Quick Facts
Biography
Michael Bernard Beckwith is an American New Thought minister, author, and founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, California, a New Thought church with a congregation estimated in excess of 8,000 members. Beckwith was ordained in Religious Science in 1985. He is married to New Thought musician Rickie Byars Beckwith.
Career
Beckwith is founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center, co-founder of the Association for Global New Thought, and co-chair of the Season for Nonviolence along with Arun Gandhi.
In 1986, he founded the Agape International Spiritual Center, a transdenominational community which today counts a membership of 9,000 individuals who study and practice New Thought–Ancient Wisdom. Agape's outreach programs feed the homeless, serve incarcerated individuals and their families, advocate the preservation of the planet's environmental resources, and globally build and support orphanages whose children have survived the ravages of war and AIDS.
Beckwith was one of the featured teachers in The Secret (2006) movie and the bestselling book by the same name that followed the film.
Beckwith teaches meditation, affirmative prayer, and speaks at conferences and seminars. He is the originator of the Life Visioning Process, a technique purporting to offer its practitioners a method for putting a stop to being a passive tourist in one's life. He is author of Spiritual Liberation, which won the Gold Medal Nautilus Book Award, Inspirations of the Heart, which was a Nautilus Book Award finalist; Forty Day Mind Fast Soul Feast; A Manifesto of Peace; and Living from the Overflow. In 2011, Beckwith released TranscenDance, a collection of remixed lectures set to electronic dance music by Stephen Bray and John Potoker.
Media appearances
Beckwith is a leader in the New Thought Movement, and was featured in the documentary The Secret. Beckwith has been a frequent guest on Larry King Live on CNN, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Beckwith has participated with other New Thought ministers, and the Dalai Lama, in The Synthesis Dialogues. Beckwith also appeared in Dalai Lama Renaissance (1999), a feature-length documentary about the Dalai Lama, narrated by Harrison Ford.
In January 2009, Beckwith appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, and a live webinar with Oprah Winfrey presenting his book, Spiritual Liberation, and DVD of the same name.
He also appears in the films Raw for Life and Raw for 30 days, wherein he shares with other experts the benefits of eating a raw plant-based diet. The movie also includes (among others) Bruce Lipton Ph.D, Gary Null Ph.D, Julian Whitaker M.D., Woody Harrelson, and Morgan Spurlock.
Michael Beckwith is also known for his support of TheTwilightBrigade.org (Compassion In Action), the largest volunteer end of life care organization within the Veterans Administration system.