EPISODE 215
MB: “ The police took me from the street and brought me to the house where the marijuana was. Everything they did was illegal, but it doesn't matter. They brought me to the house and asked me, was this mine? I said, no, I don't live here. So I had a different address on my license. They subsequently took me to the police station, handcuffed me. Went and got a search warrant, then came back, uncuffed me, took me to the house and arrested me as if they had gotten a search warrant and came into the house. Now the inner voice told me I was walking totally free it had already said, you're, this is not your destiny. Don't even worry about it. And that's when everybody thought I was crazy. I'm paying attention to what's happening in the courtroom, but I'm meditating and I'm reading because I've already been told I'm walking. I don't know how I'm gonna walk, but I've already been told I'm gonna walk. So everybody's saying Michael's freaked out on Jesus. He's crazy. They're telling him, you should leave the country. Once the locals get to you for all that marijuana, the Feds want you because they found all those guns in your house, I said, no, I'm not even gonna have a record. ”
[INTRODUCTION]
Hey friend, welcome back to The Light Watkins Show. I'm Light Watkins and I have conversations with ordinary folks just like you and me who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. Today, we have a bite-size, plot twist episode.
A Plot Twist is a shorter clip from a past episode where the guest shares the story of the pivotal moment in their life trajectory. And the idea behind sharing their plot twist is to inspire you to lean into those plot twists when they happen in your life, because usually. When you get turned around from what you thought your path was in life, what's actually happening is you're being detoured towards your actual path.
And sometimes that looks like getting fired or it could look like getting a divorce. Or in the case of this week's guest, Reverend Michael Beckwith, it's getting arrested for selling weed.
Reverend Michael Beckwith is the founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center, which has a congregation of over 9,000 people a week.
He was one of the thought leaders featured in the film and book, The Secret, which was the documentary about the law of attraction. He's been featured on Oprah several times. He's the author of Spiritual Liberation, Inspirations of The Heart, 40-Dayay Mind, Fast Soul Feast, and A Manifesto of Peace. And he's got a popular podcast called Take Back Your Mind.
But he wasn't always a reverend/author/thought leader in the spiritual space. He started off as an atheist who had a stint as a pharmaceutical distributor. And in this clip he talks about how he escaped jail, how he transitioned onto his spiritual path and which turn of events and plot twists led to the creation of Agape. Let's listen in.
[00:02:57] MB: I lost all my friends. I didn't have any friends. People said, “Michael had freaked out on Jesus.” I didn't get high anymore. I didn't drink. I didn't do anything like that.
[00:03:06] LW: Well, you did have that one last delivery that you had to get rid of.
[00:03:10] MB: That one last one. Yeah, that's the one that really gave me a great miracle. That was, I can see it right now in my living room. It's my last dope deal. Now, interestingly enough, I was already moving out of it before the experience, before the arrest, before everything was – This was not my destiny. I'm having these experiences, etc., etc. I'm sitting and this is the last dope. It's the only time I ever had contraband in my house, because I had a person that worked for me and they had a stash house. Whenever there was a delivery, we generally be delivered there and then I had a distribution network.
This one time, because he was out of town, I had it delivered to my house. Anyway, long story short, the police came in. They actually took me from the street and brought me to the house where the marijuana was. Everything they did was illegal, but it doesn't matter. They brought me to the house and asked me, was this mine. I said, “No, I don't live here.” I had a different address on my license. They subsequently took me to the police station, handcuffed me, went and got a search warrant, then came back, uncuffed me, took me to the house and arrested me as if they had gotten a search warrant and came into the house. They did everything wrong.
This is all little details that don't matter at this point, but I hire Harry Weiss as my attorney. Now the inner voice told me, I was walking totally free. It already said, “This is not your destiny. Don't even worry about it.” That's when everybody thought I was crazy.
[00:04:39] LW: Yeah. You were sitting in the court reading spiritual books.
[00:04:42] MB: I was reading. Listen, I was reading a pamphlet by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh called Chaotic Meditations, when it was just a pamphlet. He didn't have all these books. I'm reading that book and reading a couple of other books. I'm paying attention to what's happening in the courtroom, but I'm meditating and I'm reading, because I've already been told I'm walking. I don't know how I'm going to walk, but I've already been told I'm going to walk. Everybody's saying Michael's freaked out on Jesus. He's crazy. They're telling, you should leave the country. Once the locals get to you for all that marijuana, the feds want you, because they found all those guns in your house. I said, “No, I'm not even going to have a record.” Now, everybody just thinks I'm nuts.
I'm sitting in court and the trials going on with continuances. It's not really a trial. We haven't even got totally past arraignment, but continuance, continuance. Then at one point, the prosecutor is interviewing a policeman, a motorcycle cop that wasn't even on the scene. He wasn't even there, but he said he was. They’re interviewing him. They said, “Why did you go to Mr. Beckwith’s house?” He says, “Well, an informant told us that a big drug deal was going down. We went and got a search warrant and then we staked out the house. Then when we saw the drugs being delivered, we went in with our search warrant and we arrested Mr. Beckwith, blah, blah, blah.” None of this is true, obviously.
The assistant attorney jumps up and says, “That's hearsay evidence. We demand that the informant stand in front of the accused and identify him, or we demand that the case be thrown out of court.” The judge says, “Everybody come up.” Defense attorneys, prosecutor, and says to them, “I need the informant here within three days, or I'm going to have to let Mr. Beckwith go.”
We come back to court three days later and the prosecutor says, “Your honor, the informant is afraid for his life. He will not come.” The judge said, “Mr. Beckwith, I have no other recourse but to set you free. You may go. I hope I never see you in my courtroom again.” I said, “Your honor, you never will.” I walked out totally free, no record, nothing. I'm free. I go home and the wind is blowing. My neighbor's house has a weather vane. The wind is blowing at those point in the direction of the wind. I was saying, “God, if this means what I think it means, is something to do with my destiny.”
I'm trying to get some language like, “What does this mean? I want that weather vane to point in my direction if this means what I think it means.” Before I can finish, the weather vane turned and point right at me. I just started crying. I’m just sobbing like a baby. I surrendered my life to the presence of God and never looked back. Now, the funny thing about this is I was followed for a number of months by police.
They went to so many spiritual communities. They went to so many retreats. They went to so many – They must have grown spiritually. Because I went to Paramahansa Yogananda. I went there to meditate. I went to hear every guru that came in town. My whole life was just totally about anything about the spirit.
The story behind that is I remember sitting in my living room and I didn't have a job now, but I'm soaring in the presence. I'm thinking, “Okay, God. What do you want me to do?” The phone rang. There was a woman on the phone who I went to high school with. She says, “Is this Michael Beckwith?” I said, “Yes, it is.” She said, “I was looking at your picture in our high school annual and I saw your phone number. I decided to call you, because God told me that you could help me.” I said, “Really?”
Now, at this particular stage, I don't have any licenses. I had no therapy license. Nothing. I'm just Michael. I just expanded awareness. She said, “Yeah.” I start to counsel her over the phone. She starts to send me donations. She starts to tell other people, “You should call this guy if you're having issues.” People are calling, sending me donations, etc. One night I go to this restaurant and she's in line. I hadn't seen this lady since the 12th grade. Okay. It's been four or five, six years. I see her in line. I call her name. She looks at me and she leaves, because she was so embarrassed that she had given me all these deep dark secrets of her life and her regrets and mistakes she had made and the way she was judging herself.
She looked at me and thought I was judging her for the stuff that she had done with her life. I had no judgment. I was in prayer for her. Then I go home and I think about what just happened. She never called me again. Never heard from her again all these years. Then I realized something. One, I didn't have that phone number in high school. It couldn't have been on my annual, because I've moved. I'm an adult. I don't live in with parents. I have my own phone number. Two, the phone number is unlisted. She was either lying about seeing it under my picture in the album, or she got it some kind of way. But my phone number was not out there. It was totally unlisted. I didn't get my phone number out to anyone.
It made me be on my path towards being a spiritual practitioner, spiritual therapist. People would come and seek assistance from me. Then what happened was my mother and a family friend by the name of Lissa Sprinkles, they were attending Founders Church of Religious Science and they were attending the Guidance Church of Religious Science. They were trying to get me to go. I'll say, “I'm not going to anybody's church. I don't need to do a church. It's not too much truth happening in church.” They said, “No, this is different. You need to come. It's not like the regular Christian churches, where they're damning you to hell and it's saying they're the only way to get to heaven. It's not any of that. Please come.”
It behest my mom, unless I go, I go to the Guidance Church of Religious Science. The Founder was Dr. Daniel L. Morgan. I come in, in my early twenties. I come in a little late. He's already, sorry, speaking. I come walking in and I hear him say, “Heaven and hell aren't really places. They’re states of consciousness.” I say, “He's right. What? This is going on in church.” I mean, I was I was excited. What? I said, “He's right.” Everybody turns to look at this young boy walking down the aisle saying, “Dr. Dan is right.”
I sat down and I listened. I couldn't find any holes in what he was saying. It was all pure metaphysical principles. That was a Sunday. Monday, he had a 15-week class on metaphysics. I show up and it was week seven. He says, “What is your name?” Sir, I said, “Michael Beckwith.” He says, “Mr. Beckwith, this is a 15-week class. You've arrived at week seven. I would appreciate it if you would leave and come back when we start over.” I said, “With all due respect, Dr. Dan. I'm going to stay. Finish. When it starts over, I'm going to start over and take the whole thing again.” He looked at me. He says, “Okay, you can stay,” like that.
That's when I discovered that there was a license called a practitioner. The spiritual therapist. I said, well, that's what I'm doing. Subsequently, I ended up going to that spiritual community and taking all the classes. I was still doing meditation retreats. I was still doing my own thing. I was doing that. That propelled me into eventually becoming a licensed practitioner, which I did for seven years of full time. That's all I did. Seven years, saw six to eight people every single day, six days a week. I saw a lot of miracles through prayer with people.
Prior to that, I worked for the mayor's office. I worked with Tom Bradley for five years. I worked in the eighth district. I ran the senior citizen fairs of that area. Built the Golden Age Senior Citizen Resort with a guy named James Burke and Ernie Sprinkles. I'm the one who helped get the pavement in the ground, the wheelchair access is paved. I had a big movement to get that for the seniors and for people who are in wheelchairs.
Then I worked for something called Prison Preventers. There's a guy name Lyle Carlos Kawasaki, who was a part of the Japanese mafia. When he was in prison, he had an awakening. When he got out, he started Prison Preventers, which was to give pardons for criminals who needed to assimilate back into society. I was his personal assistant for a number of years.
Then eventually, I was taking my oral examination to be a practitioner. One of the guys on my panel said to me, “Wow, I really love your consciousness. I'd like for you to come work for me.” I said, who – I didn't know who he was. He said, “My name is Bob Love. I run the International Prayer Ministry. I want you to come work for me.” I said, “Okay, let me just talk about this after my –” Obviously, I'm passing the interview. You're trying to hire me. I said, “Well, when we finish, let’s talk about it.”
Now I had at the time, I just finished operating the census bureau office for Compton. Up until that time, Compton would always come into second to the last place in doing the census in terms of accuracy, proficiency, etc. When I went there, I turned the office into like an ashram, non-religious ashram. I had people who had a place where people would go in and do affirmations. We would do contemplation. I couldn't call it prayer meditation, because it's the federal government. I had all of this going on. We came in second in the nation in terms of accuracy, completion for the census for Compton and changed a lot of lives.
People went back to school after being in the flow of what I was teaching. These individuals from the federal government flies out to see what I was doing, they think I'm a little odd for I have these little places where you can go close the curtain and sit in and have moments of reflection before you go out and do the census. All kinds of things that were off the beaten path. This is a long time ago.
Anyway, they offered me a job. They said, they were going to give me a car. They wanted me to go around to different federal offices and do some of these processes. The money was really nice. Then I'm offered this job at the prayer ministry. The money was not so nice.
[00:15:00] LW: There's not a lot of money when you are praying.
[00:15:01] MB: There wasn’t a lot of money at the prayer ministry. But I'd already been shown by some previous miracles that my needs would be met directly from source. Not telling my wife at the time, I took the job with the lower amount of money, because I knew my destiny was with the prayer ministry. Then I took that job. Then I was a full-time licensed therapist. My full-time licensed therapist made way more money than when I was making up my job, so my needs were met. It made me realize that having to pray every single day for people, something happened.
The night before, I would meet people in my dreams that would call the next day. Before they called, I was already meeting with them, praying for them. When I would answer the phone the next day, I knew who these people were and already knew what they were going to pray for. Now, that facility amplified itself, because I was praying every day for so many people answering the phone. That's why today, I try to implore people to meditate, to pray. This is the quickest way to open up your channels.
[00:16:21] LW: You were doing good work, but you had an intuitive hit that the work wasn't good enough. There was more that you were meant to be doing and things started falling apart. Next thing you know, you find yourself in Mexico having some vision.
[00:16:36] MB: You've really done your homework well. Yeah, I was working at the prayer ministry. I was the director of training at the prayer ministry. I was on the faculty of the university there teaching, and I had my private clientele and I was doing seminars. A lot of them out of my living room, a lot of it bringing places and things like that. I was doing all of this. Part of me was like, “I'm doing well.” I was doing seminars before they were popular. You know what I mean? Now it's like a thing. I knew I was being pulled to start a community, but I was resisting it. I was like, I don't really don't want to – I like my weekends.
I remember a couple of things happen. One, when I said yes, well, first of all, I had a cook in my neck that I was going to the chiropractor on a regular basis to get fixed. He put it into place, so I could turn my neck to the right. Quickly, though, after a while, it becomes sedentary, again, it becomes stuck and I couldn't have full rotation to the right. I could go to the left, but I couldn't go to the right.
When I finally said yes to establishing a spiritual community, my neck popped into place. I never had to go back to the chiropractor. That this condensation of energy was my resistance towards the destiny that was trying to come forward. I do go to Mexico, I think it was Puerto Vallarta, I think it was. I actually saw Agape. I saw, I had a vision of it. I remember coming back to Los Angeles and telling the director of the prayer ministry that I was going to be leaving. I was going to start a community. She said to me, “Where?” I said, “I've been advised to start it in Santa Monica.” She says, “Why don't you start a community for your own people?” I said, “Short people.” She turned red and felt embarrassed, because she was saying, “Why don't you start it in the hood? For black people.
She was so embarrassed about saying that. Eventually, I started my vision group, pulled people together in my living room, because I had three groups of people that I pulled from. There was my private clientele. They were all people are always saying, “Well, if you ever start anything, please let me know.” I always said, “I'm not going to start anything. Don't worry.” I was teaching a practitioner class at the time. They were always saying to me, “If you ever start anything, we're going to be right there with you.” Okay. Then there was people from the seminars I was doing.
Anyway, I pooled, curated a number of people to meet in my living room. I started this vision group and Nirvana Gayle was there. I can see Deborah Johnson there. I can see Joan Steadman. I can see Bill Whirlpool. I can see Eunice [inaudible 0:51:09]. I can see all these people. I can see them all in that. Coco Stuart. They're all ministers. I started this vision group to open up to the possibility of catching a vision for a spiritual community, then becoming the vibration of it. Number of months, number of months, just meeting every week to become the frequency of the community we wanted to birth.
It wasn't about business plans. It wasn't about linear strategy. It was about becoming the consciousness of Agape, the consciousness of love, the consciousness of connection. Then letting that determine the actions. On November the 30th, 1986, we had our very first service 36 years ago.
[END]
So that was Reverend Michael Beckwith, founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center. To listen to the rest of Michael's fascinating story and hear what happened after he went all in on starting Agape, you want to go to Episode 154 in the archive and I recommend following Michael on the socials @MichaelBBeckwith, B E C K W I T H.
And if you know anyone who's making the world a better place and they had an incredible plot twist in their life, email me your guest suggestions at light@lightwatkins.com.
My other ask is that you take a few seconds to leave a rating or review for this show. You hear hosts like me, always asking listeners like you to rate and review the show because that's how a lot of the bigger guests will determine whether or not they're going to come on to the podcast. So it does make a huge difference and it's absolutely free. All you do is you look at your device, you click on the name of this show, you scroll down past the first five episodes, and you'll see a space with five blank stars. You just tap the star all the way on the right to leave a five star rating. And of course, if you're feeling a little bit more generous and you wanna go the extra mile, leave a one line review about the show, and that goes a long way as well.
Also, don't forget, you can watch these Plot Twist episodes on my YouTube channel. If you ever prefer to see what Reverend Michael Beckwith looks like as he's sharing his Plot Twist. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube as well. And otherwise I will see you on Wednesday with the next long form conversation about an ordinary person doing extraordinary things to leave the world a better place.
And until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart and keep leaning into those plot twists in your life. And if no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you and have a fantastic weekend.
