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. The difference between spirituality and psychology is not a problem. It’s really should be heralded. Rejoiced. Let’s take Freud. He said that you were the ego and super ego. I’m not going to do the psychology course today, but it’s not difficult for you to see what he was talking about the difference again, you’re taught witness consciousness. He wasn’t thought that I wasn’t spent a lot of time looking so no evidence in Freud’s writings that he had stepped back and saw that these things were of the mind, but that consciousness was aware of them. He came up with his theories by studying other people and many people he studied were from institutions. They were institutionalized patients. So that’s extreme.
And so what he saw, and I want to know if you see it, when you watch your mind, do you ever see that your mind talks about body things, drives hunger, sexual things, pain, discomfort of the body and so on. You have a voice inside your head. You know you do it talks to you all the time. Does it ever talk about I need this, I’m hungry, I want that, I’m this, I’m that. And about body animal, basic instincts, basic things, basic functions, yes or no. Have you noticed? Okay, that’s what he called it. You are not it. It is something your mind talks to you about. Well, people say to me sometimes, why is the voice talk so much? Well, it’s a good thing it talks some because you could get lost in consciousness or lost in mind somewhere. Think about things and not eat and be cold and be in trouble.
Okay? So it calls you back. So if you’re out there lost in thought and your body needs something, wants something, the voice says, Hey, you come out here, take care of me. That is a voice of the mind. So the mind represents your with those kind of discussions. It does do that, doesn’t it? So it’s not you, it is the body communicating to you who have the ability when you’re asleep, you’re not paying attention to your mind. If you’re go to the bathroom, you don’t know, right? It has to wake you up. Okay? And have you ever had a dream that wove in something like having to go to the bathroom or some noise outside or something like that? It all of a sudden sharpen the dream and then all of a sudden it wakes you up. So the communication between the body, which is animal instinct is basic.
It stuff expresses itself through the mind. Why? Because the consciousness is distracted by the thoughts of the mind and comes down and deals with the things. So it’s not a bad thing, but it also has very, very animalistic tendencies. It can people do all kinds of things out of anger and out of survival. Well, the body does have those instincts. It did evolve, did it not? So there are impressions like that. Most of you don’t have issues with that, but all of it’s there as the fact in the search for truth. I said you’re living with a pet. This is your pet. You have an animal that lives with you, it’s your pet question is how good did you train it or does it run things you don’t want to around somebody that the ID runs things. So there, that’s Freud’s Id. Not so complicated is it go study psychology?
It’s going to talk about that and see how it works and so on. But they’re just talking about the fact that these bodily animalistic instincts and hunger and different things, those are animalistic. They’re base instincts express themselves through the mind. And the reason it does that, there’s a part of the mind that formulates thought patterns that formulate to represent the body. Well, there’s it. What about super ego? Now I know you know about that one. Have any of you ever felt that you did something and it can’t be you because you did it, you did something and then some voice inside your head says you shouldn’t have done that. Oh my god, I can’t be. You get so much trouble if your mother, you knew you did that, right? If your wife knew yes or no, does it ever talk like that? Answer me. That’s the super ego.
That is something that got built in your mind, in your mind, on your body. Animals don’t know about that stuff. The tiger going to say, oh, I shouldn’t have killed the bear in the lamb. Poor and lamb, it doesn’t have that problem, okay? But humans have programmed in their mind, society impressions right and wrong, good and bad, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so that helps to balance the it. It’s a good thing and something in they’re telling you, no, don’t do that. You get in trouble. But how did that get impressed in you? A warrior who’s trained a true strong warrior who’s trained, is trained to kill and they’re trained to be comfortable with it, some of them don’t. They end up with PTSD, they can’t sleep at night and so on, correct? That basically means that the super ego feels guilt, it feels terrible, and it’s telling the mind that now the mind’s not comfortable.
Others are just, they get into the animal instinct and they’re out there doing the best they can to kill as many as they can and hand to hand combat. They love it and there are people out there just love that stuff, which is not wrong. It’s fine, right? There are going to be all kinds of people balance the world. So basically you now understand that it is a segment of mind. I should have started where I normally start, what is mind? What is mine? It’s not the brain. That’s like saying the end user of a computer is the CPU or the hardware. The brain is the hardware that connects the mind to the body and to all that stuff. What is the brain nerves? It’s just neurons. That’s just all nerve cells. That’s all the brain is. Its nerve cells packed together very, very intelligently, very strongly.
And then you get patterns in the brain. Well, so is a computer, it’s wires and they pattern the wires so that it will do the things that it needs to do. But who tells ’em to do ’em? You do. There’s an end user in there. Well, it’s the same thing in here. You are the consciousness, the center, the being who lives in there and you have a mind and that mind has nothing to do with the body. That mind has nothing to do with the body. Basically consciousness looks at mind, mind sends messages and receives messages from the physical plane Mind is not physical and the fact that they can trace and see different MRI things and stuff moving and say, oh, this part of the brain is doing that, but that’s like going into the hardware on the computer. When I push enter, I said, oh, this move that way.
So the consciousness is the highest. The mind is the next level. Very, very subtle energy. And then there’s the physical plane. And the physical plane communicates to the consciousness via the mind. So you’ve now got ID and superego. Not complicated. Not only do you have them, I talked about it, but you have them, don’t you? Okay? You ever hear mommy and daddy and preacher and rabbi and past boyfriend and his girlfriend trucking in there? Let’s say you had a marriage didn’t work out so good. Somebody was controlling you and it ended. So they put a super ego in there. Don’t do that. You shouldn’t do that. Don’t do that ever purposely. Do what they told you not to do. You’re in there. Those are just aspects of your mind that are programmed based upon your past experiences and your body and so on. Well, okay, what’s ego, which is the ultimate one I want to talk about.
What is ego? Psychology has interesting definitions. I think Freud, that kind of stuff talks about the aspect of your being that balances stands in between. It is super ego and develops a self-concept. I’m the one who listens to this part of the super ego and I’m the one who expresses this part of the in or I don’t express any, I’m very proper, right? It’s just basically it became the self-concept. It’s just another part of your mind. Does your ego talk to you? What do I want? Should I go here or should I go over there which will make me happy? What’s wrong with me? Yes or no? There’s a little discussion in there going on using the word I. Does anything inside your mind use the word. I notice a super ego says you shouldn’t have done that. You’re getting in trouble. That’s not right.
You shouldn’t do that. Okay? You got programmed in there and the edge is talk about the, you just, it’s really raw stuff. There was a time I grew up in the sixties, that was a very interesting time to grow up in college, right At the college in the sixties, there was a whole movement that what true spirituality was about is getting back to the body, getting back, no mind, just be raw, be body. And people really like that. Why? Because the mind is a disgusting place to live. All it does just tell you your problems, what you should do, what you shouldn’t have done, and it’s hard living in there. So the whole thing was come back to your animal self. Well go back to be an amoeba or possum or something. No, you have evolved past that and I’m impressed that you can go back and knocked your caught in your mind, but you went backwards.
Okay? So the question is we’re talking about ego. So what happens there? I want you to see these as segments of mind, like programs that run in your computer, your computer can run anything can. It runs the program of it. It runs the program of super ego. And in order to balance those, because the consciousness gets lost in that stuff, it’s not comfortable living in there. And so what it does is develop a set of thoughts. They’re just thoughts. You are not your ego. You are watching your ego. Once you get a decent seat of witness consciousness, you watch the thing and it freaks out. See how ridiculous it is in there? It’s never okay, alright. You see something happen and say, I know why she did that and she doesn’t like me. Then you find out she loves you, but she was embarrassed to tell you that’s why she walked away, okay?
It just makes stuff up and what it does is make up a, it makes up a set of thoughts that you hold onto you. The consciousness, the will holds onto a set of thoughts and you develop what psychology calls a self-concept. I love it. Have you ever heard the word what is a concept? Something you made up? It’s not reality, it’s a concept of reality. So you made up a you. Can you change you? If he doesn’t like what you’re doing, can you say, oh, it’s okay, I don’t have to do that. I can be the way you want me to be. Just tell me how you want me to be. Yes or no? What is that telling you? You made the thing up. It’s just a stupid voice talking inside your head that you pulled together and you made a you. Somebody wants ask yoga.
Non enlightened master totally beyond it. All right? What is the ego? In one sense, it blows me away. He said the masquerading self. In other words, the consciousness built a mask out of mind and pulled it in front of itself. And that’s what it presents to everybody. Do you not do that? What if you have a self-concept that you’re a good pianist and somebody walks in the room and says, oh my God, stop it. That’s pure noise. What happens? Feel good? You freak. Have you ever defended yourself? Which self are you defending? Because the consciousness doesn’t need defending. It’s in there. It’s wonderful. You’re defending your ego. You developed a mental pattern inside your mind. You did it used will talk about that. You developed that mental pattern inside your mind. And if something comes in from outside that doesn’t match that mental pattern, you tell me what goes on.
And worse yet, by the way, is something does match the mental pattern. It’s love at first sight. Oh my god, I’ve looked my whole life to see you. I’ve never had anybody that agreed with me. He says, wonderful, I’m so happy. Yeah, we’ll see the moment they say or do or don’t do or don’t say one thing, it’s over. Yes or no. I’m talking very big pieces here. That’s why your relationships are so difficult. You’ve heard relationships are difficult, haven’t you? There’s people can help you with ’em. There’s therapy, there’s this, there’s that. There’s techniques, there’s all kinds of things. Why? Why relations so hard? Because what you call a relationship is that you are in relationship with somebody who agrees with you. They are the way you want them to be. They believe what you want them to believe. They act the way you want them to act.
They want to eat when you want to eat. They want to go to the same movies as you do. How would you like to be in a relationship or somebody who doesn’t want to eat when you want to eat, doesn’t agree with you about any philosophy you have or any politic sets that you have and doesn’t like any of the movies that you like. Nice relationship. It’s called divorce irreconcilable differences. In other words, you don’t agree with me, I don’t want to hang out here. So what you call a relationship I teach you is have a relationship with yourself. Just when you go on a dating site and some of you do it, and I’m not saying you enough to, alright, you go out there to the computer, it’s a computer. You’re talking to a computer, you know it. You’re on the web, it’s going to ask you questions.
What do you like to eat? What kind of restaurant do you like? What kind of pets do you like? Do you pets? What time do you generally eat? Do you eat breakfast? Do you eat lunch, dinner? What do you like to have? Do you like tv? What shows do you like? Blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I found a match. What does that mean? You didn’t find a match? I found me right or wrong? Well, you going to match with somebody who doesn’t match anything you said and that’s what you want. That’s what you call a relationship. Someone who matches you. You made you up. I already told you that you made up over the course of your life. Let’s get this straight. Psychology says the following man is a sum of his learned experiences. I have learned to teach that almost every time I talk I can’t not why they’re right, but no you’re not.
You’re not it. You’re the consciousness, but your psyche, what you did with your mind that those patterns that you built inside your mind are the sum of you learned experiences. Where else did you get ’em from? If it says are you a cat person or a dog person? What’d you do? Decide on your own. There’s not a chance in the world you saw a movie or you had a cat or you had a dog or somebody had a dog, you didn’t like him. Let’s something happen that left that impression on you. And psychology says that a lot of those impressions were made in your formative year. Oh wait, they call them formative years. You were kind of open and now this happened and that happened. All of a sudden you don’t like fish. Your goldfish died. I don’t have any fish. I don’t want to do it hurt too much. Oh great. But if you goldfish didn’t die, oh I like fish your mind, your ego is the sum of your learn experiences. So now you have that going on inside your head talking to you and that ego is stronger than the ID and the superego. Whoa, I thought it was survival. You’ve been taught in the school early, early school survival is the strongest instinct really. I like to bring up the example in Hamilton Ner Hamilton and Aaron Burr, very sophisticated people and somebody said something to somebody that insulted them. That’s all that happened.
Insulted me. I challenged you to a dual. Well in those days, you know what a dual was? You stood back to back, you took 15 steps, you turned around and shot Musk at each other. Wait, I thought survival was the strongest instinct. Why did you do that? You have insulted me. You challenged my ego and I’m willing to die. Wow, that’s pretty sophisticated. Are you hearing me? Ego’s strong, isn’t it? Have you noticed? So when you have relationships, you’re trying to say, I have found somebody who agrees with me. In other words, that matches the sum of my learned experiences. You want to know the probability that somebody matches sum of your learned experiences. How about zero? Why they didn’t have the same experiences as you? Understand that nobody in the whole world has ever had the same experiences as you. Nobody ever will, nobody ever did.
You have a unique experiences every moment in your life. You’re the only one there and then you’re somewhere else. So the probability of somebody matches the sum of your learned experiences is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of because it’s not going to happen if you’re the sum of your learned experiences. Nobody else had those experiences and didn’t process ’em the same way period. So don’t formulate your relationships based upon the fact that this person agrees with you. They’re saying they agree with you because they like you. They want something just like you say, agree with ’em. You want something and then you get into this compromise thing. I just love it so much. It’s so cute. Monday’s your day, Tuesday’s mine. You get to have it your way. I get it my way. And we get along very well. No, you don’t get along at all, right?
You don’t really like Tuesdays, which is his day and you don’t really like Monday. It was your day, but he tolerates it so he can have his day. That’s not a relationship. So just for kicks, what’s a relationship? I am not my ego, but I one. I have one, okay? Other person. I’m not my ego, but I have one. I really love you. How would you like to use this relationship to get rid of the ego so that us, me in there and you in there can touch each other, not through the mask, without the mask. To understand that that’s possible. You have at some point gotten close enough to somebody where it felt like one, right? There are times that happened. How long does it last? Give me a break. If we get that moment, don’t talk ever again because anything you’re going to say is going to take that away and don’t get dressed.
I might not like what you put on and don’t make a phone call because I’m going to wonder who you’re talking to. How long does it take to take that union away? Ego steps in there. 1000000000th of a second so that what’s the purpose of relationship? To get rid of you. And with two people in that relationship who understand that the higher self who’s watching the ego is the only place that real love comes from and the only place that real beauty comes from. And it’s a beautiful place. And when two people are using the relationship to do their best to support each other, to get rid of all these judgments and desires and wants and needs and just be, that’s a spiritual relationship. It’s a beautiful relationship, okay? It’s very rare. So it’s not that there can’t be beautiful spiritual relationships, right? But that’s not what we have.
We have ego relationships. We you can’t believe what he said to me. I dunno if I can live with him ever again. Well, he had bad pizza the night before and his father died and he was in a really bad mood and he said that, okay, let it go. No. Okay, fine. That’s ego. The reason I’m doing this, that’s ego. No, I don’t have to let it go. I’m not letting it go. He’ll walk all over me. I me, mine, I me, mine, I me. Mine. That’s mine. That’s my day. That’s all it talks about, isn’t it? You check out how often that voice in there talks about I me mine. It’s way more than the super ego and way more than the, that’s the backdrop that super ego interrupt. Okay, I’m feeling guilty. The super ego made me feel guilty. Who’s talking? They didn’t feel good before and I don’t want to feel good because he just keeps talking.
Is that not the backdrop, the I mind? That’s the ego. That’s Freud’s ego. It’s a pattern in the mind of thoughts that you held onto because of your past experiences and you managed to build this, I don’t know whether it works or not, but you built this thing that you feel gives you a place to rest and your friends are the ones that agree with it and your enemies are the ones that don’t agree with it. And your purpose of life is to get that which your ego says it wants in order to be happy. I want a big house now the prairie, I have dreams. Who has dreams? The ego. Why? Because he’s not happy. So he comes up with things and things will make it happy. And what don’t you want? I don’t ever want to meet another person like father. I didn’t like him at all. I don’t like the way he treated my mother. That’s it. So there’s just this ego in there. There’s some of you for now, I want you to understand when it talks, say hello, some of I learned experiences. How you doing today? And it’s going to say not so good.
Why? Because the world’s not the way I want it to be. Who are you? You made this thing up based on the summary of your learned experiences. Why would the world be what you want it to be? God, I can’t help myself. You say it’s the summary of your learned experiences, right? Your life is like pearls on a necklace. Every experience becomes part of your life, right? Anytime. I dare you to dare think about this. I think about it all the time. Anytime you have an experience, how many are you missing? How many other things are going on everywhere? Including in Mars, galaxy is far, far away. How many things are going on in Einstein’s Timespace continuum, which includes everything that you’re not experiencing when you’re experiencing the one experience, you’re experiencing 700 billion zillion quillian. And if you are having one of those experiences, then some of your learning experience would be different.
You’d like cats and dogs. So you have married the most ridiculous thing in the world, this meaningless experience you had, which is called statistically insignificant. Okay? What is one out of 700 billion trillion and you built every one of your experiences is one of those. You could have had a different experience and then it would be talking different things. It would be liking different things, not liking different things. Saying I want this, I don’t want that. And it’d be different. And so you wake up someday and you realize, well thank you Sigmund. I’m glad you understood the mind or you understood the programs that run in the mind. You don’t understand mind because mine can do anything. Mine is phenomenal. You don’t have to think about you. You can think about going to Mars. You can think about science, you can think about solving things, you can think about music.
There’s billions of things you can do with your mind other than the IE mind, but I guarantee you the vast majority was IE mind. So basically, so that’s psychology. Psychology have different techniques of what do you work with psychology. This therapeutic psychology. Is your mind screwed up in there? It’s difficult to live in there, isn’t it? Has it ever been difficult to live in there? Yes or no? Has it ever been painful in there and people do suicide and people do drugs and people drink alcohol? Yes or no? Because it’s not so nice to live in there and the consciousness has to live in there. But what made it a mess? You did. You collected this. Lea experiences built a fake ego. You got in the super ego and they thought, oh my god, there’s three big circus in there. And then you’re coming out of the world saying, oh world be the way I want. You don’t even know what you want. Have you ever changed your mind ever in your entire life? You ever changed your mind about what you want and what you don’t want? What does that mean? You made it up and then you come out into the real world that says physics out there. Physics, chemistry ever complain This is rainy on your birthday. He doesn’t know it’s your birthday.
I just show you how crazy the mind is and then you literally get upset because it’s raining. We don’t wanted to. I wanted to go camping and you blaming on God. How could God do this to me? Somebody wants tell me that I’ve gone to church every Sunday. Why would God do this rain on my birthday, rain on my wedding day? I’m not going to comment. I think it speaks for itself. You’ve made your ego God, you sat there and said even God’s supposed to be what your ego wants and poor God, he said, well wait a minute. You all have different experiences. What am I supposed to do? I love you but I can’t. It’s either going to rain or not. Or the farmer wants rain. You don’t want to rain, somebody else wants snow. Some of you feel gypped because the snow in Gainesville the other day, alright, and somebody feels wonderful because their crops didn’t freeze.
That guy said, oh, you’re on your own. I’ll step back and watch the movie. Alright, so we’ve now built mine that psychology and therapy is about now that it’s a mess in there, how can you learn to cope, learn to cope with the fact that it’s not the way you want things happen in life, you have to learn to cope with them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They don’t tell you that whole mishegas that’s going on in there does not have to be going on in there. You can be sitting in the seat of self, the one who’s watching, the one who’s experiencing the one who’s pulling the ego together and instead enjoying the beauty. That is the nature of your being. You’re the most beautiful being ever walked the face of the earth. I don’t care what they tell you. I don’t care what you’ve done doesn’t make any difference there.
I’ve broken every rule there is. Alright? Every rule, it doesn’t make any difference. What you’ve ever done is so stupid for you to hold onto that. That’s just another thing that makes you live in hell while you’re alive. Forget afterwards is you made hell inside the self, the consciousness, the ahman, the being in there, the consciousness that is watching all this and you say, well, I’m not watching. Yes you are. You wouldn’t know what’s going on. Every single one of you knows every word I said is true. Every one of you live in there. You watch your image, you watch the super ego, you watch your ego, you watch the struggle, you watch the suffering, you watch the anxiety, don’t you? If you go to therapy and say, I just feel so anxious. How do you know? You know you feel anxious. How do you know your heart hurts?
How do you know you’re scared? How do you know? Eventually you look at me, it goes, I’m in here and I see it. Wow you. How deep that is. That’s spiritual. That’s a spiritual statement. To sit there and say I’m anxious. That’s not spiritual. That’s a lie. You are watching anxiety. So you said I am. You just define yourself by what you’re watching. That’s absurd. But if you go in there and you say, my mind and my emotions are just spewing off all this anxiety, it’s hard to live in here. Well that’s spirituality. You step back into the seed of self that is the seed of self. The one who uses the word I, not what the eye’s talking about. You are in there, are you not? Okay? So that is the purpose of spirituality. Psychology is to straighten up the mind and emotions so that they’re tolerable.
So you can live with them and they say to you, to every life, some rain must fall. Don’t expect it to always be nice. They’re wrong. There is a state of absolute permanent, unconditional ecstasy inside of you and it happens to be you, but you’re busy looking at the rest of this junk. Your consciousness is addicted to looking at your aid, ego and super ego and then trying to make the world be the way makes it feel better and you just get lost. You get lost in stuff and that’s why people drink and that’s why people do drugs and that’s why there’s all the fighting because the world coming in isn’t matching what I want. It’s not making me feel good. What is depression? What is depression? That the consciousness who is pure ecstasy all the time. Nirvana, that’s what Buddha found is looking at a totally depressed lack of energy.
Psyche, you are not depressed, you’re looking at a depressed psyche. But the trouble is you don’t know how to get out and that is a spiritual journey. You ready to go deeper so you have a few choices in your whole life. We’re talking about your lifespan, you have a few choices. One, go out there, get money, get power, get looks, get whatever it is so you can manipulate the moments in front of you to be the way you want, which is how everybody’s living. You go out every moment to try to get everyone to be the way you want. Everything, weather, everything. If you don’t like that, it snows. Where can we move? We move to Florida, let’s move to Pensacola. It can’t be the way you want. People say, why can’t it be the way I want? Because that’s supposed to be be the way it is.
Why did it snow in Pensacola? Well there was this Alaska front that came down because of this may be global warming, who knows? But whatever the point is, it had nothing to do with you. But you say, why do I have to put up this now I don’t like, see what I’m saying? So what you do is you project yourself out into the world and you say, why would the world should be the way I want? Well because there’s 8.5 billion of you plus the thing called physics and meteorology and psychology and all kinds of things that determine how things are and it doesn’t ask your permission at any time how the result. You get it? Alright, let’s get this straight. Is it supposed to be the way I want? You already said the way you want is the sum of your learned experiences. That’s pretty small.
How can the world be the sum of your learned experiences? They’re not even happening anymore. You storm ’em inside of you. Well what is the moment out there? It’s the sum of it’s learned experiences. It’s physics, it’s chemistry, it’s cause and effect. There are things that happen that made it snow in Pensacola. Okay, the right or wrong, I don’t care. Is it not true? There are things that happen. Go study meteorology. Go study everything. You’ll find out why it happened. So the outside world is the sum of all the things that made it be the way it is. And so no wonder you’re suffering because you think it’s supposed to be the way you want. And so psychology studies that how to handle the fact that it’s not going to be the way you want, right? Marriage counseling as a marriage, counseling’s, all these things.
It’s like, okay, yeah, how do I talk to you about the fact that it’s not going to be the way you want? How you get along anyways, how can you handle it called coping spirituality. Real spirituality is about you are not your mind. You are not those patterns that are going on in your mind. You’re looking at them but you’re not them. And if you start paying attention to who you are, what is the nature of the consciousness that is watching the patterns of the mind and the patterns of the emotions? Because you feel your emotions, you feel subject, verb object. You feel emotions. Who are you? True Spirituality is about self-realization. That’s a big word. No, it’s not. Realize who’s in there, who are you that’s watching? Because you’re a very great being and I’m glad to tell you that if you’re watching some guilt or this or shame or problems or things like that, your karma, all this kind of stuff, if you’re watching that, by definition it affects you.
It affects what you do, it affects your life, it affects everything. If you get high enough in there and you honestly let go and realize I wouldn’t have done this stuff now. So if you can let it go and we’re talking what that means in a minute, alright? If you can not keep getting distracted and hanging out with that stuff you stored in there, you’ll start to feel joy and you’ll start to feel love and ultimately it will fall off because you’re holding it if something’s suppressed. See, talking about suppression, ready suppression is an act, it’s a verb. You suppress that. Who suppressed it? There’s an action done. So if something happens, an event happens, it’s already left, event left, but it’s inside of you, you couldn’t handle it. Who couldn’t handle it? Who suppressed it? You in there, the will, the center of consciousness.
Do you push things away in there? Okay, you’re doing it. Okay now it’s true. You’re doing it based on ego based superhero, all that kind of junk, right? But the point is consciousness which is all powerful, is lost in those patterns of mind and it behaves accordingly. So you suppress things but it’s you. It’s the center of will that’s suppressing them and you also clinging to things. Never had a really nice experience. Not one have to end and you keep thinking about it all the time and trying to make it happen again there that’s Buddhist clinging. So you in there are holding onto the impressions in your mind or pushing them away and so you’re doing it. So ultimately if you stop doing it, which is true, spirituality, you get wise enough and deep enough to be centered in the seat of self and you say events are going to happen in my life.
Some of ’em feel good, some of ’em don’t. Fine, I ain’t keeping them. And sure as heck, you’re not going to keep the ones that bothered me. Why would I make a storehouse in my mind of everything that ever bothered me? You did that, didn’t you? It comes back and haunts you. It comes like you see something, it makes you think of it again. Why did you store that in there? They make it sound like you have no power in there. You’re the only one in there. Nobody else is in there. It’s a single occupancy apartment. It’s yours. That’s your house, that’s where you live. And so you catch on and eventually you get to the point where you’re in there. There can be some little things going on in the mind, but you’re not married to them. You’re not distracted by them. So somebody said something, your girlfriend or boyfriend something said something in passing and it didn’t feel good to hit what was left of your ego, right?
Why can’t you just say so what? So what, right? Fine. Because you’re afraid it’ll happen again. That’s why you can’t let it happen. Do you understand that it didn’t feel good and you couldn’t handle that? It didn’t feel good. This is very deep in the essence of true spiritual growth. It’s not the thing somebody else heard it and it didn’t bother at all. Somebody else heard it and because of some of their learning experience said, oh my god, I love it. Okay, it’s not the event, it’s what you do with it in there and if you can’t handle it, then you push it away. I can’t handle it and you don’t want it happen again. And so you better not stay there me again or sleep on the couch for three weeks or I’m out of here or I’ll take the kid, whatever the heck it is.
So you’re trying to manipulate the world so that it doesn’t do things that bother you, that causes a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, and it really screws up relationships at work. Your boss tells you, I don’t like how you did that and he’s the one who told you to do it that way. I said boss would like, I don’t like how I did that. You do that and you go home. I can’t stand him. I can’t believe he’s talked to me like that. I did what he said. I don’t work there anymore. I don’t care. You quit your job. Why not? Because of what the boss said because you couldn’t handle what the boss said. You couldn’t handle the feeling. So you don’t want it happen again. So you got to get out of there. Believe me, you go to the next job, it’s going to happen again.
It’s going to happen again. Why? You just reinforced your inability to handle that situation. You just invested in the part of you that couldn’t handle the situation. People make investments, don’t they? You invested in that part. You said I’m going to lose my job. I’m going to have to find another one. Oh my god, everyone’s going to be mad at me. I don’t care. I ain’t putting up with this. Well, you just made that a major part of your ego and the next time anybody has anything even close, you’re out of there again. And same thing with relation to not just bosses. God, I’m so proud of you for listening. What’s the option? Learn to handle things inside. That’s spirituality. Not try to make them not happen. Learn that I’m in here. I have an ego and the ego is very sensitive and it’s a spoiled, it’s like a 3-year-old trouble.
It wants things the way it wants them and it throws tantrums. Does it not throw tantrums? Have you ever had a bad mind day? So it is in there throwing tantrums. I want this and I want this. And you are used to doing whatever it says because otherwise you feel terrible. You have the right in there and that is the spiritual path. You have the right in there to better than that, to be higher than that. Somebody says something, it bothers you, you feel it, okay, things happen, things don’t feel good. I can handle that. Take the little baby ego by the hand say, it’s okay baby, it’s okay. We can handle that. It’s all right. And the boss told you what he told you. He said, fine. I know he is wrong. I don’t have to say anything. He’s the boss, right? And next thing you know, you still have your job and you get back to work and you enjoy doing it next time trying to do it maybe the way he said or she said, what’s the difference?
Who’s better off the one who’s behaving based on the stupid ego, which is some of your learned experiences or the one that has learned to let it go and handle things right? So you learn to handle what’s going on inside of you. Then it’s fine. It’s fine. Have a nice day. It’s fine to deal with things that don’t feel good. Some people can’t handle the rain. Some people can’t handle the thunder, some people can’t handle anything. They put bars in their windows and they lock themselves into their little house. I ain’t doing that. It’s crazy. Just learn to handle it. Somebody once told me a story that they had a grandmother or somebody lived in New Jersey on the 30th 40th floor, the giant high rise, and she literally told him that she can’t sleep at night. Why grandma? Because I look out the window, 40 stories down in a city, New Jersey or something and I looked down and there was a car parked down there on the street that I didn’t know which one it was.
Who it was. And so it could be something bad. So I get anxious and I can’t sleep. Do you want to be like that? Well, you like that in different ways. Okay, so basically you sit there and say that spirituality, I gave you a choice. One thing you do with your life is try to make everything in the world be exactly the way you want and never be the way you don’t want. Good luck. The second thing you do with your life is notice. Wait. It takes two to tango. It takes me deciding I don’t want it and it happening. What instead of my making it not happen, I stop deciding. I don’t want it. There’s a paradigm shift for you. In other words, I can work on myself to not, I am not the someone who learned experiences. My psyche is, but I build the psyche.
It’s a mask I’m holding in front of my beautiful self and then everything has to match. And so you learn to start letting go. You learn to start accepting. You learn to start surrendering. You’ll learn to start working with yourself to be more tolerant and more tolerable of the fact that the world is not supposed to be the way you want. Science tells you it’s supposed to be the way it is. What is science studying why it is the way it is. Science doesn’t study whether it’s to be that way. They better not be doing that right because then they made a decision how it’s supposed to be supposed to be. Looking at it and looking at what the causes are that made it be that way. They don’t go there and say, I got to find a cure for cancer. We’ll just make it not be that way.
How? I don’t know. Just make it not be that way. It shouldn’t be there. It’s a terrible thing. There’s not going to be anymore. It’s like give me a break. I have to study what are the forces and factors that we can trace back that it ended up being like that. That’s what science does. And you’d be very good to be an inner scientist, okay? You have to be the big people that think a whole lot, okay? But you can be there wise enough to realize it’s not going to be the way I want and I’m suffering not maybe the end of suffering is to stop wanting it to be a certain way and start off by saying, okay, this is what happened. Can I handle it now? What can I do about it? And now how can I make it not have happened? There’s no way in the world you’re going to make it not have happened.
It’s embarrassing. There are things in your past that you think shouldn’t have happened and they still bother you because they shouldn’t have happened. I’ll bet if you go there and study them, you’ll find out they had to happen. Grandma did this to mommy and this happened there and then you first kid and who the heck knows there were causes behind everything that happened. They just weren’t what you wanted. And so you get to the point where you sit there and say, I am going to learn to let experiences come in. Which ones the ones that are there the moment in front of me, there’s reality be here now. That’s the moment that’s going on. Did it feel good? No. Is that okay with you? Sure I can handle it. I’m driving down the road and a car cuts me off. I have to ram on my brakes.
Alright, I’ll never drive again. I’ve got a petition that they put lights all over the frame. What are you doing? It never happened before. There’s probably all kinds of intersections that could have happened. All kinds of cars that could have happened. Just be grateful you didn’t get hit and dry. Can you handle reality? That’s spirituality. If you can handle reality, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel good, but you can handle it. Then it’s over that 95% of your life you handle what happens. You see clouds go by, you see trees drive by, you see people going by. You see cars drive by, make an old big deal out of that. But you pick certain one of them that’s 5% not on my watch, and then you store it inside. So spirituality is about that other methodology of your life to sit there and say, if I want to be happy, I can’t be like this.
I have to change. Not the world. It’s not going to happen. And so you start letting go. He says, how do you do that? I teach, yes, there’s meditation, there’s mantra, there’s gurus, there’s just lots and lots and lots of things and they’re all wonderful. Anything. You’re in therapy. I don’t care. Anything you’re doing with the intention of thinning out that garbage that you stored inside of realizing what is a super ego, a pattern in mind. Do I need one? That’s up to you. If you don’t have one and you’re out there killing people and doing all kinds of crazy stuff, I hope you have a very strong super ego. If you’re not and you don’t feel those urges or tendencies, you don’t need one of the things and so it’ll fall off and you need a little ego to be able to interact with the world, but you don’t need that maniac that’s in there demanding that everything be exactly the way he or she wants it to be and getting upset.
If it’s not, you don’t need that. Here’s your ego. I can handle it. There’s good use of the eye. I can handle that. Oh, I can handle that. That’s what I should be saying. It’s a good mantra, right? I can handle it. I can handle this. I can handle this. Be welcome to use it. And you learn to let go of the garbage you’ve collected inside. It will come up by itself. If you don’t push it back down, can you handle what comes back up? You keep letting go. Keep letting go and relaxing. Then the big question is, what about my interaction with the outside world? If the purpose of your interaction with the outside world is to make everybody and everything be the way you want, you’re in trouble and so is everybody else. It’s the cause of all conflict. If the purpose of your interaction with the outside world is to serve, is to participate with love, with caring, with compassion, doing the best you can with every moment that falls in front of you to serve it, to make it more beautiful. Oh, it makes me cry. Imagine all the people living life at peace. Imagine if you went to work, you know how you went to work, not to make money so you could have a nice weekend and not to impress everybody and not to be the boss’s favorite. Not to get the court office not for ego. It’s crazy to say you went to work to do the job. You went to work because it was a job that needed to be done. How do you know it’s on your desk or somebody’s telling you to do it? You’re going to do something. It’s a tiny little plant in the middle of nowhere. So you going to do something, you might as well do your job and you enjoy doing it. Why? What’s the difference? I tell you, this bumper sticker, I love the bumper sticker out there. I’d rather be surfing. You’d rather be sailing. I’d rather be this. At one point years back, I think the seventies or eighties and they made a bumper sticker for me and said, I’d rather be doing what I’m doing. Wow, congratulations. You’re a happy person. Why can’t you be happy doing what you’re doing? Because your ego will let you, because it made the patterns from your past experiences that said, I’m only happy if I get what I want. You can change that by letting go. What you held inside was the things you couldn’t handle or the things you wanted more than anything else.
You stored them inside. They became the foundation of your ego. If you let them go because they’ll come back up. Don’t worry if you let them go when they come back up, that becomes your spiritual practice. Relaxing, releasing, letting go, doing a mantra. I don’t care what you do, I don’t care how you do it. It’s your business. It’s not my business. Because the semi of your learning experience, totally doing the semi violent learning experiences. So it works for you. It may work for you to get into a relationship, right? And the person’s different than you and you’re trying to get along with them and maybe find out you can’t. Well, at least you learned something you tried. If you went out there and get your best effort, you’ll be better the next time. You learned all kinds of stuff, didn’t you? Or maybe you don’t get in relationships.
Maybe it’s not something you need and you learn to be alone. I don’t know. I will never ever tell you what to do, ever, ever. It’s none of my business. But I will tell you why you would do it. I don’t tell you why you don’t want you in there. You don’t want to devote your life to that maniac in there that thinks every single thing should be exactly what it wants it to be and it’s not happy unless it’s not and all kinds of garbage goes on. That’s a very destructive and very difficult life. So instead you learn to let go. It’s your business. How you do that. You’re going to find out. It’s not hard to know what to do, why It’s in your face.
I have to go to therapy to find out what I stored down there. No, I don’t think so. I think it’s coming back up right or wrong. That’s why you went to therapy because it’s bothering you, right? But you don’t want to admit it. You don’t want to look at it. You don’t want to deal with it. You want some other way to do it, okay? No, it’s head on. And so basically when it starts to come back up, you just relax and release. You offer it to God, I don’t care what you do to it, I don’t care. Just don’t push it back down. But it hurts. Of course it hurts. It was stored with pain. It’s going to come back with pain. You didn’t handle it when it happened, so you stored all that pain inside of you. That’s why life is a mess.
And it’s the same thing for everybody except that you all stored different stuff because you all had different experiences when it comes back up. I’m telling you now, I’m talk about real spiritual growth. So spirituality is, it’s about the ego and about that stuff. Mine because you have to let go of it. Christ said to die to be reward. That’s exactly what he’s talking about. Mari Baba said, man, minus mind equals God. Now you understand that’s who’s back there. Your God self, a beautiful conscious being, but it’s addicted to watching the mind and then addicted to doing what the mind tells it to do. That’s the fall from the garden. If you learn not to erase the mind, not to never think, but when the mind is puking up, the stuff that you store down there, say thank you, it’s healthy, let it go. Learn to let it go.
Learn those techniques. Then what will happen is you’re going to find out that every single beautiful experience you ever had came from self. If you felt love, it was not the other person. How do I know? Because if the other person said one word or didn’t say one word, you don’t feel love. It came from inside of you because your ego liked what was happening. So it opened the window to allow the love who you are and it’s the nature of your being. Okay? They say God is love that love is there all the time. Unbelievable beyond your comprehension. But when the ego opens, you get to feel it. When the eagle closes, it’s like, is the sun shining when there’s cloudy day? Of course it is. The sun’s always shining. Is the sun shining at night? Always. It just sits out there for 4.5 billion years shining exactly the same. You’re the one that covers it up so you can’t see it. That’s what’s happening with love. That’s what’s happening. Inspiration when with joy, everything you are underneath the veil of the mind and so therefore you don’t feel that. But if the mind gets what it wants, oh my God, I feel what a wonderful day. I won the lottery. Okay, it was beautiful. I met somebody. Oh, I so happy. Somebody who did what matched what I wanted. You should have heard what he said to me. He thought I was the most beautiful person I walking face of the earth. And he was always embarrassed to tell me since kindergarten and oh my God, I can’t believe I want to see him again.
You don’t want to see him again. You should run away with just that because said eight going to keep working. Is it if he ran up to you or he or she ran up to you every single time they saw you and said those exact same, oh, you son’s back. You’d get sick to your stomach. And then after three times, not to mention if you ran to everybody else and said the same thing, now we’re in trouble. You see what I’m saying? It’s so conditional. It’s ridiculous. And so you learn to let go of yourself. Ultimately, you start to catch on that as you let go of your stuff, you feel more joy, you feel more freedom, you feel more openness because you’re fine. It’s much easier to live in the world. You don’t need things. You can still play, you still get married, you still have children, but not because you’re not okay.
There are people, they’re not okay. And I hate to talk this way. They’re not okay in the relationship. They just to have another child. We had our first child. We really were getting along really well. So maybe that will fix it. I don’t want to be that child. And so you wake up and you realize it’s not about getting what you want. It’s not letting go of the part of you that’s limiting you to only enjoying getting what you want and you start to appreciate everything. So I want to talk about psychology, spirituality. They’re very close, aren’t they? Right? Spirit. Spirituality is looking at psyche and doing more than looking. It is addicted, isn’t it? Okay, it you don’t know how to not, but you can learn to not. But it has to be your intention and that’s the essence of spirituality. It’s your intention to get in or get out just because your intention to get out ain’t happening tomorrow. Believe me, this stuff is sticky like addiction. Breaking your addiction to the ego. It is not an easy thing to do, but it’s worth every single moment of effort that you could ever put out. And this one’s permanent. If you learn to let go and handle life, all of a sudden life’s beautiful forever and it gets higher and higher. So that is, I want to talk about psychology, spirituality. I think we kind of covered it. Okay, free yourself. The beauty inside of you is gold. Alright, 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.
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