Okay, so you had to have started when you were like 10 years old. [Mich a e l Be ckwith ]: I was six. They used to call me the boy preacher when I started, I was the youngest person in my spiritual counseling class, to become a p ra ctition e r and then I was young when I started Ag a p e . Th e y used to call me the boy, the elder citize n s u se d to ca ll m e the boy. I love that. [Liz Dawn]: And how old were really you were, you were like in you r 20s. [Mich a e l Be ckwith ]: I was in my twenties when I received my firstt license as a spiritual practitioner. Then when did I graduate? So I was probably, I don't know, 29, 30 when I graduated from the school. [Liz Dawn]: How did you jump into this? What was your introduction? [Mich a e l Be ckwith ]: I was pulled into it actually. I, I was attending USC as a psychology major and I began to have a series of inner exp e rie n ce s th a t u ltim a te ly led to this tremendous awakened awakening that I could never get back in that box Page 2 again. So I went on a research project to discover what had happened to me, bumped into the mysticism of the ages, meditation. And it changed the trajectory of my life. Now at that time, I didn't see myself as a public person. I had a, just a very intimate relationship with the presence is very real to me. It was more real than the 3D reality. And eventually I did receive a license for spiritual counseling , but I didn't want to be a public person. I wasn't trying to start a community or be a minister or any of that. I loved the one on one. I saw like six to eight people every single day in my practice, five, six days a week, had seminars, things like that. And I kept getting the pull to start something. I resisted it. I went into a school of higher consciousness, a school of ministry, not to become a minister, just to take more classes. I did five years in that three year program and the fifth year the assistant Dean comes up to me and she says, Michael, when are you gonna graduate? I said, I'm not trying to graduate, I'm ju st enjoying taking classes. And she said, well, you know, once you graduate, the classes are free. So I took a full load and graduated. Then the energy of starting something was on me. I resisted as long as I could. And finally I capitulated and cause my life started falling apart. The end, it was a new energy trying to emerge in me. So I said yes and started a vision group for the national spiritual center in 1985 and launched Ag a p e in 1986 and so I give you the short version because resistance was a long time. [Liz Dawn]: I understand about resistance, but you really, everyone knows who you are in the world because you've been on the Oprah Winfrey show. You have not only been on the Oprah Winfrey show, you've been on dr Oz, you've been Own, you've been on SuperSoul Sunday and Oprah named you as one of the top spiritual teachers in our world. Pretty much. Yeah. What an honor. Page 3 [Mich a e l Be ckwith ]: An d n on e of th a t wa s on m y vision b oa rd . It wa s a ll like , I ca ll it spontaneous goodness, just like evidence that you're, you're walking in the right direction and staying committed to, to what I said I was going to be committed to, which was first my own growth. And then secondly, sharing, right? So I look back and I see a lot of things that I've had the opportunity to be about and I'm very, very happily surprised about it. Embrace it and keep on stepping. And you have, trademarked, wonderful process called the life visioning process, which I love. Can you te ll u s a little b it a b ou t th e life vision in g p roce ss? Life vision in g p roce ss is actually the technology I use to start Ag a p e . And it represents the next stage of technology where metaphysics is concerned. The beginning stages are of course, visu a liza tio n . Th e re -enchantment of our imagination, creative imagination. You know that's one stage and it's a very powerful state and we have to master. [Michael Beckwith]: The next stage is visioning where we become aware that there's something within us, not on a personality level but on a soul level that wants to emerge through us. Just as within a rose seed is a rose inside of there. Now that rose seed can use the imagine if it had human con sciou sn e ss, it cou ld im a gin e itse lf being an Oak tree, but it's not going to be an oak tree. Because intrinsic to that seed as a Rose. So there are gifts and talents and capacities within us that are intrinsic to u s in d ivid u a lly, u n iq u e ly. So th e visio n in g process instead of seeing what you want, which might be from the personality, you're actually embracing what's trying to emerge in you. It's already there. Your destiny, what you agree to before you even got here. So you learn how to listen to that. You learn how to articulate, you learn how to then surrender to it, which may go against what your personality wants from time to time. What eventually provides the context for true happiness because you're being yourself, not just being what your parents wanted you to be Page 4 or what society wanted you to be or your religion wants you to be? It's what your sou l wants. So that's the technology. I mean, that's the context of the technology. [Liz Dawn]: I think so many of us struggle with that. So teach me how to do t h a t. I mean, teach me right here, right now, Michael, how to do that. You know, in terms of how to know the difference, how to discern the difference from the personality, from the ego to that soul place. Because that's a process that I know everyone would love to learn about. [Mich a e l Be ckwith ]: It’s an ongoing process because you become se n sitive to you r spiritual faculties. Now what I teach is that we don't see, because we have eyes, we have eyes because we see, we don't hear because we have ears, we have ears because we hear, in other words, is a spiritual faculty of sight and hearing that produced the eyes that created the ears.