E108: Understanding the Personal Mind and the Path to Liberation

Michael Singer: People say, somehow, I always end up talking about mind. Let’s talk about mind. You can’t talk about something when you’re too close. If a eight cylinder engine is running, you can’t see the pistons, you can’t see the cam, she, you can’t see anything. This is all a blur. You’re looking at this overall mess.

In order to understand what I mean by mind, when I talk about mind, you have to at least be able to get to the edges where there’s not mind. Maybe meditation helps, maybe spiritual experiences helps. Many things can help you at least momentarily see the edges of what your mind is. Otherwise, you will not see it.

You think you see it, you don’t see it. ’cause it is your mind talking about the mind. It is your mind judging the mind. Is your mind involved in the mind? It is your mind with its desires and its hopes and its dreams. Oh, this dream’s not bad, but that one’s good. I’ve got myself together. It’s mine. Okay, so basically you come down to what do the edges of mind look like?

It’s still now. You may never have reached that state yet. You will at some point It will happen. Don’t crave it. ’cause that’s mine. Don’t try to achieve it. ’cause that’s mine. Just how pervasive mind is. So at the edges it’s silent. What’s silent? Mine, you would just call it empty Mine. It’s not talking, it’s not thinking, it’s not creating the tis, the ripples that create mine.

Fine. Now take a step in and it doesn’t take long to step in. And what you’re going to see is that there’s constant activity where I point here above your head. Your mind is not in your foot. The center of your energy, center of mind is not in your foot. It’s not in your knee. It’s not in your hand. It’s not in your ear.

It’s not in your heart. It’s here. You hear yourself here. You don’t realize that ’cause you’re so lost in it. There’s no knot here. Yes, I think about my foot. Fine. That’s not your foot. That you thinking about your foot, that is a thought in your mind about a foot that’s very different than the foot. Okay. I have likes and dislikes.

No, you do not. Your mind has thoughts about likes and dislikes. You do not have likes and dislikes, but have you noticed your mind Does? Have you noticed that that thing talks about what you like and what you don’t like and what you want and what you don’t want, and how to get it, how to avoid it. Have you noticed it does that you are the one who notices?

The essence of spirituality is that simple. You are not what you notice. You are the one who notices. It’s called consciousness awareness. You are aware of what I’m talking about. If I tell you your mind never shuts up, you don’t say yes, it does. It doesn’t. It talks all the time. Talks visualizes. What does it talk about?

We’ll get into it in a minute. That’s how you get to know mine. But the fact that it’s mind and it’s happening up here, and that you’re seated up here and you are lost in it, you’re completely lost in it. What does that mean? It means your consciousness can abstract itself. From watching, hearing, being involved in what it’s looking at, that is the deepest teaching you will ever get.

Your awareness cannot extricate itself, free itself, liberate itself. What liberation means cannot free itself liberate itself. From looking at this thing that we’re gonna talk about that has edges, I guarantee it has edges, right? And the edges aren’t Oh yeah. Mike, and have big thoughts. No, those are still within the realm of thought.

Those are still mind. I teach you, I do about think about the galaxies. Think about how far away a light year is. I want you to, well, ’cause then at least you’re not thinking about yourself really. It works. It’s true. What you think about can be less binding, but it’s still binding. You’re still creating thoughts and looking at them.

There is a state in which you are not creating thoughts and you’re not looking at them. That is the spiritual state, and I don’t care if you’ve ever experienced it. It’s there all the time. The mind is just a area in which thoughts are created. The problem is it’s very prolific and there’s no limit to how big the thoughts can be.

We can discuss quantum physics. How there’s vibrations underneath that. All the atoms and everything create themselves outta that. What a big thought. It’s still a thought. The mind is just a thing. It’s just a thing, an area in the universe in which thoughts are created, and you are the universe looking at those thoughts.

You are literally the universe, the entire universe, the entire quantum field, the trillions of galaxies. That which is underlying all of that is your consciousness. But why don’t I feel that? ’cause you’re staring at this petty little thing called the area of creation that makes your thoughts. Well, if I stared at my finger so much that all I saw was the finger, then that’s my universe.

Right or wrong, you are staring at the thoughts of your mind. You think your mind is expansive. Do you understand how tiny your mind is? Everybody’s got one, don’t they? And they all can create all these thoughts, but they’re within the confines of this tiny little area that you’re staring at, and you stare at her all the time.

You’re not just stare at it. You identify with it, you say, that’s what I am. I am my thoughts. I am my thoughts. You don’t say it out loud unless somebody makes you, but you’re saying intuitively I am. My thoughts. What do you mean? When I was in fifth grade, something happened to me. Notice I me, you’re defining yourself as the one that had the experience in fifth grade.

It’s not even there anymore. Let’s start with that. How many things only exist in your mind? How about your entire past? It doesn’t exist anywhere. It’s anymore. She, my sister, she remembers it differently than I remember the event that we had together. Who’s right? Where’s the event? It doesn’t exist. It existed for a moment in time and space, and that’s all.

It wasn’t there before. It’s not thereafter. But what’s reality? Reality are the atoms that created that event. All of the energy that created that event in that moment, and then it did something else. The same atoms created something else. The same energy created something else immediately. It didn’t even last in the now.

Second, it did not stay in the same place, but it’s inside of you for the rest of your life. Where In your tummy, in your mind, what does that mean? It means you have this ability to hold onto things in an area around your head, and you made that real. You literally collected the events that actually happened.

Some of ’em anyways, the big ones, you collected them, decided to keep them somewhere. It’s like a storage bin, a filing cabinet. And you took these things that aren’t there anymore, you stuck them into filing a cabinet and to you, they’re still there. They’re real. They’re just as real as if they happen.

There are people you will not talk to again ’cause of what happened three years ago. There are people, all you do is think about them ’cause of what happened three years ago. It’s not there anymore, is it? It’s only in this make Belize place. Called your mind. Not even the mind. Your mind. It’s not in my mind.

It’s not. Her mind is what’s in his mind and her mind. No, it’s not a chance. It’s a place. You stored events that already happened. They’re not there anymore. They’re not real to kind of meaningless. They’ll never happen again. But your mind is afraid they will. I. Look what you’ve done. So you took this, I’m gonna call it a filing cabinet, computer memory bank.

Okay. You store things in a memory bank, can’t you? So you sat there and said, this event happened. I’m gonna keep this one, I’m gonna keep that one, I’m gonna keep that one, but I don’t like it, so I’m gonna push it away. So I never think about it. Obviously if you don’t wanna think about it, you kept it. You don’t have to keep the white lines on the road.

You don’t have to keep every cloud that goes by. You don’t keep every person that walks by you in New York City on the sidewalk, do you? You don’t keep every word that you ever heard anybody say, but you keep some of ’em. Alright, there you starting to understand mine. That’s pretty weird. I’m telling you.

It’s weird. Otherwise, what’s happening is called be here now. What’s happening? It’s what’s happening. It’s very different. The, it’s actually happening, isn’t it? I’m trying to paint mine for you. I want you to finally get it. It’s not real. The fact that you stored all that stuff selectively, there’s no basis that you kept one verse another except you decided to, who decided to my mind and what happens, and this is like 17,000 layer chess, if you keep one.

It decides whether you keep the next one. Wow. And then that builds. So I’m going into detail. You kept the fact that someone didn’t say hello to you yesterday. Do you know how much commotion that’s gonna make in your mind? I am afraid to see them next time. Should I talk to them? Should I ask why they didn’t say hello?

Or will I get embarrassed? Maybe they didn’t hear me. Oh my God, they maybe didn’t say it ’cause they don’t like me. I don’t know if I want to hear. Does it do all that answer me? That’s mind. It’s not you. It’s the fact that you stored this thing in there. And now in a sense, it has a life of its own. Why?

Because something hits it and it comes back. Does the stuff come back that you stored in there? Why? Why does your stuff come back and hers doesn’t? Why does your stuff come back this year but didn’t come back last year or it didn’t come back last year? It goes back this year. It does all that, doesn’t it?

It’s pretty crazy stuff what’s going on in there. But you don’t see it as crazy. You not only don’t see it as crazy, you see it as you. That’s me. I am that voice in my head. I am those thoughts and I better deal with myself. And what does that mean? Okay, now we’re going to, you see, it’s a storage bin. Got it.

And you can stick stuff in there, can’t you? And it gets sticky. And what is stuck in there can get hit by what comes in next time. And it can hit itself. The stuff that you stored in there from before, it can hit the stuff that you stored it from before and all of a sudden you’re spacing out and all upset.

That’s where your moves come from. That’s where everything comes from. It doesn’t just come from mine. And I told you what you did with your mind. You see it, you stored this stuff in there. That’s the foundation. Okay? I, I’ve been quoting you lately. The psychology says a man is the sum of his learned experiences.

It’s not true. You’re the consciousness that’s looking at the sum of your learned experiences. Big difference. But it is absolutely true that what you are looking at in your mind is very 16 layered, complicated stuff that is the sum of your learned experiences. You saw a movie when you were 12 years old and some lady had a miscarriage and it ruined her life and you don’t have children.

How many people had babies? They didn’t have miscarriages, and you wanna sit there and devote your entire life not having a baby. I’m not saying you should have a baby or not, but I’m telling you that’s ridiculous. But you do it, don’t you? I’m trying to bring it to the surface. What is common to us? That should be absurd.

Or you saw a movie where someone had baby after baby, after baby. She made a whole soccer team, 11 children and to follow where they win and what they did and so on. I wanna have 11 children. I don’t know, you wanna have 11 children just because that movie showed you that. But you will think like that.

That’s what happens with mind. You store stuff in, it’s a place, you store stuff and then it keeps coming back. And in a sense, what it does, I’m gonna say the word, it attacks you. Your mind attacks you. It brings back that you had an accident on the 39th, once, five years ago. When does it bring it back? When you’re driving down 39th.

Oh, when you’re about to turn on 39th, how do you feel Scared. Did the accident happen every day? Did it happen to everybody? Is there more of a probability that the accident’s gonna happen on that street at that scene than was anything ever before when you never had an accident? Well, the statistics, oh, there must be higher.

I had an accident there. They’re no different than anybody else or anything. But they’re different to you, aren’t they? It doesn’t make any sense intellectually, honestly, it makes no sense. There is no difference. I mean, you’ll see those flowers on the side of the road, the plastic ones, right? The people put memorial, and you think, I’m not gonna drive down that road.

It’s not covered with flowers. There’s one thing over there with flowers, and one person was drunk or something and had an accident. You don’t even know the person. You don’t even know what happened, and you’re all upset. But people die in car accidents. They die in car accidents before you saw those flowers and after saw the flowers, but your mind’s not bothering you.

You have to understand mind or you will never get out. That’s why I talk about mind all the time. Why? Because that’s where you are. You’re caught in that thing, and it’s destroying your life and destroying the life of everybody around you. Why? Because not only do you want it to be the way your mind wants it to be, you want everybody to want it to be the way your mind wants it to be.

You want everyone to behave the way your mind likes. You want everyone to believe in what your mind believes in. There is nothing special about what you believe. It’s a thought in the mind. It can change tomorrow. Okay, now you’re getting quiet. I want you to get quiet. I hope you get shocked and stunned that I’m talking like this.

Mind is a place that you stored your past experiences and you didn’t just store ’em, you stored ’em with power, with emotion. You stored ’em with this stuff called I like and I dislike. That’s why the great Zen teachings talk about preferences. Now we went from you stored events, fine. You started an event in your mind, you stored that.

You used to swim and you almost won the title. Something went wrong. You should got that. What was that? 12 years ago When you’re in high school, you stored it with that, didn’t you? You know what that means? You didn’t even store it neutral. You didn’t even store it as it happened. Distorted as the effect it had on you inside, destroyed all the emotions, all the preferences and dislikes and likes so far.

Do you understand how much trouble you’re in? It’s bad enough that you stored the thing and then something’s gonna happen. It’s gonna pop back up because it reminded you of it, but you stored it with all this power. You don’t bother storing stuff that doesn’t have likes and dislikes. Okay? And the more you like the event, it didn’t like the event, the stronger it is stored in there and the more likely it is to come back up and the more trouble it’s to cause.

Why’d you call it trouble? What if I liked it? You’re in trouble. The example I always use is. You’re in love, young lady in love, and you met your perfect guy and oh my God, it’s so exciting. You’re waiting. Z marry. But you have a mommy who’s very materialistic. Some of them are okay, and she told you, look, someday the person you love is gonna come to you and get down on one knee and as Merriam, it better least at least be a car and a half walk away.

If it’s not a car and a half, she could have told you that. I know people, the other parents told ’em stuff like that. Well, what’s gonna happen now? It’s going to change your feelings. You’re going to be all excited and it’s all there and you’re gonna open it up and it’s 0.3 cars. What’s the difference?

It’s a piece of stone. It means nothing. But it did inside your mind, didn’t it? I made an example that most guys. Can’t relate to, I hope. Right? But you just look at all the things. You’re like that with that because you stored it positive, you want it happen again, and it doesn’t. You get what is disappointment?

1. Ready. You never get disappointed. There is no such thing as disappointed. Mine made it up. It’s one of those things mine made up. It made up that I wanted to be a certain way. Where’d you get that? I saw a movie James bonded and I don’t know, somebody did something that impressed me and so I stored it inside my mind with the, I like nagging.

Get disappointed. Otherwise, there’s just events. How can events disappoint you? There are events in the universe. The next thing that I’ll fight, teach you all the time, every single place in the universe, there’s something going on, every single spot in Einstein’s time, space, continuum. There is something going on, and what’s in front of you is just one of those.

Feast. Please once, do not let your mind, not listen to me. Dare to open it. Is that not true? There’s just one of those events happening in front of you. One’s happening over there, over there, over there, blah, blah. Every single place in the entire universe, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter Galaxy, there’s something going on.

Why is what’s going on in front of you any different than any of those? Why is the event that’s happening there and not here in front of me different from each other? They’re not. If I turn this way, then that’s that one. You are doing it. You are doing it. Your mind is saying that event is different.

Every one of those events has a history. If science turned its tools toward any one of the, and it’s doing it all the time, by the way, toward any one of those events, it would try to figure out why it is the way it is. You know what science does. Try to understand and figure out why are things the way they are?

What’s the cause and effect? What’s the previous culmination and summation of events that took place, that caused that to be that way? At that moment, why is there hurricane there right now? Why is there a tornado? Why is there this? Why is there that? Just why it means there’s history. If there was not an answer, there would be no science.

It’s called cause and effect. That is the foundation of all of science, including psychology. Why’d you behave like that at that time? Well, mommy did this and daddy did this. I ate something bad the night before and somebody said something to me right before I saw you. And what are you saying? You’re saying that every moment that’s unfolding has a reason that it’s unfolding.

I know you don’t like it. Is it true that every single thing that ever happened and will ever happen in the entire universe, wherever it is, has a history of why it unfolded that way and you decided in your mind to like it or not like it? What does that mean? What does that mean? Who are you? I like it.

That’s a really important thing that you like it. Gimme a break. Oh, I love you. You’re laughing instead of crying. You’ll be crying when you go out.

I beg you. Now what we’re doing is we’re using your higher mind, your intellectual mind, your clearer mind, and that’s not based on your past experience. That’s based on reason, logic, intelligence, understanding causality. You have to be a genius. You got one of those, it’s called the impersonal mind. The abstract mind.

Okay. Then there’s this mind. It’s still mine. Still mine still within the realm of that bubble, but then there is called the personal mind. What is the personal mind? The one that you made by holding on to the experiences that happened in the past that you did not let go of. They’re your personal collection.

Aren’t they? Mm-hmm. Nobody else has that collection, do they? No one has going on in their personal mind. What you have going on. How could they, because there’s the, some of their learned experiences. Here’s the, some of your learned experiences, and every single person is different, and they are so powerful because you store them with power.

Your intellectual mind is open. It’s open. If a true scientist has been sending five years researching something and finds out he missed something, and another scientist said, oh, you shouldn’t have gone here, he says, thank you. He doesn’t get insulted. He doesn’t get scared. He doesn’t feel embarrassed. Why?

Because it’s a purely intellectual abstract. I’m interested in truth and understanding. It is not about me. I don’t wanna know Nobel Prizes. I don’t need people clapping. I don’t need nothing. I just want to find out why this is going on the way it is, and if you can help me and you win the prize, muzzle tough.

That’s a scientist. No personal. See, it’s impersonal, isn’t it? You can be that way. And so basically that’s in a level of a thought, a level of mind, but the personal mind is not like that. And let’s take a moment to talk about what it’s like. It’s totally about you. What you like, what you don’t like, what happened that you liked, what happened that you didn’t like?

And you not only say that I didn’t like it, you say it shouldn’t have happened. What is that? It’s enough that I decided how I wanted it, but once I decided how I wanted it, it’s wrong that it happened. The cause and effect, the whole thing about Einstein’s time, space continuum, that everything is what it is based on whatever it was, and ain’t what I want.

It is not what I want. Therefore, it’s wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. Does your mind do that? ’cause don’t you dare say no, I’ve been doing this for 55 years. All right? I mean, here your mind does that, but you don’t see it as your mind. You actually see it as right that mind is never right. The intellectual mind can come up with things that are beautiful theories, concept views, discoveries, and all wonderful things.

And it can hold, although Newton was wrong, Einstein taught around, right? So even when they think they’re right at the intellectual level, but that’s fine. We’re all glad, right? They went the next level, but not the personal mind. There are people whose personal minds as follows. You’re at a party with your husband or wife, or significant other, and you say something really stupid.

This is wrong. You know, you just had your numbers wrong, right? And the people are sitting there looking at you and you’re others standing next to you and you turn to them and say, you see what I’m saying? Right. There’s no way he sees what you’re saying, but lemme tell you a secret. He better say Yes. I see what you’re saying.

Now I understand the personal mind. You got one. And then all the junk that will come up if he doesn’t say that. This is the human problem, isn’t it? The personal mind is absurd. It doesn’t serve any purpose. It just causes big trouble. And if you’re caught in your personal mind and you are, I guarantee you, your intellectual mind is thousands of times more powerful than you think it is.

But you’re in your personal mind again, what’s the personal mind? The sum of my learned experiences, but they’re not neutral. I only kept them ’cause they’re power packed. I labeled them like dislike really? Like really don’t like. Take a breath. Are you looking at mine now? Understand, it’s just, it’s like taking a fishbowl, putting it over your head and having the fishes swim inside.

It has an outside. 

it’s not the whole universe. It’s not even close. I already showed you. It ain’t her mind. It’s just a thing that’s swimming around in there. All those little fishies you collected, but they’re very distracting, aren’t they? How distracting. You can’t get your consciousness off of them, and that’s the spiritual problem.

That’s the entire spiritual problem, is that your consciousness is addicted, and that’s the right word, is addicted to being distracted by what’s swimming around in there in this little tiny area. It’s so small. I can even think about it. The little tiny area that you call me is just your mine. While you’re doing that.

You are lost. Doesn’t matter how smart you think you are, doesn’t matter how right. There are people who take positions, but I’m right. She shouldn’t have done that. I can’t believe she did. I’m gonna tell her that she did that this. Whoa. But you don’t understand. I do understand very well. It’s just that little fish in there that you stored in there and cow it, and then decided they’re wrong and which ones are right.

Tomorrow, somebody will say something to you either about her or she’ll say it. That’s very complimentary and it will stop doing what it did yesterday. It is the most fickle thing that ever existed. The personal mind. Is the fall from God. But it’s not ’cause God’s staring at it, right? So God’s still involved.

God is staring at those thoughts and you think, I’m telling you, I don’t care how much I talk to you about it. You think they’re right. You walk right out there and do the same thing again. And don’t get embarrassed. We’re just making sure you get your bearings. Why is it that way? I told you why it’s that way.

’cause events happen. Yes, events happen. They come in, they have a vibration, you feel them. Rattlesnakes don’t feel like butterflies. People that say nice things to you don’t feel the same as people who dish you, but I wanna make sure that’s primal. What does that mean? That means the rattlesnake is actually a rattlesnake and it’s actually in front of you, scaring you.

The person is actually saying something nice to you, complimenting you, and this person’s actually dissing you. What’s the difference? I’m telling you, if you be afraid of being dissed and someone comes up to you, you will see them dissing you when they’re not. Yes or no? You can’t even tell. You can’t tell why?

Because what comes in has to pass through this garbage that you stored in your personal mind. And it’s pretty complex, isn’t it? It’s got 16,000 layers on top of each other, and they all hit each other. And next thing you know, you’re scared. Have you ever been talking to somebody and be afraid of what they’re gonna say?

Ever talking to somebody and decide, you know what they said and never heard another word they said? And that was it, man, get me outta here. You don’t know anything. You only know what it looked like when it passed through your stuff. Do you know how personal your stuff is? 100%. If you hadn’t seen the movie when you were five, you would not be thinking the way you’re thinking now.

But it really did happen. Fine. So did everything else. I keep trying to show you that the things that are most important to you, you don’t understand how he was driving and I didn’t do anything and the guy ran a light and he hit me. What? It happened 22 years ago, but I still won’t drive. There’s no way.

I’m not stupid. I know what happens. Okay. Is that rational? Some people will say, of course you had a terrible accident. That’s ridiculous. People drive all the time. You drove all the time before, but you took this one incident, turned it into this major mishegoss that’s gonna run your entire life when it’s just one spot in the time space continuum.

Can you imagine what it’d be like if you didn’t do that? You could live your life. You could actually experience the reality of what’s unfolding in front of you on a regular process. Fine. You had a car accident 22 years ago, so what? It’s over. But it’s really important. It’s no more important than anything else I’ve ever knew, driving anywhere at any time or any accident or non accident that never happened.

It’s a moment in Einstein’s time of space continuum that you couldn’t handle, you could not handle that happened to you. So what did you do? I kept it. I keep teaching you that. I know there’s the smartest thing to do. This event that bothered me more than anything in my entire life on keeping it. It’s gone.

It’s over. It was over 22 years ago. There’s no remnants left at all. They tore the road down and repay you. They build a expressway with, with, with bridges over the place. Alright? But you kept it. It only exists in one place, which is inside your mind. Why would you do such a thing? You answer me. Does that make sense?

Wouldn’t it make much more sense if we had our way to sit there and say, huh, into every life swim, rain must fall. Let’s go. What’s the next event? And literally be here now. Be interfacing with the reality that’s unfolding in front of you to the best of your ability, enjoying it, dancing with it, interacting with it, but not going back and storing this garbage that is the personal mind.

All this stuff you stored, we are so lost in it that I would bet you that most of psychology does not think you can’t have that. They think, oh no, that’s part of who you are. Isn’t that part of who you are? Let’s check it out. How’d it get in there? Somebody walks up to you and says something to you. You hear it.

It bothers you a little bit. For whatever reason, it will not stay inside of you unless you hold it. It will come in and you’ll do this thing called resist. You’re in there, aren’t you? Can you resist? Do you resist experiences, emotions, and thoughts and things when you resist? That’s equivalent to saying, I’m keeping this sucker.

I’m not gonna let this pass through me. I’m not gonna let it continue. Its event journey through the universe. It happened now as the present. It happened and I was the president. I can’t let her do that. Because I don’t want it to pass through me. I don’t want it to get closer to me. I don’t like it. I don’t like what it feels like.

I do not want this inside of me. What you’re really saying is, I do not want this to have happened. You tell me how many things that have happened, can you undo this or they didn’t happen. None ever for the history of creation, nor will ever be if they happen, they happen. The question is not that they happen.

The question is, can you let them have happened? Or can you in there? God, you the most powerful thing in the universe. You’re the only thing that matters are your ego saying, no, I don’t want this to have happened. Okay, very good. You have a problem now. It happened. It can’t not have happened, but you don’t want it to have happened.

Now we have two opposing forces, reality and your personal ego that sit there and says, I don’t want this. Are you relating to this? Do you do that? I don’t want this stuff happen. Okay. Sometimes it’s so fast you don’t even notice it. What you’re doing is protecting your ego from the experience that doesn’t fit it.

If you wanted it to happen, well, okay, well that happen, right? But if past experiences built a self-concept, which is, that’s the core of your personal mind is your ego, your concept of who you say you are. I’m not somebody you can talk to like that. You have an ego. What is ego? A collection of thoughts that you collected.

The some of your learned experiences that are deciding, this is who I am. It’s not who you are. You’re looking at it just like any other part of your mind. But when something comes in and doesn’t match that core, it’s called your self concept that the core thoughts of who you think you are. I love the fact that I called it self concept.

What is a concept? It’s a concept, not reality. It’s the opposite reality. It’s a concept of reality. It’s a concept, something you made up in your mind. So you made up a U in there and now an event happens that doesn’t match what you made up. It don’t feel good and you don’t want it coming in there, and so you end up resisting it.

When you resist it, you store it. Anything you didn’t open up to let it pass. It’s still in there. Because you resisted it. The Hoover Dam is stopping the Colorado River from flowing through every single minute. The Colorado River’s trying to push past that dam every minute, every single thing you ever stored in there and didn’t let pass through is trying to get out.

Just like that damn slightest thing happened. It pops up, doesn’t it? Somebody can’t even see. It just feels yicky down there. I just don’t feel right today. All of it is that stuff you stored down there and you stored a lot down there. So you built this mine. See, not the mine, the personal mind. It’s just a subset of that entire universe of mine.

You built this tiny little thing called me. And it made a mess. Do you have trouble living here on this planet? The Buddhist said, all life is suffering. Wow, what a negative attitude. And you know what he said? The more I grow, the more those four noble truths, at least the first three. The other is the path, but they’re, they’re breathtaking.

What an amazing thing. All of life is suffering. The cause of suffering is preference. I use the word desire. Same thing. A preference is a desire. Desire is a preference. I like preference better because you can’t get away with the same desires, extreme and lust and greed. That’s you think desire is right and preference.

You can’t get away from that sucker. Alright? The cause of suffering is preference. What does that mean? You have a way you want reality to be. Therefore you suffer. I’m not saying what to do about it, but do you see the truth? If you did not make up in your mind, where did you get an idea how reality be?

You still didn’t get it from reality. Excuse me, sir. I made it up. Yes you did. You made up. You made up a world inside your mind that isn’t there. Hmm, and it bothers you that it’s not there, and you worry and you have anxiety, and you have desires and preferences and hopes and dreams and all kinds of things that are about what you made up.

Again, I, I hate to do this, but say like, pop your bubble. People say Hopes are spiritual. I’m given you some room. If you’re depressed and you have no hope in life, hope is very spiritual. If you’re not that broken, what is hope? What is hope? I hope someday it’ll be the way I want. When was last time you hoped it wouldn’t be?

What are your dreams? I dream someday the world will be the way I want. It’s still based on the eye. Somebody else has totally different hopes. So it’s totally different dreams and they think they’re just as right as yours are. So Buddha’s, right? The cause of all suffering is that you did this thing and make up in this world of openness of mind a world.

You know, as I said, like did you or did you not make up a world inside your mind the way you want it to be? Does it always end up like that? No. Come on, look at me. I like that. We’re having, now we discussion, right? So you use this memory bank, this storage bank to make up this thing of called your concept of how things should be.

If they’re not that way, you suffer. If they are that way, you get excited. So what do you do with your entire life? Now we’re gonna define your entire life. I try to make it be the way I want and I try to make sure it’s not the way I don’t want. I try my best to make the moments unfolding in front of me be the way I want them to be, and I try my best to make sure they’re not the way I don’t want them to be.

Which moments? The Einstein time space, continuum moments that are a result of everything that ever happened, coalescing together in every one of those moments. I wonder how good I’ll do, trying to make every moment be the way I want it to be. How you done so far. Even when you get it the way you want it to be, you’re worried it’ll stop.

Don’t you or Feder yet? You change your mind.

I’m not sure I should emerge you. I don’t feel like, I thought I would’ve been, I got a midlife crisis. I thought by now, if I have the kids in the thing, the station wagons and the job and these things, that I would feel happy, but I don’t. I somehow, my concept of what I wanted wasn’t right.

I’m gonna go drop out. And they do that. Isn’t that what a midlife

Speaker: crisis is? The one I made up didn’t work. Can you make up another one? I tell you that’s my favorite. When someone says, no, don’t leave, don’t leave. I’m so sorry. I can be different. I swear. I can be different. Just tell me how you want me to be.

In other words, you made yourself up and you can make up a new one if you’re scared enough. You hear me? So the cause of suffering is because you made up a concept in your mind of how reality should be, and it’s not that way. And so the end suffering is not to try and make it be the way you want it to be.

How about the third Noble truth? To end suffering. End preference, but that’s way too strong. You gotta freak out over that sucker. You know? I can’t handle that. Well, wait a minute. I shouldn’t know anything. I just sit there, let everything happen, not do anything. No, it didn’t say that. You can’t even imagine what a world without your personal mind looks like, right?

What it looks like. Perfection. Well, I guess that’s what it is. It is every moment unfolding in accordance to the laws of everything in the moment that it’s unfolding and you not resisting a single thing, interacting with it, participating with it, serving it, helping it be the best that it can be. That’s a saint.

That’s an enlightened great being. There is no personal motive. There is no personal concepts or views or hopes or dreams. Why would there be? They’re not storing that garbage, but that doesn’t mean they don’t participate. They’re the ones who truly participate. ’cause they’re not participating for themselves, which is so tiny.

It’s ridiculous. Why are there wars? ’cause we’re all participating for ourselves and none of us agree, do we? Let’s read the news. Do we all agree how it’s supposed to be? Yes or no? Don’t you all agree the way it is now, and you’re gonna say no, but you all mean for different reasons, and tomorrow you’ll have another one.

There’s not a chance John Lennon has to come back. Imagine all the people. Yeah, imagine all you want. That’s also mine because it ain’t gonna happen. It is not gonna happen. While you’re doing what I’m talking to you about. Well, you’re storing inside your mind to some of your learned experiences and tag em as I want.

I don’t want, and then go out there trying to make them happen. You’re at war. You are at war with everybody and everything, including your spouse and your children. ’cause you have a way you want them to be. You made this up with your mind. Use your brilliant intellectual mind that can discover things and create things and said, oh, intellectual mind.

Don’t create air conditioning. Don’t fly on the moon. Don’t fix medicine, right? Just come on down here and figure out what I want and how to get it. And that is your personal mind. And it uses your intellect to do it. It comes up with plots and plans and constant, I once taught something like that. Like what does it, what does it really look like when you’re sitting there working with your mind, the first thing it says is, what’s my motive?

I have to have a motive. What’s my, how about this? What’s my objective there? Nice and neutral. I. Do you have an objective which might happen today? An objective which might happen over your life? I have an objective. Okay. Very good. I Something I made up. Yeah. I don’t have an objective. Life’s gonna do it and I’ll participate, but I made up me, me, just this little thing, that 8.3 billion of you running around at the same time, but mine was as matters.

I made one up. Okay, good. And you’re just on one little planet. It matter what the rest of the universe I that you’re, what you made up has nothing to do with, do you understand what you made up? Has nothing to do with anybody else or any other place in the whole universe. It’s just about you. So you made up a strategy about what I want, what I want to happen, but you know, it’s not gonna happen by itself.

So the next thing your mind does, aside from making up a strategy about you, it makes up. Tactics. That’s a military word, strategy and tactics. When I first saw that, I said, oh, that’s the Army to go. Go study West Point. You’ll find out about strategy and tactics. What are my tactics? Well, I can dress really nice in a thing.

I can dis her and make ’em not like her by saying really negative things. Let’s see. I could drive. That’s your tactic about how to get your strategy the way you want. Anybody got any of those? Anybody find themselves thinking about that kind of stuff? I hope you’re embarrassing. I want you to plush, but I want you to be embarrassed.

I just want you to wake up. While you are doing that, you’ll never be okay. You can momentarily get what you want, and for a moment, feel good. Somebody likes you. Somebody apologizes. They can work at. It doesn’t last, doesn’t last at all because of what I told you. This thing that’s going on in your personal mind is a mess and it has nothing to do with reality and you’re not gonna control reality.

Isn’t it funny? A nice Jewish yogi and I said this and I heard, not my will, but thy will be done. Who said that? Oh, one of the highest means of walking the face of the planet. What does that mean? Not my will, but thy will be done. When he went up there before they arrested him, he was praying. He said, may I pass this cup?

And what did he say? No. I’m sorry, not my will, but I will let it be reality’s way. Right. Really, the story isn’t that true, that when Judas was gonna go out there and turn him in, he walked over and kissed Judas in the cheek and said, go do what you must do. This is what must unfold. And he was willing to live from the impersonal place.

And it’s pretty neat stuff in it. Guess what? Buddha did the exact same thing and all the great beings did the exact same thing. What is it called? Die to be reborn. What do you mean die? Die of the personal self to reborn. And what we haven’t talked, we’ve talked about the intellectual self, we haven’t talked about beyond mind.

You do not have to live in your mind, but in order to not live in your mind, you can’t run away from it. That would just be mind telling you, oh, drop out. I went down, get married, renounce every, that’s mine. Doing the same stuff. What you have to be willing to do is look at it. That’s why witness consciousness is the big step.

Are you willing to watch your mind, your personal mind? We’ve talked about it kind of made you look at it a little bit here, didn’t I? Are you willing to look at it? Realize. Whoa, that thing’s got problems. It thinks it’s the center of the universe. It things, things should be the way it wants it to be, and every way it wants it to be just made up and it could change it in a minute and a second and it starts watching that.

You start noticing that and you don’t go in there and fight with it and renounce it and do this kind of stuff. You just start seeing it and it starts looking not so good. It starts looking like it’s the risk. That’s where I got, and I’ve lived it for a very, I’m not perfect, but I’ve lived it for a very long time.

The risk, listen to me. I’ve never said this to you. The risk of not listening to it is way less. Than the risk of listening to it, and I saw that a long time ago. It just makes a mess outta everything. It gets embarrassed, it gets ashamed, it gets scared, it gets self-conscious. It doesn’t like itself, and then it loves itself.

Doesn’t like itself. It looks at everybody else as a mirror of who it is. It Somebody likes you. Oh, I’m good. If somebody doesn’t like you, I’m no good. It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them. The only reason anybody wouldn’t like you is because they have something inside themselves that doesn’t do okay with you.

Where’d that come from? Somebody else would love you to pieces. Okay. People like stray dogs and cats, other people, oh my God, I get the dog catcher. Some of your learned experiences and so you end up watching it and realizing the greatest. You don’t realize which part’s right or wrong. You just look at the whole thing.

That’s what I’m trying to get you to do. Look at the whole fishbowl and everyone, those fish swimming in there and saying, I don’t think so. That’s where you get, I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m going to live my life by listening to any one of those fish that swims by at any given moment, and then something else bumps into it and says something else and, no, no.

Nope, nope. There. Now you’re ready. Now you’re ready. That’s we are ready for spiritual growth. Does it mean it went away? No, it does not mean it went away. You are addicted to looking at that. You have to go through withdrawal. The self, the consciousness has to be willing to go through withdrawal of being all involved and everyone those things are swimming by and think it matters.

If somebody likes you, it doesn’t like you, or if you think you don’t even care if somebody likes you or doesn’t like you, you care if you think they don’t like you. Mm. You care if you think that somebody else doesn’t like you because this other person didn’t like you, that somebody told, I don’t even get it.

It’s too complicated for me. It’s crazy living in there. You don’t wanna live in there. Do you? It’s not like you wanna live in there and fix it. You’re not gonna fix it. They’re not fixing that sucker. So some of your learned experiences and you tagged it with what you like and what you don’t like, and you’re running around trying to make it work and not work and you’re worried and anxious and all kinds of, where’s anxiety come from?

It might not be the way I want. That’s anxiety. It might be the way I don’t want, that’s anxiety. Don’t worry. It won’t be the way you want, and it will be the way you don’t want. Well, then it’s a game of most of the time. How many times can it give the way I want? Go on compromise. All right. To ruin your life.

No, this thing is unnecessary. The ego is unnecessary. Life will unfold without you. Don’t worry. Your heart will beat your lungs. Go in and out. The planet will orbit. Babies will get made out of fertilized little cells. The DNA knows what it’s doing. 800 billion, zillion trillion things. Or doing it by themselves and you’re trying to make izi on my face, go to the prom.

That’s free little. I don’t want him to dance with her more than three minutes. If you dance more than three minutes, you’re gonna get jealous. How small did we make this thing? But yet everything else happening by itself and you just wake up and he say, I don’t wanna be like this there. That’s when you woke up.

Well, what I do suppress it? No, suppression doesn’t work. Suppression doesn’t work. It stays in there. That’s what you did to be it in there. You suppressed it. Renounce renunciation? No, no, no, no, no, no. In order to have to renounce it, you already tagged it as good or bad. You already decided I want it, but I don’t wanna want it.

Roberts used to talk about that. Okay, I must want it, or I wouldn’t wanna renounce it, and I wanna really bad. You don’t renounce the white lines in the road. Announce all kinds of things. The only thing you think you’re supposed to renounce are the things you want. So now you have this thing you want really bad, and you think the answer is to renounce it.

If you have to step back from it and hold it back because you’re so addicted to it, that you’re gonna make a mess outta yourself and everybody else, by all means. But that is not a strategy of getting outta your personal mind to renounce it. Can you see that? All you’re doing is pushing it away. You still must want it, although you don’t have to renounce it.

Alright, so it’s deeper. I want you to get the deep, what is the deepest, why did I store this stuff to start with? If it’s the stuff I stored that’s making me want and not want, based on some I learned experiences, maybe I better stop putting stuff in there on a moment to moment basis. ’cause it’s a bear to carry that stuff in there.

And maybe if it wants to come up, I better help it come up. Maybe it’s about cleansing, about letting go of not having that stuff in there. And if I had one minute to close out with technique, there’s your technique. That’s your liberation. All the other things you’ll play around with, when it’s said and done, you’re in there and you’ll see.

That it still resists and it’s still cl. It’s called clinging if you like it, and resisting if you don’t like it. While you’re doing that, you’re just storing more, you put more fish in the fishbowl. So are you willing to, on a daily basis, moment to moment, watch the tiny little things? You know, like what she said, I don’t like what she’s wearing.

Oh, like that He didn’t say hello. You know, just the tiny little things. Notice that you used to store those ’cause they used to come back up. They formed your opinion about somebody that’s that, are you willing to take a breath and say, I don’t wanna store it? Are you capable of not storing it? Yes. But you have to learn how to, you just relax during the process of resistance.

You’ll see it start to resist or cling, relax. Oh, you’ll wanna get that straight. I don’t care how much I talk to you, you will not want to, just like a drug addict, they’re trying to stop the drug, but they will not want to not do it right. There’s no way I can make them not want the drug. Do you understand that?

You have to be willing to say it’s bigger than what I want right now. I wanna experiment with not storing at least one of these suckers, right? Okay. It’s hot out. I am not gonna complain. Why?

Speaker 3: It’s fun. It’s hot. So what?

Speaker: Let go, relax. Don’t resist. Let it come all the way in. Oh. And touch you. And pass. You’re gonna find out.

It can pass through. It will pass through if you don’t touch it. And then bigger things happen, and then your old stuff starts coming up all by itself. Do I need a therapist? There’s nothing wrong with a therapist. I’m gonna tell you right now, you know who your best therapist is, life, why it’s gonna hit your stuff.

Don’t use the therapist. There’s nothing wrong with a therapist. I’m gonna tell you right now. If you go out there into the world of life, you’re getting hit, it will find out where your stuff, yes or no? Does life find out where your stuff is? Yep. Doesn’t even take a second, does it? There you go. There’s your therapist.

The question isn’t that, are you willing let it go? And eventually you’ll reach the point where the answer is yes. I wanna know what it’s like to live in here without this stuff in here. I would love to be liberated. What liberation means, free, free of this, this attraction and addiction to myself. And when you do that now, we’ll close out.

What happens as you let go? The personal mind dissolves. There’s no reason for it to be there. It doesn’t have those preferences. It honors the heat. It honors the cold. I once trust somebody. It’s not that the great way is not difficult for those to have no preferences. It’s also true. The great way is not difficult.

Those who prefer everything. If you prefer everything, it’s like having no preferences. Good. Do it that way. Just say how much you like to eat. I like how Look at him. He came over here, he said something really mean to me. I love it. Now it goes right through, so there is your understanding of mine. You got a better understanding.

It’s a thing, and you’re staring at it. It’s not you. You don’t have to stare at it, and it doesn’t have to be there. But as work, that’s deep spiritual work. Well, that’s the purpose of your life is liberation. And eventually you’ll touch places where that mind’s not there. You got outside the fishbowl and the intellectual mind is not driven like the personal mind.

And the next thing you know, it will be quiet. Some people quote it, the voice of the silence. You know, it’s just the voice of the stillness, the voice of silence. What does that mean? You will know what to do, not intellectually, not personally. You’ll just be in harmony with the unfolding of the moments in front of you.

Just like a rattlesnake gives off a vibration, the moment gives off a vibration. You literally, and I have to stop. You’ll get to the point where if you go to eat something, you listen to me. If you’re still, then you’re quiet. You’re not making all this commotion, you’ll reach out there to take something.

Your entire energy system will shut down. Don’t eat that. How do animals know how to not eat poison things? You don’t see dead animals lying all over the place. How do they know? Sense. It’s not psychic. You just, you’re in harmony. You’re in harmony with the vibration of things. Everything has a vibration. I don’t like to call it psychic.

It’s natural, right? The every moment is giving up a vibration. You don’t have to worry. Somebody’s lying to you. One, you wouldn’t even care ’cause you have no objectives. And two, you will know they’re not telling the truth. So what do you do about it? Run away. No. Be quiet. Understand, let that be a factor of how you’re making your decisions.

Where do you see how well you do? Especially if you’re not living off your personal self, your personal reactions. Okay. Do we have a nice talk? Do you understand mind, ego mind, personal mind, and no mind. Just openness. Openness. You’re receptive. Okay, very good.

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.