Tami Simon: Today I speak with Michael Beckwith. Michael is a humanitarian, peace activist, and founder and spiritual director of the Agape International Spiritual Center in Los Angeles. He is the author of Spiritual Liberation: Fulfilling Your Soul’s Potential, as well as the Sounds True audio learning program Life Visioning: A Step-by-Step Process for Realizing Your Highest Potential. Here’s Michael Beckwith sharing the story of his own spiritual awakening and the discovery of what he calls eternal truth.
I’m curious–of all the life paths why you chose to be a reverend. Or were you chosen? How did that work?
Michael Beckwith: I fought against being a reverend. In fact, in my younger days I was more agnostic even considered myself atheistic and I really didn’t have a high regard for reverends. I thought they were good people but some of them were selling things I didn’t quite believe in. So I am shocked, in a sense that I ended up on this path. I had a tremendous spiritual awakening, which allowed me to pursue Eastern, Western mysticism and became a spiritual counselor, and then the next stage was to go through the school and become a minister. And even when I did that I wasn’t planning on being a public figure. I liked my way of life of doing the counseling and doing the teaching and being on the faculty at the university. I never wanted to be a minister. I was kind of pulled into it. There was something that wanted to erupt and express that way and I fought it for a number of years, actually. To the point where I even had a crook in my neck and the moment I surrendered, and said okay, I’m going to walk in this direction, my neck snapped back into place. And so my resistance manifested physically as a neck problem.
So, I’m shocked. And you know what, I don’t really think of myself as a minister or a reverend. I really just think of myself as an individual who just loves the Presence, whatever name we choose to call it, whether we call it the Presence, the God, the love energy, whatever. I just love the Presence and seek to be a vehicle of teaching about it.
Tami Simon: Let’s go back for a moment. You say you had a tremendous spiritual awakening. So what happened?
Michael Beckwith: This was early twenties. I was attending USC and I had a series of experiences that I didn’t know what they really were. And at that time they would have been labeled pathological.
Tami Simon: Like what? Pathological?
Michael Beckwith: I was in the psychobiology department. I was going to be a doctor. And we had to go to these homes to work with kids who had some mental problems. And when I would talk to them they would tell me about hearing the voices and having visions, and I was, too. So here I am talking to them about something that I’m having. But I couldn’t tell anyone about having these experiences because they were pathological. They weren’t seen as normal. So that was going on.
Tami Simon: Let’s just unpack this slowly. What kind of things were you hearing? What kinds of visions were you having?
Michael Beckwith: At the time I was leaving my body a lot. I would think about people and I would suddenly be projected into their living room looking at them. I was like hearing this cadence of voices that were like giving me knowledge and information, and I would try to shut it out. I thought I was going crazy. This went on for a period of time, and it culminated with–and during this time I was having a dream and had the same dream every night. In this dream three men were chasing me, but I always woke up before they would catch me. But every night they were a little closer. So at one point, they were very close, and I was going to wake up like I normally do. It was a very lucid dream. And I turned around and there was a tent behind me, a very small tent and a long line of people–I couldn’t even see the end of the line. But I knew everyone in this line of people. So I thought to myself, “These men can’t hurt me, I have all of my friends here.” So I started shouting for help and they turned their backs on me. Two of the men grabbed me, held me down, and another man plunged a knife in my heart, and it was painful physically–excruciating pain–and I screamed out and I died. And when I woke up I could see that we were surrounded by this presence that I call love, beauty.
At the time I was pretty much agnostic, so the word god wasn’t in my nomenclature. The love was so intense, and the beauty was beyond description–that was my name for this: love-beauty. And it was a dramatic shift in my life after that. My priorities changed. I began to research and study what had happened to me. I began to study Eastern, Western mysticism, meditate, I lost all my friends. They thought I freaked out: “Michael’s thinking there’s another reality.” And that was the beginning as an adult of this pursuit of unitive awareness, this pursuit of the realization of the oneness with the present.
Tami Simon: That’s interesting. I’ve never heard anybody before describe their spiritual awakening as something that occurred in a dream state.
Michael Beckwith: Yeah. It was a lot of phenomena in my waking state, but the actual settling of who I used to be–it was a lucid dream. I was conscious in that dream. I’m making decisions, I’m looking behind me, I’m screaming for help, I could make myself wake up. But at this time I couldn’t.
Tami Simon: So that term, spiritual awakening. It’s a term that people throw around a lot and mean different things by it. What do you think it means for you to say you had a spiritual awakening?
Michael Beckwith: For me it meant that my priorities shifted and I became more interested in spiritual values. My reason for being on the planet shifted. Whereas before I was going to college, I was going to go to med school, which is not something that’s terrible, that’s bad, but my whole purpose shifted to wanting to have a stronger realization of who I am. I wanted to self actualize. I wanted to wake more. That was my primary mode of being in the world, and it hasn’t shifted. It’s still the same priority, that and being of service. I would say that I awoke to a dimension of my real nature. That I was ignorant of up to that moment.
Tami Simon: What would you say changed in terms of your sense of identity?
Michael Beckwith: I think that’s what majorly happened. I saw myself after that as a dimension of this presence that’s everywhere. Whereas before, like everyone else, I tended to think of myself as a child of my parents, you know a grandson, a son, a husband, something that had something to do with the phenomenal world, whereas after that it was, No! I’m more than that.
I remember when I was eleven years old I had a big ah-hah. I had a big opening when I was eleven. It was around my birthday I was in Washington D.C. where my family is from. And I was walking down an aisle in the supermarket to get something for my grandmother and I suddenly became aware that a bottle of baby food was going to fall down in the aisle next to me. I could see it, and I ran around and caught it before it hit the ground. And the person that was stocking it said, “Well, how did you know that was going to fall?” And I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t know. So on my way home. I’m in this big state, that I can talk about now–I didn’t know what it was then. My grandmother, my uncle, and my mother were on the front stoop and as they were looking at me, I said to myself, “My mother’s looking at her son, my grandmother’s looking at her grandson, and my uncle’s looking at a nephew, but I’m not that, I’m something else.” And I had to make a choice as I got closer to them whether I was going to be me, or whether I was going to be what they thought I was. And at eleven years old I chose to be what they thought I was. I didn’t have the strength to be more than that, so I chose to be the son, the nephew, and the grandson, but I always remembered that experience that I had.
So fast-forward to the twenties when this thing happened and I was killed, I couldn’t get back in that box. Something had shattered that left me out there, and I had to discover what this was. Who am I, really–that’s not merely a dimension of my ancestral lineage?
Tami Simon: Now you mentioned that there was some inner momentum and call to be a reverend and that you had to follow it, and you had this crook in your neck that straightened out when you finally listened to the impulse coming from inside you. And I’m curious if there were times in your life when you haven’t listened to that impulse, and what’s been the result?
Well that was one of the times, I didn’t listen for a long time. It was just a nagging for me. There have been times in working at Agape where I knew a particular way to go, but I didn’t have the buy in, necessarily, the people around me. And before I would just say we’re going to do it anywhere, and I would say Okay, we’re just going to do it the way you guys want to, and it would end up not working. But I would just let that happen, knowing that wasn’t going to work and then come back to the way I was feeling originally.
Tami Simon: So how do you know when that voice inside, that impulse is aligned with your greater good, and when it’s just some kind of voice that’s yakking at you that could be the voice of all kinds of motivations and self-serving ideas? How can you discern that?
Michael Beckwith: Generally the voice of the ego is generally louder and generally has something to do with my convenience or comfort that I’m going to benefit from; and the other voice seems softer, and it’s more about service and it’s not about my convenience or comfort at all. It’s more about I’m going to become more myself; it may be uncomfortable. There’s going to be a greater degree of service involved. So there’s a little bit of difference there. It’s not yelling at me. It’s soft. This is the path to walk in. But it comes after years of meditation and slowly listening. And I still work with it and still have to discern whether this is the way to go, or this is the way to go. And something happens in my stomach too, there’s a visceral–something happens in my solar plexus. It gets real calm if I’m going in the right direction; and if I’m not there’s like a flutter. It’s like uh oh, this is not the right way to go.
Tami Simon: What would you say were some of the most challenging directives that you’ve received that you had to trust. Like, Oh my god, you want me to do this?
Michael Beckwith: Well, I would say just in the beginning just to start the Agape International Spiritual Center. I got that directive, and I even got that again in a lucid dream state. I got it more than one time. And one time in a lucid dream state, I was walking down the street, and I was taken to this building and there was a tremendous amount of energy and love and fellowship and community going on. And it just looked very beautiful. And it was diverse. And the voice said, “This is what we want you to do.” And in the dream I said, “I can’t do this!” and in the dream I was real small, and this vision was really big. And I said, “I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this.” And it said something like, “You say yes, and we’ll do the rest.” It was like that. But I delayed it for a while. I didn’t want to be a public figure. It wasn’t my personality construct. I was more a behind-the-scenes kind of person. I used to write for a city councilman, and I could write the speeches and be behind and work on the programs and develop programs. I didn’t need to be the person out front; and here I’m being invited to be out front, and it was daunting and I said yes. I left the position I had at that time, which provided finances for me and my family, and I stepped out on nothing. And it was very, very challenging.
Tami Simon: So you take your dreams really seriously?
Michael Beckwith: They’re really more than dreams. There’s a difference. With these lucid dreams are like I’m awake and I’m getting instruction or knowledge. I’m having a direct experience.
Tami Simon: That’s a really interesting idea that you’re getting instruction. Who could be giving you instruction or what? Where’s the instruction coming from?
Michael Beckwith: I just call it divine mind. I call it love, intelligence. It’s more of a presence and I know that it knows.
Tami Simon: Now let’s say somebody’s watching us and they say, “I want that kind of confidence. I really don’t know when I’m dreaming, and it’s just something I’m afraid of, something I want to have happen, I don’t really know. I can’t discern that.” What would you say to them? How can you help them?
Michael Beckwith: Well, first of all, I probably wouldn’t put them on the path of trying to do lucid dreaming. That’s not my expertise even though I do it. I don’t teach that. I would more put them on the path of developing a spiritual practice. Becoming interested in participating in their own evolution and whether you have lucid dreaming or whether instruction comes the way it comes for me, that’s not really important. What’s important is everyone is a candidate for insight and revelation. Everyone is a candidate to receive instruction and knowledge however it comes for them. I think it’s speaking to everyone in a language that they can understand. So I would put them more on a path of self-discovery through affirmative prayer, meditation, visioning this type of thing and teach them to be receptive to that knowledge as it comes to them that they can learn how to discern that.
Tami Simon: Now you mentioned affirmative prayer? Can you give me an example of what it’s like to pray in an affirmative way?
Michael Beckwith: Affirmative prayer is basically acknowledging that what you’re praying for and about, it’s already occurring, it’s already happening. I teach that whatever it is that we want, hope for and desire, it’s already within us. So affirmative prayer is basically lifting your vibration to accepting and feeling that it’s already occurring at some level. I mean being receptive to it moving through you. I define prayer as embracing reality without trying to get anything from it. So affirmative prayer is a way by which you come in tune with what is and become receptive to the what is expressing through you, as opposed to someone on their knees pleading to give me something.
Tami Simon: Here’s an example of probably a distortion of what you’re talking about. “I have more money than I need right now,” and the person knows that they’re deeply in debt, but they’re saying this affirmative prayer. “I have more money than I need right now.” And your thinking they’re a liar.
Michael Beckwith: Well, first of all that’s not a prayer. That’s an affirmation and they’re using that affirmation for something material, money, so I wouldn’t even teach that. I have a tendency to say that people have a tendency to concretize the ineffable and the intangible substance so if I say to somebody “infinite supply” they’ll think money. So I would switch that affirmation around and say I’m in tune with infinite supply and all my needs are met and begin to feel that, and then what happens is an individual is guided and directed to do what is necessary to allow that to happen in their life. It’s not going to drop out of the sky necessarily, but if you begin to have a feeling tone that you live in a friendly universe and there’s an infinite supply all around you, that divine opportunities are all around you and you start to feel that, you act differently in the world. You see opportunities that you couldn’t normally see. Your steps are ordered by this new law of your being that you’re now affirming, so like an affirmation brings you into a state of prayer, where you’re communing with existence itself, with the supply or the love or the peace or whatever seems to be lacking.
Tami Simon: but what if you say a sentence like that. I’m in tune with infinite supply, and then you immediately hear in your head, “No I’m not, I have $20,000 of credit card debt that I have no way to pay.”
Michael Beckwith: Well, generally that’s a wonderful exercise and the person begins to do that affirmation immediately there’s going to be the voice of the ego or the voice of dissent, saying, “No you don’t. You’re poor, you’re ugly, you don’t” have enough this, and as you keep doing that affirmation you can become aware of your unconscious belief that’s inhibiting your flow. And so when that happens it’s a really good thing because you can see what you really believe about yourself. And now once you really understand what you believe about yourself you can challenge it. You can begin to uncover those beliefs and begin to change them. So that’s a good process, to write down an affirmation and see what you really believe about it in order to keep going deeper and under layer, under layer, under layer until you uncover and begin to transmute those particular beliefs through spiritual technology.
Tami Simon: So let’s just take the example: “I’m in tune with infinite supply.” and then the thought comes up, “No I’m not, I have $20,000 in credit card debt and I can’t pay it off,” and what do I do?”
Michael Beckwith: If a person keeps doing that affirmation he’s not going to be stuck with that sentence.
Tami Simon: Where does it go from there, then?
Michael Beckwith: Underneath there’s going to be other things that begin to surface. Perhaps, self-worth issues start to arise. Perhaps abandonment issues start to come forward. You going to start to uncover, perhaps unforgiveness issues, because debt is often an issue of unforgiveness. You’ll start to get to what’s really the issue. It’s not $20,000 in debt because you had to have a state of consciousness to produce that debt. Now what is that state of consciousness? What is that belief? What is that that you’re really holding onto. Not you, [Tami] this is an example. And now when you begin to discover that and shine the light on it, you can change it. Now you can create another affirmation. You can create some empowering questions around that. There are many spiritual technologies you can use to transmute that energy.
You can begin to ask the question–depending on what the issue is. If it’s self-love, you can ask the question, “What does self-love look like? What does it feel like?” If it’s about money or supply, What is the real nature of supply? Now the universe will answer that question. Generally what people do is they ask a disempowering question. They’ll say, “Why does this always happen to me?” The universe will answer that and give you all sorts of reasons.
Michael Beckwith: But when you ask, “What is the nature of supply and how can it express in my life?” the universe will answer that question as well. It will begin to speak of this invisible supply that’s everywhere that can be transmuted into ideal employment. It can be transmuted into talents and gifts that need to be activated and expressed. A person can begin to empower themselves to ask the right kind of questions. That’s just one technology you can use once you uncover what you believe about yourself or about God or the universe.
Tami Simon: So what are the guidelines for asking the right kind of questions?
Michael Beckwith: You want to ask about the nature of reality. You want to ask how you can grow, how you can expand your awareness. But you don’t want to ask questions like, “Why me? Why is this happening to me again?” You don’t want to ask, “Who’s to blame for this?” You don’t want your mind to go on a scrutinizing fault-finding expedition. You want your mind to become an avenue of awareness of that which is true, that which is eternal. So you have to ask a question that leads you there, rather than leads you down the path of just more human experience and the human condition, which is a mockery of the divine creation.
Tami Simon: Let’s take a different example. Let’s say somebody has had a hard time finding the kind of life partner, love partner that they want and they just think everybody else has the opportunity to find the love of their life but me. There must be something wrong with me. And here I am doing some kind of affirmative prayer. I’m right now at this moment magnetizing the love of my life, walking in the door, and then the voice comes in, “Look how old you are. It’s not going to happen. Get real.” What am I going to do about that?
Michael Beckwith: First of all, instead of just concretizing love . . .
Tami Simon: No, I want it to be a person. I don’t want it to be the experience of the present moment. I want it to be a real . . .
Michael Beckwith: I understand that, but you have to start somewhere. There’s no cookie cutter situation here. There’re some people who don’t love themselves. There are individuals who can’t share love. There are individuals who believe there are not enough good people around. There’re all kinds of situations, that you can say, this works for this. There are principles that work for everyone, but everyone is different.
So if a person’s looking for a divine mate, they’re looking for a companion, they’re looking for a way to express more love. We have to ask, “What is the nature of relationship? What is its purpose?” And the purpose of relationship is to perfect our loving and to be in a place where we get to express love. So there are many people who don’t have that. They’re not even looking for that. They’re looking for a body, as you say, that maybe that makes them happy. Well, that’s not what a relationship is for. A relationship isn’t to make you happy. A relationship is a joint participation in the good of love and the good of God and the good of beauty. So first of all we have to understand what the relationship is for. What is the life partner about? It’s about growing and unfolding in love.
Tami Simon: No, it’s about not feeling so lonely. What if that’s the truth about why I want a life partner.
MS: Well, you’re still going to be lonely with the person. Because the person is not going to end your loneliness. Loneliness is inside. There are people who are with a lot of people and they’re still lonely. And there are people who are by themselves who aren’t lonely. There are people who can be alone and not be lonely, and there are people who can be with someone and still be lonely. So that’s an inside job. So if a person thinks that a relationship is going to heal that, then there’s going to be a problem, because when they get in that relationship they’re going to be glomming on the person, they’re going to be clinging, they’re going to be demanding that that person make them happy: “Where are you going? You didn’t get back here on time. I miss you.” It’s going to create a whole lot of other issues.
And so the idea is you want to clean those issues up before you bring the partner in or you want to realize that in the course of partnership you’re going to be working on those issues. Because the person’s not going to heal those issues. That’s internal.
Tami Simon: So whatever the challenges that I’m facing, whether it’s a financial challenge or wanting a love relationship, what are the principles that help me get down to the root issues that really work. What are they?
Michael Beckwith: The first principle is oneness. You are connected to this presence and that you already have everything that you need and that through your spiritual work and introspection, contemplating and asking the right questions you begin to discover that it’s already within you.
Tami Simon: Okay, let’s just pause for a second. What if my experience is that I don’t have everything that I need?
Michael Beckwith: Well, fortunately your experience is just experience. [laughs] It’s not real.
Tami Simon: Okay, it feels pretty real. Okay, somebody may say I hear that; that’s the starting principle, but that’s not what the world feels like to me.
Michael Beckwith: Okay, well here’s the beautiful thing. Where we are at this stage of evolution, we can think independently of our experience and of our circumstances. That’s what practicing spiritual principle is all about. You may have an experience of lack. You may have an experience of loneliness, ill health–whatever the case may be–but we have this thing call our consciousness that allows us to think independently of that experience. That means I can enter into a co-creative partnership with this presence and begin to change my perspective, my point of view.
I can even change my feeling and nature and begin to tap into the love, tap into the peace, even though it’s not present in my experience. I can use my imagination. I can use things in my life that are already working and begin to feel what that feels like. And begin to train myself to live in that vibration until that becomes, maybe not my predominant vibration, but I’m hanging out there more and more. And then what happens, the universe responds to that. There’s a demonstration, there’s a quickening. Something changes in my life.
It’s never going to change if I’m down here in the vibration, “Woe, poor me; I’ve always had a bad experience. It’s never going to work out for me. I don’t know who I am.” You become a self-fulfilling prophesy of that. So with spiritual practice you can begin to think differently. You can even become a candidate for insight and revelation for who you are and watch your life change. It’s not easy. But it’s a simple process. It’s just not an easy thing to do because the emotions are so gross and even though our emotional life is a feedback form the past they are a subset of our previously held perceptions that may have come from experience. They’re so gross that we think that’s who we are.
But our emotional body is not who we are. It’s a subset of our previously held perceptions. So now I can take my attention and begin to shift my perception. How do I do that? I do it through what I study. I do it through the people I’m associating with. I do it through my spiritual practice that we’ve mentioned here a few times until there’s a shift that occurs. I begin to have ah-hah moments about the real nature of reality and the nature of who I am, independent of my experience. So now my life begins to change, slowly at first, perhaps. But every little shift gives me a little more trust that something is occurring.
Tami Simon: Okay, but here’s a potential pitfall, and I’m curious what you think about this. You have potentially, people who are like, “I feel great today. I’m connected to everything. I’m grateful for everything.” And you can see that the person’s giving you a bunch of baloney. They actually feel terrible, but they don’t want that experience anymore. It’s pretense. That’s often what I see happens when people first get exposed to what you’re describing. They don’t want to get stuck with a used-to-be, so they pretend this other thing, but it’s not what they’re really feeling.
Michael Beckwith: Well, they’re pretending something. The idea is to have an intention rather than a pretension. And so eventually those people burn out. They either fall by the wayside and say this stuff doesn’t work or they go in a little deeper and they start to really establish intention. But it’s not an intention to have things of the world. The intention shifts to really changing themselves: to really discovering what blockages are within them–not from a blame game–but just what is it that’s within me that’s preventing me from happiness, from joy, from creativity, whatever the case may be.
So the thing about it is, this kind of work is not for the faint of heart, because you have to really change, you have to really be willing to change. Oftentimes people come in in a mad rush, they read all these how-to books and how to have it all and this type of thing, and then find out later they gotta do some real serious work. They’ve got to do some real introspection. They’ve got to be honest with themselves. They’ve got to really look at themselves in the mirror and see where they’re lying to themselves, see what they believe about themselves, and oftentimes people fall off the path then because that’s too difficult. They want a quick fix. They want someone to give them some fancy words that they can just poof–suddenly it’s happening. So a lot of people fall by the wayside, but a lot of people keep going, and they realize that there are real principles, there are real ways, there are real practices that if you engage them, they’ll change your habits and those habits will become a change of lifestyle. The lifestyle will become a way of life and you start to bear fruit with that way of life.
It’s not a get rich quick or get made quick or get anything quick. It’s really a precursor to a way of living one’s life, and oftentimes people don’t want to change their life. They want to get something while they remain the same. They want to change the world while they remain the same and that’s not going to happen. That’s fantasy.
Tami Simon: Yeah, now I asked you what the principles were for dealing with whatever challenge you have in life. And you started by saying this recognition with oneness. I interrupted you and we went all over, so I want to know what the other principles are.
Michael Beckwith: Well, there’s what is called the law of mind in action, which is an awareness that your thoughts are units of mental energy that have the tendency to transmute themselves into speech, behavior, action, perception that becomes more experience. So that’s a mental law. The thoughts that you are continuing to have also become a dimension of your experience, whether it’s of the body temple to the degree of health you may or may not be having, how you see the world, and your experience in the world. People understand that, particularly with the advent of our science, where we can actually measure patterns of thought. You can actually see a person in alpha state or beta or delta and notice that people in higher states are much more creative and peaceful, and much more prone to success if they were to maintain that.
Tami Simon: Now what are you saying? That we should monitor our thoughts? Think certain kinds of thoughts? What exactly are you saying?
Michael Beckwith: I don’t teach control of your thoughts. I do teach being mindful of what’s flowing through your awareness and establishing a level of intention as to having thought for food, instead of having food for thought, which means that you surround yourself with individuals living or dead who fill you with the good, the true, and the beautiful, and that’s what you’re placing your attention on until it begins to be more real to you than your temporary experience.
Tami Simon: Okay, once again, what if you tend to have some kind of repetitive thought pattern that’s not all that uplifting.
Michael Beckwith: Well, you can have a level of mindfulness in which you’re aware of it, and as you’re aware of it you realize it’s not you. It’s a habit that’s going on independent of you. So once that is occurring you can interrupt it. You can bracket it. To use a Buddhist term, you can bracket it and put it to the side, and you can challenge it. You can begin to place your attention somewhere else. But you can get to the point where it’s not running you. And you can begin to also be aware that there are some things in your life that are working. You can go on an appreciative inquiry as to what’s working in your life and begin to feel that.
In the African shamanistic tradition a dimension of their healing is if something is wrong in an area of your life, you place your attention on what’s working, and then bring that energy into the other area of your life. I call it spiritual shape shifting. Let’s say you have lack of finances, but you’re very healthy. So you take that exuberance, that confidence in that area of your life and you begin to bring into your mind the area of your finances. And you take this energy and you place it over here whenever you think of your finances. So you do an energetic shape shift.
As you’re able to hold that space–you’re going to stumble, you’re going to fall, the repetitive patterns are going to come up–but as you’re able to more and more hold that space, then this becomes your habitat. And you begin to discover that you’re thinking differently about finances and about supply. Your actions begin to be different. Opportunities begin to open up. Things begin to change in that area through understanding of thought and with really thinking it.
What most people call thinking is just a regurgitation of thought they’ve had the day before, the day before, the day before–the rehashing of the same thought form, but that’s not thinking. That’s called mentation. Real thinking is inspiration. Real thinking is going into that realm where original thoughts of the divine mind of universal love and intelligence begin to think through you. That’s thinking. Everything else is mentation. And the average person is just living in a thought cocoon of something they have thought before. They’re living in the reality of that thought cocoon. It’s an agreement in our collective society about whatever that thing is and evolution is very slow. It basically comes through crisis–something that breaks us out of that particular thought cocoon.
But an individual that’s engaging in a spiritual practice is consciously participating in their own evolution through gaining dominion over their attention and placing it where they want to.
Tami Simon: Now you mentioned this process that you’re calling spiritual evolution isn’t easy, not for the faint of heart. So what’s so hard about it?
Michael Beckwith: You’re fighting against comfort and convenience. You’re ego is working on behalf of your survival, so it’s not really interested in your evolution It’s interested in your surviving at all costs. And so when you begin to participate in the conscious evolution of your own soul, there’s some sabotage there. There’s some thwarting of that, that occurs on a largely unconscious level. Also you have to go against the prevailing societal beliefs. Our society itself bombards us with the thought forms of functioning comfortably with conveniences. You don’t turn on your television and see an advertisement about “unfold your soul.” It says become all you can be by joining the army or something silly like that. So you’re going against that. But you’re going with an impulse that’s infinite. It can become conscious of itself by means of you, so ultimately it’s the only game in town.
Tami Simon: Okay, I want to evolve, but I don’t want to give up my survival needs.
Michael Beckwith: You don’t give up your survival needs. That’s there, that becomes second nature, almost. You’re not going to do anything that’s going to make you unsafe–you’re not going to go out and eat poison, stand in front of a car to prove you’re immortal. You’re not going to do anything silly. That’s already there within you when you got your human being training. When you got here and your parents said don’t eat this, don’t put your hand in that. You’ve got that, but if it continues to run the show then you end up just being in the status quo. You don’t work for transformation, you work for comfort and convenience within the status quo.
So we have to understand, yeah you’re going to survive and then from a larger context, you’re not going to die anyway. You realize that at another level, meta-level, you’ve never been born, you’re never going to die, you’re never going to lose anything. Most people don’t know that. The ego can really control because they’re afraid of death and they’re afraid of loss.
Tami Simon: Well, yeah. Let’s unpack this anyway. You’re never going to die, you were never really born–I mean, your sitting here looks like someone was born and is x number of years old and all the rest.
Michael Beckwith: This is one part of our experience, but the part of our essential nature–we’re talking about spiritual awakening understanding who we are as a spiritual being. We use the word spiritual, which is synonymous with eternal, it’s synonymous with that which has never been born and never will die. A spiritual value is something that is always peace, love, joy, harmony, so we are spiritual beings that have a human incarnation. So with every insight through prayer, through mediation, whatever the spiritual technology is, we get a greater awareness of our eternal nature and it alleviates a little of that fear, that worry about the future, about what’s going to happen to us. So all that energy that gets siphoned into that fear of death is now used for creativity, is now used for soul expression, is now used for unpacking the gifts and talents we have within us and to express them. So whatever time we have on the planet is not just sitting around being afraid we’re going to die, but the time we have on the planet is absolutely being used to express the gifts within us and to serve the emerging paradigm on the planet. It’s a whole different reason for being on the planet. When you’re walking asleep, dreaming you’re awake, you just don’t want to die. When you start to wake up you realize you’ve been dead all this time and now you’re starting to live. You can express yourself.
Tami Simon: So you don’t have any worry about physical dying?
Michael Beckwith: Well, I don’t put myself in harm’s way. I don’t walk around worrying about that. I take care of myself. I eat what I think is proper. I don’t walk in front of traffic or jump out of a plane. I don’t have that worry, no.
Tami Simon: What about the part of your life that won’t exist when you’re dead? Your relationship with your wife, with the members of your church, all that?
Michael Beckwith: Well, I think they do exist. At some point they won’t have a body either, and if we’re vibrating on the same vibe we’ll see each other again.
A friend of mine called–and he’s a great singer–and he passed a couple years ago. He lived with us before he passed. So I still see him now. Carl will come visit. We’ll hang out and talk, and I know it’s not my imagination.
Tami Simon: Okay so let’s just slow down here. What do you see?
Michael Beckwith: Again it’s in the lucid dream state. He’s a lot younger than he was when he was here, and we hang out and talk. He tells me what’s going on and I wake up. I recently had this with another friend of mine who passed. I won’t go into the whole experience. But it’s Carol, and I hadn’t heard from her for a long time since she passed. Sometimes I’ll get some kind of connection. And a couple days after I had that thought I connected with her and asked her some questions about some people and got the answers I needed and I woke up. So when we talk about not being in communication with that part of our relationship, that goes on. Again, that’s not my specialty. I don’t teach any of that, but I have my own experience in that.
Tami Simon: What’s more interesting to me is to understand what you know about yourself that’s internal. Most people’s experience is that they’re born and they’re going to die, and that the people that they love are going to die or have died, and that when those people are gone, they’re gone forever. Dust to dust.
Michael Beckwith: I think what happens is they get a pleasant surprise. They say, “I did all that worrying about death and here I am. I still exist. I’m a dimension of existence. I’m an individualized expression of existence. I did all that worrying about death and I could have been doing something else.” I believe that’s the individual’s experience when it happens.
Tami Simon: But the individual isn’t even an individual anymore. What’s experience that relief?
Michael Beckwith: Consciousness. They were in a thought cocoon that they were their body and they were temporary. And then as they wake up they realize, “Oh my god, my body was my vehicle. It wasn’t who I was. It was like my car. My car got smashed, and my body is no longer working for me, phew, I still am.” It becomes more like that.
Often people talk about the three different kinds of awakening. The kind of awakenings you have when you go to bed at night and you wake up the next morning and you realize, “Oh I’ve been dreaming, and now I’m in this dimension.” Then there’s the kind of awakening when you make your transition. Some people call it death, and you realize “Oh! I’m still alive. And then there’s the awakening when you break free from this sense of presence and you realize, “Oh! I’m one with all.” So there’s different kinds of awakenings. And many people because of their fear of death are doing everything they can to stay safe and stay alive, making all kinds of choices around staying alive and they never even pursue the other forms of awakening.
We can see this in our culture. We have a culture driven by ego and comfort. And we have this whole survival thing that is so prevalent that we spend all our money building war implements in a country that has more war implements that could destroy the world ten times over. We keep building more and building more because we’re so afraid, even though we pretend that myth is the home of the brave and the land of the free and all that, but inside it’s like scared people: “We’ve got to get another nuclear weapon and another missile, we’ve got to protect ourselves; there are evil people out I the world.” It’s the ego run amok. It’s not just our country it’s all countries that are run by the ego. Most of their energy and resources are going to survival rather than education, rather than art, beauty, unfolding of the soul. Imagine when we transcend or overcome the ego’s grasp on us, our resources will be used differently. Not just to protect us. Of course we’ll always have something to defined ourselves. I’m not being Pollyannaish about that, but more of it will go into healing arts and arts of beauty and love and the unfolding of who we are and what our potential is. Imagine that society. Every time someone has a breakthrough and has an awakening like that they become a part of that next paradigm, I believe.
Tami Simon: I’ve heard you say on the life-visioning program that at every step of our evolution we have to let go of something to go to this next step. And I’m curious if there’s more for you to let go of, and if so, what?
Michael Beckwith: Always. Because most of spiritual growth development–I would venture to say all of it is about letting go of something, shedding something. And I think then there’s another level where you are learning again. But it’s pretty much releasing. I came through a period not long ago–and I’m just coming out of it right now, a very dark period in which I’m just still now getting the inner meanings of it, but there’s a tremendous amount of angst and a tremendous amount of “I just can’t do this anymore.” Something was dying in me. So I don’t have the language yet as to what I let go of, but I did let go of more resistance to more of my potential expressing, and it didn’t feel good.
I talked about it. I always talk about whatever I’m going through when I’m speaking. So yeah, there’s always more.
Tami Simon: Thank you. Very authentic, very real.
Michael Beckwith: My pleasure. A pleasure being here.
