Christian Metaphysics And Spiritual Healing With Gaylon McDowell

Who would have thought that the simple act of rubbing Vaporub on the chest would trigger dormant asthma? Certainly not Reverend Gaylon McDowell. In this episode, Gaylon shares the story of how he nearly died of asthma until he discovered the wonders of Christian Metaphysics and spiritual healing. He talks about how he got his start in the ministry, with the help of teachings by Les Brown and Dr. Dennis Kimbro. He aims to teach people how to work with their minds and challenge the theologies that they’ve been taught. To learn more about Gaylon and his advocacy for spiritual healing, head on over to this podcast entitled Truth Transforms.

—

Listen to the podcast here:

Christian Metaphysics And Spiritual Healing With Gaylon McDowell

Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve probably got his tour coming, The Preacher, The Stripper, and the Hypnotist. All the way from Chicago, Gaylon McDowell.

That was fantastic, Mark.

We got the tour, The Preacher, the Hypnotist, and the Stripper. Which one are you?

I’m clearly the preacher.

I’ve seen you do the hypnosis and I did see some of your dance moves. I would like to clarify and verify instead of guess. I can be all of them.

I’ll follow your lead.

If it wasn’t my dance moves, I could be a dancer. If it wasn’t for my body, I could probably be a better stripper but I can’t dance and I don’t have a decent body so I’ll stick with hypnosis.

We’re going to let Marcus walk in his lane.

I hope Marcus keeps his title.

That’s right. I scrubbed them all the time.

He’s more buff than the both of us.

He found out that we’re getting ready to do another seminar. He started working out because he didn’t want you to outdo him with those pushups. I still give him a hard time about that but he’s in Canada building a big resort so he can start doing seminars out there.

What’s it going to be called?

One area is called Heavenly because it’s peaceful out there. It’s cool.

Some people you’ve got to love with a long-handled spoon. Share on X

I saw a picture or something on Facebook. He was in someplace that looked like it was a farm. Maybe that’s what he’s doing.

That’s what it is. We had the privilege of meeting you and all of a sudden, we did our live event. You came out in a live event and there was the main star, which was you, and the rest of us.

When I saw your presentation in one of those events that I attended, I was like, “There’s something about him that I like.” Outside of the fact that you were exceptionally effective at what you do and I was like, “I’m going to that event.” I’m glad that I did and I felt as though that it helped us develop what I feel will be a friendship going forward. I invited you on my show, on my podcast Truth Transforms. Even one of the staff members that works for me at the church, Crystal, reached out to me. She’s like, “You’ve got to have him back on the show.” I’m like, “No problem. I’ll get him back on the show.” It’s because you’re practical. The thing about it is when you’re doing practical work that helps people transform their lives, I’m all for it because that’s what I’m about. It takes one to know one and I appreciate the work that you’re doing in the world.

We did a 2.5-day event and this was from all cultures, races, religions, beliefs, whatever it was. This was the first time when we got together. I remember that on the second day at lunch I said, “We’re all coming together here. Would you mind if a preacher would come up here and bless it?” We’ve got more compliments on that. The Muslim lady came to me and went, “I am grateful you did that. I wanted to ask if you could bless the food. It was perfect.” I had many people properly saying, “Thank you.” It didn’t matter.

It was the way you did it. It was the most beautiful, connecting way of giving everybody a reason and a desire to have a belief and to follow what’s out there in their heart. You go along with everything. Look at Marcus’ life. Here’s a guy that’s an old stripper that transformed his life. It’s funny when you think about it. We all have pasts and we get to be influenced by people like you in the future. How we became this trio was interesting and neat. Everybody still talks about that event. “Do you ever talk to the preacher man anymore?”

That’s how you kept calling him. That’s how you referred to him.

Who didn’t love you? Everybody loved you. We would say something and turn and go, “We’re going to get in trouble for this.” Marcus gets the idea because he didn’t tell me what he was going to do. He’s like, “I’m going to shock Mark and Gaylon. They wouldn’t tell me.” I started laughing. People ask us to this day, “Are you going to do that?” It could be. Who knows?

We’re open to it.

I’ve been on your show more than Marcus has.

Yes, you have.

I’m one step ahead of him. It’s not a competition but if you’re leading, you don’t want to get behind either.

We’re going to make it a competition.

It’s never a competition unless he goes ahead of me.

No problem. Without a doubt, anytime you’ve got something going on that you need to let the world know about, consider this a free standing offer to come on my show and let people know about it.

Christian Metaphysics: Most religions will tell you that there’s something wrong with you and that they have the only remedy or the only medicine.

You’re a different preacher man. You’re the preacher man that doesn’t judge. You’re a preacher man that accepts, leads, comes to the heart and wants to see from other people’s side so you can understand how they do things. How did you even get involved in the ministry? Were you born into it?

I come from what you would call two sides of life. In my mother’s side of life, my mom was very spiritual, but she was eclectic. She studied a lot of things. Her mother and father were from Mississippi and they had the hardcore, fundamentalist, I would call it sanctified but people will now call it Evangelical Pentecostal. Growing up in the black community, we call that sanctified. You didn’t do anything. My grandmother didn’t go to the show. She didn’t drink. She didn’t curse either. Nothing. No R&B, no rock and roll. Whereas my dad and his side of the family were looser. We’ll put it that way. It’s the best of both worlds.

Basically, what ended up happening was weird, Mark and Yolanda. I remember that it was around the holidays, maybe 1992, Thanksgiving, and my mother was cooking. My room was next to the kitchen. I didn’t decide to go to college after high school. I decided to go into the workforce so I was working. When I got home, she’s like, “Put this tape on your stereo. I want to listen to it while I cook.” I’m like, “Okay, sure.” I put on my stereo. It was a church service where I am now the Executive Minister which is funny. It was Les Brown.

A lot of people don’t know that Les Brown is an ordained minister for my church. He left the ministry to go into the motivational speaking world. He will always come back to speak at their church, Christ Universal Temple in Chicago. There’s this tape and it’s called The Courage to Live Your Dreams Part Two. I’m telling you, when I heard it, it was a lightbulb moment. I was like, “Ma, can I keep this tape?” I would listen to it over and over again. I said, “Do you have anything else?” She let me hear another person who had started speaking at the church. He wasn’t affiliated, but he was a guest and his name is Dr. Dennis Kimbro. He was the person who took Napoleon Hill’s manuscript that he was writing for African-Americans and put it out and finished the work called Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice. This led me to hear the person who founded the church was a woman named Rev. Dr. Johnnie Coleman, who taught Christian Metaphysics and a better living version of spirituality. It was practical spirituality for better living.

To make a long story short, I listen to these tapes and show up. In January, I started going to class and I ended up in a situation where I never thought I would end up. I thought I had a chest cold and my grandmother told me to put some Vicks Vaporub on my chest. I went to Tom Joyner, who’s a very popular African-American radio disc jockey. He was having a retirement party from traveling back and forth. I put it on when I came home and I couldn’t breathe to the point where it was ridiculous. My mother drives me to the hospital.

This was a serious deal. You couldn’t breathe.

They said to me that if I hadn’t got there ten minutes later, I would have been dead. That’s how much I couldn’t breathe it. When they tested my lung capacity, they gave you something to blow on and you’re supposed to blow multiple inches. I couldn’t blow it more than a quarter inch. I’m in the hospital and I’ve got exposed to this constant transformation of metaphysical thinking spirituality and I can remember the doctor told me that the Vicks Vaporub activated dormant asthma that I never had.

It did the opposite.

It activated something dormant because I never had an asthma attack in my whole life. The first one almost took me out. I’m in the hospital and I’m debating with the doctor, “You have asthma.” “No, I don’t.” “Yes, you do.” “No, I don’t,” and all of the things. I’m twenty years old.

You knew it all back then.

My mother is pacing back and forth, and I grabbed some books that I bought from the church for a class I was going to take. I remember saying to my mother that I’m her baby. I said, “Ma, with oxygen stuff on my chest and everything. According to these books, I don’t have to have these if I don’t want it.”

Are you talking about asthma?

I don’t have to have this asthma. I was in the hospital for five days and when I got out, I had to stay home for another two weeks. That’s how how severe it was. When I got out, I went to the class. I learned about spiritual principles, my conscious and subconscious mind, affirmations and visualization, meditation, and how to create a system around healing my body. When I got out of the house it was late January, we started classes in February, and probably by May, I didn’t have any symptoms. I was on two inhalers and pills.

I don’t use to tell people the story because people only hear this last part and it’ll hit the part that got me here. I remember going to the doctor for my last checkup with the specialist for your lungs. He told me everything checks out well, but because of the damage that was done, you have to keep the two inhalers and the pills. I went home and prayed about it. The next day I had a conversation with my mother and I said, “Mom, I believe I’m healed and I’m going to prove that this truth works or I’m not going to be here.” I threw the inhalers and pills in the garbage in front of her.

To learn about any person, you have to be intimate with that person. Share on X

She might empty the garbage that night.

I don’t know if she ever did, but that was my step. For me, I got engrossed in seeking to understand how spirituality works. How does the mind work? How do your spirituality and your mind affect your body? I was reading 3 to 5 books a week. I was listening. Do you remember the old Walkmans?

Yes, I do.

I was walking down the street walking with it. I changed the way I thought, talked, what I exposed myself to and what I would listen to. I submerged myself in understanding universal principles because I knew if I can understand what these people are writing in these books, I could demonstrate it. That became my goal. I tell people all the time that almost dying from asthma was the best thing that ever happened to me.

It was the best thing to happen to thousands and thousands of other people because you’re only here for one reason and that reason is what you’re doing. It’s serving. We should have you and Les on the same one. Next time, I’m going to ask Les to come on and have you as a guest, especially Les definitely knowing it.

He would love that. I love that. We’re still friends to this day. I can’t tell you how much because for me, even when I didn’t know him initially, that tape, listening to what I’m going through. I had that tape and I would listen to it. When he would show up at the church, I made sure he knew who I was eventually. The church is pretty big. We have 3,000 seats now before it was more because we had pews. It was hard to even walk up on him because there were many people but I was dogged and determined. After I got my healing, I went into classes to learn how to become a licensed teacher. I got into ministerial training, then became a licensed and ordained minister. I was asked to come to work for the church. I was working in the grocery business and management. I was dogged and determined to help as many people as I could with what I was learning. That’s been my story I’ve been teaching, the official term is called New Thought Christianity or Christian Metaphysics. I’ve been teaching New Thought since 1996.

You’ve got to get Marcus on here too. We’ll get The Stripper, The Hypnotist, and The Preacher on conversations with Mark and Yolanda. I want to interview all three of you.

You help a lot of people, don’t you? As far as teaching them Conscious Transformation, all that, what is it that you like to teach people?

I focus on a few fundamental things but I came up with this a couple of years ago. It’s a term that I like to use. I was speaking to some students from Columbia College in downtown Chicago. I was being interviewed about different religions and their concepts of human beings. I said to them, “Most religions will tell you that there’s something wrong with you and that they have the only remedy or the only medicine.”

I said, “My position is this. I believe there’s something radically about you and I’m here to help you discover it.” That’s my message. There’s something radically about the human being. We have inner potentials. We have the possibility to create and manifest the goodness of God, the universe, life, or whatever the term is comfortable for you. It is a manifestation. It’s necessary for us to recognize that our self-image, self-esteem, and self-awareness are dictated by beliefs.

You would tell people with subconscious mind training. What we’ve been taught in the past about who we are, and our connection to wholeness. I already believe that I’m whole. I believe your whole. I believe every individual I meet is already whole. There’s nothing broken about them but the primary cause of suffering is forgetfulness. If I had forgotten who I am, if I don’t know who I am, I can’t express what it is that I’m seeking to do. That’s why I love movies like The Matrix or The Bourne Identity. People don’t know who they are and they are awakening to who they are.

What I seek to do is through teaching universal principles, teaching people how to work with their minds, and challenge the theologies that they’ve been taught and throughout their lifetime or the lifetimes of multiple generations that you don’t have to accept what has been presented to you. You have a mind. You are already whole and once you recognize your wholeness, you can start to work towards expressing that inner good in a way that helps not only yourself but helps make the world a better place and a world that works for everybody. That makes a difference to me. I believe in making the world at work fair. That’s it in a nutshell. If you want to talk about some of the other things like consciousness or your awareness producing or manifesting as your world, intuition, and things like that. Also, getting rid of what I call the Smack Down God.

That’s how religions are. They want to control.

The Smack Down God is checking the list twice trying to find out who’s been naughty or nice. We need to evolve our theological and philosophical thinking. When we evolve those thoughts, we can start dealing with people not based upon religion, creed, color, nationality, and all these other things that we deal with. Until we deal with those issues, it’s hard to see people as people because we have all of these barriers that we put up in front of each other, so we can deal with each other authentically. We deal with our concept of that individual or concepts based upon how many checkmarks are checked.

Christian Metaphysics: It’s necessary for us to recognize that our self-image, self-esteem, and self-awareness are dictated by beliefs.

Gary Zukav says this best. He talks about how when you walk into a room, you automatically start looking for people who are familiar or who are like you. How many guys are in the room? How many guys my age? How many guys are black? How many guys are economic-based upon my perception? What that does is not a reason that allows me automatically to authentically relate to you as a human being.

I can honor who I am and his fullness and I can honor who you are in all your fullness. We don’t have to be colorblind but we can be color honoring. We don’t have to be gender blind, but we can be gender honoring. We put too many barriers up. What I seek to do is to challenge beliefs in a strong way, sometimes in an uncomfortable way. It helps us get back to the authentic self when there’s something radically about you before somebody whether it was a parent, a grandparent, a family member, or a politician, a clergyman, whoever told you there was something wrong about you.

It’s right and wrong. It’s controlled. They want to control so they have a bigger community so they can say, “Look how big we are. We must be right for us to be this big.” They get significant from that and it goes to their head sometimes. In my background, when I was twelve years old, I was out of the house. I went to this cult type of group. I wouldn’t be the man I am because of them if I hadn’t gone through that experience. I had such a great time and learned a lot. I talked to my best friend about that and I said, “I would never redo it again. I’d want to go back because I learned so much that’s why I became the person I needed to become in order to be able to serve the way I’m serving. If I hadn’t done that, where would I be?

Mark, what’s interesting when we start talking about belief systems. I’ll never forget that I was the first minister that I personally know that helped perform a same-gender wedding. One of the young ladies called me the day of because they weren’t necessarily happy with her being a lesbian, but they were like, “You’re about to get God’s wrath because you’re about to go too far and get married.” She called me and said, “What do I say to them? They’re Pentecostal and they’re quoting scriptures to me.” I said, “Do you want an answer?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Tell them, ‘So what?’” She was like, “I can’t tell them, ‘So what?’” I’m like, “Why not? So what?”

I’m not devaluing anybody’s religion. What I’m saying is this, you having that argument at that level of the argument validated that they’re standing in this position of authority over your life. It’s your life and you get to choose who you love. If none of them agree with it, as my grandmother used to tell me, “Some people you’ve got to love with a long-handled spoon,” and that meant from a distance. It doesn’t mean you don’t love them because they’re walking in their way. They believe what they believe and they’ve been conditioned to believe that way. They think that they’re conditioned belief in a subconscious mind is God’s absolute truth. The warping of scripture with our culture helps support it. When I told her, “So what?” It freed her. You might have people who are reading that are like, “That guy is being blasphemous now.” I’m being easy. I’m way worse than this.

Maybe she was gay because it wasn’t her sin. It was the people judging her and not accepting the way God would love her and accept you. Maybe she was chosen to be that person as a test for other people to see if they would stand up in love the way God loves her.

It’s possible because what I do know is, “So what?” I believe every human being is divine. I believe every human being is a whole. I believe every human being brings something of value. I also know that I don’t have to think in a way that people 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 years ago believed in worship for me to have a relationship with what I consider the holy or the divine. What ends up happening is personal experience is taken away and people don’t want you to challenge them. They don’t want you to ask questions. They don’t want you to make them think about what they do.

First, because I represent New Thought in ministry, I have people from time to time challenged me on things. I know my stuff for real, including mainstream biblical scholarship. I know how to do the metaphysical and mystical biblical interpretation. The whole shebang. I was like, “No, let’s not talk about what I teach. Let’s talk about what you teach that’s generally understood. I’m not going to go argue my position. Why don’t you believe what you believe?”

By the time you started hitting them with facts, not mysticism, not metaphysical theory, not somebody’s personal revelation, but a thing that we can prove factually. It helps them deconstruct what they thought was absolute and it’s necessary. In my opinion, and I can say this because I’m a part of the religious world, we can be a little bit too cocky. It is what it is. I challenge people right down to the cosmology. The world was created in seven days. I don’t know if you want to get this heavy into the theology on this show, but I challenged people. It was the two creations of human beings. Chapter 2 and 3 are 500 years older than chapter one. Adam and Eve had two sons and all of a sudden Cain kills Abel. Cain leaves and goes to find a wife. Where did this woman come from? Why are you taking this literally?

How do you teach someone intuition?

What I tell people is this, I believe intuition is the inner wisdom. It’s our inner GPS system. I jokingly call it God’s Planning System. What I teach people is to follow their intuition. First of all, stop paying attention to the moments where you say, “Something told me.” “My first mind.” “I had a gut feeling not to go, not to trust or do something.” Those are the moments when you pay attention, when you follow them, they will consistently be right. When you don’t follow them, you’re consistently wrong. That’s the first thing. The second thing, you have to give yourself time to be with you. I believe that intuition is a function of the spirit. That’s my personal belief.

Therefore, to learn about any person, for instance, you have to be intimate with that person. It’s the intimacy. You have to spend time with the person to know a person. You have to spend time with yourself. Turn the TV off, put the phone down, turn the radio off, and spend time with your own contemplation. Maybe you’re doing some type of prayer work, visualization work, subconscious mind training, or whatever that might be, and start paying attention to what comes up. What comes up as an inspiration? What comes up as an a-ha moment? What comes up to do something that you normally wouldn’t do? See how it connects. Stop paying attention to it.

What that means to me is, I normally read something that pulled my mind where I needed to be something inspirational and I’ll do some affirmations. I’ll still put myself in some type of meditative contemplation and write down what I get. I’m at the point where I don’t care where I am, I will stop and write down anything that I consider intuitive here. I put it on my iPhone in my notes. If I’m driving, I call my office and I leave myself voicemails and I can’t miss it. Every time I follow through on it, I get an idea of, “You should do this. You should do that. You should contact this person, or whatever.” Every time I do it, it works. Every time I don’t do it, I don’t get the results I want.

This is something that’s practical. I don’t want people thinking, “This is mystical. This is heavenly that there’s no earthly good.” You have an internal guidance system that if you follow it, it will consistently guide you into action but you have to recognize it. It is not going to shout over your mental noise so the reason why you slow down, contemplate, calm the body, breathe and relax is so your mind can slow down enough so you can hear it over the middle noise.

There's something radical about you that you need to discover. Share on X

That’s our great way to put it. I teach the subconscious and I’ve never heard it said like that. It’s true. What you’re saying is like, “You are dead on. You are right. Stop.”

I am a firm believer in following your gut. He’ll know what I’m talking about. When we used to go four-wheeling in Colorado, they would want to go up these huge boat. As he’s talking about it, I would have a vision of if I did that here are the three things that could happen. There were always things where I would end up getting hurt so I would be like, “No, I’m not going to be doing that with you. You crazy fools go do it. Get over with it. Good luck.” The time that I didn’t follow my gut was the time that we went and I hurt my chin. I did have the vision that I was going to get hurt somehow and I didn’t listen.

We fixed you up.

No, you didn’t fix me up. Even when I was little, when I was a teenager, I always followed that gut feeling of if something didn’t feel right, I didn’t do it. At times that I didn’t follow my gut, I didn’t get the results that I wanted. I am a firm believer in that. If you follow your gut, you’re going to get the result that you want, whether it’s telling you not to do it or go forward and do it. What you’re saying resonates to me to say, “You need to calm down. Listen to what you’re being told and connect the two which is your heart, your gut, and your mind into feeling good about what decision you’re going to make.”

What’s funny to me, being a person who works in ministry is the people that I’ve met who have the strongest intuition are normally always women. However, somehow ministry is mainly led by men. It’s the craziest thing to me. I’m not saying that women have a higher capacity of intuition. Women have learned by necessity to learn to follow it. It’s like, “No, he looks okay but something’s not right.” You learn to navigate a little bit differently. What I tell people as I teach the process from a metaphysical standpoint, I call it revelation realization manifestation. I believe that people get the revelation, that’s the intuitive hit, inspiration, the divine idea, and the revelation. Until that revelation turns into a realization, in other words, a knowing what’s real to you, you can’t manifest.

People try to go from revelation to manifestation and if they miss or skip a step, they become frustrated. I’m sure you all have heard people say in your seminars or workshops, “I know that God or the universe or whatever showed it to me. I’m clear about how come it’s not in my life.” They’re trying to skip over realization. They got the revelation. They don’t have a realization, which produces the manifestation. The way I teach it is when the conscious and subconscious mind comes together in complete agreement and alignment, that’s the realization, now you’re in knowing versus, “This is something that has been shown to me or appeals to me, yet I don’t have a knowing.” If the religious talk, we’ll say something like, “I don’t have an effect.” Until it’s yours, you can’t do anything with it. I believe that the revelation shows up to help guide you into the individual that can have that manifestation. What I’ll tell people in my classes is, “The dream isn’t for the now you, it’s for the potential you.”

I remember that men have to be shouted out. Women have to be whispered to. There are only two times in my life. Have you ever got a feeling it could end up bad like death is about to hit? It’s only happened twice in my life. I remember this one time I was on the Allegiant Air Flight. I’ve been in planes with airbags and dropped. I remember we were on the ground at Branson-Springfield, Missouri. This was before I landed with Tina. I jumped up and my body jerked. This plane isn’t going to make it.

We’re still on pasture when I went, “Something isn’t right. I’m telling you this plane isn’t going to make it.” My body started heating up. My heart started pounding and I’m thinking, “I am going to start praying because I’m going to come to visit you in a few minutes.” I never forgot that. They were getting ready to close the door. When they closed the door, I was freaking out inside. I never said anything and make an announcement, “We have a problem with the landing gear. It’s stuck. If we take off, we won’t be able to land so we’re going to have to ground the plane until tomorrow.” I thought, “I knew it.”

Didn’t you say anything?

I was freaking out.

I would have been like, “Give me my luggage. I’m getting off this plane. I changed my mind. I don’t want to travel.”

You start to think of women, that’s women. Men, I had some images in my head. I wasn’t drinking anything but I needed a drink. The other time was when I was driving from Las Vegas to Grand Junction. My nephew is a Native American Indian so the idea is if you ever see an owl, that means there’s death that’s happening or going to occur. You don’t want to see a live owl. I’m driving and I’m getting tired and I thought, “I only got 80 more miles to go. I can make it to Grand Junction.”

I was not alone. I was like, “I’ll keep myself awake.” It wasn’t a minute later when an owl flew into my windshield and flew off. It freaked me out. My heart pounded. I looked up and there’s a sign that says, “Rest area five miles.” I thought, “I’ve got two choices. Either rest for a moment or forever.” I pulled over that car so fast and I never forgot those two times. Those were years ago. That’s how strong it was. Women are like, “I get it.” For men, they need to get whacked around a few times and you’ll finally figure it out.

They’re going to get slap you around.

Christian Metaphysics: Once you recognize your wholeness, you can start to work towards expressing that inner good in a way that helps not only yourself but also makes the world a better place for everybody.

My teacher and mentor Rev. Coleman used to always say, “Nobody wants to pay the ticket when it’s time.” When you don’t learn the lesson that you’re supposed to learn she will use the analogy that you will be a grown man, still sitting in that second-grade chair. After a while, the chair will start to get tighter and tighter, it’ll become uncomfortable. She used that analogy to say, “When you don’t get the lessons that you’re supposed to get when you’re supposed to get them, the next time will be more painful and the next time will even be more painful, and so on. To get the lesson now, you’re 50 years old in a chair that was created for a seven-year-old. It’s not supposed to be comfortable, but you won’t evolve until you get that lesson but nobody wants to pay the ticket when it’s time.”

When you talk about praise and gratitude, how does that work?

I like to use a little analogy. If you take the P off praise you get a raise. I didn’t make that up so I don’t want to take credit for it. I heard somebody said years ago in church. Praise and thanksgiving are attitudes of mind that I believe help the mind function at a level above the conscious and subconscious. In mystical language, they have a lot of terms like Christ consciousness, super consciousness, higher awareness, or whatever the term people use this on them. In the old Hebrew language, The Secret Place of the Most High.

I believe that as you pray, you live your consciousness above what is mundane. You put yourself in a higher spiritual or universal flow to be able to walk in what the world would call grace, the flow, or in alignment with your truth. To do it, it means that you start to put your mind on what it is that is good. As you contemplate what is good, you condition your mind to start to rise above the conditioned beliefs and experiences that you have.

In other words, to borrow a phrase from a good friend Jesus, he would say, “Judge not according to appearances, but judge righteous judgment.” People think that means don’t deal with the issue. If you’re a supervisor and caught somebody stealing, you need to fire them, of course. That’s not what he’s talking about. He’s talking about, “Am I paying attention to the illness? Am I paying attention to the breakdown? Am I paying attention to the lack of money? Am I paying attention to the family drama? Will I allow myself through praise and thanksgiving and having an attitude of gratitude to place my awareness, my consciousness, my thinking in a higher level of being?”

The gifts that allow me to be a conduit through which these universal ideas and energies can flow and manifest or express in my life and to the lives of others. Praise is not a tool to say, “Let me massage God’s or the universe’s ego,” because that’s what people think. Let me use all these big words in the scriptures God, omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence and all of that. Sometimes I upset my students when I say, “God doesn’t speak English.” I use that as a metaphor to say, “It’s natural that the language you’re using is where your mind is.” It’s not sitting cross-legged in meditation, it’s where your mind is. If my mind is in a state of gratitude, thanksgiving, and praise, what I’m doing is I am lifting up my thinking above the regular human things that touch people.

Maybe because in the consciousness of praise maybe the people at the airline catch that the landing gear doesn’t work. Maybe because I’m in the consciousness of praising, maybe I missed a car accident. Maybe because I’m in the consciousness of praising that person who got caught and everybody else who tricked them, lied and stole from them didn’t get me. The idea is to live above the things that would normally touch people. I’m a priest so sometimes I use ministerial concepts, but in Psalm 91, which says, “A thousand can follow your side and 10,000 in your right hand, but should not come near you.” There’s talking about a consciousness of praise. I consider a life that is in harmony, the byproduct of consciousness of praise, gratitude, and Thanksgiving.

You need to be a coach. You need to start a coaching business or something.

I’m starting a coaching business.

If somebody wants to be coached in any way, what can they expect? I’m going to be your first client.

I’m already winning this. We’re going to talk about what’s radically about you, first. We’ve got to deal with the belief systems around you not being adequate or not having enough to do what you need to do. Afterward, we put structure around it. You have to learn how to work with your intuition, you’ve got to learn how to follow your inner guidance, you have to understand and learn principles of how the mind works. How do you discipline your mind to get the results you desire? What are the techniques? What are the tools? What are the principles you need to know what learning understands so you can get what I consider preferred demonstrable results? In other words, people always demonstrate.

The issue is, are you getting the desired demonstrations? What I seek to do with my coaching business is to help people get desired results and demonstrations because I’m sure you hear people say, “I need to make a demonstration.” I tell people, “You always are making demonstrations,” because life is consciousness. In other words, what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, what I’m believing, and what I’m saying, and what I’m doing is showing up as results. If I want different results, that means that I have to have different beliefs so I’m going right for the beliefs. I’m going hardcore towards them and help give people a structure to be able to get the results they desire.

You’re not massaging their story. You’re creating something that’s going to give them the results that they desire that they haven’t gotten before. You’re about results. How do people get a hold of you? I remember one time doing a radio show and they kept saying Gaylon. I remember talking to Crystal or somebody.

It was Crystal. She works for me at the church.

We have the possibility to create and manifest the goodness of God, the universe. Share on X

I talked to somebody else and I said, “Gaylon.” They go, “Pastor McDowell.” I go, “Who’s Pastor McDowell?”

In that setting, that’s who I am. In a coaching setting, they’re going to get Gaylon who happens to be a minister. I’m not trying to push my theology off on anybody. What I’m seeking to be able to do is help people understand that I’ve had many years in high-level leadership and helping people. I’ve taught thousands of people. I’ve spoken at conferences around the world. I church grow, leadership, spiritual principles prayer, prosperity, goal setting, visualization, and everything you can think of I’ve done and some stuff that you might not have ever heard of. I have experienced and done this. I’m not some Johnny come lately who off the street saying, “I want to become a coach.” I have results. I have a podcast that’s been on every week for the last few years.

Is that the one I was on?

Yes, Truth Transforms.

I love it. How does somebody get a hold of you, Gaylon, if they go, “I want to know more about Gaylon. I want to talk to him?” They can talk to you and you’ll be as reliable as possible and they can tell you anything, and you’re not going to judge them for their actions, behaviors, or the past. You only have to influence their future to become a better person who they already are.

There are a couple of ways. You can call the church and ask for me. If you call the church, you need to be asking for the coach me, not the minister me. That’s (773) 568-2282. If a person wants to email me, they can email me at GMcDowell@CUTemple.org.

If I can write as fast as you can talk, I would have it down already.

What about websites?

I’m in the process of getting my website back up. I took it down and I’m in the process of getting that back up so it should be up soon. I don’t want to send somebody somewhere to a page that doesn’t work. The phone number is (773) 568-2282. That’s the call of the action. That’s the call the corporation and my assistant will let me know that somebody’s trying to get in contact with me.

This is going on five different channels. We hope to hit 683,000 as our goal, but we’ll probably het 50 people.

I’ll put it on my Facebook and I also have a Facebook page for my podcast called Truth Transforms with Rev. Gaylon McDowell.

He’s got it on his YouTube channel. It’s on his Facebook and our Conversation with Mark & Yolanda page.

There’ll be several hundred people up to a couple thousand watching this interview and contacting you. We want to make sure they can get to you somehow.

We’re only not talking about religion.

Christian Metaphysics: When you don’t get the lessons that you’re supposed to get when you’re supposed to get them, the next time will be more painful.

It’s got nothing to do with religion. It’s about faith and God

You’re not preaching about your beliefs and trying to force it on somebody else you are talking in general of how our mind works in what we choose to believe in. The only thing we have to do is we have to learn to respect the beliefs of each other, in order to be able to communicate with each other and be comfortable talking about these topics that people don’t feel comfortable talking about like in politics.

What was funny about it is I believe that you can’t have war outside and unless you have war inside. The fact that I’m having a conversation where I potentially am starting from the standpoint of irritation. What that means is what’s happening in my own belief system and the beliefs in my belief systems are being challenged. I have a perception, a paradigm, and a context that I believe is my identity but it’s not. It’s false. It was generated through a lifetime of experiences. People teaching you things, you’re going through things and making up a story about them. I have friends who are Muslim, Buddhist, and friends who say, “I don’t do this God thing at all.” I respect all of them and I can still navigate.

If I go into my own neighborhood, I come from one of those neighborhoods where everybody knew everybody. We knew each other’s parents and grandparents. It was a well-established middle-class African-American neighborhood. We all knew everybody. Everybody knows everybody. I can go to the old neighborhood and everybody respects me. Everybody still loves me. I can laugh and joke. We can reminisce, we can talk about my pre-preacher days and everything and it’s all good. I’m not trying to impose upon them because I’m not trying to convince, convert, or coerce anybody. I live my truth. When something shows up that is inconsistent with my truth, I disengage without devaluing the other individual.

As a coach, you have to see it from everybody’s point of view because you can’t coach them if you’re only right and they’re always wrong,

For me, I’m not invested in making people wrong. What I want to do is be in a space that allows us to communicate in a way that says, “Even if we disagree, we can disagree without being disagreeable.” That doesn’t mean that I’m progressive. I believe in the change that needs to happen and all of those things. However, I’m not going to lose myself in the process of it. This is for Mark because he used to be in seminary. There’s a statement that Jesus says it’s taken out of context. He says, “What good is for a man to gain the world and lose his soul?”

The word soul and Jesus is the language of Aramaic means self. What good is it for a person to gain what they seek and they say they want and lose themselves getting it.” How often have we devalued ourselves to get something that we want? How often have we devalued ourselves to be around people who are not necessarily for our highest good? How often do we devalue or break or compromise our integrity to get the money, position, business, or person? What good is it if I had to lose myself in the process? It’s not worth it.

That’s a fact. That is dead on. That’s what I loved about having you at the last event. It was powerful to see everybody come together like that. That’s the first time we did lunch, learn and contribute and we gave the check or part of the lunches to the cure for cancer for life for kids. You should have seen the gratitude they had. It seems like we gave him $1 million. We didn’t give them that much but it’s the fact that you gave and what’s it’s going to mean to you. That’s where Criss Angel and Gwen Stefani gave a lot. It’s a tight community.

It’s all donations and nothing goes to staff. It goes to the family, 100% of it. It’s a real deal. That’s what I loved about it and we still get messages and say thank you for the donation. I go, “How do you not want to get to that or be a part of that?” and everyone else turned away. If you would walk up to scale to us and go, “I don’t know if anybody everybody can afford it,” but they slipped us $100 and go, “I want to pay for something.” We’re like, “We didn’t ask for that.” That’s when you got to see who people are and they didn’t do it to brag. They did it because they had that opportunity to do the thing.

It’s a reflection of the two of you because that’s who you drew into. Quality is going to attract quality and I’m not valuing human beings when I say this. If you have a radio station that is 102.7 and you have 102.8 you can still hear the song with a static. You all function from such a place of love and grace and harmony, that what you radiate, you attract back to you. You drew me, Mark and Yolanda. I know what was happening. I know what was going on.

I’m hypnotizing you.

Out of all the thousands of people, we’ve performed and millions of we’ve done shows in front of, there’s a handful that we keep in touch with and talk about and you’re one of them. I still remember we were driving down the road and we went to the a restaurant. We’re going down this little tiny road and we drove off and we got a message about the situation. I got off the phone with you three days before about you having a loss in your family. I was like, “I talked to Gaylon.” It struck a nerve to say gratitude. I said, “Yolanda, we’re grateful wanting to be his friends but we don’t know.” We don’t know when your last meal was. When is your last trip? You do what you are supposed to do. When it’s your time, it’s your time. You will never know.

You have to make peace with those things. As you all know, my cousin was murdered for no reason. He was visiting another friend so people were shooting up and he was in the house. The bullet went through the window. He was sitting on the couch, got hit, fell, and died. We are being in a space where you still maintain your peace and strength. Nobody’s been caught or arrested. Even now and that was two days before Memorial Day but you still have to be able to go forward in grace and say, “Am I going to allow this situation that I don’t like, didn’t want to happen, that was very difficult for my family?” I can’t even imagine what my auntie is going through, one of my little cousins, his children. However, we still have to be able to go forward with grace even when it’s hard.

The primary cause of suffering is forgetfulness. Share on X

I always tell people that it’s easy to talk about what you’ll do when everything is working right but when life gives you the sucker punch, where will you stand? What will you do? What type of person will you show up as in the midst of drama and trauma? I choose, regardless of the situation, to always show authentically from the standpoint of I’m a whole being and nothing can add to it and nothing can take away from it. Even when it’s painful I’m still holding on. Always and I hoped to be that space for my loved ones and the people who I’ve had the blessing of teaching in ministry and going forward with coaching or speaking. If people want to watch me preaching, I have a ton of sermons on YouTube, check them out there.

We’ve got a whole trip and we’re coming to Chicago. We’re going to have to check you out and make sure you do a good job in that.

I was preaching and I was getting to my point. I was preaching so hard to power in the neighborhood and I told people that it was my knowing. We had to wait fifteen minutes with the power to come back on and continue the service.

I do love the name of your radio program, the Truth Transforms. My idea for my podcast is Let’s Face It. Every day, it’s going to be something different. Let’s face the fact that you’re not always open to talk about X, Y, and Z. Let’s face it because people are not that, especially with everything that’s going on with this pandemic. Everyone is focused on only what’s happening to them, and they realize that it’s happening to everyone. The judgment on whether people wear a mask, but choose not to wear a mask, whether people choose to not stay home or travel. Everybody has a choice. As long as it’s not affecting you personally, why are you judging that person?

One of the challenges that come into play is, this is where being able to have cold conversations matter because people have passionate positions that they’re ready to kill people over. What I tell people is this, this is my soft answer. If it works for you, great, if not, great. I tell people, “You can have your own truth, but you don’t get to have your own facts.” The reason why I say this is, it might be a fact that in this situation whenever you walk in your truth, let’s be responsible to do what we need to do as citizens to make sure that we’re taking care of each other because you don’t get to have your own facts.

That’s my nuanced way of communicating with people with love because if they know that I’m coming from a space of love and not from a position of attacking. We can then have a conversation. The moment I put my hands up, you have to put your hands up and now it’s a battle instead of us trying to figure out, what we can do to help take care of each other? It’s like that old analogy that people say when people go to heaven the spoons are too long. Have you ever heard of that?

No.

It’s the story where a person says they got a glimpse of heaven, and when they got there was a gigantic table. It was food across them but the forks of the spoons are exceptionally long. The people were asking the angels, “How can people eat with the gigantic forks?” The story says, “You’ve got it wrong. You’re supposed to take the food from the person across the table from you and feed them.” That’s Heaven. Heaven isn’t about me. It is about the other individual. If you come from that space, you can find the wiggle room to create a world that works for everybody but let me feed my brother and my sister first.

I love that. That’s cool.

You can use that, Mark.

You know he will. He’s going to find the opportunity to use that. We appreciate you taking the time to sit down and chat with us on your day off. We’d love to do this again in the future. We’ll definitely keep in touch and keep you posted on anything that we do as far as events. I know we were talking about doing something virtually for the Total Transformation Group. We’re in talks about that so we’ll keep you posted on that and keep talking and keep staying in contact so we can do this again.

I look forward to it and I know that we are supposed to be together. I believe that with my whole heart.

Yes, we are. We will continue this because when we come through to Chicago, we’re going to come to see you.

I’m looking forward to it.

Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice

We appreciate you. Hopefully, we get all this shared and everybody has read all that good stuff shared on yours. Let’s keep touching lives and making a difference.

God bless you both.

Have a good rest of the day off.

Thank you.

—

That’s a gentleman that I’ve gotten a chance to meet at our seminar last time. What a true gentleman he is. I would love for you to give him a call and chat with him for 10 to 15 minutes and see what service he will be able to help you with because I know there’s something out there. He doesn’t want to change it but he wants to influence you to be the best person you already are. Get rid of pain and give you some basis to grow so check him out. You can call him at (773) 568-2282 or go to his email.

Send him an email. If there’s something that you need help with, dealing with. I know that there are people dealing with family members dying, getting sick, or anything that you’ve been going through during this pandemic, but also, good things too. What I’m saying is if there’s something that he can help you with spiritually and emotionally to help you get through it. He would be a great person to get in touch and put you at ease with that.

He’s awesome. Share this video with other people.

We’ll see you for Mark’s total transformation appointment. We’ll see what his midlife crisis is going to be.

Do you want to have a twenty-minute consultation? If people want to talk for twenty minutes, they can book it online though. Thanks for joining us. Share this video if there’s someone in your life that needs to hear this message.

If there’s somebody you don’t like and you didn’t like the message, share it to tick them off on Facebook and Vimeo if you want to stream videos, get some good laughs, and share them with your family. We will see you for Mark’s total transformation. I don’t know what it’s going to be. We will both experience it together.