← Into the Magic Shop
Into the Magic Shop
Reverend Michael Beckwith: Illuminating the Path: A Journey of Spiritual Awakening and Compassion
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- [00:00]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Foreign.
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Dr. Jim Doughty
Hello, my name is Dr. Jim Doughty, and I'm the host of the into the Magic Shop podcast, where we explore the mysteries of the brain and the secrets of the heart. Hi.
- [00:19]
My guest today is Reverend Michael B. Beckwith, who's been called the spiritual maverick, but he is also a teacher and an ordained minister. He founded the Agape spiritual center in 1968 with the intention of bringing a practical approach to spirituality through meditation and affirmative prayer. He has developed numerous transformative programs, and he is also the host of the podcast Take Back youk Mind, which he calls it a roadmap to help guide your mind away from worry, doubt, fear, and towards your real, authentic purpose. I know you're going to enjoy our conversation today, which spans the whole gamut of practicality, spirituality, and how to transform your life, as well as manifestation. I hope you enjoy.
- [01:20]
Well, Michael, thank you so much for being with me. I really appreciate it. Obviously, we've known each other for a bit, but you've always been a hero of mine with all the work you do, and it's wonderful to have you with me. One of the things I like to do, because each of us has a backstory which in many ways predicts our present story. And I know that you went to USC and you were quite an activist, but at the same time, you were a drug dealer. And I know you've shared that story, but I think oftentimes people who we admire have backstories that we're not aware of, and sharing those backstories, I think makes people understand that we're all human and, frankly, we're all flawed in different ways.
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Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Absolutely. I attended Morehouse College, and then I transferred over to usc, and as you indicated, I come from a very highly activist family in terms of civil rights and things of that particular nature. So growing up, we would be picketing on the weekends in order to ensure equal wages for women and people of color. So I grew up in that dynamic, which is one of the reasons why I went to Morehouse College, which was where Dr. Martin Luther King graduated from. At Morehouse College, I established what is called the Harriet Tubman Prison Committee, in which we worked tirelessly to allow for the prisoners to receive income for the work that they were doing inside the prison so it wouldn't be slave labor. So I was involved with a lot of things. At some point, I moved back to Los Angeles, and interestingly enough, I was sitting at a meeting, a meeting. I was part of another organization, and I heard someone behind me say, if you were to take over the world tomorrow. Would the world be any different? And I looked around, and there was nobody sitting there. And so the meeting continued. And the voice said it again, but this time it came from within me. If you were to take over the world tomorrow. He was talking the world. The voice was speaking about the people in this meeting who wanted to change the world. We had all the right ideologies and all of that. And I realized it was coming from within me. And so I looked around the room, and I could see the pathology of the people in the room. This person was territorial. This person always had to be right. This person had a massive ego and had power issues. I could read the room. And I realized that though we were working on behalf of the planet and working on behalf of a great society, the world wouldn't be any different. And so if we were to take over. So I left that meeting and never went back. The very next week, somebody in that meeting shot another person because they. An argument ensued. So it was right after that that I enrolled in usc. I was a psychobiology major. And my path at the time, I thought, was to go to go to med school, as you indicated. You know, I was selling weed. You know, at the time, it was illegal. Now it's, you know, it's everywhere. Like. Like liquor stores, you can buy. You can buy cannabis sativas anywhere. But at the time, in the 70s, you know, it was. It was illegal. And I was. I was. You know, at the time, I was in college, I was smoking a little weed. So I started off selling it just to get mine for free. And then it escalated until it was a nice business. And I had people working for me in Los Angeles and Nashville, Atlanta, New York, Chicago. I mean, it just kind of expanded. I had really good connections, and I was making a tremendous amount of money to the degree that until my financial aid kicked in, I could pay USC cash, which was a very expensive school. And subsequently, two things occurred. One, this inner voice got louder, and I started having a tremendous amount of spiritual experiences. But at the time, I didn't know what it was. I was in the psychology department. So I labeled the experiences that I was having pathological. I thought something was wrong with me, so I stopped smoking weed. I said, this has got to be the weed that's causing this. And I just stopped. And they intensified. I was astral traveling. I was leaving my body. I was seeing vision, hearing things, and it intensified. And there was a moment in which, in my lucid dream state, these three men were always coming near me every night. And I would always wake up before they would get too close to me. And so one night they were very close. I could see the outline of their face. And I looked to my right and there was a small tent. And thousands of people were trying to fit into this small tent. And I knew every single person in line. And I said to myself, these men can't hurt me. I have all of my friends with me. And then one by one, they turned their back on me. Two of the men held me down and one plunged a knife in my heart. And the pain, physically and emotionally was excruciating. I screamed out and I died. When I woke up, I could see that the love that penetrated my being was beyond anything I'd ever experienced or known. The beauty of everything was just so magnificent. I could see without my eyes in all directions, the beauty, the length in the rug was alive and beautiful. Something had happened and I could never get back in that box again. Now, prior to that, it's difficult because it's back in the 70s. I'm trying to think timeline of this, but in terms of the marijuana situation, I got arrested on my very last deal. I received some marijuana and I told the man, I said, I'm not doing this anymore. It's not my destiny. I never planned to, you know, have such a big cottage industry. And so anyway, I got arrested and I was knocked off the street by the police. And they looked for the weed in my car, didn't have any, and they asked me where I lived and I had my parents address on my license and I told them where I lived. And they subsequently went to the side of the house where I actually lived and knocked on every single door until they found the marijuana in my house. And again, I never really had marijuana in my house. I had a stash house for people want to know. But one time I did have it in my house. And so subsequently I end up going to court. I'm going to make this story short, shorter than it really is. But I went to court and I'd been told inwardly that I was walking away from this totally free without any blemish on any on my life record, et cetera. People around me thought I had lost my mind. They said, you're going to go back to sc, you better, you better, you better leave the country. Because once the local people convict you for possessing marijuana, the federal government's going to convict you because you had guns in your house. And I said, no, I'm walking free. I've been told I'm walking free. This is not my destiny. This is going to be like a miracle in my life. And people thought I'd lost my mind. Anyway, I'm in court and I'm reading. I'm not even paying attention to the case. I'm reading a pamphlet by Bhagwan Sri Rajni called Chaotic Meditations. And it was his first little book he put out. And subsequently, the assistant attorney. I had two attorneys. But the assistant to the attorney was quizzing a motorcycle cop who wasn't even on the scene. But he said he was, but he wasn't. Again, a lot of these things don't really matter these days. But he's asking him, why did you go to this house? And he said, well, the informant told us that a delivery was going to be made. So we got a search warrant, staked out the house. When we saw the delivery, we rushed in and we arrested Mr. Back Whiston with the marijuana. Now, none of that was true, but again, that's another story. They actually arrested me, then got a search warrant, then brought me to the marijuana. But anyway, nevertheless, my attorney says, excuse me, that's hearsay evidence. We demand that the informant come in front of the accused and identify him, or we invite the case to be thrown out. So the judge called the attorneys to his stand and said, please have the informant here within three days. So we come back to court three days later, and the prosecutor says, your Honor, the informant will not come. He says he's afraid for his life. And so the judge said, well, I have no other recourse. Mr. Beckwith, you are free. I hope I never see you in my courtroom again. And I said, you, Honor, you never will. And I left. I went home. The wind was blowing very hard, and the weather vane on my neighbor's house was pointing in the direction of the wind. And I said, you know, if this means what I think it means for my destiny, I want that weather vane to point in my direction against the wind. And before I could finish that, the weather being pointed right at, I started crying. I fell to my knees, and I just surrendered my life to the presence. And don't. Didn't have a record. I had an arrest record, obviously, but no conviction. I went on with my life. People had no idea how I walked out of that. The individual police officers followed me for a while, so they went to many meditation retreats. They went to many different churches, you know, but. But that, that, that. That little small portion of my life was over. Now, there was one other miracle that happened. It was a bunch of Them but one I think is, is interesting is that me and my wife, we had a small child who's now a man, you know, and, and my, my former wife, she's passed over a couple years ago. But we had a nice little duplex and the man. Middle of the night we smelled smoke and we. And there was a big blaze coming out of our kitchen. And so we grabbed our boy and we got out of the, got out of the house in time. Fire department came and doused the flames. And so for a period of time I had to stay at my parents house until the insurance adjuster comes out, checks out the fire damages, you know, and then we begin to repair the home. So we bring this insurance adjuster comes in and he's looking for the genesis of the fire. You can see the smoke damage on the walls, but there was no source of any fire in the house. The only damage to the house was the damage that the fire people caused by putting the fire out. So there was water damage and they looked high and low and couldn't find any evidence of a fire. But there was water smoke on the walls. So that was a really wonderful time in our life because the insurance company, we had enough money to like do a whole makeover on the home. New paid jobs, new rugs, new curtains, everything, new kitchen, everything. And I was staying at my parents house so people that would come and visit me at that time thought I had moved because there was a yellow, you know, strip there. So it was the fire that didn't burn anything. But it gave us time to be away from the house in time to have a whole new makeover for my whole new life. And it was, it was, it was amazing, really.
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Dr. Jim Doughty
Oh wow. Well that's fascinating and it's interesting how there seems to be this trajectory of your life that obviously you are part of it, but it is seemingly outside of yourself that is manifesting this. And very few people get an opportunity, I don't think or actually listen to the message that can transform their lives. So how do you go from. If you want to call it an awakening and you were mentioning you were going to meditation, you were attending various churches. How did you go from there to co founding the Agape Spiritual Center? I think it was, was it 1986?
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Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Yes.
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Dr. Jim Doughty
And that was with your wife, right?
- [15:30]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
November 30, 1986? Yes, we were married and I had a vision group. And so that. That particular experience where I had the wake up call, it was a tremendous wake up. I could see differently. It was, it was When I was a young boy, I had certain experiences, but I sought always to normalize myself. It was every time I had a certain kind of inner experience. I didn't want to be weird, so I would normalize my myself so I could fit in. But after that experience at USC when I was killed, I could never get back into that limited perception anymore. So for a number of years, that was in 19, like 1975. So it took a number of years for me to integrate this higher state of consciousness through the practice of meditation, doing a lot of inner work and things of that particular nature. I had to study to discover what had happened to me. And so I would bumped into the teachings of Walter Russell and the mystical teachings of Jesus the Christ and Katama the Buddha and Zori Aster and George Washington Carver and Howard Thurman, a number of people that earnest homes even later on that allowed me to see what was happening to me because it was a continual process. And I lost all my friends because everybody thought I freaked out, you know, because I might buy my personality construct had changed so drastically that people didn't know me anymore. So. So I'm evolving, I'm integrating. And then my two things occurred. One, my mother, who was. She was the person in our family that if somebody made their transition, she would go with them and escort them to the other side. So as a. As a little kid, I'm from Washington D.C. but grew up in Los Angeles. My father moved us here when I was a little boy. So when somebody died, made their transition and a family member in Washington D.C. my mother would wake us up because she said, oh, I just. I just escorted Aunt Marie to the other side. They sent me back and said, it's not my time yet. So she had a certain gift and, and she was attending metaphysical communities. So after I had my. This week, after I woke up, you know, I understood things she'd been saying, but I also was encouraging her to go deeper. Anyway, long story short, she advised me. She invited me to go to this metaphysical church. And I said, I don't really need to go to a church. I. I get mine directly. And most churches aren't really saying the truth. They. They're basically clogged up with the whole theology around Jesus. But a lot of that is made up. It's not direct. And she said, no, no, you'll like this place. So two things occurred. One, I go to this metaphysical community. It was the guidance church of religious science. The founder was Dr. Daniel L. Morgan. And I walk in and he's Already speaking. And I hear him say, heaven and hell aren't really places. They're states of consciousness. And I shout out, he's right, this is true. You know, I'd been tried because I'd been traveling on the other side a lot. And I said, oh, they actually say this in church. Really? So I sat down and the next day I, I joined his class. He had a 17 week class on metaphysics. And I, I sat down and he asked me my name and I told him. And he said, well, this is a. It was, it was 15 week class. Excuse me, this is a 15 week class. And you've came, you came in on the seventh day, seventh class. I, I suggest that you leave and come back when we start over. And I said, with all due respect, Dr. Dan, I'm going to stay and I'm going to then start over and go through the whole class again. And he said, okay, have it, have it your way, you know. So there I discovered there was something called a licensed spiritual therapist. And so that's, that's 1, 2. I was sitting in my. Because you asked me how I found that agape. So I'm sitting in my living room one day, I'm unemployed at this time, and I'm sitting there meditating. And I just say, what do you want me to do? Like that. And the phone rang and it was this woman on the phone. And she said, michael, you may not remember me, but we went to high school together. And I was. And I'm having some difficulties and some guilt about some things I've done. And I opened up our high school annual and your picture was there with your phone number. And God within told me to call you. And so I began to counsel her and pray for her with great results. And she began to send people to see me and be in my vibration for healings. And then something interesting happened. I go out one night to a restaurant. I hadn't seen this person since high school. And I see her standing in line to go into the restaurant. I call out her name and she looks at me very surprised because all this time we've been on the phone, we've never seen each other. And she runs away because she was embarrassed by some of the things she had revealed to me, that she was asking for counseling around to get rid of her guilt and shame and this type of thing. And then when I went home, I thought about it. I realized, you know what? I had an unlisted phone number. And I did not have that phone number when I was in high School. Those are my. That was my mother's phone number. And I didn't, that phone number was gone and I had an unlisted number. How did she get my number? So it just, I couldn't really, you know, did she really see it in her annual or did she get it from somebody? I don't know. The point being, that was a direct answer as to the beginning of what I was to do with my life. So people would come see me, they would sit with me, I would pray for them, things like this, and wonderful things would occur in people's lives. And subsequently I received a license, you know, to practice spiritual therapy as a practitioner. And I was seeing six, seven people every single day, five, six days a week, full time. Then that developed into me and a partner of mine doing seminars. Before seminars were popular, we were doing seminars and workshops, silent sadhanas, where people would meet. We'd meet on Saturdays and had these whole program. A lot of that stuff is very popular now. But back then it was, was relatively new. And when I was receiving my license, I was being interviewed by an individual that was running a world ministry of prayer. He asked me to come on his staff. I came on his staff to train the practitioner. Subsequently, that became very popular, very prosperous. And then there was a moment in which. I'll just tell you the story. The CEO comes to meet with me and the director of the prayer ministry because we had turned a subsidized department into a profit department. It was, it made a million dollars net one year with no advertising, no marketing. And he said he was going to help us double our money. And I said, wait a minute, we're not a profit department, you know, we're a prayerful department and it happens to receive donations. And he said, I said, what are you going to do? You're going to come in and pray with us? He said, no, no, no. We're going to cut your prayer time in half. Put a computer on the tables so you just take the names. At the end of the day, you can just pray over the basket. And then if you, if you, if you're practitioners that you're training, answer twice as many phone calls will double your money. And I said, one, if the practitioners stop praying, results are going to go down. The money's going to go down. So as long as I, I'm here, we're not, we're not going to do that. And he says, I could turn this organization from a 24 hour operation into a 16 hour operation and fire someone. I said, you can do what you want. As long as I'm here, it's not going to happen. And the two people that were sitting next to me moved their chairs away from me unconsciously, like we're not with this guy. Anyway, he let, he slam, he, he, he, he stormed out of the room. He came back later and apologized. But I knew my upward mobility was gone. It was, it was gone and in the organization. And I left to go on vacation and I was in Puerto Vallarta and I had a vision of agape. I could see this spiritual center now. At this particular time, I'd also graduated from the school of ministry. It took me five years to graduate from a three year program because I wasn't interested in being a minister. I just liked the high conversation in the spiritual practice. And so I see this vision, it was one of many visions. And I finally gave up my resistance to starting a community. I really liked my life at the time. I was seeing clients, I was doing workshops, seminars. I started guest speaking. I like my weekends off. It's never happened since then. And I come back to Los Angeles and I share with the director. I'm going to start my own spiritual community. And, and I, I'm not going to leave a day before I train the person under me. I'm going to train him. I'm teaching everything I know. I'm gonna put him in the driver's seat to really do all of the training and everything properly. I'm not going to leave a day before. And she said, where are you going to start your community? I said, I've been guided to start it in Santa Monica. And she said, in Santa Monica? What about your people? And I said, short people. And she turned red and said, oh, I didn't mean anything. I said, don't worry, I'm not taking any offense. And I said, I'm following my guide. So subsequently, I started a vision. That's what I called it back in 1985. And I got three groups of people, clients that kept saying to me, if you ever start anything, I'm going to be with you. And I always say, I'm not going to start anything. People who had taken, who were in my practitioner training class that I was teaching, if you ever start anything, I'm going to be with you. I said, I'm not going to start anything. And then the third group of people were people who had taken workshops with me. So out of that, there's about 12 people that would come to my living room every Thursday night for months, would send them through A process of visioning, not just Agape, but visiting the kind of people we would need to be to. To absolutely anchor spiritual community. If we were going to name our community Agape, which means unconditional love, I mean, we had to vibrate at that level. So every week we worked and worked through the machinations of the personality and the emotional body and so that we could actually hold the frequency of unconditional love. And then 1986, we realized it was time to, like, go public, to start something, because it was like our own. Our own private meetings every. Every week. And so the potency of those meetings and the love in those meetings were so strong. And everybody was from different walks of life. Everybody, you know, straight, gay, black, white, you know, everybody. It was such a love fest. And eventually we send out invitations and November 30, 1986, was the birth of the public expression of the Agape International Spiritual center. Got about 400 people to come to see what was. You know, they didn't come to stay because many people came from other communities just to support. And we were left with a base of about 50 people that then subsequently grew, grew, grew, until we had to keep moving until we could find places that would hold the congregation. So that. That's, in short, what would happen. You know, I had inner visions. What? I had one vision where I was walking down the street, and I was infinitesimally small in this dream, but I was very conscious. And there was a building with all of this laughter and joy and love and music and different kinds of people coming out of the building. And the voice said, this is what we want you to do. And I said, I'm really small in the dream. I said, how am I going to do that? How am I going to start that community? And they said, you say yes, and we'll do the rest. And I woke up from that. And eventually my resistance to starting in a community eroded. And now I'm just in bliss, you know, I'm in ecstasy, speaking and teaching. It's, you know, I was denying my own destiny by. By. By resisting. Starting agape. Yeah.
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Dr. Jim Doughty
Well, you know, it's interesting because people talk about resisting, and you have to accept, and. And then everything happens. But people are afraid of acceptance because it may change their lives. And as you know, I mean, there are people who say, well, I know what my life is today. I don't know what. What it will be if I accept. I just wanted to ask you a couple questions. You mentioned Agape, and of course, I'm familiar with Martin Luther King's work, where he spoke about agape and you were talking about vibration. And also you made a statement that oftentimes we don't hear from spiritual or religious leaders. And I say. And let me preface this by saying all the spiritual and religious leaders I respect are completely inclusive. But we see so much from people who, as an example, a spouse being Christians, and yet a lot of their speech is hate speech and separates us. And why do you think that is? And how does this relate to the term agape? And what do you believe are the motivations of these individuals? Now, of course, I have my own opinion, and I think it probably will match yours, but I just wanted to hear what your thoughts were, because that's one of the problems in our world is not accepting people for who they are, right?
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Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Absolutely. The word agape I did. I was inspired by Dr. King. I met Dr. King when I was a little boy at Homelands Methodist Church, the church that we attended as a young boy. My mother introduced me to him when he came into the west coast to raise money for SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I remember shaking his hand. His hand was very smooth and soft. And I said to my mother, wow, his hand is so smooth. And she said, he does a different kind of work, baby. Anyway, that speech about agape penetrated me when I was very young. And so I knew that would be the name of the community. Now, agape, as he described it, was the love of God operating in the human heart. And so it transcends religiosity, transcends pseudo patriotism, transcends pseudo nationalism. You know, the love of God operating one's heart allows you to see that we're all emanating from the same source, you know, and religion is supposed to take us to that. Religion, which means to bind oneself back to the source, is a mode of transportation for your transformation, to see that we're all one. And so that's true religion. As you've just said, it's true religion. Now, there's something called religiosity or religion religism. Religism is when an individual loves their religion more than they love God. Religiosity, they love the different holy scriptures, whatever, whatever it is, whether it's the Bible, the Quran, the Dhammapada, whatever. They love the scriptures more than they love the presence of God. And so you have many people that call themselves whatever, they call themselves Christians or whatever, but they're caught up in the external aspects of that religion, the structures of it, but they're not deeply practicing what the religion offers. Every religion, every religion at heart offers some level of prayer, some level of meditation or introspection, some level of building kindness and compassion, deliberate kindness and compassion, some level of deep and abiding forgiveness. All of these are part of tenets of a true path with heart. But many people are caught up in the external aspects and they'll say, I'm a Christian and wouldn't know Jesus if he walked down the street.
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Dr. Jim Doughty
You know, in fact they would ridicule him, right?
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Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
They would, they would probably crucify him all over again. And so it's just, it's like a, it's like a club. Like they join this club called Christianity, but the practice of it is, is surface at best. Most of the time it's just a club where people go to these places called churches and they're in this club called Christians. But they hate everybody else or they judge everybody else, they judge other religions or they judge other people, other denominations and things of that particular nature. So they end up practicing the antithesis of what Jesus taught. You know, they practice the opposite. And so they're not having any real spiritual breakthrough. It's kind of a milquetoast kind of way of living in the world.
- [35:00]
Dr. Jim Doughty
Well, I think it's a way to serve an ego. But the problem is the greatest I, I think thing we can do is to extinguish our ego. And now obviously that's not a hundred percent possible, but that is the challenge of all of us is to be non judgmental, to be accepting, to be loving, to live a life and practice that life, not just say that's what you do. It's interesting because as you know, we saw last saw each other at the Council of the Parliament of World Religions.
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Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Yes.
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Dr. Jim Doughty
Which is always a blessing to be involved with. But I founded the center at Stanford actually, which also has King's papers there. But the reason I bring that up though is when I founded the center, the Dalai Lama ended up being the founding benefactor. And as a result he and I became friends. And then I became the chairman of the Dalai Lama foundation, which has been and was a great honor for me. But the extraordinary thing about that experience is that I ended up meeting, becoming friends with many of the leading spiritual and religious leaders in the world. And whether that's Amma the hugging saint or Pope Francis or Sri Sri or Eckhart Tolle or Byron, Katie, many of these people and you maybe. But the thing that has always stuck with me and actually has been really a Guide is this reality that all of these people who carry this power and who I respect, they actually live above the dogma of their religion because their worldview is compassion, non judgment acceptance, unconditional love. And they understand that for a subset of people, the dogma that has been created around those religions is strictly a dogma that helps a subset of people. But the underlying power of this practice is universal. And that is the most powerful thing and that is the real glue. And it is not about in any way ever judging some person in a negative way. But also, as you mentioned, it also contains figures, forgiveness, this recognition that all of us are frail, fragile human beings who make mistakes in our lives.
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Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Absolutely. We're all imperfect, seeking to allow that which is perfectly within us to come forward. This is why I say from time to time that there really isn't a Jewish mystic or a Christian mystic or a Buddhist mystic. Once an individual comes into a level of mysticism, you can appreciate your particular culture that you practice, but once you break through, you don't. You wouldn't call yourself a Christian mystic, even though people like to say that about people. You're a mystic. You're aware that there's only one power, one presence, one love, one intelligence. It's everywhere. And though you may have awakened through Christian practices or Buddhist practices or Judaism, once you break free, you appreciate the boat that you took to get there, but you're more involved with where you are rather than defining yourself based on your religion. And as you said, a lot of people who are stuck in the religion, it's an ego thing. Their ego is wrapping themselves around that religion and saying, this religion is better than that religion, or my God's bigger than your God to that effect. But once you break through, I mean, the beauty and the love and the intelligence that's flowing everywhere, it's really nameless. But it's, it's life itself and it's, it's not bound by dogma, it's not bound by denomination or religion. It's, it's, it's our life.
- [39:24]
Dr. Jim Doughty
No, that's exactly right. In fact, I think one of the most powerful things that I connect with You Is this PBS special you did, I think, was it in 2009? The answer is you.
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Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Yes.
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Dr. Jim Doughty
And, and maybe you can share with us how that relates and actually the power of that.
- [39:47]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Well, you know, I was the, the title is reminding people that, you know, not to look outward, but the answer is always within us. And that is that which prevents us from joy and peace and happy and harmony Harmony is content within our consciousness. That's within us, that needs to be cleared away and dissolved and forgiven and released. And the answer is within us. The love, the peace, the joy, the wisdom, the harmony, abundance. That's within the construct of our consciousness. It's already here. And we're seeking to discover, activate, express it so that it emerges from us. And so many people are living a life of thinking that their answer is somewhere else, that someone has their answer. You know, if I could just find that person that has my answer, I'll be okay. But the answer is us. It's within us in terms of how we're blocking joy. And it's in us in terms of the joy or the harmony or the abundance or the intelligence. It's intrinsic. It's our nature. We are the. We've emerged from the eternal. We've emerged from the eternal life. We're never going to die. We're always going to continue to unfold, to reflect and to reveal this eternal life. And so as we turn inward, introspection, you know, we go from extrospection to introspection. And then introspection provides the context for us to have insights that goes to transpection. We go beyond limited perception and we see different not with eyes, but with our awareness. And so I think the answer is you, not the podcast. The answer was UPBS special was a step in reminding people about that, you know, now we have language like, you know, take back your power. You know, I like to say, take back your mind and stop looking out. Really, really do some inner work. Well, set yourself free.
- [42:02]
Dr. Jim Doughty
Well, you know, it's interesting you said that because so many people do look outside themselves and some people translate that there's some power in the universe that if they could just connect with it, it would solve all of their problems. But I totally agree with you that the powers within you, and one of the challenges, unfortunately for so many people, is, and you've written about this in that you may express a desire or an aspiration or a dream, and you have all these people outside of yourself tell you, well, that's not possible, you can't do it. Yet this is what creates limiting beliefs, right? Once you say it is not possible, I cannot do it, that becomes truth. And the brain doesn't care what is truth or non truth. If you tell it and it believes it, that becomes reality. And in fact, one of the things I'd be interested in your opinion on is if you look at a lot of people, and I'll use in one example as an example, if you query high school students what they want to be, the answers unfortunately are I want to be rich, I want to be a celebrity, I want to be an influencer. And obviously these are very ego driven motivations which I think unfortunately oftentimes our Western society promotes that, that is a definition of success. And if you're powerful, if you're wealthy, that somehow that quote unquote, success translates into happiness. And of course it doesn't and I would really like your opinion on that. And how do we, how do people get out of this self involved, narcissistic, self absorbing narrative that seems to be promoted? And in fact, I think unfortunately a lot of social media companies want you to be addicted to that narrative or want you to keep scrolling or being there and promoting this narrative of trying to appear perfect for others in the hopes that you get likes or you get external affirmation.
- [44:39]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Yeah, yeah, you're describing definitely the Western mindset of turning us into consumers rather than creators. And the lie that some type of external amassing of something, whether it be likes or whether it be money or houses or fame, is going to translate itself to some kind of happiness. That is what we're. By the time a child is seven years old, they've been inundated if they watch television, that is with hours and hours and hours of that kind of narrative until they actually believe, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? Oh, I want to be famous or something to that effect. And you know, we're in the process of trying to unravel that in people and basically have a person ask, what is it that I'm here to contribute? What am I here to give? What vibrational footprint do I want to leave on the planet? What talent and gift do I need to cultivate to express before I leave the planet? Because we don't come to the world to get anything because we already have everything. We've come to circulate it, to share it, to shine it, to radiate it, to glow with it. But in a high tech, low touch, materialistic, consumer driven society, then the lesser values are definitely, we're seduced, provoked or intimidated into believing those things. And you have whole groups of people that are living at that dynamic. And so how does one go from that to awakening? People basically grow two ways. They grow through pain or insight. People will get sick and tired of being sick and tired. You know, I work with people that have achieved a lot in the world in terms of finances, but they're, they're Alcoholics, they're, they're drug addicts, they're sex addicts, they're. They're power hungry over people that manipulate like they had, you know, they're not happy at all, you know, and what they have with the world is saying, this is what I'm supposed to go after. And then they discover, you know, they look behind the curtain and there was no Oz. There was nothing there, you know, nothing real. And so that pain then drives them to become a little bit more introspection, perspective, that pain drives them to ask different kind of questions. Why am I really here? Who am I really? I'm not just the son or daughter of my parents. I'm. I'm something else, you know, and then some people, like in my case, you know, I had a, I had a radical insight that changed. Well, it kind of reawakened something that I had as a kid, but it changed everything, you know, that I could not deny. I can remember, Jim, that I remember when I woke up and I'm like, why is everybody so frantic about money? It was like. And I, and I had been in that rat race, you know, I remember what Lily Tomlin once said. She said, even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat, you know. And so it was. I. But I was like, why is everybody chasing money? You know, when I, you know, my earlier stages of awakening and. But you're absolutely correct. It's inundated within us.
- [48:03]
Dr. Jim Doughty
Well, and go ahead.
- [48:06]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Okay. We're inundated with that, with that narrative. And that narrative is also based on lack. You know, individuals feel less than they're feeling, a sense of lack. But if only if I have this much money, then I'll feel whole. Then they get that much money, they still don't feel whole. Oh, they have twice as much. Then I'll feel whole. They get twice as much. They're still not whole. If I had what you just fill in the blanks, whatever it is that they're trying to achieve.
- [48:34]
Dr. Jim Doughty
Well, you know, it's interesting because. And when they get into that mode, you know, you would sit there and think, well, they would become more generous. But then they look at the world through the continuing lens of scarcity.
- [48:47]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Yes.
- [48:47]
Dr. Jim Doughty
That somebody's going to somehow try to take it away from me and I need to get more and more and more. I'll tell you a brief story about my own life is I grew up in poverty. My father was an alcoholic and my mother had had a stroke when I was a child and was partially paralyzed. And had a seizure disorder, attempted suicide multiple times. We were on public assistance, and I met a woman in a magic shop, believe it or not. And in fact, I wrote a book about this called into the Magic Shop. But she actually was a very, very kind woman. She knew nothing about magic. She was the owner's mother. But she taught me a meditation practice. And in some ways, you could say my interaction with her over a period of six weeks was an awakening. But she taught me a meditation practice, but she also taught me a manifestation practice. And I was 12 at the time. And the problem was, if you grow up in poverty and you feel that you're lacking, when you talk about manifesting, you sit there and say, well, I want to live in a mansion, I want a million dollars, I want a sports car, et cetera, et cetera. And what's interesting is I made a list for her and I used the classic techniques of manifestation, and I acquired every one of those things. And I was never more miserable when I had everything than when I was a poor child. And yet I had all of these people sitting there saying, jim, God, you had the perfect life. Look at you, man. You have a Lamborghini or you have a Ferrari. And yes, I did, but I was attached to them as defining the identity for me. And it was completely empty. And it was interesting. The rest of the story goes that I ended up being incredibly successful to the point where I had about $80 million. And this was 24 years ago, 25 years ago. And in the dot com crash, I lost everything. It was 3 million in the hole. And I was trying to analyze how did I end up here, right? I went back to this conversation and what I did realize and what changed my life actually was I realized the drivers were all about what I wanted and that I was not focused on the other because I was so insecure. I still had my shame and I had not resolved those issues. And when I refocused, how I looked at the world and I tell people, when I looked into myself and actually understood, it made me realize that everyone is suffering. But my gift was to be of service and not so selfishly be oriented. And in fact, the. The end of the story is that I had made some arrangements to give some stock to charity, primarily for a tax write off. And the lawyers, when I talked to them, because I had a $15 million loan to pay back and had to sell everything, the lawyer said, well, Jim, it turns out we actually did not file the paperwork. You can keep all of that stock. And after this period of reflection. I said, give it away. And in fact, that ended up being $30 million at the end of the day.
- [52:24]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Wow.
- [52:25]
Dr. Jim Doughty
But the. The point of the story is, though, what it did was it liberated me because what was holding me back was this sense that I wasn't good enough and that I had to. It was all about me, what I wanted. And it changed my perspective from one of selfish interest to be of service. And. And I think that's really the message that you're promoting. And also one of the things that I always say, the greatest ability we have, and if you want to call it the profound nature of awakening or consciousness, is when we're able to look at the other as ourself.
- [53:05]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
That's it. That's what happens when you break free from the limited perception you actually see the other person is an expression of who you are, and you're here to serve. You have deliberate. Not an. Not a random act of kindness, but you have deliberate kindness as a way by which you live. And it keeps you kindness, compassion. It keeps you rooted in your real self, even when external circumstances are running amok. You come back to yourself rather than, am I right? You ask, am I kind? And if you. If you're rooted in your kindness and in your compassion and your love, then your thought and your word and your actions will represent that you'll do the right thing. You'll harmonize around right action. So this is. It is true. So what you've also just described is if a person is really suffering from depression or anxiety, anxiousness. If you ask the question, what can I give? How can I share? How can I contribute? How can I help somebody? The energy circuits flow differently. Energy starts to flow through you. Your chemical. The chemicals in your body become tonic rather than toxic. Your immune system becomes stronger. More energy flows through you. And just through your desiring to contribute, assist you too, you change your whole chemical nature of your body, which then provides the context for you to get greater clarity, greater guidance, greater wisdom. And you end up healing yourself by wanting to contribute to others, which, as you've just described, is not really another. It's really an expression of who you are.
- [54:51]
Dr. Jim Doughty
Well, it's interesting, I know obviously, that you know His Holiness, and one of the things he says, of course, is if you want to make others happy, be compassionate. If you want to make yourself happy, be compassionate. And I think those are very, very profound words. In closing, I want to thank you for your time, and I really appreciate it. I also just wanted to let you know, actually, I have A book that's coming out actually on the 7th of May, and it's called Mind Magic, the Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything. But it looks at it in many ways exactly as we're talking about, from not the perspective of the universe or that there's something out there, but an understanding that one, the manner in which you manifest what you want, it has to be focused on being of service and not a selfish goal. And I think absolutely, very much that's what we're talking about. And I would love to send you a copy, actually.
- [56:03]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
I'd love to receive it.
- [56:05]
Dr. Jim Doughty
Perfect.
- [56:06]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Yeah, but you're, you're saying absolutely true. I mean, you know, a lot of the research has shown that when someone is kind or someone is generous, someone is assisting someone else, you know, their chemical changes, chemicals of their body. But people who witness it, they witness a kind act, their consciousness changes because we're all connected so well.
- [56:29]
Dr. Jim Doughty
And this gets to this point of vibration, what people, you know, we have the woo woo pseudoscience side of the house. But the fact is, a lot of these things actually have a kernel of truth. And we do have this vibrational energy that actually surrounds us. And when we're with people like yourself and His Holiness and others, you sense this energy, this power, this positivity that actually motivates you to be a better person, I think.
- [56:59]
Reverend Michael B. Beckwith
Oh, absolutely. You know, mo, most of who we are is invisible. We see just less than 1% of who we are. Most of it, it's invisible. We are vibrational being. You know, we have a body, we have a mind, we have whatever we think we have. But we are vibrational beings. We are a filament of light. We are living dynamic information, you know, and, and as we practice spiritual practices, we become more coherent around that and our vibration is lifted, vibrates faster, and we begin to see that we really are the light. The light that lights up every being that comes to the planet. For real, we're living. We're living luminosity. And though that may sound woo woo, it's absolutely true, true.
- [57:52]
Dr. Jim Doughty
On that note, woo woo. To true, true. Right, well, listen, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it and it's a joy to connect with you again. Thank you for being with us today. The into the Magic Shop podcast can be found where you find your most popular podcasts, or you can find us@intothemagicshop.com.