UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Welcome to The Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes, and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com
Michael Singer: Ative, Jai Masters. Sometimes people write and they ask, why don’t you teach meditation? What superb of meditation? Why don’t I supposed to experiencing meditation? I stopped teaching meditation a very, very long time ago. Not that I don’t meditate, but I realized no matter how you meditate or how deep you go, you’re coming back. Have you noticed at some point in my journey, the longing was so strong that it was unbearable to come back. So you try to meditate longer, but you’re coming back. I don’t care what technique you use, I don’t care how long you sit, you’re coming back. And so I didn’t want to come back, but and meditating six hours a day and strict, you still came back. So my path became why am I coming back? Not why can’t I meditate or why should I come meditate longer or what am I doing wrong?
And you start looking instead of up. You start by looking down what is holding me down? What is pulling me back? It’s so beautiful when you manage to go into a deep state or have a deep spiritual experience. Why do you come back? Because there’s something pulling you back that doesn’t even take a moment. One phone call, a thought, anything, somebody talking and next thing you know that meditative state is over. Well, I didn’t want it to be over. So the path that I ended up following for all of these years and the one I teach, I don’t teach not to meditate. I teach what to do when you’re not meditating because that’s the majority of your time to say the least. And when you look down instead of up, you have to stretch to look up. You have to struggle to look up why, what is going on down that is so weird that it keeps pulling you it.
So instead of trying to fight to stay up or go up, you start looking to see what is this force that is pulling you down? And at first it looks like it’s the world. There’s people, there’s relationships, there’s finances, there’s this, there’s that. There’s noise. There’s different things in the world that disturb you and they pull you down. Well, you start looking at that. At some point you realize I can’t control the world. In my case, I moved out here to be in the middle of nowhere alone. Nothing was out here in those days, nothing. There wasn’t paved roads or anything, and it’d be meditating. The dog would be barking, but the door wasn’t next door. It was miles away to realize I can’t stop that. What can I do? How can I stop the world from bothering me? And you realize you can’t. Why?
Because the world plays its own song. The dog barks when it barks and the police car goes by. When it goes by and the road makes noise and then people come visit and then this happened and it rains when you’re outside. And then there’s just things that happen. Have you noticed it’s a happening place? And it took me a while, but I’m a pretty smart guy and realize I can’t control that. I can’t control the dog barking. I can’t control the weather. I can’t control who comes out to visit. I can’t control whether people’s in a good mood or bad mode. I can’t control what’s unfolding causing these disturbances that I’m blaming on what’s happening outside. And so you take your next step, which is why is it bothering me? Not does it bother me if you don’t behave the way I expect you to, you bother me.
Is it true that you bother me or do I bother me? That was the next major step because I can’t control you and everybody else and all the different situations that unfold. I don’t care what you do, move out the middle of nowhere, it don’t matter. They’ll start building there. Things are going to happen and you’re not in control. That’s one of the biggest things you find out. You are not in control. You are not in control. Have you noticed? And if you try to be in control, one, you won’t be and you’ll get ulcers and you’ll worry and you’ll feel anxiety and you’ll struggle. The answer is not to be in control. You’re not in control. You’re not in control of the weather, you’re not in control of other people’s opinions and views and preferences and hopes and dreams and moods and everything, and you can control your own body.
You can get sick and it gets old. I don’t care if you want it or not. Life has its rhythm. Rhythm means nice song, and the songs aren’t always so nice. It writes songs too, okay? And it can write the blues and it can write the funeral march and it can write right? The spring, can’t it? It can write all songs, whether it can be bombing, it can be stormy. It’s not under your control. This is part of waking up and becoming mature on the path. If they teach you how to control it, they’re teaching you garbage because you’re not going to control it. No one ever did. No one ever will. I don’t know what to say to you, and I hope you disagree because if you disagree, then you really need this talk. Life is not under your control. It’s not meant to be.
It’s not supposed to be. If you get the way you want, I don’t get the way I want and then you want it a certain way. Yesterday you wanted a different way today. Do you ever change your mind? Well, we’re neurotic, and so it becomes a real fundamental understanding on I call the path of life. You can close a spiritual ethic you want. It has been here on this planet for 4.5 billion years. It made all the trees, all the animals, the entire evolution of everything it made and created the 35 trillion selves that make up your body. It made your eyeballs, it made everything. What did life? Are you in control of any of that? In control of the sun, shining in control of the weather? I don’t even how to talk about it. You’re in control of anything really. If you stop and look at it, that’s what it means to look down, to start with, look down.
Are you in control of your body? I can eat what I want. And when you swallow it, what happens? It just sits down there. No, it hormones and acids and stomach things, and then they break down and then it goes down and it gets passed with a capillaries. It feeds the you don’t eat for you. Your body sells me to eat. So the reality is every single thing in your life, not every single thing, maybe 0.000000001% have the effect of something you’re doing. But I started a business doing well, and then a competitor came in.
Then this happened. That happened. I got sick. Anything can happen. You’re not in control. Do you not like when I tell you that they want to tell you you’re in control. You’re not in control. That’s a ridiculous thing. If you take a list of every single thing that why do you not fall through the floor? You have to be a physicist. Do you fall through the floor or do you stand up on top of the floor? Are you making it so you don’t fall through the floor? No. Why don’t you fall through the floor? Because there are these things called covalent and ionic bonds that bond together molecules, and they’re strong. Some of them and other ones aren’t as strong. Air. The microstructures holding together air are very nice. You walk right through ’em. They break the floor. Doesn’t do that. Well, what if I jump up and down real hard?
You’ll break your bones unless the floor is soft, then you’ll fall through. It’s not you doing any of this. It’s creation, it’s life, creating everything. All the planets, all the stars. Well, if I jump up and down, why doesn’t the planet move? They say for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Well, bam, man, I jumped on top of the floor. It didn’t break. It passed the energy through energy needs created to destroy it. How come the planet doesn’t move when I jump? Because it’s circling the sun and there’s centrifugal force and gravity offsetting each other. It’s invisible as could be, but it’s why the planet doesn’t move when you jump otherwise it moves. Do you want to know all this? Of course you want to know all this, but at least be wise enough to understand you’re not doing it making the sunshine.
You make the sunshine. What if the sun didn’t shine? You ain’t here. No planet ain’t here. That’s one star at a 300 billion that have to be in harmony and working with each other so that everything stays in the same place. I could talk about this forever. Why? Because I want your mind to understand you are not in control. You are not in control. The things that matter in your life the most have nothing to do with you. They’re just the way things are. Why the atoms bond the way they do? How did all your cells make themselves into pancreas and pineal glands and hormones and how all that happen? You say, I know teacher, the DNA molecule. Well, that’s neat that you understand that, that a baby’s DNA molecule knows how to make the entire body a single cell. Microscopic cell has the intelligence in it based on the DNA molecule, how the genes are on the molecule to make the whole body.
The mother doesn’t make the body, doesn’t know how to make an eyeball to every single thing that matters is already happening. It’s way bigger than anything you’re doing. It creates the stage on which your little ego says, I mean charge. If it wasn’t happening, there ain’t nothing going on. Where’d the DNA molecule come from? It’s pretty brilliant, right? You didn’t make it. It made itself out of nothing. It put itself together over time. The molecule, the molecular structures were such that the basic laws ended up binding those together has nothing to do with you yet it is essential to your life. It’s beyond the essential. Everything that is the most essential thing to your life has nothing to do with you. Nothing. It’s the truth. It’s the absolute truth. What a science showed us that it’s not even here. They’ve gone down to quantum fields with little vibrations in them, and that’s what’s creating all the molecules and all the atoms and so on, and you don’t even know it’s there.
You don’t even know anything, but it creates everything. How come when you wake up in the morning, your bed and your dresser and everything is still there? Did you work hard at all night? Do you understand? There’s absolutely no reason that they would still be there for them to be there. The quantum fields, which are random, there’s this probability of where an electron would be. There’s no space where it is that takes billions and billions of ’em and they tend to average here. Well, every single one had to end up in the same place for your dresser to stay there. If you study this stuff, it should blow your mind. Nothing is given. It’s not true that God created the heavens and earth. It is being created every single millisecond. Otherwise it’s not here. It’s not like there’s some super glue and we glued your dresser there.
Oh, your dresser’s made up of atoms and the atoms bond together when now and the atoms aren’t even there. There’s just electron hundred protons, subtonic particles, but they’re not even there. Ultimately, it’s down to these wave agitations in a quantum field and they have behavior patterns that bond together, that behave together, interact together, and create electron protons which put themselves together. That’s happening every moment for anything to be the way it is. Einstein says something really beautiful, he said, reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Even by reality, every single thing you’re interacting with, every moment of your life, everything you think you see everything. Every single thing. So there’s the start of a spiritual foundation. It has nothing to do with you. It’s here without you. It was here way before you came. And guess what happens when you leave? It’ll still be, wouldn’t it?
All the meaningful things, the hundreds and billions and trillions of things that make the universe has nothing to do with this. You who’s sitting there saying, I’m in charge and I know how I want it to be and why can’t it be the way I want it to be? And so you wake up and you realize, okay, why can’t I stay in a beautiful, loving, peaceful meditative state? Because you have done something with your mind that should be against the law. We just don’t know any better. You have a mind, not just a physical form. You have a mind. I’ve discussed that with you. What is the mind? It’s a supercomputer beyond anything you could ever comprehend. It can do anything. It can go anywhere. It develop rocket ships and made nighttime light. Look what your mind did. It’s phenomenal what it can do, and it’s supposed to do that.
It’s a higher aspect of your being, but something you did do, that’s a major problem. As it said, there are ways I like things to be, and there are ways I don’t like things to be. I don’t care how they’re supposed to be. I don’t care how God made them. I don’t care what physics says. I don’t care. I want it to be my way. That’s a problem. If you heard me tell you it is not your way. It is not supposed to be your way. Do you breathe? Does your heartbeat, do you make it happen? You do not make your heartbeat. It happens by itself all day. You’re busy doing other things. The heart keeps beaten 78 90 times a minute. Okay, well, even wouldn’t last too long if it wasn’t. Everything’s like that. It’s all happening by itself. But you are in here building a mine that says, I mean mine.
I have collected thoughts of experience I’ve had before of the world and some of them I like and some of ’em I don’t like. Do you like Saturn? Do you like the fact that Pluto’s way out there? Do you like the fact that Jupiter has a storm? I couldn’t care less about that. Oh, so you couldn’t care less about 99.999999999999% of the universe, but you really care about the point of blah, blah, blah. So we’re given this gift of a body and breathing and everything, and you’re here on this beautiful planet that built itself and it’s taking care of itself and manifesting all the time. It’s amazing. And you’re having experiences. That’s the purpose of life, to have experiences for God, to experience himself, created a heavens and earth, and now he’s visiting in the form of you. He experienced his creation. I’ve taught you before, over and over the moment you experience no one else has ever experienced, not literally the moment you’re experiencing in front.
You’re standing what you’re seeing, what’s happening. Only you are experiencing that experience. No one ever will. No one ever did, and then the next experience, same thing. Every single moment of your life, you’re having unique experiences that only you are having and will ever have. Wow. What do you do with it? You make a royal mess out of that. Instead of sitting there saying, thank you, thank you. Wow, look what happened now. Wow. Look at the experiences unfolding in front of me. I’m not creating it. I can’t keep saying it over and over again. Please hold on the moment in front of you, how much of it did you make? How many cars are driving by? How many trees that you looked at? How much white lines, how many clouds? How much of this did you make? Did you make this moment? No, you didn’t make any of it, but what do you do?
You experience it. You’re supposed to experience it. Your consciousness experiences the moment. That’s beautiful, but then you do something very weird. You take this thing called the computer mind. You’re supposed to have a mind. There’s nothing wrong with mind. It can get knowledge and study things and create and explore and music and earth and engineering and rocket science and ai, and look what it can do. It’s a phenomenal thing, isn’t it? What did you do with yours? You had the unique experience that were given to you and instead of experiencing them and being open to the next experience and letting them all create the beauty of your inner being, you decided I liked that experience and I didn’t like that experience. I liked when the dog barked when he was my dog, but I didn’t like when the dog barked if he was a pit bull, okay?
I liked if I saw a snake and it was the kind I like, but not with rattlesnake. These are moments unfolding in front of you that have nothing to do with you, but you took that moment and instead of letting it merge into this brilliant computer mind of yours as a piece of information, as a beautiful experience you had, it doesn’t mean to pick up the rattlesnake. You learn. You pick the things up, right? It doesn’t mean you have to hold onto this experience and say, I never want this to happen again. It scared me so much that what you did, this is is the core of what I’m talking about. So you took this beautiful mind, just like the world is amazing place, isn’t it? Your body’s amazing, everything’s amazing, so is your mind, but what you did with your mind is this experience came in and instead of letting it be an experience you had and poured into your consciousness and just learned from it and grow from it and be part of it, and it’d be part of you.
How Nora snakes. I saw a rattle snake once, right? Was it scary? Yeah, it was beautiful. Okay. A storm came when I was little, did a hurricane when it blew tree. Oh yeah. It was so exciting, and then we got to clean up and hear me. You had experiences. What’s wrong with that? You in there, you who lives in there, the consciousness who is the recipient of all these experiences, who has given this beautiful body and a beautiful mind and a beautiful heart. You are the soul, the self, the Atman, the consciousness that dwells in there. Rather wait to the end to tell you that consciousness is God, consciousness. There’s only one. The whole universe that which is aware that it is, is aware of itself is consciousness. Objects aren’t aware of themselves. You are aware of them. You are consciousness so that consciousness drops down here to experience this creation, and you are God’s emissary.
As I teach you, you’re God’s ambassador, emissary, to experience the moment that no one else will ever experience, and it’s all the same God consciousness, but it has to have 8.3 billion people plus all the insects and everything in order to experience creation, right? That’s what’s actually happening. The one consciousness is splitting itself to look down through your eyes. You’re a sacred being and it’s experiencing. That’s how it’s meant to be. That’s the garden. Adam and Eve in the garden, everything was fine. Of course it’s fine. It’s always fine. Look, it’s beyond fine. It’s incomprehensible. But what you did and that tree was called the tree of self-knowledge. You had an experience. The consciousness did and it did something really weird. It said, I don’t like that.
Whoa. What’s that? I don’t like that. When you go to a movie and sit in a theater, did you make the movie? Are you in charge of what’s happening next? No. You’re the recipient. Well, that’s the same thing out here. It’s unfolding. How about the movie? Something happened. You said, I don’t like that. I don’t want to see that. Well, you’re not going to like that movie very much, are you? That’s what you did with your mind. You judged and you stored events that came in. You were meant to experience them. They’re your events. They’re playing your song. It came in. You had the experience, but you didn’t let it go through. You clung to, it’s called clinging. Please understand what these words mean. It’s an event that came in through your senses and it’s passing through your mind and heart so it can merge into your consciousness and be experienced fully.
Like when you sit there and said, oh, it touched me the depth of my being. Every single experience is meant to touch you to the depth of your being. Oh, oh, ever have something touch of the depth of your being. I felt it was in the presence of God at that sunset or when you held me and kissed me the first time. Everything is supposed to be like that. Everything is like that. It’s just the variety of the creation of God, of creation. It comes in, but the consciousness have free will, and one thing you can do with that free will is not let that experience pass through. You have the ability to hold onto it, to stop it in your mind so it stays stuck in your mind so that you see a snake go crawling by, but it’s not gone. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
There’s the next event. You don’t see the next event because in your mind, the snake is still there. There’s nothing wrong with the snake being there. If you want to bring it back, remember what it looked like, you have a storage memory, but that’s not what happens here. You don’t let it make it all the way through so you can bring it back. You push it down across Freud, resistance, suppression, repression, it’s all the same stuff. You push it and hold it in your mind so it’s there at night and you tell your husband about it and you tell your kids about it. 15 years later, you talk about that snake that scared you, okay, so you held these things in your mind. That is what we mean by the personal mind. Why is it personal goes, what’s going on inside? Yours is not going on inside of his.
He didn’t have the experiences as you did and he didn’t feel about them the same as you did based on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Pretty complicated what goes on in there, isn’t it? No, it’s not. There’s just experiences of reality passing through, but it gets pretty complicated when they don’t pass through. Now that I held onto the snake, I’m afraid of baby rattles. I’m afraid of coiled ropes. I have made a royal mess of this sacred place called my mind, I guess go really slowly. Don’t close down yet. I have made a royal mess of this sacred gift that was given to me called my mind, my open mind. I can think and create, but it can’t anymore. Why? Because the things I stored in there, the personal things that I stored in there, the vast majority of which were scary, uncomfortable, I didn’t like.
You have not suppressed a whole lot of things you like so much. You done some, you’ve held onto things. Oh, I hope this happens again, but nothing compared to every moment of your life. You’re having experiences you don’t want to have. Okay, I got you. I’ve now built the personal mind. What is the personal mind? A subset of this expansive universal mind that can think of anything. Think of galaxies. If I tell you there’s a quantum field with vibration, you’s got a concept of what’s going on. If I tell you there’s 300 billion stars in your galaxy, you can see a galaxy armadillos can’t do that. I guarantee you right now, you have the ability to explore your expansive mind. You have an expansive mind. Deep. Can I tell you, er Krista, fully enlightened. By the time we’re done, you’ll understand what light means. Fully enlightened made the following statement.
The purified mind is no different from the self. The purified mind is no different from the self. In other words, if a mind doesn’t swear, I get to be with God. No. That’s not the purified mind. The purified mind is the one that doesn’t do what we just talked about. It didn’t hold on to specific past experiences that now are defining your personal mind, which your consciousness is caught in. What do I want? How do I get it? I’m not happy. What if this happens? Does the mind do that? Is it capable of thinking of a galaxy? Yes. How often does it do it? Never. Okay. If I make you do it, I try. If I make you do it, you might for a moment, oh look, but otherwise it’s right back here. That’s why you come down after meditation. I realize that because I stored inside a part of my mind, a very small part of my mind.
I stored scary stuff. I stored the stuff that I wasn’t comfortable with in the past or things that I want to happen again or things I don’t want to happen again, and then that part of my mind is very active. Is it not? It’s always worrying that I do wrong. What should I do? I shouldn’t have said that. Oh my God. Well, I should I tell somebody, but what is it doing? What is this I? There’s no I. There’s just universal consciousness experiencing the moments that are unfolding in front of it, but no. Now there’s not. Now there’s this noise going on in there. Most of it’s worry in it that fears and desires. What are those? What is a fear? What is the fear? I’m sitting here. You’re sitting here. What’s the problem? A fear is something I stored inside myself that was scary hell, and it keeps pulling me back into it was a desire, an experience I had once that felt better than I feel now and I want it to happen again.
That’s the core, and then the mind thinks about how do I get it to happen again? What do I have to do that doesn’t have to be going on in there? That is not natural that you’re caught in this personal tiny little thing called you. The mind is part of the whole universe. Everything’s expansive and whole, which is where you go if you meditate deep, but you come back quick, don’t you? And so you catch on that you did this, you did this. You didn’t know any better. I’m not blaming you, but you used the power of your will to hold onto these moments that have happened in your life and build a concept of yourself. Tiny little thing. It’s tiny. It’s so small, it’s only about you. It’s the whole world only about you. I try to teach this over and over again. Well, there’s 8.3 billion people alive right now.
They ain’t about you are they? You wish they were, but they’re not. What are they about the things they held on to and they had different experiences than you. If any part of you get it will liberate you. Any moment you’re having experience, how many are you missing? I’m challenging you. How many other experiences are going on everywhere that you’re not having at the moment? You’re having that one experience, 700 billion, zillion quillian. And if you had one of those instead of when you’re having your mind would be different, you held on something different. So everybody has had different experiences and everybody has held on to different experiences and they built this thing called the self-concept called the ego. It’s a subset of mind that is caught in itself thinking about what I like, what I don’t like, what I want, what I don’t want, who I like, who I don’t like, what happened in the past that I don’t like what happened in the past that I do.
What do I do about it? How can I change this? How can I feel better? Who do I need to find? I need to change my relationship. I need to change my weight. I need to change my height. It’s just this noise that never stops about I me mine. And what it’s trying to do is to say I’m not okay. Make me be okay. Figure out. I need to figure out how to be okay. I have to figure out what I think I need and then figure out how to get it. It’s called strategy and tactic. It’s a war. What’s my strategy to get what I want? Make me feel better. Then what’s my tactic to do it? This is what it’s like to live in there. Now I said first look down. You are trying to look up. Oh, look up. I can’t look up man.
I go, it’s junk going on a side and you tell me what to do. I take the name of God all you want, right? It’s coming right back down. No, I’m using affirmation, positive affirmation. Why? Because otherwise there’s negatives can be in there. You have to struggle to do affirmation, which is all fine. Just understand why it is the way it is. So now you’ve built this thing inside your mind. It’s scary as could be. You worry all the time. You have anxiety and stress. That’s why you don’t have to make the world run. It runs itself. All the things I talked about to start with, oh my God, the baby made itself. Your body takes care of itself. The heartbeat itself, it all happens by itself. If you think it doesn’t, next time you wake up in the morning, decide for one day, you have to make your he beat, do this and you have to make your lungs going.
I see how much work you get done. It goes on by itself. It’s miraculous, all of it. But you build this thing in there called the ego called the self concept called the personal mind. It’s just a little subset of thoughts that keep talking. They’re busy, they’re neurotic, and that’s why when you leave meditation or loving hug, that moment don’t last very long. We’re having a moment. Yeah, that’s how long it’ll last too because this suckers coming right back, pulling your awareness down into it. I use the word distracting. It is rather distracting. It distracts your consciousness all the time until that’s who you are. That’s who you think you are. This thing in here that likes that and doesn’t like that and wants that, I’m the person that had that experience when I was young. My parents got divorced, I was so unhappy. That’s who I am.
It is not who you are. You’re the person that had the experience. You still exist if you didn’t have the experience. I had this terrible experience. My husband did this, that and the other thing. Oh my God, I’ll never be the same. Well, what if your husband didn’t do that? What if you never got married? Would you exist? Would you still be in there? Of course you would. You’re not the experience you had. You’re the one that had the experience. You’re the consciousness that had the experience, but you couldn’t handle it. Now we’re getting down to your work. The consciousness couldn’t handle the experience you had, and so you did what I consider the funniest thing in the whole world. I learned this way back in, noticed in the early seventies, right? What a dumb thing to do. If I have an experience I didn’t like, it comes and it goes.
It’s gone. I’m not gone inside of me. I’m keeping that sucker. I didn’t like it. Why would you keep what you don’t like? You’re driving down the street and somebody runs a red light and you ram on your brakes and you skid and you didn’t hit. Nothing happened. You will never forget that for the rest of your life. Now you’re scared to go in the car. Don’t drive down, down road. Don’t drive down, down road. That’s very dangerous. It’s not any more dangerous than it was before you did that. But to you, it is, isn’t it? So you held inside of you the worst thing you could ever store, that which bothered you the most. That’s the entire foundation of psychology. But you don’t know how not to do it. And now it’s so reactive that there’s so much junk in there. So now where you live, where your consciousness lives is staring at that distracting little bundle of thoughts called my ego, called me, called self-concept, and it’s always active.
Try to go to sleep at night sometimes. Then shut up, have something happen, have something almost happen. Have something that you thought maybe could happen. Bother Jenna. You don’t want to live there. I don’t want you to live there. You do not have to live there. You do not have to live like that. But if you stored this garbage in there, what’s going to happen is your consciousness is going to stare at it because it’s scary and it’s noisy. There’s way noise than the dog that was barking and is way worse than a pit bull. And so now your consciousness is distracted by that all the time. That’s why they tell you work with your mind. But I would like to say instead of work with your mind, find out why your mind is the way it is. Buddhists say, work at the root, work at the root of why that noisy crazy thing is always in there doing that, messing everything up.
You fall in love. It says careful, slow down. You’re going to get hurt. You got hurt before you want to live like that. You do not have to live like that. You’re not meant to live like that. That is not a reasonable life to live. So first you look down, it’s called witness consciousness. You don’t try to fix it. You don’t try to change anything. You just say, alright, I’m going to notice what’s going on down there. Why is it down there? Because your consciousness is the highest seat there is the consciousness is the highest seat. There is. Everything is below your consciousness. You’re looking down just like you look down at the ground, you look down at your thoughts. A lot of people say to me, I don’t know what you mean. Well someday you’ll know what I mean. You’ll sit in a seat and your thoughts are always below you.
Everything is going on. You have to look down, not down outside, look down inside and you’ll see that they’re a mess. And so you decide at some point, this is your spiritual awakening. I don’t want that going on down there. That’s not much fun. And the concept that it wants me to do what it said, it needs to make it be okay. Who’s guiding things around here? Because this broken part of me is telling me what I got to do and what everybody else has got to do for me to be okay. Why don’t I just fix the darn thing so it’s not broken. That’s spirituality. When you understand. Rumi once wrote yesterday I was clever, so I was trying to change the world today. I am wise, I’m changing myself. That’s the spiritual change. That’s when you woke up. How do you do that?
Okay, well let’s be a little more positive. Can you fix it? Yes, you can fix it. Can everyone fix it? Yes, everyone can fix it. Will it happen immediately? No, it will not happen immediately. You’ve made a royal mess in there and you’re addicted to it and it’s got control over you and you still live your life as though getting what it wants is what’s going to make you happy, don’t you? If you get what you want, it’ll be okay. If I avoid what I don’t want, I’ll be okay. That’s the principle of the lost mind of a lost soul. But you start watching and you realize, well, maybe I don’t have to do this. Maybe I can be okay with reality. Maybe I can be okay. That life built everything, every moment is building everything. Maybe that can be okay with me instead of me saying, no, it better not do what it’s been doing for 4.5 billion years just the earth.
It better do what I want it to do right now. If I change my mind, it better do it different. I told you my favorite is this. I can’t believe it’s raining on my birthday. It has to be raining. It doesn’t know it’s your birthday. I guarantee you the rain knows nothing about your birthday, but you’re getting upset, aren’t you? Alright, this is called getting out. This is when the soul, the inward consciousness has woken him enough to say, used to be a song in the sixties. We got to get out of this place. If it’s the last thing we ever do, that’s what it starts to look like. No way I’m living in here, not without garbage going on. I can’t have a decent life, nor can anyone around me because I’m a manipulative person that’s trying to control everyone to be the way I need them to be.
Okay? And so you start by getting your bearings. Just get your bearings. Can you dare to watch? Don’t change a single thing. Can you dare to watch the absurdity that is going on inside your personal mind? And can you dare someday to listen to this talk and realize, yep, that son of a gun thinks everything should be the way it wants. If things are not the way you want, you say they’re wrong. Instead of hazing the way you didn’t expect. They’re wrong, aren’t they? You start watching this thing and you realize ego’s a mess. That personal mind is a mess. It will never be okay. It can’t be okay. Its foundation is absurd. And so your first step you watch, then you start to work with it. Me, I started a fight with it. Shut up. I don’t want to hear from you. And I learned very quickly that that didn’t help one single way other.
It just made more of a mess. So how do you work with that? My experience is first you be gentle. That thing, it doesn’t want to be that broken. You stored every single thing that ever bothered inside of it. Of course it’s bothered, isn’t it? Of course it’s stirred. Of course it’s not happy course. It thinks it needs to do things to be okay. You made a mess in there. So you start, you look at it without reaction, without judgment, and you apologize. You did it. I mean I did it. If it comes back up, what do you do? Push it back down. You know what? That’s coming back up. Do you? You’re doing this. You’re holding it that way. You’re creating your ego. You create that thing. So you look down and you say, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you apologize to your psyche. What is the psyche?
A collection of thoughts that you build. They’re not the consciousness, they’re something you’re conscious of. But just think of a body. Don’t abuse the darn thing. Don’t beat it. Take care of it. You have a mind, a beautiful mind, and you abused it. You stored every single thing that happened to you that you didn’t like inside your mind. That’s what psychology taught you. It’s what Freud taught you. You did do that and now it keeps trying to come back up. You keep pushing it down and it just created all this disturbance in there. So you get centered enough and meditation helps with that. Now you’re using meditation properly. You look down at it and you realize it doesn’t have to be this way. I can work with you, I can work with a psyche. I can liberate you. I can free. You don’t want to get things the way you want.
You want to honor and respect and love things the way they are so you can be free. It’s called liberated being. And so what do you do? I teach you this. It took me a long time to catch onto it. You star with the tiny little things that happen in your everyday life. If you have all that stuff stored in there and you do, you know, do what good is it. If you’re going to put more in there, you reach the point. These are different stages of your growth. You reach the point where you say, man, that’s hard to get rid of the stuff. Wow, is it making a mess? If I even think of something that bothered me when I was four years old, it bothers me. I ain’t putting no more in there. There now go step by step. I am not putting more in there.
That is the purpose of my day. The purpose of my life. I’m a person of my life is not to get an A or not earn a million dollars or not to marry somebody that I really love. No, no, they can happen. I’m not renouncing the purpose of my life. I ain’t putting no more in there. It’s ridiculous trying to live with that. So you start practicing what’s called acceptance, surrender, letting go. You know that the teachings, what does that mean? Something happened out there. You said something. I wasn’t sure what you meant, but I didn’t like it. If it meant what I thought it meant, I didn’t like it. You’re about to store another one in there and you’re not going to like her. Next time you see her, you hear me? You just lost a friend because your mind thought that maybe she said something you didn’t like Ever done that.
But you don’t even start with that. You start with the simple things. I told you the fact that it’s hot out, the weather, the fact that the driver in front of you doesn’t drive the way you want. The fact that somebody is wearing something that offends you or smell, I don’t care any stupid little thing. And notice your tendency to suppress, your tendency to resist, your tendency to push away anything your mind says I don’t like. And you start saying, no, I don’t want to do that anymore. And you work with yourself. There’s so many ways to, you can use affirmation. I love the weather. I love this. If you think somebody said something you don’t like, watch, I love it. I love it. But what if they meant something really nice? I love it. What if they really meant to dish you? Oh, I love it.
It’s called affirmation. You neutralize this stuff before you store it when all the time. Well, why would I? Because of the cost that you take on if you store it, you’re sitting on a little planet in the middle of nowheres, somebody said something. Let’s screw yourself up about it. That’s your choice. Or step back on the planet. Do it all the time. Just step back on the planet spinning through the middle of nowhere. It’s like a little seat that you sit on top of the planet, you’re big and it’s just spinning around nowhere. I told you, what’d you do today? A 360. It’s the round my access. I rotated. But due to this year, a 360 around a star, there’s 300 billion in your galaxy and there’s 2 trillion galaxies, all with hundreds of billions. What did she say that bothered you? Are you willing to do that every single time with the new things that are coming in?
You have a choice. Be bothered or don’t be bothered. But shouldn’t I be bothered? No. If my body’s hurting me, should I beat it? No. Why would you beat it? That’s not rational behavior. If my mind is causing problems in there, should I get into them? No. You just sit there and say, I can handle this. I can handle the weather. I can handle the driver in front of me. I can handle what you said. I couldn’t care what you meant. Who cares? You were in a bad mood tomorrow. Have you noticed? You probably have never. I made him. I tested him a long time ago. The vast majority of what you think is going on is not going on. The vast majority of what you think is going on inside somebody else’s head is not going on. You are projecting your fears and anxieties and desires because you have to look through the veil of that mind.
I told you, don’t do this. It’s not nice. Don’t do this. But in my early days when I saw this stuff going on in there and he was carrying on about those people, talking about him or this or that, or somebody was saying something, I would walk right up to that person and say, did you really mean to say what I thought you said? I don’t even know the person. No, I know what you’re talking about. And I show him, you’re crazy. You’re crazy. And I used to listen to you. No wonder I had such a rough life. I’m looking through the veil of that which is programmed for me to have trouble. Like I stored everything I’ve ever had trouble before. Now don’t do that. Just let go. Okay. It came in. It’s felt disturbing. I don’t care. I don’t want it to not happen again.
I don’t care. I would rather have it happen again than stored inside myself forever when it never happens again and you learn to let it go. So how would you like to have a relationship with somebody that if they’re in a bad mood, they said something and you hold it against him? He just an hour went by and he said, oh, let’s go play now. Why’d you say that? I Nice relationship. Wouldn’t you hanging out with a pretty high dude or do this? This is what it means to grow spiritually. Does meditation help? Of course it does. It lets you get above it and have a little vacation. Do vacations help? Yes, but you have to come back. Well, I don’t want that to be what your meditation is. A vacation. One time you get a little vacation, then you come right back to all that garbage.
Yes, meditate, do your work, whatever you want to do. But when you’re down here, clean up one, don’t take on anymore. I’m begging you don’t take on anymore. It’s not worth it, is it? Have you seen how easy it is to get scarred in there for somebody to say something, you think something and it stays in there and keeps coming back. The next time you see them and you see something on tv, yes or no, takes one second to get stored in there and it could take years to get it out. Therapy, meditation. You got stuff in there like that. I don’t want you to have that in there. You don’t need to have that in there, period. It’s not natural. It’s not meant to be. And so what you do is you start practicing letting go. It comes in, it hits something and you decide.
Meditation can give you that moment of consciousness where you decide, do I want more stuff in here or do I want out? That’s your choice. Every minute that’s your choice. And at some point you’ll say, I don’t want more stuff in here. I don’t care what you meant. I don’t care how the driver in front of me drove. I don’t care if it’s hot out. I don’t care. Stop it. I ain’t holding this in there. And you learn to let it go. How my experiences, relaxation is the answer just like a yoga asana. How do you do? Just relax into it. Force no, relax. It will open up. As you relax inside, you will tense against what bothers you. You will tense, resist that which doesn’t feel good. Relax instead of resisting. That’s the entire path. That’s the entire path. Relax instead of resisting. And when you relax, you gave it room to pass through.
Doesn’t mean it’ll pass through every time. It may not. So let it go tonight. Let it go tomorrow. Every time it comes back up, don’t yell at it. Don’t get mad. Just let it go and it will leave less of a mark on you than if you had resisted for something. To leave a mark, there has to be resistance. And so your resistance is what makes it stay in there. So if you relax through it, then what happens? Now it becomes very easy. Now all of a sudden you’re happier. They remind me all the time, oh my God, it works. I’m so much happier. My relationships are better. Of course they are. You’re not polluting every single thing inside and outside of you. But then what’s going to happen, I’m warning you, is something bigger is going to come up by itself. Oh, by itself.
Somebody hadn’t thought about for a while. Some billboard makes you think of it or somebody says something, doesn’t say something, and you start crying and you start feeling this pain in your heart and so on. And what you think is what I do wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong. Everything you’re doing is right. That is the path. Now that you’ve stopped putting new stuff in there, what about all that old stuff? Oh, I’m going to have to go to therapy for the rest of my life. No, fine. If you want to do that, your therapist is life. It will bring that stuff up, wound it. Your everyday life will end up hitting that stuff. Your choice is push it back down, play the blame game or practice letting go. And eventually get to the point you say, I don’t care what comes up, how big it is.
I don’t care what it is, bring it on because the meaning of my life is that this stuff’s not going to be inside of me. And now all of a sudden the mind thins out by itself. Not you have to learn techniques and all this kind of stuff. Why did it thin out? The reason it talks so much is you store all that garbage in there. If you let the garbage go naturally just keep relaxing through it. But what if it really, really hurts? You decide. Would you rather store the pain or let it go? I know in my life, I can remember way back in the seventies, early eighties, right when I was doing a lot of, I would see this come up and Mickey, he was so trained in this, he would say, do you want that to stay in there from now on?
Or do you want to get rid of it? But it hurts no pain, no gain. It’s called soul birth. Women go through childbirth. That’s so much fun. You go through soul birth and you start little by little saying, I want this to happen. I don’t care what it feels like. It’s down there hurting. Anyways, it just came up. I’d rather have the herd in front of me. I have the opportunity to work with it, to let it go, to use affirmation. At some point you catch on. I’m still holding it. I’m teetering with it. I’m trying to let go. You didn’t let it go. You caught it and don’t know what to do. You caught the tiger by the tail, right? You caught it here and you learn to offer it up. You learn to just let go. Offer it up, give it to God.
Just anything that comes up, fine, fine. Let it go. Just keep offering it up. Just find to stay open while this garbage purifies through you and you will be able to do that. And every time you do it, you get higher. Why? Because it was blocking your energy, it was messing you up, and all of a sudden you get higher and higher and eventually, so I have to stop right on time. You’re going to find out there’s a flow of energy inside of you. You hardly knew anything about. You always call it Shakti. You start feeling this rush of energy coming up, not down. You were looking down. This won’t let you look down. It’s like a flow of holy water as the Bible calls it, coming up strong, powerful so that your consciousness can’t look down anymore. It’s forcing it to look up. And it’s so beautiful that your consciousness doesn’t want to look down and therefore it’s able to.
Hercules. When he cleaned out the Augean stables, you know the story. He was given a task, Herculean task, and he had like one day or something to clean out the stable. Well, instead of going in there with a shovel to clean it out, it was Hercules very strong. He redirected the flow of a river to flow through and boom, we just washed it right out. That’s what the Shakti does. That’s what happens when you let go enough and she starts flowing up, she washes it out while urine in ecstasy. She washes it out. That’s called the ascent. It just, all this energy starts flowing up. It takes you higher and higher and then you start being able to use more of your mind. It’s not lost in your personal self. And people don’t understand that. They say, well, what if something happens that you’re supposed to deal with, you deal with it, but you don’t deal with it because you’re not okay?
You don’t deal it. Exactly. I can’t handle this. It’s just something that brought the universe, gave you this moment, and you deal with the best of your ability. Not personal, not need, not desire, not fear. Just what can I do to help? And every moment that passes by you, that’s your attitude. What can I do to serve this moment? What can I raise this moment because I’m fine with it. I have no trouble. Okay, so we went the whole way. Hear me from the lowest aspect of your being that you’re lost, staring at you just made this lowest part of your being. The meaning of your life. Your world is as small as your ego. That’s all it thinks about. What do I want? What do I not want? What happened to me? Why was that fair? It was not fair. Woo. It’s just a tiny little collection of thoughts.
And they’re your thoughts. It’s not even anybody else’s. I ain’t living in that world. That’s a tiny little world, isn’t it? It’s not a whole lot of fun either. This is how you liberate yourself and the Shakti will take you the rest of the way. And we haven’t even talked about getting high. We start getting a little bit liberated. You let go enough. That’s where the great masters win. That’s where Christ went. When you say, my father and I are one. Now you’ve tuned back into the part of you that had come down and was experience in the moments of life. But you don’t have to come down. You can merge with the whole universe. And that’s where the great masters went. Alright? Can you see how sincere I am that you could understand this? I love you. Why would I want you to live in that tiny little box that’s so full of junk, the garbage you held inside throughout your life that’s creating all these tiny thoughts about yourself when you’re capable of being fancy, the most beautiful being that ever walked, the face of the earth, healing where you walk, healing takes place, everything.
You’re a great being, but we get a little lost, don’t we? Free yourself. Free yourself.
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.
© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2025 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.
