Spiritual Liberation

Book excerpt: Michael Bernard Beckwith -- the dynamic spiritual leader who touched millions of readers and viewers in The Secret and through the spiritual community he founded, the Agape International Spiritual Center -- is now sharing his transforming central message and his powerfully accessible means for embodying that message in daily life, a process he calls "aspiring toward spiritual liberation." Michael Beckwith teaches that inner spiritual work, not religiosity or dogma, liberates us. He draws on a wide spectrum of ancient wisdom teachers such as Jesus the Christ and Gautama the Buddha; contemporary spiritual luminaries Thich Nhat Hanh, Sri Aurobindo, and the Dalai Lama; and Western contributors to the New Thought tradition of spirituality such as Emanuel Swedenborg, Walter Russell, and Dr. Howard Thurman to create a profound new belief synthesis. Either read silently or aloud, Spiritual Liberation can be included during meditation or prayer. Each chapter includes an affirmation that distills its core concepts into a sentence or two for the reader to easily practice throughout the day. Beckwith's personal and touching accounts guide the practitioner to integrate and activate the intrinsic gifts of divinity into everyday life. The core concepts of Beckwith's teachings are cohesively conceived and convincingly stated in the provocative chapters of Spiritual Liberation. Topics covering "Evolved People," "Transportation to Trans-formation," "Transcending the Tyranny of Trends," and "Inner Ecology" are some of his foundational teachings that bring together insights from a range of spiritual paths to form a coherent practice that is neither Eastern nor Western but truly spiritually global. Regardless of their belief system, readers will find it impossible to finish this book without at least a few "Aha " moments.