UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Welcome to The Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes, and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com
Michael Singer: Jai Guru Dev, Jai Masters. The more you grow, the deeper you go, the more you see how powerful the mind is. Obviously it’s powerful. It’s split atoms through to the moon, made air conditioning built cities, pretty amazing thing, but that’s not the part as you grow, that you really see the power is it is the thoughts of your mind up to a certain point in your growth and that’s a very deep point. It’s the thoughts in your mind that determine the quality of your life. It is not what goes on outside of you that determines the quality of your life. It’s what goes on inside your mind that determines the quality of your life. If people would just see that, but that’s the epitome of it, is you understand you don’t live in this world, you live in your mind. Well, really, you live behind your mind. You live in your consciousness.
You are the consciousness that is aware of the thoughts of your mind. That’s not so complicated. Doesn’t take a religion, it doesn’t take discipline. You are the awareness, the consciousness that is aware, that you are aware that there are thoughts going on in your mind. Otherwise, you don’t know you have thoughts, right? You’re not aware of them. You don’t know you have them. The essence of spirituality is do you want to get involved in what you’re aware of or do you want to seek? Who are you? Where’d you come from? Where did awareness come from? Why are you in there? Alright, well, we’re going to discuss that today. Why that’s difficult. It shouldn’t be difficult. So you’re conscious and the first thing you’re aware of it is really the first thing you’re aware of are the thoughts in your mind. It’s like the yogis talk about ous that you have different bodies, physical body and energy body, a mental body, a wisdom body and a bliss body, and then the self, that the self is encased, like eggshells.
Those fun things that you pull apart the Russian toys and they’re just inside of each other and you live deep inside and when you look out, you see your mind. Well, you should see bliss. That’s the first layer. You’ll seeing bliss all the time. That’s the first layer. The first layer outside of self is ecstasy, is bliss, is a vibration of bliss. Then it comes down to gallio, wisdom, deep wisdom, understanding, deep, and then it comes down to mind and it comes down to energy, emotions, and it comes down to physical. And you form out there that you don’t know that now, but someday that will not be a philosophy to you. That is what you will go from one layer to the other and that’s who you are and you decide where you want to go. You want to use your mind, use your mind.
You want to get into your heart. You get into your heart. You want to put your energy into the world, put your energy into the world. It’s your choice. You’re in there. You have complete control. You have complete control. Now, why don’t I have it Now, we’ll talk about that, but just understand that’s what’s going on. So the mind’s to do that, why are you not in ecstasy? It you’re being distracted from the ecstasy. I teach you that, and I hope you understand that because people don’t teach you that. It’s not that you haven’t gone there, it’s that you’re being distracted from there. Okay? So if I’m sitting here seeing this room and all of a sudden a snake goes over there, I’ve seen a room anymore, you guys aren’t here. You might as well not be here. You understand that it’s exactly the same as you’re not here.
Why? Because I’m not here with you. I’m over there with a snake. The snake has distracted my consciousness and pulled it away from my awareness of a very natural thing, which is you guys. That is why you’re not an ecstasy right now. That is why you’re not experiencing nirvana. That is why you’re not. God realized you are being distracted by the snake. It has pulled your attention down to it. Therefore, you’re not experiencing what’s there, which is joy, ecstasy, love God. It’s not I have to get back to God, I have to stop leaving. Big difference. So the consciousness is being drawn down. I’ll call you. An example is being drawn down to the snake. By snake, I mean a scary thing, something that’s not comfortable, something that’s distract your awareness so much that it gets fixated on it. Fair enough? Okay? That is what your mind is. It doesn’t have to be that, but that is what your mind is. Your mind is that snake. Your mind tells you, oh my God, what did I do wrong? Your mind tells you you did things wrong when you were three. You don’t mind until you did things wrong five minutes ago, a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, some of you guys, I’m not picking on you. Some of you guys are into past lives. I must say there aren’t past lives, okay, but I got enough trouble with this one.
You literally, there are people running around thinking, oh my God, I killed somebody in my past life. I’ve such amazing karma. Oh my God, there’s a mind for you. I would not let my mind do that. I don’t care. Whatever happened in the past, life happened. I don’t know this God, this over. No, no, I’m not doing that. I have enough trouble in my mind about what it thinks. It knows happened now. Now all of a sudden it wants to think something happened 15 lifetimes ago, Mary Bob said, you have thousands of lifetimes. I ain’t doing it. Doesn’t mean it’s not true. Things are true. I don’t have to do them. Why? My mind can get really screwed up. Do you know anything about that?
Okay, so your consciousness is distracted by your mind. You’re distracted by your mind. That’s the truth of the matter is, and you are distracted by your mind. Come on, let’s go real. You can look outside and if your mind is afraid of snakes, you can see a rope that’s coiled up and get scared. You can hear a baby rattle and get all weird yes or no, so you’re not even seeing the outside world. You’re seeing your mind. You’re sitting here. It’s beautiful. He went to Hawaii and it was really beautiful and all this stuff, but it just so happened that you went with somebody else and they ran off with somebody else.
How you doing in this beautiful place? You hate it. It’s ugly, stupid flowers. Am I right or wrong? You are distracted by your mind. You know it’s true, but you won’t talk about it. You won’t pay attention. Everything I’m saying is the absolute truth. Every minute of your life, you are not living in this world. You’re living in your mind, your consciousness, awareness. You are wherever your awareness is, your awareness is on your mind. You’re aware of your thoughts, you’re aware of what you like things or don’t like. Who decides you like things in your mind? Do you understand that? You think, oh, I like the color blue. Why the mind said so? I mean it doesn’t have to be. There can be a vibration. We talk about the energy body and so the blue can make the energy body nice and guess what the mind says? I like that. I want blue. The heart doesn’t do that. The heart’s an experiencer. The heart feels. It doesn’t sit there and say, well, I like blue, but I’m not getting enough of it. So I’m really upset. The heart didn’t do that. The mind did that. Your mind could screw up every single thing that ever was or ever will be. I love her. I feel so much love, but she’s not with me right now. I wonder what she’s doing. Hope she’s not with somebody else Mine. Does anybody have one of those?
That’s a problem. Let’s go slow. That’s a snake. That’s worse than a snake. That’s a coil lever. Rattling, lau snake sitting in there screwing up your life. You can’t have a decent life if you don’t have a decent relationship with your mind. Period. That’s all it. It such the truth. I told you it is your mind that determines the quality of your life. That is not some spiritual discussion. Which one? You don’t think that’s true. It is your mind that determines the quality of your life. So what are we doing about that? Let’s talk about it in a sense. You all know it. You know it. Don’t think about it, but you know that and you. We don’t want to like that. We want to have a nice quality of our life. Now I’m going to go very slow. Never go slow. Just pay attention.
Your mind is determined the quality of your life. Instead of working with your mind, you buy into it and it says, I want to go to Hawaii. I should get to go to Hawaii. I work hard. I should be able to afford to go to Hawaii. This is ridiculous. There we go. You just got yourself screwed up. Don’t tell me you don’t do that. Alright, so now your mind has done that and we’re not doing well. Watch what you do about it. You try to borrow money to go to Hawaii. You try to date somebody who lives in Milwaukee. Maybe they’ll take you there. You dress all Hawaiian. Maybe you try to get the world outside of you to be the way your mind wants it to be so that your mind’s not giving you trouble and that’s how you know to change the quality of your life.
I need somebody, years ago I got divorced or she left me or this happened or I’ve never really had a really strong relationship. I don’t think I met my soulmate. I need to find somebody. You are out there trying to find somebody and what if you can’t? I’m depressed. Your mind is not only screwing up your life, it’s running your life. So this whole question, for example, of attracting to yourself that what you want, people whole seminars, they go for weeks to learn how to do that, okay? They learn mantras. They go to India, they go, oh my god, they got all kinds of stuff, right? Truth, let’s get this straight. Can you attract to yourself what you want? Yes. Okay. How does that gel? We just talked about I that your mind determines the quality of your life. Who’s telling you what you want?
Who’s telling you that you want anything? Who’s telling you you’re not okay without it? Your mind? Do you understand that your mind is saying, I’m not okay, let’s go to Hawaii. I’m not okay unless I find my soulmate, I’m not okay unless have enough finances to do what I want to do. Right or wrong? You don’t want to say this, this stuff, do you? Alright, see, I’m not talking against the law of attraction. It’s there. It’s real. I’m going deeper. I’m sitting here telling you, your mind has distracted you to tell you that you are not okay unless you have this thing didn’t it? And you’re buying into that. You’re in your mind so much so that that’s it runs your life. What does the snake that was just causing you a problem you don’t have? The thing is telling you what you need to do. You better do for me to stop bothering you and you’re doing it. I just, over 50 years, I’ve gotten a little bit involved, alright? To me, if your mind tells you you can’t be okay unless you have something and you go out to get it with a gun, you get to get with good looks. You go out to get it with money, you go out to get it with flaws of attraction. You go out to get it by behaving really well. So God gives it to you.
They all look the same to me and I’m not telling you not to do ’em. You got to be where you’re at. You understand that, but you come out here, we’re going to talk. We can have once in your life an honest talk. They’re all the same. They’re not really the same. There’s different repercussions and karma, whatever, but they’re all the same. They’re basically saying, your mind has told you I’m not okay, and it told you why they need something. They need something to be okay. Alright? Who said so? My mind? Why are you not okay of your mind? Why are you not sitting in the bliss, totally bliss out like the great masters because your mind distracted you from the higher states of your being and then it’s doing this. Nna is talking, so your mind is doing this. Your mind is screwing you up.
Your mind is being a snake and then telling you what to do to get a cage for it because it really likes cage. Get a sister snake, they can play with each other. Then you don’t have to be scared. That’s what’s happening. Your mind is telling you what to do so that it will stop bothering you. There. I got it. Did I? Your mind is telling you what to do so that it can stop bothering you. Alright? Guy is hitting you, mistreating you and telling you this is going to go on unless you do that. Holy mackerel, you letting the worst thing in life run your life, okay? So your mind is literally telling you what to do so that it stops bothering you. And I gave you all the techniques it uses. I know you judge, I don’t. There are people whose mind tells them the way to get money is to rob a liquor store.
Why does their mind tell them that? Because that’s what daddy did. That’s what my friends do. Mind tells ’em all kinds of things, doesn’t it? There are people that the mind tells them, run around naked and people will pay attention to you. They are. They do the hat. There are people, let’s get honest. There are people that are so caught in their mind and it’s so closed, they don’t feel anything. You know that they don’t have any heart, they don’t have anything, they don’t feel anything and they go to s and m clubs to get beat. Listen to me, I’m an honest talk, don’t they? Yes or no? Alright, why? So that they can feel something who told ’em to do that? Their mind. There are people that if the mind is not getting what it wants, it tells them to kill themselves.
I always want, so don’t you ever talk about suicide publicly. I’m going to talk about truth. Do people commit suicide? Did anyone commit suicide? That the mind didn’t tell ’em to do it? That mind is a serious problem and the answer is not to give it what it wants. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with having things. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with preferences and this and that, it’s just they ruin your life. The fact that you want something your mind did, that you don’t know what you want. How many times have you gotten what you want and never want anything else?
How much times have you knocked out what you want and yes, the next day you never even thought about it ever again. You couldn’t have cared less. Thank God I didn’t get that. Thank God I didn’t go down that road. Okay, take a breath. This is all mind. It’s not the mind. I teach you that all the time. The mind is a very great thing. These are layers. There’s a vibration, rates of your being and mind is a vibration rate that’s extremely creative and extremely inspired and extremely, oh my God, that can do amazing things. He can write music. It can think about things. Einstein sat in a chair and thought about theories of relativity. They did not come from his math. He would sit down and think about things. Your mind is very great, but you just use a tiny bit of your mind, the vast majority of what your thoughts are about.
There’s a quiz. What are the vast majority of your thoughts about me? What I want, what I don’t want, what I believe, who I like, who I don’t like? What happened in my past, what I hope happens in my future, they’re about me. Do you know there’s a whole universe out there that’s not you, but you don’t think about it. That’s called the personal mind, the ego mind. Okay, why is it like that? If you were in your state of bliss, it wouldn’t be doing that. If you’re doing this instead of IE mind, okay? And if you are in a state of pure intellect that is inspired to think things through and the wisdom of mind can do great things, you would not be doing IE mind. And so if you’re in the intellectual mind, the abstract mind, the creative mind, you’re not thinking about you.
If you’re thinking about you, you can’t be doing creativity. You can’t be doing that stuff. I mean, John’s not here right now, but he’s a great potter, right? John doesn’t think about making pottery. He can sell ever. He creates and people want to buy it. Fine. If they didn’t, he would still make it. Now go to a commercial pottery shop. What do people want? Let’s make it. It doesn’t have any soul to it. It didn’t come from the heart, it came from the mind, what the mind wants. So eventually you catch on that you’ve missed your higher self, which is the self enlightenment. And then not even paying attention to the ecstasy that you were given and not even paying attention to this beautiful mind that you have. Every one of you, you don’t have to be Einstein, you have a beautiful mind. I can think of all kinds of things, but it doesn’t, it thinks about me. And I do this with you all the time. Use your intellectual bio. I’ll borrow your intellectual bio for a minute. I know it’s hard to get you off of you.
Literally. I used to teach some stuff when I taught, I don’t know, back in the seventies in Santa Fe. And I’d give lectures like this and they let me do that in the school. I would sit there and I’d teach, and some of ’em were night classes and people, they’d come and continue their education or so everyone did really well. But every once in a while, so I’d walk up to me and say, it’s really interesting, all these things about the planets and the galaxies and 1.3 million earths fit inside the sun. It’s really interesting. How’s it going to put food on the table? What’s it got to do with me? It got to do with me nothing.
I want you to see. That means your personal mind will not let your consciousness go to the intellectual mind if we talk about it, how small is this thing you’re thinking about all the time? Because the vast majority of your thoughts are about you. Okay? So what happens is if you try to think beyond that, it pulls you back. It distracts you from your bigger mind. How small, if that’s true. And the vast majority of the thoughts which I’m caught in are about I’m e mine. How small did I make my universe? Well, let’s see, I’m here. What do I take up? A couple of feet, six foot by three foot, 18 square feet. Well, how much more is there than that physically, even in this room, much do I take up even in Gainesville, how much do I take up? How much in the United States do I take up?
How much on a planet earth do I take up? And that’s what I’m thinking about. And 1.3 million earth fit inside the sun. Come on, we’re going to go big. Now, how much room am I taking up? Am I important? 1.3 million Earth inside the sun and I’m taking that amount of space. That’s all I think about is that, well, I made my world pretty small and the sun is one of 300 billion stars in our galaxy. Now how small am I? How important is what I’m thinking about? Zero. Zero. That’s how important it’s, and I spent my entire life thinking about that funny, right? And there’s 2 trillion galaxies. Now I don’t know about you, but that’s rather liberating to realize I don’t really have to think about this all the time. And by the way, the other fun part is this, of all of the stuff I’m not thinking about, it seems to be doing its thing.
Planet stay in orbit, the atoms stay together and 35 trillion cells inside my body give me a body. I don’t do a thing. I don’t even say thank you. The planet keeps spinning, man, what am I thinking about? Me, me, me, me. And how are you doing with that? It creates anxiety, tension, fear, et cetera, et cetera. By the way, that is what creates desire. There’s nothing wrong with desire, but I understand what creates it because I’m thinking about me. I’m caught in this tiny little space of me and it’s not very comfortable. So I need to do things to make myself feel better. I’m compensating for the fact that I’m not okay. Everything I’m doing is compensating for the fact that I’m not okay unless I am touching a deeper part of my being and I’m expressing that into the world. Otherwise I’m taking, I need everything to be the way I want so that I can be okay.
This is how much your mind is distracting your consciousness. It becomes your whole life. Is it your whole life? Of course not these 35 trillion cells that make your body, they’re pretty much your life. The fact that the planet still spin through space and I don’t fall through those. Adams are doing their job. Everything has to be doing what it’s doing for me to even be here. And I’m thinking, no, it has to be the way I want right now and it better not have been the way it was because I didn’t like it. But that happened 30 years ago. I don’t care. I didn’t like it. Your mind does that, doesn’t it? Yeah.
The mind is a problem. The personal mind, mine I gave you. Mine is beautiful, but what you’re doing with, it’s like you’re running a program in this great computer of mine. You’re running a program that is, I mean mine, I mean mine, I mean mine. And therefore you’re not experiencing anything else and you’re caught within yourself and you’re not okay and you’re scared and you’re insecure. What is insecurity? I have a mind that says I want to be accepted. I have a mind that says I judge everybody. They’re probably judging me. I’m not comfortable. I’m not comfortable, am I? I’m not comfortable. So I have to get comfortable how? Find a special relationship, be popular, wear clothes that people agree with or ones that no one agrees with because I like to be a different, you’re not getting away from this or what group can I join so that I feel part of the whole and what can I believe so that people agree with what I believe?
So now you have to go out there because you locked yourself in this little cage of your tiny little mind. And by the way, why is your mind the way it is? Hers isn’t like mine. Hers isn’t like hers. Why is it doing what it’s doing? It’s so easy. You don’t need psychology. It’s very easy. Your mind is the sum of that mind, that personal mind that’s talking all the time about I mind is the sum of your learning experiences. I told you, if you don’t know what a is, you’re not afraid of it. Nor do you want one.
But if all of a sudden you read in a newspaper, there’s a floating around town and it’s for $7 million, where’s that? All of a sudden that thing you read was a learned experience and it programmed your mind and the minute it programmed your mind, you either want it or don’t want it. Well, that’s what your experiences throughout your life have done. You dated a redhead in fifth grade and she was wonderful. She was terrible. Now you do or don’t like redheads. You did not make that up. You were programmed. That part of your mind is programmed by your past experiences. If when it came in you in there hit the mine, it felt good. It came in the energy body, it felt good. Guess what? You want it to have it again if it felt bad. Let’s see. You don’t want it to have it again.
You’re programmed. That is what determined your preferences. That’s what determined what you’d like and what you don’t like and what you want and what you don’t want and what you’re upset because it’s not happening and you’re excited it might happen or you’re afraid that it might happen. You understand that you’re in there. Do you see this? And now you’re living inside of that. So it’s programmed by your past experiences that determined whether it’s happy or not happy based on the past. Freud taught you that you held know what you did. You’ve had experience in your life that didn’t feel good. I’ll tell you what we should do. Let’s keep them so they keep coming back even though they’re not happening anymore and they’ll never happen again. Your parents won’t get divorced again. They’re gone. They died. It doesn’t matter. I’m not getting married. I’m not.
I saw how terrible it was and I’m not having children. I went through that. A child is a divorcee. I don’t want anyone to go through that. I’m not having children. You had an experience and it didn’t feel good. So you kept it and let it mold your life. I a Freud, I’ll tell you, I guarantee you the ones that bothered you the most molded your life, they determined the quality of your life. Why? They’re over, they’re over. They shouldn’t even be in there. They just be memories. If you want to think about it, fine, but they don’t come back and haunt you. They don’t come back and destroy your mind. There are people who say, there are psychologists that say that. Not all of ’em who say if you had a bad childhood, those are your formative years. You’re never going to get over that.
You have to learn to cope. Why do you need to cope? Because you kept it. Why’d you keep it if you didn’t keep it in there? You don’t have to cope with it. Find you saw a snake once. How many times did you not see a snake? 700 billion. How many times did you see one? Once? Isn’t that silly? So now you have to have this mind. That’s a serious problem. It’s a serious problem. If you want to tell me what you want and what you like and what happened, okay, I’ll try to listen. It’s hard.
Ramdas once said, if you want to tell me all the things that went wrong and was bothering you, I’ll try to listen, but I don’t even listen to myself. I don’t even listen to my mind saying those things. Well, I don’t want to listen to your saying them. It is 8.5 billion people on the planet earth. They all got a story they call it now they call ’em stories, right? They all have a story to tell. Why? How about be here now what does that mean? There are no stories. It’s over. It happened. Fine. Okay. My parents got divorced. Okay? I had a bad teacher in the fifth grade. Okay, fine, but I have now, you’ll never know because you’re too busy looking at the world through the programming of that filter that you built in there, you couldn’t handle reality. That’s why you understand that.
Why’d you keep it in there? You couldn’t handle it. You don’t keep everything in there. I mean you have memory. You can bring that memory. Don’t my memory. I’m talking about some scars, patterns that left impressions on your mind, that built this personal mind. You collected them and you sewed ’em together. And here’s me. It’s my ego, my self concept, what I like, what I don’t like, what I believe, what I don’t believe, who I like, what I hope happens in the future, what I wish never happened before. You just built this thing. Go the eagle island. Do you have to? No, you do not have to. You do not have to do that. You do not have do that. I highly advise instead of building it, being uncomfortable with it and you know you’re uncomfortable with it and then trying to get the outside world and everybody in it to be the way it wants it to be so it feels better.
That’s a tough job and it doesn’t ever work. If you get what you want, you’re afraid of losing it. If you get what you want, you get tired of it. If you don’t get what you want, you feel depressed and terrible, you can’t win. There’s no win in that mind. That’s a losing situation in eventually you wake up to that and you sit there and say, well what am I going to do? I’m in it. I’m in it. I’m in. It has distracted my consciousness and I’m addicted to that thing and it’s a dictator. It runs me. What happens to you? Your mind wants something. I don’t give you what it wants. You suffer. If something starts to happen that your mind doesn’t want hasn’t happened yet, you worry about it. Is anybody listening? This is not natural. You do not have to live like this, period.
I wouldn’t live like that another day. I want to live with that. That’s ridiculous to live like that, isn’t it? That’s a lose lose situation. And you think no, if my ship comes in, who made up the ship? If you have bucket lists, what’s a bucket list? I have not been okay my entire life. I’ve tried. There are some things I haven’t tried yet. Maybe they’ll make me be okay. I guarantee you there’s nothing on your bucket list that you’ve already done unless you’re not done with it. I want to do it again. It’s like this is crazy. Why can’t you be okay? You’re on this beautiful planet. It’s unbelievable. You can’t handle the unfolding of these amazing colors and shapes and people and things and things to do and everything. No, they don’t match what I want. They match what I don’t want. Or maybe someday they’ll match what I don’t want and that makes me scared and that’s how I live.
And so I’m busy out there manipulating. Is there another way to do it? Let’s get this over with. Are you convinced that you’re distracted by your mind? Are you convinced that your mind’s a serious problem and as a quality of your life to being determined by the thoughts it’s creating? What’s the alternative as opposed to thinking the only way you can be okay is to get the outside world to be the way your mind wants it to be. And I hope you’re old enough to realize it’s not going to happen. Why? Because the sum of your learned experiences is what your ego mind is. Your desires are the sum of your learned experiences. There’s a moment of folding in front of you is if the sum of your learned experiences is the moment of folding in front of you, every person, every event, all the physics, are they the sum of your learned experiences?
Never. Well, but wait. You want it to be the sum of your learned experiences. That’s where your preferences come from. It’s not going to do it. We have we and you go out there and start manipulating don’t you. Don’t you dare do that again. I don’t like when you do that. No, I’m leaving if you do that. Okay, very good. And you don’t just do that to people. You do that to the weather. It better not rain tomorrow. I’m going camping. Alright, now there’s a big eye. I said there’s an ego for you. It better not rain tomorrow. I’m going camping. You do it. You say that. I can’t believe it’s raining on my birthday. It doesn’t know it’s your birthday. How big is his ego mind says said, understand you can’t win. I’m not telling you not to do your thing, do your thing someday you wake up, you can’t win.
No. Is ever one doing that? Well, what’s the alternative? Well, let’s see if the mind is the problem, then maybe the mind is the solution. Maybe we can work with the mind directly instead of having to indirectly manipulate everything else. So the mind’s okay and maybe since I don’t have control over that entire universe and everybody in it, I do have control over my mind. I’m in here. It’s my mind. You mean I can clean up my mind and everything will be okay? Yes, everything, yes. Will it be the way, dice way? Will it be the way it should be? Will it be moral? Will it be just? Will it be? I can’t answer that. We can talk about that, right? But for right now, it’ll be the way it is. Very zen rose will be red, water will be blue and whatever the other one was.
Grass is green, grass is green. These are what they are. That’s your starting position. Otherwise it’s not okay that they are what they are and then you suffer. I’m not going to do it. Buddha taught you. That’s how deep Buddhist teachings are. All life is suffering. The cause of suffering is that you want things to be a certain way. That’s the cause of your suffering, desire, preference. If you are open and you enjoy the fact that he’s wearing that blanket and it didn’t remind you of the blanket you lost two years ago and is that it?
I only laugh because it’s so true. Do you hear me? So now it can’t just be the blanket. It has to be this thing going inside your mind. There’s nothing you interact with that hit your mind and that’s why you suffer. And so basically you catch on and we’re right there to this very rational point saying, if the mind is the problem and the mind is the solution, well what do I do about it? Do I have to renounce the world? Should I renounce everything that my mind wants? No, of course not. Then your mind is still running your life.
I’m talking really honest like grownups. If your mind wants something and you go out there to get it, it’s running your life. If your mind wants something, you absolutely, I’m not touch it. I have nothing to do with it. It’s running your life. You may have to go through a stage like that. It’s like if you’re addicted to alcohol or addicted to a drug, you have to go through withdrawal. You have to go through a stage of not doing it. Otherwise you stay addicted to it. But there will come a time where you don’t have to do anything. You don’t want it. You’re naturally liberated, you’re free of. It’s what liberation is. So yes, there may be times, but there’re just times they’re not the answer. Understand renunciation does not free you. It locks you up in a different box. I can’t touch anything. I can’t do anything.
I can’t say anything. It’s okay. I’m being good. Mayor Baba, great master once said the following, somebody once said that was giving a lecture, someone was talking, he talking about God and so he yelled out, well, if you do good, look how good is close to God. Just take away an o. OV said you can spend your entire life trying to take away that O and you never will. That’s not your way to God. To sit there and be good, you’ve got to be free. You’re free. You’re not locked in this little box that I better watch every single better. Watch out, better not show God’s looking. It’s just another box, isn’t it? It’s just another ego thing and you’ll be scared. You’ll be scared. Oh my God, I won’t go to heaven. Oh my God, I gamble. I did that. God won’t love me. It’s the same mind. Boy I’m talking real mature to you guys. Is it not the same mind? It’s just reprogrammed, right? Is that not what religion does? Try to reprogram your mind.
Okay, liberation means I have one of those and it’s very addicting, it’s very demanding and it’s very distracting. Can I learn to not be distracted by it? Not to change its clothes, not to do what it wants, not to not do what it wants, but to literally not be distracted by it. Now we’re talking deep now we’re talking the deep path and I understand the difference. It’s like, okay, the mind says, oh, I want that car watch. I want that car. The car drove by and the thought went by. Can you do that? Can you learn to do that? Yes. Can you learn to not have your mind run and dropped from the O for good to God? I ed an I learned to not have your mind, run your life or ruin your life. It’s ruining your life, okay? You don’t have to fight it.
These are deep, deep teachings. A deep one’s teacher don’t fight with your mind. You are reinforcing it by fighting with it. I can’t believe you said that. That’s an X-rated of thought. I don’t have X-rated of thoughts. Oh my God, that’s disgusting. How could you think that? There you go. You just buried yourself in the thought. You just invested in that thought by resisting it. You know who taught you this? You go check the Bible and you see, if Christ didn’t say they set an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth, but I Sam unto you, resist not evil. If you resist evil evil’s running your life, you’ve just devoted your life to evil, to doing it or to resisting it. Well, what’s the alternative?
I’m free. I’m free. If the thoughts need to do what they need to do, I’m fine. When I’m coming and going, couldn’t care less have nothing to do with me. They just something I’m watching you let white lines on the road go by. You let clouds go by. Why can’t thoughts go by? Because they distract you. If the clouds distracted, you’d be standing there staring at ’em. If the wine line distract you, if you stop looking, but they don’t, you’re capable of letting things. Do you know that 99.9% of every single thing that ever came in through your senses went right through When you were looking at that snake, there was still a room, there was still grass they went through. It’s just the things you focused on and you kept them. That’s why they’re distracting. You stored the things that caught your attention so much you didn’t like it and you focused on it so much that it stayed and now you keep holding it in there. Why? Because I don’t want to see it again. So I’m keeping it away. I’m suppressing it. That’s what suppression is. I’m keeping a distance from me so that it can always be there.
Have you had things happen in your life that are like that, that you’re still holding onto? If they try to come back up, you push ’em back down and that people talk about it and you’re sensitive and you get hurt. Maybe that’s how you fix this situation. You say, I need to learn not to do that. That’s not a very rational thing to do, to program my mind with every single thing that ever bothered me so that it distracts me all the time and I’m addicted to it and I have to fight in there and keep everything right. I have to fight outside. Whoa, that doesn’t sound like fun at all. So the answer is I need to let go. That’s the answer. I need to let go. I need to learn to let go of this stuff I stored in my mind. I need to do that. How would you like to wake up tomorrow morning and not have any of that stuff in there from your past? And somebody says to you, you remember when your parents got divorced? Yeah, it was a tough time and that’s it. Now she talking about that. Oh my god, I can’t believe.
Weird. Do you get weird? It gets me. Do you get weird sometimes when you see something or think something or somebody says something or you think somebody might, I want to know. Come on, come on. Is it weird the right word? It gets weird in there, doesn’t it? Do you like it getting weird? No. Therefore you need to manipulate the world so it doesn’t do anything that makes you get weird or you learn to let go of that stuff that you stored in there that it’s hitting that shouldn’t be in there. It’s not happening anymore. I got a rule. If it ain’t happening outside, it ain’t happening inside. That’s what be here now means. By the way, if it ain’t happening outside, why is it happening inside? I mean, I can do things inside. I can think about the universe. I can think about God.
I can think about creativity. I can write, oh, I got to so many things on my mind, but that mind that has caught my attention and keeps it there my whole life because things weren’t the way I wanted them to be and now I have to go out and kill myself to try and make it be okay. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I will not devote my life to however you want to devote your life to that sucker. Is it not a losing battle? Okay, so what do you do? Yeah, sure. You can meditate, you can do res, you can find gurus fine. You can do all those things. And I’m not telling you not to do anything, but I’m telling you, if you do all those things and don’t let go of your mind, you didn’t get anything. If you go over there, let’s just say that the sixties, that was a big thing.
Go over there and meet the gurus and visit all the places and come back and say, I met this guru. I met that one. You just reprogrammed your mind for ego. You build what’s called a spiritual ego. You did the same thing just about something else. Now we’re really talking deep. I want to help you skip all the steps. I want you to be free, love every morning of life. And so basically you wake up that that can’t happen while you have with this junk in there. So what’s the technique? There are some very serious techniques. You can do all a lot of trouble and there’s something really simple. Well, don’t do it.
Don’t store it in there and then have to meditate and do mantras and do all kind of thing to try and get it out. How about we don’t store it in there? How do you do that? How do you do that? That’s what I teach. I meditate. You should meditate. You can meditate. You can’t meditate, right? I teach what to do while you’re not meditating and that’s a lot more of your life. What can I do while I’m not meditating? That changes all this? You can start by waking up in the morning saying, okay, I remember the talk. I got a bunch of garbage in here and it’s a problem and I don’t know how to get rid of it. How about I start by not putting more in?
Oh, I can do that. I could do that. That’s a lot easier. I could go through the day and not put more in there. If I say something to somebody and they don’t say back what I expect them to say, if the driver in front of me is driving five miles hour below speed limit and I’m in a rush. If I get every light going to town, every single light turns red before I get there. Alright? If it rains when I don’t want it to. These are not really earth shattering things, but they bother you and you talk about ’em. Oh it was so hot yesterday, yesterday’s over. How about we actually seriously take this assignment and say it seems meaningless or unimportant that way about things. I resist things. I don’t like the weather. I don’t like the person. I don’t like somebody to say hello.
I don’t like that somebody said something. Whatever. It’s just this little stupid little thing that driver in front of me. All this stuff. What if I actually practice? Just practice. We practice a piano, we do scales. They’re very boring, but it’s good to do scales. We practice athletics. We don’t start off with master of things. We practice tennis. You practice golf, you practice things. What if we practice not storing this stuff that easy? I’ll make it easier for you just since you shouldn’t have stored the stuff to start with. If you didn’t store all that stuff, you’d be in ecstasy right now. You wouldn’t be distracted by this stupid thing you built in there. You’d be feeling your ecstasy body and have brilliant thoughts. So if you want to do that, you have to learn how to not store stuff just cause you didn’t like it to let it go. Alright? And you do it with the tiniest thing, the new book, living on Tyler. I teach this, I call it low hanging fruit. Just start with the low hanging fruit. What’s low hanging fruit? That which the only reason it’s bothering you because you said it did.
Somebody comes and punch you into face and I don’t bother you. If somebody sits there and takes your house away, that things can bother you. I understand, right? But if the only reason it’s bothering you is you decided to have it bother you, it’s very silly. It’s raining out. It doesn’t have to bother you. You decided I don’t want it to rain. What if you want it to rain? Just plant your garden. You are deciding this with your mind. So if you’re deciding with your mind, I’ll give you a clue. You have two choices. Let it go or decide that you like it. I teach that you should let go of your preferences. Some people come to me, say, I like my preferences. I say, okay, I know you like your preference. I’ll give you a different path. Totally different path. Remember the third Z page?
I said The great way is not difficult. For those that have no preferences, he gave me permission to change that line. It’s the most famous line that was ever written. The great way is not difficult for those under preferences ready for the change. Here’s the edit. The great way is not difficult. For those who prefer everything, take your choice. Either way works fine. In other words, don’t store it negative. The temperature, the rain, the line. You have to wait in the grocery store, whatever it is. When Oprah interviewed me on the new book, she picked out a line and then she’s wise. It was definitely the most beautiful line in the book. It was always my favorite, right? The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You’re bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. Okay? That’s certainly true of this low hanging stuff, but you can’t even handle that. So maybe we start there. Practice accepting, honoring, respecting, letting go, handling, call, whatever you want. The things that you had decided, your mind just decided, I don’t like this. I don’t like the shirt he is wearing. Now, you don’t like something either. Let go of that. Stay open. Stay open to it or tell your mind. You can talk to your mind. Hello mine. You don’t like it. I love it.
It’s called positive affirmation. I love the shirt. Look at that shirt. I can’t read it. It makes me dizzy. All the colors. I love being dizzy. Can you do that? I highly advise it. And you go the morning, you wake up and say, that’s what I’m going to do today. I’m not going to store more negative junk inside of my mind now things will happen. Hit your old stuff. I know it’s difficult. Just do the best you can. Do the best you can with that. I’m telling you, if you practice your scales on the piano, you’ll not be able to play Beto right away. But you’ll get better. You’ll get better each time that you practice, every time you practice accepting, honoring, respecting life to let it come in and let it go, you’ll get better at it. And next thing you know, it won’t just be the weather, it’ll be the fact that you called out to Sally and she didn’t acknowledge that you called her and she’s your best friend.
And your mind’s going, well, why? What did I do? Oh my God, I hope George didn’t tell her what I said. All of a sudden you say Sally and she doesn’t turn around. Say, Sally didn’t say hello, you don’t care. Or if you want, if you’re not there yet, you say, oh, she’s probably got her earbuds in. That’s she told me she was earbuds. Leave it positive. Otherwise, three days later when you see Sally, guess what’s coming out of your mouth? I said, hello to you. Three days. Holy mackerel. You know what Sally’s going to say? What are you talking about? And then you get hurt. You didn’t even know you ignored me. What are you doing? You’re screwing up your life. You are doing it yourself. Sally didn’t do it. So I gave you two choices, either just let it go. I don’t do this again.
I’m going to practice letting go. Just let it go. And or use positive affirmation. Leave it positive. Don’t let it sit in there and ruminate and make your life get ruined. Because you decided, what did you decide? Oh, I know what’s happening. You’re right. Oh my god. Three years ago I told George something about Sally. She probably ran into him and he probably told her that, what am I going to do? Should I call George? What are you doing? How dare you ruin your life like that. Okay, anybody listening, do you do that? I’ll be nicer. Does it do that to you? That’s how I want you look at it. I’m in here. Look at that. Thing’s drew to me and I’m buying into it no more. No way. Okay. I literally moved out to the woods and left. Folks get my rin. Oh, it’s just a dropped out.
I said, I ain’t letting that sucker go inside my mind, period. I don’t care what it takes. I’m taking a hiatus from this thing to watch and get that thing together, alright? And tried the best I could to shut it up. And then I learned what I just talked to you. It took 50 years. Alright? You try to shut it up. There’s a reason it’s talking. Why? Because you told it to. You told it to figure out how everyone should like you told to figure out what to wear, what to eat, what to you told it to do. This neurotic garbage and it’s busy doing it and you trying to shut it up. Alright? You start catching on, you’re in there. Take a breath and let go. Just keep letting go. Let go. And next thing you know, you can handle bigger things and bigger things.
I’m very proud to say I see people that practice this path, that big things happen and they handle them. They handle really good. Somebody dies, somebody leaves. It happens. Does that mean I don’t interact with life? That’s ridiculous. Of course you interact with life, but you don’t interact with life because you can’t handle it. You interact with life because you’re participating in it. So if somebody you love dies, you’re going to feel sad. Now of course we have a feeling instead of a mind. You know what some people’s minds say? How could you do that? How could you die on me? You signed a license, we were married. You said you’d be here forever and you take care of me. Their minds say things like that, don’t they? That’s ridiculous. Instead of feeling loss, instead of feeling the love that you have for this person and going through the process of the adjustment that’s necessary, that they’re no longer in your life, you’re letting your mind ruin your entire life.
The real situations are scared to talk about, aren’t they? You can handle anything. It doesn’t mean you don’t feel. You do feel. Finally, you feel your mind’s not stopping your heart from feeling. The heart has a feeling and then it releases you grow. You learn from it. You’re a better person. You’re a better portion for single situation you went through because you learned to go through it. You learned to be a knower of that situation and instead of being weird about it, and so you start practicing this, you’re practicing this, but you do interact with life. It’s not that hyvee doesn’t interact with life, they don’t interact with life because they can’t handle it. They interact with life because they can handle it. They have clarity and instead of saying, what do I need to do to make you be the way I need you to be?
So I’m okay. They look at the situation, what can I do to help? Not help me? There is no me anymore. Not like that. You’re okay. You’re okay. You can handle things. Then you can handle things. You come into the world and you say, here’s a moment passing before me. How can I raise it? What can I do to help? You can’t fix everything, but you can smile. You can be kind, you can bring love. You understand that, but not if you need it to be some way for you to be. Okay. Alright, so we had a nice talk about the eagle mind, didn’t we? That’s how you get rid of it. You can’t suppress it. You can’t put on clothes on it or dress it white. And I’m spiritual. You learn to handle the daily things and in the morning you say, I’m going to handle it.
You’ll go through the day and the night you sit down, you say, did I handle it? The answer’s of course. No, I didn’t handle everything. Well, let go of what you didn’t handle. Neutralize it. Just neutralize. It sounds like. I can say if Sally’s still bothering you because you didn’t say hello somebody, you have to use affirmation. Just sit down and say, mine hell am mine. Sally had those new earbuds I gave them to her. She was listening to them. See, she was honoring me by listening to the ear. But you don’t know how I was doing, but you didn’t know the other way either. Say, well make something of good. You don’t. You make up bad every single time. Everything’s the worst that your mind can think of and you wonder why you’re not okay. So neutralize if you have to, then you’ll learn to let it go on the fly.
You learn to let it go on the fly. All of a sudden you’re in a meeting and you say something that nobody agrees with you and you walk out and they’re all talking and the might say, oh my God, I’m going to get fired. Just sit there and say, wow, I learned something. What I said wasn’t right, and they all help me and taught me, thank you so much and you’ll walk away and that’s the end of it. You hear me? I’d rather get fired than have that go inside my head. You learn to say that to your mind. You’re fired.
Well, you gave it a job to do. You said to your mind, mind, be psychic. Figure out how everything needs to be for me to be okay. And then figure out how to make it be that way and then go do it. You’re fired and then you’ll get higher and higher and you’ll still interact with life and a nice talk with some honest discussions. You do not want to devote your entire life to that garbage that is going on inside your mind that you built. You built it because couldn’t handle reality. Learn to handle reality. And where do you see what happens? And that’s you end up. It’s not if I be good and I do everything, I get to feel joy. No, it’s because you’re not distracted by the garbage you stored in there. You will naturally feel joy. My guess. That’s the higher layer. That’s where you are. And in the end, the ones who went really deep, they went past the joy, they went past the ecstasy to the one who is experienced. Someone’s experienced in the ecstasy. What’s the nature of self? What is enlightenment? To fall back into the core of your being and to find out that you God descended. Alright, as high as I’m going. Thank you for listening. 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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