I am a regular attendee at the Agape International Spiritual Center, located in Culver City, CA on Slauson and Buckingham Parkway, and if are an open hearted, spiritual person of any or no religious faith, then perhaps you should be too. Even if you are not spiritual, but would like to explore that part of yourself, than you too might benefit from being a part of a tolerant spiritual community, whose goal is to see the shining light of God's grace awakened in all of us by nurturing a conscious oneness in the greater spirit that we all share.
I began going to the Agape Spiritual Center about fifteen or sixteen months ago, but had not become a regular participant in the activities of the center until earlier this year. What is it all about, you may ask? It starts with the understanding that we are all the children of the loving spirit of the universe, that you may understand to be the ONE God. I would think of it as the God that is one. We are all a part of this force, this energy, this spirit that is God. Hence our lives are governed by the laws of spirit, and that is what Agape is dedicated to exploring and realizing in peoples lives.
The ministry was founded and is run by Reverend Michael Bernard Beckwith, whom you may possibly know from his appearance in the documentary The Secret, which was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show. Reverend Beckwith preaches a philosophy that tells us that our responsibility for the happiness and fulfillment of our lives begins not with our physical actions but with our mental actions. Everything that we think and feel emits an energy that disperses into the universe. In turn the universe returns to us the energy that complements our expressions of thought and feeling. It cannot be therefore that we feel prosperously on the inside and remain outwardly impoverished forever. If we believe and therefore feel the energy of happiness and abundance within us, it shall be reflected in the circumstances of our lives. Even if we never become millionaires, when we have learned to master the feeling of being at one with the generous spirit of creation, we will have riches in abundance in our relationships with ourselves and with others, and that is surely what we all desire. This is God's gift to us, and we need not be of any particular faith or philosophy to partake of it. We need only understand that the wealth that we seek through money or the approval of others exists in its essential form in the very fabric of creation, and we need only give ourselves to it to experience it.
There is more to the purpose of Agape than this powerful message however. It is part of a greater effort unfolding in the world right now to raise humanity to a higher level of consciousness. In my own life I find that I am able to relax and embrace my natural identity in spirit, and need not prove anything to anybody but myself as a being who was put in this world for a definite purpose in God's design. At Agape everyone is free to be themselves, because that is the very point. No judgment, simply the recognition of the innately divine quality from which every human being is made. The experience that is created there, every Sunday morning and Wednesday night is one that simply cannot be put into words. I encourage you to come for yourself, and see what it is all about.
