E143 - Michael Beckwith: Discover The Life You Were Designed to Live

Michael Beckwith delves into the essence of a fulfilled life and how to manifest your soul’s true calling and potential. Beyond the outer conditions we face, he shares practical tools and insights for creating our destiny from the inside out. He opens up about navigating life's complexities, facing criticism, and the value of solitude. Ultimately, he inspires a journey toward service and embracing infinite possibilities for a transformative life. BonCharge Red light therapy: Go to https://BonCharge.com/KnowThyself and use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% Andrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyself.one/books ___________ 0:00 Intro 1:55 Defining a Life Well Lived 4:18 Life Visioning Process: Unlocking Your Heart’s Desire 11:05 Moving From Lack to Abundance Mentality 17:58 The Gift Hidden in Your Challenges 22:27 This Life is a Simulation 25:12 Ad: Boncharge Redlight Therapy 26:30 Michael shares a Poem 31:06 Art as a Vessel for Truth 35:12 Harnessing a Greater Intelligence 37:56 Balance of Skill Building & Flowstate 40:27 Importance of Deepening Spiritual Practices 45:44 Transcending Judgement with Understanding 49:23 The Value of Alone Time 53:53 Do This Every Night Before Bed 59:10 Power of Forgiveness to Transform Your Life 1:02:25 There’s Infinite Possibilities: Here’s How to Choose 1:07:13 How to Handle Losing Friends as You Grow 1:10:20 Navigating Criticism & Praise 1:13:30 The Cycles & Seasons of Life 1:17:38 Being of Service 1:22:18 Conclusion ___________ Episode Resources: https://www.instagram.com/michaelbbeckwith/ https://www.michaelbeckwith.com https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast https://www.knowthyself.one Listen to the show: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  People have more power than they can even imagine. We look at nature and we see when everything is in the right condition, then the potential emerges. Now, the difference between us and a tree is that we have to consciously participate in that emergence. Now, many people will look to the world and say, oh, this is a bad time. But we create our own condition. And then that seed of divinity within us starts to emerge. You live in a field of infinite possibilities. Why don't you choose a good one? People will say, where are some of the advanced teachings? And I'll say, well, not magic, it's just practice. We all know about visualization. Visioning is getting in touch with your soul and asking, what is it that's within you that really wants to be expressed? It's the difference between making something happen with your mind

• 0:45Speaker 00

  to going to making something welcome. Because it already exists. And what happens? You bump into self-love and appreciation. You bump into the awareness that you have everything you need, but you activate it and start to walk in that direction. And life changes.

• 1:03André Duqum?

  Well, Michael, it's good to have you back. Thanks for coming back in the studio.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Absolutely. When I found out I was coming, I had a smile on my face. Because I didn't know what my schedule was going to be. And they said, no, that's us come this week. I said, oh, yeah, I like that.

• 1:16André Duqum?

  It's my honor, man. It's so good to jam. And our community responded so positively from our last conversation. We touched on a lot of amazing themes from the dark night of the soul to what it means to live a purpose, vision, intentional, driven life. And so let's keep diving in. We live in a wild time where we're fed so much information and we have so much access to so much, which is incredible. It's easy to fall into the comparative trap of seeing what our life should be based off of what we think is attractive in others.

• 1:46André Duqum?

  And I've just found this so much for me and my own personal life of like, true joy has come from living in alignment with what my version of a life well-lived is. So what is, in your opinion, for your life? And what you feel like what you've seen as a pattern in many people is a life well-lived?

• 2:01Speaker 00

  A life well-lived is a life of service. It's that being of service to humanity, being of service to your own soul evolution. Keeps you at a baseline of joy and happiness. And as you've indicated, there are people living on the planet and they get pulled by celebrity, fame, comparison of how much money a person has and things of that particular nature. And as we know, comparison is suicidal. You know, if you compare yourself to other people, you're committing kind of an inner suicide. Or you're providing a context for your baseline of joy to go down. But if you're living a life of, you know, how much can I give?

• 2:44Speaker 00

  How much can I serve? You come on what I call the right side of the law. Meaning, as spiritual beings, we've took an incarnation and arrived with everything. No one is missing anything. I mean, I'm not talking about materialism. The qualities of the spirit, we have them all. So we're here to unpack that. We're here to activate that. We're here to express that. We're here to give, share, shine, radiate that. So if you ask, you know, what do I have to give today? How can I contribute? How can I share? Now you're on the right side of the universal law that will provide for you,

• 3:26Speaker 00

  activate your own gifts of potentiality to share and to give. So you find yourself in joy more often than not. But if a person is living in this field of social media comparison, and as you indicated, they're being bombarded with all this information. You know, there's a difference between information that informs and information that transforms. And most of the information flowing in social media is just information, somebody's opinion. But if you start to ask, how can I serve? You become available to what is called inspiration. That's not coming from time and space. That's coming directly from the heart, mind, or the infinite. It's a whole different flow of information.

• 4:10André Duqum?

  So I want you to walk us through a little bit of your life visioning process, because you've been supporting people really get clear on this. You know, I think success societally is thought of as just getting what you want out of life.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 4:23André Duqum?

  But taking it a step back and knowing what is worth wanting is even more important, right? Because we could spend our whole life going after what we thought we really wanted to come to find out, it actually doesn't mean a whole lot to us. And so when you think of that, you mentioned last time you were on the show that your heart's desire and the divine will are the exact same thing.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 4:43André Duqum?

  And so when you think of discovering what it takes to discover what is worth wanting and what our hearts desire and therefore divine will is, what comes to mind in supporting people with that?

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Well, there's wanting and there's immature wanting. And the immature wanting oftentimes comes from what society gears us to want through the vast commercialism, commercials, marketing. There's all manner of things that people grow up in and they say, I want this, I want that. But they have no idea where that desire is even coming from. Is it coming from their soul? Or is it coming from society hypnotizing? I call it nefarious hypnotism, hypnotizing people into thinking they want this. I saw a recent meme that showed they were asking kids what they wanted. And one person was saying, I want a Lamborghini. I want a million dollars. Somebody said, I want a billion dollars.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Then they asked people in poorer countries what they wanted. And the little kid said, I'd like to see my father again. You know, I would love to have a taste of meat. I haven't had it in a long time. You know, I would love to have a quiet place to read a book. That it was totally different based on the culture that the people came from and the experiences they had in life. So when you talk about the life visioning process, you know, we all know about visualization. You can use visualization to basically manifest things you want. Visioning is basically getting in touch with your soul and asking, "What is it that you've come to deliver?

• 6:19Speaker 00

  What is it that's within you that really wants to be expressed?" So at the end of your time on Earth, you're not lamenting the fact that, you know, "Okay, you've got six cars." But did you activate your potential? Did you actually give the gift you said you were going to give? You know, I firmly believe that before we took the incarnation, we made a promise to ourself. The promise was, we would come here, we'd wake up, and we would contribute and distribute our gifts. Now, in any destination, you bump into turbulence. You fly from here to Seattle, New York, Chicago. The plane always hits a little turbulence.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Then you land, hopefully, most of the time. So when you come to the Earth plane, you come into turbulence. It's a science of millions, beliefs, perceptions, superstitions. You move through the turbulence and the world that turbulence is creating. But ultimately, through some kind of way, you start to wake up. If somebody's listening to us right now, that means something is pulling them to be at this particular podcast, to wake up, to know themselves. So at some point, you wake up and you realize, "Oh, I've been going through the turbulence. I've had some drama, had some trauma. I've had these belief systems, I had this religiosity, but now I want to wake up." And now I can begin to ask the question,

• 7:46Speaker 00

  "What is it that's within me that really wants to emerge? What gift do I have that needs to be activated and expressed?" Now, if I ask those questions sincerely in meditation, I am going to activate my spiritual faculty that may have been dormant because I've been caught up in the world. I haven't been using my intuition. I've just been using my rational mind, my logical mind. I've just been using, you know, ways to survive. I start to get little glimpses and glimmers and intuitions and hunches about, "What is it within me that I really want?" You know, I do an exercise with people sometimes in which I'll put them into a meditative state.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  And in this meditative state, they feel that all of their needs are met. They're healthy, they have harmonizing prosperity, ideal employment, right mate, all this stuff. And then, from that space, I'll say, "Okay, what do you want?" And now they have everything. "What do you want?" And if they stay in that long enough, they won't ask for a car, or another house, or whatever, because they already have it. In the feeling tone, now we'll start to emerge as what they really want, what their soul wants. What are they to contribute? What gift are they to activate within themselves that they are to express?

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Now they're living from, as you just indicated, their heart's desire and the divine will. It's the same thing. The divine will is a greater expression of life. Our heart's desire is our unique way that we're to express the divine will. Because everyone's different. There's no one on the planet exactly the same. Even though powers that be hate the word diversity, it's built into the program. It's nothing but diversity. Everybody's unique. And so that's what I'm seeking to help people get to, you know? And what happens? You bump into self-love and appreciation. You bump into the awareness that you have everything you need, legitimate needs.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  But you activate it and start to walk in that direction. And life changes. And you still get the stuff of the world. In whatever culture you're living in, you know, you still have what I call, I call it harmonizing prosperity. It's not just gluttony. You know, it's your legitimate needs.

• 10:22André Duqum?

  As you said, getting back into the space where you discovered the joy in your being, then asking that question of what wants to emerge from from within me, it completely changes your answer, right?

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:34André Duqum?

  What comes off of a person who is in a state of joy versus a state of anxiety, fear and hard desire? Like, those are two completely different answers. And I think it's a really important reflection again here is to is to have that practice that gets you into that state. So then you can ask that question because so much of our life has been up until this point, I think for many of us, asking these questions of what do I want? How do I get it from a state of inner lack?

• 11:05Speaker 00

  It's lack. Oftentimes, people are asking that from a state of lack, like they don't have something. And so then when they get it, they're still operating from lack, even though they have the thing, there's still a lack within them, which is why we see many people with a lot of stuff, a lot of money, but still acting as if they don't have, greedy, manipulative, dominating, because they manifested from the consciousness of lack rather than from the consciousness of overflow and connection. So that's a very good point. Where are you asking from?

• 11:43André Duqum?

  Right.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:44André Duqum?

  Yeah. So what else have you discovered in the, I guess, the texture of what emerges? Because I think it's so spot on, right? You look at nature. Nature is emergence from the growth of a redwood tree to the blossoming of a flower.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:00André Duqum?

  As long as it gets what it needs and it's in the right environment, it naturally grows into its full potential.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:06André Duqum?

  It's encoded within all of us.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:08André Duqum?

  And so, yeah, what do you think about that process?

• 12:11Speaker 00

  Well, I think biomimicry is great, you know, because we look at we look at nature and we see, as you just indicated, when everything is in the right condition. Then the potential emerges. Now, the difference between us and a tree is that we have to consciously participate in that emergence. A tree, you just put it in the right condition, leave it alone. It has water, it has sunshine, it has all it needs. There's no no in it. There's no maybe, oh, I want to be a daffodil.

• 12:37André Duqum?

  We have more agency to go in the opposite direction.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely. That's why we're the image and likeness of God, because we have that kind of agency. So, the inner work that we do is to participate in that activation of potential. I like to say, we're not anticipants. We are participating in an energetic flow. What does that mean? Ralph Walser Emerson had a word called endogenous, which means that, you know, indigenous means that certain things grow in a particular environment. Palm tree's not going to grow in snow. You know, it's indigenous to warm weather. There's extogenous, that which is outside of us. Endogenous means we create our own environment. We become the ripe condition.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  So, if we're participating with our own visioning process, our own meditation, our own high intention, et cetera, et cetera. We become a condition for the emergence of our potential. And it doesn't matter about the external conditions of the world. The economy can be up or down. Stocks can be up or down. Presidents can be in or out. That's not our condition. We create our own condition. And then, that seed of divinity within us starts to emerge, because we are the condition. Now, many people will look to the world and say, oh, this is a bad time for X, Y, and Z. So, they're living from an extogenous point of view.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  That is determining my destiny. But, when we go within, We create our own condition, potential is activated. There's many people being healthy and successful in all the stuff that's going on in the world, being happy. It doesn't mean you deny what's happening, but you still create your own condition. So I always try to offer people understanding that you get to create your own condition. You know, not what's on the news, not what's in your social media, but you. And when the condition is right, emergence happens. When you have a right state, then the next stage emerges. If you don't have the state, you don't have the next stage.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  So the state has to be normalized. So you have to, obviously, people go up and down. Some days are better than others. But if you have a level of practice, you have that state most of the time. And then there's a natural stage that unfolds for that individual. People have more power than they can even imagine. It's, they could just see themselves.

• 15:16André Duqum?

  No, it's, it's great. I was just writing this piece the other day about the link between humility and intelligence.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:25André Duqum?

  And it's a lot of what you're speaking to here, you know? We can look at it, you know, and the kind of gross or dense example of somebody who uses drugs, who, you know, is exogenously seeking for these state changes, right? Failing to recognize we have our own endocannabinoids, right? And these endogenous chemical factory within us that, that allows the capacity for all of these states, state experiences naturally. And so making space for that condition, like you spoke to, for our natural emergence, is one, a just really liberating perspective, and it kind of takes the pressure off of us because it's less of like us, of course, there will be activity, but it's less us forcing

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:02André Duqum?

  to do something, and it's allowing and accepting something to emerge from within us, which feels way more effortless.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely. It's like, it's a difference between in what I call stage two, when you're learning how to manifest, making something happen with your mind, to going to making something welcome. It's a, when you make something welcome, that's more feminine, it's more allowing, it's more letting, and that is what, that's what happens when you become the right condition. You're making something welcome because it already exists. Peace, love, joy, wisdom, harmony, abundance. You don't make that stuff. You don't make those qualities. Those qualities already exist. You're making them welcome to be the activity of your awareness. When you're trying to make something happen, oftentimes the energy of trying to make something happen is, "I don't have it, so I'm gonna make it happen." You know, and that's a stage of development.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  It's not a bad stage, it's just a stage. But again, you run the risk of, one, becoming addicted to manifesting, and two, you run the risk of, even when you get it, you're still not happy. You still think something's missing. But when it starts to be activated through allowance, it's a part of your being. This is who I am. You know, I'm not trying to get abundance. I am abundance. You know, I'm not trying to get joy. I am joy. You see, it's a whole different identification that begins to be activated.

• 17:28André Duqum?

  It seems as though, especially looking back in hindsight, that the challenges that occur in our life are, in many ways, designed just sweetly for our own evolution, you know? And it doesn't feel like it often in the moment.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Right.

• 17:42André Duqum?

  But looking back, you really see how this kind of life in this realm on earth is set up in such to where we're gonna get, to varying degrees, challenges that are, really can be viewed as opportunities for growth.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 17:56André Duqum?

  Yeah, and so what do you, from that perspective, like, how do you see the challenges that come up in our life? Because everybody who's listening right now has a version of something in their life that is maybe not flowing as effortlessly as they wish it to be.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Right, right, right.

• 18:10André Duqum?

  But I think shifting our perception and what these things can serve change our relationship to it.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the key thing, shifting your perspective and perception. I often say that the challenges are actually our gifts and work clothes. So they're actually coming to actually activate potential that's latent, that cannot be activated without a challenge. Because sometimes people become lazy, you know? They're like, not lethargic necessarily, but they're not really activating potential because everything seems to be going okay. But when there's a challenge, what do we have to do? We have to go in. We have to activate potential. And we end up discovering things about ourselves, or activating things about ourselves that before may have just been a belief. But now it becomes active.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  You know, there's a, there's a seed in, um, in the forest, some kind of pine tree that when these, when these seeds fall into the soil, they never germinate, except when there's a forest fire. They just stay there for fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years. But a forest fire is the only thing that's hot enough to make the seed open. And then it becomes the new trees for the next iteration of that forest. And I think there's qualities within us that are there. But the challenge becomes like a fire that breaks it open. And suddenly we discover things about ourselves and powers and energies that we didn't even know we had until that challenge came. So I think challenges are built in for the soul's edification.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  And, and so we're not here teaching to live a challenge-free life.

• 19:48André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  We're here to learn how to navigate and to transcend and transmute challenges so that we become the next great vision and version of ourselves. We're here to constantly grow. And the universe is so progressive that if we get too comfortable, the, um, we get kicked in the butt a little bit. You know, wake up.

• 20:15André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  You're not, you're not activating your potential, you know? It could be a symptom. It could be a financial thing, could be a relationship thing. But the universe is always expanding and moving us forward.

• 20:31André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's like what you mentioned last time about people transforming either through insight or crisis.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:37André Duqum?

  You know, and I think we oscillate between both, most of us throughout our life. And those challenges that arise in our life, whether they be relationship dynamics, financial struggles, um, something inner with our mind, our body, our emotion, right? When perceived as opportunities for growth, what you resist persists in that thing, right? So like when you accept it as a challenge, when you accept it as an opportunity for growth, then like when you're, when you go to the gym and you work out, you understand the challenge. You choose it, right?

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 21:04André Duqum?

  I feel like when you choose it, it just, our relationship completely changes and, and it allows us to have synergy with it instead of it's me versus life. I feel like so much of our, our time here often is like, And this subtle but pervasive energy of the way my life is right now is not how it should be.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:22André Duqum?

  You know?

• 21:23Speaker 00

  That's great. That's good. Yeah. You use the word weights. You know, I often like to say that imagine you're just in a big weight room. You're in density, time, gravity. You're here lifting weights, you know, and this is you got time and space. Things that don't really exist. They're abstract mental concepts. They're not like forever, you know? But while you're in time and space, this is a weight room. And it's actually a canvas by which you get to paint with the colors of your soul. And so you're here lifting weights. You know, sometimes you have to lift weights around love and forgiveness. Sometimes you have to lift weights around contribution and generosity. Or whatever, whatever quality that seems to be lacking.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  You actually have to go in and lift that weight. You have to actually perceive it. You actually shift your perception. You have to actually change your conversation around it. And until that weight becomes easy, it's like, oh, yeah. So that's, I think that's a great analogy.

• 22:24André Duqum?

  Yeah, it makes me think about, uh, we just had Deepak on the show and he referred this quote from Victor Shine about, you know, our life is a dream. And we're asleep and sometimes we become awake enough to know that we're dreaming.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:41André Duqum?

  And it, you know, we have these moments of insight of revelation where we kind of get our head above the ocean. You know, tide and we can see this life and how it's set up in these different dynamics. And then we come back into the weight room, so to speak, and live our life. Those moments where we do kind of get our head above the water and we see how this is very much like a simulation.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 23:00André Duqum?

  It's like all these.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  It is a simulation.

• 23:02André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  It's a matrix. Cause it's the condensation of thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, opinions, points of view that have condensed itself into a world of appearances. You know, it's always changing. And, and once you, like you say, when you pop up and you see that you're dreaming, you're having a dream of separation. But you're never separated from the divine. It's an impossibility. But we dream we are. And then the world of appearances, the collective belief impacts us. So we have a whole collective, superstitious belief about separation. Then you have all these religions.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  That have their point of view and oftentimes religiosity takes over that locks people into a religion rather than into the transcendent. So people end up fighting about being a certain religion, which the religion itself was to take you beyond religion. It just becomes a whole dynamic of superstitious thought that creates a simulation of separation. Doesn't even exist. It's not even real. When I mean real, it's not eternal.

• 24:10André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:11André Duqum?

  Yeah, yeah, there's that that that perspective and that balance of things can, you know, be real to us, but they're not in the absolute truth of how things are, you know, actually happening.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:21André Duqum?

  You appear to be separate from me right now.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:23André Duqum?

  But and you appear to be over there, like a few feet away from me. But the reality is this image is being inverted and we know the whole story, right? You're happening, we are phenomenas appearing inside of ourself within one another.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's why healing, it's like in a moment of real healing, it just simply means that that which has never been hurt, it's a revelation, it's a revealing of that which has never hurt. So then the body changes or the mental body changes. And then that's and that's I've had an opportunity to be a part of that a lot where it's like, you know, how did that happen? Well, you dreamt about this disease, you know, but now you woke up to the fact that there's a part of you that can't even ever be diseased.

• 25:10André Duqum?

  Yeah. Yeah. Hey fam, we'll get right back to the show. But first, you probably have heard me talk a bunch about how when I meditate in the morning, I usually stack it with red light therapy. So if you don't know, there are over 4,000 peer reviewed studies on red light therapy, showing benefits of cellular healing, skin health by stimulating collagen, testosterone, sleep, mood, the list goes on and on. It's a great way to get healthy light exposure in the morning before sunrise. Just 10 to 20 minutes a day is all that it takes and there are innumerable benefits. If you're looking for a red light therapy device, Bond Charge is a solid option. They have the lowest EMF levels on the market, no flicker, both near infrared and red light and one

• 25:54André Duqum?

  Lightweight device, they ship worldwide, have an easy return policy, and also offer other science-backed wellness products worth checking out. Which you can do so on their website, boncharge.com/knowthyself and use coupon code knowthyself to save 15%. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com/knowthyself. Use code knowthyself to save 15% off. Bon Charge products are all HSA/FSA eligible, giving you tax-free savings of up to 40%. I hope you dig it. Back to Michael Beckwith. That's amazing. Did you, I heard from a little bird that you maybe wrote a poem. You told me on your way in about this. I'm curious, where did that come up? Because you were just, you took a little hiatus this past month.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, in the month of March, I just, I didn't speak at Agape. I still had some work things to do, but every March I tried to take off.

• 26:46André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  And so it was Women's History Month, so I just had all my women ministers just speak. And they, they did.

• 26:52André Duqum?

  Ministresses?

• 26:53Speaker 00

  They killed it. You know, and so thus I stopped shaving, as you can see. And I was sitting down, and since I didn't have, what was beautiful about it, since I didn't have like appointments to go to most of the time, I had moments of longer periods of meditation. I didn't have to like, okay, I got 22 minutes here, I got a half hour. I could just sit as long as I wanted to. And so I sat and I started laughing because I was thinking about people going into virtual realities and then not realizing they're already in one. So they're in a simulation, they're in a virtual reality of time and space and constriction. And then they put something on and they go into another simulation.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  It just made me, it was funny to me. And I don't put down VR because you can use it to develop skills. You know, it has some very powerful benefits. So I sat there, I started writing this, you know, about the simulated dream. Took me two days. I mean, I wrote and then I had to go somewhere. And then when I came back, like three or four or five days later, I wrote the second half of it. And it was, you want to hear some of it?

• 27:59André Duqum?

  Yeah, would love to hear it. You want to share?

• 28:01Speaker 00

  Sure, I love it. I used to write poetry a lot back in the day. And then I kind of got busy.

• 28:08André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  And then, so it's called The Simulated Dream.

• 28:11André Duqum?

  All right, that's a nice book you got there too.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  One of my sisters bought this for my birthday.

• 28:15André Duqum?

  That's very good.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  So I started it on 3/26. Great. And I completed it on April 4th. Amazing. So it says, it's called "The Simulated Dream." "Oh beloved traveler seeker of the stars, do you not see the cage within which you play? A theater of mirrors reflecting who you think you are? Yet the essence of you lies beyond the fray. This world, this simulation, this grand illusion is shaped by beliefs, perceptions, and imprints of the past. A mosaic of stories, a web of delusion, where shadows of truth are cast and recast.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  You've built a game within the greater game, virtual worlds to escape which seems mundane. But how ironic, this digital distraction, when you already dwell in a scripted abstraction. Every thought, every fear, every fleeting desire weaves the matrix of the life you perceive. But deep within, there's a soul on fire, whispering the truths the mind cannot conceive. Ah, the simulation is not the prison. It's the teacher, a framework of lessons, a sacred disguise.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Its purpose is not to bind, but to feature the path to awakening, the opening of eyes. For the ultimate game is not to win or achieve, but to wake up beloved to the eternal and the real, to shed the mass that your mind weaves, and embrace the truth that no illusion can conceal. You are not the avatar, the role, or the name, not the stories you tell or the titles you claim. You are the witness, the light, the eternal flame, the harbinger of love in this temporal game. So play, yes, play. But play with awareness, knowing that the stage is but a fleeting projection.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Be the presence, the stillness, the boundless fairness, a beacon of truth in a world of reflection. For when you awaken, the simulation transforms. The false falls away and the real takes form."

• 30:33Speaker 00

  You're not here to escape, but to create, to anchor eternity in the tides of fate. Beloved, rise, be the harbinger of the divine, a lucid dreamer in the landscape of time. For the game was never to lose or to win, but to remember the truth that has always been.

• 30:56André Duqum?

  Snaps. Snaps for Michael. Love that, man. That was great.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I felt good because I was like, when I was a little boy, I used to write in journals a lot when I was in elementary school. No one told me to do that. It's just something that kind of emerged as a kid. And I had stacks of them. So one day, my mother found them under my bed, and she asked me what was wrong, if something was wrong with me. I said, nothing's wrong. I'm just writing my emotions. And about two weeks later, they had me in sport. I was in baseball and football and track. It was like, you know. And I can remember like kind of cutting that part of myself off. So then I'm a senior at USC, and I have this spiritual awakening.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  And then a few years after that, I had a, there was something like agonizing inside of my being. It was jittery. I couldn't be comfortable. And I went to a place, I started writing. And this emergence of poetry just flowed out of me. I mean, volumes, volumes, volumes. So that which I had dammed up when I was a kid and went into the masculine sport thing, you know, track and all of that, got opened up again. And so then I wrote a lot of music. And then, you know, I've been doing agape now, 39th year. And so you get busy.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  So being off, I just sat, and it started coming out again.

• 32:34André Duqum?

  Yeah, poetry. I mean, talk about emergence, man. Getting quiet and really just allowing the words to flow is such an amazing practice.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. The only challenge with it is I had to, doing it again, I had to see what my handwriting said. That word weaves. I was trying to read it for us. I said, what was I trying to say? Then it finally came, oh, mine weaves, you know? Because my handwriting should have been a doctor.

• 33:00André Duqum?

  I think

• 33:03André Duqum?

  what art enables is a level of relaying truth. And I feel like more of its direct essence, right? Because we get so literal in our logical way of deducing and explaining

• 33:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:15André Duqum?

  reality through our intellect, that we lose the poetry of life.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, poetry, music, directly heart connection. You know, it transcends the logical mind. So people can actually feel something without having to figure, tear it apart and think about it.

• 33:33André Duqum?

  Yeah, it brings it more into the feeling, you know, like some of those lines, what a scripted abstraction or a lucid dream and that landscape of time or, you know, there is some the lines under that point to like the absolute truth of reality of like what this all is and this leela and this divine play, right?

• 33:50Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 33:50André Duqum?

  And I love both sides of it, too, because I love having physicists and consciousness researchers on the podcast and get into the, you know, into the nitty gritty of the scientific process of it. But that balance is necessary.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  It reminded me that when I first woke up years ago, you know, I was balancing between this mystical awareness and science. Because UCLA at that time had a parapsychology department. And so like Mitchell May and Judith Orloff, a lot of those people and a lot of friends of mine were going through that because in this society, they were deemed weird, you know? So, so I was studying a lot of the science of mysticism. And so I was very aware of vibration frequency, non-local healing, things of that particular nature, while I was exploring in my own consciousness. And, and that particular department doesn't exist anymore at UCLA.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  You know, they were way ahead of the game years ago, but now, from what I understand, it's, it's not there anymore. But in my own upbringing, I was always balancing between now what we call quantum physics and quantum entanglement and things of that. And the mysticism, it was always a nice, nice bridge for me.

• 35:03André Duqum?

  Yeah, I think that balance is necessary. And activating like those, those dormant potentials and possibilities within us. I mentioned earlier, you know, I think

• 35:16André Duqum?

  Howard Gardner has this great framework about the frames of mind is one of his books about the different types of intelligence. He puts it into eight different categories from kinesthetic bodily intelligence. You know, a lot of athletes to musical to linguistic to logical, mathematical, which I think is, you know, put a little bit more on a pedestal societally. But it invites how intelligence weaves throughout all of our lives differently.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:40André Duqum?

  And sometimes the resistance is simply because we haven't discovered and allowed to explore more of what comes naturally to us. You know, no one's going to disagree that Kobe Bryant or Steph Curry, you know, is an incredible form of intelligence, right?

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 35:55André Duqum?

  It's just different.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. Because you see them, you see the intuition.

• 35:59André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  You see the physical prowess. You see the non-thinking, suddenly doing something that they'd never planned before. You know, I remember the guard, Nate Archibald, I think, New York Knicks. You know, he was going down the court and there was three people guarding him and he did some kind of weird move and turned around and went up 360 and laid it in to win the game. And when the announcer asked him, how did you know to do that move? He said, I didn't. He said, that move took me over because it was the only move that could happen to get through three people. So it was an intuitive intelligence that took him over, the zone, the flow. So yeah, this, I think we're, I know we're surrounded by divine intelligence, not divine

• 36:44Speaker 00

  intellect, but divine intelligence. And it uses the intellect, uses the physical body, uses the mind to like weave through whatever's going on to reveal a healing, a destiny, a slam dunk, a palm, a medical

• 37:04Speaker 00

  incision, you know? A doctor was reading about a doctor who had to do a very...

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Intricate surgery on an infant's heart. And he said he prayed. And it was, the procedure took hours, but he said for him was like five minutes. And they were patting him down, you know, with the sweat. But he said he felt something on his hand guiding him. And he was able to do this surgery. So whether it's that or slam dunk, you know, it's this intelligence of love just flowing through us if we allow it to take place, you know? Yeah.

• 37:46André Duqum?

  Yeah, I would like to get your perspective on that because allowing it to take place sounds really nice and something that I think everybody would want, wants to experience more of in their life. And yet there is this balance of like developing the skills and almost the unconscious competency. So you, your body knows and you can let the body intelligence, cosmic divine intelligence, whatever word you want to use, take over and that's where you experience flow.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 38:10André Duqum?

  For example, on piano, there is the practicing of scales and different keys and chord progressions and voicings. And then you get out the way and stuff starts happening that emerges in ways you can't comprehend.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 38:20André Duqum?

  So what do you feel like the balance is of like doing the work, building the skills? And then, you know, allowing something greater to take over?

• 38:29Speaker 00

  You have to have the practice on whatever, whatever you're working on so that you say that so the body is already in tuned to that and then something takes over. You know, and there are people that have natural ability, they say natural ability.

• 38:43André Duqum?

  Yeah, like more savants.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, but a lot of, a lot of times people who have natural ability don't develop their highest capacity because it's come so easy for them. You know, I had, I had a friend years ago who's, he was a natural athlete. He had a natural yogi, but he never would like do the practice.

• 39:04Speaker 00

  So as years went on, you know, I became better at, I wasn't naturally flexible. You know, he's taller than me, so he was naturally faster. But as we went on in our life, you know, I ran varsity track. I was undefeated on my mildly relay leg. You know, I became very flexible in yoga. And he stayed pretty much the same. He was a natural, but he didn't develop the practice to actually activate his potential. So I think that whatever skill we're trying to develop, you have to practice it.

• 39:35André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  You know, I, I, I like to practice meditation. You know, I, I do have a certain gift of I can open myself up and I can go speak. I can, I can open myself up and I have this access to certain levels of, of wisdom and knowledge that's within me, but I'm not going to skip my meditation. You know what I mean? I'm going, I'm going to go, I want to activate that. I want to be in tune with that on a regular basis. So I'd rather, I'd rather give up doing, eating something at that moment. I'd rather sit, you know, and, and get in tune, you know? Eat later. I'm just using as an example.

• 40:15André Duqum?

  For sure. It makes sense, you know? You, you take care of what you love, you take care of your gift, and then what you love takes care of you.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 40:23André Duqum?

  The gift takes care of you.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Absolutely. But the word practice, I think, is important. I think.

• 40:28André Duqum?

  That devotion to it?

• 40:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's like, like, like, people will say, you know, what are some of the advanced teachings? And I'll say, well, theory is, is beginning. Practice is advance. So you study all the stuff, read all the good books, you read the Bhagavad Gita, you read the Dhammapada, you read the Bhagavad, you read all the stuff, you learn the mystical teachings. That's beginning. The advance is actually trying to practice that. Sitting, you know, having some level of practice where it becomes, where it dawns on your awareness. You have an aha, you have an insight.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  It's like, oh, I've heard that a million times, but now when I sat, I understood it at a whole another level.

• 41:17André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 00

  You know, but you don't get that without the practice. And you have to have a moment where you think not.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:25André Duqum?

  Yeah, that's it's so easy to live in the abstraction or the thought of of the thing rather than the actual thing.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  The actual encounter.

• 41:33André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  You know, you have to have an encounter. You have to have your own personal revelation of what you believe. You can hear a million speakers and you say, oh, that's beautiful. I believe that, oh, yeah, I'm inspired. But you have to have a personal revelation of that. And that's what you get. If, you know, you can be walking on the beach, you can look at the ocean, you can be still. And then suddenly, oh, my God, I know, I know that now. I actually feel that that's, that's absolutely true. I'm actually, I'm actually at one with that wave. I'm actually at one with the tree. I'm actually at one with all of life. Whereas before you may have believed it.

• 42:10André Duqum?

  Right.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  You know, you read, you read the quantum physics, you're the one with everything.

• 42:18André Duqum?

  Have you heard of the parable of the cafe on the cliff? Do you ever?

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Cafe?

• 42:23André Duqum?

  Cafe on the cliff.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Maybe.

• 42:24André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's roughly speaking, it's that analogy of, you know, say you're on the edge of a cliff and you're about to dive into the water, right? And metaphorically speaking, that's representing you into actually living into the practice of these theories, you know, actually doing the deep work and, and facing off with the parts of ourselves that are uncomfortable and really getting deep into the water, you know? And it's like the person that, that gets there and says, hold on, like, you know, let me, let me stretch a little bit before I jump in, you know? And then a friend comes by, be like, hey, I want to have a talk with somebody and just like, let's have a conversation for a little bit right before we, right before I dive in. And he's like, you know, I'm actually kind of thirsty. Would you grab me a glass of water? And it's like, okay, yeah, all right, I think I'm ready to go in. Actually, I'm kind of hungry. Would you mind grabbing me a bagel, you know?

• 43:09André Duqum?

  And it kind of keeps going and going where the more people come and they get a picnic table and they sit down, they have conversations, you end up building this cafe on the cliff.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  Instead of diving in.

• 43:17André Duqum?

  Yeah. And you, you start living on, on the cliff edge, right? You build this restaurant and, and you get like, right there, but you actually, you know, fail to have recognized the most important part, which is doing the work, getting into the water. And it's just like the story of Siddhartha, right?

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 43:35André Duqum?

  That tension between. Being totally consumed by what we what we know to be true, you know, and living in the concepts of it.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And, you know, we live in a world where we, as you said, put on the pedestal, the intellectual understanding of something, rather than actually having the encounter with it, you know? And I used to have a teacher that would say, he called it the "ra consciousness." He would say, he told, he would tell this parable of fish swimming in the ocean, you know, when turns, you know, they all kind of do that. And then a big wave comes and knocks one of the fish on the sand. And he sees a beach ball, and he sees people having a picnic, and he sees all this stuff. He has no language for this. And he's looking, he's looking, and the wave knocks him back into the water. And the other fish say, "What did you see?" And all he says, "We're a, a, a."

• 44:27Speaker 00

  He can't describe it, because he had no reference to what he saw. And so, you know, when we begin to open up, we go into that space where we don't really have the language for it, you know? Then later on, when we use language, it's the same words we used to use, but they mean something different, because the context has changed.

• 44:47André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  And so, we want to throw ourselves over the cliff, jump in the water, so we're living in a "ra, a, a." I don't really know how to describe this, but it's real!

• 45:01André Duqum?

  You know, and that's why I think there's the the sages throughout time have had a unique capacity to, through the futility of what we have, the capacity for the the human language.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:14André Duqum?

  Be able to describe as close as we can, right? The words will never do it justice, but they can be close.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  That's why we have poetry and poetry and and parables and stories, so you can talk around it and talk about what it's not.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  But you can't talk about what it is. Yeah. Because then that word right there separating from the is in this, you just have to just be quiet and let your light so shine.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Oh, it's good, man. It's sweet. I was thinking, I was in the store the other day and the woman

• 45:53Speaker 00

  was so rude and, and just, you know, it was like giving me no, I'm buying stuff, no energy. It was just like, and it might, a part of my mind said, this person really shouldn't be with the public. She should be in the back room working, but she shouldn't be out here. And then I changed. I said, you know what? I don't know what's happened to this woman. She may have gotten a bad phone call, may have had some trouble with her kids at home. I just started just thinking and then I started having compassion. It's like, she's having a bad day. I'm good. And then all of a sudden, she's changed right in front of my face. She started smiling and becoming really polite and extra helpful. So I think there was like this connection with us on the invisible side. And when I

• 46:37Speaker 00

  saw her as human, you know, and maybe just having a bad day and got curious as to why she was acting this way, she changed. So then I thought about the fact that, you know, I was in a conversation with Rabbi Sharon Brous recently and we were talking about the fact that tyranny and tyrants cannot exist in a field of love, that it can only happen if people are separated from each other and have polarization and hates and live in their opinions. And so what if we all just started thinking about people who don't like us, but become curious as to why? Why are they acting like this? Why don't

• 47:19Speaker 00

  they like me? You know, why don't these men like women? Why don't these people like, don't like people with a lot of melanin? And you start to have a level of compassion as to what happened to them that would force such a limited perception. And then in that moment of compassion, we start to develop a whole nother energy on the planet of which tyranny cannot invade because we're all in love.

• 47:44André Duqum?

  It's a trip when we catch ourselves in those moments of how we're seeing life through our own distorted perception of it and not as it actually is.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:52André Duqum?

  And then you get those moments where you can sort of collapse the energy and you have a deeper connection.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:58André Duqum?

  And you recognize, oh, like, we're all one. You see the humanity behind somebody. There's plenty examples where we could look online or see the things that are happening in the world and judge it and condemn it, hate it. Not to say that these things are right by any means, you know, but, but you're inviting like, the deeper understanding of something leaves no space to judge it.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Right, right. Once you go to the depth of it, you can see any things that impacted people, traumas, dramas, unhealed issues, and that's what's running them. And rather than judge it, you can become a, um, a place of healing. I, I, I teach the practitioners at Agape that when you see a lot of calamity going on in the world, whether it's war, hate, whatever the case may be, that is the world inviting you for prayer. If you, if somebody comes to you and says, I have a diagnosis of some kind, can you hold me in prayer? You're gonna say, yes, of course.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  So when, when you see all this stuff erupting on the world, that's the world inviting us into prayer rather than judgment.

• 49:07André Duqum?

  Like a planetary disease.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  It's like, yeah, it's like wars and rumors of wars and hate. You know, it's like, oh, cancer, let me go into prayer, rather than judgment. Because if everybody's in judgment, there's not going to be any healing. There's not going to be any forward movement. Yeah.

• 49:23André Duqum?

  It feels like the, a real like litmus test to like, and yardstick for seeing where we're, our own growth is in life and our own development is how we feel with ourself when we're alone.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Oh, I love this. Yeah.

• 49:38André Duqum?

  And I would love to get your perspective on this and we can get into the tools, you know, that continue to support this, but man, even in podcasting, it's easy to come on here and, you know, for people to put on a show for an hour or two, you know, it's easy for us to go to work, maybe even and put on a face, you know, of different things. We cannot lie to ourselves.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  Nope.

• 49:59André Duqum?

  For extended periods of times, you know, it's going to show up in distorted energy in so many different ways. So what comes to mind when you think about that?

• 50:07Speaker 00

  I have said over the period of time that if you're not in love with yourself when you're by yourself, you're going to be hell with other people because you're going to become an emotional stalker. You're going to try to make that other person make you happy. So you have to learn how to be alone, not lonely, but you have to learn how to be alone and actually love this person and actually self-reflect even on the areas that you don't like to actually look at them square in the face, embrace it and be willing for that energy to change. So you have to like yourself with you by yourself or you're not going to like yourself in relationship because you'll manipulate that relationship in some kind of way to

• 50:51Speaker 00

  make yourself feel better. But at the end of the day, if you don't like yourself when you're by yourself, it's going to be a problem in the world. So that's inner work. So it's a wise thing to spend a period of time by yourself. I love my alone time. I love it. There's certain things that I do every day in which I do alone and nobody, I don't have to respond to anybody, I don't have to react. I don't have to make sure that person's okay. I don't want them to make sure I'm okay. I love being by myself, but then I'm better with people.

• 51:30André Duqum?

  Yep.

• 51:31Speaker 00

  You know, and I've told people, I was making a joke the other day, I was in an all-day workshop and the person that was facilitating it, I was saying, well, normally at this time.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  I would have been at the gym working out, drinking my hydration, my water, my smoothie, meditation, then come here. But since you start the workshop so early, psychologically, if I get mad today, it ain't your fault. I was joking around. I said, I just didn't get, I didn't get my alone time, you know? But I have to have it.

• 52:06André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:08André Duqum?

  I feel like the more that we bring sincerity into our practice and bring heart into our alone time, right? Because there's alone time on social media and then there's alone time being in stillness, right? And the being in the stillness and like in these deepening of practices, I think we start to really perceive to the degree in which we have, we're participating in the conflict in our life. You know, like in our relationships, like our role and the conflict that we bring and how so much of it is perpetuated just from self-conflict.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Most of it is. It's like without authentic self-love and appreciation, not egotism, but authentic self-love and appreciation, we set up energies that we will run into, we project it onto the world. We project our unhealed energies onto the screen of life and we end up bumping into our lack of self-love. Now, we may put it on somebody, but it's actually, we're creating our own hindrance, our own obstructions, our own delays. And so being able to sit and to work through without denying and embrace and actually like this person, that's what we carry into the world. We end up liking people that don't like us.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  It becomes a whole nother vibe.

• 53:24André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  It's like, because you don't take as many things personally. You know, because you're able to separate, oh, that's not, that doesn't really belong to me.

• 53:31André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  You know?

• 53:32André Duqum?

  Yeah, I feel like you really know what's meant for you and what's not meant for you in that space. And that cultivation of self-worth is the antithesis energy to what would be like a self-obsession, right? Where you're spending time to reinforce these beliefs you have about yourself, but in the absence of a perception of who you even are, then you get to allow that other space to emerge like you're speaking to. I'm really curious what you think about, because there are many practices that we can have and like, you know, things we can be devoted to that support the deepening of our experience of our true nature. I've found, and I've heard you speak to the really bedtime and like the time before sleep, our mornings and our nights are some of the, if not the most important times to guard because we're in a hypnotic state, right?

• 54:17André Duqum?

  So if somebody wants to really take responsibility for their life, they want to cultivate vitality, they want to know their true nature, what would be an example of a bedtime routine or something like at nighttime that can really help us guard that space?

• 54:33Speaker 00

  That's so very important. When you go to sleep at night, first of all, there's a level of forgiveness of the day, petty annoyances. You don't want to go to sleep with any of that. You don't want that to be a part of your subconscious.

• 54:49André Duqum?

  And why?

• 54:50Speaker 00

  Because it will, it will, it will create momentum of that perception.

• 54:54André Duqum?

  Fester.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then become a part of your mood, your attitude and your greater perception. So I like to like scan and forgive. And then.

• 55:08André Duqum?

  When you say scan, you mean like body scan?

• 55:10Speaker 00

  Yes, scan my, scan my day.

• 55:12André Duqum?

  Okay.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  You know, so that I'm not holding on to what this person said or what I think they've said or what I think they meant. So it's just like a forgiveness. Now, oftentimes people will talk about at the end of your life, doing that. I say, do it every day. Don't wait until the end of your life and forgive all these people. You know, just don't, don't allow it to accumulate. Just, just, just, just forgive everything, every single day. And then, you know, when I, a lot of times when I go to sleep, I will close my eyes and I will choose a timeline of a life that I want to live, the feeling tone of it.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  I choose it, choose that it's happening now and then I go to sleep in it. Or if I'm dealing with something, I need an answer. You know, I will choose, it's not the future, but I'm choosing that the answer and the issue is already solved. What do I feel like? And then what happens is like it retrofit itself. It will give me a level of guidance when I wake up in the morning as to how to approach that situation. Now, when I wake up, it's the same thing. You're still in a hypnotic state. So I wake up and I consciously go into a state of gratitude that I exist. Has nothing, it's not attached to, I'm grateful that I have this, I'm grateful that I have

• 56:40Speaker 00

  that, I'm just grateful that I exist. And then I will get out of bed and I'll stand and I'll do this. I'm so grateful to be alive, awake and aware. And then I do this, I surrender to life. Sometimes I'll use the word God or love or peace. And then I open myself up and I'll say, I'm available to the energy and the strength to handle anything that comes into my life today, my assignments for today. Cause I know I have assignments on my to do list. And then there are things that are gonna come that I, I don't know they're gonna come. Somebody's gonna call, I'm gonna have to respond to this. So I ask and make myself available to the energy of that.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  And to, and because I've done it so long, I don't even, it's not even, I don't even think about it. It's like I'm, I'm able to articulate it to you now because you asked me a question. Yeah. But I'm not really thinking about it. It's just like, ah, so grateful. Yeah. I surrender. What's my assignment? You know, like that. And so when you're in those states, it goes deeper into your subconscious. And then, and then what happens is you have less worry. You know, I, people suffer from worry. They suffer from anxiety, anxiousness, they're projecting their worst case scenario onto what they call the future.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  And they're actually living in those chemicals without the thing even happening. You know what I mean? So it's, it's happening for them right now, physically, chemically, on the immune system. But it hasn't even happened. The thing hasn't even happened. But the body doesn't know it. So, you know, I like people to learn that they are they're a sovereign being and they can determine their own perception. It's not magic, it's just practice.

• 58:31André Duqum?

  It really just sounds like utilizing whether it's thirty minutes or an hour before bed to really transition your state, right? Because you're going to marinate in whatever that state you last

• 58:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 58:42André Duqum?

  were awakened. And that builds momentum in ways we don't even realize how much it builds momentum. And then we wake up in ways we're not even privy to. It's going to continue to infuse that energy, you know? And so it's like if we want to live a life filled with joy and gratitude, then releasing, which is that forgiveness stage, which you first said, those those chains and ties we have to people, events and situations in which we have resistance to throughout our day. I want to ask you a little bit more about forgiveness because in many ways, it's almost like the last illusion because we always think it's like me, I am forgiving the other person, but really it's like this inner process of of letting go.

• 59:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 59:20André Duqum?

  And and just not continuing to not perpetuate, you know, the state of of

• 59:26Speaker 00

  Resentment.

• 59:27André Duqum?

  pain and within us.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 59:28André Duqum?

  So, yeah, what do you think about what forgiveness and that, you know, point really is?

• 59:33Speaker 00

  Forgiveness is one, all forgiveness, one hundred percent is self forgiveness. You are releasing the toxicity of resentment, animosity, blame, projecting it on to another person. Now, you're not denying that a person may have gossiped about you or stole something from you or did something, not denying that. Or you perceive they did something. But the animosity and the resentment is in you. That's festering, that's speeding up the aging process, that's taking the it's it's creating the immune system to not function as properly as it could. So you're doing this to yourself.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  So when you forgive another, you're actually releasing the toxicity from your own self. So you're actually cutting the cord, the emotional cord that you have with that being. You're not condoning what they did, if they did something. But you're not connected to it anymore. So if an individual is living in a state of forgiveness, you know, they're staying inside, they're staying clean and clear. And again, it's a practice, you know? And it's, you know, every, every path of, of heart has forgiveness in it. Every religion has forgiveness in it. Why? Because it works, you know?

• 1:00:55André Duqum?

  Amazing. So like, you know, scanning, scanning our minds, getting our emotions from the day. We know what are the most prevalent things that come up? Cutting those cords, so to speak, letting them go.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  Giving forth. Forgiveness is giving forth. You go the next step. And giving forth is, I am going to radiate love. I'm going to radiate peace. It's like, uh, there's an individual that I've known for a number of years that I thought did something very heinous to me. It was just really weird. And so, uh, I know their birthday. And so whenever I notice that particular date as a time on my, on my phone or something, I send them a prayer. You know, it's just like, I think, just bless them. I hope they're living a beautiful life. I hope he's absolutely doing something magnificent. So I just give forth.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  Instead of saying, oh, that person stole that money from me. I just say, I just hope they're living a very beautiful. So I'm forgiveness, I am giving forth. An affirmative energy rather than a negative energy. Yeah.

• 1:02:02André Duqum?

  So then that moves into the second part, which is essentially visualizing energetically embracing the state that you want to see more of, you know, come into your life. And so have you gone back and forth, whether it's like visualizing a specific scenario, event, um, with people in a, in a situation? Or is it really just the energy?

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  It's mainly the energy. It's like, is, is, we live in a field of infinite possibilities. So I'll tell people to choose the possibility you want to live in. So, you know, oftentimes I go to sleep, infinite possibilities.

• 1:02:35Speaker 00

  So I'm gonna choose this possibility of my life. And that's a feeling tone of abundance. It's a feeling tone of right action. And sometimes there are scenarios there if I'm working on a particular project. But, but the primary choice that I'm making is a feeling tone. And then the feeling tone within I'll picture as whatever that's to look like. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna limit it, it by my visualization. Visualization may be a start, but ultimately the feeling is gonna determine the outcome. Not what I think I want, cuz I may be limiting it.

• 1:03:16André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  Does that make sense?

• 1:03:16André Duqum?

  Yep.

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. So field of infinite possibility. I tell people, you live in a field of infinite possibilities. Why don't you choose a good one?

• 1:03:23André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  And see what that feels like and live there long enough until that becomes your dominant feeling. But it takes work.

• 1:03:31André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33André Duqum?

  Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I've, I've more recently been experiencing with this, um, just like sleep in general, man. From, from lucid dreams to the, the time before bed and, uh, yeah, before bed, like having a committed like 20 to 30 minute practice just to transition and again, like,

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51André Duqum?

  cut any chains of the day, if anything was picked up or whatever, and just really reset the, the body, the nervous system. I kinda get a bougie version of is I like lay on a penth mat. I, I put my legs up against the wall and there's like vagus nerve.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:04:05André Duqum?

  Device.

• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  I have my earthing.

• 1:04:07André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  Put my legs up.

• 1:04:08André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, all of that.

• 1:04:09André Duqum?

  I like these binaural beats too from Newcom. And I just kinda stack it all together and just go into this practice with like some breath. And man, it's, it's, it's amazing what, what, how that transforms your sleep and how you wake up.

• 1:04:21Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I do, I use, um, soak, S O A A K dot com. And they have 32 different frequencies.

• 1:04:27André Duqum?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  You know, they have anti-anxiety, lack stress. They have whatever you think, they have the frequency of it. And I'll just, and now they have a really, their main frequency is sleep. Cuz people seem to have difficulty going to sleep.

• 1:04:40André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  So they have these little energetic things you can just put it on. So I put one of those on and put my legs up and just, it just, the frequency just wipes over me. And I'll go to sleep.

• 1:04:52André Duqum?

  It's amazing. It's a good reminder, I think, you know, because sometimes we-

• 1:04:56Speaker 00

  Right use of technology.

• 1:04:57André Duqum?

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Amazing, man. That's, that's great. I think, you know, would you say is there, is there another predominant amplifier, like in terms of, I think, sleep and like your, your morning kind of, you know, ritual, or how you feel when you wake up and how you get into those states are probably some of the most important. But for somebody that is in a phase where they realize they've been constricting their own potential, you know, and, and as you said, the universe is in resistance to that in which we're constricting, what, uh, what is there, if you had like one other kind of practice that you've found really supportive?

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  I think it's really important to, to kinesthetically, like, write the idea that's trying to emerge in your life. You just, you know, use your own, not type, actually write it with your name, and then read and say it out loud, so that you're actually physically writing, you're actually reading it, you're actually saying it and hearing it. So you're using all the senses to say, I, Michael, am living a powerful, magnificent life.

• 1:06:12André Duqum?

  And then you just gotta taste it, and you hit all five of them.

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:06:15André Duqum?

  And then just lick it.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  What does that taste like? Get some good honey in your mouth, you know?

• 1:06:20André Duqum?

  Make sure it's with the-

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then- Yeah, I think you, you write it three ways. I, you, talk to yourself. You, talk about yourself. He. So you're hitting the voices. There are some voices where you're talking bad about yourself. There's some voices where you imagine other people are talking bad about you. And then there's the voice where you're talking to yourself. So I like to tell people, write, I, he, you, or I, she, you. And whatever feeling tone you want to have in your life, right? It doesn't have to be, don't, don't write paragraphs. Just a short, pithy statement. Feel your way into it. And so you're getting the kinesthetics,

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  you're getting the eyesight, you're getting the, the voice, you're getting the listening, and it'll start to change your subconscious tendencies. Yeah.

• 1:07:12André Duqum?

  I feel like on the process of that, in the process of actualizing our potential, from the formless into the form, you know, from the states of the imaginative and the feeling to the physical. It feels like inevitably, along with that comes a change in relationships. People come and go, they will just drop out of your life. I'm just curious, how do you feel like wisdom relates to this energy of people, you know, that maybe were, you know, in your life or, for lack of a better term, for a season

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:07:44André Duqum?

  or a reason, but not for, you know, an adult.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that's, that's the good news and the bad news. I always tell people, it's good news and the bad news. The good, the bad news, it appears as though you lose relationships or structures in your life change. But the good news is that they build back up based on who you are now. And so I invite people to keep your heart open. So you don't let people out of your heart, even though they may have moved from a friend to an acquaintance. You know, the, the structure may have changed, they may have been a friend for a while, but now they're acquaintance. You don't put them out of your heart. They're still in your heart, they've been a part of your life, they'll, you know, quantum entanglement, you're still connected, you're still affecting each other.

• 1:08:27André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Speaker 00

  But now you have somebody in your life that's more coherent with the frequency you're holding now. So therefore, when you understand that's a part of the process, you know, you don't demone the fate that you grew out of some shoes. You don't fit anymore, you've grown, your body's bigger, clothes have changed. So these are clothes. These are external arraignment of who you used to be. And now you're different. Thing about it is, they may come back later. You know, I can remember there was a guy I used to run with in college, you know? And so I had this awakening. And I always remember this, I could see it so distinctly. He comes by my house one day and he opens the door, I open the door, I see him.

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  And we look at each other. And we had nothing in common. We're not the same people that would go to parties together, and we went to SC together, we did this and that. We looked at each other, it was like...

• 1:09:25Speaker 00

  And he said, hey, man, I'll see you later. I said, okay, man, I'll see you later. He didn't even come in my house. It was just like, we both knew that we were on a different frequency. Didn't hate each other, was not a fight, was none of that. He went on with his life. I went on with my life. So about 25 years later, his cousin wants to bring him to this spiritual community because he was suffering from lung cancer. And she says, you got to come to this community. I think it'd be very beneficial to you. So he comes in, he waits in line to see me, and it's him. I hadn't seen him in 20 something years. And he sees me. And we look at each other, and you know, we just hug. And then he kind of came into the community and took classes and got his body together. But it was like,

• 1:10:10Speaker 00

  he came back into my life, but at a different vibration. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:17André Duqum?

  For those of us that are in the so-called arena of life, where, you know, maybe we're more in the public image, you know, we're utilizing social media and technology for our message to be amplified out in the world, it's inevitable that criticism and praise are going to be a factor that we have to relate to, right?

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34André Duqum?

  And again, how, from your, because you've been in this game for a while, and you've also worked with some of the biggest names in the world, and you've seen how it can really tear down people if they don't have that connection with themselves, right?

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:10:45André Duqum?

  And so what wisdom have you gleaned from how to navigate the praise and blame?

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  You know, in one of my books, Spiritual Liberation, I write about the fact that there are two imposters, two imposters, praise and criticism. They're imposters. And so you treat them both the same, you know? If somebody's praising you a lot, thank you very much, but you don't get too much into it. If somebody's criticizing you very much, thank you very much. There might be a lesson in there. Maybe there's some place you need to grow. Maybe there's some, some real critique there, you know? But I don't let either one of them get me. I'm not, because I'm not out here trying to get praise, nor am I out here trying to run from criticism. You know, the depth of me just wants to be of service.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  And I'm, I'm living my Dharma, you know, uh, and my Dharma, I didn't choose this from my ego. You know, because I tried to run away from it. You know, I resisted being a public person, but that was part of the activation of my potential. I'm going to, I'm called to do it. So, uh, praise, criticism, I'll sometimes see stuff, stuff online and kind of just laugh at it. You know, I said, oh, this guy, they don't know me.

• 1:11:55André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, they say, oh, they don't know me. That's, they don't know me, it's not even true, you know?

• 1:12:00André Duqum?

  You wouldn't say that if you didn't know yourself too, right?

• 1:12:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:02André Duqum?

  It's like, uh, I think for those of us that really do get swayed and, and then aspect, whether it's online and a bigger scale, or you know, our communities and local friend groups.

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:12:12André Duqum?

  To the degree we don't know ourselves, then we'll believe the lies other people tell, right? Because it's like, if I criticize you for something, or if I name call you, or say something about your character, if there's a part of you that believes it to be true, that's how we get offended, right?

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Right, that's right. You cannot be offended if this, it's like you become spacious. So it's like, I, I, it kind of just makes me laugh. You know, because I'm on, um, all that every Sunday. You know, and sometimes people will say certain things and somebody would tell me, I just, really? Wow, that's funny, you know? It's, it becomes humorous. And oftentimes I'm not even interested. It's like, I'm delivering a message, you know? If that's what you're getting out of the message, then, you know, keep listening. Yeah, it's just fun, it's just funny.

• 1:13:02André Duqum?

  Yeah. One of the last things I'm curious about is that like, the more we live life, God willing, we have a long and bountiful life. And we see that there's patterns that emerge. There are like these cycles and seasons of life where at different phases and different times, different things are required of us and, uh, Some of those might be more solitude times where you're spending a lot of alone time. Some of those feel like crisis and a breakdown moment. Some of those are a big building phase, you know. And so in a society that views the most important timeline being the one where you're, you have the most speed and you're the most urgent and you're, you know, accomplishing all of these things from, you know, society's success

• 1:13:44André Duqum?

  metrics. What have you really learned about the importance of honoring and acknowledging the cycle and season of life we're currently in?

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I think there's just two levels to look at it. At the, at the middle level, at the absolute, there's just is, there's no cycle. When you come down into the manifest realm, there's cycles. And you, you, you learn through nature, you know, when it is time to be still, when it's time to plant, when it's time to harvest, when it's time to prune. You, you, you learn that to the best of your ability without judging what cycle you, you might be in. And as you're saying, I think after a while, you just, you just learn it. Now, at the beginning, as we were speaking, we were talking about

• 1:14:31Speaker 00

  the fact that in society, there's a whole movement towards us being successful according to however that's defined, you know, prosperous, however that's defined. After a while, you pull yourself out of that. And you are aware of what I call is harmonizing prosperity. All your legitimate needs can be met if you're living your Dharma. So you don't get pulled into all of that as much, you know. And you can, you can look at it and you can say, wow, that guy is really being pulled into something, you know. At this stage of my development, I just, just happy most of the time, you know. And I live in a, what I call a get

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  to. I get to do certain things. I get to come here and be with you. I get to fly to Canada and speak at this conference. I get to go to India and speak at this conference. I, I get to, I get to do these things. So whenever there is an underlying,

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  A lot of stuff's on my calendar. I switch it immediately. I remember a time when nobody knew me. I would never have gotten to do any of this. I said, whoops, I get to do this, you know? So it just changes all the energy of it. But I think we should honor cycles. The body, we have to know when to fast, when to release, when to detox, when to eat, when to drink, you know? And then there's a time when you get alone and you go beyond the cycles into a state of homeostasis and harmony. So I think it's a balance between both.

• 1:16:08André Duqum?

  Yeah, that makes sense how you you mentioned on the level of the manifest and the physical reality, like nature has its cycles where there's a Pharaoh season, you know, or it's going to be the season where you're reaping a lot of fruits from the seeds you planted a decade ago, maybe, you know? And so I think that, of course, from the level of the absolute, it's all one thing happening, right? There aren't these fragmentations of different things. And the level from physical reality, it does breathe some compassion and patience into acknowledging how, you know, thank God, our life doesn't all come at once and thank God it doesn't, thank God it doesn't happen all the way we want to, you know?

• 1:16:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely. That's the definition of hell, God giving us everything we want.

• 1:16:58Speaker 00

  Oh, no! I wanted that? Oh, no. I mean, can you imagine if you got what your 16-year-old wanted? You know, he just showed up. Oh, I don't want that now.

• 1:17:11André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's great, right? And then they bring us, I feel like those illusions bring us to the place where we discover we want to discard them. And then we have a new idea of what a worthwhile life, a life well-lived, looks like.

• 1:17:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's the visioning. It's like, what does my soul really want?

• 1:17:26André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Not what my mother wants for me, not what the church wants for me, but what does my soul really want?

• 1:17:33André Duqum?

  Yeah. Last thing that I would just ask is because you mentioned in the beginning, a life well-lived is when we're in service, you know, and we have many different forms of intelligences and different careers and ways of expressing, you know, God's unique intelligence through us in life. But it does feel that the most fulfilling aspects of it come when it's in service to supporting others in some capacity, right?

• 1:17:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:17:59André Duqum?

  In some way, in some form. And so for those that strive to want to live in that,

• 1:18:06André Duqum?

  yeah, if you want to share some more about the importance of that and living from service.

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  Basically, the way it's set up is that every legitimate question you ask is answered. Every liberating, you know, we have to learn to ask liberating questions. So if we ask how to be of service, or if we just wake up and say, what is it that I have?

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  Then our perception changes and we start to see that we have way more than what the limited perception would say we don't have. Now we can just be of service. I can, I, what do I have to give today?

• 1:18:50Speaker 00

  What do I have to share today? You know, in scripture, it says, "To he or she who has more is given." So if I ask that question, I'm going to get more energy. I'm going to get more insights. I'm going to get more revelations. "He or she who has not, even that which they have, is taken away." So if you're living in what I, if you're more focused on what you don't have, I don't have enough time. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough this, then that's what's amplified. So if we're going to, if we're in service, obviously, it means we're living from an overflow of having. And service breaks down this separation between you and me. I'm only serving myself as you. I'm, we're not, as you said earlier, we're not separate. We are one emanating from the same source of all creation.

• 1:19:34Speaker 00

  So I get to grow and having more energy. I get to break down the boundary of separation. I get to live in heaven now just by saying, how can I be of service? Now, I remember catching that when I was a little boy. My neighbor took me to, I think we were feeding the homeless or something. And I was maybe like eight or nine years old. And they, the family, their family was going, so I went with them. And I remember I got so high. Being of service. And when I came home and the lady was telling my mother, you know, what I had the opportunity to do, it just shifted my perspective of life. I just want to be of service. And it's kind of where I live. Yeah. Hope I'm answering your question.

• 1:20:17André Duqum?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I think that that is like the living in the reciprocity of life. Right? It's uh, and collapsing the giver and the taker into just showing up and seeing what can I contribute to life today? You know?

• 1:20:27Speaker 00

  Karma yoga.

• 1:20:28André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:29Speaker 00

  And karma yoga, you, you, more energy flows through you and then the sense of separation dissolved.

• 1:20:36Speaker 00

  I am you, you are me.

• 1:20:38André Duqum?

  We are one.

• 1:20:41Speaker 00

  It's trite but true.

• 1:20:42André Duqum?

  It is. Yeah, man. It's, it's great. And uh, yeah, just sincere appreciation for you, man. It's been, you've been in this game for so long. And when I say in this game, I just mean showing up in life from service and really, you know, desiring and actively supporting people on the, on the path. And it's so helpful, you know? I think we've all had guides and teachers and individuals that have been wayshores and uh, they're, they're so needed and so necessary.

• 1:21:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. It is my joy. I, I had a reflection a few days ago. When I first wake, woke up, most of my teachers were dead teachers. You know, and in my lucid dreaming and in my astral traveling and things like that, I was in contact with these people, you know? Walter Russell, different folks, they were very real to me. We were talking and things like that. And now, a lot of my friends have passed over. And a lot of other teachers that I've known, they're on the other side. So in the beginning, most of my, my people were on the other side. And now again, a lot of my great friends and people I've run with, different spiritual teachers, they're on the other side. So I have this relationship with them. They're invisible. So I just, I just had that reflection a few days ago.

• 1:21:55Speaker 00

  It says, wow, when I first started out, everybody was on the other side. Now, most of my friends are on the other side. I'm still here. I'm happy about it, you know? But I do have really powerful relationships with the invisibles, people that are invisible, you know? And they're just as real as you and I having this conversation.

• 1:22:13André Duqum?

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14André Duqum?

  Yeah. They live in that energy field.

• 1:22:16Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:17André Duqum?

  You can tap in. I'm glad you're here in the physical.

• 1:22:20Speaker 00

  Me too. I feel, I don't feel any age at all. I just feel, hey, I'm healthy. Life is good. What's next? Get some more.

• 1:22:27André Duqum?

  Yeah, maybe some more poetry.

• 1:22:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's gonna emerge. It's, it's, it's, it got unplugged again.

• 1:22:32André Duqum?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 1:22:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:33André Duqum?

  I love it. Amazing, man. Well, do you have anything else going on that you want to share with our audience? Or what's coming up for you?

• 1:22:40Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I've always invited people to, to, to watch my podcast, Take Back Your Mind. And wherever they are in the world, they can tune in to Agape, agapelive.com and see me speak every Sunday. And there are classes at the university. And they'll also, if they go to michaelbeckwith.com, they'll see where I'm traveling around the world.

• 1:23:00André Duqum?

  Amazing.

• 1:23:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:02André Duqum?

  Wonderful. Well, everyone, thanks for tuning into this episode of the Know Their Self Podcast. Michael, thank you so much. Always a pleasure and joy. Until next time, be well.