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, Jai Masters. Let’s talk about one of the most important words on your entire spiritual path from beginning to end. That is the word resistance. Let’s talk about resistance. It’s so deep. Just take a breath. When I move my hand through the air, there’s no resistance, nothing that we notice. Therefore, there’s no repercussions. There’s momentary movement of the air, but I don’t care and it doesn’t make any difference when I squeeze my arm or if you squeeze my arm, there’s pain. Depending on hard, you squeeze it. That’s because there’s resistance. Your nerves pick up my squeeze because there is resistance and the resistance pushes down on the nerves, which causes them to stimulate. If there was not resistance, if I had light and just passed right through the hand, x-rays do it, but how can it make it through the bones? Because there’s no resistance. Light can pass through things without creating resistance.
That’s resistance on the physical plane. All pain, all physiological pain is due to resistance. Now, when we anesthetize the nerves, there’s still resistance, but you stop them from sending the signal. Just imagine if there was no resistance, there’s no pain, okay? In order for those nerves to get stimulated, there has to be resistance to the pressure and then it causes stimulation. So all physical pain is due to resistance. Now I’m saying you’re wrong. You shouldn’t be resisting physical pain. It shouldn’t be resisting. It’s a natural phenomenon. That’s what happens. They’re made of atoms and the atoms are bonded together stronger on your finger than on the skin, and therefore when it pushes down on it and the skin pushes back, creates resistance. I’m telling you, if the skin did not push back, you’re not being touched. I’m going to go deeper than this. You at least get this to understand that this is straight physics, straight health, okay?
Some people say that they feel pain when nothing’s touching their nerves, like if their heart hurts. Have you ever had your heart broken? Does it hurt? Well, I don’t understand. There’s nothing touching your nerves. You’re not doing anything. You’re just sitting there mind your own business, but does hurt, doesn’t it? Because there resistance. There has to be resistance if the wind is blowing in your face, let’s go a little further. If the wind is blowing in your face and you don’t mind, you’re not resisting, it’s refreshing. If the wind is blowing in your face and you’re afraid of the wind, you tighten up. You resist the experience. Do you understand that? Therefore, it bothers you. If you didn’t resist it, it wouldn’t bother you. I’m going to go slowly so you all come with me. So you went from the physical, which you know its resistance in order to stimulate the nerves and do anything.
Now we’re going very slightly into the reactionary and internal reactionary. You’ve had trouble with the wind. Your father got blown over and died in the wind when you were little. The net result is you don’t like wind, you have trouble with even slight winds, but somebody else finds it refreshing. What’s the difference? The pressure is the same on the face. There’s nothing happening inside. You’re resisting the experience and does it cause pain, suffering, discomfort? There’s no discomfort. How can you feel discomfort and you don’t. You’re saying right to each other exactly the same, when in fact you did not feel discovered all your life when you’re growing up till you’re five and your father died. It’s a stupid example. Sorry, I’m keep using it, right? And now from now on, when you feel the wind, it causes pain because of resistance. You are now resisting the experience.
Any resistance, I don’t care whether it’s on a physical plane, the emotional plane, the mental plane, whatever. If there is resistance to the experience, whether the physiological, psychological, whatever, if there is resistance, it creates pain. It creates tension. It creates stress. What is stress two forces opposing each other as a stress is they measure stress on eye beams by how much weight it can hold and it stresses it because it’s resistance. So you don’t just resist outside, you resist inside. Even though there’s nothing happening, there’s nothing happening. Nobody’s touching you, but energy’s coming in. Wind is energy, experience, emotions or energy. They’re not chemicals. They associate with chemicals. So what? Right? Do you understand that? That’s not the source? Just because something happens and it’s here, I’m going to push a button and a spray is going to come out. Don’t watch me push the button.
The spray came out by itself. No, I can’t define everything based on the spray. There’s somebody pushing a button. There’s causes for things. The reason you have chemical reaction with your emotions is because of the energy, because of the shakti, because of the qi, because the energy that’s coming down causes the body to react accordingly. There’s energetic stuff in there. There’s energy. When something comes into you, it has a vibration, it has energy and you have to be able to let that energy pass through. Or if you don’t let it pass through, you resist it. And when you resist it, you create tension, you create stress, you create pain. You’re doing it in there. If you don’t resist, I’ll give you a terrible example. Somebody’s hugging you. They grab, oh my God, they’re kissing you. I can go that far. Alright? They’re hugging and kissing you.
You love them. You can’t wait for them to hug and kiss you. Therefore you are not resisting. How does it feel? You love it. You don’t know the person. You don’t like them at all. They ran up there, grabbed you to hug you and kissed you. How are you doing? Well, I don’t understand. The kiss is exactly what I kiss the kiss. Come on guys. Okay, you wake up and you realize resistance is what changes the experience. That’s all that’s happening in there. You are either resisting or you are not resisting. Now, first of all, who’s resisting? Obviously the experience is not resisting itself. It’s just wind blowing that energy coming into you. When somebody says something to you, when things happen, you see a snake, you see a person, you see someone you like, see you don’t energy comes in. It’s an energetic experience.
What armor used to call an energetic experience. The snake does not come in. It’s out there, but the energy of the experience comes in, okay? If you accept it, honor it, respect it, surrender to it, I always want to use. That means you are in there letting it come in, which is very nice of you because it already came in or you want to be dealing with it. I say this to you over and over again, no one has ever in the history of the universe made something that already happened, not have happened. If that energy came in, it came in, you are not going to make it not have come in. It comes in and when it comes in, who resists, who accepts and who resists? What a beautiful question you do. What do you mean out here? No, no, no, no. You’re in there.
You’re a conscious being. You’re aware. You’re a conscious aware being and you have power. What’s that power called? Willpower. It’s a real power. Just like energy, power, wind, power, solar power. It’s called will power. Why is it a power? Because it has the ability to resist. It has the ability to create opposition. In physics, they call it force. Force can do work. You can do work in there, can’t you? Has anybody in there ever push away in emotion? Anybody there had thought they didn’t want to have and push it away? All of Freud’s teachings were about that. You do that called suppression, repression, denial. What is that? No, no, no saying no. You are you. The center of your being is saying, I don’t want to experience this. I always give you an example. Now help you with digesting this. What if you do want to experience it?
What if you like the experience? What if you turn the corner and the sun like tonight, the sun. Oh my god, it’s setting so beautiful. It blows you away. No resistance. That’s what blows you away means it blew my mind. I had these thoughts going on in there and I was manipulating and having trouble and they were gone. The wind blew them away. That’s how beautiful that sunset was, and I was open to the experience. Come on, you use these words all the time. I was open to the experience. Does that mean I didn’t resist? What does being open mean? Not resisting. What does mean close mean? Resisting. All of these words are saying the same thing. So if I mean here and the experience that comes in does not cause me to react with resistance. You say things like, it was so beautiful, it touched me, the death of my being.
Oh, I like those lines I’ve been using lately. Has anything ever touched with the death of your being? Have other things not touched the depth of your being? Are there things that happened that you would not let touch with the depth of your being? The last thing you do alive, and I think I’m coming in here. What you just said to me, you take that back, you’re not going to help. Like I said, if you’re in there saying take it back, it’s too late. It happened. It’s never going to not have happened, and the best you can do is say, I forgive you or I don’t forgive you. Or a person said, I’m so sorry. Okay? It doesn’t mean anything. If you resisted, it’s not going to go away until you accept the energy that took place. It can’t be, I don’t accept it, but you’re saying you’re sorry and we have to live together, so I will cope with it.
That means stay in there. I know what you come on. Let’s be honest. Somebody says something, insult. Somebody does something you don’t like. Okay, well get along. You apologize. You go to counseling, do some stuff, and so you cope with it. Two years later, he or she does something even close that you think might be related to that. It’s just stuff coming back up. Did you let it go? It’s not neutral, is it? It didn’t go through. It didn’t go through. Listen to me. You held it down there and then said, okay, what am I going to do? I want to stay married and the kids and I just got to cope with this. Coping is not the same as letting go. Cope means I found a way to live with it. How about don’t resist it so that it can pass through so it doesn’t have to be in there anymore.
It’s an experience happened three years ago. What are you doing holding in there, but you are holding in there. You are using this thing called willpower, which is the power of your soul, the power of your consciousness. People ask and I give you the answer and I no one tell you a deep enough meditation. You don’t understand. I understand where gasoline power comes from. Heat power, thermal power. I understand where wind power comes from. I understand where solar power comes from. Where does willpower come from? It’s just something we made up. I say it’s there, therefore it’s there. No, you can do stuff in there. You push thoughts around if you have to concentrate. What does concentrating mean? You concentrate. Concentrate. What exactly are you concentrating your consciousness? Focus. Focus what? You use words. You’re not paying attention. You are in there. You are conscious.
Your conscious can be scattered all over the place or you can focus it. If you want to do a math problem inside, there’s a concentrate. Hold it. Do it on a blackboard inside your head. Some people can do that. Some people can’t. It’s called concentrating, isn’t it? I’m telling you what you’re concentrating. You’re concentrating your consciousness and when you do that, you create a power and it’s called willpower and that’s what willpower is. It is the shakti, the power for the energy that is captured by concentrating consciousness. Best example I’ve ever given you, I’m outside of the field, the sun is shining. It’s a beautiful day kind of. The rays fall pretty much everywhere. I’m going to burn it off. Nothing’s catching fire. Have a nine degree day, whatever. Give me a magnifying glass. It’s just glass. It’s concave comebacks, right? Hold it out. Be careful.
Set the grass on fire. Right or wrong. Can a magnifying glass come down to a point and set a leaf on fire? What is happening? It is concentrating the power of the sun’s race. It is mirror is taking ’em so that instead of them falling evenly everywhere, it’s taking the ones that are in the field of that magnifying glass. When it falls on it, it focuses them all down to a given spot, therefore has tremendous power. So that which was just the sun shining. Now, setting things on fire, that’s what’s happening inside of you. When you use willpower, you’re taking the power of consciousness itself. I can’t avoid telling you that thousands and thousands, thousands of years ago in the ancient Indian culture, they said that you in there you the consciousness is not just consciousness. The word for consciousness in the ancient yoga scriptures is shit, is consciousness.
They said it’s not shit. It’s ti, all one word. Ti find the ancient scriptures ti. What is ti? Conscious energy. They’re the same thing. So when you concentrate your focus awareness, you are also concentrating energy, powerful energy and that’s why you can do work in there. That’s why you can hold thoughts. You can push emotions away. That happens to be how I can pick up this glass. What power offset gravity to pick up that glass and don’t tell me the food I ate fine. Why did it happen? What made it get picked up? The food made it get picked up. You are using your will. Volition’s called you in there. The consciousness said I want the glass on some water. You have to use your mind, just the initial impulse, okay? Your energy is what stimulated the muscles and use some food, fine to burn off some food to do that, but it was your energy that will power that’s in there that does every single thing you do with your body, everything you do with your mind, everything you do with your emotions, your being of great power and great consciousness.
That is what’s back there. You. That’s the you in there. The ottman, the soul, you call it. You want it’s consciousness. Consciousness. It’s the same as energy. So when you focus your consciousness, that’s called willpower. When you resist inside, they’re using your will to resist what came in. I don’t want you to have said what you said to me. Don’t you dare say that ever again. I will never talk to you. Where do you see how much that runs your life? What he said, no, what you did with what he said. You resisted it. Alright, now we’re going to talk about what I’ve talked to you about. Can you have pain inside? Can your heart hurt? Can your heart hurt? Answer me. Has your heart ever hurt? How bad can it get? Can it drive you to drinking? Can it drive people to suicide? So that must be a lot of pain.
That would be a lot of disturbance. People can’t handle it. They drink, they do drugs, do all kinds of stuff. To do what? To not feel that pain. What pain? There’s nobody touching you. There’s no nerves involved. What nerves are involved when you feel pain and your heart’s broken? Nothing. It’s resistance. I brought it back down. The reason the nerves stimulate pain is because there’s resistance, your structure resistant and therefore an impulses insides the same. It’s just not physical resistance. It’s the willpower that you have and event can come in and you can push it away and hold it back and you’ll have to struggle with it for the rest of your life. Is it true that when you push it away it comes back up? Can it come back up years later? Yes or no feel? Exactly. Wait, it’s amazing. Walk into a kitchen where somebody’s cooking and your mother cooked like that and it smells just like that.
That was 40 years ago. She’s been dead and all of a sudden you say, oh my god, just all this love. I thought my mother and I just felt just like it and I felt like with a little 7-year-old girl standing in the kitchen. Well, you stored it when you push that away and you push it away for two reasons. One, because you don’t want to experience it and two because you do want to experience. You don’t want to let it go, but call it clinging. These are all acts of resistance. You’re using willpower to not let the natural happening take place, which is it happened. I felt it. It’s gone. If it stays in there, it distracts your consciousness. It is resistance that causes every problem you have inside. She’s sensitive about something I’m not sensitive about. It’s happening outside. She’s suffering. I’m not, but I don’t understand the same thing’s happening, but she’s got stuff stored from before that that’s hitting.
Can anything ever hit your stuff? Ever use the spread? You’re hitting my stuff. What’s the stuff? The stuff is what you stored in there via resistance. That’s what you held it in there. So now somebody uses the name of Ben that was your terrible husband and all of a sudden just the word Ben freak out. Why? Because you resisted the thing. Oh, but it was bad. I don’t care. I’m not saying good, bad, right, wrong, no value judgment. Here I’m talking physics resistance. It’s about physics. If you resist something, one or two things happen. Either it’s stronger than your ability to resist and it just breaks through. Hopefully you can let go, but if you don’t, it’s traumatic. What is a traumatic experience? What is a traumatic experience? Something you resisted so much that even the thought of it or anything reminds you of it freaks you out.
Things are the events that are there when they come in. If you can’t handle them in here, you resist them and when you resist them, they stay in there and they stay in there with all the smells, tastes, feelings, every single thing that was involved with that kitchen with your mother. If you did not like your mother, you walk out of the kitchen with a bad mood. No one should talk to you for the rest of the day. If you loved your mother, you’re the most open, wonderful thing and when you walk in there, the smell comes back up. Your emotions come back of what they were when you were seven years old. It’s all about energy. There’s no glue in there. There’s nothing that will hold anything in there. You are holding it in there. Your willpower. Well, what if happened 20 years ago? You’re still holding in there. That’s why you get tired. Get enough stuff suppressed down in there and see how wonderful you are, how much energy you have, how tired you get, how hard it’s to live your life. What happens when it’s so experienced happens, you can’t handle, somebody dies, something happens somebody. You have bad experience. However, somebody dumped you.
Classic thing. You’re in bed, you don’t shower, there’s pizza crust all over the place. You don’t want to eat, you don’t want to do anything. You don’t answer the phone. Why? All my energy is being used in handling or not handling the disturbance that I created. No, you don’t hear that. No, she created it. No, no, no, no. She did what she did. It came in and that’s what you did with it. There are people that can handle things. I know it’s hard to believe they can actually handle things. Did you know that people can change? Anybody ever notice? How do you do when they’re not any longer being the way you want them to be? Well, there’s nothing you can do about it. They’re doing what they’re doing because of what’s going on inside of them. The question is, can you handle it? Alright, so now you understand.
Believe it or not, you are doing it. If your heart hurts, you are doing it. But yes, things happen that you didn’t like. That wasn’t what you wanted to happen, but you resisted it is the resistance that fought the thing, held it inside and it’s bouncing off your whole energy system and that’s what the pain is. I want you to understand what the pain is when your heart hurts and so on. Like I said, take a wind that’s too strong for you to handle. Try to resist it. Oh my god, it’s bouncing off the walls and that’s what’s happening. Can it feel like razorblades inside your heart? Can it feel like razorblades inside your heart? There are no razor blades inside your heart, but there’s energy inside your heart and that energy was supposed to flow through and it can’t. You won’t let it. So there’s stages of these emotional pains.
They’re not pain. I make distinction between pain and suffering. I like pain to be used for physiological nerves. Stimulating pain and suffering is inner resistance to the experience of reality. I will not let this have taken place. I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want it to happen. I don’t want, I don’t want it, want it, okay, and so you push it away. It didn’t go anywhere. Energy can’t just dissipate. It doesn’t dissipate, but it doesn’t get stored. I told you once before it hits the wall of your resistance. Exactly at the Colorado River hits the Hoover Dam every single second since that dam was built, that water is trying to push through. Let it get a little crack. See what happens. Okay? The force of the event is there unless you reroute the river. Okay, so the same thing with the event that took place in your life that came in.
I know I talk about, it’s not that I don’t have compassion. This is compassion. It’s trying to teach you how to handle reality instead of getting in there with you a wally. Oh my god, it must hurt so bad. Sympathy. I’ve felt that before too. I can’t imagine. No, no, that’s not helping anybody. This is reinforcing the fact that of course you’re resisting. We all do. No, I’m going to teach you. You are capable of handling every single thing that ever happens in your life if you don’t resist. Now, that’s a whole nother question. How to not resist, right? We’ll get there. We’ll make sure we leave at least a minute to do that, but you guys like techniques. I’ve been doing this for how long? 55 years. Here’s the highest technique, the intent. It’s the highest technique you do any technique you want without the intent of letting go without the intent of non-resistance, how to actually go about learning to do it, that’s fine, but it has to be the base level, not I’m trying to get things the way I want them to be so I don’t hurt anymore.
I’m not trying to get things the way I want them to be so the energy flows the way I want it to and I don’t have to learn to not resist. I want the event to change. So resistance is the problem. Non-resistance is the solution, but there’s all kinds of ways to get there. Alright? What is a great being? I was coaching him. I wouldn’t do the whole thing again, but for N. When Arjun asked Krishna, these high beings, you tell me they’re enlightened walks, he sits, he talking of the man and in essence what Krishna said to Arjun, he said, no, not like that. Just as all the waters and streams of the world pour into the ocean and the ocean does not overstep its bounds. So the world of sense pours into the yogi and leaves him as a found him at peace content and equanimity, serene.
That’s the essence of all spiritual teachings. So how to get there is another issue. But understand the teaching. Understand the truth. If your heart hurts, if your emotions are hurting you, it is because you are resisting them. But what if somebody you love dies? Your heart is going to feel sorrow. Your heart is going to feel an emptiness. What’s wrong with that? That is not suffering. When you resist it and say, I can’t handle this. I don’t want to feel this, now you suffer. Okay? It can be a beautiful experience. Somebody dies if you love the person they went on to higher things, plus you feel all the love but you feel is lost is your heart can’t flow the energy like it used to as a hollowness and it’s saying, I love you. That feeling of loss after a death, if you didn’t love them, you wouldn’t feel that.
It’s the energy redirecting itself because it can’t flow the way it used to. You’ll go through some adjustment, enjoy the experience, not ha ha, ha ha. It’s deep. Hey, I always tell you the funeral march, real upbeat, right? No, as sad as can be. Chopin wrote that one of our great composers captured the expression of the heart when it’s in that state. Isn’t it beautiful? It has a beauty to it, doesn’t it Not. If you don’t want it, then you resist it and just to hear the funeral march you get depressed. Why is he talking about that? It’s terrible. No, it’s not. It’s beautiful, but not the kind beauty, just the depth. Depth. I always tell you, go see Romeo and Juliet from a troop coming through town that is professional straight from Broadway. It’s the finest production of that place. Go see it. How you feel.
Oh my god, it hurts so much. I cry for three days. It was so sad. It’s the biggest tragedy it ever was. What do you do? You bring your friends back next time. There’s a beauty to it. What’s the difference if that were to happen to you in life? You would not think that way. The difference is you didn’t resist, you didn’t resist the experience and you might’ve actually said, oh my God, it was so sad. It touched me the death of my being. The key is not what the vibration is. The key is are you resisting told you resistance. One of the deepest spiritual words you’ll ever contemplate if you resist for you suffer. If you do not resist, you experience something and you can experience it very deep as we talked about with the waters and streams pour into the ocean. So the world of sins poor, the yogi a great being, everything touches them to the depth of their being.
There is no resistance. What is the purpose of resistance? It doesn’t change anything, just causes suffering. Alright, I don’t like that that happened. I’m sorry, but it did. Okay. So you better start with being able to accept it, honor it, respect it, then you can deal with it. Nobody says you don’t deal with it. There still could be something to do that could help the energy help things, but the event that actually happened will never not have happened. So if you say, I can’t handle that, you can be screwed for the rest of your life and we all are. We want life to be the way we can handle. We want life to unfold in a way that doesn’t cause suffering inside, but you’re the one that’s causing the suffering. You won’t buy that. You don’t understand that you won’t accept that. Be better someday you will.
But I’m old and I don’t want to go to a nursing home. I sure put in a nursing home. I’ll never talk to ’em again. It’s not what you want. Things are not going to be what you want. The question is, can you accept them? Otherwise you’re going to suffer at various points, relationships, finances, this, everything. Anything that happens that you don’t like when it comes in, you suffer. And then the question is how long you suffering lasts. In the Jewish tradition we have this thing called city shiva. City Shiva, I don’t know how many days it is. I know five days. Something like that, right? That’s such an ancient tradition. What it’s saying is you love, you had love, there’s going to be this sense of loss. It takes some time for it to process. Don’t go out to work immediately the next day or this, something like that.
Sit in the home, maybe people with you, whatever it is, morning is like morning and give it some time to adjust to pass through. Then go out and let go and live your life. They’re supposed to have just that time to process it. What does processing mean? Stop resisting. You can see this example right now. Open your eyes. Look at this room. Don’t turn around. Just look what see in front of you. Did it take time to process that? Answer me. It was instantaneous. That’s how everything is. Events happen. They come in, they pass through. You’re ready for the next event. Doesn’t mean you can’t remember it. If you need to bring it back, you bring it back but it doesn’t stay in their haunt you for the rest of your life. Be here now as a natural state. Like I said, it doesn’t mean you need your memory.
There’s a natural storage of memory. It’s like a computer. It comes in, it can get stored if you’re clear, you can bring it back later, but it doesn’t come back by itself. I don’t want your computers burping stuff up that’s just stored down there three years ago. It’s supposed to happen. It’s there when you need it. You bring it up and you can use it and it stays down there. That’s what your memory is supposed to be like, but what you do is you resist the event so it doesn’t come all the way in. Therefore it circles around your resistance circle just like that. That’s what a karmic seed is. That’s what some scar is, is a pattern that you held inside with your resistance with your will and now that energy is doing this looping around. It’s always trying to come back up. Just think of anything.
Don’t think of anything. Hear a sound, boom coming back up. Sometimes it comes back up. You don’t even know why I got just so depressed now. I don’t know what happened. I’m just driving. I know why. Because you got that junk down there. It leaked, okay? That which you had stored leaked and it can come up and it can, oh my God, I know a normal human being. Don’t be one of those. It says, how do I need to adjust my life and adjust everybody in my life so that doesn’t ever happen again. So it doesn’t come up and make me depressed so it doesn’t bother me ever again. So I don’t have to feel suffering. I have to feel pain. How do I do that? I’ll put bars in my windows. I’ll make people sign licenses or have relationships with them. I’ll hire private detectives to be sure they’re being loyal.
In other words, what do I need to do to make sure nothing hits my stuff? What you need to do? Make sure nothing, not hits your stuff. Get rid of your stuff. The long enough stuff’s in there, something’s going to hit it. Sure you’ve seen it. So I’m trying to explain to you why you have emotional problems. Emotions are not problems. Emotions are natural things. You can feel fear, you can feel this, you can feel, you can feel jealousy. The ego possessive. It has tendencies. The question is, can you handle the feeling or do you get weird because you had the feeling dad resisted it and became a major part of your life. Go have a dream that your spouse cheated on you. It’s over baby. You’re in trouble. So are they really? What did you do? I don’t do anything. I dreamt that you did that.
Okay, you dreamt that I did that. Okay, but I wouldn’t have dreamt it if he didn’t do it. Look at you. Whatcha doing? Making a royal mess of your life because you can’t handle it. You know how it should be? I this amazing dream. I dreamt you cheated on me, right? Oh man, we’re like hell, hi, how you doing? I handle it fine. I want you to handle everything. It doesn’t mean you don’t deal with it. It’s very different. Maybe you need to deal with it, but we just make stuff up. I can’t deal what we made up, right? I told you
I think that Paul told John something and that John doesn’t like me anymore. Why’d you think that? What difference does it make? I don’t want John not to like me. I was like, come on man. So this is all about resistance. If you are not resisting inside, you have experiences and they have their own richness and they come and they go. They don’t stay in there because you’re not holding them in there. So as you grow spiritually, you learn the power of non-resistance but don’t think it means not dealing with things. It means not, okay, let’s get this right once and for all you say, but that’s not dealing with things. No. The only thing he’s not dealing with is the garbage you stored inside. You can still deal with the event outside. You can still say somebody says something, you get insulted. So you’re immediate and defensive.
Everyone get defensive that it’s resistance. You resisted what they said now what do you mean deal with it? It came in. I felt something. I let it go right now you might ask the person, did you mean what I thought you meant by that? That’s very nice. You gave him a chance to say Of course not. Why’d you think that? Because my uncle used to talk to me like that. Can you hear me? You didn’t act based on your resistance. It didn’t back based on your and ability to handle it. You handled it. Then you dealt with it from a place of clarity. So don’t tell me surrender means not dealing with things. By the way, surrender is not about outside. Surrender is what you do inside because your garbage came up. But do you do push it away? No, you let go. Alright, let’s talk about how to not resist.
How hard is it to not resist? Obviously it’s hard to resist. How hard is it to not resist the wind? How is to not resist what you looked at a minute ago? I told you, look, it is your natural state to not resist it is just that you have this tendency habit of protecting yourself, of pushing things away because you think they’re going to hurt you. That’s what defensiveness, what is jealousy? I don’t want to get hurt and I know it’s going to hurt me, so I’ll be jealous. Okay? Even though that’s happening. So basically all of it is because of resistance. Otherwise there are natural reactions, natural experiences, and you experience them and they go through Robert Krish. Somebody wants to have Krishna a great master. Do enlightened beings ever feel anger? He shocked me. He said yes, but it’s like writing on water.
How long does it last me to ride on water? It just passes right through. You can have the experience. There’s nothing wrong with experience. All the experiences are worth having, but if you resist the experience, you lock the energy inside and you create this friction and that is the pain you feel burning you up with emotions. It is not the emotion, it’s your resistance to the emotion. How do I know that? Because if somebody else had the emotion, I told you, if somebody went to go kissed you and you wanted the person to, you felt wonderful. If you didn’t know the person, you didn’t like ’em at all, they would call the police. It’s not the event. Now, certainly there were events that are very difficult to be open to. I’m not questioning that, but I don’t want to talk about those. That’s not your everyday experience.
That’s probably not even every 10 years that you have things that traumatic, that strong within the range of your normal human experiences. It would be very beautiful and I would love you to learn to not resist that. Your first reaction instead of being resistance is acceptance is saying, okay, this happened. I can handle this. That’s your mantra. I handle this. I can handle this instead of I can’t handle this, I can’t handle what you did, can’t handle what you said. I can’t handle what you’re thinking of doing. Can you have a thought what somebody might do and you couldn’t handle the thought? Of course life’s tough for you guys. That’s tough. That’s tough stuff, man. I wanted to get better than that. So again, I’ve just talked to you about this word resistance. It is the problem. The problem is not the event. The problem is your resistance of the event.
So now how does one practice non-resistance in order to resist? Remember we’re talking about energy is physics. In order to resist requires effort. If you resist something, you have to push it away. You want to stop the wind, hold up plywood. You want to stop the river, put up the hoer dam. It requires effort to resist. Don’t put up that effort and resistance will not take place. It’s not about the event. It’s not about the point of resistance. When you touch the event, it’s about your intent behind. Is it your intent to resist the event? Is your intent to have it not have happened? That’s really, I don’t want this to have happened. Where are you back in there when your intent becomes, I don’t want to carry the stuff inside of me. I want to have a nice life. I want to bring light down.
I want to feel love. I want to be able to serve others. I don’t want to build this garbage inside of me that now determines how I act and react and everything I say and all the pain and suffering that I have or will have or I’m afraid of having. So your intent, that’s what I try to instill on you with everything I teach you. What I want is to give you the intent to move toward liberation. What is liberation? Non-resistance. If you don’t resist, it will not be pulling you down into it because it all came up. It all came up to the depth of your being. If it all comes in and up to the depth of your being, all you feel is God. All you feel is the breeze of creation, passing through your being. There’s no resistance. No, you doesn’t need to be you. Why does it need to be a you to resist? What do you guys talk to me? You say, what about boundaries? What about boundaries? Where should I resist?
Come on. If you’re taught boundaries, surely there’s some boundaries. In other words, where is the line in which I resist? I’ve learned a long time ago, there is no such thing, but you’re protecting your ego inside. I mean outside touches you abuse you get the hell out of there. I’m talking about that. I’m talking about your inner state of when do I get insulted? When do I’m not going to handle this anymore. In other words, I’m in here. I got problems. I’ve been trying to be okay, but this crossed the line emotionally by suggestion to you should you manage to get there is you don’t have a line like that. So the first thing you do is let it go. They let it go. You let it go. Now it is store it. You have to carry it with you. At some point your ego goes away.
It’s just say, okay, people are the way they are. I’ve started that a million times. You are the sum learn, learned experiences. They’re the sum of their learned experiences. Of course, they don’t match you. Why would they match you? Then psychology say that man’s the sum has learned experiences. They’re right. It’s not true who you are. You’re the consciousness noticing that your psyche is selling learned experiences. What else would it be? It’d be drawing your experiences all the time and you’re wrong every time. Why? Those are just your experiences. I never get this across to you. When you have an experience having one experience, how many are you missing? How many other experiences are going on in the world in the universe that you’re not experiencing when you’re having that one experience? 700 billion zillion quill, right? So you’re having one of 700 billion and you think it’s the most important thing in the whole world.
You’re going to build the foundation of everything you think and everything you do and what you resist and where your boundaries are and what’s right and what’s wrong, all based on that experience and then you have another one. Well, you missed 700 billion of those. When will you wake up and realize you don’t know squat. You just collected a few experiences and now you’re expecting the world to match your experiences. Nobody’s going to match your experiences. They didn’t have your experiences. If you had one different experience, if your father didn’t die from the wind, if that didn’t happen, your whole life is different for you. That’s absurd. That’s insulting. There’s 700 billion experience you could have had yet that one. So what? That’s the ending to get in fact, not so what? Hey, I’m the one who had that experience. Nobody else had the experience you had even standing next to it.
It’s a different angle. They came in with a different mindset. No one had the exact experience you had ever, ever will ever did there. That’s my experience. They’re playing my song, but that’s not how you do it. If you didn’t like the experience, you stored it inside. I said it enough. Are you getting it? This thing of resistance is the cause of all suffering. It’s funny, Buddha taught that the cause of all suffering was desires, preferences. I just told you what you do when you have a preference, you resist. It’s the same teaching and in fact you need to go further back. The reason you developed a preference is just you resisted something. I don’t want to have this happen to me. Why? Because it happened and I resisted. Now I have this mascar inside and it determined what I want to happen and don’t want to happen.
Resistance is everything and non-resistance is everything. Non-resistance is the highest spiritual state. Where was an example of non-resistance? Jesus, forgive them. Lord, they know what they do. May I pass this cup? No, not my will but thy will. Non-resistance, Buddha non-resistance. Gandhi on his way down having been shot pna to the person who shot him as an act of forgiveness so he didn’t carry anything with him. Truth. What did King teach Martin Luther at the extreme? He taught non resistance. D, he says, don’t fight. Sit there but don’t fight. And the sah, it’s a sah that Gandhi taught.
In other words, handle it and he changed. I mean GHI is an amazing example. He freed a country from the most powerful force on earth at that time, the British government and they left. They couldn’t handle the guy and all he did was non-resistance, right? So how do you not resist? You will feel the tendency to resist. Do you understand that? I understand. It happens very quickly. If you meditate and you mantra into things, it happens slower, it slows it down, slows the process down, but you are in there and if someone’s talking to you and you start getting upset, you’re getting upset. Before you get upset. If they’re saying something you don’t like and your mind’s formula what you’re going to say back what’s happening in there, you’re a conscious being. You see the commotion coming up and your tendency is to push it away is to resist it.
You have to learn to want to grow spiritually. You have to learn that when that tendency starts, instead of resisting, you relax. The opposite of resistance is relaxation. The opposite of resistance is relaxation is like judo versus karate. Okay? It’s like the blade of grass doesn’t get blown away in a hurricane, but the oak tree goes down. That’s zen teaching. Why? There’s non-resistance. So as things come in, you’re going to feel the tendency to resist. That’s wonderful, that’s great. Don’t feel guilty. That’s wonderful. That’s your moment of teaching. That’s why life is your guru. It’s going to hit your stuff. It’s going to come in and you feel the to resist. Are you conscious enough? Just that little gap. First you have to work it. Opening that gap. How much time is there between the reaction and the action? You get to a point. You will eventually get to a point.
You do this for enough time and you keep letting go there. We know time between the experience and the reaction because there’s no stopping it. Everything just comes in and goes through. It’s called becoming establishment seat of self. You’re now sitting back in the consciousness and any tendency to be pulled out of your seat of consciousness by the reaction going on down there, you just relax. It goes like this. I used to way back in the seventies, I remember people told me, I used to teach like this. What does a yogi’s mind sound like? I don’t know. Maybe I should.
Why bother? What was he going to do is aggravate you? What were you going to say? Why did she do that? Maybe she doesn’t like me. Let go. Non-resistance first, let go. If there’s something you need to deal with, it will still be there. Do you understand that? Do not think that your resistance is helping. If you resist, you’ll funda then be dealing with your resistance, the effect of your resistance. You won’t be dealing with a situation. If you say something to me it’s not nice, wouldn’t it be nice if I understood why instead of don’t you say that to me. How dare you? Oh, get out of here. That was your resistance talking. That was you trying to deal with the fact you couldn’t handle it, so you push the energy back out there. If you can handle it, it comes through. Now you’re standing there saying, I wonder why she said that and maybe you’ll find out and maybe we can deal with it.
So no one’s telling not to deal with things. We’re telling you not to let the reaction or resistance be how you’re dealing with it. That doesn’t ever do any good at all. The best that can happen, you shove it back at her. She says, I’m sorry, even said it. Just leave me alone. Great relationship. She won’t say it anymore because she dumped on her as opposed to imagine you’re having trouble, you say something to somebody and they let go and they’re standing there even though you blew all that wind at them. They’re used to people pushing back, aren’t they? What if it made it through and they’re waiting for your reaction? There isn’t any. You’re standing there. Sometimes that’s enough. People do it. They sit there and say, I don’t like when I react like that, but no one’s ever just stood there. That was really nice.
Somebody to dump it back on you, okay? But you have to learn not to resist. How do you learn not to resist? I told you you’ll feel the tendency to resist. It sounds trite. What does that mean? The best I can get is you’ll feel the tendency to use your will to push it away. I don’t want to feel this. Use your will to relax instead of using your will to push it out, use your will to let it in, to let go. That’s meditation. That’s every single step of your spiritual state. The great masters talk about transmutation of energy, maybe heard those words. Something happens and it comes in as disturbance. That anger, that resistance can turn her to love. How? By not resisting it, it’s just energy. Energy is energy. Je the beautiful saint that gave us the Jewish statue. That’s her picture down the corner.
Very, very high being. She was tru. She didn’t talk about herself. She was very quiet, but we were very close and I’ll never forget, she passed some years ago. She leaned over me. She said, Mickey, I said, yes, mother. She says, don’t you just love when they yell at you, there’s so much energy. Is it there? Can you feel that coming? She used that to go to God. It went right up her spine, right, and she felt ecstasy when the devil tears were yelling at her and telling you the truth. That’s transmutation of energy. You say, how do I do it? How do I transmute the energy? You don’t. You stop resisting. It’s not something you do, it’s something you don’t do. There’s the biggest teaching of the entire on the spiritual path. There is nothing in the end. There is nothing you are doing.
You are ceasing to be this person that’s doing all this stuff. I guess you’re doing it because of your blockages, because stuff you store from before or people say how to get rid of samskara. I stored this years ago. My mother and sister said that, blah, blah. I can’t let it go. You can let it go. How? When it comes up and it will come up, you have to go there and dig for it. Believe me, it’ll come up. Let go. But what could that do? Let it go. The energy stored down there because you’re holding it down there. Don’t hold it down there and it will come up by itself. You know that because afraid of it. Do you know it’ll come up by itself if you don’t maintain it, keep it down there. Let it come up. Practice non-resistance. There’s a chapter in the enter the soul called the spiritual path of non-resistance.
Now you see why non-resistance is a very high thing and it’s something you do deep inside. When you’re conscious enough, you sitting to witness enough. You see the tendency to resist once you’re already resisted, I’m being mad. Don’t worry, it’ll be a big battle going on either inside of you or outside of you because you mess with the energy. Okay? The other example that we use all the time, A still lake is so beautiful. You can see your reflection in it. It totally still you love it. A leaf falls in a lake. Ripples happen, don’t they? Well, I don’t like that. My reflection looks distorted. I don’t like that. Guess what? There’s only one thing you can do to solve this situation and that is non-resistance. Well, no, I can stick my hand and smooth out the ways. Okay, see what happens. I can jump in and pick up the leaf.
Anything you do will make more commotion. That’s what’s happening inside of you. Anything you do to resist reality will make a mess inside of you now and for a long time that’ll still be down there. If you can let the ripple be there and leave it alone and be comfortable with the ripple. It’s interesting. Also, the stillness is interesting. The ripple is interesting. Relax, just relax. It’s neither doing or not doing. Just relax. It’ll go away, won’t it? That’s what it’s like inside of you. The resistance that you do inside is a cause of every problem you’ve ever had and it’s truly cause of your emotional problems. How do you know somebody’s having an emotional problem? They can’t handle their emotions. What does that mean? They’re resisting them. It’s not like you’re supposed to not have emotions, but if you resist them, it’s like dropping your hand into the water and trying to make ’em go away.
It just gets worse for you and everybody else. Relax. Relax. That’s the key word. What do you mean relax? You have hands in there, don’t you? Push things around. You resist. Sit on the hands. That’s your first practice. Just put ’em down under there. Do not resist. You won’t be able to do it. You practice and I’m going to stop now. I don’t want to. Well, it’s exactly like learning an instrument or learning a sport. You practice, there’s practice for tennis, practice for piano. You practice non-resistance. It’s the highest spiritual path you can ever do. The other thing, oh sure, do yoga, meditate, do mantra. These are all things that help you stay centered enough so you can practice non-resistance. If you sit there in the best yogi as that anyone ever had big deal, you get an ego, enormous. You’re showing off. They’re not going to do anything spiritual.
Okay, let go, go of the tendency to resist. You’ll grow so fast. In fact, people write me, and it always been wonderful. I started doing this, oh my God, get along better with everybody. I don’t know what I did wrong. All of a sudden now, oh my God, there’s all this turmoil inside of me. What did I do wrong? You didn’t do anything wrong. You stopped resisting the small stuff. Now the bigger stuff’s coming up and you’re just resisting that let go. We just keep letting go. I dare you. You know what? The distance between where you are now and total enlightenment, resistance, someone yoga, if it’s all just energy and I’m energy, why can’t I just let it go through? You say good luck if you tried for that amount of energy and openness to pass through you, to blow up until you learn how to handle it. So learn how to not resist, and that’s why I always teach you that. The traffic, the weather you resist all the time. Practice not resisting and where do you see what happens? You’ll be further, further back and you’ll be able to handle your emotions. You’ll be able to handle your thoughts. Just work on these things. You’re a great being. Okay, O stop. Thank you for listening.
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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