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: VE trimesters when you step back far enough away from yourself, meaning. All of your thoughts and your emotions are
not focused on this tiny little thing called you. Certain things become crystal clear. For example, you are given a phenomenal gift. It didn’t cost you anything and is the greatest gift that could ever be given.
You were given the time between your birth and your death. I am not. Tell me what happens during that time, but you were given the time between your birth and your death. Was he given to anybody else? They can try and take it. All kinds of things can go on, but it’s yours and that’s a very important way to look at it.
Don’t ever feel you being controlled. They never feel free will. It’s your time. That’s all. Now the question becomes what is going to go on during that time? And that’s when it gets interesting because what goes on during that time, believe it or not, is still completely in your control. It is completely up to you, but you haven’t evolved enough.
To see that or to contemplate that or to understand what that means, because I’m telling you, I mean, you play around when you’re a little baby, but from the time you’re born to the time you die, you’re inside. You are in there. I’ve never asked anybody, are you in there? And they said, no, you don’t have to be brilliant.
You don’t have to be his philosopher. Are you in there? That is the most important question that could ever get asked. And the question is, I don’t care if you’re a little baby. I don’t care if you’re a teenager. I don’t care if you’re an old person. The answer is yes, I’m in here. Why are you asking me, right?
I’m in here. That’s the most important question and that’s the most important answer. It’s that simple. Yes, I’m in here. Prove it. You can’t prove it. It doesn’t make any difference. You’re in there. If someone says, you’re not in there, I say, fine, I’m not in here. There’s an argument. You know, you’re in there.
That is the essence of intuitive understanding. There’s nothing more intuitive than the fact that you know, you’re in there. Do you get that straight? All kinds of other things can change your beliefs. Your this, your that. Do you have beliefs? How do you know, okay, I don’t care what your beliefs are. I go, what your hopes are I what your dreams are?
And I go, what your fears are. I mean, of course I do. I care about you. But the net result is, as a spiritual person, why would somebody care about such a thing? You were born, you’re gonna have experiences. How do you know? ’cause I’m in here. Are you in there? When you go to sleep, are you in there When you go to sleep?
Well, you wake up in the morning, oh, I had this amazing dream. How do you know you are in there, aren’t you? Well, what about if you go, some of you had deep sleep. You wake up and you say the following thing. Oh my God, I went so deep in sleep last night. I didn’t have any dreams. Have you ever said that? How do you know if you weren’t there?
How do you know you didn’t have any dreams? ’cause you are always there. That is a, you were given the time between your birth and your death. Who was you in there? Okay. There’s no such thing as not being conscious in medicine. We talk about going into a unconscious state, that that means you’re not aware of the outside world.
They don’t call you unconscious when you’re dreaming. They don’t know what you’re doing in there under anesthesia or something like that. It’s because they, you don’t relate to the outside world. They have the right to define that. That’s, you went into an unconscious state, but you’re in there. People have near death experiences.
People have by experiences, people have dreams. People have all kinds of things, don’t they? When, when they’re in there, who’s having them? You in there? I don’t care. Well, I don’t wanna pinpoint you. I just wanna say you’re in there. Were you in there yesterday? Are you sure? We were in there 10 years ago when you looked in the mirror, when you were 10 years old, did you see something?
Did it look like it looks now? No. Were you looking. Is it your conscious being, seeing the image of a 10-year-old and then a 20-year-old and then a 50-year-old, then an 80-year-old? Okay. I don’t care if you liked it, didn’t like it. I don’t, I’m not talking about that. I’m asking are you in there? I. And what you’re gonna find out, and it’s the most important question to ask you, are in there ever wished you weren’t in there?
Come on. Have you ever wished it would never stop being as nice as it is in there? Have you wished there would never, ever be as caustic as it is in there? Who’s wishing this? Who’s aware that it’s caustic? Who’s aware that it feels good? Who is in there? So there the two most important things as you step back and look at your life.
One, I somehow dropped out onto this planet. I have no idea, but I ended up in this planet for how long? It’s none of my business. I don’t know. It could be tomorrow, it could be 30 years. Anything can happen. You do not have control over it. I know you like to think you do, your diets perfect, everything fine, and they hit by a car tomorrow or a meteorite or something.
So you drop down on the planet. Your conscious being the entire time you’re here, you’re conscious being even in sleep and the yoga sutures of Paton, which is one of the deepest yoga writings from I think 500 BC or something. He makes this point. He says, you are conscious and you’re conscious of objects of consciousness.
You’re conscious of your body, conscious of the outside world, conscious of your thoughts, conscious of your emotions. When you go to sleep, you’re conscious of these things, your mind’s making up. Subconscious or maybe even some inspired things that drop down there. You can be inspired during a dream, have visions and do things, but you’re still seeing them, aren’t you?
If you wake up and you say, oh my God, I heard an entire symphony. I gotta write it down. Who heard it? How do you know? Where were you? You’re always in there. And then Patanjali says the deep one. He says, well, what about in deep dreamless sleep? He says, it is not. You’re not conscious. You’re conscious of nothing like you’re there, and so it’s so peaceful.
There’s nothing disturbing your state of consciousness. It’s total peace. That’s a high state. It’s not the highest state. We’ll talk about that later, but you just see how it all ties together. It ties together to saying, I’m here. I’m going to be here until I die, and I’m in here. That’s a foundational. If you never thought anything else, you are literally following this teaching.
One of the greatest master I’ve walked facing of the earth, Raman Rah, Hershey, his entire teaching and haal, his disciples, was ask, who am I? Who’s in there? How do you know you’re in there? Who sees when you see? In other words, who is the consciousness that is in there the entire time? Well, the answer should be easy.
I’m in here, but it’s not easy. Is it? And now you start to understanding the spiritual path. Why is it not easy? Because it is true that I’m conscious and I’m conscious of my thoughts. I’m conscious of my emotions, I’m conscious of my body. I’m conscious of the world outside, but sometimes when I’m conscious of it, what I’m conscious of has a real strong pull on me.
And I have trouble realizing that it’s me, conscious of it, and I start to literally identify with it as me. Like I sit there and say, oh my God, my foot hurts. It hurts so bad. So what? You’re back there feeling a foot hurt. Good luck. Okay? Because the strength, subject and object. The strength of the object.
That you’re conscious of, which is a foot hurt, is enough to pull your consciousness involuntarily down into the hurt foot or the stubbed toe, or the hurt heart or the troubled mind. And next thing you know, you’re not noticing that your mind is troubled. You’re saying I’m troubled. Whoa, that’s a big difference.
I am the one that’s aware that the mind is causing trouble. I am a one that’s aware that, oh boy, it hurts. But you don’t say that. You say, I hurt. You get pulled into it. It’s strong, isn’t it? That is called the fall from the garden. That is little. It’s talking about you are the consciousness. Someday first, the talk.
You are a very beautiful being. You’re the highest saint in the universe. If nothing was conscious, does the universe exist? Just stop for a second. I don’t philosophize video, if nothing at all. Has this quality of awareness or consciousness, does anything even exist? How would you know? How would anybody know?
There’s no difference, is there? Look at me. What meaning does that have? Nothing. Nothing experiences it. If nothing ever experiences it, nothing. It doesn’t exist. And so you realize a consciousness is what gives meaning to everything. Anything you’re conscious of may not be nice, not nice, whatever, but it has meaning.
It’s an object that you’re experiencing. And so basically you come to understand that, well, we’ll start this way that you in there consciousness, that’s a thing. Alright. It’s not a thought. You don’t think that you’re conscious. You watch your thought, think that it’s conscious. You are a conscious being and you are a very high being.
And gray ones who stopped being pulled into the object of consciousness and didn’t get hurt with the toe, and didn’t get hurt with the heart. They were able to stay centered, called being centered, established in the seat of self is all these nice words, meaning I didn’t get pulled in. Who didn’t get pulled in?
You you’s in there. Who was always been there, but you always got pulled in. Doesn’t take much, does it? Somebody says one thing you don’t like. Ah. And the next thing, bye bye. Maybe you’ll come back. Maybe you won’t. I’ve literally met people that were doing fine and they got caught in a relationship or a fear or this or that, or somebody died.
They haven’t come back yet, and I’m talking 30 years. They just got caught. And they built their house inside that object of consciousness. Do you see a difference? That’s what Christ meant by don’t build your house on sand. Don’t build where you stand on top of that, which just keeps shifting and changing and you have no solid ground.
Okay? But there is a state called becoming established in the seat of self. Being centered. What is that like? I want you to find out. That’s why you meditate. That’s why you do spiritual work so that you can, not just someday, but a lot of days and a lot of times I wanna be all the time find out that you don’t need to go down.
I can sit here and look at that picture and still be sitting here. Can I project my sense of consciousness onto that picture without moving? Can it become so traumatic or difficult or beautiful that I get sucked in and I can’t get out? You guys aren’t there anymore. If I concentrated completely, let’s concentrate.
Focus your consciousness on just that picture. Completely. Totally. You guys aren’t here. You know, it’s disappeared. That’s the power of consciousness. It can project itself onto objects of consciousness, or it can remain seeded in itself in the center, the source of its consciousness and it can project on it, but it’s just, you know, white lines in the road.
It doesn’t hold you there. You’re able to not, you’re not able to stay ’cause nothing’s stopping you. It just isn’t interesting enough to lose your center. So you remain there. The gray ones who was able, who were able to do that and go deep inside, said the same thing every one of ’em. Buddha, Krishna, Christ, all the great masters, said the same thing.
What? Whoa, it’s nice in here. It’s not neutral in there. They have a word for it. Nda, eternal conscious ecstasy. Just stop for a minute. Eternal conscious ecstasy. That’s a Buddha called Bliss and Nirvana. Christ called the heaven. It’s like there is something very beautiful in there, and it happens to be who you are.
That’s who you are. The consciousness has a nature. It’s nature is ecstasy. Well, why don’t I feel it? Because you’re being distracted by what you’re looking at. You’re being distracted by your thoughts. You’re being distracted by your emotions. You’re being distracted by your body. You’re being distracted by other people, places, things, events, all kinds of things.
You can be driving down the road and a jet plane fly by and you’re not driving down the road anymore. Woo. You conscious went with a jet plane. That’s how easy it’s to get distracted. How about I say something to you? Most people don’t know what it’s like to not be distracted. For any period of time. It’s not just a DHD.
That’s an extreme case. That’s what it says about our society. It’s so far out there. They have no control over their consciousness. Anything they’re reading, it gets distracted. You’re just getting distracted from being distracted. Do you understand the difference? You’re constantly distracted. You’re consciously your thought.
Why did they think die? I don’t know if I don’t wanna feel this. Maybe I should go over there Constantly, all the time going on in there. Very rarely. There are moments in your life, every one of you that are so strong, generally positive, not a lot of them, it turn the corners of sunset. It blows you away.
Somebody hugs you that you didn’t expect it, and you always liked them, right? And all of a sudden you go, bye-bye Ever been? Bye-bye. Kinda nice. That ain’t kinda nice, isn’t it? Not so easy. Is it okay? Because your mind stops, you careful, not so fast. You can get hurt, so it pulls you back down. But you can settle back into the beauty of the interstate periodically in your life, but it’s very rare.
You’ve had these states that just blew you away. When you have a state like that, people say things like, oh my God, I turned the corner. There was magenta and CI felt it was in the presence of God. I, I touched something inside of me that was so beautiful. I touched the core of my being. You nice words, aren’t they?
How often you been there? Honestly. Okay. Because you are distracted by the objects of consciousness and you can’t let go enough to fall into the state of consciousness, the pure state of consciousness. That’s where yogis go. That’s what the higher states are, is they’re established in the seat of self.
And then I might as well say it, that’s not even high. That’s not a high state. That’s basically you cease to be pulled down. There are states beyond that where you’re not only not being pulled down, you’re being pulled up, you’re not doing it. You don’t do sad, and practices and mantras and that kind of stuff.
Why? Because it’s so beautiful up there. That you forget to get pulled down. There’s no stimulus to be pulled down, and because you’re not being pulled down, you don’t have a sense of your individuality. I am here, but I’m not caught in my thoughts. Congratulations. That’s nothing. Okay. I’m not looking down anymore.
Good. I’m glad, but I’m still here and I could be looking down, but I’m working on it. When you reach the high states, you’re not looking down. There’s, it is so beautiful up there that you can’t get pulled down. Nothing can pull you down. Well, if nothing pulls you down, there’s no you. There’s no sense of separateness.
There’s just consciousness, and that’s, that’s merger. That’s where the great ones go. That’s what Christ meant when he said, my father and I were one. That’s where Buddha went into Nirvana. They literally merge. Their individual consciousness ceases to be individualized. It’s like a drop that fell into the ocean.
It just merged, but I don’t wanna talk about that tonight. I wanna talk about why you come down. That’s your natural state, and it is. That’s your natural state. When I hear people complain about their state, I laugh. Oh, I’m having so much trouble. My boyfriend left. I don’t really laugh. My boyfriend left. My girlfriend left me.
This happened. My dog died. In other words, you got human problems. You got a bunch of human emotions that can’t handle reality. Your dog died okay? You feel sad for a little bit now you suppress it for the rest of your life. I’ll never own another dog or cat or anything. I go, I can’t handle the holy do you hear me?
You learn as you grow. Let’s go back to where we started. You were born. You’re gonna have experiences as you go through your life. There’s a time between your birth and your death. What’s going to happen during that time? Let’s see. You’re gonna have experiences. They’re not a single moment. You’re not having experiences for all those years.
That’s amazing. What a movie. The question is now, are you having experiences? The question, what are you doing with them? So now I lift the cat outta the bag that you in there are the most beautiful thing ever. Welcome to Face of the Earth. I’m serious. I, I’m a nice Jewish yogi. Alright. Christ teachings are so obvious.
It’s ridiculous. He said, as I sit at the throne of my father, it’s a state of consciousness as I sit at the throne of my father. So you too shall sit by my throne and these things that I do should do these and even greater things, right? He said, you’re the same as me. You sit in that whole hi throne and these things I do.
You’ll do too. My father and I are one. There’s, there’s a, I wish I had it all the time at my fingertips. There’s a section in John where all of a sudden Christ goes off and he’s talking to his disciples. I think it’s at the Last supper, and he says, may they know the one that’s in the, as I’ve known the oneness in the May, we all be one together.
The word one is used like 10 times. What does that mean? It means you merged. It means you’re capable of letting go of yourself. What did he call that? Dying to be reborn. You die of the individual self, your ego, this thing that says I exist and I’m important, and falls back into a spiritual merger. Okay?
It’s all, the teachings are so obvious. It’s ridiculous, but we don’t understand them. Why? Why do we understand them? ’cause the pull down is extremely strong. If you stub your toe, it’s very hard to not get pulled down. If somebody hurts your heart or turns it on, by the way, just as hard you wanna be with them or you don’t wanna be with them.
You want these experiences, but you don’t think about it. It’s not a conscious effort, it’s that there’s this stimulus and the stimuli pull you down and most people are always pulled down. They have never ever not been pulled down. Okay, so what are they doing with their lives? They’re noticing that sometimes when they get pulled down, ’cause they don’t know they’re pull down, but suddenly when they get pulled down, it’s pleasant.
It’s pleasant down there and sometimes you pull down it’s caustic down there and naturally nobody had to tell ’em they like one and don’t like the other. They like when it feels nice and they don’t like when it doesn’t feel nice. And you’re ready. I’m going back to where I started this talk. You have this time between your birth and your death.
Whatcha gonna do with it? I just told you we were gonna do with it. If you are, quote, a normal human being and you don’t wanna be one, you’re gonna spend your entire life from childhood through death through on your deathbed, trying to get what you want. Avoid what you don’t want. You’re gonna try and get what you want.
Relationships, finances, travel, entertainment through people liking you, people not, not liking you. Understand that. Just watch your mind. It’s constantly telling you what you need, what you don’t need, what you want, what you don’t want, how to get it, how to avoid it. Look at me, I’ll ask you, is it true or not?
Have you noticed? You don’t think of anything else? Most people never think of anything else in their entire life. They just change what they want. You know? They define better what they don’t want. I want the corner office. I really want the corner office. Hello. It’s a little office somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Oh, it matters to you. It matters. It is meaningless. I want a relationship where they dote over me and they believe and they agree with everything I agree with, and they stay that way throughout my entire life. They change just like I do. Okay. Make a little wish list. Good luck and what did you win? You win.
Keeping yourself. You just one, keeping your limitations. I got it to be the way I need it to be so I can be, okay. Are you in ecstasy? Do you worry about anything? Do you have to plan and plot and struggle? Of course you do constantly. That’s why, because you devoted your life and endurance purpose. You just have to wake up.
You devoted your life to saying, the meaning of my life is to get what I want and avoid what I don’t want. Well, that’s a pretty limited meaning. Especially since it keeps changing, doesn’t it? What change do you have? Just running as fast as you can, going nowhere. Do you understand that? But it doesn’t look like that.
It looks like there’s a wind. There’s something that I can get that will take care of me and it’ll always be okay. Do you see that in the world around you? Even the big rich people and the powerful people and the poor people. Everybody’s getting exactly what they want. They never struggle with anything.
Right? I think it’s kind of neat nowadays. ’cause we got big things to look at. The richest people in the world we’re having trouble. I’m not sure you wanna trade places. So basically you wake up at some point. And you say The problem is not what I defined that would make me Okay. The problem is that I define what would make me okay.
Instead of defining life itself as the purpose, I’m gonna send you to school all the way through boarding school, through your doctorate from fifth grade through, okay. What is the purpose of going to that school to get a’s? It’s not No, the purpose is you learn things. You have experiences that is the purpose of your life on earth, every single second.
It has no other purpose. The purpose is you drop down here a conscious being and you’re gonna go through all these experiences, aren’t you? Are you gonna go through the experiences or not? Of course you are. Any experience you have, you already have. There it is. Those are your experiences. What did you do with those?
That’s the essence of what I teach you. What did you do with the experiences you had from youth all the way through? You picked the ones you liked and said, I want this to happen again. And you picked the one you didn’t like, you suppressed it and didn’t wanna ever look at it again and deny that it even happened.
I don’t wanna think about it again. I don’t be reminded by it. And you devoted your life to those two things. That’s pretty tiny, isn’t it? That’s a pretty small thing to be staring at. And do you win in the end? No one takes it with ’em. That’s how you measure whether something was really meaningful. What was the end?
Meaning? The meaning of life is so much deeper than that. That is so shallow. The meaning of life is there are these experiences that are happening every moment of your life. You’re having experiences. It doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad, they’re experiences. I’m gonna teach you piano. Don’t ever make a mistake.
Don’t ever see the scales wrong. You ain’t gonna learn anything? No. I’m gonna sit there with you and as you go through the learning process, we’ll work on it together and you’ll get better at it. It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake, doesn’t matter if it goes wrong. Doesn’t matter if it goes right, right?
Teaches you things wrong, teaches you things good, teaches you things bad, teaches you things. Every single experience you have while you’re here is an experience your consciousness is having. And I’m telling you, someday you will wake up and you realize, thank you. For every single experience you ever had or ever will have.
But why can’t I decide what I want? Because what you’re gonna decide filters out what you had before and it’s well, tries to replicate. I had a bad marriage, now I want a person like this. But not like that, that, but like this and like this. What are you doing? You’re basically trying to have a relationship with yourself.
You’re not learning anything. You don’t learn anything. You learn when you sit there and say, I’m here and I’m full of it. Come and get it. Come and get it. I don’t want it here. I don’t know how to get rid of myself, but I’m, it’s called being open. I am open to utilizing life for what it’s meant for.
There’s somebody who was very wise person I read way back in the sixties, seventies that said, earth is a place that souls are sent to evolve. Guess what? Earth is a place of souls are sent to evolve. How do you evolve by getting what I want? Of course not what you want. You just picked out the few experiences you had that made you feel better and you wanted ’em to happen again.
Well, those are very experiences you don’t need. Again, you did well with those, but how’d you do with the ex-husband and how’d you do with this? And how’d you do with the job that got fired? And how’d you do with that? And how’d you do with the fact that you started thinking. Something could go wrong.
Anybody ever think something could go wrong? Does anybody ever worry? Do you understand? It will never go away. What is worrying? The fact that I have a preference for something to happen or not happen. It’s not happening, but I think it might. And so I can’t sleep at night ’cause I’m worrying. What I want might not happen, and what I don’t want might happen.
Well, you are in trouble. They won’t tell you that, but they’ll tell you is okay. Focus on how to get it. Stay up all night, write down your plan. Work 70 hours. Just just get it. Get what you want. Then what happens? Answer me, honest. Have you ever gotten what you wanted ever, even for a short period of time?
Have you ever gotten what? Just, oh my God, I got what I wanted, right? How long it lasts. You don’t want anything else ever again. It’s a losing battle. You’re missing the entire point of your life. That’s a big thing to miss, to drop down here. And so at some point you do this thing called waking up. What do you mean waking up?
It means you step back enough to notice that you’re getting pulled down and it’s kind of choppy down there. It’s not so much fun. It’s a struggle. It’s anxiety and fears. How any fears, you should not have any fears. If you’re playing the piano and you’re practicing. Don’t be afraid of making a mistake.
That’s ridiculous. If you’re in a relationship and really like somebody and you’re freely expressing yourself and you’re afraid of them, might not like how you’re expressing yourself. What kind of relationship is that? Fear is useless. I mean, master used to say, if a lion’s jumping at you, be afraid, but not the psychological junk.
It never ends, does it? Have you ever been afraid someone might not like you, ever been afraid? Someone might like somebody else, but they’re not telling you and you could get hurt? What are you doing? How can you live like that? If you have a choice and you do, it’s your life and you choose to live in neurosis, choose to live in fear and anxiety and struggle, that is what you chose.
So waking up is when you wake up and you talk about how to do it, and you say, whoa, wait a minute. At the end, I don’t want to have lived like that. I have gotten to buy with the least suffering or something. I wanna spread my wings. I wanna be bold. I wanna feel if I can express the beauty inside of me, I’m, I’m expressing it.
And if things could happen to hurt me, I’ll learn from them. I’ll go through them. They’re great masters. Nothing hurts them. It’s just amazing. They go through all these experiences and they’re fine. It’s just another like white lines in the road. There’s a story about Ronald Harshi was talking about him.
He lived in Al and had a little band of very deep disciples. There was a story that they were climbing up. The Amal ones to go visit some saint and, you know, a little band of him and six or seven disciples, whatever. And some bandits came and beat him up. The master got beat up, he was bleeding and they stole all their, their cooks and pans things.
Well, they wake up in the morning after having, you know, gotten knocked out and being there, and they, they wake up, what’s the master? He’s walking up the mountain and he said, Matthew, where are you going? Where are you going? He said, well, where were we going? I’m going, where we going to with the saint? I said.
I said, oh, okay. I mean nothing to him. He’s like, okay, that’s what happened next, so move on. We have to go back down and get the police and come why? What a beautiful thing to be that free. Never worry about a single thing. Just be able to experience everything. So that is the meaning of your life. Your life has tremendous meaning.
It’s not that one thing has more meaning than another. It does not. Every experience you have is your teacher. Right. Does that mean that I attracted it to myself? I have bad karma. No. It means the world unfolds. Tried to explain this to you and I know I can’t. The world unfolds based upon the laws of physics, chemistry, psychology, creation.
God, I don’t care. Just take all the laws that cause everything to happen, mush them together in a given moment, and something’s gonna be happening. It’s gonna rain when it rains. If you wanna know why it rains, go to the university and study meteorology and you’re gonna find out and it got squat to do with you.
It’s just the culmination of all the forces that cause this moment to be the way it is. Is that okay with you? And someday you’re gonna say yes, bring it on. I can handle it, I can grow through it. I can become better because of it. I don’t have to go outta my way to make it happen. I have to sit there and say, I wonder if I can handle being mugged.
Okay. I no. You just go about your business living the highest clearest state you possibly can, and the world is going to unfold around you. And sometimes it’ll be pleasant and sometimes it won’t be pleasant and you will grow from the times it’s pleasant and you’ll grow from the time it isn’t pleasant and you may even grow better with the other ones.
Right? Makes you stronger, makes you from a fearless. Eventually you will catch on everything. Is that way you’re having experiences because that’s the moments unfolding in front of you. Do I deserve it? I don’t want you to think like that. I want you to say sometimes a plane crashes. Not very often. Don’t worry, but sometimes it does.
Does that mean you should never fly? Gimme a break. You just are bold enough to say, I can handle the moments that are gonna unfold in front of me. I don’t take ’em as blame, as shame, as karma. I just am open to them. And what you’re gonna find out, I’ll just give you the little clue, right? You have done experience in your past that haven’t worked out so good.
You hurt people, you did this, were selfish. You did stuff. You store that inside of you. You feel guilt, you feel shame, or you suppress your guilt in your shame. It gets very complicated in there, doesn’t it? And so therefore, as you go through different experiences in life, believe it or not, you see them as mirrors of what you stored inside.
So if you sat there and hurt some lady or some man, and then you see somebody who looks like them in Germany have nothing to do with them. You feel bad, you have a bad mood, you go through problems. Is that your karma or is that the way it works? Because you stored this garbage inside of you, the world becomes a mirror that reflects back to you what you can’t handle.
So I don’t wanna see it as a punishment. I wanna see it as a teacher. Karma’s a teacher. It’s not something you, you, you did wrong. You’re gonna pay for it. The great masters teach that in the time of complete enlightenment, when you drop all of this garbage you had inside, all your karmic seeds are burned off and die instantaneously.
As you stopped carrying the garbage inside of you, you let it go and you merged with the universe. So there’s no more karma, there’s no more seeds. That’s a beautiful way to look at it. So next time you think that somebody’s punishing you ’cause of something you did notice, there are times you don’t ever do it.
’cause I used to experiment with this where you sit there and you know somebody doesn’t like you. You know they’re talking about you behind your back. Okay? So you know this. What do you know? The fact that you even see it that way means you’re sensitive to it. Do you understand that? And I have dared him back in the early seventies to walk up to somebody and say, look, I know it’s weird, but is it true that you were judging what I did and the person looked like that?
I was out of my mind? They don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m telling you, the vast majority of time, that’s what’s going on. You’re getting on a bus and you trip. You feel like a clutz, an idiot, right? Nobody cares. Just like you don’t care about them. They only care about you. They don’t care about you.
They only care about them. Go back, don’t do it. Go to high school reunion and wait. Do you see what happens? You interact with the people the same as you did 30 years ago. You don’t know these people in any way, shape or form, and they don’t look at you the same as you look at them. You’re carrying your karma, you’re carrying your, some scars, the patterns you stored inside, you’re carrying them inside.
Therefore, when you look outside, you look through them. That’s what karma’s about. You look through the filter of your suppressed stuff, of your held on stuff. So of course it looks that way. So what’s the answer? Stop carrying that stuff instead. Make this commitment to your life. The time between my birth and my death is a very holy time.
It’s a holy time. It’s a time that God gave me to drop down into this tiny little planet in the middle of nowhere with all this amazing things going on. I ain’t wasting one second of it. Not one millisecond. How do you do that? You stop storing this garbage inside of you from your past. That is the essence of real spiritual growth.
It can’t happen till you start doing that. You have stored how many things in there? How many things are in there that freaking you out if they showed up or if you thought about ’em or had a dream about ’em. Anything. You understand that somebody looks like somebody, somebody talks like somebody. Somebody doesn’t look like somebody.
It’s like, well, your stuff is in there. It’s gonna get hit. Yoga call some scars. Patterns that you stored from the past. They are terrible. They ruin your life. They have literally no meaning. If you drive down the road and a a car rams under brakes and you almost hit them and you skid, okay, you had an experience.
Congratulations. You drove really nicely. Nobody hit anybody. You’ll be afraid to drive down that road for the rest of your life. You’ll tell everybody, oh my God, people don’t drive well on this road. It’s you and you have to be willing to say, it’s not gonna be me. I’m gonna have experiences, and they’re not always gonna be pleasant, but they’re gonna be done.
They’re gonna be done. How? By suppressing them, that doesn’t make them done by expressing them. I’ll tell you how I feel about the fact you did that. I’ll make sure I express it. It just carves it deeper. Now they’re carrying your stuff and you’re carrying your stuff. It’s not true. About expressing all this stuff is the way.
If you can’t do any better, I always teach this. Suppression is the lowest thing you can do with your energy. It happened. I don’t want it to have happened. I resisted it happened. I denied it. Happen. Well, you’re in big trouble ’cause now you’re carrying that inside of you and it will show up in all different ways, doesn’t it?
Next, instead of psychology teaches you it. Expression. That’s suppression. Well, it’s expression. I know I have this garbage in here. I know. I’m mad at you. I know. I can’t handle what you said. I’m letting it out. I’m not carrying this in here. You sit there and you take what I have to say to you. Right. Well, you just reinforced how important that is to you, and you just reinforce it on top of them.
You will never be the same. Somebody does something. Four years ago, they promised they’ll never do it again. I was so wrong. They do one little thing. Four years later you said you wouldn’t do that again. Yes or no? And you talk about forgiveness. If you have to forgive, it’s too late. I. It means you held it in there and what you’re saying is, I held it in here, held it here all these years, but I’m gonna forgive you.
Forgive me for what? For the thing you did. I thought you let it go. Well, I stored it, but I didn’t blame you. There’s something much greater than forgiveness letting go, and you don’t do it for somebody else, you do it for your own liberation. You just sit there and say, this happened. It hurt me, but heck, if I’m carrying this for the rest of my life, or heck, if I’m letting this ruin our relationship, I, I’m experimenting with the relationship.
I’m experimenting with needs, be open acceptance and honor and respect, and I just stored something. I don’t care if you did it. I don’t care what you said. I stored something in there that’s gonna ruin this relationship. So if you wanna live a beautiful life, you have to learn to say. I was born and I’m gonna die.
Every morning I was born, I’m gonna die. And today I’m gonna go through a series of experiences, most of which have nothing to do with me. They’re just the moments that are unfolding in front of me, and I am not. Going to store them. I’m going to experience them, learn from them, kiss them on the forehead and offer them up.
Now, if you can’t do it in one day, take two, take three. I don’t care. But it has to get done. Okay? And you wake up. And you start to set the direction of your life toward liberation, freedom, Chita, a liberal, that’s what they’re called, a liberated soul. Someone who’s back there enough to where all the incidents of their life can pass through, and they’re not carrying them with them.
What is that like? I’m telling you, you will feel love. For no reason is, why not you feel love? ’cause you’re made of love. That’s what’s back there is love. And if you’re not getting distracted by this garbage you built down here, you’re going to feel love. And what else? Inspiration. Pure inspiration. All the time.
You have to think about what to do. What to say. Anything like that. Businesses, people. Always talking about business. You don’t like businesses? Well, unfortunately, you know, I went through a big business. None of it was purposefully. Never at any moment did I say I wanna run this big public company, right? I, I live in the woods, baby.
That’s who I am. But life brought this stuff and so you use it to go to God. You use it to grow properly with no other motive. You do your best ’cause it was given for you to do. But that’s not your motive. Your motive is, this is a moment in life that was given to me and I’m growing. I’m learning, I’m growing.
I’m facing big business people. I live in the woods. I dropped out. Okay, I’m dealing with Wall Street. Give me a break. Okay? And, but you just do it. Why? For the growth, not for an objective. You do it because every day and every moment in your life is an opportunity to let go of yourself. And you start using it like that, and now you have a meaningful life, a tremendously meaningful life, every moment of it, you’ll eventually start seeing it is liberating you.
Is that hurting you? Life doesn’t take anything away from you. It does not. Well, somebody died. That’s an experience. It’s real. It happens in life, but I love them. Wonderful. See what it’s like to go through the loss of someone you love. It’s part of an experience in life. Yes or no? Is it an experience in life?
So are you giddy about it? No. But you’re open about it. You’re willing to go through the loss, the pain, and what happens that makes you a greater person, a greater being. So that’s the essence of what we’re talking about tonight. It’s the most important thing. How can the anything be more important than the time between your birth and your death?
But you don’t ever think about that. You think about the time between this, this business deal and that business deal, or this relationship that’s not working and this thing like that. And then what do I do? I’m afraid and I might get sick. You make it so small that you’re distracted by these minute stupid experiences.
Not stupid. They’re meaningful, but they’re not meaningful the way we’re using them. Because we’re trying to manipulate them so they don’t bother us. You are always trying to not be bothered. What kind of life, what are you gonna do with your life? Not be bothered. I used to tell a story to get people to do it right.
I’m gonna take you all on a phenomenal journey. I. Okay, you’re not taking your bodies with you. We’re gonna go into outer space, and I’m having a camp with you guys, okay? And I’m the teacher and I’m out here and we’re traveling around and we see the planet earth down there, okay? And we sit there and say, how would you like to go down there?
And people say, well, what do you do down there? What do you see? Whatever you want. There’s just all kinds of stuff. It’s a camp. There’s all kinds of stuff down there. There’s computer camp, there’s war camp. All kinds of things are going on down there. And everyone says, says, wow, that would be exciting, but, but do I have to stay?
No, you don’t have to stay. He’s going. Just go visit for a few years and then we’ll come back and we’ll share our experience. It’ll be so much fun, right? And we’ll go around and say, well, when you go down there, if you can do anything, what do you wanna do? I wanna get married. I wanna get married and see what it’d be like to have relationships and, and grow and wow far out.
What do you wanna do? I wanna go down there and sail the ocean’s blue. I just wanna see what the wind is like. What do you wanna do? I wanna go down there, worry and suffer every moment of my life.
Whoa, where’d you get that one? And that’s what you’re all doing. ’cause you didn’t step back. You got caught in this stupid little thing of what somebody said. Can you be bothered with what somebody said? Can you be bothered what somebody didn’t say? Now that’s weird. How do you know what they didn’t say? I don’t know, but I didn’t want to not say it.
And you just wake up and you come here and you start saying, I got some work to do. And it is not on the outside world. It’s on me. I can’t be okay if this is what I’m doing with my mind. And what I’m doing with my emotions, having stored all this garbage and being afraid of myself, you do understand.
You’re afraid of yourself. You’re afraid of all that stuff. You store down there that somebody’s gonna hit something and something’s gonna go wrong. No, you wake up and you realize, I am going to start to use my life for what it’s meant for you. Don’t start all once. There’s no chance. I teach you all the time.
The way you start is with the tiniest little things that you can’t handle now, such as the weather. It’s so hot. It’s so cold. I hate the cold that, what are you doing? It’s weather. What about the driver in front of me? They keep stepping on their brakes, not using their blinkers. These are ridiculous, right?
And look, they’re going 30 miles an hour wheel speed limit. Some of us have to get somewhere. What are you doing? Driving was so crazy about the driver in front of me. How about practicing not doing that? Don’t worry about all these old big some scars and all that junk. If you can’t handle that, it’s hot, it’s cold, it’s wet, it’s raining on your birthday.
If you can’t handle these meaningless little things, you don’t stand a chance. So you start like practicing the piano or practicing a sport, you start practicing handling reality. Could you raise your hand to write me? How do I know reality is it just happened? Don’t be philosophers with me. Says it’s very simple.
If it happened, it’s reality, but it wasn’t. There’s no buts. It happened. Did it happen? Yes. It’s reality. It’s not fair. It doesn’t happen to do with fair. It has to do, it happened. Can you handle that happen? And you start with the little things and you start realizing how, and I always teach you, my techniques are so simple.
Relax. What do you mean relax? I gotta do a mantra. I gotta do many times something. Right? Relax. Why To resist requires tension. If anything’s coming at you and you don’t want it hitting you, you have to resist. And resist means opposing, right? It’s physics. There’s an equal and opposite opposing force.
Correct. And that creates tension. Don’t tense. Relax. Well, I can’t, I don’t like that it’s raining. Relax, but I, it’s still gonna be raining. I believe me. Please don’t make it not rain. ’cause you’re relaxing. This is not what this is about. I’m attracting what you want. Relax your shoulders. Well, I don’t wanna just relax ’em, but, but they’re tight.
That’s ’cause you’re tightening them. It is not happening by itself. You are resisting the experience and while you’re resisting the experiences, you will not relax You. ’cause you’re busy resisting. It’s like it takes a long time for this to sink in. You mean relax on, don’t wanna Yeah. You mean relax on every single thing inside of me wants to resist.
Yeah, that’s right. But how do you do that? You relax. I don’t understand. I’ll bet you don’t. Okay. I, I tell this story actually in the new book, living Untethered, where I don’t wanna get into old story. Do it quickly. Let’s, you’re in a tug of war. With, it’s a real strong force on the other end, and all you wanna do is go home and eat a lunch.
But you gotta win this tug of war. And you’re tugging and tugging and stepping feet a certain way and balancing right. And finally, Yoda shows up. I like Yoda. And he says, Luke, yeah, let go. Mean, let go. I gotta hold on this rope. I gotta get my feet right. Open your hands. What happens if you open your hands in a tug of war?
You may call it cheating. I call it over. The question is, do you wanna play games or do you want out? And that’s the bottom line. You reach the point I want out. I’m not playing games, not about right or wrong or good or bad. I don’t want this tension inside of me. I don’t care if it seems justified, it’s not.
You are better off dealing with everything in your life. Relaxed, calm, clear, centered, thinking clearly than you are tensing, reacting, fighting, and getting angry. You’ll make better decisions every single time. There is no basis for tension. It doesn’t help anything. And so you learn eventually, okay, I’ll let go and it’ll kill you.
Wait till you start really doing it, but I don’t wanna let go. Yeah. But you said you won’t let go and you make that the pulse start of your life. I’m gonna relax through this. Doesn’t mean you don’t interact, you relax first. You don’t interact out of tension. You don’t interact out of anger, you don’t interact with frustration.
You can’t make a single good decision based on those things. Those are all based on your garbage inside. You learn to relax. You just learn to relax. Keep letting go, and little by little you’ll see it works. If I let go. I don’t tense. I don’t tense. The energy stays back here with me. It doesn’t get projected down into fighting with life and fighting with everything.
And the great ones just keep letting go. But they still interact, but not out of reaction or. This, that, and the other thing that’s about as deep as I can go with you, but what’s the purpose of what we talked about? You were born, you’re going to die. In between. There’s something that’s yours and it’s nobody else’s.
It’s called your life. It’s called the experiences of your life, and you basically start owning them. He starts saying, I’m going to experience the experience of my life. You know, this expression, how’d you do on vacation? I had the experience of my life. You should be having the experience of your life, every moment of your life.
Well, I guess it is the experience of your life and you learn to let go of the resistance and let go of the tension, and all of a sudden you’re present. You’re present, and you’re able to make decisions and be there and you feel your energy releasing going up instead of being pulled down. That is the spiritual path.
It’s a true spiritual path. It’s so the pathless path. You haven’t to defined it. But it’s taking you for a ride Beatles did. Right? The long and winding road that leads to your door. That’s beautiful. Alright, whole purpose of the talk. What are you doing with between your birth and your death? ’cause you can do whatever you want.
And if you start doing this, that’s called Metro Call that making the pole star of your life. He just set your eyes on the highest. You never take ’em off, and you just keep letting go. Letting go.
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@michaelsingerpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds true. Waking up the world.
