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: Jai Guru Dev, Jai Masters.
Mind like the lakes and oceans can become or can be disturbed. You are the consciousness that experiences a calm mind, are a disturbed mind. That’s the essence of truth. The problem is a combine doesn’t distract you into it. Therefore you feel more the depth of your being, the more the essence of what self is. Ahman soul, call it what you want because you’re not being distracted and pulled down into mind because it’s calm. But if mind is disturbed and it can get very disturbed, then consciousness is drawn down into it and it can’t get out. It has trouble getting out. It doesn’t even know there’s an out during those times. Sometimes they last a very long time. I like the Beatles song to listen to the words. Here comes the sun. It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter. It’s like the mind can take over.
So we can talk spiritually all we want about the high states, the beautiful states, the meditative states, the peaceful states. But until you who’s in there working with mine, living with mine gets a handle on things to where it’s possible for you to understand. Mind is not out of your control. You’ve let it go out of your control just like a horse can go out of your control. But if you know how to ride, how to work with it, when it starts to go out of control, you know how to bring it back, hurting it or anything, but you understand how to ride mind. You understand how to live with a mine, how to work with mine. Can it get disturbed? Yes, it can get disturbed just like the ocean gets disturbed when winds and earthquakes and things underneath come up, it gets very disturbed.
Lace get disturbed when things fall into it so your mind gets disturbed. So how does one deal with this? That’s a very so easy to use spiritual talks and talk about the peaceful states, how nice they are, but that’s not where we live. We can go there sometimes, but it’s an effort. You go on two week retreats or you do this, you meditate for hours or you get a relationship that you like and it works because your mind can cease to be disturbed, can get quieter, which is very beautiful and there’s nothing wrong with it. Of course there’s nothing wrong with it. If you have a still mind and an open heart, that’s beautiful. The problem is they don’t stay that way. They don’t naturally stay that way until you do the work that’s necessary to find out why the mind gets disturbed, why the heart closes and what to do about it.
So let’s start right there. Does the mind get disturbed? Yes. Does the heart close? Yes. Can the mind become yes. Can the heart open? Yes. Good. Alright. Now the question becomes, is there anything you can do about it? Because you all know it’s the truth and that’s where all these techniques come from. I used to say, I don’t teach techniques, and then people told me, oh yes you do. You tell me to relax. That’s a technique. Okay, fine. Right. There’s nothing wrong with techniques. They’re wonderful if they work for you or help you, by all means. Anything you can do when the mind is disturbed to calm it down a little bit when the heart’s closed, to not react with it or to open. These are wonderful things if it works for you, work with it. But deeper is the understanding is one. Let’s put it this way.
You are not going to get to a mind that doesn’t get disturbed ever or reasonably ever until you understand why the mind is disturbed. That’s just the root Buddhist say, work at the root. We’ve discussed this time and time again, so we’ll do it very quickly. Your mind gets disturbed because you have blockages inside that don’t allow love and peace and Shakti and God to be your natural state because you blocked it. You blocked your energy flow. When things happen that disturb those blockages, the mind gets disturbed there. I said it in three sentences. That’s why the mind gets disturbed. The disturbed mind is not its natural state. It’s natural state is peace. It’s natural state is harmony, but because the energy that would be bringing about that natural state is blocked by these things you stored inside every time something happens, it could be outside, it can be from inside.
You think something you feel something, you see something. Who knows darn well. It doesn’t take much for that mind to get disturbed, does it? Okay. It just gets going. That’s because you’ve blocked the Shakti flow. If the energy is not blocked, things can come and go inside. Even things that normally would cause disturbance. They happen, you experience them, but they don’t cause this tremendous turmoil inside of mine because they didn’t hit the blockages that when the blockages released their energy, it expresses itself in the mind. It’s like something coming up from a spring that comes up from underneath causes, waveless and all kinds of things. Not to measure an earthquake, an underwater earthquake, my God, causes tsunamis, causes all kinds of things. So when your stuff underneath gets disturbed, gets started is aggravated, it releases the energy blocked energy that it has and it comes up and it hits your mind from underneath and your mind starts spewing different thoughts and all kinds of stuff based on that.
That is what’s happening. It’s not the outside world that’s causing the problem. It’s what you stored inside of you that gets hit by the outside world that causes the mind to get like that. And it would get what your mind very easily can get fixated on patterns of thoughts that are disturbing. And then because they’re disturbing, you can’t get off of them. And the next thing you know, you’re thinking about this all the time. You would sit there and say, is my mind if it gets disturbed by something, why don’t I just paint or run attention to something else? Or why would I put my attention on a disturbed mind? And the answer is because you don’t know how not to because it distracts you because its energy is such that it pulls the consciousness down into it and then it stays there and you try to not think about it.
Next thing you’re thinking about it, it’s not your fault, it’s not doing anything wrong. It’s just basically that something got disturbed inside in the heart, the root of the minds and the heart. That’s where you store all your, some scars, the patterns and something hit it, something aggravated it, and then it started spewing the disturbed energy and that hit the mine and then the mines caught there and people can get caught there for a very, very long time, a very long time longer than I want to talk about what does one do about that? Wow, wouldn’t that be nice to talk about? What can you do if your mind is disturbed? I can tell you one thing that doesn’t work. The more attention you give to it, the longer it’s going to stay disturbed and the more disturbed it’s going to be. So if your mind is disturbed and you want to think about how do I stop this disturbance?
You’re creating disturbance to me. It’s like, or a rock or a leaf fell into a quiet lake and it’s making ripples and you don’t want, well get the leaf out, jump in the lake. That’ll work real well. That’ll get rid of the ripples. That’s what you’re doing when you participate in the disturbed mind. It’s easy to talk about. It’s just not easy to not do it, but at least understand. The other thing is the more attention and energy you give to it, the stronger it gets. You’re feeding it. So if you go there and you can’t handle it inside of you and you know can talk about it, you yell about it, you call somebody and tell them about it, you do something to try and get it out of you. It’s like going to pass it off. No, that does not get rid of it.
You haven’t done anything to deal with the root of why it’s happening. You just said, I can’t handle this so I’m going to blame somebody or I’m going to talk about this or I’m going to yell about it or I’m going to express myself. Every time you do that, you’re feeding it. And that’s what people do. We don’t know how to deal with this. There’s a couple of principles of dealing with a disturbed mind. One is understand in the end, consciousness does not have to be drawn into the disturbed mind completely. Independent light does not have to shine on something, just turn it somewhere else and does. Something’s still there, but light’s not shining on it. So the disturbed thoughts are still there, but your consciousness doesn’t have to focus on them. And that’s the ultimate that you’ll find out of how to deal with times where release is happening inside and it causes disturbed thoughts and you can’t get out of them. You can always pay attention that you are the one who’s experiencing them. It’s not that easy because they’re really strong. That’s like sitting saying, I’m going to grab your arm and squeeze it so hard that it hurts. But don’t think about it.
Gandhi did it. Gandhi had an appendectomy. Well, I talked to his disciples without anesthetic. But you’re not Gandhi, nor am I. It is just a question of taking your consciousness and putting it elsewhere. Shine the light somewhere else. At least you understand the possibility that is possible. But how do you do this? So the first thing you do, if you have a disturbed mind, we do get, I’m not talking about a normal mind that’s complaining about the weather, like they usually talk about the car in front of me. No, no. I’m talking about something has happened and you know how to deal with it and it’s not comfortable and the mind keeps fixating on it and ruminating on it and complaining about it and trying to figure out what to do. And it’s very uncomfortable. And the more uncomfortable it is, the more you pay attention to it because you’re trying to solve it.
And the more you talk about it, the more it becomes your whole life and the more you try to get rid of it, you make changes. Talk about that. You make changes in your outside world based on your disturbed mind. And don’t tell me I haven’t done that and then all of a sudden something happened that ceases to be so disturbed. I used to say, you’re left holding the bag. You change your outside world, you change your relationships, you change, you live, you change your fine, you change your job. I don’t have to deal with this job anymore. The next thing, you don’t have a job. Now I have to deal with having money because you acted based on a disturbed mind. Okay? So again, some principles down here about the stuff that we don’t normally talk about. We talk about how to meditate and how to do alternate, no breathing and how to say God’s name.
What about the fact that that mind can get so disturbed? You can’t do any of that stuff, can it? Yes or no? Okay, what do you do then? So fruit and principles are mostly about what don’t you do. You don’t try to solve it by thinking about it. You just went to something that’s broken and asked how to fix itself. It can’t. It’s broken. Do you understand that? You can’t think your way out of a disturbed mind. That’s like I said, you can’t jump in the water and pull the leaf out that the ripples go away. What do I do first? Remember that? Remember if your mind is disturbed and you can’t handle it and you can’t, you’re going to try and do something that makes it feel a little bit better. That thing which you did was based on a disturbed mind. You would not have done the thing you did if your mind was not disturbed.
You actually made a decision based upon a disturbed mind. That’s not so wise, is it? And you may make big decisions, life-changing decisions based on a disturbed mind. But how do I know I’m making decisions based on a disturbed mind? Because your mind is disturbed and you know that what you’re doing is an attempt to try and live with a disturbed mind or have it stopping disturbed. If you talk to me like that ever again, I swear to God, I’m leaving you. I’m leaving you. Why would you leave me? I thought you love me. I don’t love you. If you talk to me like that. Well next thing you know, here it goes. Here it goes. You just did it. You participated in it. You participated in it. So these are some of the principles. One, try not to let your disturbed mind tell you what to do.
Just try not. Just stop for a moment and realize my mind is disturbed. I’m having trouble with it. Don’t think about how or what’ll happen. You’ll say, alright, I need to be quiet. You’ll be right back. Yeah, but what about it’s strong? A disturbed mind is a very distracting thing. So the first thing you do, and because you guys meditate and you do different things, you wouldn’t be here otherwise. You at least have a moment to look at it and say, is my mind disturbed? That’s a very nice question to ask yourself. Is my mind disturbed right now? And don’t ask me. How will I know? These are very simple things. Yes, my mind is disturbed right now. Then remember this talk. Don’t make changes in your life ever based on a disturbed mind because everything you’re doing now from that point forward is saying what has to happen outside? So my mind’s not disturbed. That thing that you just built outside may have nothing to do with you when you’re calm and when your mind’s not disturbed. Next thing you know, you’re left with a bunch of stuff. I’m not going to call it karma, I don’t like using words like that, but you have ended up with a life that doesn’t fit you anymore. When you don’t have a disturbed mind, you look out there, who’s she?
Just all kinds of things can go on. So certain principles is just ask yourself, be very straight with disturbed mind because you don’t want it to think. You just say hello. Mind, mind, mind. Are you disturbed?
Yes. Check mark. You say starting a plane, a pilot, right? Check. Are you disturbed? Yes. Okay, we’re not making decisions. We’re not making any long-term decisions based on a disturbed mind. You can understand that you’re capable at least of that, of holding enough to say no, we don’t make, just like if you drink and you get drunk, don’t make decisions when you’re drunk out of your mind because it’s exactly the same as making decisions. When your mind is disturbed, the basis of those decisions is not good. It’s not solid. Alright, so what do I do? So now I haven’t made a decision and it’s very beautiful by the way. If you have that level of discipline to where you’re willing to say, my mind is disturbed, I’m not going to make changing decisions, that’s one less thing to be thinking about. That’s one less thing to cause more ripples in the ripple of mind.
Otherwise, what I do about this, oh my god, maybe I should leave. I could do this thing. I could change. You hear me? It just starts going more and more disturbed. It’s thinking about what to do because it’s disturbed. So that’s discipline. Notice I’m talking about meditating, I’m talking about you in there, you’re in there, you’re conscious and there’s always things you can do to better your life, to better where you’re going. Alright? And so fine, you ask, is my mind disturbed? Yes. Okay, so I’m not going to think about what to do to make it not disturbed. I’m going to look at it and realize, okay, right now I’m having a bad hair day, a bad mind day. So I’m telling you that’s a minor thing, but it’s very major that you now have taken a step back and said, I’m not going with it now it’s going to keep talking.
And by the way, it doesn’t just talk, it affects your heart. The mind and heart are a unified system. I call the psyche the combination of mind and heart. They have different chakras, they’re different energy centers, but they touch each other just like the leaf makes the ripples and ripple touches something else. So the fact that your heart hurts, the fact that you’re having disturbance in your heart and the fact you have disturbance in your mind, you have to be able to say, fine. That’s what’s happening right now. I have a disturbed mind, disturbed heart. It’s difficult to live with, but I’m in here and I’m not going to screw up my entire life because of the situation that’s going on right now. And people do. They make entire life decisions based upon some stupid situation that’s bothering them. Do you hear me? Okay, I’m going to drop out of school.
Just all kinds of stuff just because you think, but I’m not happy here. Of course you’re not happy with disturb mind if your mind wasn’t disturbed, you’d be very happy here. Do you understand that? So you get this foundation. So now I’ve got the point where not just using a disturbed mind to think about how not to be disturbed. God, does anybody hear that? Can you imagine using a disturbed mind to think about how not to be disturbed? There’s not a single thing that’s going to tell you that you want to listen to, okay? So you just step back for a moment. It’s not going to stop the disturbance, but at least you’re not going with it. You’re not doing that kind of stuff and then you’re going to find out that it’s difficult to be in there. Someone will say, do mantra. Well, you can’t always do mantra when it’s disturbed.
Meditate. Mayor Baba literally said, if your mind is extremely disturbed, do not meditate. Why? Because you’re going to meditate on a disturbed mind. That’s what you’re going to do. Unless you’re a very deep meditator, you’re going to sit there and ruminate constantly about the disturbance in your mind, which will make it worse, which will make it stronger. You’ll get all uptight and anybody’s tried. Anybody know what I’m talking about? You guys are real quiet today. I’m a serious talk. We. This is called reality. So it’s not about trying to meditate or trying to do that. It’s about realizing at all times. Remember, I am the one that’s experienced and disturbed mind. It’s not going to change right away, but just remember that yes, the mind is disturbed. I like to ask, how do you know? You know your mind’s disturbed. How do you know your heart hurts?
That’s the deepest question I could ever be ask spiritually and eventually you say, because I’m in here. Okay? That means you’re not the disturbed mind and you’re not the disturbed heart. You’re the one that’s experiencing the disturbed mind and disturbed heart. That itself gives you some room to breathe. Now you can try different things. Some of the highest things you can do is can you get your consciousness off the disturbed mind? You mean not deal with something just escape. That’s not escapism, that’s denial. It’s not denial. It’s understanding that when the water is rippling, that you don’t jump in to try to stop the ripples. You need to get some distance, you need to get some objectivity and that’s why a therapist will teach you, take up a hobby, run, do this, do that. That’s not a solution, but it’s a temporary thing that permits your consciousness to stop staring at the disturbed mind, which it has to stop doing that otherwise it’s going to keep, you can be disturbed for months, for years, for your whole life.
I’ve met people that were doing well and then something happened. Whatever, something stored down there got stim. Who the heck knows why? And they went with it and years and years and years, I’m talking 20, 30, 40 years later, they come and talk to me and say, boy did I get lost. I just got lost and I got into that world of my lost world and it ran my life. But okay, well I’m trying to deal with it. That can happen to you. You can completely lose your bearings because you can’t handle what’s happening inside of you. That can happen. You can’t handle what’s happening inside of you. And so you try to make decisions that will make it easier to deal with. Fine, I appreciate it. I respect it. Try to step back. Always remember, I am not the disturbed mind. I’m experiencing disturbed mind. I’m not the hurt hand.
I’m experiencing a hurt hand. I’m the one who’s experiencing it. That one is not disturbed. That one cannot get disturbed. The self is never disturbed. A light that is shining on something does not get broken, does not get old, does not get beautiful, does not get ugly. The thing it’s shining on does, but the light doesn’t. That is why we call it the light of consciousness. You are always in there if your mind’s disturbed. I told you the question is how do you know? Ask yourself that. How do I know the mind is disturbed? How do I know the heart hurts? That’s pushing you back instead of coming down and getting pulled into it. That’s one way, alright? But understand you are not disturbed and the heart hurts, but you are not it. You’re the consciousness experiencing it. And you’ll get to a point where even in a lot of turmoil, a lot of disturbance, there’s a type of meditation because you asked yourself, you’ll find that it got a little easier to live in there.
Why? Because you didn’t get as close. You step back, you don’t push it away, you step back. Lemme talk to you about that. It’s so important. I don’t want to feel disturbance that’s suppression to push it away. I don’t like this. I don’t want to deal with this. So you’re in there using your awareness and consciousness to try to push away the disturbance. You didn’t deal with the cause, it’s still there. You pushed it down and then if you suppress it, it gets much worse over time, it gets worse. Suppression is a terrible thing to do. If you suppress something, it’s like a computer virus. You listen to me, I’ve been doing this for a long time. If you push something down there, it will start to spread amongst all your subconscious and all kinds of weird things can go on and all of a sudden you’re feeling weird stuff that you never felt before two years later.
That’s because you shoved the disturbance down into your energy system as the last place in the world. You want it. It’s down there causing all this underneath currents and problems with everything. Like the people who do that once in their life, they push it down there. They don’t understand why can’t I have a long lasting relationship? You don’t understand because you have this garbage down there and you shoved it down there when it was disturbed. So basically you don’t want to push it down, but you don’t have to get involved in it. That’s all it boils down to. So if you can shift your awareness, your consciousness to something else, it is a healthy thing to do. You still haven’t dealt with the problem. It’s still going to be there, but you’ve got some from it. You got the ability to breathe. You’re not out there making stupid decisions based on it.
And you’ll find, I always find that if I’m willing to see that I’m the one who’s watching it, even though I don’t understand how, it just gets easier to live with it. It gets quieter and sometimes if you’re high enough, it gets beautiful in there because you got pulled back into a nicer place of your being as opposed to the place that’s staring at the disturbance. So all of these things are real healthy techniques. Ultimately when it’s all said and done, it’s never going to really stop until you get rid of why it’s there. What is it that you have stored inside of you from the past that is causing whatever happened outside or your thoughts inside? What is it that hit this stuff and caused all this disturbance? Now words you’re going to find out is what I always teach you. You built a whole structure in there.
It close your ego. You built a whole structure in there based on your past experiences that basically said, I had this experience when I was young and it was really nice, so I want that to happen again. Okay, one brick, I had that experience yesterday and I didn’t like it. I don’t want it to happen again. There’s another brick and you just took all these experiences, some that felt good and some that felt bad. You didn’t do anything with the neutral ones. I would tell you the white lines on the road, they’re not part of your ego unless you are the person in charge of painting the white lines. You sat on that little thing to pull behind and you push the button and let it out and you have sometimes they trickle you look, they didn’t paint straight and you got fired. Now you look at every white line you see, I bet he didn’t get fired.
All of a sudden the white lines are staying in there because you had an experience that you stored inside that made that be part of your inside. It’s a brick. Every single time you like something or don’t like something and you hold onto it, it becomes a brick that you build your psyche out of. I’m the person that doesn’t like this. I’m the person who likes this. I’m the person who wants this. I’m the person that doesn’t want this. All of your preferences and desires and fears and hopes and dreams, they all come from the garbage that you stored inside. But what about the nice things? I don’t like to talk to you about that I really don’t. Good enough. If you just deal with the bad things that you stored in there, why are the nice things a problem? Because you want them to happen again because you cannot be here now from then on, this was such a nice experience, I’m going to go up north and find it again.
Instead of experiencing reality, instead of being open, instead of feeling all the new experience you can have, you try to have that one again. Now you judge everything based on that. Oh, that wasn’t as good last time when you said you love me. You had more meaning to it. That’s what’s wrong with positive and scars is you clinging to them. We just call it clinging you, clinging to them and then you can’t be open to experience what’s happening because you want that to happen next and then you judge everything against it. So you’re trying to recreate the moment that you like. Deep yoga teaches you a sub, scars a sub scar, a positive or negative doesn’t matter. It will ruin your life. Now you see why? But you can keep the positive ones. Don’t worry about it. The more you let go of the negative ones, the more you won’t have to clean the positive ones.
They’ll all be nice. So basically the stuff we do to get our consciousness off of the disturbance is not going to fix the disturbance. It’s going to give you a vacation. A breather gives you some distance, which is real important. It’s not avoidance. You’ve got to be able to get some objectivity so that then you can start to deal with things and a lot of times you step back, you get busy doing something else and so on, and that’s my favorite part. You got away from it, you went to work, you did this or did something and you’re not thinking about it. And the moment you stop doing what you’re doing, a first thought starts and you feel it. You can feel it start to get a little bit weird, right? It does that and then it comes right back. This is what it means to grow spiritually.
It’s not about love and light. It’s about dealing with why you’re like that. Why does the mind do that? Ultimately it is not going to stop doing that until you let go of the blockages that you stored inside from the past that are causing it to do that. I used to fight with my mind back in the early days, be still shut up, stop it. It looks absurd Now what are you doing? I’ll tell you what, there’s a rock fell in. I’m going to throw rocks at the rock so it doesn’t be there. What about now? Now you look at it with compassion. You look, that’s when you’re back there. You look at that disturbed mind and you realize you did that. You laid those blockages inside from your past so that when this person said this or when somebody said that, or when this situation’s not going the way you want, all this disturbance started coming up.
So you realize it’s the blockages that are causing this. It’s not the event somebody could be standing next to you saw the exact same event. It didn’t do anything to them. How about I get a little closer? You could have been there yesterday and it wouldn’t have done it to you, but something happened in between the day you met somebody, you decided you really liked them and now they’re talking to somebody else. Before you met them, they were talking to lots of people, didn’t disturb you, you did this, you’re the one that held that stuff inside and then said either I don’t want it or I want it. And you judge everything based on that. The whole thing becomes a mess. So eventually you get to the point, like I said, I’ll skip. We’re working slowly toward the middle. You get to the point where you look to the disturbed mind and you say, I’m sorry, you have compassion.
You did this. You stored that stuff. Don’t blame the mind. The mind’s a computer. How do you blame your computer? You are running thing, you’re doing it, but you don’t know the laws. You don’t know the principles of what’s causing the mind of you the way it is. So these things you stored from before, the likes and the dislikes that which you don’t ever want to happen again and couldn’t handle it. You pushed it down, you pushed it away. You’re going to learn not to do that with a disturbed mind. If you have to temporarily so that you’re not acting on it, fine, but that’s not an answer. Pushing it away so that you feel better temporarily because you pushed it away. All you do is store it inside and all it’s going to do is cause trouble later. And so basically, like I said, it is very healthy to at least contemplate, think remember, I am not disturbed.
I’m looking at disturbed mind. I’m the consciousness, the awareness of being that’s looking at a disturbed mind. Okay, what do I want to do? I don’t want to get all lost in the disturbed mind. Like I told you, trying to figure out what to do about the fact that it’s disturbed and how I have it not be is part of getting lost in it. Now, I’m not advocating that you become irresponsible and not deal with things. I’m saying you take a step back first. So if you need to, you know what you know do naturally. When I didn’t realize these teachings you eat, it feels better sometimes for a little bit. Why? Because you distracted your consciousness from focusing. I having a real honest talk tonight, aren’t we? There are things you do, which is fine, but just I want you to see what’s happening in there is you can’t handle what’s going on.
And so you try to do something that will distract your consciousness from what you’re experiencing. Go to a movie, it’s wonderful. I’m not saying don’t do it. I want you to be aware of what you’re doing, but you go to a movie, it’s fine to get a little vacation. It’s coming right back. However, that vacation is a healthy thing. Taking that step back can help you. You can step back and say, okay, what I want you to do is they could step back and say, I can handle this. Yes, it’s a problem. Don’t get down to the details. Give you some a little space. Are you having a problem? Yes. What? It doesn’t matter. I’m just having a problem. I’m having a problem and I’m dealing with it, right? How By taking a step back, you take a step back, it’s going to come back.
It’s there. You didn’t do anything to get rid of it, but you’re a little clearer. You’re less likely to bury yourself in it and make decisions based on it. But I’m telling you, ultimately as you grow, because you all wouldn’t be here if you’re not doing spiritual work, ultimately you’re going to find out there’s stuff that was stored in you from before that now has gotten disturbed. You had a chore at work and you didn’t do well at it a couple of years ago or six months ago and you got yelled at and you got thing now they gave you another chore. You can’t sleep at night. You’re all disturbed. What if I blow it again? So you know how you measure it. If you hadn’t blown it in the first place, you wouldn’t be doing that. If you didn’t have that thing stored from your, that you didn’t handle well, it might well be, you’d be excited about getting out there and trying to doing the thing.
It’s that stuff you stored in there from before because you didn’t handle it right. That’s causing disturbance now. So basically, ultimately it comes down to what I always teach you. How do you get rid of that stuff that’s stored in there? That’s how you get rid of a disturbed mind, but not right then while it’s happening, it’s not going to work. It’s a long-term process of sitting here saying, okay, can the mind get disturbed? Yes. Why? Because I stored stuff that makes it disturbed inside. I did that. Well, alright, watch. These are real life examples. You have a discussion with somebody, a friend, and she says something. He says something and it didn’t sit right and you’re walked away from the situation not feeling right. Alright, can you handle that? Now we’re talking about how do I have a disturbed mind? Can you handle that?
You walked away from an interaction with somebody and it didn’t feel right, didn’t feel good, and the answer is of course not. What you try to do is call back, tell somebody about it so you feel better. You can do everything I talked about in the beginning. You’re going to try and push it away or rationalize what difference does it make. She wasn’t such a good friend. Anyways, you do anything you can to try and not have the mind be disturbed, but then it’s going to be inside of you. You make me cry. Next time you see that person, you don’t want to see them. You’re not as open as usually do. They’re not a friend anymore. Maybe you tolerate them, but you used to like them. Well, it takes is one incident. One incident that you couldn’t handle you’re uncomfortable with that you suppressed down there because you didn’t handle it well.
And I’m telling you, you don’t have the same relationship with that person from then on. So you sit there and you say, look, handle stuff. Alright, so now I’m looking down there. Somebody had a little interaction. It wasn’t so comfortable. It happens. Can I handle it without snoring? It can. I literally handle it to where it’s not there the next time I see this person, can you imagine I’m clean? How did you do that? I let it go. That’s what I teach you. That’s a high technique. I don’t think it’s a technique and there’s life. You better let it go. What does that mean? Let it go. Don’t keep thinking about it. Don’t try to solve it. Just sit there and say into every life some rains fall the weather. I call it inner weather. It’s inner weather. Can it rain outside? Yes. Can it rain inside?
Sure. Can it get windy outside? Yeah. Can it get windy inside? Yeah. Can there be tornadoes outside? Yeah. Can there be tornadoes inside? Yeah, it’s just inner weather. You just treat it like inner weather. So I’m sitting there, okay, it rained a little bit when I talked to you last time. I say literally we were talking, we got to get out of the rain. I don’t blame you. I hold it down. Think about it. Next time I see you or every time and I have to talk to everyone, my God, it was raining when I talked to her. It is in her weather. It changes on a dime. Can do anything. And so you sit there and you look at it and say it’s okay. It’s okay that it didn’t feel right when you walked away. It doesn’t matter. There’s 8.3 billion people on the planet earth.
You’re not going to get along with all of them every single minute. I guarantee you. The amazing part is you start thinking about it differently. There’s 8.3 billion people on the planet earth. You don’t get to know them. You got to know this person and you got to see what it’s like to interact with somebody who’s different than you. Isn’t that fun? You just deal with it differently than being weird. A senator saying, I can’t handle what happened. It doesn’t feel right and I don’t like what it doesn’t feel. And it was getting disturbed. Notice that that incident, that interaction did not have to disturb you. It didn’t feel good. It was a little bit weird energy, but you didn’t have to store it. You have to make it something the next time you see the person. Why did you say that? Even if it disturbed you go back and okay, I’m getting very high about it.
I’m going to accept that it happened and I’m going to talk to her about it Objectively. She didn’t get disturbed by it. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with you that you’re bringing back up what happened four months ago. Let it go best you can. When the incident happens, let it go. Then it won’t be fodder for your mind to get disturbed later. Just understand your mind is disturbed because of the stuff you store down there. If you want to not have a disturbed mind, don’t store stuff in there. Ultimately, if you don’t store the stuff inside of you, you’ll be filled with love, joy, and peace and nothing can touch it. That’s the only way you actually get liberated and free. So we’ve been talking about how to deal with a disturb mind. Kind of nice to talk about, isn’t it?
And how most people do it, they drink, they smoke crop things. Does it work? Of course not. How do you know it doesn’t work? You have to do it again, what I’m talking about. If you let that stuff go and don’t put more in there, that works. You have to do it again. That’s gone. Okay, that’s it. I didn’t store it. If you don’t store that thing, but that’s a little disturbance. You had a little talk with your friend of yours, they store that. You never have to deal with it again. It’s not there. You let it go. As opposed to, I can’t handle it so I’m going to store it. That’s just so funny. If I was doing a retreat with that, I’d make you say that. See how stupid it sounds? I can’t handle that. So I’m going to store it.
I don’t ever want to deal with that again. So I’ll store it inside for the rest of my life and avoid it for my entire life. It makes no sense at all. Alright, so there you become. Now your path. Now you’re doing yoga and the different techniques for the right reason. You’re not doing them because I’m disturbed and I don’t want to feel the disturbance. You’re doing them because if I breathe, I can let go. If I do some yoga after a tough day, I can release. I release. It’s real and so on. So basically you come down to understanding. It is all about whether you’re willing to not store disturbance inside of you. If you do not want to have a disturbed mind, then don’t store disturbed things. Well, what if disturbed things happen? Let them go. What does that mean? That’s what I always talk to you about.
It means something happens. It is disturbing. Don’t say it’s not disturbing. It is disturbing, but I can handle it. That’s your mantra. It’s not that it’s not disturbing. It’s not that, oh my God, I’m so mad at myself. I’ve been meditating for years and I still get disturbed. That’s makes you disturbed. That says that called spiritual ego. Another disturbance. The question is, can I be in here? I see the disturbance and say, I can deal with this. I can handle this. I don’t have to avoid it. I don’t have to deny it. I don’t have to suppress it. I can deal with it. In fact, eventually he’ll get to the point where you say, thank God this disturbance is coming up so that I can let it go. I don’t want it inside of me. I want to use every single disturbance that I feel to get rid of all the other disturbances that I ever could feel.
Isn’t that wonderful? And I’ve told you before, if you’re dealing with that friend that you talked to and they got a little bit off and you feel disturbed when you walk away, that’s a certain level of disturbance. Not anything. You’re something dying that you love or a divorce or somebody leaving you. There are very disturbing things that can happen. Aren’t there much more disturbing than in a little conversation with somebody you didn’t feel comfortable when you walked away? But if you can’t deal with that, you can’t deal with the rest and the amount of, it’s not the event. It’s like, okay, I learned. I have a conversation with George and it wasn’t really good, but I learned how to handle that. I had a not nice conversation with George for a minute. Well, what about Sally? No, I can’t handle that. No, that’s what we’re talking about.
It’s not that you’re handling the event. You’re handling the energy inside. That was uncomfortable. You’re handling that level of discomfort. How about I say that It’s a level of discomfort. So it has nothing to do with who I was talking to, male or female, older young parents or stranger. It just caused some disturbance. Oh, star Wars caused a disturbance and the force, didn’t it cause a disturbance and a force? I learned to handle that. Then you learn to handle all those other situations. That’s the beauty of spiritual growth. If you can handle that level of disturbance, I don’t have to worry about what caused it because I could handle it. I don’t have to think about it. And eventually you won’t even remember why it bothered you. You’ll get to where that level of disturbance doesn’t mean anything to you. Therefore, those events, they’re nothing.
Maybe some of you say, what’s he talking about? You have a conversation with a friend and it didn’t end good. I don’t even notice that. Good. Congratulations. But you all do. You know what I’m saying? So it extrapolates just that level. That’s all comes down to that will letting go means is not handling an outside event. It’s handling the level of disturbance that you’re feeling inside. God, I hope I understand that. So when I talk about letting go, I’m not talking letting go of your job or your spouse or your this or your that or food. I’m talking about letting go of what you’re experiencing inside that you’re having difficulty with. How do you learn to do that? I have found, but other people have the techniques. I’m sure you relax. What do you mean? The tendency is to resist the disturbance. That’s like a natural tendency.
Someone takes a swing at you. Your arms go flying up. So if you feel disturbance inside you protect yourself by pushing it away. Relax. Oh God, you didn’t say that. Yes, I did. Relax instead of that. If you’re relaxing inside, you can’t protect yourself from it. Oh my God. He said not to protect myself from it. No, not inside. You don’t want to protect yourself from it. It’s just energy. It’s just weather. It’s just weather. There’s just some wind blowing inside. You don’t want to protect yourself from it. Push the wind away. You want to learn to let it go. Relax, relax, relax. Just keep relaxing. Relax, relax externally. Relax your heart. Relax your shoulders. Relax your buttocks. Relax your tummy. Just relax and inside, there’s hands in there that can push things away. You know that you manipulate stuff in there. Push stuff away.
Grab stuff, sit on ’em. But no, but then this is going to get closer. If the disturbance will come all the way in good. It has to come all the way in and pass right through to where it’ll never affect you again. You’re perfectly happy with it. I’m going to tell you a secret, very deep yoga secret. There’s a word called transmutation. I’ve heard that transmutation. It’s the essence of deep yoga. What does that mean? It means it comes in as a disturbance. You want to resist it. You don’t want it coming closer. No, I don’t want, no, I can’t handle this. Okay, okay, I’ll handle it. You let go and almost a disturbance turns into love. The darkness turns into light. Why? It was energy. The vibration rate of the energy went up. It got higher up inside of you. And the next thing you know, you’re feeling joy.
That’s very high state, by the way, the trans of energy like that. But at least don’t resist it. So you learn to let go and you learn to let go. I’m telling you, you’ll not have as much of a disturbed mind, and if something does disturb your mind, you’ll know exactly what to do about it. Relax. Don’t get into it. Give it some room. Thing I always find is if it gets disturbed, it seems like I have to deal with this. Usually you don’t. Usually that’s the reason it’s disturbing you because something’s ing that you don’t like. What if you like it? Ma? Shati, the one who gave us the durga statue back in the seventies. She’s very, very, very high being so high that she didn’t want anyone to know how she was. That’s really high. She would not do anything to attract people to everything.
She should keep away from her, and she wants to lean over to me. Told her this story many times and she said, Mickey, I said, yes, mother. She says, don’t you just love when they yell at you? There’s so energy isn’t there, all this energy comes up. She was able to transmute it. She got high off of it. You didn’t make any difference to her. She loved it. Oh, I would like it to be, wouldn’t it be fun to be like that? Right? So you’re going to find out that the vast majority of the things that are disturbing you is because you don’t like them. I don’t like what you said to me. I don’t like what might happen. Who decided you did? Well? They just sit there and say, okay, I’m going to like dealing with this. There are people I’ve met people after her hurricanes and different things.
Recent one, the one down south that everything flooded and so on, and people got thrown out of their homes and they fell apart. There was this beautiful lady come up here and she says, yes. I decided I was going to like it. I would like going through it. I’d like living with somebody else. I’d like trying to rebuild my home. I’d like going down there and seeing it all washed out. Well, if you like it, it’s not a problem, is it? Well, who decided? You don’t like it? You. It’s all under your control. Are you willing to work with your mind? So there’s positive affirmation. There’s the things you can do to distract your mind to something else. There’s all kinds of stuff you can do. And yes, you can do alter breathing, and yes, you can do front of Yama. Yes, you can do yoga.
All these things are very, very good if you’re doing them for the purpose of handling what’s happening to you. They’re not anything different than alcohol or anything else if you’re doing to avoid dealing with yourself. So basically, you just get to the point where you realize minds can get disturbed. The reason they get disturbed is because you stored this stuff down there that got hit and it formed a whole self-concept that you stored. And now you have all these likes and dislikes and preferences and problems and so on with things that happen. The ultimate way to deal with a quiet mind is to let go of that stuff. How just when it comes up, every day, let go a little bit every day. Let go a little bit every day. Let go a little bit. And next thing you know, you’ll go through entire periods of time in your life. Well, you never get disturbed. You might never get disturbed. Does that mean that everything went the way you wanted? No. You just didn’t notice that. It wasn’t the way I wanted. I didn’t have it. I You’re doing a project. It’s flowing beautifully. Well, that’s nice. Then all of a sudden, obstacles come. That’s fun too. And next thing you know, everything you’re dealing with is the same. It’s just bring it on. Okay? I hope that helps. You’re very special, but the mind pulls you down or ways to liberate yourself.
Ative.
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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