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: Ative, Jai Masters. There’s some very basic understandings that can help tremendously throughout your entire growth. First is the word consciousness. There are scientists today, they have no evidence. They just postulate that consciousness is just a very, very, very, very, very complicated cluster of neurons. They get there by seeing that that’s what the brain is. Neuropathways neurons tied together and they can watch different parts of the brain behave in different ways based upon probing, based on whatever MRIs. They can do all kinds of tests and their consciousness is seeing that they don’t really contemplate consciousness even though they are conscious obviously. But then they write the physiological theory that if you get complicated enough, all of a sudden those cells together become consciousness. That’s what consciousness is. Well, it isn’t that. How do you know? Because only one person knows what consciousness really is, and that’s you because you’re conscious.
It’s not a theory. Are you conscious? How do you know? Shut up. I just know. I wouldn’t have heard the question if I wasn’t conscious. Okay, there’s something in here that is aware that is in there and it’s aware that there are thoughts. It’s aware that there are emotions. It’s aware that it receives the signals from the body that’s aware that things come in through the senses. If you weren’t in there, you wouldn’t know any of that. You simply wouldn’t be there. Okay? So consciousness is the most important aspect of your being. If you were blind, you would know that you don’t see, you could still have thoughts, you could still have feelings, so on. But if I took away your thoughts, your emotions, your sense is guess what? You’re still going to be there. You just will not be receiving any signals either from your mind or from your heart or from your body, but you’re not going anywhere.
You’re conscious. I won’t use the example of spiritual out of the body experiences, near death experiences because they don’t want to hear about that, but people do have out of the body experiences. I dunno if you ever had, but people have that something so special. Don’t make it important, but people do travel and then see things that they never saw before and so on, and there are lots of evidence on near death experiences. You go look it up yourself, where a child, a 10-year-old child is lying on an operating table having, they’re on the verge of death, they’re going flat line, and they surgeons all around them and they’ve never met the surgeon. They were brought in emergency conditions and the child had an out of the body experience or had a near death experience. And when they came back, they told the people that were asking them that they were aware of what was going on during that surgery, that they were floating on the ceiling looking down, and they repeated, and of course what they saw take place, and the part that blew everybody away was the surgeon’s shoes were under the operating, not under the table, but under the cloth that hangs out down there.
So you couldn’t see the shoes from above and the child never saw the shoes. And he described all the shoes, what were type, they were all kinds of stuff. And then the child who had never been in this hospital before told what it was like on the fifth floor is on the second floor, on the fifth floor outside looking in through the window and described it perfectly. Now, they don’t take notes on that. It’s just okay. The point is you’re not your brain. Your brain is like a computer chip that ties consciousness. Your mind, we’ll go deeper in a moment, but ties your inner being to the physical world. It all comes back, all the messages, the nerve system and all the neurons and all kinds of things are active in that computer, but the computer doesn’t know someone’s looking at it, but somebody knows they’re looking at the computer to the end user consciousness is the end user.
Beyond that, you have these people who meditate. What is real meditation? Real meditation. Yes, there’s all kinds of techniques. They’re all wonderful. And by all means, whatever works for you, work with it. Real meditation is about exploring consciousness, not about the mantras, not about steering at a candle though, that’s all part of it. But when you’re done with all that, you’re in there and you’re aware that you’re in there, not you’re thinking, I’m aware, there are no thoughts. And that’s where the great masters try to go. The yogis go. They’re not interested in the thoughts, they’re not interested in the emotions, they’re not interested in the body healing this and that. They’re not interested in what’s going on in the outside world. They want to know who experiences that. And by quieting down enough, potentially it goes through this in yoga sutras, by quieting down enough, you end up in the seat of consciousness.
That’s what it’s called, the seat of consciousness, the place from which you notice your thoughts from which you notice your emotions, which you notice your body and the outside world. So we’ll get into it more later in a moment. But so consciousness is the essence of spirituality, the exploration of consciousness, but not the way the scientists are doing it. I want to know who’s conscious enough to see what you’re seeing. That’s what I think is hilarious. The only way you know something is to be it. If you’ve never been to New York, you can philosophize all you want, read all the books you want, step one foot in that city and you know more than all the books that are written. It is a direct experience. You can directly experience consciousness, not you can you do. If I turn off your consciousness, you’re not there. You’re not experiencing anything.
People go very deep in meditation. Sometimes they go very deep in meditation and my favorite is this. They come back and they say, oh my God, I went so deep. There were no thoughts. I went so deep. There were no thoughts. How do you know? Because you’re still conscious. You’re not conscious of thoughts, you’re conscious. There was no thoughts. If what you meant by there were no thoughts is your mind was saying, oh, there are no thoughts here. That’s a thought. But if you go deep enough, you’re just aware of being aware I am that I am. You’re just in there. There are no thoughts coming up. Or if there are, you’re not distracted by them. And that’s the second big word I’m going to use. So understand that consciousness is the beginning and end of the meaning of your life. Why? If you don’t have thoughts, you’re still there.
If you don’t have emotions, you’re still there. Oh my God, I don’t feel any emotions. How do you know? Because I’m here. If I turn off the light of your consciousness, it’s over. There’s nobody there, nobody home. Okay? So consciousness is something you get to know more than the scientists know about. I don’t care what they study. I don’t care what they math equations. I don’t care what they cut up. They’re not touching consciousness. They’re dealing with form. Consciousness is aware of thoughts. It is aware of emotions. You are. Are you not aware of your thoughts? Have you ever said, oh my God, my thoughts are bothering me so much today. Or, wow, I had this beautiful thought. How do you know? Had that thought? So you that knows it, the knower, the see or the being, the essence is different than what you’re seeing.
It’s this question of subject object. You are the subject, the consciousness awareness, and every single thing you’re aware of is an object of consciousness. If you take away the object, you’re still there. I do. Then I think it’s tell the soul. If you’re in a room and there’s a piano and there’s people and there’s a party and everything going on there, are you there? Yes, I’m going to take away the people. Where’d they go? It doesn’t matter. They’re gone. Are you still there? Are you aware? There’s no people in the room anymore. You’re exactly as aware as you were while the people were there. It’s just what you’re aware of has changed. If it didn’t take away all the furniture, so there’s just an empty room, are you aware that the room is now empty? Is it the same being who is aware that the room was full, that there were people, that there was noise, that is now aware that it’s an empty room?
Yes or no? So you didn’t change. It changed a lot. You didn’t change. Okay, now I’m going to do an amazing thing. Don’t get scared. I’m going to take the room away. I’m going to take the room away. No room. Are you aware that there used to be a room and now you’re looking at an empty space? You are the consciousness. If I take you away, it’s over. So the most important part of spirituality is understanding that you are consciousness. It’s not important what you’re conscious of. I mean, yes, I know you care a lot about what you’re conscious of, okay? And we’ll talk about why, but the reality is consciousness is your soul. It’s the essence of your being. If it’s not there, you’re not there. But if it’s there, you’re just aware of different things. The second major understanding of spirituality is a word that you don’t think is spiritual, but the more you grow, boy are you going to see It’s a very spiritual word.
It’s called distraction. That’s distraction, spiritual, because if you weren’t distracted by the objects of consciousness, you would remain naturally seated in the seat of consciousness. There’s nothing pulling you out of the self. I’m here, I’m meditating, and there’s a big noise outside. I’m not meditating anymore. My consciousness, which we’ve talked about you in there, is distracted by the noise. Are you distracted by thoughts? Are you distracted by emotions? What does that mean to be distracted by? It means when you’re not distracted, then nothing is pulling you out of the seat of consciousness. You don’t have to meditate, you don’t have to do monetary, you don’t have to do anything. You are seated in the depth of your being. Why? Because nothing’s pulling you out. It’s your natural seat. If I’m sitting here, that’s where I’m sitting. But if I look at a picture over there and it looks interesting to me, I’m still sitting here, but my consciousness has been distracted by the picture.
So it’s pulled out. Or if you talk, yoga once wrote and it was in a lesson, something like that, that if you’re meditating, you’re trying to meditate, the most distracting thing is human talk. It wants to know what somebody’s saying. And so we’re trying to meditate. Somebody’s talking, but you’re really trying to listen to see what are they saying. So you get distracted by the outside objects and therefore you don’t naturally sit in the seat of your consciousness. That’s why I have to talk about consciousness, because everybody’s conscious, but nobody thinks about it. They pay no attention to their consciousness. They pay attention to the objects of consciousness. I want a new car, I want a new wife, I want a new husband, I want a baby. I want to look better. All these things are things you’re conscious of. They’re not you, the things you’re conscious of.
You’re the one who’s conscious, but you’re so distracted by the objects of consciousness that you have to struggle to try to not be. You have to struggle to try and maintain a center of awareness, but you’re always aware, but you’re aware of the objects. They distracted your consciousness. Think about a light. A light has its source. The sun has a source, a light bulb has its source, light has a source, but when it shines out on an object, it is then illuminating that object. So if the light was conscious, it thinks it’s the object, which by the way is the third one I’m going to use. Same with distraction. So for some reason the object distracts you away from your seat of self there, and it does, doesn’t it? I talk about outside objects. Do your thoughts distract you? Do your emotions distract you? Can you be reading a book and all of a sudden your heart starts hurting or feeling wonderful and you’re not reading the book anymore, you got distracted.
So objects can draw consciousness onto them, and that is what needs to be distracted. When they talk about a D, h, D, what are they saying? A child or a grownup, whatever, can’t maintain the focus of consciousness on an object long enough to go to school or to do this or to do right? It gets distracted and different people get distracted by different things and different people are more distracted than others. And some people are so focused on something. Listen to me, not enlighten them, not focused on the self, right? Meditation is when you’re not distracted from the seat of self, but they’re so focused like you watch a football game or some sport, okay? Like Olympics is fine. I’ll use the example of football. I don’t know if you ever tried running as fast as you can with somebody running next to you, bumping into you yelling at you, and a ball is thrown and you have the awareness to focus on hitting it with one finger back to yourself while running full speed and getting hit and catching it.
Now that means you didn’t get distracted. And they do that in Olympics on the bounce beam or something like that. And they’re very focused, very focused, and they slip. Boy, that would distract you. You just gave up four years of trying to win the medal, right? They get right back on that thing as if nothing happened. So they’ve managed to focus their consciousness to where it doesn’t get distracted by anything other than what they’re doing. You don’t what I’m saying? You’re still distracted. You’re distracted by what you’re doing. You’re not distracted from what you’re doing. Please listen to me, right you this idea of consciousness and distraction. So when you focus your consciousness, one pointedly focused, okay, you can do very great things other than being all scattered all over the place. What scattered means, I can’t maintain the focus of my consciousness. It gets distracted by things, whether they’re inner things or outer things, it gets distracted, okay?
Alright, so that’s two great spiritual words. So great. I don’t like going words, consciousness and distraction. That’s why you’re not enlightened. If you were not to, alright, I’ll do it. Patanjali wrote a thing called yoga sutures. Maybe you’ve heard about it. It’s considered one of the greatest yoga treatises ever written. And he describes the path of yoga, the path to enlightenment. It’s very esoteric and so on. But he starts off by saying, if you can’t sit down and detach yourself from your senses, you can’t meditate because you’re going to get distracted. And so he gave a name. I don’t teach this stuff, said just don’t pay attention to him. Alright? I probably won’t get it right anyways of prya. Most, you guys never heard that word. Sanskrit. What does praha mean? The ability to detach from your senses. Detach what your consciousness is basically saying what I taught you, that you have the ability to not get distracted by what’s coming in through ears, eyes, taste, whatever it is, so that you can be sitting there and it’s cold out or somebody’s talking and are not.
Is your ear working? Yes. Is the eardrum vibrating? Yes, but you are so focused one pointedly that you consciousness does not get drawn into anything with a sense. That is what pray horror means, the ability to withdraw from your senses. Most of us can’t even do that, although as I’ve taught you before, in case you feel you’re not a great yogi or yo Guinea, every single one of you, every single one of you has the ability to practice praha regularly and you do it every single day. When you go to sleep, you do. Do you ever have dreams? Do you have dreams? Well then are you conscious of your dreams? Do you come back and talk about ’em? Are you experiencing them? Do you go things? Do things in your dreams? Yes or no? Alright? Same consciousness is not being distracted by the noise that’s going on in the room by different things of the body and so on.
It withdraws its awareness from the body. You can’t fall asleep if it doesn’t do that. You are you listening to me? I’m teaching you the deepest spiritual teaching it could possibly be. I want you to understand you experience these things, it’s not paying attention. So you do have the ability to withdraw your consciousness from the senses. You do it every single night. And if you go very deep in meditation, you may find out that you slip into meditation and somebody says, I was talking to you and someone, did you hear the phone? No, I didn’t hear a single thing. So you withdrew the consciousness. I don’t like to say you withdrew the consciousness from the senses. I want to say the consciousness did not get distracted by the senses. It’s a better way to talk about it. I didn’t get distracted. The sensors were still there, they’re still working.
But your awareness did not get pulled down into it. So Patanjali taught that brought your horror as the first stage essential for meditation. He said it’s not meditation and then the other is darna. Now I’m not being distracted by my senses. Can you one pointedly concentrate So totally on a candle, a thought of a candle or a mantra, something inside one pointedly. What does that mean? It means I’m not going to distract by anything else. You see how powerful consciousness the distraction are already we’re talking about the essence of meditation, the essence of the spiritual path. Alright? So when you’re able to withdraw from the senses, I mean your consciousness is going to get drawn and distracted by the senses. Now mentally, can you one pointedly focus on a candle burning or on this or on a mantra something, I don’t care what it is, but the point is it’s so deeply concentrated on that one thing that nothing distracts it from it.
No other thoughts that are getting created. Draw your consciousness off of that one thought that stana one pointed concentration. So the first is, there are great yogis that teach the pat yoga sutures are the most esoteric thing that people can’t understand them. Now you do big words. So pray your horror means you’re not being distracted by your senses, darn. It means you’re not being distracted from one pointed focus from your mind. Your mind becomes one pointed focus. Nothing inside emotions or thoughts. Draw your consciousness away from that. See why conscious distraction is so important? That’s all we’re talking about, right? Well, what’s the meditation? Dion? What’s Dion? The same thing. Not distracted by your senses. Now, not distracted by anything but the one pointed focus of your mind. Okay, what’s Dion? When that one pointed focus focuses on the consciousness itself, it focuses back on the source of consciousness so that now you’re not drawn into senses or into mind, even one pointedly.
You don’t leave the seat of consciousness. That’s what true meditation is. That’s how Pat says meditation is when the one pointed focus in a sense doesn’t leave the seat of consciousness. Can you visualize that? The light is now not shining out, it’s focused on its bulb itself on the sun itself and the source not on the radiation that came out and hit the earth. The sun has raised go flying out. Then they hit objects, then the objects light up, alright? And may believe each ray is conscious so it gets distracted by the objects it’s shining on. So it can’t know who it is, it can’t look back. It doesn’t know it came from the sun. It’s too busy being a car there. Understand? You see it? So now it’s focused on that. It’s so distracted by the outside object that it doesn’t know its source right now.
It learned to withdraw. So now it knows it’s the ray of light that’s falling on the car or on whatever. So now it’s step one, step back. It still doesn’t know who it is. It still knows itself as this light coming down. When it doesn’t get distracted by the ray, it finds itself where it came from at the source of the wreck. Well, your consciousness is the source of your being. So everything we’re talking about so far, we’ve talked about consciousness and we’ve talked about distraction. God, I hope you get it. It’s not going to change you now, but once you catch on that this is under your control. I mean you get to explore who you are. You get to explore the depth of your being. So now, and we will learn how to do that in a moment, alright? And so you’re not distracted and when you’re not distracted, you naturally don’t leave the seat of consciousness.
If I tell you, focus your consciousness back on yourself, you dunno what to do, you’ll create a mental image. I’m focusing it. No you’re not. But if you’re not distracted, it doesn’t leave. If I’m sitting here and that picture doesn’t distract me and you guys don’t distract me, then I’m sitting here, but I’m able to project my conscious out, aren’t I? And get distracted by what you’re doing. Okay? And you get distracted by the outside world, by your thoughts and by your emotions. When that ceases to happen, you remain seated in the seat of consciousness called becoming established in the seat of self. What you all mean by mindfulness nowadays or witness consciousness is that your seat all the way back, all the way back to the source of consciousness, but your consciousness is not being distracted by your thoughts. You’re aware of your thoughts.
You can know what they are. You can say, boy, I had a really bad thought day. How do you know I was in here watching? Did you get lost? No, I didn’t get so distracted that they drew me into them, but I was aware of them. That’s what you all mean by witness consciousness. You all heard of witness consciousness, right? So you’re at least aware that you’re in there, but there’s way higher states who’s in there? Where’d you come from? Someday you’ll be back there far enough to where you’ll be able to notice your thoughts. You’ll notice your emotions. Now you notice them, but you them. That’s the third most important spiritual concept. Consciousness, distraction, identification, and I can’t say that word without almost crying. What does that mean? Well, consciousness is aware. What does distraction, it gets distracted onto an object. So it can’t stay seated in the seat itself because it gets distracted by the object.
Big deal, get distracted, come back, get distracted. Okay? No, you can get so distracted for such a period of time that you actually identify with the object you’re distracted by. You actually say, I am my thoughts. You are not your thoughts. You’re the one who’s aware of your thoughts. But if somebody asks you who you are, you say, I’m the person who paid Dorothy in the third grade. I’m the person who’s married to Charles. I’m the person who has these two little children. You are not, I’m sorry. Those are things you’re aware of. You didn’t exist before you had the kid, you didn’t exist before you got married. You’ve been in it the whole time. These are experiences you had, but you are so distracted, so it’s not a bad thing. You just dare to listen objectively. You are so distracted by those objects that you define yourself as them.
You don’t define yourself as the consciousness that was aware that this thing got pregnant and the baby dropped out. That’s my baby, that’s my life. That’s who I am. The mother of this child. Okay, well if that’s who you are in language study, this verb to be is really important. Verb defining who you are. In fact, in Spanish they have two to Bess, Sarah and a star. One is you are this and the other is, yeah, right now you have an experience. But in English we don’t have that. So you say, I’m the father, I’m the mother, I’m this, I’m that. You even say I’m hungry. Oh, that’s who you are. Hunger. You know what you say? I’m full. Oh, now you’re hungry and you’re full. You are the consciousness that is aware that your body is screaming at you. Body object, consciousness, subject saying, hungry.
I’m hungry. So you get so attached to so distracted by the object that you actually define it as yourself. You identify with it. How’s that? And the milder cases. I’ve used an example all the time. It’s a good example. You go into a car showroom to buy a car. You don’t have a car. So they ask you, what car is yours? No, I don’t have a car. Okay, you bargain with a salesman doing the thing. You not want that car. People are sitting in it. People are sitting on it. I think that one, right? You go back to the room, you sign your little name, you come out, get off my car.
How long did it take? How long did it take before you identify with that car? That’s what I’m talking about. When it distracts you enough, this thing happens where consciousness loses so much, its sense of self that it identifies with it. And I can’t say it’s bad because everybody’s doing it about everything. Who are you? If I asked you who are you? I went in detail, who are you? You don’t say the self, the othman. You sit there and say, I’m the person that had this experience and that experience and when I was growing up, this happened, happened how much detail you want, full detail. And then I wore this and then I ripped that and then this happened and then this guy dumped me and I was hurt. I was one who got hurt because so-and-so dumped me. Spell it out for 7,000 pages and you’ve just said that you are the experiences you had who had the experiences, the consciousness.
But because you identify with it, that’s who you define yourself as. Psychology has this thing called the ego. Maybe you’ve heard of it. We talk about he has a big ego that just means he really identifies with him so much. It’s hard to be around him, but everybody has an ego. How does psychology define the ego? The self-concept. Ever heard those words? We let these words get said and we don’t even pay attention to how powerful they are. What is your self-concept? It’s obviously not you. It’s a concept of yourself. What’s a concept? A thought. What’s your concept of what it’d be like to go to Bali? You’ve never been there. What’s your concept? Make it up. Do whatever you want. It’s probably green. Sounds like it would be green. It’s a concept. They’re calling this your self concept. It’s something you made up in your mind about you and now you’re presenting it to people.
This is who I am. I won this award, I did this. Yeah, I know I was embarrassed. I was young. I did this. How do you use the word I to define all that? That’s why they call it the ego, but it’s not who you are, it’s what you identified with these experiences you had and got distracted by sufficiently that you identified with them as you. How do you identify with them? I teach this all the time. Everything comes and goes. Have you noticed you don’t have to be Buddhist and talk about the temper and nature of things. This moment that just happened isn’t here anymore. It’s a motion picture, not a snapshot. They’re not a single experience you ever had that will ever happen again. Do you understand that? Not the actual experience exactly as it was. It’s only there for the moment that’s happening.
The atoms that are making up the moment make up the next moment then we’ll stay there and make that moment. Okay, so how do you know about it? It’s gone because you have a mind, which is a wonderful thing if you use it properly, but you don’t. Why? What you do is if something distracts you enough, you keep it in your mind when it’s gone. You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. To me. You walk on water. I’ve never told you, but guess what? When I stop saying it does not stop going on inside your mind, okay, you want to find me again so I can say that again, right? Well, you keep it. You hold onto it in your mind or you say something bad. This somebody insults you. Guess what? It doesn’t go either. It sure went away. You’re not supposed to stand there, stand for the rest of your life in front of you.
It went away, but it didn’t go inside and you did why? You got distracted by it sufficiently until you held it inside your mind and you took these objects that are gone. They’re gone. They already happened and you kept them in your mind and they distracted you enough that you identified with them. I’m the one he insulted. I’m the one that he said such nice things. Oh my God. That’s where your ego comes from. The things you held in the mind. You were distracted by them, neither positive or negative sufficiently to I ain’t letting ’em go. I’ll never forget what you said to me. I don’t forgive you. In other words, I’m keeping this thing. In fact, I’m telling you right now, I’m going to think about every day of my life what you said to me and I’m going to suffer and it’s your fault.
Congratulations. Do we not do this? Okay? Because you got distracted by it. It was strong enough to distract your consciousness enough to where you identified with it as you. It’s gone. No, but it’s not gone inside of me and I built an ego. What is an ego? It’s a pattern of thoughts that you held in your mind. An ego’s a thought. You’re not the 5-year-old that played Dorothy in the fifth grade that’s gone so long ago. You’re 55 years old, but you held out of that. That’s part of my self con. They all clapped. They said I would be an actress. Okay? And 50 years later you’re still identified with it. It became part of your self concept. I’m the one who did this. And so you built that inside your mind and you have it going on there all the time. This collection of who you are.
That’s hilarious. My favorite is this. Where are you going? You’re dropping out of school. Why? I need to find myself. Well look under the bed. Maybe you’re there. You are the self. Maybe you go find yourself. I have to go to als or do something. Are you hear me? Right? It’s because you’re so distracted from yourself that you’re caught in the ego that says, I don’t know who I am. I need to find myself. That’s just a self-concept that I don’t know who I am or whatever. I want to get personal. Okay, what do I want to be? What do I want to be when I grow up? How about enlightened master called enlightenment? Self-realization. How about self-realized you found out who you are and you’re not getting distracted by who you’re not. And so you’re seated in this beautiful seat of consciousness and do not think of consciousness as neutral.
Consciousness has a nature like everything else does in yoga. Teachings, consciousness as nature is defined as follows. Nda, what is that? Eternal conscious ecstasy. That’s who you are. And you’re out here looking for a boyfriend or a girlfriend or somebody that will hire you or somebody that will say something nice to you. You’re an ecstasy. You’re eternal conscious ecstasy. Now that we’ve built this, I can use the words, you are eternal, conscious, ecstasy, distracted by junk and identified with it. I am a sinner. I’m no good. I did something when I was in fifth grade that embarrassed me so much and it defined my whole life Mazeltov, congratulations and that’s who I am. It is not who you are. You’re the consciousness distracting when we say it over and over to you. I am the consciousness distracted by objects of consciousness and sometimes identifying with them and defining myself as those objects.
Are you those objects? No, you are the consciousness. You are not your body, but you’re identify. You’re very identified with your body. How bodies get old. Look at me. I mean bodies get old, okay? And you’re so identified what your body looks like now. You don’t want it to get old and you get a gray hair or some wrinkles or varicose veins or something like this, which bodies do when they get old. But your self-concept says no. So you do every single thing you can to hide it to show it. So your self-concept isn’t matching reality, it has nothing to do with anything, but you have a self-concept. So those are the three words I wanted to talk about. And then we’re going to go deeper. Consciousness, distraction and identification. See how powerful that is? That’s why the world is a mess. That’s why imagine all the people living life at peace.
Good luck. Alright? Why? Because the consciousness is distracted by the objects that it’s experiencing. Not every object, but some objects hit it stronger than others. Which ones the ones that feel good and the ones that feel bad? That’s what you get distracted by. Have you noticed? Alright, you are so into that, that when your mind is bothering you because you got distracted from ecstasy, so you could hang out with garbage, okay? You got so distracted and so bad in there that you tried to get distracted from your distractions. Go to a movie, do this, eat food, do that. You’re trying to do things that make it feel better so you don’t have to hang out with what you me made inside, don’t you? Yes or no? Come on. What are you doing? You’re trying to distract your consciousness. Same consciousness. You’re trying to distract the consciousness from its addiction to the thoughts and the emotions which you built because you got, I love it.
I see how powerful the word conscious and distraction are. He’s trying to distract yourself from your distractions that you built through the course of your life. Yes or no? Did you not store things inside of you over the course of your life as you got very distracted by and now they’re still in there and they still distract you even though they happened 30, 40, 50 years ago and they bother you. And so now you try to develop patterns and alternatives in your life that, oh, I need a vacation. I need this. I need to go to a movie. I need to do a drug. I need to have a smoke. I need to find somebody. I need to find somebody that dotes over me and distracts me from myself. Yes or no? How would you like to go out on a date and all you’re aware of is what your mind is saying all the time and you’re just feeling the same thing.
You felt free when on a date you think you’ll marry the guy. I don’t think so. Now go on a date and have the guy or girl just blow you away. What does that mean? Blow you away. It means blow you in there away from the garbage that you were lost in. The movie was so amazing. I sat there for two hours and I didn’t even know I was in the theater and I didn’t even know who I was. I was just completely engulfed in the movie. It was entertaining. What does that mean? It distracted you from yourself. Isn’t it neat? Like how powerful? It distracted consciousness from what it was addicted to watching its ego, its thought patterns. It distracted your awareness. I’m saying I’m taking your everyday experience and showing you are yogis and yogis. You’re not paying attention. It’s not a matter of right or wrong.
Should I go to a movie? Should I do this? I don’t know. I don’t care. But I want you to pay attention to what’s going on. Is it okay if I’m distracted by that? There’s no okay or not, okay? I don’t want to talk about it. Let other people tell you what to do. That’s not what yoga’s about. Yoga’s about waking up the consciousness to return to the seat of self where it’s constant ecstasy all the time. Literally waves upon waves of joy, of love, of peace, of inspiration, always going on inside. It will never stop. It has never stopped from the beginning of time. That’s what the Bible was trying to talk about when they were in the Garden of Eden. It was just God. It just filled with joy and ecstasy. So they experienced walking around the garden but they weren’t distracted by it.
They didn’t define themselves as it. And the fall from the garden is when they ate of the tree of self-knowledge. They identified with their bodies, they identified with themselves and now they have to work with a sweater or brow to be okay, which you’re doing every single day of your life. You’re trying to work with a sweat of or brow to be okay, aren’t you? What do I want to do? How can I find somebody? I need a relationship. I need to do things. I want people to respect me. Oh boy. In other words, I ain’t doing okay. So I need to be distracted by things that make me feel better and then identify with them. And that’s the worst. That’s that’s the end man. Now how do you get out? Watch. I’m ecstasy, but I’m distracted by things that happen to me over the course of my life.
So now what I’m distracted by is depression. What is depression? There’s this low energy feel. There’s no juice because I’m pure ecstasy, but I’m distracted from it by this junk that I stored inside of me. So there I am. And if you ask the doctor, how are you doing here? What you say? You say, I am depressed. You have just defined yourself as what you’re looking at. I am that. That’s what you are. No, no. The psyche is depressed. It’s depressed energy. It’s low energy and I’m staring at it and I don’t know how to get out. But I’m not depression. I’m the same consciousness that fell in love three days ago before she left me. But I was happy. I define myself as happy. Now I’m defining myself as sad. I’m sad. I was, oh my God, what a misuse of the verb to be.
You have the right to say, oh doctor, I am experiencing depression. There we go. Now I have a subject, a verb, an object, but not, I am depressed. We’re just addicted. Oh my God, it’s worse than drugs. And so basically that’s what’s going on. And so you’re caught in this identification with your ego. It’s something you define in your mind and now you have to go out there and make the world behave to where when it comes into you, it fits within your self-concept. People treat you the way you want to be treated. They see you the way you want to be seen. And you do every single thing you can to make it so the world coming in matches the concepts you built inside your mind. This is how I want to be looked at. And if what happens if somebody says, no, you’re not, that’s not your child, that’s her child.
You stole it, you freak. You freak. What you say is, thank you, goodbye. What’s the difference? What they say? It’s your child. They had the child, but you can’t handle it. Somebody say that. That’s showing you the depth of identification with what you’re not. So now obviously if I’m distracted from the highest thing that could possibly exist, which is you, you’re the most beautiful being there both the face of the earth. And I didn’t get struck by lightning. Why? Because Christ said that to you. I’m a nice Jewish yogi and I love Christ’s teachings. What did he say? As I sip at the throne of my father, that’s a state of consciousness. I’m with God as my consciousness is one with God merged with God. That’s the throne as I sip at the throne of my father. So you shall sit by my throne and these things that I do, you should do these and even greater things, it’s telling you the same as him.
You’re the great being. Your pure consciousness. You’re one with God. That’s what he said. Then you not say, my father and I are one. And they said, you sit by my side. That’s who you are. But you don’t know that. Why? Because you’re distracted by your psyche. You’re distracted by your thoughts. You’re distracted by your emotions. You’re distracted by your body. You’re distracted by everybody else. You’re pretty distracted. I’m a distracted dude. Yes or no? How distracted are you? Every single minute of your life you are distracted away from yourself, which happens to be pure ecstasy. Don’t ever think you’re not happy. Don’t think you’re not good. Don’t think you did something bad. You can’t be okay. If a light shines on something and something’s beautiful, does it make the light beautiful? If I shift the light over and it shines on something disgustingly ugly does make the light ugly.
If I shift the light over on something just freshly built new, alright? Does make the light new. If I shift the light over to a broken down old object just falling apart, does that affect the light? You are the consciousness, not the object of consciousness. There’s nothing you ever did. Nothing you will ever do that will take away from you who you are. Your pure consciousness descended and unfortunately got lost in staring at the objects of consciousness. And that’s the only problem you have. You don’t have any other problem if you were to stop doing that, which is not so easy. That’s what the entire path is about. If you were to stop doing that, you would be in a state of absolute joy and every person in the world want to be with you. Who don’t want to be with someone who’s emanating light all the time.
Okay? Okay? The trouble is you’re not seated. Your consciousness has been distracted by you, by this ego, alright? And now that it’s not comfortable, you have to go out there and try to get the world to behave in a way that matches your distractions. You’re distracted by tall men that do this or speak that and so on. And she can’t stand that kind of, you’re like shorter men. So you’re all distracted by different things. Now I just said to you, that’s why the world is the way it is. Why is the world the way it is? From a yogic deep point of view? Why is there all this war? Why is all this hatred? Why is this all this violence? Why is all this? Oh my God, why is it the way it is? Every single one of you had different experiences. No one has the same experiences.
So as you go through the pattern of your life, you have experiences. No one handles experiences and they certainly didn’t have the sequence of experiences that you had. No one ever and never will. So you developed a self-concept based upon the experiences you had that determines what you like and what you don’t like. What you think is good, what you think is bad, what you think is good. Somebody judges you. Oh my God, how could you do that? It’s all based upon the programming that you collected within yourself due to you’re being distracted by different things. You can’t have in there something you never experienced because you didn’t get distracted by it. If you’re reading a book that’s still seeing it or a movie, no, but if you never had exposure to it at all, you’re not distracted by it. It’s not part of your self-concept.
If you never saw a snake ever in your entire life, never heard of it, never saw it, there’s nothing in your self-concept about snakes. And that’s true of everything. If you dated a blonde or a redhead male or female in junior high school and they dumped you, you don’t like blondes or redheads, you don’t trust them. I’ve had personal experience, don’t tell me I’ve personally seen what they’re like. You do literally do that. Do you understand that? Kind of funny, isn’t it? So you’re distracted by this. You build the concepts and every one of you have different concepts. Every single person has a different self concept. I told you if you’re married to somebody, they say, oh, I’m just like you. They are not. They cannot be and they are not. So now we go out there and we have these issues. What the issues that distract us from the seed of ecstasy.
I don’t want to quote the seed of self anymore. I will, but I don’t want to distract ourselves from pure ecstasy. We distract ourselves from pure ecstasy so we can become identified with what we collected over the course of our lives so we can go outside and try to manipulate the world so that we could feel a little ecstasy. And now you don’t use the word ecstasy, you feel better. But net result is everybody has a different self-concept. Everybody has different likes and dislikes. It was all molded based on experiences. So now there’s only one world out there and we’re going to compete, aren’t we? You have to compete, you have to struggle. You have to work with the assert of your brow to try and make the moments unfold in front of you, match what you want. If they match, you’re happy. If they don’t, you’re freaked out and everybody’s different.
So let’s go to war. So basically it’s because we are identified with ourselves and ourselves are not okay and therefore we go out and try to manipulate the world and everybody in it to make it be the way we want and therefore don’t really get along. You can make believe, you do stay together for the kids or something. Love is real. You can have love, but don’t you dare for one second think that person’s the same as you. I don’t care how much you love them, I don’t care how deep it is, I don’t care how committed they are. They are not the same as you. I mean they are way back there. If you both back there, man, come visit me. I want to meet you, but otherwise she got her stuff and you got your stuff. And yes, we can try to be nice to each other, which is very good.
By all means do that. But don’t all of a sudden if he or she does something you didn’t expect, don’t say, how could you do that? I would never have done that. That’s right. You wouldn’t have. And they did because you had different experiences than they did and they were suppressing theirs and all of a sudden something happens. Come on. No, nobody’s had such experiences. So it doesn’t mean you don’t have relationships, you have relationships, but you don’t kid yourself to think that anyone is the same as you because they’re not. They are at the deepest level. But otherwise, no, they’ve had different experiences and therefore they were molded differently. They got distracted by different things. So what does one do to live in this world and have a beautiful life? All the time, every day, all the time. What does one do? They understand what we just talked about.
The problem is not the world. The problem is that you’ve been distracted from the seed of self. And the only time you really feel wholeness is when you touch that spot. You’ve touched the spot, intimate moments of beautiful sunset. Music can take you away, can’t it? I’ve been teaching you lately, I’m sorry. You say things like, oh my God, it touched me through the depth of my being. Anybody ever touch you the depth of your being? Can you ever felt that, that it touched you to the death of your being? A beautiful sunset or a music piece that you went bye by and it just felt whole because, right? That’s because it distracted you from your distractions. It pulled you back so you’re no longer distracted. It moved you so deeply that you touched your deeper part of your being and you felt love and you felt joy and you felt ecstasy and inspiration.
It’s there all the time. So what does one do? They understand the concept of distraction. They understand the concept of identification and you can’t start with distraction because then you’re suppressing. It shouldn’t be a struggle. That’s why I teach you the way I’m teaching you. It’s everything we’ve talked about so far. You have to memorize it. Do you have to take notes? You are it. They say spirituality doesn’t get learned. It gets realized. Every single one of you know that every single word I’ve said so far, you live it every day of your life. So now what do you do about it? If you start with, I’m going to know the self. No you’re not. You’re being too distracted and you just fight and struggle and no, that’s not an answer. Okay, I’m going to shut my mind up. No, you’re not. It’s not a healthy thing to do.
There’s a reason your mind talks because you store all this garbage in here and it’s trying to release it and express itself and suppressing it doesn’t work. Alright, but what do I do? First start, I said to you, consciousness, distraction, identification. Start letting go of what you’re identified with, not renouncing. It is not your car, it is not your car. You didn’t make it. You don’t know how to make it. It’s an object on the planet earth that you’re aware of and you get to hang out with. And little by little, I used to start with teaching you things like start with the weather. Why is that the rain on my birthday, it didn’t rain for two weeks. Why is it raining on my birthday? Do you know how absurd that statement is? It’s not raining on your birthday, it doesn’t know it’s your birthday, but you identify with the weather.
You identify so much with the eye that the weather should be the way you want it to be. No, it shouldn’t. It should be the way it is. Why? Because there’s forces that made it be that way. El, Nina, la, Nina, there’s just all kinds of things going on that caused the weather to be this way this day. It’s not personal, is it? But you took a personal n you my eyes have to rain on my birthday. So you start working at that level, this level of identifying with things that have nothing to do with you, whether it has nothing to do with you, alright? Believe it or not, what somebody else says or does, it’s because they ate peace the other night that made them sick. Their father died before they talked to you. They have a of this, all kinds of people looking like you, that they freaked out because your eyes were brown.
It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them. Do you understand that if a person likes you or not has nothing to do with you, it has to do with them. They are feeling something in your presence. People do not like or not like you. They or don’t like what they’re feeling and what they’re feeling has very little to do with you. Yes. Maybe you said something just right now that hit them the wrong way because for 75, for 30 years, they stroll this garbage inside themselves and you just touched something that you shouldn’t have touched with them. That’s not you. That’s them. God, if you learn nothing else from this talk, stop caring whether people like you or not because as you’re really finding out what they like themselves in your presence, you’re just there. You’re something that’s there. They don’t like the weather or they like the weather, they like you.
It’s the same thing. It depends on what they’re feeling inside themselves, based upon their experience and their self-concept, their psyche, what they built inside themselves. So you just get to the point where you say that is the beginning of your work, of your spirituality is on your ego. Your ego is what to identify with. How about we thin it out a little bit to identify with things you project your sense of self onto the weather and onto what people say and onto the car in front of you. Why does he have to drive like that? Doesn’t he know I’m in a rush? Have you ever talked to the driver in front of you? Which one of you don’t raise your hand? Have you ever talked to the driver in front of you? Every single one of you talk to the driver in front of you. They don’t hear you.
I’ll tell you, this is how simple spirituality is. Start in the solid, simple ground of stop being absurd. Stop bothering yourself. Remember I told you Oprah picked that in my new book, living Tethered. She said the most important line that she read was the moment in front of you is not bothering you. You’re bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. The driver in front of you is not bothering you. It’s a driver in front of you on the planet earth, but you’re bothering yourself about it, right? Come on, where’s your blinker? Nice blinker, buddy. Why you keep stepping in your brakes? You 50 miles on the speed lift, don’t you say, what are you doing? Bothering myself? You know how much you do that with? Why? Because you identify with your ego. I identify I’m in a rush, but doesn’t he know I’m in a rush?
People say, right, why do I keep getting the lights? I’m in a rush. It has nothing to do with you, but you make it have to do with you because you’re identifying with it. You’re identifying with your concepts and views and opinions. Start thinning out how when it says next time, why is it have to rain on my birthday? Say what I said to you. Say to it. Hello in there. Hi. It doesn’t know it’s your birthday. Have fun, right? Oh, it’s so hot. I gave you that one. I do it all the time. It’s so hot. Oh my God, I can’t handle it hot, right? I did this back in 73. Two. Two. I did it. Mickey, right? Mickey, why is it hot? The sun is hot. What is the sun? Mickey? It’s a star. Holy macro. Those little twinkle little things out there that you look at.
It’s one of those, but you’re close enough to it to feel its heat. It’s pretty needed, okay? All of a sudden you stop bothering yourself about it. You start being blown away by it. 93 million miles away. It’s so hot. You’re complaining about the heat. Miami’s 360 miles away set on fire. You’ll fill a thing up here. Use your mind to help liberate yourself. And you start doing that with everything. And next thing you know, the eagle starts to fall off. You start to be okay with the heat. Should I be okay with the driver in front of you? Should I be okay with the fact that it’s raining on your birthday? You think it’s funny? It’s funny that you used to complain about that. You start having fun and the next thing you know, you’re not distracted by the things. Remember I said consciousness, distraction, identification.
You start letting go of identification. The won’t be as distracted by things because you don’t pull down and the next thing you know, you find out that you’re not as distracted because you’re okay. If you’re okay with the traffic, you’re not distracted by it. You’re not distracted with new mantras or listen to radio. Have fun. And the next thing you know you’re doing better. The next thing you know, you’re not distracted. And I telling you the natural state I wish people would understand the natural state is as you liberate yourself, as you work to liberate yourself not to find the self, okay, you liberate yourself from distraction identification, you will start to feel the joy. You’ll start to realize you’re naturally being drifted back toward the seat of self. Why? Because you don’t want to laugh. I tell people, no, it’s not about use it to go to God.
Go back to God. No, stop leaving. Stop leaving. Not go back. You is there a difference? So you little by little, let go of what is distracting and pulling and identifying and you start to thin out and next thing you know, you’re going to find yourself sitting in a very beautiful place, and I’ll close it by telling I told you that beautiful place. Witness consciousness. You can now handle the world. I see it. I see the tendencies. I can let them go, et cetera. Now what? You’ll get to a point where you’re establishing that seat. No effort. There should be, there is effort. I don’t mean it, but it’d be really nice if you let go enough to where it’s not effort. You just find yourself there because you don’t leave. And then something will awaken inside of you, not the mind that will just intuitively question, where’d I come from? Yes, I’m seated here and I’m watching all this stuff down there. Who am I? Where’d I come from? What’s the source of consciousness that should make you cry? The source of consciousness is the most beautiful thing they could ever be. In fact, you have a name for it. Oh God.
It’s every master of any tradition who found themselves back to that seat and let go. So they got pulled back up, said the same thing my father and I are one. Buddha said it. Christ said it. Great saints of all, saints time, the medium right, have merged back into the seat of consciousness, which every consciousness is the same. There’s just consciousness. That’s all there is, right? Work on these things. Jai.
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.
© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2024 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.
