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: Masters, what you’ll find if you commit yourself to spiritual growth is that it’s all about and having nothing to do with ego. It’s all about it, but until you get rid of it, there’s no spirituality. Let’s not talk about the word ego. Let’s talk about lower self. That’s something much easier to relate to that. What does that mean? Lower self. It means that you are sitting inside. That’s where you are. You’re deep inside. Way, way. Someday you’ll find out how deep and you’re noticing what it’s like to be in there. You live inside. You don’t live outside. You live inside. I told you once before, I’m going to be very blunt. You don’t even care what happens outside. You care about the effect the outside has on the inside. I guarantee you, you just watch. Oh, but my child’s sick. Okay? There are a lot of children that are sick.
Yeah, but this one’s affecting me. There are lots of things going on all over the place like lots and lots, right? And the only ones you care about, I’m sorry, I’m not picking on you, is the ones that affect you inside. In fact, if something’s happening behind you, you don’t know it. It doesn’t affect you at all. If you turn around, okay, you live inside, your consciousness is inside and you don’t go outside to experience the world, the world comes into you. I’ve discussed that with you. That’s science. That’s biology. Your eyes do not look outside. You are not looking outside. What is happening is light is reflecting off the objects, hitting your optical sensors and sending messages up your optical nerves and then it renders inside your mind, and I know it’s very hard to conceive that you are looking at me inside your mind.
Your mind has just like when you’re looking at a flat screen tv, you’re not looking at the ball game in San Francisco. I mean, you are. No, you’re not. I don’t know. Okay? All I know is what is happening in San Francisco was picked up by a camera’s eye and then broadcast through the internet and then it rendered on your flat screen tv. You want to see what you’re really looking at, and I’m going to talk about this. I want you to know this analogy. Get up real close to the flash screen tv. Ever do that? Guess what’s there? Dots. Pixels isn’t a ball game. There’s no movie, there’s nothing going on, is there, but come back further and it averages it out and it looks like something you are inside consciously looking at the rendering, what came in through light that came in, got broadcast back to your brain and then rendered in your mind, and I’m telling you right now, you are not looking at me and it’s so hard in the mind.
You are not looking at me. You’re sitting inside looking at the TV screen of your mind and seeing me, and your mind is so brilliant that it gives 3D, it does all kinds of fun stuff, but understand that things are not the way you think. You see them. So you’re sitting inside looking at what’s going on inside. One thing that goes on inside is the rendering of the outside world. Well, it’s not just the rendering. The outside world that goes on inside. You have these things called thoughts. They’re not outside, they’re inside. They’re created inside. You can make any thoughts you want, can’t you? It’d be bad enough if it was just the rendering the outside or good enough. Who knows the rendering, the outside world plus thoughts going. Just imagine there’s this world is coming in and then there’s these thoughts in there, and there are also these things called emotions.
You know anything about those? I think you do. Where are they inside? They’re not outside. They’re inside. So you’re sitting in here in the new book, living in Ted. I call it the three ring circus, the outside world, the thoughts and the emotions, and you are in there, the end user experiencing this stuff. When you have an emotion, don’t you? Oh my God, I got so hurt. Oh my God, I feel so much love. Who does? These are verbs I got. I feel so much love. Who feels the love? That’s spirituality. When you know who feels the love and who recognizes that there are thoughts and who says, oh, my thoughts are so negative today. Who’s the my as a possessive pronoun? People say, oh, my thoughts are bothering me today. Hey, I had this great thought. Who did? You’re talking as though you know what you’re talking about.
Why? Because that’s where you are. You’re inside recognizing that you’re inside, but you don’t recognize that. You recognize that. You recognize that you’re inside because you get lost in the objects of consciousness instead of sitting in the seat of consciousness. That’s the only difference. The enlightened master is experiencing the same thing you are, except that they know they’re experiencing it and you’re lost in it. Have an emotion. How are you doing? I’m doing terrible. No, you’re noticing an emotion. There’s a cloud passing by. How are you doing? I’m fine. There’s a cloud passing by. You’re having an emotion of fear, anxiety, self-consciousness, embarrassment. How are you doing? Terrible. No, you’re not. You’re doing exactly the same as the cloud passing by. You’re noticing that there is something going on inside of you that is colored, is white, is blue, it’s black, it’s whatever it is, but you get lost in it.
You get pulled into the emotion out of the seat of consciousness and not just the emotions. You have thoughts going on in there. It’s hard to talk about. A fish doesn’t know they’re in water. They’ve never been out of water. You don’t know how lost you are in your thoughts because you’ve never been out of your thoughts. You say something like, God, my thoughts are really bothering me today. Your thoughts are always bothering you. You just don’t know what it’s like to not have thoughts. Go deep in meditation and come back and say, oh my God, there were no thoughts. It was so peaceful. It was so beautiful. I wish I could stay there. I answer your question. If there were no thoughts, how do you know there were no thoughts? You didn’t think, oh, there’s no thoughts. Those are thoughts. So you exist outside your thoughts, but not very often.
There’s always stuff going on in there. Why did he say that? I don’t know. Should I go over here? I don’t know how my God. Oh, why is this thought bothering me? You don’t realize that other thoughts are bothering you all the time. Your thoughts about I, what do I want to do? What happened yesterday? And I don’t know, should she like me? Should I talk to her? I don’t know. I don’t feel right about it. Then suddenly will come in from yesterday. Do you remember when George dissed you? God, I got disturbed by that thought. What were you thinking before that thought? You didn’t get disturbed by it. You got distracted by it. What does it mean to get distracted? You were doing something before that happened. What were you doing? Thoughts. You were doing mind. You’re always doing mind. Most people don’t understand that they’re so lost in that constant conversation that they get distracted from it, but they don’t pay attention.
What did you get distracted from? You get distracted from the ego. You get distracted from this constant, me, I, me, my I. What do I want? Where should I go and I don’t know what to do and I’m not doing well because I’m not sure what I should do. Alright? And so he asked me the other day, what if my mind says, you really should do this? And then it says, no, don’t do that. What should I do? I can remember when I woke up enough to have the following realization. If it says, oh, I want to do this. No, you shouldn’t. Then it doesn’t know what it’s talking about. If you’re sitting there, go to a financial advisor. Here we go. Go to a financial advisor. What should I invest in? Buy IBM. No, no, don’t buy IBM Buy apple. No, no, no. Don’t buy apple. Buy Nvidia on its way down or up. I don’t know. Leave. It is obvious. That person does not know what you’re talking about. Your mind is doing it all the time. Should I do this? Well, maybe it’ll be like this. No, it probably won’t. It probably. Maybe I should. In other words, it doesn’t know the answer. When you have indecision, what is that telling you? That you went to something that doesn’t know the answer. But what do you do? You keep going there.
You keep wanting it to know the answer. I think its initial indecision. Lets you know it does get straight here. Be strict with your mind. We’re going to talk about this, but there’s an introduction. Be strict with your mind as follows. Oh, mine. Should I get married? I don’t know. It’d be really nice. Really love him or her. So yeah, but you want to go travel around Europe and do different things? I don’t know. Okay, mine. Mine. If you don’t know, I appreciate that. Shut up. Obviously I can’t get my answer there. Well, if I think about it enough, what? Are you kidding me? You either know or you don’t know. Something like that and you don’t. You just keep thinking about it. Oh, and it bothers you and you worry and do this and that. I told my mind a long time ago. I don’t mind if you don’t know. If you don’t know, you don’t know. Just tell me you don’t know. I don’t know. Okay, fine. We’ll get some more information. Wait a little bit. We’ll, it’s not indecision, it’s wisdom. Okay, so what is lower self? You are in there. We now you’ve laughed. You’ve seen it. You’re in there, aren’t you? Do you ever wish you weren’t in there? Have you ever had the need to distract yourself from yourself, distract you from yourself? You have a word for it. Entertainment.
I need a vacation. From what? From a job? No, from me. Well, don’t worry. You take yourself with you. So you’re in there and you notice what’s going on in there. You just don’t notice that you notice. You just bury yourself in it trying to find an answer to the mess that you have inside. Okay? So inside you receive the senses gets pictured there you have thoughts and you have emotions. Those patterns are habit. Every one of you see things differently. Even you see the physical world differently. It doesn’t just come in and render in your mind as it comes in, your thoughts and emotions. Say, I like it and I don’t like it. How would you like watching TV that way? See, at least when you’re watching tv, hopefully it’s you watching the tv. What if in between you watching the tv, there’s something saying, oh, I don’t like that.
I wish it didn’t do that. Oh, oh my God, I realize, oh, come back. Come back. I want to see that again. That’s what’s going on inside of your mind. It renders, it comes in and it doesn’t make it back to you. It has to pass through your thoughts and emotions. I’m talking about the real world now, not the tv. It passes through your thoughts and emotions and your thoughts and emotions. Judge it and they say things about it. Oh, this reminds me when so-and-so did that. Mind you watching a movie that way something happens and all of a sudden this voice, oh, it reminds me when Julia Roberts did that and there such and such and oh, guess what? That’s what’s going on inside your mind when you try to watch tv, and that’s what’s going on inside your mind when you’re trying to experience the world.
So very few people experience reality. They experience reality colored by their thoughts and emotions as it comes in and then they store. So I’m describing lower self to you. They store it that way. I called out to Sally and she didn’t even turn around. I don’t think she likes me very much. You’ve just stored that. Sally doesn’t like you. Sally has earbuds in. She likes you tremendously or she likes you so much. He likes you. Your girl that likes the guy. He likes you so much that he’s embarrassed to even look at you. So he turned his head away When you walk by, oh my God, I thought he liked me. He doesn’t even, he didn’t look at me. That’s what you stored and you’ve done it your whole life with everything. So you’ve stored these absurd patterns that have nothing to do with reality.
They have to do with what your past got pattern judging the pattern that’s happening now, can you imagine how mixed up that’s going to be? Why do you do all that in there? Why is there all that? It’s not hard to understand because you in there who happened to be a very, very high being, but you lost yourself by looking away from yourself. You looked away. You looked at something outside your inner self, you looked outside and you got lost. And it’s not comfortable being lost. No one likes being lost. Be like having amnesia, getting hit over the head. I don’t remember who I am. I don’t know where to go. I don’t have family. I don’t know my name. I don’t know anything. You panic. So you in there the self, you all think the self such a wonderful, beautiful word. The self is God.
It is. That’s God in there that literally the creator of the universe is who’s looking at your thoughts. The creator of the entire universe, God himself, itself, herself called along. That which has always been and will always be is exactly what is looking at your emotions. But my emotion and my heart is hurt. Who’s looking at it? So what happened? I thought God’s filled with love and joy and such an eternal conscious ecstasy. Yep. That’s what’s in there. That’s what’s looking at your thoughts, but leaving the seat of self, leaving the experience of self to pay attention to the junk that’s going on inside your thoughts and your emotions and you don’t know how not to. You’re drawn into it. You’re drawn into the negativity. You’re drawn into the fear, drawn into self-conscious. You’re drawn into the embarrassment. You’re drawn into the need. Come on.
That’s lower self, that whole thing that we just talked about that got created because you left instead of sitting in ecstasy, that’s the Gordon. Instead of sitting in ecstasy and experiencing the nature of your being and then enjoying the movie, right? There is a movie out there. There’s reality out there. It got created and well, kind of neat. But if you lose yourself by staring at it so much that you forget that you’re in there, you forget that you’re the one who’s looking, that’s witness consciousness. You forget. You’re the one who’s looking and you’re absorbed in what you’re looking at. That is literally the fall from the garden. That is what happened. Adam and Eve, they started to identify themselves as separate from who they were. They ate of the tree of self knowledge. Now, I know myself as separate from myself. In fact, I don’t know myself because I separated from myself.
What happens is panic, all the great ones, master taught that the soul, that’s a word for the consciousness that’s looking at the human. It panics. And you inside, maybe you’ve noticed at some points in your life are panicked in there and you’ll do every single thing you can to not drown, grabbing, clinging, lying, stealing, taking, manipulating. How do I know that? Watch, you’re in love with somebody and they told you, I can’t handle you anymore. I’m going to leave you ready. Here’s what comes up. No, no, don’t leave me. How do you want me to be? I’ll be any way you want me to be. Oh, that’s really funny. In other words, I’m not who I said I was. Just tell me who you want me to be and I’ll be that. You do do that. You understand that because you’re panicked in there. You grabbed onto something, it made you feel better inside because he or she’s there.
This is there or the job is there or the money’s there or the car is there, or people respect you. There’s things you pulled in that you held onto inside. You didn’t pull them in. They came in and they supported you. This person all of a sudden tells you, I will love you every day of my life forever. I’ve never ever turned for you. You’ve never had a better friend in your retire from life and you didn’t believe it at first you don’t believe anything. Alright? But little by little, little by little, little by little, you start to trust. What’s that word? Trust mean? I’m really being bad today. You like trusting, don’t you? You know what trust means to people that the other person will behave the way you expect them to. That’s what trust means. And we make it a holy word. That’s not holy.
That means I’m not okay in here and when you’re around, I’m doing better in here and I trust that you’ll always do what makes me feel better. I trusted you and what happens? By the way, they did not break that trust. Okay? The only real trust you can have with another human being is I trust you’ll be who you are. I trust you’ll behave the way that your past patterns make you behave or that your meditation helped you learn. I trust that you will be you and just please try to do a good job of it. Alright? Not I trust that you will be me. And that’s what you mean when you say I trust you. And what happens if they don’t meet? I don’t say break, but don’t meet your expectation of trust. You get destroyed. Have you ever been destroyed? I’ve said it once before.
Has it ever broken apart in there that I don’t even know who I am? I don’t know where I’m going. I dunno what to do. It can do that, can’t it? Why? Because it’s not real. What you’ve done, you in there who happen to be in a state of ecstasy, but we’ll get there at the end are looking at something that isn’t in a state of ecstasy. Something that got lost and it panicked. And then as things came in, blanky, mommy, daddy, boyfriend, girlfriend, child, all these different things that passed before you grabbed some of ’em, didn’t you? This one made me feel better. I felt less panicked, less scared when I owned this property myself. When people went, Ooh, that’s what I was wearing and I got my hairdresser right and I don’t have any pimps on my face and so on. So you grab onto these things like a life raft of floating board in an ocean.
When you’re drowning, I’m holding onto it how hard for life. You’re holding on so hard and you feel it when it breaks, how lost it is in there and how you grab for anything to hold on. Then you build your self concept. You build this ego, you build this fake thing inside. That’s why you can say, tell me you want me to be and I’ll be that way. In other words, I don’t care what I built before, I need you to be here. Otherwise it’s going to break. It’s not going to be good. Understand that’s what we’re all doing because we’re not okay. Why are we not okay? Because we left the seat of self because we staring down. It’s something that’s temporal. It just keeps changing, doesn’t it? Right? It just keeps changing. We don’t want it to keep changing. I want to hold onto it.
I want to build something solid. I want to believe what is a belief? Belief is not a holy thing. I’m going to be in big trouble this talk, right? A belief is not a holy thing. A belief is a thought that you decided to hold on in your mind and it created stability for you. I believe this, this and this and this. Well, what if it’s not? It is. But what if people don’t agree with you? Then I don’t hang out with them. I stay with people who believe what I believe. It’s very important. Your beliefs are very important not to enlighten being the beliefs. They’re just thoughts that can come and go. They’re kind of fluid, but you don’t let them be. You’re told not to let them be. Beliefs are something you are to hold onto for dear life. Why? Beliefs can create structure for you.
Yes they can. Everything I tell you is true. If you hold on that thing, you can believe in that. Believe in it deeply that hang out with people who believe. You have to angle people who believe what you believe. Otherwise, it is hard to believe it. If you’re around a bunch of you, I believe you’re the finest person I ever met. I have watched you. I believe it to the bottom of my being. Everyone I meet says You’re a mass murderer. But, and they show newspaper articles too. No, that’s fake news. Now I believe what I believe. You can believe anything you want. He’s an alien. I can tell nowadays that’s not even weird for people to do that. That’s standard operating procedure. SOP man. That’s make something up and get a bunch of people believe it. So basically a belief is a thought. A belief is a thought, is it not?
It’s a thought. A thought that you clinging to who? The one that needs to cling, the one that’s lost, the one that needs to have some solidity and you’re building your solidity on of belief. It’s really funny. Christ didn’t teach that. Christ said, don’t build your house on sand. What is a thought sand? It comes and goes. You change any time you want. Ever change your mind? Have you ever changed your mind? Well then it’s shifting sand, okay? But we have beliefs. Why? Because we need to. Why? Because we’re lost and it’s scary and we don’t have solidity. So you’re trying to build false solidity and it’s false solidity. Why? Because you’re building it. It’s not naturally there. You’re making it up in your mind and it can change so it’s not so solid. So you hold onto it. Then you hold onto different things and by the time you’re done, you’ve built the structure inside yourself.
Psychology calls it ego. Freud call. It is super ego, ego. It’s a psychological model that you built inside that you say, this is who I am. So everybody else is, this is how things should be. This is the political thing you should be thinking about. This is the right, this is wrong. And find everybody defines right and wrong differently nowadays. Not just foreign countries or different beliefs, same tradition, same everything. And there they are on opposite sides, the aisle and they absolutely believe the other person’s crazy. Okay, so you’re inside and you’re clinging and you built this model over the course of your life and you did. Do you realize you did that? Do you realize that your thoughts are nothing? Your hopes, your dreams, your concepts, your views, your likes, your dislikes are learned patterns that you picked up by clinging to things as you pass through your life.
You dated somebody whose name was George. He was a schnuck and he hurt you in high school. Everyone gets hurt in high school. If you hear the word George, your heart closes 30 years later. You’re just picking up these patterns that you clung to of like and dislike, want and not want based upon the experiences you had in the past. I always tell you, and I just wait until someday I see that you get it. At any moment you’re having an experience, how many experiences are you missing? How many experiences are you not having that are going on all over the place at the same time? You’re having that one experience. There is not a number big enough, 100 billion zillion things are going on everywhere that you’re not experiencing and you’re experiencing one of them. Well, I studied statistics. I took advanced statistics in college long time ago.
I liked it if you told a statistician I had one piece of data out of the 700 billion that exists, each moment I’m picking up one more and each moment there’s 700 billion I’m missing. How important is that? There’s a word for that. I remember it. It’s called statistically insignificant. You built your model based on that. You built your model of what you like and what you don’t like and who you like and what you believe and what you believe and what your hopes and your dreams and all of what you. All of that stuff you build based on that one experience that you had each moment of your life and you’ve missed everything else. So if you look to the left, you’re different. If you look to the right, you’re different, looked up, you’re different. Alright, I want to know, do you get it? That’s a hard thing to get and what you say when you’re telling somebody, no, no, you don’t understand.
This is not something I’m making up. I had this experience and you think you had that one experience out of 700 trillion things that were going in that moment, that means you know something. Well, there’s a piece of data for you and I’m telling you, you really do. You really believe that, don’t you? Because you had the experience. You think you know something. So if you didn’t have that experience, you had a different one. You’re a totally different person. That is your lower self, that model that you built in there based on the sum of your learned experience. Psychology says man is the sum of his learned experiences. Your psyche, the model you built inside your self concept is the sum of your learned experiences. You’re the one in there building a thing. You’re the one in there clinging and holding on and you’re in there, aren’t you?
So there’s the difference. By the way, that’s where spirituality and psychology, traditional psychology differentiate. Spirituality is everything to do with psychology. Why? Because unless you stop staring at that thing, you’re not going anywhere as long as you think you are. The semi learned experiences have fun because you won’t. What will I do if I think I’m the semi learned experiences? You’ll notice that when things come in from outside that can make you feel good and they can make you feel bad based on the summary learned experiences, what turns her on, freaks her out. What turned you on yesterday freaks you out today. You had one more experience. You read one book, watched one movie, met one person. Believe it or not, this is a spiritual discussion. So if you think you are your psyche and people do, they’re staring so much of that thing and so caught in it and so clinging to it and so on. I know I’m a psychic. I know what you’re going to do with your life. You’re going to try and make the moments unfolding in front of you, match the some you learned experiences.
You ain’t dating George. That’s what you’re going to do. You can say this is me, this is how I am. I’ve always been, oh, that’s so proud. This is how I am. I’ve always been that way since then. Little what happened when you were little that made you be that way. I don’t want to talk about it. And it’s straight psychology. It psychology builds the psyche, it builds this model and you’re lost in that model, are you not? And you want to argue with people that your model’s, right? That’s ridiculous. Your model is so tenuous. I told you learn one more thing and your model changed. You see what we’re doing? So what you’re doing is you built this model based upon the past experiences that you clung to a lot of experience you had passed right through. There are people who could be driving down the road, sitting shotgun, somebody’s driving and somebody runs a red light and they ran.
This guy runs under their brakes. The car skids around, but they didn’t hit anybody and that happened when they were 10 or 12 years old. One person says, wow, that’s exciting. Look, got a good driver. My father was right. I tell people about us. The other person will never talk about ever the rest of their life that don’t like driving them cars. They’re grabbing onto everything. They’re scared to death. It depends on what you clung to. You didn’t all clinging to the same thing, you didn’t have the same experiences. So therefore what is going on inside of you is completely different. I’m going to make a statement to you. What is going on inside of you is completely different than what is going on inside of anybody else right now or ever that will ever live or ever did because nobody had the same experience that you did and nobody ever will.
So if you’re trying to find someone who’s the same as you, don’t bother, do you understand that no one has ever had the experiences you’ve had? Come on, think for a moment. No one has ever had the experience you’ve had. You move through time and space that never repeats itself and you’re in a particular spot that nobody else is in. Even right now. You’re all looking at me from different angles. You’re hearing different things. You have different experiences. No one has had the same experiences you’ve had from the beginning of time because the same things didn’t happen again and we’ll never have them because everything changes all the time. You are unique. That amazing God made a universe in which every single place he came down to visit is unique and it is. It’s unique. So one thing is if you’re out there trying to find people that match, you don’t bother because they don’t.
So what you’ve done is you’ve had experiences, fine. You’re supposed to have experiences. There are. That’s why you’re here. You’re here to experience, to have experiences, to learn, to grow and wow, to become a greater being. Every single experience you have makes you a greater being. What a bad ones. Who called them bad? I did. I got sick. I got cancer. I had to go through chemotherapy and there was nurses and doctors and all that. How was that experience? Wow, I learned so much. It was unbelievable. I learned so much about my body. I learned how medicine and then all these people were caring for me. I saw these hospitals. They caused hundreds of millions of dollars and I didn’t have any money, but I got to go and be in them and so on. Wow, wow, wow. Or oh my god, I made it through, but I don’t know.
I don’t know if it’ll be okay and it was a terrible experience. I’ll never be the same. I don’t even want to breathe because maybe give me cancer again. Which one you want to be? It’s any way you want it to be. Experiences are things that come into your consciousness and make you greater because you experienced them. Let’s say you never saw a snake in your life, you never saw a snake. You’re not as great as somebody who’s seen snakes. Why? Because you never had the experience of a snake. Let’s say you dated somebody and then they dumped you versus somebody who got married to the first person they dated and stayed married for their entire life. Who’s better off?
Every single experience makes you a greater being. So you learned how relationships can break up. You learned how the pain can happen. You learn how to deal with pain. You’re a great being. You’re a great being. Until you didn’t handle it, until you said, I don’t want to have this experience, you’re never ever going to not have it. It happened. It came in. All that stuff happened and you couldn’t handle it. So you pushed it away and you stored it, you stored it as negative, you stored it as positive and now you’ve molded your whole view of life based on those experiences and you think you know something I just told you. At the same time, you’re having that experience, you’re missing every other experience. So nobody knows squat. So then you identify with that and what you’re going to do when you do that, don’t feel bad.
It’s what naturally happens, but you can do something about it is you are going to try and make the moments in front of you unfold in a way that matches what you think should be happening. Which one of you don’t do that? You think your spouse and your children and every single thing and your boss and your finances, every single thing, your looks, what are you going to look like when you get older? Every single thing you’ve made up based upon your past experiences, based upon your likes and dislikes, which are programmed by your past experiences. That’s one single thing that you like or don’t like that you didn’t pick up along the way. You have experiences and so they made you feel good, they made you feel bad. Again, I’m going to be psychic. I’ll bet that the ones that made you feel good, you want it to happen again. I’ll bet the ones that made you feel bad, you don’t want it to happen again. See, you built this system of like and dislike based upon your past experiences. Somebody else had the same experience. They took it differently. Somebody else didn’t have that experience. Therefore they don’t have a like or dislike about it. I want to know, do you hear me? This is serious stuff, okay? You just realize what you’re looking at in there is just ash.
What is the ego? Something you made up based upon the building blocks that you pulled together in your mind and held onto of like and dislike or the, you don’t do anything with neutral stuff. You drive by tons of trees all day. There’s clouds, there’s everything that just pass right through. But if you saw a tree, the reminded of the tree you fell out of when you were little, you keep talking about that one. Or you see a tree that it looked like your mother’s ring was on the bark, had a ring, there was a little red spot and a little ripple. Wow, you going to bring everyone go see that tree? Why? Nobody else would go do that. You see what I’m saying? Your whole favorite patterns, what you like, what you don’t like, what you notice, what you don’t notice. They’re programmed based upon the past impressions that you had as you move through these moments of your life and you think that’s important and you want ’em to happen again if you liked them and not happen again.
If you didn’t like them. And I’ve just defined your life. And that’s very sad because it’s built upon a momentary experience that if you didn’t have it, it’d be different. Pretty tenuous stuff isn’t it? A random, alright, spirituality looks at that whole system, the whole psyche and says, wow, that’s pretty tenuous. That’s pretty bolthouse on sand type stuff. So I’ve just talked around the edge of this giant subject called lower self, that entire thing’s your lower self, oh no lower self is the one who swears. No, no, no, no. It’s way deeper than that. Lower self is you are in there, which happens to be higher self. You’re in there but you don’t know you’re in there. How do you not know you’re in there? A light that shines on something illuminates what it’s shining on its source did not go down there to what is shining on its source remains here.
But if it’s the light of consciousness, then it’s not just a dumb light, it’s consciousness awareness. So when it shines out away from its source, it identifies with what it fell on. Oh, look how beautiful I am. Oh look how sick I am. Oh look how broken I am. It’s shining on something and instead of saying, oh, light can shine on anything, it’s identifying what they’re shining on. It identifies itself what they’re shining on. You identify yourself as what you’re looking at as your self-concept as this, that and the other thing that’s lower self, that which you’re shining on, which conscious is aware of. And people ask me, well what if my thoughts are nice? Well that’s really wonderful. I hope you have nice thoughts. You’re not your nice thoughts, they’re just nice thoughts. That’s the light shining on something that looks good. You’re still there.
The light is still there. If what it’s shining on changes color or it breaks or if I take it away, oh my god, what do I do if the light doesn’t have an object to shine on? Well, my understanding, it shines on for infinity. It just goes on through space. If it’s a vacuum, it just shines out. It’s there forever. So what are we saying? The consciousness is pure light. The consciousness has just so happened. You who’s back there, who has gotten panicked by leaving the seat of self, by losing your sense of true being and passing that sense, that identification onto what you’re looking at. That is the essence of spirituality. If you get that, do you get what I’m saying? Can’t you identify with things? You do it all the time. Get off of my car. Wait a minute, it’s a car. No, it’s mine.
Don’t touch it. You’ve projected your sense of self onto an object. If somebody steals your car, people freak out. Somebody steals your husband. They really freak out. It’s fun to laugh. Laugh, alright, because I want you liberated. That’s what liberation means. You have ceased to identify. You’re free from identifying with this thing that you built because you were scared that you built because you thought you were drowning and I’m clinging to it and I built a self-concept. You’re not your self-concept. A self-concept is a concept of self. A concept is something you made up in your mind. You are the one who did it. You’re the one that’s in there doing the clinging, being the grabbing and holding. So you’re looking at this thing and this thing has major problems and it does that thing you’re looking at is called conditionally. Okay, what does that mean?
I’m okay as long as you behave the way I expect you to. I’m okay as long as I get the money I want, I get my vacation. I’m okay As long as there’s not a roach in my house. If it is anything is not the way I want, I’m not okay. That’s called conditional wellbeing. You like it? It’s fun, isn’t it? No, it’s not fun at all. It’s suffering. It’s a struggle. It means I have to make everything outside be the way I want it to be, don’t I? What did they say when you fell from the garden? Now you must work by the sweat of your brow to be okay. Go check it out. I’m a Bible reader, but I know it says that. Okay, old Testament. Now you must work by the sweat of your brow to be okay. Know anything about that.
Know anything about working by the sweat of your brow to make the relationship work, to make the finances work, to make your looks work, to make people like you. Every single thing to be the way you want it to be. Yeah. In the meantime, you who’s in there are the highest he ever walked the face of the earth. What did Jesus say? As I sit by the throne of my father, that’s a state of consciousness as I sit by the throne of my father. So you shall sit by my throne and these things which I do in even greater things you shall do. He did say that. He said, you’re the same as me, one with God. Okay, what’s wrong? You’re identified with staring at you instead of being you. And so basically lower self is what you’re looking at. It is very strong. Why?
It’s built out of the patterns that either bothered you or made you feel good. You’re serious about what you held onto there. It’s not a minor thing, it’s keeping you from drowning. So if you’re grabbing onto this board for a long time and the coast guard comes along and says, give me your hand. No, you will not take your hand off that board. They have to pry it off. You are used to clinging to this thing that you built, this false self of concept. And so it’s not to let go, is it? Alright, so I wanted to talk about it and we only have a few minutes, but that’s all it takes. Can you let go? Can you stop doing that and come back? It’s called self-realization and come back to the seat of self and then live your life from knowing who you are and then enjoying the experience.
What experience? The experience. The one I’m given. I like for people to say, but I don’t want to miss anything. You’re missing everything. You’re missing every single thing that’s going on. Absolutely every single place all the time, every moment. You’re only experiencing one thing. And so you stop being like that and you sit there and say, I am the self. So Muhammad, I am bra, I’m self, I am that I am. I am the I am whatever you want. Right? When Moses asked God, what’s your name? Who should I tell? The Pharaoh sent me to go. Let my people go. What did he say? I am that I am I am that I am. That’s the translation of the name he gave. I am that I am, I am that. Which is that’s who you are. You are that which is you always were. You’re in there, you’ve been in there.
Were you in there yesterday? You were in there last year. Yeah. What you were looking at changed. But you same you in there looking. The consciousness is your core of your being. When you get back there, it’s called enlightenment. It’s called awakening. It’s called self-realization. What happens? You merge back into the ecstasy of your being. But then I can’t live my life. Of course you can live your life. How would you like to live your life? Being filled with love, filled with joy, filled with inspiration, filled with ecstasy all the time and every single thing you interact with, that’s what you’re interacting with. That you’re just sitting here giving nothing to take, nothing to need. Just filled with love and joy and sharing it with the world. And that’s so bad, okay? That’s who you are. You’re absolutely capable of that state, but you have to stop this lower self stuff.
There’s work to be done, but the work isn’t what you think. It’s as you sit and witness consciousness, witness consciousness is not enlightenment. It’s a step back to where you realize, I’m in here noticing what’s going on. Enlightenment is when you’re not in there, you let go. The ray is not shining on the object. The ray returned to the source, merged back. That’s when Christ said, my father and I are one. As the meic states, I’ve never called aati. You’ve merged back, you can come back, but you merged back. So how does one do that? In a minute or two? You don’t do it by beating up lower self and you’ve been taught that. You think it takes all this discipline and all this and you have to renounce everything and no one, you don’t want to do it and no one, you can’t do it.
It is not about renunciation. It is not about denial. It is not about beating anything up. It’s like this. I’ve done this for 50 more years, alright? I’ve watched carefully, at least what has worked for me to whatever degree it is, alright? You have a child, he’s misbehaving, he’s throwing tantrums, he wants something in the store, he has his tendon. He’s going through terrible twos, crying, throwing tantrums, everything going on, right? Hit him. Go to jail. He should. That ain’t going to solve anything, is it? What’s that going to solve about that child’s behavior to spank him or hit him or do it for stuff like that? Okay, get him what he wants. There’s a smart thing. It works. He stops crying and screaming. Neither those work, do they? What do you use? You have to be centered within yourself so you’re not reacting because you’re not okay.
When you hit him, you’re not okay. So you have to fight right? When you get him what he wants, you’re not okay. You’re trying to change the behavior. You can’t handle it first. You have to handle it. You have to be okay that this is happening. Otherwise you will not deal with it properly. Doesn’t mean you have to let it happen, but you have to be okay that it is happening. Alright? So now you’ve worked on yourself enough to, you’re okay. How do you deal with the child? You use what’s called child psychology. You sit there and say, well, which one do you want? Do you want that little truck? Well, we don’t even have a truck at home today. What I used to do with Mickey, I think a tell on him, right? I sit there and say, really? You want that early when I do my meditation days, right?
You really want that. You want a candy bar or something like that? I wasn’t eating that. I said, okay, tomorrow we’ll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes because it’s always today. Anyways, be gentle, but understand what you’re doing. Have your intent to be to raise the energy, not push it down. It’s called transportation. How can I take the energy this child’s feeling and redirect it so you’re throwing a tantrum. So, okay, I’ll tell you what, we’ll let this go. We’ll look at it later, right? And wow, this guy, some ice cream come, daddy’s waiting for us. Redirect. Re-channel the energy as opposed to shoving it down by beating it or reinforcing it by giving into it. That’s how you treat lower self. First you have to get clear. Can you handle your emotions? Can you handle your thoughts? You need to learn to. Meditation helps mantra your helps different things happen.
And what does it mean to handle them? Get rid of them. No. What if you feel jealousy? What if you feel insecurity? Ever feel insecurity? What do you do with insecurity? Same thing you do with a child. You look at it from the seat of witness consciousness and you say, oh, there’s the ego who feels insecure? My self-concept. I built a concept. I’m afraid people won’t accept it and I feel weird and it makes my emotions weird. Can I handle that? Can I stay conscious in the seat of self? Noticing that the emotions and the mind are talking like this. If you can’t, you’ll be reactive to do anything you can to make it not happen. So you learn to stay conscious. How I told you, there’s lots of techniques. Use the techniques. They’re not the end. They’re just techniques. Now you’re conscious, you’re still going to feel jealousy, insecurity or something like that.
Can you handle it? And when you sit there and say, I understand now. We had this whole discussion where it came from, how my self-conscious got built. I understand the lower self. You notice it and you say, yes, this is the behavior that’s going on. It doesn’t feel good. Nobody said it felt good. I don’t have to make it feel good. I have to be okay to handle it. Now how do I deal with it in the highest conscious way so that over time its energy won’t be like that. How do I raise it up? The Gida says, one should raise the self with self, not trampled down the self for self, which can be self’s. Friend can be self foe. It’s talking about uppercase ottman and lowercase ottman. How does the higher self deal with the lower self? By raising it up, not beating it up and not giving it what it wants.
There’s a place in between. It’s called I’m here. I’m conscious. I don’t need to feel insecure. Like I said, I don’t have time. I give you all the fuck I give. Give you lots of ways to raise it up. How can you be insecure? There are 8.5 billion people on the planet earth. One of them didn’t say hello. Put things in perspective. You’re sitting a little planet spin in the middle of nowhere. It’s so tiny. 1.3 million Earth inside the sun. You’ve heard that number from me before. How much you, if 1.3 million earth inside the sun and you’re standing on 0.001% of that planet, what do you care? What’s going on? You want to feel insecure. You’re sitting on a planet that if it blew up, just s smithing blew up in a very short period of time. A couple other planets would change the orbit and nothing else in the universe would know you ever existed.
These are liberating ways to use your mind. Free yourself from this absurdity of thinking what everybody said or how you look or what they did. Or he made a mistake. Oh, I said something stupid. What are people going to think about me? They don’t care. They don’t think about you. They’re too busy thinking about themselves. Let go. Just raise it up. Think in ways that raise yourself. Alright, van and I talk about lower self. You can every minute of every day of your life transmute these energies. You can raise yourself because you’re having trouble every minute of your life guarantee you. And you start working with yourself. And what happens is then the other stuff just falls off naturally. It’s amazing that the kid will outgrow the truck. He’ll forget he wanted it. He’ll bring a child up, but he wouldn’t if you spank him and he wouldn’t if you give it to him.
You have to find this middle. So the middle way, the Dao to learn to be centered and then bring the energies up. Just keep bringing the energies up. Find ways to think that are higher than the way you’ve been thinking. Find ways to raise stuff. If you have an emotional thing and something happens in a relationship, you aren’t so used to working with trouble in a relationship and you start to get scared, you should tell your mind, God, thank God this finally happened. I wish that happened when I was in junior high school so I could learn how to handle things that go wrong in relationships. And now I’m just, wow, it really hurt. Alright, thank you. These things will raise you up if you work with this. Alright, so we’ve talked about where lower self came from. Now, do you have a better, that what you are looking at from your seat of consciousness is what you built to try to protect yourself. And you’re doing it all the time. That doesn’t get any worse. You ready? You ready for do some serious growth? I don’t want you to be here next year in the same state you’re in now, nor do you. So you just keep working with yourself. And the way you raise lower self is to raise lower self. Life is about liberating yourself from your lower self, freeing yourself, raising yourself back to the seat of self where there’s nothing but ecstasy, nothing but light, and then you become a blessing on the earth. 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.
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