PeaceLink 11.11.11
An Interview With Michael Beckwith
by Sydney L. Murray
Our theme this month is Modern Living. And what is astounding is that we are living in such complex yet amazing times. The amazing organization of Agape and Rev. Michael Beckwith are gathering together with other like-minded people on 11.11.11 at Agape to celebrate and create PeaceLink. I wanted to know more and spoke with Rev. Beckwith as he took time out at an airport headed to Philadelphia. Yes, we do live in a modern and technological world.
Vision Magazine: What is the inspiration behind PeaceLink?
Michael Beckwith: It’s a number of people coming together to create a vibration and coherence all around the world in which individuals will stop and celebrate the infinite possibilities that lie within each and every one of us as spiritual beings and the human incarnation. There’s so much attention being portrayed in the mass media which is disruptive, that shows parts of society which have fallen apart.
Yet all at the same time there’s a whole pattern of energy emerging so peacefully, brought about by individuals that are sending out a call to place our attention on that which is seeking to emerge in us, in the human family, and to come together and articulate that—to feel that, to express that, to celebrate that, and to anchor that on the planet on this particular day. We will have an array of artists, speakers, visual artists, dancers, singers, and we will come together and adopt the highest for our planet and reach out to other places [cities] and release that powerful work and joy.
VM: If there is one thing, what have you changed in the way you lived in the last year?
MB: I would say that, probably, I’ve up-leveled my spiritual practice and acknowledge that I’m always seeking to have it evolve. So my time in my meditation and yoga practice has probably increased. And the other thing that we’ve changed is, we did “Pressing the Reset Button” at the Agape community, in which we stopped as a community, and as a staff, and as a board of trustees, and ministers, and reevaluated everything that we would do, and began over so that anything that’s not working, we took a hard look at it, and removed it if necessary as we are now preparing for the next 25 years of our community.
VM: And what came out of that reset button?
MB: A lot of healing for everyone. Our staff members had really powerful moments of healing and connecting to the vision of why they first began this spiritual practice and why they first began to attend and participate in the Agape community. And then, embracing the next step of our community, really going to the next level of excellence and service to our worldwide, global congregation as well as to each other. So there’s really a strong birth of passion and love, and releasing anywhere within us where things had become stale.
VM: Our theme this month is Modern Living. What does that term mean to you?
MB: First of all, it’s the right use of technology. I think technology has invaded our experience of the last two years. And we wanted to embrace technology and use it in a way that is inspiring, uplifting, healing, life-transforming, and release the inertia and the time-wasting aspects of it. In the modern world, we want to embrace the sacred quality of living, but allow technology to help us, so it becomes inspiring, beautifying, and transforming. And if we do that, then we evolve as a species. If we just get stuck in entertainment, we’ve devolved.
VM: How can one person change the world?
MB: When one individual makes a stand for excellence and releases inferiority and mediocrity, changes their internal environment, and also changes the environment they live in, it begins to create a wave of energy that changes every environment they go into. That whole power that they begin to emit draws to them other people of like-minded [world of] thought and vibration, and it creates a ripple effect throughout the world. The three kinds of people, or three kinds of ways people think or act are: Inferior, in which people are constantly complaining or tearing things down. There’s mediocrity, where people are just trying to maintain the status quo. And then there’s excellence, where people are progressing and evolving, tapping into [their] creativity. So when a person makes a stand for excellence, they change their internal environment, the environment in which they live, and they create a field that draws other people [to them] that do the same thing. One person can do that. We have seen that with Mother Theresa. We’ve seen that with Nelson Mandela, we’ve seen that with Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King.
VM: Why do you think spiritual community is so important to our world right now?
MB: A spiritual community not only provides the space where people are encouraged to tap into excellence, but it also provides the place for practicing it, as well, with each other, and becoming strong in it [excellence]. And so spiritual community is a place where, one, it’s a hospital where people come and heal, it’s a hospice where people lift that which is within them that needs to die, and where the gifts that need to emerge, can also be nourished to come forward. The spiritual community provides those particular places, a place of healing, a place of letting go to that which doesn’t work [in their life], and a place of birthing that creative urge, that divine urge, which is within all of us [and] within the community that encourages us to have spiritual practice and spiritual goals.
The world is mediocre. The mass, corporate media, television—it’s the mediocre mediums that keep people at the status quo. Shopping, consumerism, materialism, fear, doubt, worry, prejudice, and separation. Those are normal ways of living based on the television programs we view. We need a spiritual community to encourage us to go beyond what society demands of us so that we can move beyond the societal standards that are basically our minimal standards for living.
VM: In your opinion, do you believe peace is possible?
MB: Absolutely. I’ve had visions for a long time of peace. And first of all, peace is not simply the absence of war or conflict. Peace is a quality, all of its own. I describe it as the dynamic of harmonizing good. So peace is possible; peace is everywhere except where it’s being suppressed. Spiritual communities, individuals who have a spiritual practice, are providing the template and the vibrational field for peace to continue, to be amplified on the planet. I think it’s the next stage of our evolution as a species. You have systems that are falling apart right now, whole systems that are falling apart, and the new systems are trying to be born. As we foster these new systems being born, peace is imminent. I’m not saying it’s easy, I’m not saying we’re not going to go through tough times, I’m not saying the birth pangs aren’t going to be difficult, but I do believe there’s a beautiful baby at the other end of that.
VM: Where do you think we go from here?
MB: We need to articulate the vision of what’s possible. Right now, individuals are very good at articulating what doesn’t work. And right now, we need to articulate what does work. That needs to be our conversation now because the conversations the world has are held together by a synergetic network of conversations that ultimately become our beliefs that become our perceptions that become our experiences. So we need to have a conversation about what’s possible, and then as these conversation become embedded with us, then our beliefs change, our perceptions change, our actions change, and our experience changes. That’s where we have to go from here.
Right now, the corporate media lets us know exactly what’s wrong in the experience of what’s wrong. Now we need just as much and more conversation about what works and what’s emerging that works until that world becomes more real to us than the world that’s dying.
VM: Is love the most important choice we can make (to love other beings, love ourselves, etc.)?
MB: To love is described as absolute presence of God, however we define that word. If the total giving-ness of the spirit is without any sense of withhold and one chooses to love at that level, they become a very, very powerful force in the world. It is not something we can do with our mind. It is something that we evolve to as we have insight into that reality. And again, this is why spiritual practice is so essential, because it gives us insight and revelations into what love really is. And if we choose to act from that level, we can literally change the world.
VM: And what about loving people that you don’t know?
MB: Dr. Howard Thurman once said, we cannot love humanity—that’s abstract—we have to love humanity in particular. Which means, you have to love the people that surround you. Now, to say that I love humanity, the people that I don’t know, is somewhat easy because those people aren’t bumping against us, not stepping on our toes, not making us mad. And so, yes, we do have to love humanity. But we practice by loving the people in our families, the people we work with, the people that cut us off on the freeway, the people that imitate us. And there are different levels of love. There’s forgiveness, there’s patience, there’s kindness, there’s generosity, there’s compassion. Sometimes other people evoke some or one of those qualities and we have to choose to activate and practice those qualities until we become mature enough and enter into the art of loving to love. We grow, we mature, we can love to love.
VM: Where, in your opinion, do you think that our modern world is heading?
MB: Right now, we’re at the precipice of a dying culture and an emerging culture. We’re seeing destruction, or the falling of the banking system, Wall Street, these systems in our lifetime, that we used to be able to say, “You can take that to the bank.” That actually meant something. It meant the bank was trustworthy. Now you know today that the banking industry does not have the consumers’ interest at heart. It’s a system of greed and avarice that has very little desire to serve the public, and so that system is dying. And so, we’re involved in a moment in which things have fallen apart—our educational system, medical system, the banking system, and the economic system. These are all systems that have reached a state of maturity where they have to be transformed.
Now, at the same time, there’s an emergence in business where people, society, and the earth are the bottom line for businesses. There are educational systems where creativity is the bottom line, there’s medicine where healing is the bottom line, not profits. And these are all emerging systems side by side with that which is dying. We’re the civilization; we’re the people who get to witness the actual death of a society and the birth of another society that challenges a dying culture. And the new media, which is reporting about the new culture, [is] speaking about what’s emerging. And right now, most of the people are so involved in listening to the [mass] media as it is being reported from a dying culture.
VM: Do you have hope for our world? Do you believe that we will emerge in 2012?
MB: When people meditate, when they pray, when they do the life visioning process, when they have their spiritual practice, what happens is, they come out of time. Time is relative; it’s not an absolute. It bends back on itself, as Einstein reminded us. And 2012 was the moment when a lot of people who are in spiritual practice, who have come out of time, [believe] that’s the end of time as we know it. And when normal people come out of time, [they are] into more of this timeless state of love and peace, harmony and creativity. That doesn’t mean everything’s going to change overnight. It simply means that a new wave is now beginning with some percentage of the population of the world.For more information on the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, CA, visit www.agapelive.com. To learn more about PeaceLink 11.11.11, visit www.peacelinklive.org. Also, Michael Beckwith’s new CD, TranscenDance, will be debuting at PeaceLink. Nine high-vibration tracks include, Adventure in Paradise, U R The Answer, Let It Be Alright, Who Loves You Baby, Energetic Shapeshifter, Life is Good, In This Love Together, One Day in Heaven, and Mystic Cord of Memory. Guest vocalists include Siedah Garrett, Niki Haris, Savory and Brenda Lee Eager. Get TranscenDance at www.agapemedia-international.com, iTunes, Amazon, and everywhere music is sold.
