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: Jive Esti. There’s a word that we use a lot. That we really don’t pay much attention to. We’re supposed to or told to, but we don’t. And that’s gratitude from a religious point of view. People talk about be grateful for your blessings and this, that and the other thing. It is so much deeper than that. So let’s talk about it for a moment.
What do you have to be grateful for? If I went around each one of you. You would tell me, oh, I had this baby. Oh, I got a new car. Oh, I won the election. Oh, okay. I just, you’re gonna tell me these things that are personal to you. And you think that’s what gratitude is. I’m sorry to tell you that it’s not gratitude.
That’s a spoiled brat. I got my toy. I got the toy I wanted for Christmas. There’s gratitude. Slow down, man. That’s ridiculous. Let’s take a look at what gratitude is. Do you breathe? What would happen if you didn’t? How much effort are you putting out every moment to make sure your breath goes in and out?
How about none in general? I realize some of us have some more trouble. All right, but in general, it goes in and out by itself. Now, if you didn’t get the toy, you’d still be alive. If you didn’t get the car, you didn’t win the election. If that breath didn’t go in and out, maybe that’s something to be grateful for.
Maybe you’re taking it for granted and therefore you don’t have gratitude. Does your heartbeat, what? 70 times a second? Whatever it is, right? So like a minute, not a second. You don’t wanna go three times a second,
whatever it is. How long has it been doing that? However old you are, 20, 30, 50, 60, 70, 80. We’re getting there, whatever it is. Every single minute. Every minute for all those years. What if it didn’t? Bye-bye. Gee. Well somebody said thank you. Never if you were to look at the living people or not, to mention all those ever lived, let’s just take the one, the 8.3 billion lives today.
99.99. 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9% of those beats do right. How do you not have gratitude for that which is happening by itself without you doing anything? And is the meaning of you being alive? If it missed one or two minutes, forget it. That goes for your heartbeat. That goes for your breath, right or wrong.
Why don’t you think like this?
’cause all you think about is, oh, she loves me. She says, look, she gave me a flower. Oh look, I got an A, I thought I had a B. Oh boy. I got an A.
Michael Singer: Can we go home now? No, I, I am serious. This is a spiritual discussion, but it shouldn’t be a spiritual discussion. It’s logic, it’s reason, it’s intellect, it’s, it’s like, my God, what are you missing? Everything. So I’ve now covered two things that go on by themselves. Could we ask how they go on by themselves?
Whoa. We study that, haven’t we? But we still take it for granted. We completely take it for granted. I once gave a talk as follows. Let’s say you were born into a world in which they didn’t know. No one knew that we were going by itself. Okay. Like you guys think if you want something to happen, you have to make it happen, don’t you?
You want something good go out there to make it happen. Well, let’s say you were born into the world that they thought that was good and it’s a good thing that it go on. It’s not going by yourself. When you’re crazy, they sit there by yourself, do this without you doing anything. You better pay attention and this what your life would be like.
How much work would you get done? None. You just completely take it for granted. There is zero sense of gratitude Is there? All right, so that’s your heartbeat and that’s your lung going in and out. That’s not the only thing that’s going on. I here tell there’s something like 35 trillion living cells that make up your body.
They make up your skin, they make up your heart, they make up your lungs, every single thing and every single moment for the entirety of your life. You don’t pay attention. Once I said thank you to your liver, thank you to your kidneys. All you do is complain if something goes wrong. Otherwise, you take for granted that 35 trillion living cells will do what they’re supposed to do to keep this thing alive all by themselves.
You don’t say thank you. You don’t pay attention. And so unless something goes wrong, no. Is that reasonable? I say thank you once in a while and, and you realize, man. This whole thing’s going on by itself, and I just take it for granted. I totally take it for granted. Okay, there’s your body. Let’s talk about your brain or your mind for a second.
Do you think, do you have the ability to think? Where’d you get that ability? Who gave it to you? Get older, it may go away. It does. In other words, I’m in here. There used to be faults. I used to be able to bring back what happened yesterday. Now there’s not. Okay, you ain’t your entire life and never said thank you.
And now all leaders complain. Is that supposed to be like that? Well, there’s this thing called aging and all kinds of stuff goes on. It’s part of the process. But you never even pay attention, that you have the ability to create thoughts. Can you create thoughts? I want you to see a boat right now. Bigger Queen Mary.
You can do anything you want with your mind, can’t you? Who gave you that power? Kind of inherited it. You have this tremendous gift every moment, every second of your life. There are so many of them. How do you just let all of this be? And you never say thank you. You have no, no sense of gratitude. The only sense you have is if it doesn’t do what you want it to do.
She didn’t treat me the way I to be treated. He didn’t open the door for me. I thought he respected me, but what the heck is that compared to all this stuff I’m talking about? So you take every single thing for granted, no gratitude, and then you complain when it’s not which way, and we’ll get there. Okay?
You not only have a mind that can think, but you have free will. Where’d you get that? I, I’m serious. I’m gonna pick this up. How’d I do that? I ask people this. Well, how did I do that? Where, where did that happen? Where’d it come from? You’re gonna find out if you meditate or go deep enough inside that you are in there.
Are you in there? Yes or no? By the way, how’d you get there? How’d you end up in there? Are you conscious of all the things you’ve been grateful for? Maybe being conscious is one. Otherwise you wouldn’t know that you knew that. You didn’t know. I in here, Jack and and what, and I can make things happen. Hey, I can create a thought.
Can I? I could do some math simple anyways. I can write two times two equals four inside my brain, and I can see it there anytime I want. And I can do way more complicated things. I can learn physics and I can learn medicine, and I can learn that. How’d you get that ability? You’re so proud of yourself.
You’re so smart. Where did you get thoughts? Where did you get the ability to create a thought? You don’t know, do you? Not one of you know where you got the ability to create a thought. You just do it and take it for granted. So you are in there and you have abilities in there who gave them to you? I’m not answering this question.
Okay. All they know is you did not give it to yourself. If you weren’t able to think. You can’t think. Well, remember, you don’t remember every single thought, every single ability you have, every single thing you’re doing in there, including worrying. Do you have the ability to worry? Why would you do such a thing?
I don’t know. But you have the ability to do all kinds of stuff, don’t you? You should have gratitude that you can have thoughts. Do you have emotions? Do you know what an emotion is? The answer why? You know what an emotion is? How? ’cause I’m in here and I experienced them. Where do they come from? Why do you experience them?
Why do they show up when they do? You’re just in there just taking everything for granted and not paying any attention to the power you have. So basic foundation is you’re in there, you’re conscious check. I have the ability to think. Wow, far out. I can create a thought myself. I’ve been doing this for so many years, right?
I am grateful that I can create a thought, not just I’m older now. Right? But always it was that way. Where’d it come from? You write, write some music. Where’d it come from? How do you have the ability to write music? How did the ability to write a book, how do the ability to think, how do the ability to feel?
Do you feel love? What is it? No, you just make it so small. That’s where ego comes from. You make the whole thing about your ego. It’s about not just, do I feel love, right? Do you feel love for me? Not just that. Do I believe that you feel love for me? That’s where you live. Look how small that is. Did I get the corner office?
Hello. Where’d the corner office come from? I can’t talk about it. There is no sense of gratitude picking on you, your sense of gratitude as follows. I’m in here check. I have the ability to think check, and what I did with my thoughts is decide how I want everything to be, what job I want, whether I wanna be smarter than the other person, what I wanna look like, how I wanna age.
I just in here inside my little mind that could do anything. I decided how I want the world to be. The whole world. How do I want this country treating that country? How do I want this being that way? I just have opinions, opinions, opinions. Oh my God, do you have them? Right? And they go down to the tiniest little thing.
I don’t wanna have a zit I my prom night. Okay? And that’s, by the way, the 35 trillion cells did that by themselves. Is there anybody listening? Is this ridiculous? So you in there, you have the ability to think very good. You’re in there and what you do, I’m gonna skip to the bottom. What you do is you have creative thoughts that say, I am me and I am in here, and I’m the center of the universe and everything should be the way I want it to be, and things shouldn’t be the way I don’t want them to be.
Is that true? Are you in there, the center of the universe? Why do you think you have so much tension and stress? ’cause you decided that you’re God, not the God I wanna talk about. You decided. I admit, man, admit and things should be the way I want, shouldn’t they? You know what you say when they’re not the way you want, they’re wrong.
I can’t believe you said that to me. That is so wrong. I should have gotten that job. It should not have rained on my birthday. It didn’t rain for days before. Well, I did it have to rain on my birthday. Has anybody ever talked like that? How ridiculous is that? It rain has nothing to do with your birthday.
Look at what we have done instead of having gratitude for the rain. But no, I didn’t want it to rain on my birthday. I wanted to go, who are you? You hear me? Is it okay if I’ve talked to you that way? The net result is what are you doing? And you were given the gift of consciousness. You’re aware, then you’re given all these other gifts.
You’re given a body with a three 5 trillion cells that take care of itself day and night for all these years. The heartbeats, everything’s happens. You know what happens when you swallow your food? It gets digested. And it breaks it down into molecules and passes them into bloodstream so it can feed those 35 trillion cells.
Did you know that’s why you eat? No, I eat for taste. I eat ’cause I’m nervous. How did it all become about you? It’s not about you. You know, I know it’s not about you. ’cause you complain all the time that it’s not the way you want. Do you complain? I’m telling you what you complain about. It’s not the way I want.
I don’t feel the way I wanna feel. Things aren’t happening outside the way I want them to happen. The person’s not behaving the way I want them to behave. Somebody’s not saying to me what I want it to say. You even go to the point of saying, I know what he’s thinking and I don’t like it. Do you understand how spiritual this talk is?
It’s like shaking you, saying, wake up. How in the world can you have a decent life? If you are ignoring everything and only thinking about yourself and what you want and what you don’t want, and you’re measuring the quality of your life, not about the fact that your heart beats, not about the fact that your bloodstream works, not about all these trillions and zillions of things that’s go on all the time.
And I, I’m gonna say more, I haven’t even come close yet, that you just completely ignore, don’t you? You ignore them. Just, okay. I’m a spoiled brat. I get every single thing that I could ever need, but I want more, and I don’t like when it’s not the way I want. It’s just like a tantrum. The tantrums did not stop at two or three.
You throw them your entire life. If it’s not the way I want, get outta my way. Either I’m gonna close down and get depressed and never talk to anybody, or I’m coming out swinging because of what? Because of what I decided I wanted. Isn’t it? It’s what I decided I wanted. Well, how did you make that decision?
You were given the ability to think is this thing called free will? You’re in here. You can do what you want in there. There’s nobody else in there. Mommy in there, daddy in there. Kids in there. No. Your thoughts about them are in there, but that’s your fault. You’re creating the thoughts. The outside world’s out there and you’re in here.
Well, how you doing in there? I don’t even wanna ask you. I once had an experiment way back in the seventies, and I would just random on the street, say something, Hey, how you doing this? The kinda answer I got. I’ll get by. It’s okay. Not bad. Could be worse. I learned way back then, and somebody asks me, how you doing?
I say, ecstatic. Nobody says that. Why not? You’re sitting on the, and now let’s get Really, you are right now sitting on a little planet spinning around the middle of nowheres. Total black, empty space. You can’t even breathe out there. And it’s just this tiny little ball and you’ve spent your entire life sitting on it.
And all you’ve done is complain. All you’ve done is struggle to do what? To make it be the way you want. How big are you? Really? Mm-hmm. How big are you? Well, there’s 8.3 billion here on the planet right now. How much room you taken up at any given moment? I don’t know. You know, 10 by 10 little square. I’m standing in this little square and that’s all I perceive is what’s around me.
And I miss, I always ask you this, how much of life are you missing every moment. The other way to ask it is, how much of life are you experiencing every moment? Nothing. How much are you literally taking in of what is at that moment point? Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right? You, you’re missing everything and you think that you’re important.
You’re not important. Don’t get depressed. That literally when you catch on and I talk to you like this, it liberates you. Oh, I don’t have to make it all be the way I want. Oh, I can appreciate the fact that I’m spinning a in a little tiny planet that’s taking care of itself. If the trees water themselves, the black forest waters itself, they don’t have that little can out there watering.
How does that happen? By itself, food grows. This grows carbon. Oxygen turns into oxygen. All of it. I, like I said, I talked about your body. All of it is this, isn’t it? If it wasn’t happening, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be alive. Physics says. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
You’ve heard that basic Newton stuff, okay, I’m gonna jump up in the air and I’m gonna land on the floor. Why didn’t the earth move? For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Why didn’t it move? Well, ’cause it’s a little more interesting than that. It doesn’t move because there are these bonds that hold the atoms together and your feet are made of some of those bonds and the floors made of some of those bonds.
And when I jump up and down, just happens to be this way, by the way, when I jump up and down, the bonds that hold the floor together. Are stronger than the bonds that hold my feet together. Therefore, they absorb the action ’cause of the resistance. They have the power to absorb it, therefore it doesn’t pass down and the earth doesn’t go out of orbit.
Well, what happens if something really big hits the earth? Why is it stay in orbit? And that’s, you get to understand everything that’s going on. You have no respect for, there’s this force called gravity, where’d it come from? And there’s this thing called centrifugal force. And because something’s rotating and then something’s gravity, they, they stay in orbit.
They’ve been there for 4.5 billion years. That planet has stayed in orbit around one star By time he said Thank you. I always ask you, has somebody asked you? What’d you do today? You want an honest answer? A 360 on my axis. What’d you do this year? A big rotation around a star. Hey, man, that’s what I did this year.
I took a lap. Not around the track. I took a lap around a star, didn’t I? Why can’t you look at things the way they are? The truth, I, I, I can’t even help myself from putting it all out there. I’ve told you so many times. Earth. How important is earth? It is nothing. If it blew to smithereens tomorrow, a few planets would change their orbit and nothing else for the rest of the universe would know you are even here.
It’s completely meaningless, right? Well, what am I, chopped Liver. You wish you’re not even chopped Liver. When you die, they throw you in the ground or they burn you, and it’s like the body. What are you doing? Making you the center of the universe. Right. I threw some numbers out. I told you 1.3 million earth fit inside the sun.
Don’t you dare let that just pass through your ears. Did you know that 1.3 million Earth fit inside the sun? The sun is one of 300 billion stars in your galaxy, of which there are 2 trillion galaxies, all with hundreds of billions of stars. How important are you? How important is it that this person says something nice or didn’t say something nice, or that it rained on your birthday?
If you look at reality and you have an obligation, you have a mind. You can contemplate reality. You should be doing it all the time. You should contemplate what’s actually going on and you won’t be so messed up. Right? Your mind is like an ingrown toenail. All it does is think about itself. And does that make life easy?
No, it makes it impossible. Everything has to be the way you want it to be, the way you think it should be, and it can’t ever be the way you don’t want it to be. And you start catching on as to what’s going on. You need to learn about the word gratitude. By the way, if you wanna see a picture of the planet earth opposite that door over there, I stand before it every morning, every evening.
It looks like an eight by 10. That’s just black, right? What is that? Well, you’ll look carefully. There’s a little dot just sitting on there. Do ask, what is that? That is a actual photograph of the planet earth from 2 million miles out. There’s another picture. Really beautiful. It’s taken from outside of Saturn when we went with Saturn’s rings and Saturn has rings right and there’s a little dot inside one of the rings.
You can even see it in your magnifying glass. That’s the planet earth in the midst of everything and you are making a big deal out of what? Why are you choosing to live like that? ’cause you do not have to live like that. You have the right to every single morning look at that little tiny little speck like we have photographs.
You don’t have to go very far out to where you came to see the planet Earth. Again, you see the solar system. We’ve gone way out there. Voyager has gone out past the whole thing, and all you wanna do is think about you and not even think about your heartbeat or your liver or your kidney or your body or your mind.
You just wanna think about you. That’s ego. That’s what’s called ego. You developed within your mind. This mind that can think of any, you can think of anything you want, anytime you want. I just made you think about a galaxy far, far away, or a boat or a person or anything. Your mind can think about whatever you want.
Do you understand that you’re free, period. Okay. If you don’t feel free, you decided you weren’t free. And so basically you have the freedom of mind. That’s a beautiful freedom you have. What should you be feeling? Blown away. Every moment. Oh my God, look what’s given to me. Everything, the whole world. I can see, I can hear my body works, my heartbeats.
There’s just everything is given to me for nothing, and all I do is complain. The opposite of gratitude is complaint. You complain that things aren’t the way you want them to be. Do you complain that things aren’t the way you want them to be? You’re not willing to admit it. That’s crazy. That’s all you do.
The weather, the this, the people, how they treat you, what they talked about, whether you won money, every single thing. It’s a constant complaint. And how do I know? Because you’re taught strive to make it be the way you want. What does that mean? It means it is not naturally that way. It is not naturally the way I want.
I’m supposed to fight and struggle and never give up. To make what? To make every single thing be the way I want to make that person think about me the way I want to make this happen. To make that right or wrong, it’s okay if we talk like this. The truth of the matter is, you’re a free being. You drop down onto the planet.
Where’d you come from? You don’t know. I don’t care what you believe. That’s just another thing in the mind. You drop down onto the planet a few years ago, you’re gonna have these experiences and your heart’s gonna beat and it’s gonna all this, and every minute it’s like, wow, wow. Thank you. Thank you constantly.
Thank you, thank you. And then you get older and you just watch your body get older. It’s kind of fun. And then you leave. What’s so hard about that? What do you mean you suffered? No, no. What did Buddha teach you? And I talk about the deep spiritual teachings, the foreign noble trus of Buddha as follows. One.
All the life of suffering. Whoa, that’s pretty negative. He’s supposed to be a positive guy. I just showed you all life suffering in it. Everybody. Rich people suffer. Poor people suffer. Young people suffer. Old people suffer. Sick people suffer. Healthy people suffer. Everybody is out there suffering. They’re struggling.
First, noble truth, all life suffering. Second noble truth. The cause of suffering is preference. It is, it’s translated as a desire. But what is a desire but a preference. You can’t have a desire without having a preference. You gonna choose what you’re preferring. So I like the translation third in patriarch used the word preference.
It’s easier to digest preference altogether. You suffer because you decided how you want everything to be. And it’s not that way. Is Buddha right? Is that the cause of suffering? I don’t wanna go old. Sorry, Charlie. I don’t want her to have died. Sorry, Charlie. I don’t want this. I don’t want that. I don’t want constantly suffering is caused by preference.
Buddhist said how to end suffering and preference. Wow. That’s a big command, especially when I’ve talked to you this way that you understand all you’ve done your entire life. Is decide how you want things to be and say, I’m not gonna be okay unless I make ’em be that way. And how I don’t want things to be.
And your entire state of being, the whole quality of your life is based on having done that. And you’re taught to do that. All your advertising, every single thing is you need this, you want this, you don’t want that. So now go out and struggle. Well, life is easy. If you pay attention, what do you mean? I was born onto a planet.
It’s quite a planet. It grows its own food. It waters itself. It’s got all these animals, live deer. These giant deer live out here all the time. They just hang out and then they go there. I don’t know whether they live. I don’t understand. And babies run around, happens all by itself. That happens to all the animals, giraffes and buffaloes and, and hip hop.
You understand that it’s all what a planet. It’s a zoo. It’s a veritable zoo. When was the last time I said thank you? No. No. ’cause all you care about is yourself. You might take a picture of a deer to send to somebody. Say, oh, look at the deer I saw. It’s about me. It’s about me. It’s all about me. So that’s somehow that happened to us.
We were given this consciousness, we dropped down on the planet Earth. We’ll spend some time here and we’ll have experiences, all kinds of experiences. There’s computers, there’s camp, there’s, there’s archery there. There like, it’s like going to camp. I once said, and I really believe it Earth is God’s idea of Disney World.
Go to Saturn, go to Moores, go to Jupiter. Go anywhere as you want. We ain’t seen nothing. Not even an amoeba. And here you got all these animals and all these things, and all these colors, and you don’t have gratitude, do you? You have forgot. You forgot to say thank you. And I understand how deep gratitude is.
Gratitude is open your eyes. Wake up. This is a phenomenal life that you have with a mind and with a heart and a body and a whole world that’s taking care of itself and it unfolding and presenting challenges to you in situations to you. It’s an amazing thing that’s going on. Is it not? It’s just absolutely amazing and I haven’t gotten down to, ’cause your mind is so brilliant.
The human mind, you are able to look past what you’re looking at and find out that they’re really just a bunch of dots. Like pixels on a TV screen, there’s a bunch of atoms. Then you found out it’s not even atoms. What’s really out there is a omnipresent quantum field, which they don’t know what it is, but it’s a, we give it a name, a quantum field.
What do we know about it? It can vibrate. It can create wavelets. Give a quantum physicist wavelets. They’ll build a universe. They build every star, every single atom. Let those wavelets interact with each other and this will happen. That will happen, and the whole universe is made outta that. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?
Anything you want to think about other than yourself is a very healthy thing to do. They talk about thinking about others. Yes, it’s very nice to think about others. How about thinking about. Everything. The thing I just said to you, that there’s this omnipresent field. They don’t know what the field is. A physicist does not know what the quantum field’s made of.
They just know that there is this field and it can vibrate and interact with each other like wavelets in an ocean. They hit each other and they create wavelets, and that’s where electro notion protons come from. The interaction of those things behave in a way that all of a sudden there’s this, that and the other thing, and it builds the whole universe.
And that’s what you’re looking at right now. I told you, you wanna be grateful when you wake up in the morning. Is your bedroom still there? Is your bed, there is your body. There is the dresser. There is the ceiling there. Whoa, wait a minute. How’d that happen? I thought they’re just these little wavelets and the quantum field interacting constantly with each other.
You’re telling me that all day, all night. They kept making that exactly the same from the bottom up so that when you wake up, oh hi. Well, what is the probability? Especially when physicists come down and say, you can’t even see where an electron is. There’s just probability. It’s all probability. The probability will be here.
It’ll be there. That probability gave me my bedroom back. There should be complete gratitude about everything and the fact that anything is the way it is is completely unbelievable. You wanna call it God, fine. You don’t wanna call it God, I couldn’t care less. It isn’t you. That’s what matters. It’s all here.
It’s making itself. It is phenomenal. And so you start to use, I’m not telling you not to use your mind. You use your mind. You’re a conscious being, and you have this gift called the intellectual mind. Use your mind properly. You have two aspects of your mind. One is very big. In fact, it has no limits. You could think anything you want, anytime you want.
Where do you wanna go today? Microsoft, the human mind is brilliant. You have a mind, you can think about these things. That’s your intellectual mind, your abstract mind, your creative mind. My god, the mind’s phenomenal, isn’t it? Right. What have you done with your mind? You’ve limited the thoughts of your mind to this tiny little object called you, my body, my emotions.
You hurt my emotions five years ago. I’ll never talk to you again. What the heck is that? You held on to these impressions that got made in your mind. I wish you could hold on to what I’m talking about, the gratitude. You won’t, you’ll walk out, you’ll be right. Who took my shoes? Alright. And so basically what you’ve done with your mind, you listen to me, your mind is brilliant.
Your mind is capable of comprehending all we’ve been talking about and billions times more it could create, it’s inventive, my God, it could do things all right. All. What do you do with your mind? You have experiences during your life, some of which are not so pleasant, and you decide I’m going to keep those inside my mind.
I let the white lines on the road go. I let the people, I don’t know, go. I let the cars drive by. They have nothing to do with, they just all go, but. If a car drives by, that looks like the one that I had when I was in high school, and the first time I kissed somebody and then she dumped me 32 years ago.
That sucker’s still in there, isn’t it? That car is still in there and all the emotions and all the issues, and you programmed your brilliant mind with that garbage you held inside your mind. Everything that ever bothered you, even it’s a minor little thing. Said hello to somebody and say hello back. You start to figure why didn’t I do instead of contemplating the quantum field or, or the fact that there’s corn fields come outta nothing, DNA, I can’t even talk about it.
It’s impossible, isn’t it? Where’d the baby come from? It’s mine. It is not yours. He nothing, nothing to do with it. One fertilized cell, a tiny little microscopic cell, knew how to make itself into a baby all by itself. It’s the truth. It’s phenomenal what’s going on all around you, and you ignore it because all you wanna think about is what you stored from the past, which made you happy and which made you not so happy.
You know, make sure it doesn’t happen again. You make sure it does happen again, and you’re struggling in that little box called the ego. What do I want? What do I not want? What do I like? What do I not like? How are you supposed to be? I bothered marrying you out of 8.3 billion people. I picked you. And look how you’re behaving.
What are you doing? All your thoughts are about this tiny little thing that’s nothing. And so gratitude is not getting what I want. Freedom is not the freedom to get what I want, the freedom for myself, I have you say it this way. Freedom is not freedom for yourself. It’s freedom from yourself. When you stop thinking about yourself and you let your mind open and expand to the beautiful universe in which you live, it’s neither good nor bad, nor right, nor wrong, nor moral, nor immoral.
It’s just, whoa. It’s big, isn’t it? It’s really, really, really, really big. But what you’ve done is said, no, it’s about me. And so what you’ve done is limit your life. To this absurd thing you’ve done with it, what’s called your personal mind as opposed to your intellectual mind, your abstract mind, your free mind, your free being.
So let’s make sure we end this spiritually. What about enlightenment? We’ve been talking about mind so far. What is this state that people talk about? A very, very high state nirvana enlighten, and my father and I are one Christ said, well, what exactly is that? When you stop doing this with your mind, doing what?
Concentrating on you, concentrating on the littleness of your being, your tiny little life, that seems so important and it’s not. Come on statistically. It’s called statistically insignificant. Okay? And you’re gonna find out when on your deathbed, I don’t wanna die too bad,
but what happens to all the things I like
Michael Singer: too bad?
And go ask the pharaohs. They buried it all with them in the pyramids. Wake up. Use your mind. So what happens is right now you use your mind, unfortunately, your mind and your heart to limit it down to this very personal person, this very tiny little thing. It’s small. And your mind does not have to be focused on that, but it is.
And so you focus on it and then what happen? You develop an ego. And what happens is your consciousness, your awareness of being becomes totally aware of that. Totally aware of my feelings. The tiniest little feeling. You, why do you say that to me? I can’t believe what in the realm of 1.3 million earth fins outta the sun.
What did he say? How did you even hear it? I don’t even understand anything. That’s just one number. The number I like to play around with you guys is how far away is your nearest star? The sun, your nearest star, 93 million miles away. What is the next one? About hundreds of billions and 300 billion stars in your galaxy.
Where’s the next star? The next closest star? I think it’s 4.3 light years away. What does that mean? Nothing. Doesn’t mean nothing to me. Doesn’t mean nothing to you. Okay. 4.3 light years here. If I catch a light beam and hold it above the planet earth, I got it right there. Okay, and let it go for one second.
It circumnavigates the globe seven and a half times that fast enough for you. Bam. It just went around the earth seven and a half times. Go that speed for 4.3 years and you will get to the next star. Thank you. That’s the right attitude and that’s the next of 300 billion in your galaxy. And what are you doing with your mind?
How often do you think about that fact? Never. Why? It’s real. It’s reality. It’s way more real than, I can’t believe. He didn’t say, hello. I can’t believe I wore the wrong thing to the party. I feel so embarrassed. Do you see how small that is? You do not have live like that. You have the ability to think like I’m teaching you to think.
Spend some time practicing, practice, expand your mind. So we talk about enlightenment. What’s that mean? At some point, you will catch on that you are not little. I don’t mind your ego feeling little. ’cause it is tiny as it minuscule and doesn’t exist. Alright? But in terms of you in there, look how expansive your mind is capable.
Look at the power you have. You’re a great being at some point. And if you work with it, it will happen. You will get your consciousness off of your ego. If, I mean you don’t have one, it’s just kind of boring at some point. Really? Really? You gonna do that again? You did that last year. We already played that one.
God, leave me alone. Right? You don’t have to shut your mind up. You don’t have to shut your mind up. You have to stop being interested in what it’s saying. Okay, fine. You’re neurotic. I understand. Of course you’re neurotic. You’re an ingrown mind when you think about yourself. But I ain’t hanging out there.
But maybe she doesn’t like you. Fine. She doesn’t like me. I’ll be okay. You start freeing yourself from yourself. There’s no reason you can’t do that. Little by little you free yourself, and next thing you know, your consciousness isn’t drawn down into the personal mind. That’s a very great state. You are gonna find some amazing things.
You are gonna find out that every love, every inspiration, every creativity, everything you ever wanted to feel is going on in the higher state. You are a very high being. Stop staring at yourself and you’re gonna find out, whoa, there’s love. There’s permanent, unconditional wellbeing pouring inside my mind, pouring inside my heart all the time.
Why? Because I stop focusing on the garbage. You’re perfectly capable of it. It takes time. You’re already addicted to yourself talking about addictions. There’s an addiction for you, the addiction to yourself. Pretty big addiction, isn’t it? That’s why you’re addicted to everything else to try and get away from yourself.
Alright, well this is yoga. This is spirituality. You learn to not focus on this stupid little thing you made in there. And it starts to thin out. It will thin out and you’ll start to feel shock to. You’ll start to feel all this energy pouring inside of you and then all of a sudden you realize, I’m fine.
That’s what I want you to be. I’m fine. Doesn’t mean the car didn’t get in an accident, doesn’t mean somebody didn’t say something. No, I’m fine. Things happen. It’s a happening place, and guess what? I can handle it. Ooh, how would you like that? How would you like no to the bottom of your being, you can handle anything that ever happens to your for the rest of your life.
That’s called liberation. That’s a liberated soul. It’s even muta. You have to worry about anything. It doesn’t mean you don’t do your job. Doesn’t mean you don’t create, doesn’t mean you don’t do things, but you don’t do out of fear. You do it out of expression. You express yourself. Have fun. Have a good old time.
’cause you will have a good old time and it won’t be a problem to anybody else. You’re a problem with somebody else ’cause you want something from ’em. If you don’t want anything from anybody, you can still love them. Of course you love them, but there’s no reason not to. Right. But that’s not even a high state.
That was just liberating your consciousness from staring at this tiny little part of your mind called the ego mind, the personal mind. Now you have this playpen. You can go anywhere you want this, anything, have fun. At some point you’re so free that your thoughts don’t even bond you. You are welcome to have them.
They’re not as real. They’re just about the earth. You know about this small little place, and all of a sudden you realize you are you in there. You are the consciousness that is aware of the mind. You are not the mind and the freer it gets the more you start experiencing the consciousness itself.
Consciousness has a nature. His nature is called nda. Eternal conscious, ecstasy. That’s enlightenment. When nothing is pulling your awareness of being down into the mind, down into the heart, down into the whole personal mess, then all of a sudden you start floating up. You feel like a vacuum cleaner pulling your consciousness up.
It always got pulled down. You’re struggling to not go down. You’re struggling to get what you want. Now all of a sudden, there’s this force deep inside of you, way deeper than your mind. It’s called the ascent. It’s pulling you up. Why? ’cause you’re a very high being. You are consciousness. You are the greatest thing that ever was.
Staring at something not so great. You are pure consciousness, staring at once. Little thing. You can’t get your consciousness off of it. As you free your consciousness, it starts being free and it starts expanding up and eventually you get this force pulling up inside of you. You can’t even stop it. It’s going out day and night, constantly pulling up and you, you still can’t let go.
The great ones, even the very great ones, talk about this. Why? ’cause now you’re not caught in your mind or caught in your heart. You’re caught in the sense of individuality. I’m not my mind, but I am the consciousness the. Looking at aware of that I’m separate. Well, you’re not separate. You’re not separate.
You’re like a drop of water that fell into the ocean. Right? And eventually the very great ones, but only very great ones. That’s why there are so few. Christ Buddha, the real great ones let go. And Christ and my father and I are one. And the Buddha went into Nirvana. In other words, bam. The Mayor Baba said I was a drop.
A drop of consciousness, it fell into the ocean. Find it. Go find that drop emerged. Yoga means merger oneness. That’s literally what it means is your individual consciousness, not the mind. The consciousness itself let go completely and fell back into its source. And most not. I said it perfect, right?
Meditate on the self honor and worship your own being for God, T twelves within you as you. That’s who you are. So I went all the way from the bottom where you have no gratitude, you just lost in yourself. And the only thing that’s good is when you get what you want. You do not have to live like that.
You’re choosing to live like that. Work with yourself first. Free your mind. Take it off of yourself. Please contemplate what we talked about today, about how big it is and how free it is, and how everything’s given to you. This, get your consciousness off. It gets your mind off yourself and what will happen, you’ll start feeling all this joy, this love freedom, open up inside of you and then it will like call to you from a deeper place inside and you’ll start following it.
It happens naturally and ultimately, you can get to these very, very high states. They’re very great states. This is yoga. Yoga, I can’t even talk about it without crying. Yoga is a body of knowledge that is the deepest body of knowledge that’s ever been collected in all of humanity for all the time. It’s about from here to there.
Literally the entire path from I am caught in my mind. I am paying attention to me. I am completely free and liberated. One with the entire universe bringing down light that path from there to there. That is the science of yoga. The end of the key to Krishna says Una.
Free yourself. Free yourself. There’s no reason to feel anything but eternal, infinite love and total wellbeing. Bring that down here. We need some more of it. Ja.
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.
