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: ARD of Grand Masters. There’s so many aspects of the spiritual path that people like to get involved in, participate in believe in, and all that stuff. There’s one aspect that if you can get it, it takes you the whole way. How do you start? Let’s say I take you and I put you into a house. The house has no windows.
That’s a nice house, reasonable size. Then that’s your life, period. If you lived there for 50, 60, 70, 80 years, your entire life is what is going on in that house. I assure you that things will become very small. The slightest mark on a wall, the slightest sound, the slightest change. Anything will come to your attention and you’ll focus on it, and you will try to keep things a certain way.
In that house. The problem is your consciousness is so much bigger than that. What a waste, what a ridiculous thing to do. We do that with so many things in our lives. I’m not picking at anybody, so if I say this example, don’t you get mad at me, but let’s say you’re getting married. Well, that’s a great thing.
Congratulations. I’m so proud of you. You found somebody, you love them. You’re gonna get married. Do you know what a big deal people make outta that wedding? Have you any idea, especially the most wealthy people would ever like, the napkins have to be exactly folded the right. How many things can go wrong?
That’s just like being in that house. You have limited your frame of reference to that day. It’s such a special day. It’s a day like any other day. The sun will come up, the sun will go down. Everybody else, all 8.3 billion of you will go out their business, except for a handful of you that have decided to make yourself neurotic.
You decided that nobody’s making you do that. There’s nothing wrong with it, but you’ve made yourself neurotic about every little thing, the flowers, the this, the that. Who trucks first? Can you imagine? They have like 10 trials and practice weddings and all kinds of things. All right. Which is fine. Please do it.
Don’t listen to me. I always tell you, do not listen to me, but I want you to hear. It’s the truth, isn’t it? What did that. The same thing as when you locked yourself and somebody locked you in that house, you locked yourself into a frame of mind. It’s not reality. What matters is the wedding. What matters?
You love each other. It has nothing to do with anything else, but you have created you and probably your mom and dad and different people, alright? Have created this thing that is, doesn’t exist. You created it in your mind and you have all these rules about how it has to be and what’s gonna happen, and if anything goes wrong, you get neurotic and and so on.
There are people, it could be anything. I’ll just use one example who do a wedding like that and something goes wrong, it rains or somebody drops the flowers. I’m telling you, it ruins their life. There are people, they, they can’t handle that. This is something that went wrong. The wedding was meant to be that way, and years later still bothers them.
Now, is that logical? If you want to have a nice life, you have a life. What does that mean? Your life means you drop down onto a planet in the middle of nowheres. And you are gonna be here for some 70, 80, 90 years, which is a very short period of time. I tell you all the time, the planet’s been here for 4.5 billion years.
You’ll be here for 80, 90 years and this is what you want to do with your life. Make yourself a neurotic mess. Am I picking on you or do, is it okay if I talk to you this way? Why did you do that? That’s a deep question. Why did you do that? The truth is you didn’t just do that with the wedding. You did that with your entire life.
You did that with a toy when you were little. It had to be exactly that toy, that color. Wait a minute. This is a big place. This toy store all over the place. There’s all kinds of toys. Why does it have to be that toy, that color? The same as Johnny got, but yours is a little nicer. What is that? Because it does the same thing as the wedding, it makes you neurotic.
You know what Ashley does? It makes you unhappy. The potential for your unhappiness with something that happens at that wedding is so high, the probably that thing’s gonna go down the way your mind thinks it should, with every single thing being exactly the way you want it to be, et cetera, et cetera, and the way mommy wants it to be and et cetera, et cetera.
It’s so low. There’s always some drama. It was the same thing with that toy. There’s all kinds of toys. What is going on? That we do this to ourselves. That’s what I wanna talk about. Do we do this to ourselves? Do we do it every single day? You have to give a talk in class. Okay. About what? Or some subject you studied or something like that.
You can give a talk. Nervous, scared, most people. You’re sitting on a planet in the middle of nowheres for a few years. How big did you make this little event that you’re going to give this 20 minute talk? This is a spiritual discussion because while you are doing this and you are, we’ll talk about it.
Okay? While you are doing this, you will not have a nice life. You will struggle. You will suffer. You’ll feel anxiety. You have fears, insecurities. Yes. It’s not because life is that way. It’s ’cause you made it that way. You don’t live in that house, it’s a house. Get out.
Just get out of the stupid house. No, because then the pet won’t get fed. And this would happen and that could happen. And maybe there’ll be a mark on the wall that that wasn’t there before. And no, I’m not getting outta the house. There you go. Basel tough. Don’t get outta the house. The analogy of that house is what’s meant by enlightenment.
It’s that simple. Get out of the stupid house and there’s a world out there. There’s an entire weather and things and go places and everything. That’s pretty big, isn’t it? Expansive. That’s liberation. You are what’s called ajita. Oh, that sounds really special. A liberated soul. ’cause you got out of the stupid house.
Yes. You are a liberated soul because you had locked yourself into a non liberated state. Who did that? You did that. Who said that? What? It was so important. Who said that the toy had to be what it was you did? Who said that the talk has to go exactly what you wanted to? What if you give you the talk and you slur and you forget a word and everybody laughs and you laugh with ’em?
Who said you can’t be like that. Nobody said you can’t be. Anyway. You did. You said you made these rules inside your head that said everything has to go the way how I want. I made up what I want. I made up what I like. I made up what I don’t like, made up what I believe made up what I don’t believe I made up, who I like made up, who I don’t like.
I made up where I wanna live. I made up every single thing and if it goes the way I made up, I’m doing good until I start thinking that it might not.
When was the last time you got what you wanted and never wanted anything else? Wake up. What have you done? It is not, what have they done to you? What have you done to you? You did this. If they did something to you, if you feel that it’s ’cause they didn’t do what you wanted them to pay attention to the absurdity of what we’re doing.
We are taking a mind. It’s a great thing. A mind. It can make decisions, it can think about things. It can remember things. It can do all kinds of things, can’t it? Mine’s got a lot. It’s a computer. Where do you wanna go today? That’s what Microsoft asked you. What it, where wanna go today? You know what you said to hell?
I wanna go to hell, I suffer. Okay. And you basically, you have this mind. There’s nothing wrong with your mind. There’s something wrong with what you did with it. It’s nothing wrong with a car, but if you decide to run people over a thing, there’s something wrong, but it’s not the car, it’s you. There’s nothing wrong with your mind.
It is what you’re using your mind to do. That is damaging and not healthy. You’re using your mind to, you don’t need the house to lock yourself in. You locked yourself in your mind. You locked yourself in a thing. It has to be like this. I don’t like this color. I don’t like that color. I like this person. I don’t like that person.
I can’t believe what she said to me last time. I don’t ever see her again. That’s her dude. That’s exactly the same as building a house and locking you in it. Now you’re locked inside that mine with preferences and hopes and dreams and concepts and views. I. People say to me, but aren’t hopes good things?
I can be fair. I gotta, I’ve grown older. I have to be fair. If you are depressed, I want you to have hope, but I want you to understand what hope is. And my hope is, I hope someday it’ll be the way I want. I hope someday it’ll be the way I want. What’s understand. I hope that it wouldn’t be the way you want.
Isn’t that what hope is? Because what you hope she don’t want it. You make up anything you want and then hope it’ll happen, but it’s good as opposed to being depressed and having no energy and getting down and all that kind of junk. I’d rather have you have hope that you’ll get what you want. You have to understand you did this.
No I didn’t. Yes you did. You made up how you want it to be. You made up how it has to be inside that house where you live. You made up how the wedding has to be. You made up how the toy has to be. You made up how the person has to be. You made up how every single thing needs to be for you to be okay. How you doing so far?
Why do you think there’s so much neurosis, so much anxiety, so much tension, so much fighting. Why? ’cause everybody made up in their mind. They didn’t have to build a house. They did it in their mind. They made up in their mind how they want it to be, and unless it’s that way, they’re not okay. And so they fight outside to make everything be the way the inside mind decided it wanted to be.
That’s what’s going on. That’s what all war is. That’s what all disharmony is. That’s what every, you know, John Lennon imagined all the people. When all the people stop doing that, we can imagine all the people living at peace. But while every single person goes inside this place called your mind, it’s just a place.
It’s a play pen. You can do anything wrong with it. Every single person goes inside that mine and makes up how they want every single thing to be. How they want all people to treat them, how they want to talk, what they want to happen, what they want the weather to be like. It better rain on my wedding.
I’m having it outside. I took a big chance. Now you’re neurotic, you’re scared to death of the weather. Everyone’s scared of the weather. You’re making this stuff up in your mind. Just like I said, you built that house without windows and you’re basically living in there, and it’s not easy to live in there.
Why? Because you have these thing called preferences. You have the way I want things to be and the way I don’t want things to be, and if I get them the way I want them to be, I’m a happy camper, at least for a while, a little bit, and as they’re not the way I wanna be, I suffer. That’s the bottom line of what’s going on.
So you have a choice. Either you continue doing that and try to get things the way you want. Is that not what everybody’s doing? Look at politics, look at marriages, look at everything. You have made up in your mind how you want this world to be. Will it naturally be that way? Does it just kinda end up that way all the time?
A chance in the world you believe that the meaning of your life, you don’t realize it, but you’re saying it to make up what you want and then go make it happen. You’re taught that, aren’t you? That’s what it’s about. Decide what you want. And then don’t quit. Just go out there. I don’t care whether you use nice words or this, or manipulating or lies, or just get it the way you want or you will not be happy.
The trouble is you think you’re right. You don’t think I made this up? Of course you made it up. The mind can do anything you want, but you made up something that you believe in so thoroughly that when it doesn’t go the way you want, you say it’s wrong. You were wrong. You should not have said that to me.
You should not have done that. It shouldn’t have happened this way. It shouldn’t have rained. I, it’s my favorite and you all laugh, but I don’t know why it didn’t rain for weeks. Why did it have to rain on my birthday? It doesn’t know it’s your birthday, does it? And what are you doing? This is what you do with your mind.
You make up things and then you decide I’m not gonna be okay unless they happen that way, and then you go out there and cause so much trouble in this world. Imagine 8.3 billion of you making up something different. Mm-hmm. No two of you ever made up the same thing. I mean, for a short period of time, but like two ships in a night, they don’t stay that way.
I’m gonna talk why in a minute. So you all made up different things and now you all go out there and try to make the moment in front of you. Who cares about the other moment? I care about the moment in front of me. The given time when you’re talking to me, I’m gonna talk with my friend. Well, you’re talking to me, but I care about is what you’re saying.
I don’t care if I have the fact there’s 8.3 billion other people saying something at the same time. I only care about me. And amazing. I only care about me, about my moment, the moments I’ve had, the moments I’m having, and the moments I’m gonna have are in my head and I have a way I want them to be.
Nobody else wants them to be that way. There’s no way. Well explain that to you, why in a moment, why I got that way. But now you go out there and fight with everybody or manipulate and try to figure out how can I get things? You ever think how to get things the way I want? Like you don’t understand how big the gap is.
How do I get the job that I’m passionate about? Wrong? How do I be passionate about every job? Oh, that sound a little different, but I say I can’t. I’m the way I am. No, you are not the way you are, you’re the way you made up. Psychology says, man is the sum of his learned experiences. And then there you made it up.
You got programmed by your past experiences and now you’re coming here into a world saying, my past experiences are the important ones, be the way I want you to be. Well, her past experiences, she’s wrong. I know. ’cause I had the experience. You literally believe that. They dated someone named Ben. Once he turned off a real schnuck.
I do not do Ben’s anymore.
I purposely left through a person’s name instead of a person’s hair or height or religion or you understand that? And then it was a little more personal, wouldn’t it? You do that. Your past experiences have programmed your mind. You didn’t even get to program your own mind. It wasn’t like you came down, dropped outta the womb.
Here you’re, and somebody said, here’s your checklist. What do you want? You went through the experiences of your life, every moment of them. Some of them were pleasant, some of them were not. That’s yin and yang. This is natural. Whether it could bealing, whether it could be rainy people, could be nice people could be mean.
So you went through the experiences in your life and they programmed your mind. They programmed your mind to say, I like this kind of person. I don’t like that kind of person. I believe in this. I don’t. Don’t you dare think you’re right. Any person who claims you’re spiritual, who thinks they’re right, that’s a joke.
You think you’re right because of the past experiences you had. If you had different past experiences, I assure you, you would think different. Just please step into truth. You feel and think the way you do because of the programming that happened to you through your life. And if it was really strong programming, you know, you saw your parents die in a car accident that’s in there way programmed deep in there affecting the entire rest of your life, you may never go in a car again.
You may never have children ’cause you don’t want it to happen to them. What kind of a way is that to live? You’re a free soul. You came down here onto this unbelievable planet. It’s quite a planet. Don’t tell me what’s wrong. Look at it. There’s plants. There’s things to eat, there’s things to do. There’s colors, there’s shapes.
Look how many types of animals there are. How can you be bored? There’s giraffes and elephants, there’s everything. And you step down here and all you do is complain. Not only do you complain, you have fear. What are you afraid of? That it might not be the way I want, or worse yet, that it might be the way I don’t want.
Mm-hmm. What else do you fear? I’m talking about lions jumping at you as a different kind of fear as instinctual. Not most of you have that problem on a regular basis. Okay? Well, you don’t, but you have the problem that, I dunno what she’s gonna say to me. I dunno if she’ll like me. Oh, I don’t know whether I’m wearing the right thing.
I feel out place. There’s not, you have that junk going on, right? You have ruined your life. God didn’t do it. The world didn’t do it. You didn’t pay attention and you had these experiences. They came and they went, yes. Terrible thing happened. I don’t like to give an example. Terrible thing, but there’s terrible things that happened.
But you know what that happened is a PEs tense verb. They’re over. Yes. You got divorced. Yes. Your parents died. Yes. You got sick and had to go through cancer treatment. Do things happen? But they’re over. But they’re not over in. You are. They take a breath. That’s the most important thing can ever teach you if they’re over outside, why They’re not over inside.
Why did you decide that it was intelligent to told every single thing that ever bothered you inside of you. So it can keep bothering you. I’m not kidding. You did decide that, didn’t you? Why did you decide to hold every single thing that ever bothered you? When your parents got divorced, when you were five, when you didn’t get to go to the fair, you wanted to go to, your sister went.
Why is it intelligent to hold that inside of you for your entire life and let it keep bothering you? Don’t bother answering me. Why? Because it’s not. If you’re gonna store everything that ever bothered you inside of you, you are going to be bothered. And because you’re afraid of being bothered, you are gonna make every decision for the rest of your life based on avoiding that thing.
I don’t fly in planes. I’ve seen what goes on. I almost got an accident in a plane. Oh. It jumped up and down. Now I’m never Okay, fine. Fine. How many times does a plane jump up and down and not crash? How many things are you missing in your life? ’cause you decided, ’cause you happen to have one experience, it’s gonna guide the rest of your life.
I ain’t getting married again. Not chance in the world. I’m not getting married again. Okay, fine. Don’t get married again or. Why can’t you sit there and say, wow, that was one hell of a learning experience. I bet I do better next time. That was something else altogether. Why? Why can’t you do that? But you don’t?
You can’t handle the events that are not comfortable to you, and so you suppress them, you hold them. That’s where the word suppression comes from. You hold them inside of you because you don’t want them to touch you. You literally, I’ve touched this before, when something comes in that’s not comfortable to you.
You don’t welcome it. Okay? Come on through. Get it over with. You don’t do that ever. You say, stay away from me. I don’t want you coming close to me. I don’t wanna experience you. I don’t want you to have happened, and so I’m gonna push you away. That’s what you do inside. You push things away, and when you push them away, they stay inside.
They’re not a chance in the world. They don’t, I don’t care how far you push ’em away, the further you push ’em away, it goes from suppression to repression to denial. Okay? It just gets further and further down there. Why don’t you just let it go and just say, into every life, some rain must fall. So there was mine.
Why can’t I just experience the reality of life? Let it come in. When it comes in, pass through and be present. It’s called be here now and be present in the current moment without storing all this garbage inside of me so that I might be here now I’m there then. Every decision I’m making is based on avoiding what I didn’t like and trying to have happen what I do like.
So I’m not living my life. I’m manipulating and controlling and fearing and judging, and it’s so complex what you’ve done with your mind. I can’t even talk about it. Do you have to live like that? Of course not. Where do I have to move? So it’s not like that. It’s not like that anywhere except inside of you.
But all my exes live in Texas and I don’t wanna go back to Texas. You’ve just brought your past into the now and you think that you can only be okay if you make everything match the way you want it to be. So what’s the answer? The answer is get outta that house. Have the wedding, but don’t care about it.
You don’t not have the wedding, but have fun. If it rains, have fun. If it napkins run, who cares? That’s why I keep trying to talk to. When I talk to, it’s like, alright, your frame of reference right now, I get to talk the other day. Your frame of reference is so small. Your frame of reference is so small, it’s only made up of the experiences you’ve had.
What else can it be? How big is that frame of reference, the experience that you’ve had? Don’t answer because I wanna make sure you think of it properly. Alright. The only way to properly think about it’s as follows. At any given moment, you’re having an experience, right? How many are you missing? How many experiences that exist in the universe, oh, let’s just say the planet Earth.
How many experienced events are taking place at the same moment you’re having your event everywhere else? 700 billion, zillion. So how much do you know versus how much did you miss? If you’re the sum of your learned experiences, you’re pretty limited, aren’t you? They’re pretty limited experiences. Look to the right, to the different one, look to the left, and another one.
Look up any place there’s something else going on, right or wrong, and you’re missing that. If I could talk for an hour about just this subject, you’d get bored and leave. I wouldn’t. This is the most important thing you will ever hear. Why? Because it’s logical. I’m talking to the intelligence of your mind.
You are missing every other experience that’s going on in reality to have your one experience. Then your next one, next one. You’re gluing them together and saying, I know something. You don’t know anything. If you miss everything, how can you know anything? I minored into statistics back in college, right?
I like statistics. We had a phrase, something was called statistically insignificant. That’s what your stuff is inside your mind. It is statistically insignificant compared to everything else that could have been going on, that was going on, but you weren’t paying attention to it. You didn’t see it. You are so caught at staring at yourself.
You honestly believe you’re the center of the universe. Like G said, no, the earth is not the center of the solar system. You absolutely believe that you’re the center of the universe, that this world is here for you. It’s either for you or against you. It’s all about you. You are not necessarily in reverse.
Every other person’s exactly the same. They’re just consciousness standing on a spot, having an experience, and not being able to handle the experience they’re having. It’s bad enough that you missed all of them. You couldn’t handle the one you had.
Okay, and what you did was build a mind. You built a mindset just by going to the computer and just building something. You built a mindset that, I know what it did. It’s called the ego. You built a mindset that said, I am here, uhoh. Here I am. Well, who am I? I am the one that, that’s my mommy. No, you’re not.
You are the consciousness that got born and dropped down here, and there’s this lady over there. She birthed your body. She didn’t birth your soul. She didn’t birth the consciousness, and she didn’t birth your body either. There are 35 trillion living cells making up your body. How many did mommy make?
Zero. That body made itself one fertilized cell new. How to make that liver and pancreas. There’s just this amazing thing called life that just is everything and it does everything. And then cornfields and OMG. But you won’t do that. You make it so small ’cause you make it be about you, but it’s not about you is it?
It’s not about you. That I like to take you at this point. Alright? You have a mind. We’ve been talking about the personal mind. The personal mind is this tiny little nothing, right? Your mind can go anywheres. Think about a galaxy right now. See a galaxy. I want you to see in Drama to Galaxy, you see it now, leave in drama and go see a whole cluster of galaxies.
Can you do it? That’s called your abstract mind, your intellectual mind, not the mind that is tiny about me, right? It’s the same mind. It’s just one is thinking about me and the other’s thinking about a much bigger universe. Okay, so now I want you to take the ME one. And I want you to take it off the planet Earth.
Go out with the astronauts out there where they see, they have this overview effect they call it. Ever heard that term? The overview effect. Astronauts have that. They go there, they go off the planet, they go, whoa. That’s where I’ve been living. That beautiful. Oh, they all come back environmentalists. I guarantee you that that beautiful little fragile ball floating through outer space with clouds and land and oh my God, why?
Because now I said you, the semi learned experiences, your mind is, your mind now had in other experience, way outside of you, and it took you outside yourself. Isn’t that beautiful? But I don’t wanna stop there. Now, I dunno if you’ve ever seen him, but there’s a picture of Saturn where the earth is inside of one of the rings.
It’s a tiny dye. You can’t even see the thing go out there. That’s just Saturn. It’s just a few planets away and you can’t even see the earth. Now, go pick on. Boom. I’m fast. I dare you. Leave the solar system. I told you before, if you leave the solar system, you’re leaving your star, your son. Let’s go to the next sun.
How far away is the next star? Remember, there’s 300 billion of them in your galaxy, 300 billion stars in your galaxy. Where’s the next one? After the sun, 4.2 light years away. That should mean nothing to you. I don’t want it to mean anything to you. It’s just a number, and we’re doing this for a reason to take you outta your personal mind.
This is another mind you get to use. How far away is 4.2 light years? If I hold a light beam above the planet Earth and I let it go for one second, it circumnavigates the globe seven and a half times. Is that fast enough for you? It went around the entire Earth seven and a half times in one second. Now, stretch your mind.
Go that speed every second for 4.2 years, and you’ll end up at the next star. What was wrong with the little pimple on your face? And what was wrong with what you said in the class when you stumbled over your word? What are you doing? Why did you make your world so small? It’s not that small, is it?
Because this is your world. You say, what’s got to do with me? Are you kidding? It’s reality. It has to do with you. Your mind is just as capable of thinking of that as it is. Thinking about the toy you wanted or what somebody said to you that you don’t like, that you’ll never forgive them for what? Where’s that?
I don’t even see it anymore. Are you willing to dare. To take in the truth to your mind instead of doing this thing you’ve done that make it an ingrown toenail. It is. Only think about itself. Its whole thing is about itself, isn’t it? But what about all this go out there in space? Have something happen to this beautiful little planet.
Maybe a meter eye hits it or this happens always happen and it blows it to smithing could happen because the entire Earth it blow apart. A few planets would change their orbit. Nothing else would know it even happened. They wouldn’t know you’re ever here. I just went to the closest star. If there’s 300 billion stars in your galaxy, how many galaxies are there?
2 trillion. 2 trillion galaxies, all of which have hundreds of billions of stars. But we’re gonna do that. Where’s the next galaxy? I’ll end with this on a little trip here. I said to you, the next star was 4.2 light years away. Where’s the Andromeda? Where’s the next galaxy? You can see it floating out there.
2.4 million light years away. Go at that speed of every second for 2.4 million years, and you’ll region rama, and that’s one of 2 trillion galaxies. What are you worried about? What’s the problem? Where’s the beef? Am I making any sense to you or is your mind still saying, what’s that got to do with me?
No, you’ve got it wrong. What’s that garbage that you made up in your tiny, tiny little mind got to do with you? Nothing. The fact that your consciousness is able to comprehend. The breadth and scope of God, of reality, call it whatever you want. I don’t care if you call it God or you call it reality. Same thing.
What it is, you know there’s a thing in Zen called not you. It’s a very high state, not you. Well there, not you is everything else. And it’s a pretty big everything else, isn’t it? Look what you did with your world. Did you make it small? Answer me, did you use your mind? That could go anywhere if we just went there to make it so small that you suffer.
You made up how you want everything to be. How it has to be, how people, not just what they said to you. Like someone told you they loved you. Like this. Yeah. I love you too. That work? That work for you? No, I don’t think so. It has to be the right tone. Whoa. Are you picky? Have I gotten through to anybody yet?
No wonder you suffer, right? I highly advise learning not to do that. Can you learn not to do that? Can you learn the piano? Can you learn a sport? Can you learn a language? Can you learn things? I’m not saying you’re the best at it, but can you learn then why can’t you learn to be okay? Why can’t you learn to stop doing this absurd thing of making your mind so small?
It is bad enough that the mind is so small. It’s only your mind. Everybody else has got one too. But you don’t care about theirs. You only care about yours. There’s something wrong with this and you’re not gonna have a nice life. So what do you do about it? You take a breath and you say, do I wanna live like that?
I have all this pre, is there pressure? You have pressure on you. You do not. You are out there and outer space is 2.5 light. Years away, you’re gonna be okay. But I think it’s hilarious. And they almost say, do the worst thing that can happen is you die, right? You guys don’t even wanna die yet. You hate being here.
All you do is complain. You worry, you complain. You have anxiety. You’re afraid of, of people, places, things, but you don’t wanna die. Right? You just, it’s, it’s so absurd. It’s so absurd. It’s ridiculous what you’ve done with your mind. So what do you do first? Take a breath. It’s a big breath. It is however you want it to be.
You’re the one who married this part of your mind. That’s closed, that have past experience. What happens in relationships. You have past experience, you have financial problems, you have this, the kid problems, this and that. Next thing you know, it weighs on your heart. It weighs on your ability to love. And you wonder, how do we grow apart?
You didn’t grow apart, you grew into your minds. But it didn’t used to be like this. I used to love and well, of course you didn’t know all that garbage on top of your mind that you built. So here, what do you do? You decide the problem is my mind. The problem is not the politics. We can deal with that and we’ll talk about coming back and dealing with life, but you can’t deal with life when you’re dealing with you.
You’re not dealing with life. You’re dealing with what you like, what you don’t like, what you believe in. Now you are angry and you’re this right. That’s that’s not dealing with life. That’s being locked into your tiny little mind and believing what it’s saying, and you realize, I don’t wanna live there. I don’t wanna do that.
You’ll see it. Take me one minute at the end to come back and say, there’s this thing called your dharma. Right action. But don’t do that yet. You gotta free your mind until you have a chance for understanding, right action. Right Action is never what you want, but it feels right. I’m sure it does, because that’s how your mind is programmed.
So how do I work with myself to expand my frame of reference, to open up and let my life be life instead of trying to make life be me? The weather is the weather. You’re not gonna change it. You’re not gonna change the way it is, and you’re not gonna change the way it was. You have to wake up enough to say, I don’t wanna live like that, period.
I am not going to live like that. It’s absurd. It doesn’t work. It’s suffering. There’s tension and anxiety, and there shouldn’t be any of that. How you like that? There’s no tension, there’s no anxiety, there’s no fear, there’s no worry, there’s no insecurity. None out there. You’ve expanded your frame of reference.
Oh, Sally, down on the planet Earth, who lives at 1502 in the corner bedroom, doesn’t like you. I can’t wait to meet her. Nothing is saying you have to do this with your mind and make it so small. So what do you do You first decide? It’s a long-term decision. It’s a life decision. I am not going to live like that.
I don’t care about anybody else. There was a song back in the sixties. We gotta get outta this place if it’s the last thing we ever do. Okay, well, we gotta get outta this place. But the place is your mind. And fortunately, since it’s your mind, you can do whatever you want with it. So what does one do? One decides to wake up in the morning.
I son, I give you, you wake up in the morning, I’m back and you say there’s going to be life. Not very much of it. Just a little point of it is gonna pass by me today. I’m gonna get my slice. It’s gonna pass by the weather, the people, the words, the this gonna pass by me today. Guess what? I’m going to be okay with that.
Why? ’cause the alternative is to not be okay. ’cause I am not in control of this place. I don’t run the weather. I don’t run what? How a mood you’re in. I don’t run what you think about me. I don’t run, no, sorry. If somebody’s over there and not my frame of reference and they step over here, all of a sudden they’re there before is ridiculous.
I can’t be in charge of them. I want people to like me. I feel very sorry for you, which people? How much should they like you? When should they say it? What’s appropriate? Holy mackerel. And so you wake up and you sit there and say, I am going to be okay with the moments that pass before me today. Ready?
Good luck. ’cause you’re gonna find it. You can’t do it. But that’s ridiculous. Why can’t I sit on the planet for a day? I have the events that are folding in front of me. They’re gonna unfold in front of me anyways. The weather can be what it was. You’re gonna say what you said. Your only choice is suffer or not, by the way, not to suffer or not have a great time or suffer.
All right, and so you decide I’m gonna have a great time and you’re gonna find out that you probably will make it to teeth brushing before you stop having a good time or breakfast or this or that, right? It’s not the temperature I like or the thing, oh, we’re out corn flakes. There’s gonna be something that ain’t the way you want it to be in there, and you realize that’s my work.
Not making it be who I want it to be, not worrying. How could I forget the corn flakes Now? The kids are mad at me. I will never do it again. I’ll write it down. The answer is ready. Here’s your mantra. I can handle this. I. No, there’s no object, just this. I can handle this. I can handle the driver in front of me.
I can handle the fact that I’m in a rush and all the lights turned red. I can handle the fact that it rained when I don’t want it to. I can handle the fact that it didn’t rain when I do want it to. I can handle this and that. This is universal. I can handle life. How’s that? I can handle life. You should be able to handle life.
You’re the highest species on the planet. I can handle life and you’re gonna find out you can’t. And then you’re gonna take a quick look and say, why can’t I handle this? You ready? What you gonna see? ’cause I said I can’t. Why can’t you handle the driver in front of you driving 10 miles an hour? Will the speed limit you can’t pass them?
Can you handle that? Of course, you, if you want to, you can handle that. If you don’t want to, of course not. You are welcome to not handle anything you want and get neurotic anything you want, and you do it all the time. Why can’t you sit there and say, fine, I can handle it. This is the way it is. I can handle.
And you’re gonna find out that it’s not that easy. You feel tension, you feel anxiety. You did that. You told yourself, I don’t want that light to turn red. You hear me? And you’re embarrassed. Still look at it, right? You go in there. Oh, don’t turn. Oh, oh, okay. You do not have to live like that. You get to sit there and say, I’m driving down the road.
I see the tendency. Do you have anxiety about the driver or about the light or something like that? I’m not even gonna wait for it to get anxious. I’m going to do this thing called relax. Some of you do yoga. You’re supposed to relax into the asana. You relax into it and the more you relax, you get calmer, open, nice and even can feel some, some endorphins, that kind of stuff.
You get a nice feeling by relaxing. Well then relax as you approach the light. Relax when you’re driving behind the driver, relaxing. It looks like it’s gonna rain. Relax when you have to talk to somebody who yesterday didn’t have a good conversation. I beg you. I dare you. It is not out of your control.
You have just let it be out of your control. You’re like addicted to all this tension and all this anxiety, and all these fears and all this insecurity, and they’re hard to let go of, but you practice just like you. You can get off a drug. People do that. They’re capable of getting off drugs. That’s tough, but they do it.
Or you can get off this. You can get off the mesh you made inside your mind. Relax through it. Just keep relaxing. If it tells you I have to give a talk, I’m anxious to give a talk. Talk to her. Don’t buy into the anxiety I taught you. You give the right to lead the planet. Your mind can do anything you want.
You think no, but reality is being anxious. No, it’s not. Reality is being in outer space and having a good old time, realizing none of it makes a difference, does it? Does it make a difference? And you’re not gonna be here very long anyways. And so start doing this. It’s called Working with yourself. Instead of having it work on you or making you a neurotic mess, constantly work with yourself, not just on the meditation pillow or this or that.
Just constantly notice this is a mess in here, and I did it. I made it a mess by being so small. The smaller I started that talk. The smaller you make it, the more neurotic you get and you made that thing very small in there has to be exactly what you want, when you want it, the way you want it. Uh, my favorite is this.
It can’t be the way it was yesterday. I. Well wait a minute. It was the way it was yesterday. Wait, but better yet, that shouldn’t have happened when I was young. Gotta have fun ’cause it did happen and it’s never not going to have happened. All I’m asking you to do is be logical, aren’t I? That which happened in the past will never not have happened, but you’re bothered by it.
That does not make sense. There’s no logic to it, is there? You’re making it so suffer for no reason. Learn to let go. Learn to relax. Learn to accept. Learn to look at life and say, bring it on. And if brings it on, it’s hard for you to handle. That’s like learning to play tennis and you don’t do good with your backhand.
Good. Keep hitting it there. I’ll get better at it. Life is that. Life is something here to liberate you, not bind you. It’s here to free you, but it can’t. If you keep making all these tiny pockets inside your head and thinking, you’re right, that’s amazing what people do. I’m right. I don’t talk. I’m right.
You’re wrong. I’m right. You’re not right. You’re only right within the frame of your little mind. It can think of anything, but it ties itself in to where there’s nothing but trouble in there. And so you start working on freeing yourself. That’s the spiritual path. Liberation. But liberation doesn’t mean you get to do what you want.
It’s freedom from wanting things to be a certain way. You’re free to be open, you’re free to experience. Now, I promised I would talk about in one minute about dharma. About right action. Now that you’re clearer, which means you’re not listening to the noise that is going on inside your head that has been programmed by your past experiences.
It knows nothing. It can’t know anything. It missed everything. Read a book. How many didn’t you read? Watch a TV show. How many didn’t you watch? Have a conversation with somebody. How many conversations didn’t you have? Stop thinking, you’re right, I can’t possibly be right. The sampling is so small, it’s ridiculous.
So what is right? Action. You accept reality and part of reality is you look at your mind and laugh. You don’t get into it. You laugh. There’s no way I’m living in there. You learn to breathe, you learn, let go. Alright? What happens when you do that is you walk into a moment and you’re not reacting based on the garbage inside your head.
You’re called centered. It’s called clarity. You’re just there. There’s no anger, there’s no desire, there’s no fear, there’s no self-consciousness, there’s no motive. You’re just there. It’s called clarity. Now what now? From that point of clarity, wait till you see what life looks like because it will not look like anything you’ve been doing your entire life.
You’ll just look outside and you’ll see a world that’s unfolding out there and you don’t need anything from it. You’re at peace. You’re fine. Okay. It’s raining. Okay? It’s not raining. Okay. You like me, okay. You don’t like me. You’re clear. You will look outside and you will see there is something, always something you can do to raise the moment, not.
To get what you want. Just is there something I can do that as this moment passes by me, it’s better off because it passed by me. It passed by somebody who’s clear and that clarity can look outside and have compassion and understanding that not everybody’s where you’re at. They didn’t hear this talk.
Okay? And they’re caught in their stuff. You don’t hate ’em for it. You don’t judge ’em for it. Just look and see. Can I bring peace into this situation? Can I bring some harmony? I don’t care if it’s a smile, I don’t care if it’s not yelling. Whatever it is, every moment passes by you. You’re just busy grabbing and fighting it and reacting to it, aren’t you?
There will come a point as called clarity, where that doesn’t happen because you let go of enough of your personal mind that is not reacting to life, it’s just experiencing life, and you become a giver instead of a taker. While you need it to be a certain way, you’re a taker. I don’t care how you think of yourself.
You’re trying to make it be the way you need it to be, and you think you’re right. That’s the saddest part. I talk to people, they think they’re right. Say anger. You know, they just, you see him, alright, I’m right, right? You’re not right. Nobody’s right. It’s too small. These person’s sample is too small. And so you’re now clear enough to stand in the presence of it no matter what it is.
And you’ll see I don’t need anything from you or from anybody. I’m fine. How can I give? How can I help? You don’t even think you’re giving because you’re not taking, you’re a giver. You’ll see the spirit will start flowing out of you instead of you grabbing and then fighting with it and trying to get what you want.
That there’s this power that comes down. You’ll feel it pours outta your hands. Pour all your chakras. You become a being of light. Why? Because you stop being, being abused. This tiny thing that you devoted your life to stop it. Free yourself. And what happens is the shocky will naturally just start pouring down through you.
It was always there, but you were using it to get what you want. You use it to suppress you, use it to fight you use it to struggle. When you stop doing that, she becomes a pure flow and people feel it, and you help people and it’s, it’s such a beautiful life. Let’s get this straight. If you think that I’ve convinced you, you’re nothing.
You’re so tiny. No, I You are the most highest thing, most beautiful thing ever walked to face of the earth. But you made yourself so small. You’re not small. You’re so big that you can hold it all. It all fits inside of you. You are literally, God descended, but he fell little too far. He hit his head on the way down.
He kind of got, let’s call a lost soul. Let’s call the fall for the garden. We’ve discussed that today. You fell from the universal state of your consciousness down to where you’re only conscious of you, of your hopes, your dreams, your beliefs. Alright, enough. I will never stop. You know that. Let me ask you a question.
Do you understand you are a great being. You’re not some little beggar. That’s a little thing that has to try to get things the way you want them to be, but you have to let go of staring at yourself. Alright? Work on these things, ative.
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.
