Super Soul Special: Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith: Manifest the Life of Your Dreams
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I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.

Michael Bernard Beckwith founded the Southern California-based Agape International Spiritual Center in 1986, blending both Eastern and Western spiritual principles. The 9,000-member Agape community focuses on a core message of peace, unconditional love, and our unique oneness with God.

He teaches that the vision we set for our lives begins a sacred process of unfolding that unlocks everything that is unique, mighty, and magnificent inside each of us.

I'm excited I get an hour of you to myself, not in a pulpit, on a stage, just to probe your mind about how we all can create a life vision for ourselves. But I think about people who have circumstances that aren't as good as mine or yours. Is it possible to life vision when you're at the bottom? Not only is it possible, that's probably the best time to do it.

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. And not even, not just even what should I do? Not even what should I do? Not what should I do? But the universal 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 interprompting.

There'll 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 too.

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'll 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. And that is available to every human being. 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 universe will answer. That's the way it operates.

I actually had my first agape experience recently and it was like church but also not like church. So is that how you envisioned it? So when you come to agape, as you've seen, everybody's there. Right. Old, young, black, white, straight, gay, Christians, Muslims, Jewish people, everybody's there worshiping the one God.

And in the field of love. And the gospel that you preach is based on the gospel of... The teachings of Jesus. Yes. Absolutely. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. We also embrace all of the other great teachers on the planet. We transcend religiosity. And when you go deep enough into those teachings, there's no contradictions. Mm-hmm.

You know, it's interesting. I was raised in a church, Baptist church, where every first Sunday they pass around the grape juice and you take the communion and this is my body.

And I never actually felt a sense of communion. When I was at Agape, as I looked around, what I felt was this is what communion is. Yes. This is what it means to commune and to come together of a like mind and a like spirit. And, you know, the words people speak to each other and the way you are embraced. That is what communion is.

And what does that impact of communion have on our souls, do you think? First of all, 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 communing with God, we can commune 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

a kind and just global society from that sense of communion with the presence. Absolutely. That's never an absence. So I know one of your life tenets that you speak about in life visioning is teaching people to participate in what you call the unfolding. Yes. The unfolding. And you talked a little bit about this in Super Soul Sessions. You tell people there's something unique, mighty, and magnificent within each of us, and it's our job to let that unfold from within us. How does that journey begin?

It goes back to asking the question. But it also goes back to understanding that the presence of God has never made a mistake, 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.

And so doesn't that help answer that question too? Because you know, I talk a lot about purpose and people are like, "I don't know what my purpose is." And I always feel your purpose is wherever you are unfolding in the moment. Is it not? Yes. 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. And 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? Yeah. I was just saying this to a friend recently who is stuck

and feeling like I've done all the things to manifest properly and it isn't happening. And, you know, and I said, "Well, you have to look at what you're pushing against." The point is that you have to be in alignment with it. 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. Yeah. I know this person said, "I prayed. I did that."

God hadn't answered me yet. This is the deal. God is always answering. Yes. But are we receiving? Are we listening? Are we available? Yes. So prayer, meditation, life visioning, it attunes us to become in 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 vibrationally ready.

So how do we get-- this is absolutely-- this fascinates me, this conversation. Because there have been times, I know in everybody else's experiences, where you think about something or you think about a person and that person calls you. Right. Then there are other times where that doesn't happen. I remember one day I manifested tomato soup. I was on my farm and up comes my neighbor with-- I couldn't even believe it. So I was like, how did I do that? How did I do that? I want to be able to do that again. But it's a space where--

I wanted it, but if it didn't come, I would also be okay. That's it. Yeah. That's called the let go. Yeah. Is that, that's what it is. You know how people do wishing wells? They throw a coin and they forget about it. Yeah. And then the thing shows up because they had an intention.

Then they let it go. They don't even think about it anymore. Right. 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. Yeah. Because when you want it, want it, 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, which is translating into, 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. So you can't receive it. So you end up blocking your own blessing. Totally. In that way. When did you come to know this? When did your level of connection, spirituality, and alignment reach the space that went beyond religion? I had left religion at a young age. And so I was pretty much agnostic going through college. I went to Morehouse College and I transferred to USC.

And so at USC, I had a spiritual awakening. I woke up. I had a lucid dream in which I was killed. And when I woke up, I could see tremendous beauty everywhere and the love of God penetrating my being. And I had to go on a search to discover what had happened to me. And so that-- You had a lucid dream? A lucid dream. I was awake in the dream. Three men came after me. And this dream had been going on a year. I'm just shortening the story here. OK.

culminated with two of the men holding me down. One man stabbed me in the heart. The pain was physically and emotionally intense, excruciating. This is your dream? This is my dream, but I could feel it in my physical body. Okay. I screamed out. I woke up. The beauty everywhere. I mean, animate and inanimate objects, brilliant, shining. The light everywhere. The love I was feeling from God everywhere.

just penetrating my entire being. It was like, "Wow!" And the dream? I woke up now. Now I'm awake. You're awake. I'm awake. And I knew something had happened. So I began to do my research now to discover what had happened to me. And that's when I bumped back into the teachings of Jesus and all the other great teachers who talked about this luminosity, the light that lights up every man and woman that cometh into the world, the true light that was found in Jesus. That was a born-again experience. Yes, it was totally shifted, my whole perception.

And I was considered weird. I was considered, you know, Michael's off his rocker. He's a Jesus freak. What happened to him? Because the guy that went to bed that night was not the same person that woke up. And my life has been on an unfolding arc of falling more and more and more in love with his presence and being more and more of service.

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So let's talk about that unfolding. You say that that journey comes in four stages of spiritual growth. The first stage is something you call victim consciousness. Can you explain that to me? Yes. Victim consciousness is where many people live. Yeah. Somebody did it to me. The reason why I'm not happy is because they 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 to me. My mother. My karma. Yeah. Okay. That's the victim stage. Every victim has a victim 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 Lou Hamer 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, maybe I'm in my own way. Maybe there's something more than what meets the eye. And would you say that if you are stuck and you are sick and tired of being sick and tired, if you're in that space where

there's no movement and you've tried everything that it means you need spiritual momentum or you need an awakening. Yes. 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.

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. Recently I had to say that. Tweet, tweet. 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 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. I

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. You're not denying that those things have happened. But it's the energy that you give to it. That is a definite true fact. If you start talking about somebody or you're engaged in a conversation where you're gossiping, before long, you're just spiraling down. Energy goes into those lower frequencies. Doubt goes into those lower frequencies.

worry, fear, all... 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. 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 a "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.

What about this dark night of the soul you speak about? You know, everybody's heard that phrase, the dark night of the soul. There are people who have that dark night and kind of abide in that space so they never really get past it. But the dark night of the soul is there for what? 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 this particular experience was going to last forever, 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 and your identification through it. You move through it faster. Yeah, the other not you're not like hunkering in on the suffering of it, right? And you also say pain pushes us until a larger vision pulls us right? That's that's one of my favorite statements is pain pushes until the vision pulls so life is progressive and

You're good. You're good. You are tweet a minute. The universe is progressive. Yeah. And it's pushing you until you get pulled by a larger vision. So once you have a vision that you can articulate. Okay, so pain pushes you. So it's hard, it's harder, it's harder, it's harder. And it's trying to force you into having a vision. Yes.

that's bigger than the pain. 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. So when you begin to have a vision... Oh, this is good. I'm going to shout in a minute. This is good. This is really good. Amen. You begin to have a vision.

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. I'm going to walk in the direction of that possibility and the potential instead of allowing myself to go, oh, woe is me or I can't believe. I'm going to walk in the... This is a good talk. Then you're not pushed. You can preach it. You can preach this. It's a good talk.

This will preach. Oprah told me to preach this. You should preach this. So you walk in the direction of the potential and the possibility instead of being stuck here. Then you're not as pushed as much. The cosmic two by four doesn't need to hit you as much. Wow. You're pulled. You're being pulled more by joy and it's like I'm being pulled by something. 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.

So this is how you learn to manifest, which is the stage two, is by understanding that principle of the push and the pull. Understanding that pain pushes until 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.

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let's talk about vibration you use it a lot in your uh teaching and i noticed like everybody at agape is on a on the same vibrational frequency and using that language and i don't know when it was i first got it that there is a energy and a frequency to everything yes and that your whole

Role and goal in life is to line up with whatever is the frequency that is gonna allow you to move in the flow of your your own life Well, how did you discover this? It's back in the 80s I started using that terminology because I became aware that you know, we are vibrational beings, you know, we're not just flesh and blood You know if you put anything under a microscope an intense microscope you can ultimately see that everything is vibration and

And as the scientists are now 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 manifests in our life.

So people who are holding on to rancor, animosity, they're slowing down their vibration. Okay. I just had an aha there. You're actually, when you recognize your vibrational frequency, you're drawing into yourself all the time, literally, the vibration that is most like what you're putting out. Right. Correct? Right. You cannot, another way of saying is you cannot have what you're not willing to become vibrationally. If you do get it, you'll lose it. Ah.

You see, this is why people, they'll win the lottery, they lose everything, or they'll finally get the person they think they want to be with. Absolutely. 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 vibrationally 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 that in vibration. Oh, that's so good. You need to repeat it. That is so good. Isn't that a... Look. Hallelujah! Hallelujah. That is so good. You're not really attracting things to you. You're really radiating. It's really a radiation. I could cry right now. I felt that so strongly. That's going to resonate with a lot of people. Yeah, you're radiating it from within out.

It's like if I become the vibrational frequency of love, harmony, peace, and I'm radiating that... That's the key. ...it's going to show up in my life. That's the key. That's the word. You're not attracting it. You have to be it and radiate it, and then it comes, it is drawn to you. Right. And you to it. So then the work then becomes about you working on yourself. Yes. Yeah. You have to like yourself when you're by yourself.

Yeah. 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.

Correct, you see. You also talk about wealth in the way that, you know, the idea of manifestation can be confusing to people because a lot of people think, you know, I manifested my wealth or I manifested my husband, my possessions. But you say that you limit your true spiritual potential if you get attached to those things. Right. Those are wonderful signposts along the way. They're wonderful blessings. But at the bottom line, we're here to unfold our soul.

Bottom line. Bottom line. We're here to-- there's so much good within us. Yes. Is that the purpose of human experience, you think? 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 the 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 unfoldment. I can actually choose to be better. So you teach the power of life visioning. What is the difference between visioning and visualization?

This is a great question. This is good. Visualization, that's stage two. That's manifestor 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 manifests. 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 the life force? Yes, it's the life force. It's my unique. 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. So it's not a physical vision or visualization, like visualization is like I imagine myself to be... In Hawaii, or you imagine yourself to have this house or this car. No, it can include that, but it transcends that. You're actually becoming in tune with your purpose. Got it. It's a higher level. It's a higher level. It's the next level of unfolding. It's the next level of unfolding. That's what it is.

It is the next level. So it's like channeling, which is the next level of unfolding. Yeah, being a channel is the third stage is I realize that I am a place through which the infinite expresses. Oh, this is good. You see, I'm available. So we use words like surrender, yielding, allowing, letting. Opening. Opening. I'm available. I'm surrendered. Now what happens? We come into...

frequent encounters with the zone or the flow. Yeah. You know, when you 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. And something is God, you know, something taught me. When you allow yourself to be the channel through which the infinite flows through. Right. 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 happens.

And the moment you think not, you become available. You become a channel for such beauty and greatness and love and giving and creativity. And then by stage four, you are like...

I don't know if it's all the time. It's like agape on a Sunday morning all the time. That's stage four. Yeah, you feel you're at one with God, you know, and it doesn't take away from God. As a matter of fact, to limit the presence of God is to blaspheme the presence, you see. So you just feel connected. It's a connection. Yeah. And that's stage four is my life is the life of God itself.

Because there's no other life outside of God. God is infinite. Who can live in that all the time? I love it. I've had... You've had moments. Moments. I've had glimpses. I've had moments. I've had, you know, like little... Yeah. Where you can feel it. But just to be there all the time. I don't know if being there all the time is a part of this plane. Is it?

I think that you just get to higher and higher levels of it. I would agree with that. Yes. And you find yourself today at a higher frequency than you were 10 years ago. Absolutely. And if you're not, then you're not evolving on the planet. And 10 years from now, you want to be at a higher frequency than you are now. Thank you. Thanks for blessing us with your words and your presence. Thank you.

I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.

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