UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Welcome to The Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes, and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com
Michael Singer: Eventually, if you’re sincere in your growth, you’ll see that it all boils down to Shakti. It all boils down to the Chi flow. All the different things that you’re trying to achieve and get and experience in life, it’s not about pronouncing or deciding or getting or getting rid of. The beauty of true spirituality is that you get to have every single thing that you ever really wanted. The trouble is people don’t know what they want. All you want, guaranteed, under all circumstances, at all times, is to be happy. That’s all anybody wants. They just want to feel joy. They want to feel love. They don’t want to be afraid. They want to feel okay. They want to feel that everything is fine, and there’s nothing wrong with the innate yearning to be at peace, to be okay, to have nothing bothering you, nothing, nothing ever, and to always feel love and joy while you go about the business of life.
There’s nothing wrong with that. That is what you should yearn for. It is what the soul yearns for. There’s nothing you can do about it. The trouble is that that yearning for peace, for well-being, goes to the mind, which is the easiest place for us to go. And it uses the mind as a tool to try to find out how to make this happen. That’s the mistake. That is the core of all the mistakes. That is the cause of all suffering. When the yearning to find peace and the yearning to feel love and the yearning to just be okay, we’ll just call it that, just be okay, fine, goes to the mind and says, “What should I do? What needs to happen, oh, guru mind?” It’s basically how we treat our minds. Oh, knower of all things, great God of the mind, what should I do?
Well, the mind in truth is not so smart. It won’t tell you that, but the mind only knows what it knows. It is the sum of its learned experiences. It only knows what it’s been programmed with. It only knows what experiences it’s had. And what the analytical mind does when you go to it with that question is it goes to its memory banks. It goes to its analysis and says, “Oh, you need to get married. Oh, you need to have another child. Oh, you need to make more money. Oh, you need to lose weight. Oh, you need to get a new career. Oh, you need to change jobs.” That’s what it does, doesn’t it, right? It comes up with answers. It’s an answer machine. That’s what it was hired for. Does it come up with answers? What do you think when you say, “I can’t make up my mind?”
It means it came up with so many answers, I can’t even figure out what to do. You need to get married and you need to get divorced. You need to have children. You need to not have children. Hello. It’ll do them all, won’t it? All it’s doing is trying to come up with something that makes you feel it will work. It’s such a fascinating process when you slow it down. When you go into a clothes store and you go to buy clothes, I’ve watched you. I know what you do. You try them on. You watch people trying to buy clothes, both men and women. It’s not a gender thing, and they have these big mirrors, three-way, back, front, and you stand on these platforms, and you do your little buy the clothes thing, right? What exactly are you doing when you do that? You already can tell when you put them on whether they fit or not. That’s not what you’re doing.
If they’re too tight, you’ll know. If they’re too loose, you can feel it. But when you’re standing in front of those mirrors, a very fascinating and deep thing is happening that you need to pay attention to. Without realizing it, what you’re doing is taking in the reflection of what you’re seeing and letting it process through your entire judgment system, through your heart, through your senses of feeling, to try to see how it moves you. And if when you stand in that mirror, your heart opens and you feel warmth and you feel good about yourself, then you say, “I like it,” which is a lie. What you really like is the feeling that you felt come up inside, not the outfit. That outfit that made you feel that way today may hang in that closet and never get worn.
You know that, because it never feels right again. But in that particular moment, it made you feel that way. And that’s where people go astray. Instead of recognizing that what they like and what they love is the feeling of well-being, the feeling of right, they associate it with objects that make them feel that way in a given moment. And there’s nothing wrong with you. The same object will not necessarily make you feel the same way next time. If you actually watched what it is that made you feel that openness, that warmth, that sense of well-being when you looked in that mirror, it may have as much to do with what you ate last night as it does that outfit.
If your stomach is upset, if somebody called you yesterday and wasn’t a good thing, it was still on your mind, all of these different things affect how you’re going to feel when anything comes in through your senses. Whether it’s sunny out and the way the light is falling through the windows or whether it’s cloudy and rainy and you’re in a depressed mood affects whether you open when you look at the reflection of those clothes or when you meet a person or when you ask your mind, “What do I need to do to be okay?” It doesn’t stay the same, does it? Who’s willing to be honest? One day, it’s one way. Next day, it’s another way, and how the heck can you decide anything? The only thing you can be sure of is that underlying every single thing is the yearning to be okay, is that under all circumstances, what you really want is to feel open, to feel loved, to feel peace, to feel an inner sense of enthusiasm and well-being. If something makes you feel that way, then your mind tells you that’s what you need to feel that way.
And it tells you that all the time. And so your mind, you go to the mind. The mind takes its past experiences, all the different input it has, and it comes up with, conjures up these concepts of what you need to do, what everybody else needs to do, what everything needs to be in order for you to experience what you want to experience. And that is the folly of humanity. So when yoga says you can have what you want, what it means is you can have the peace. You can have the love. You can have the joy. You can have the enthusiasm. You can have the overwhelming feeling of well-being from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you go bed tonight without thinking about a single thing at any time and feel that way every day of your life.
There, that’s not a bad gift. Do you want to buy a gift for somebody? Package that, all right? You can live like that, no matter what happens, period. You have the right to live like that. The problem is you are not going to live like that through the process you’re using now. And the process you’re using is going to the mind and saying, “What needs to happen in order for me to be that way?” And what the mind will do is come up with some notion, some concept, some movie it saw, something that happened in its past. When was the last time I was happy? It was on my honeymoon. I need to have another. Let’s have a second honeymoon and go back to Niagara Falls, all right? The probability that you’re going to feel when you go back to Niagara Falls what you felt the first time you went to Niagara Falls is so low, you can fake it. But the factors that caused you to open 20 years ago are not there.
The newness, this, there’s all sorts of stuff. You can’t do that. You can’t go to the mind. Long story short, you can’t go to the mind and ask it, “What do I need to do? And what does everybody else need to do? And what does the world need to do in order for me to feel better, feel higher, feel safer, feel more open?” And yet, that is the only thing that anyone ever does, is go to the mine. And so the mind comes up with this answer, telling you what needs to happen. And then you go about your business trying to make it happen, and that is the cause of suffering. Because one, you’re not going to make it happen anyways. You’ve been around the block. It’s very difficult to make this world be the way you want it to be, very difficult.
And I’m going to guarantee you something, and you should be able to guarantee it to me. Should you have that unique experience of actually managing to get it the way that your mind said it needed it to be to make you happy, it won’t make you happy. Or get it the way that your mind said you need to be so you won’t be scared and you’ll feel safe. You will not feel safe and you’ll still feel scared. Now do you know that yet? How many times has your mind told you, “If only this would happen, I’d be okay?” Are you? Can you tell me it never happened? Sometimes things happen. You’re not okay. The minute it happens, you’re okay for 20 seconds. Then the mind says, “Now what we need is” … It comes up with something else, doesn’t it, right?
It wasn’t a matter of him saying he loved me. I want him to love me and never talk to anybody else. And then I want him to get married, and I can’t just be married. I want him to get a job that pays enough money to have kids. It’s always something, isn’t it? It has never, ever, ever not been something. And the one that really works is when you’re afraid, when you feel insecurity, when you feel fear. You think, what could you do to feel more secure? If you do that, all you will do is transfer your insecurity onto that. So if I meet somebody who makes me feel more secure about things, I’m going to be insecure about losing that person. Whatever you project your sense of fear onto becomes another source of fear. I told you once before, you can’t get rid of fears by taking care of things. If I’m afraid that this could happen or that could happen and I go about my business trying to make that particular thing not happen, how will I know that something else won’t happen?
How do I know it won’t happen later? It’s what the mind says, isn’t it? Hey, it’s okay now. She apologized now, but did she really mean it? How do I know she won’t do it again? Guess what? You don’t, do you? How could you ever know what’s going to happen? You’ll never know what’s going to happen. So if you’re afraid and your mind comes up with things that need to happen for you to not be afraid, you’re in big trouble. If you go after those things, you will fail. They will never, ever make you not afraid. That is not how you get not afraid, is by doing what the mind says to take care of the picky and little problems of the moment. It’s never about the problems of the moment. It’s always about something deeper. So you get to a point, and this is a deep point, and this is real spiritual growth, where you realize this mind is not going to help me.
It says it’s helping me. It comes up with all kinds of things all the time. It’s very demanding, and there’s not a single thing that it says that if I managed to make it happen would really make a significant difference in my well-being. If it’s not this, it’s something else. Have you seen that yet? When has it ever not been something? Can you even think? When did you go for a prolonged period of your life that you were not having problems? It’s just this problem. You just focus on the particular one now, then the next one. So you have to get to a point where you go deeper and you say to yourself, “I do have the right to be happy and I do have the right to feel joy and I do have the right to feel love and I do have the right to feel enthusiasm and I do not have to feel fear.”
There, I want you to say that. That’s your starting place. You are capable of achieving that state all the time. Your life should not be about trying to make things happen and make you happy. You should be happy and have fun with life. Your life should not be about trying to make things happen so you don’t have to be afraid or insecure or scared. You should not be scared and have fun with life, all right? Your job should not be to make it be so you’re not, because then the truth is you’re letting fear and lacking run your life. You should feel whole and complete within yourself at all times with spontaneous joy welling up inside of you. And then say, “What do you want to do today? What are we going to do with all this good energy? Let’s go play. Let’s have a nice relationship with somebody. Let’s do something.”
But no need, needs are not natural. They will never tell you that. Needs are equivalent to sickness. You have no needs. I’m not talking, you can’t eat. You got to eat. I’m not talking about that. You know what I’m talking about. There are no needs. All of your psychological needs are lies. You are whole and complete within yourself. When the Shakti and the Chi is flowing properly, you are so filled with love, you don’t need love. Does that mean you don’t have relationships? Why? Why would you not have relationships? You have so much love. It’s fun to share it, but you don’t need relationships to have love. And if you ever get into a relationship where you don’t need to be in the relationship, it’ll be the finest relationship you ever had. It’s just a fun, beautiful experience of sharing what you already have going inside of you.
If they want to stay, they’re welcome to stay. If they want to leave, they’re welcome to leave. It doesn’t make the slightest difference, because you’re whole and complete within yourself. And if you go to a job, you’re just working with the job to express yourself and give. And if they like what you’re doing, they like what you’re doing. They don’t like what you’re doing, they don’t like what you’re doing, because you have no needs. You have no needs. You should have no needs. That’s the starting place of a decent life and it is the starting place of spiritual growth. While you are out there in this world trying to get, there’s nothing spiritual going on. It is when you reach a point that you realize, I am holding a plea within myself. There’s something that’s stopping me from experiencing that. Let me work with that.
And then you use your life to remove the part of you. It has nothing to do with outside. You use all of life, all of it, 24 by seven, every second. You use all of life to get rid of the part of you that is keeping you from experience the deeper part of your being that is always okay. And say it again, “There’s a part of your being that is always okay,” period, no matter what you’ve ever done. I don’t care whether you think you’re the worst person I ever walked the face of the earth. You’re not, right? And there’s nothing that you can do or ever have done or will ever do that will tank the part of your being that’s holding a plea. It doesn’t touch it. Your soul, your being is transcendent to every single thing that’s going on in this world and everything that’s going on inside your psyche.
So once you understand that, you understand spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is about going back to that part of your being. It is not about anything outside. All of your work is inside of you, and all of your work is between you and you. It has nothing to do with anybody else. Now that is very relieving and refreshing, because it means you don’t have to be dependent upon everybody else. That’s what a lot of people do. They say, “I want to grow, but my kid or my husband or this or that.” No way. Every single thing in life is for the benefit of your growth, the moment you realize it’s about getting rid of the part of you that’s keeping you from going deeper. All right, how does one go about that? We know how to go about getting lost, but once more, the way you go about getting lost is to realize you’re not okay.
Well, that’s not hard to realize, is it? You get reminded every second, don’t you, right? Either your heart or your mind, someone’s telling you it ain’t so good. And then you go to the mind. You do it. Just watch, all the time. You go to the mind. How do you know you went to the mine? Listen, when the mind’s giving you answers about what to do, don’t do this. Go here. Do that. Don’t say that. Well, maybe you should talk to this person. Ask for this. Why’d you have to say it? When it’s doing all that kind of stuff, which it does all the time, you know you went to the mine and asked, “How do I fix this? How do I be okay?” I may need to go on a vacation. Where could I go? Maybe I’ll go here. It’s just busy trying to come up with things like the clothes you were trying on.
That’s what you do with your mind. You do the same thing. Your mind is coming up with different situations, different ideas. You’re trying them on and you’re trying to see if they make you feel open and make you feel better, just like when you try your clothes on. Well, we could go off and try this, or maybe we could go on set vacations. No, we could go back on a second honeymoon, just boom, boom. It’ll do all of them in 10 seconds. It’ll come up with 50 different alternatives, won’t it? And then you’re trying them on. And if one of them makes you feel, whoa, that would be unbelievable. It’s exactly like when you put the clothes on and it makes you feel that. Don’t you believe for one second that just because you came up with a thought and it made you feel good at that moment that that thought holds any promise for anything.
Your thoughts are not going to solve your problem. Your problem is deeper. That’s why you went to the mind. There’s nothing that mind is going to come up with, ever, under any circumstances, that is going to solve your deeper problems. You have to solve them inside. I hope you understand that. That’s such a giant step to realize that this act of going to the mind to solve the problems of the heart and the soul is a very futile thing. They’re not going to do it. And then your mind just goes nuts trying to come up with more stuff. Then you wonder why it didn’t work. All right? All right, what’s the alternative? The alternative is real spiritual growth. But it’s so real, people don’t want to own it. The alternative is to look inside yourself and say, “There’s something wrong in here. Why am I not okay all the time?”
One, no one even told you you were supposed to be. In most cases, no one ever had a discussion like this with anybody. Your natural state of health, we know the body’s supposed to be healthy. You’re not supposed to worry about your body all the time. I think we all understand that there is such a thing as being healthy enough to go about your business. No one understands that about the psyche. You should never have to worry about your psychological well-being. You should be okay all the time. Nothing, just fine, I’m fine. I don’t have to worry. I don’t have to think. I don’t have to figure anything out. I don’t have to decide what to do. I don’t have to make decisions, nothing. I’m just fine. Imagine that. Most psyches have never, ever been fine. That’s what’s so funny to someone who meditates. They go into a state where it’s fine.
Good, now why doesn’t it stay that way? Why can’t the psyche just be fine? Why is that to be a neurotic mess? It is, isn’t it? It’s just nuts, thinking, worrying, conjuring, fighting everything. Why? You start by looking at that and saying to yourself, “Why is it like this inside?” Not what should I do about it? There’s the big difference. In the western way of thinking, when something’s wrong inside, you ask, “What should I do about it?” Then you’re taught assertiveness training to go out and make it happen. In the deeper teachings, the true teachings, when you see something not right inside, you just ask, “Why?” I’m whole and complete with myself. Why don’t I feel that way? Not what do I do about it? Why is it this way? Not outside, inside, and so you start working with yourself. What does that mean?
I’m telling you, if you’ll start from the base point that everything should be fine inside without any effort of your own, wow, what a starting point? Have you ever even thought like that? That’s how it should be. That’s your natural state. You are whole and complete within yourself. If it is not that way, there is something wrong, all right? Inside, not outside, I’ll go further. The natural state is you are whole and complete within yourself and you are fine at all times, no matter what happens outside, no matter what. No matter who dies, no matter what anybody says to you, no matter what takes place, no matter what the finances are, no matter what anything is, it does not touch anything inside of you. You are completely and unconditionally whole and complete within yourself. That’s what it means to be who you are. You’re a great being, but there’s this veil that is blocking that, the veil of your psyche.
You have to decide, do I want that veil of the psyche to continue to run my life? Or do I want to get rid of the veil of the psyche so I can fall back into the deeper aspects of my being where I am whole and complete under all circumstances? Then by all means, deal with it. Play with life. Do things, whatever you want to do. Get married. Get rich. Do whatever you want, but not because you need, not because you think it’s going to solve what’s wrong inside of you, because it is not going to solve what’s wrong inside of you. I know nowadays, a lot of you guys are into natural healing and holistic stuff, and you don’t like all the drugs that western medicine gives to, so to speak, heal. Because you understand, it doesn’t really heal anything. All it does is suppress and hide the symptoms and experiences that you’re having.
That’s not a hard talk to have with new age people. You are doing the same exact thing with your psyche. If what you’re doing is saying, “I’m not okay inside,” okay, well, then something’s wrong. But that’s not what you’re saying. You’re saying, “I’m not okay inside. What pill can I take, i.e., a relationship, i.e., a new job, i.e., a vacation, this, or that, whatever it is? What pill can I take to hide, to suppress, to lay on top of this sense of non-well-being so I don’t have to experience it? How can I stay busy? How can I go to parties? How can I … What is it I need to do so I’m not experiencing this problem of having inside? Why is that any different to a yogi?” It’s exactly the same. It is an addiction to using the outside to substitute for the fact that something’s wrong inside.
And no more than those pills are going to fix what’s wrong with you, what you’re doing outside is not going to fix or in any way, shape, or form effect what is wrong inside. So you just finally get this. You get it. I’m whole and complete, and there’s something wrong inside, and that’s why I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off, and I don’t want to do it anymore, ever, not even once, ever again. I want to fix what’s wrong inside and I will do it at any price, no matter what it takes, and it doesn’t take money. It takes bleeding. It takes purification. It takes the willingness to go through the changes you need to go through inside. It doesn’t cost a penny, not one penny. Nobody cannot afford this. It’s just the willingness to go through what you need to go through to cleanse what’s blocking your wholeness.
So that solves it. That’s your relationship with the outside. It’s just a fun thing that’s out there that has nothing to do with you. You’re welcome to play with it, but it has nothing to do with you. If you walked away, it would still be there. You understand? People would still be in there places. People, everything would still be there. It has nothing to do with you. You’re trying to use it to fix you. That’s why it has something to do with you. You shouldn’t be. You should wake up in the morning and say, “Hi, hi, hope you have fun today.” Now, how do you work with yourself? How do you truly work with yourself? A good way to do it is to start with that challenge of yourself. I am whole and complete within myself. I’m capable of experiencing enthusiasm and joy under all circumstances, and no matter what challenge takes place in life outside, it’s just fun. It’s just a sport. It’s play.
And then look to see why you don’t feel that way, because you’re not going to feel that way. Let’s get that straight. That’s just a neat affirmation to say. So you look at it. You say, “Why don’t I feel that way?” And you’re going to see a part of your being that you’d rather not see, and it’s very needy and it’s very scared and it’s very messed up. And sometimes, you feel it. It comes up when things go wrong. It comes up, and you don’t like it and you blame everybody for making a come up. And sometimes, you don’t feel it, but you know it’s there, don’t you? It’s just sitting right underneath. All that has to happen is the person say the wrong thing or this not happened or this happened, and boom, there it is again. And you spend your whole life running away from that part.
True spiritual growth is you stop. You stop running and you look at it and you say, “If I have one life to live, I’m not going to spend my life afraid of myself. I’m not, and I’m never, ever again, for the rest of my life to ask another human being to be the way I need them to be, never.” This is what real spiritual growth is about. Why do you want another human being to change so that you’re okay. Now your okay-ness is dependent upon them. Why would your okay-ness be dependent upon another person? You’re whole and complete within yourself. It has nothing to do with anybody else. So look how much this changes you, right? It’s fun. Imagine how much people will enjoy being with you much more. You’re not trying to make them be what you need for them to be for you to be okay.
So you start watching the part of your being that’s doing that, and that’s all the time, right? The part of your being that’s saying, “I can’t be okay until this happens. I won’t be okay until that happens. Or I’ll be all right if this person does this,” and you look at it. And from now on you say, “No, that’s a lie. It’s not true. I’ve chased that my whole life. Everyone I know has chased that, and I haven’t met an okay person yet, a complete whole being.” And so you look at it and you say, “I’m not going that way.” Imagine, and you actually don’t do it for the first time. First time you’re sitting there and the mind says, “Oh my God, don’t let him do that. Don’t let him do that. If he does that, if he talks to somebody else or starts going to play ball when you like to have your home time or quality time, whatever the heck it is, he starts doing that,” and it starts getting manipulative and controlling, and you take one look at it and you say, “No.”
And it says, “No what?” No. No, we ain’t going there. We’re not going there, and your heart starts getting into a tornado and ripping starts happening inside. Wow, out of sight. You’re getting there and you just relax. You just relax and release in the face of all that noise. That is your spiritual growth. You hold onto the deeper part of your being under all conditions. You could ask, “How will I know what the deeper part is versus the shallower part?” But I don’t think you’re going to ask that. I believe to the bottom of my heart and the soul that every single human being knows the difference between the deeper part and the shallower part. If they never heard a lecture, if they never read a book, if they don’t even know what spirituality means, there is no question when you’re sitting in there which part is the noisemaker and which part is back there watching.
And you just come to a point where you realize, if I’m watching, then it’s not me. If I’m watching a part of my being carry on like a temper tantrum and make demands of other people and I’m just watching the mind come up with all these ideas and all these thoughts, who am I who’s watching this? Who am I that’s aware that my heart is hurting and my mind is demanding and I’m about to open my mouth and tell somebody off or demand that they be a certain way? Don’t you watch that? Aren’t you aware before you do it? You are, okay? Every one of you is aware. How about if you made a little rule for yourself? Never again. Don’t do it slowly. It’s not like weaning yourself. No, never again will I go with the shallower part of my being. I will sit in the deeper part of my being who is capable of seeing what’s going on and I will go through whatever, no matter what it is.
I don’t care if it seems like it’s going to kill me. I will sit in there and let go every single time. What would happen if you did that? You know what would happen? You’d grow spiritually. That’s what it means to grow spiritually. You live deeper all the time. You hold onto the deeper part of your being by letting go of the shallower part. That’s all. You don’t have to know where you’re going. If you’ll let go of these shallower, very obviously shallower, darker parts of your being that are grabbing and needing and taking and complaining and manipulating and all that kind of stuff, you see what they are, the parts of your being that are not okay. You know how you become okay? By letting go of the parts of your being that are not okay. It becomes that simple. The part of you that’s watching that, that little quiet part inside that watches that, that’s the part that’s okay.
It doesn’t seem like that would be the part that’s okay. It’s so quiet. That’s the part that’s okay. If you keep letting go of the noisy one, of the boisterous, of the needy, you will end up in peace, because that’s who you are. The one who’s watching all this is the highest thing there is. So spiritual growth takes on a whole other dimension. When you do what we really mean by get real. That’s what it means to get real. But it’s really deep stuff, isn’t it? Are you capable? Yes. When are you capable? What asanas do you need to do first? Or what therapy do you need to go through? Nothing. How do you like that? You’re capable right now under all conditions, no matter what, of handling every single thing that is happening in your life from the highest and deepest place you can ever come from, period.
How do you like that? But nobody will tell you that. Everybody’s just a bunch of wusses. They say, “Well, don’t try to go too fast. Just put your toe in the water.” No, no, no, no, no. This is your life. Pretty soon, you’re going to be dying and you will have wasted your life not being okay. Wouldn’t you rather be okay? Wouldn’t you rather just be okay all the time and just have fun with everything and everybody? And if you’re getting married, have fun getting married. And if for some reason you’re getting a divorce, have fun getting divorced, right? And if you’re healthy, have fun being healthy. And if you get sick, have fun learning about what it’s like to be sick. Why not just have fun? You’re just going to die anyways. You’re guaranteed. You’re just going to die anyways. Why not have fun between now and then?
All right, and you realize, okay, I will. It’s very much like a diet or stopping smoking. Let’s take that one, all right? How do you stop smoking? You stop. You don’t need patches. You don’t need nicotine drops. You just say to yourself, “I will never pick up another cigarette,” and you don’t. Well, what happens? You will feel impulses and urges inside of you to pick up a cigarette. You just don’t do it. Which one of you is not capable of not doing it? They treat you like babies. It’s assumed you’re not going to be able to do it, isn’t it? That’s how every single thing talks to you. You will not be able to do this, so let’s go hypnotize you. You will not be able to do this, so we’ll put this patch on you. You will not be able to do this, so here are these nicotine-free cigarettes.
So in other words, you are not capable. You’re a wuss and you let them talk to you like that. Every single one in your society talks to you like that. That’s what’s wrong. You are perfectly capable of never picking up another cigarette, aren’t you? Come on. Some of you have done it, right? You just don’t pick up another cigarette. Is it fun? No, it’s not fun, all right? It’s no more fun than breaking any other habit. You will feel the tendencies of the energy inside of you to urge you to do that, won’t you? It’s like your whole being tries to go in the direction of your habit. Are you capable of not going? You’re so capable, it’s not even worth talking about. You just don’t do it. That’s the exact way you deal with these other aspects of your being. When you start seeing your mind telling you what you need to do and everybody needs to do to be okay, you just don’t do it.
When you start seeing your heart freaking out, telling you, “Oh my God, I’m going to suffer for the rest of my life, and Carry On, The Edge of Night, and As The World Turns, and General Hospital all shuffled together. If you got that junk going on inside of you, you just don’t listen. You just look at it and say, “Sticks and stones will break my bones. Emotions can’t hurt me.” Show it to me. Go on, show me what you can do. Give me your worst. It’s just energy moving inside of you. How can you not handle energy? Do not be afraid of yourself. Do not ever again belittle yourself by telling yourself that you can’t handle something. You can handle anything and everything. All you have to do is want to. First of all, there’s nothing to do. It’s not like I told you to pick up 1,000 pounds.
I just said sit there. If it wants to make all that noise, let it make the stupid noise. Let the heart throw the worst it’s got at you while you sit there doing your mantra or breathing. And guess what? You will never be afraid of your heart again. Why are you afraid of your heart anyways? Are you afraid of your heart? Are you afraid of what your heart can throw up at you? Fears, jealousies, insecurities, embarrassment, you’re afraid of it? Of course you’re afraid of it. That’s why you spend every minute of your day trying to make sure it doesn’t happen. Stop it. That is a waste of your time. What you’re literally doing when you do that is living for the lowest part of your being. When you go out of your way to make sure you don’t get embarrassed, when you get out of your way to make sure you don’t get in a position that’s insecure, that this doesn’t happen, or you get scared, or anything like that, you go out of your way.
What you’re doing is saying, “I am incapable of facing my own self, so I will go out there and spend the major part of my life practicing avoidance and manipulation so I don’t have to experience myself.” And then that’s fine. You do it if you want, but that’s what you do with your life. You spent your life avoiding yourself and you manipulated every person around you to avoid yourself. What kind of life is that? Nothing. It’s nothing. You are much greater than that, and so you finally reach the point. Let it be now where you say, “No, never again.” It’s just like stopping smoking. I ain’t doing it. I’m not going to waste my life being afraid of myself. That’s what you’re afraid of. You understand that? You’re afraid of yourself. You’re afraid of your own feelings.
And you just sit there and say, “Whatever can come up through this heart, I’m going to relax and release. Whatever can go on in this mind, I’m going to relax and release. I don’t care what it is, and I’m never going to blame anything or anyone ever again, ever, ever, outside for what’s going on inside of me, ever.” That’s a major step. You hear me? No blame, no blame, and no shame. I will go through whatever I need to go through. I’m not afraid. I’m not embarrassed. I’m not ashamed and I will never blame anybody ever again outside, nothing, for what’s going on inside of me. Now we’re getting somewhere, aren’t we?
Your whole life changes when you truly grow spiritually. None of the outside form changes, but everything changes. Your whole motive in life, your whole purpose of life, your whole way of approaching life goes through a complete transformation. You just sit there and say, “If I have but one life to live, I will live free.” But with real freedom, the real freedom is freedom from yourself, not freedom from other people. You don’t need freedom from other people. They’re not doing anything. The only reason it seems like they’re doing something is because you need them to be a certain way. And what you mean by freedom is, I want to be free to make them be the way I want them to be. That’s ridiculous. What you need to be free from is yourself, free from your own fears of yourself. And you have a life to live and you decide to live it. So you wake up every single morning, every morning, and you sit there and say, “The world is what it is. It has nothing to do with me. It was even here while I was sleeping.”
How come that doesn’t freak you out? You let it go about his business while you were sleeping, but you won’t let it go about its business when you’re awake? Very confusing to me. When you’re sleeping, you ain’t running nothing, are you, right? So why do you have to run it when you’re awake? I told you, they challenge you once before. The name of the game is if I see it, then I have to control it. But if you don’t see it, you don’t have to control it. That’s weird. You don’t control what goes on behind you. You don’t control what goes on in other states, other cities, other planets. But you sure control what’s in front of you, don’t you? It’s got to be exactly the way you need it to be to be okay.
You better meditate on that. Something’s sick with that. Something’s wrong with that. So you wake up and you say, “I do not need to control this world. I do not. I do not expect or need anything of anybody or anything under any circumstance, anytime. Every person, every place, every bug, everything is free to be accordance to its nature. I’ll work with it. If there’s a bug in the house, I’ll sweep them out.” I’m not saying you have to run around the house, but I can handle anything that goes on in this world, anything, no matter what it is. The worst it can do is cause what’s left of my disturbed heart or disturbed mind to get agitated, and I can handle. This is your affirmation. I can handle, with no problem at all, anything, anything that goes on in my heart and anything that goes on in my mind. I want you to talk to yourself that way. They should start at kindergarten teaching you to talk to yourself that way so you’re not afraid of yourself.
And then what happens if something does happen? The heart starts getting stirred up. Relax your shoulders. Relax your chest, and lean backwards. You’ll see the tendency is to lean forward and get all involved in what’s going on. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. It’ll just come and go if you leave it alone. If you don’t involve your yourself in it, your heart or mind, it can’t touch you. You just keep relaxing and releasing, relaxing and releasing. And what will happen eventually more and more, you will stay back behind the heart and the mind. And you will realize, no matter what happens ever again, nothing will ever pull you down. And that’s when you start to really enjoy life. You stop being afraid. It’s a beautiful thing, the thought of freedom like that. You are capable of living like that inside the exact life you’re in right now. You don’t have to change anything or anybody.
It’s all about not letting the lower part of your being control your life. You do that by obviously letting go of the stuff that comes up. So this is true spirituality. It’s an amazing process. Like I said, it’s so amazing that no one will teach it, because no one wants to hear it. So instead they feed you these tiny little things. If you do this, you do this here, these little things that you can feel good about yourself instead of the overall truth, which as far as I’m concerned, and I know it’s true because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen people do it. You’re capable of doing right now. You’re capable of the highest state right now and you know you are, but you know you don’t want to challenge yourself to that level. You don’t want to hold yourself to that level. Why do you want to be weak?
You’re not weak. You are not weak. You’re the strongest thing there is. You are the greatest thing there is. You’re the highest species on the evolutionary ladder. What you are is very, very great. And the soul is even greater than the human. And that’s what you are. So why not live that way and just struggle through? Go through. You’ll fall a lot of times. Well, what do I do if I set such aspirations for myself and I can’t do it? Get up. Just get up. Get up. And if you see yourself feel bad that you fell, let go of that. Learn to create some decent health inside yourself. Do the best that you can to reach the highest state you’re capable even imagining. And don’t be afraid to set your eyes there. Anytime you fall down, just pick yourself up and never think about it again, never.
You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to explain. You don’t have to do anything. The fact that you are even reaching for states as beautiful as that earns you the right to pick yourself up and never think about it again. You never blame anybody. You never blame yourself. The only thing that’s asked is, will you set your eyes on the highest? And the highest is you. The highest is the deepest part of your being and not give into these lower aspects of your being. You don’t destroy them. You don’t get rid of them. You just let them go when they come up. Do you understand that? It’s not about strength. It’s not about control. It’s about release. It’s about softness. It’s about surrender. Let the energies come and pass through you. Then they’re done. That always seems like it’s going to be the biggest problem that ever was.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t say this. It looks like the biggest problem that could ever be. And then you relax and release and it goes away, just goes away. It just becomes much easier to deal with. It is your resistance that is letting these energies build inside of you. If you’ll relax, fall back behind them, give them the space to pass through, they will not touch you. So that’s the start of spirituality. It’s not the end. It’s a start. When you become a veteran because you’ve been through enough of this, you will naturally, not through effort, you will naturally find yourself living very naturally. It doesn’t even seem like you’re anywhere, but you are at a place deep inside yourself to where neither your heart, nor your mind, nor the world can touch you. When you spend enough time there, I say this to you every time at the end of the talks, an energy will awaken inside that you’re not used to experiencing.
It comes from behind. Everything else is in front of you. You struggled in front of you. This is from behind you. It opens up. That’s what they mean by spirit. That’s what’s meant by Shakti. That’s the great energy flow, which is in truth your own being. Because you’ve come closer to your being, you will feel the sunlight, the burning heat and power of your own being. That’s what Shakti is. That’s what spirit is. It is your own energy that you were not tuning into, and it will start to pull you up. That’s how you ascend. You don’t ascend through will. You ascend because the energy is pulling you up and you’re surrendering to it and releasing, and it just takes you up into it. That is your spiritual path. So you have a choice. You either live this magical, phenomenal life of every day, becoming more fun, of every day, becoming a greater being, or live the life of running around, afraid of everybody and everything and needing and worrying about something that doesn’t even matter, something that’s not going to work anyways.
Will you still have a decent life? You’ll have better than a decent life. The more energy you have inside yourself, the more enthusiasm you have, the more love you have, and the more you devote yourself to the things you’re doing for no reason other than letting go of the part of you that doesn’t want to, you’ll be perfect at your job. You’ll be perfect at your relationship. You’ll be perfect at everything. You’ll be the best there is, because nobody lives like that. You’ll give your whole being to what you’re doing. That is a yogi. That’s yoga. What I just described, that whole state is Karma yoga. It’s Raja yoga. Every stage of all the yogas are encompassed in sitting in that state and letting go. You sit in the higher and you let go of the lower. You sit in the higher and let go of the lower, and you serve everything that’s put before you while you’re doing so. All right, work with these things. Jai Guru Dev, Jai Masters.
Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to The Michael Singer Podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael’s body of work and all back episodes, please join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True: waking up the world.
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