Michael Singer: Almost everybody thinks that spirituality is about techniques, meditation, mantra practices. In a sense it is, but in a true sense it’s not.
Why are you right now? Not in the highest ecstatic state of total liberation. It’s not because you’re not meditating. It’s not because you don’t do mantra. People do mantra, people meditate, do all kinds of things. It’s not because you’re clothes that you wear, the diet you keep. The answer is, and this is hard for people, you are in that state right now.
If you’re already in the state. There’s nothing you can do that’s gonna change that you are already fully enlightened. Fully merged with the oneness of the universe, fully part and whole, and parcel of the universal consciousness that’s everywhere is in the entire universe. Every spot everywhere is infinite, trillions of galaxies or your body.
You are there. That’s news to me. What do you mean I’m there? You are there consciousness that is, its state. Consciousness is one consciousness. There’s no separation. There’s just consciousness. It’s sort of like I’m looking at my body. I don’t have to look at it right now. Feel your feet, feel your knees.
Fill your hands. Now, do them at the same time. How long does it take to go from feeling your hands to filling your feet? It’s simultaneous. Consciousness is everywhere. It doesn’t move from one place to another. In its natural state. Okay, great. Very interesting. Why don’t I experience that? Consciousness has a quality, it’s called the ability to concentrate.
What does it mean to concentrate? It means to focus consciousness. That’s what you you’re doing when you concentrate. You focus your consciousness down to a point. At least you try to. Well, what happens when you try to focus your consciousness? It gets distracted. Consciousness is aware of what it’s aware of.
You don’t know anything in the universe except what you’ve experienced, what you’re aware of. If you’re in a room, it’s the only thing you’re aware of. Then that’s your life. What you’re aware of, what you’re conscious of. Consciousness is that what you are, you are consciousness that is aware of what it’s aware of.
Lemme repeat that. You are consciousness that is aware of what it’s aware of. Let’s say it’s aware of looking through a telescope at all the galaxies, then that’s what you’re aware of. That’s what you’re experiencing. Let’s say you have a hurt toe that’s capturing all your consciousness. Then you’re toe conscious.
So in one case, you’re star conscious, galaxy conscious, the other of your toe conscious. It happens automatically, doesn’t it? Why are you conscious of one thing? Versus the ability to be conscious of a much broader spectrum or anything else. And I teach that the most spiritual word is the word distraction.
What is distraction? That your consciousness is being pulled toward an object of consciousness. It’s pulled toward a toe. What’s pulled toward the toe? My awareness, my consciousness. It’s pulled toward me in awe of sunset. What is my consciousness? It’s the same consciousness. There’s just one consciousness in inside of you.
It gets distracted. Gets distracted by what? A mosquito, a hurt toe. Something you see, a beautiful man or woman or a sunset or anything. It caught my attention. Oh, that’s so spiritual. You don’t understand how spiritual words are. I was paying attention to this. Then this other thing caught my attention.
What did you go fishing? Mm-hmm. It did. This is the most important thing you can understand on your spiritual path. You are in here. You, your consciousness is in here. We’ll go deeper into it in a minute. It gets distracted by things. The first level of the thing gets distracted by are the things that come in through your senses.
Sight, sound, touch, hearing, feeling, tasting, whatever the heck it is. Those things distract you. You can be having a dinner with somebody and having a conversation and all of a sudden you take a fork or spoonful, you put it in your mouth. It’s so delicious. You’re no longer having that conversation. You are no longer with that person in the restaurant.
You have become distracted by the power of the taste in your mouth. Can it happen? Let’s say it’s so disgusting that you put it in your mouth. Same thing happens. It takes all your consciousness. We’re talking what that means, little. What do you mean? It takes your consciousness? Does it reach up there and grab it?
No. Your consciousness focuses on things. Why? It gets distracted by them. It gets pulled down to them, and whatever it is that distracts your consciousness, that’s what you’re experiencing, period. Everything else is still happening. Everything else is in the restaurant. The music’s playing, the people talking.
There’s stuff going on all over the place, but you’re not experiencing it because your consciousness got distracted down to this focal point. So consciousness is capable of focusing and being distracted that that something pulls it down to that focal point. That’s one level. I’ll give you the biggest clue next.
That’s not even as far down as you go. If your consciousness focuses, you’re not doing it on purpose. You don’t purposely distract yourself, or maybe you do. If you’re bored, you try to do something you, you sometimes try to do things that purposely distracts your consciousness so that you’re more enjoyable of what’s happening.
You do it all the time. Call entertainment. You focus your consciousness on things so you don’t have to be doing what? Doing the things you were doing before you were distracted. Anybody get that yet? There’s a state of your consciousness that’s usually not so comfortable. It’s bored, it’s scared, it’s uncomfortable.
It’s this, it’s that. Okay, doing all that junk, we’ll talk about that in a minute. You get distracted inside. So what do you do? You try to put the consciousness onto something that’s more enjoyable to you. You let that something distract you and you do it all the time. Your relationships and this just everything.
You let your conscience get distracted. And if it’s pleasant, you like it. And if it gets distracted by something not pleasant, you’re freaking out. But the whole thing is that you are conscious. You in there are conscious. Hello. You in there and you’re not in there. Oh, I thought so. Who’s in there? Don’t answer me.
Don’t give a word to it. Awareness of being is in there. Where is it in there? Normally it’s distracted by some outside objects or your thoughts. Can your thoughts distract you? Can you be thinking something and then another thought distracts from what you were thinking? Can you be sitting there reading a book?
And you’re turning the pages before you realize you didn’t read a thing, you better go back. The words crossed your mind, your mindset it, but you were not paying attention to it. You were distracted by something else. Do you ever get distracted? Lemme ask you a bigger question. Do you ever not get distracted?
When I say, do you get distracted? You’ll pay attention to what distracted you. You won’t pay attention to what you were distracted by before that thing distracted you. You’re distracted by your thoughts. You’re distracted by something and then it distracted you down. Just the hurt to or something else.
You’re always conscious of something in there. The spiritual state is when you’re conscious of being conscious. Totally undistracted in the yoga sutures of Patanjali, which you don’t have to read, is very deep. One of the greatest yoga’s teachings. He says that the first state, if you want to meditate or go into a deep state of meditation, and it’s called prya.
What does that mean? The ability to withdraw from your senses. There’s no way of saying that. The ability to wear your senses don’t distract you. You’re not distracted by your senses. Therefore, your consciousness has withdrawn from the distraction of your senses. It’s all about distraction. Now, what consciousness is being distracted by?
Then he goes to another state, which most of you think is a very high state, and must be meditation, right? Darna. Thena. What does that mean? One pointed concentration. I’m not being distracted by the outside world, by the senses. But I’m be distracted by my mind. Be distracted by my thoughts, distracted by emotions.
The inner world can distract you. It can grab your consciousness about things that happened in the past about things you hope will happen in the future. You can get pretty distracted in there, can’t you? So he taught that the way to stop that or to get past that is instead of letting your consciousness get dragged around by all these different inner objects of thoughts and emotions, right?
One pointed focus. What does that mean? Use your will. Focus it one pointedly. But if you can one pointedly focus your consciousness on a single object, especially inside, then the, your consciousness doesn’t get drawn away by distractions of the mind or the emotions. Some people think that’s meditation.
One total. One pointed focus and stays there for a long time. That is not meditation and baton doesn’t call it meditation. He says meditation is the next phase, Dion. So we’ve got pra withdraw from the census. Now I’m inside. Then Darna one pointed focus of all my consciousness on a single object. I don’t his name.
Come on. I don’t care what it is. Just a one pointed focus. Now what? Withdraw. The concentration from focusing on that object, by the way, you don’t get to do this. It has to do it naturally to where it comes back to the seat of consciousness, not what it’s concentrating on. Even if it’s beautiful, one pointed guru’s feet, it’s not what it’s concentrating on.
It’s when it ceases to focus itself. It comes back to its source. The source from where it always was, everything. When you got distracted by the toe, it got distracted from the source. When you get distracted by thoughts or emotions or good or bad or anything like that, it’s being distracted from the seat of consciousness.
That’s what it’s called, the seed of consciousness. I don’t like giving a name. Why? I guess that’s a thought. You get busy. Some people can read the back of gee, it backwards and forward. What good is that? It helped your concentration. That’s what it does. It puts a focus of your concentration as opposed to all over the place and get stuff in trouble.
It tried to focus on a holy book or focus on a holy place. Something. It, it is drawn. It’s one point of concentration. You’re, you’re closer to that. That’s fine. You’re still in your mind. It’s says your mind is more focused or focused on nice soic things. That means something that’s pure. You’re focused on something pure fine.
There’s a great master rum Christian, one of the greatest master, I love him to pieces that ever walked this plane. He told a story. About that. Talking about in regular spiritual teachings, there’s Vic, totally pure beautiful thoughts. Beautiful. Then there’s Rasik passion, then there’s Temasek, dark, you know, no movement, no energy, depressed, low energy.
He tells a story that there was a merchant that was passing through a forest and some robbers came out. They robbed him and they bound him with old iron rusty chains, and he was bound with those. Eventually, somebody came by and freed him, and then he went a different forest, monitored through a different forest, and he got accosted again by a different group.
But this time they bound him in stainless steel bonds of handcuffs. Right. Okay. Somebody came and freed him from that. Then he went to another forest and he gets accosted again and they rob him of everything he has. But this time they bound him with solid gold handcuffs. Okay? And Robert Christ just said, what the heck’s the difference in all cases, you’re bound.
What’s the difference whether you’re bound with dark rusty chains or you’re bound with beautiful stainless steel chains, or you’re bound with gold chains, you’re bound. And what is he teaching? It’s beyond Temasek, Sik, Sattik. It’s about not being bound altogether. It’s about having consciousness come back where it’s not focusing on, oh, I better be good.
I better not say this. Better not do that. I’ll show you my whole life. I’ll go to heaven. NUS called Heaven, another desire place. Your mind is still caught up in all these thoughts. That’s not liberation. It’s transcendent to that. So that basically you come down to the point where you understand that what Patan was teaching you is the same thing you’re in here.
Can you just be in there? Go be here now. Can you just be there? Experiencing what you’re experiencing, not being drawn down into it, not having to resist it, not suppressing it, not going after it, not liking it, not not liking it. All of those are things that you do. You get distracted by your likes. Do you distracted by your dislikes?
Do you distracted by what you did? Good. You distracted what you did bad. You distracted by your past. That was so wonderful. People clap when you were five. You get distracted by your past. Everybody booed when you went to school. It’s all the same. You’re talking the deep teachings. The deep teachings are called transcendent.
To all of this, the deep teachings happen. When your consciousness is not distracted, it doesn’t get pulled. Out of its nature. Its nature is infinite. It’s nature as whole, but your consciousness point of you, or you or you, your consciousness is that consciousness, the universe of one consciousness that was beautifully in the universe, distracted by your thoughts, your emotions, and what’s coming through your senses, and by her thoughts and her emotions and his and his, and by all 8.3 billion that are running around it is the same consciousness.
That’s in there. Were you in there yesterday? How do you know? I’m not gonna answer that question. Okay. How do you know you’re in there? It’s the most intuitive thing in the whole universe. You know what to say? I am. Because I am. I am that. I am. That’s what I am. I’m, I’m in here. You are in there, aren’t you?
Alright. You in there yesterday? Were you in there five days ago? You sure? Are you sure you’re in there? There was somebody in there. Was it the same you in there five days ago? He had different thoughts. Had different experiences the same you now you followed it a little further back. You sit there, we, you were in there when you were 10 years old.
When you were 10 years old and you sit in front of a mirror. Did it look like, it looks now? Was it you looking? That is spirituality. All of spirituality. It’s not about techniques, it’s not about beliefs. It’s not about likes and dislikes and practices. It’s about are you in there? Can you not be distracted by all this stuff that’s coming in by the senses, by all the thoughts that are created in your mind by all the emotions that are generated by your heart to where you just can be there bat, potentially call that the meditative state when the one pointed consciousness pulls back and is conscious of itself being conscious.
Mayor Bobo said, my drop of consciousness that was staring at me dropped into the ocean of consciousness. Drop a drop of water into the ocean. Find it. It does a very funny thing called merge Yoga means merger. That’s why yoga’s the highest teaching. It’s not dealing with getting what you want or avoiding what you don’t want, or being good or being bad, or just all this stuff.
It’s completely transcended all of that. It’s about are you in there and can you be in there and not be distracted by what’s pulling you down? And the answer is. Not yet. Okay. But I want to at least if you want to hear the teachings, hear True yoga, true spirituality is about the fact that you are the greatest being ever walked the face of the earth.
Buddha said it. Christ said it. They all say it. Christ said, my father and I are one. It means my consciousness. Is one with the creator of the universe. That’s the statement of being. The key is you get depressed, you feel lonely, you think you’re bad. That’s absurd. That’s all the stuff you’re looking at. A depressed person is not depressed.
They’re looking at a depressed psyche. They’re looking at something that has all the vibrations and tendency of being depressed. You are not that, but you’re noticing that you’re aware of that. Now, how long I tell this story and maybe, and tell this soul how long it takes to go from depression to ecstasy.
You’ve been depressed for two solid weeks. Your girlfriend, your boyfriend left you, your heart’s killing you, and you can’t even sleep at night. And there’s pizza crust all over the floor. You haven’t showered for weeks. Don’t answer your phone. You don’t wanna be friends. You’re depressed. Then all of a sudden the phone rings.
You look at the caller id. It’s the other, the lady or a guy that left you. Oh, I don’t want, oh, I’ll answer it. You answer it. And that’s what comes through the phone. I am so sorry. The biggest mistake I ever made in my life was leaving you. I never realized how much I love you. I can’t live without you. Can you ever forgive me?
I’ll do anything. Please. Can I come over? How long does it take for You’re up there taking that shower, cleaning that room up. I wanna hear, oh, I thought you were depressed. You were looking at a depressed psyche. And that psyche too. Well get into table why it changes that psyche just heard what it liked hearing and what did it do.
Boom. Got me going. You hear me? All right, so you are neither behind nor you are just a great being lost. It’s called a fall of the garden. Lost ’cause you’re staring at your mind. You’re staring at your emotions and you’re staring what’s coming through your senses, and while you’re doing that, you get distracted by that, all ’em at once.
By the way, can you be distracted by your mind and your emotions and the world outside? Usually they sink up, so happen outside. Your mind doesn’t like it, your heart hurts. Why is it that way? You wanna have an honest discussion. Why? If you’re that great being and you are a very great being and there’s nothing you ever did or will ever do that will touch that, it will never get tainted.
Nothing can ever touch it. Just like light can shine on something. It doesn’t matter if thing’s dirty or clean or broken or fixed or young or old. The light has nothing to do with it. It’s just illuminating it. That’s how they call it, the light of consciousness. So your consciousness is watching what’s going on in there.
Ah. Yes or no and what most people, and I mean literally all people end up doing ’cause they have no idea about a talk like this. I don’t know who they are, they’re too lost, is they try to change the outside world so that when it comes in, it makes the thoughts and emotions feel better. Don’t you do that all the time?
Every moment in your life. You’re not okay in there. And so you’re trying to make things come in that fit what you want. You have things you want, and if it fits them, you feel good. And if it doesn’t fit them, you feel bad. And so you literally go outside and struggle. Struggle with people, places, things, events, finances, everything to try and make it so that when it comes in, it’s the way you want it to be, so you feel better.
And if it’s not the way you want it to be, you feel terrible. How bad can it get in there? Why do people do drugs? Why do people do alcohol? Because it’s not nice in there. Here you’re madly in love. You’re the highest you’ve ever been. Hey, you want some dope? Why? Of course not. You want to drink? No, I don’t want anything.
Leave me alone. You don’t need technique. You don’t need it. You don’t want it. You’re doing wonderful inside. That is your natural state. Is every one of your natural state, you’re filled with love, you’re filled with joy, you’re filled with light, you’re filled with a sense of total wellbeing. We call it self ult.
It’s not coming from outside. It’s just natural inside. Well, why don’t I feel that? Okay. Can we take a breath? ’cause that’s the real teaching. If you find out why you don’t feel it. Fix that, and then you’ll feel it. Not if you don’t feel it, go out and try to compensate by doing all kinds of garbage, finding somebody, finding something.
Have people like you do something. Have people clap when you come in the room. The real spirituality is not about trying to make things be the way you need them to be. So you feel spiritual or so you feel good or so you feel happy. ’cause it doesn’t last. It just comes and goes, doesn’t it? It can change with one thought.
Somebody says, oh, I love you so much, you feel so open. I’m like, God, this is wonderful. Then you hear ’em say it to somebody else. How you doing? That’s how long it takes. Nothing. That’s what Christ meant when he said, don’t build your house on sand. And we do build on a sand, don’t we? It shifts. It goes, it comes.
It’s temporal. So why is it like that in there? If it’s true that it’s, it’s filled with God, it’s filled with love, it’s filled with light all the time, self a photon, nothing can take it away. Nothing does anything they can’t increase. It sat, you know what that means? Eternal, conscious, ecstatic. That state of wellbeing, not that wellbeing.
That’s ecstatic wellbeing. Alright? That’s a SAT means is eternal conscious ecstasy. That is what it is like in you right now. Well, why don’t I feel it? ’cause you’re distracted from it. Whoa. Why weren’t you distracted from that? That doesn’t make any sense. And you’re distracted by things that bother you.
By the way you’re distracted what other people think of you and what happened and you lost your car and this didn’t start, and you got some ketchup on your pants and you gotta go to work. You’re distracted by some very interesting things that are a lot less interesting than being seated in such ananda that is literally the fall from the garden.
It is the tree of self-knowledge. You got too close to this personal thing that you’re looking at. Experiencing it and you did this thing called identify with it. If I ask you how you are now, you say, I’m a woman, 32 years old, and this is my child, and I played Dorothy in the fifth grade. That’s not who you are.
Those are experiences that you had. If you didn’t meet your husband, you don’t exist. You know, the child don’t exist. If you weren’t Dorothy in the fifth grade in the play, no one’s there anymore. You are the consciousness inside that’s having these experiences, good and bad, and up and down, whatever it is, but you identify with ’em.
I’m no good. Why she left me. You’re defining yourself as an experience you had, and then you’re caught. You’re caught saying, this is what I am and, and nobody likes me, or everybody likes me, and now what do I do? Even if you succeed, you’re in trouble. I use the example of somebody walked in here after services.
That didn’t happen, but somebody walked in after services and John was playing the guitar and the person he shouldn’t have, ’cause John wouldn’t like it, but he picked up the guitar. It was all over, and he started strumming around. He never played a guitar, didn’t touch it ever in his whole life. Then some other people walk in and they look and they stand behind the curtain for a minute and they say, oh my God, how long you been playing?
This is unbelievable. That’s gorgeous. Did you make that up to yourself? You’re a prodigy. You need to go on tv. You need to find an agent. You, you need to do something, right? You’re unbelievable. They walk out. How you doing? You feel a little bit different than when they walked in, don’t you? Whoa, man.
Special. Okay. You sit there and start doing your thing again. A couple more people walk in, stop it. You don’t even know how to play. How long have you played? I just started. You sounds like it. How you doing? I wanna know. How are you doing? There’s no solidity in there. You’re totally at the whim of whatever’s coming in and how it hits you and this, that, and the other thing.
And instead of dealing with that, you go out there and try to find the people that will say night, those are your friends. The other people are your enemies. That’s ridiculous. I’ll get to that in a minute. How did it get like that in there? It’s not hard to understand. There you are, Adam and Eve in the garden.
Everything’s fine. Then something happens out there. There’s a snake. Something happens. It’s scared everything has its nature. Does a snake have the same vibration as a butterfly? Did you have to think about that? You better go read a book. No, it doesn’t have the same vibration. A rattlesnake rattled up and coiled in front of you, makes a very different vibration when it comes in than a little butterfly that lands on your shoulder.
Everything has its nature. Everything in creation. Has its vibration. Cold feels different than heath. Male feels different than female. Dark feels different than light. That’s not wrong. It’s not like your job is to make it so it doesn’t do that. That’s ridiculous. Your job is, can I handle it? Can I handle that?
A snake passed in front of me and then a butterfly, the snake passed in front of me. Can I handle it? The answer is no. I don’t want the snake to have passed by me. I don’t like it. It didn’t feel good, and I’ll never want it to happen again. What did you just do? You just stored in this sacred place called your mind, which is part of experiencing reality, and said, no.
That part of reality that actually happened, it came into me, is not going to touch me. I don’t like it, and I’m not gonna let it in. Can you make it not have happened? No. It happened, but I do not have to let it all the way in. Right. If somebody’s hugging you and kissing you and you’re melting into that, it feels very different than somebody’s yelling at you and you’re resisting.
How about the two things? If it goes deep enough in, it feels wonderful and you melt into it, if it doesn’t feel good, you don’t let it in there, do you? You do this thing called resist. Your consciousness focuses and uses its power to push away the experience that it make it not happen. Of course, it didn’t make it not happen.
It happened, but you don’t let it all the way in. Freud called it suppression, repression, denial, whatever you wanna call it. I call it resistance. Do you resist in there? Are you aware that things come in and you push them away? You do it all the time. You resist the experience. When you resist it, it stays inside of you.
Why you didn’t let it go. You can’t both hold on and let it go. So you are in there resisting how the driver in front of you is driving with the temperature is what somebody said three years ago. If it comes back up, does it bother you again? And does it come back up? Why? ’cause you stored it in there. You used an act of will of focusing this power of consciousness to push away a reality event that came in through your senses or through your mind, mind, thought about it.
There it comes back up. When it comes back up and it yi, you push it back down, don’t you? You tell people, no, please, I don’t talk about that. You know, I don’t like when they talk about that. Stop it. Stop it. Okay. Lemme get my breath. What are you doing? You’re trying to push it back down so it doesn’t bother you again.
So you’ve stored this inside that sacred place called your mind. It’s something that can experience things and yes, your mind intellect can remember things, but this is not intellect. This is just personal garbage that you held inside of you, made up of things that you didn’t like, you didn’t wanna experience.
So you held them inside and now they’re stuck in there. And because you weren’t comfortable when they happen. Believe me, you’re not comfortable with those in there. There are things you don’t wanna think about. It’s in there. Why? Because you stored it in there and it’s going to stay in there. ’cause you keep it in there.
So now what you’ve done is made a collection not in the world inside your mind. You stored it inside your mind and now what do you do? You have to try to create a world outside of you that doesn’t hit the stuff. I got bit by a dog when I was young. I’m dating this guy and he is got two dogs. I don’t know what to do.
’cause a part of me really loves him and then wants to do this and, but, but the dog freaks me out in the thought. I met the dogs yet and I don’t wanna meet him. What do I do? Look at you. And it was, it ruined your life. What? Something that happened 10 years ago is in there ruining your life right now.
Maybe that seems rational to you. A dog barked at you and you got scared when you were five years old. But I try to wake you up to sit there and say you had an experience. A dog barked at you and you had to go run away or something like that 22 years ago. Is it rational and reasonable that it’s running your life?
No, it’s ridiculous. I keep trying to say it. At the same moment that you are having that experience, how many other experiences are taking place that you’re not having? Everywheres else, 700 billion zillion quillian every single spot in Einstein’s time, space continuum throughout the universe. In galaxies, far, far away, in the middle of black holes and on earth, there’s something going on.
There is no place that nothing’s going on. You’re not experiencing it, but it’s going on. Okay, that moment in front of you when you were five years old, 20 years ago. Is one of those moments that was going on. They’re going on everywheres, but you make a really big deal out of the one that happened in front of you, don’t you?
No wonder it’s so screw in there. You sat there and said That moment has more importance than any other moment of the whole universe for the rest of my life. I almost got in a car accident. Okay? I ran on the brakes. I skidded around. I am never driving down that road ever again. It’s a dangerous road. It wasn’t dangerous before yesterday.
Why is it so dangerous now? Nobody else finds it dangerous because you had that experience. You get so focused and fixated on the ones experience that came in through your senses that you couldn’t handle. You then stored it and it became the crux and center of your life. You’re done. It’s over. You’re stuck.
If you didn’t ram on your brakes and skid around and almost have an accident two years ago, at that place, would your life be different? Not really, but to you it will. I’m gonna find that guy. I’m not stopping until I find a license number. I’m gonna track him down and sue him. What did you just do? You were unable to handle a real moment that happened to you, so you made it the center of your life.
It was meaningless. It was statistically meaningless. The other one I like to talk to you about is you’re standing there and someone’s yelling at you. Or dissing you. Do you understand that is not personal. If that person had eaten something different yesterday. They wouldn’t be yelling at you today if that person would see the phone call from someone died.
Someone got born, someone loves you. Just before they met you, they would not be yelling at you. It is not you who did this. It is them. If you looked inside their mind, you would see that all the experience they ever had culminated in this moment that this is what happened. Okay, fine. You said boo, and they’re, how dare you boo me.
Or you said Boo and said, oh, I love it. Which is it? It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the sum of their learned experiences. Can anybody get that? You know how complex you are. Is it not true that you end up liking and not liking ’cause of your past experiences and that you get all upset ’cause something happened to you five minutes ago?
Well, they do the same thing. But they didn’t have the experiences you had. So to sit there and think that it matters, if somebody thinks about you, I’m gonna get tough with you. It’s not what they think about you, it’s what they think about themselves. Somebody stands there and says, boy, what you did, you’re an egotist.
That’s ridiculous. I can’t. I would never have done something like you did. Of course not. You had totally different experiences than me, and you’re judging me based on your experiences. Are they not doing that? Isn’t that what’s going on in your head? The, some of your learned experiences? Then how in the world can you think somebody else is judging you out of any basis of anything except some of their learned experiences?
And you’re gonna try and please the person. It’s ridiculous. ’cause the person next to them doesn’t like what you did. The person next to them liked what you did because they all had different experiences. And so go out there and try and every, everybody like you. Do you know how much meaning it is that people like you?
Zero. You know how much meaning it is that you’re comfortable within yourself and open and experiencing love and joy and beauty unconditionally no matter what happens. I’ll take that one. As opposed to going out there and trying to make people like me. I’m gonna say one more statement. You think and everyone you do that they’re thinking what you’re thinking.
Yep. Your mind is telling you, oh, they don’t like that. I said that. What should I do? Oh my God, I can’t. Why did I say you think that’s real? None of it’s real ever. Psychology says Man is a sum of his learned experiences, meaning your psyche is made up. It’s programmed by your past experiences. That’s a true statement.
Nobody had anything near the same experience you did throughout your life. Each one of those. Pearls of moments was different for everybody, but you are in there driving yourself crazy, worrying about what you said, what people like you, what do you do? What should I wear? Go stand there. Decide what you’re gonna wear.
Why are you deciding what you’re gonna wear? Don’t be like me. Don’t you dare be like me for how many years? 40, 50 years. Exact same outfit. I have multiple of them. Don’t worry. All I wear the blue shirt, khaki pants, what do I care to think about that junk? Alright, but otherwise you’re thinking, what should I wear that will do what?
Impress somebody else. How do you know you’re letting yourself drive yourself crazy. That’s why it’s a mess in there. You stored this stuff from the past that you don’t want to happen again, and now you’re literally using your own mind to decide what somebody else will like or not like. No wonder relationships is so hard.
Everybody’s trying to make the other person be what they need them to be so that when it comes in, they feel better. And then they say, well, well, how could you do that to me? Oh, what are you talking about? You know what I’m talking about? No, I don’t. How would I know what you’re talking about? But they mean it because they know what they’re talking about.
Do you understand what I say that to you? You think everybody thinks like you do, and if they don’t, you try to make them think that way. By how manipulating, controlling, threatening, promising. You literally buy their affection. Hey, if I pull up in a Ferrari, will you be impressed? You go rent a Rolls Royce and have somebody like you ’cause you drove in a Rolls Royce, I think you’re in trouble ’cause you don’t own that Rolls Royce.
What are you gonna pull up in next time? Anything you do to try and impress somebody, it’s a cost. You have to carry that cost. So why am I doing that? ’cause you’re not okay inside. That’s the only reason you need other people to accept you, to like you, to not, not like you. ’cause you are not okay in there.
Why are you not? I told you you’re fine in there. You’re self agen. You have unconditional love. Unconditional, I mean, no. What happens? You’re filled with love no matter what. You’re filled with. Peace, filled with joy, filled with wellbeing unconditionally. Well, why don’t I feel that? Because you stored all that.
Garbage inside of you. The whole key is not personal. There’s just events unfolding and you can’t handle ’em. And so what you do when you can’t handle ’em is you suppress them, you push them away, and you make a storehouse of all that garbage. Sorry, that’s the right word. And you carry it like a weight throughout your life.
And your solution to it is to manipulate and control the world so that when it comes in, you feel better. And not, when it comes in, you feel worse. It’s called struggling. So suffering. Mm-hmm. And then you, you know, get weird. Okay. Well, people with all kinds of things, they kill people, they’re robbed, they steal all kinds of things because they’re not okay.
The only reason everybody does anything. That’s out of harmony with what would be beautiful. And John Lennon, imagine all the people living life at peace. It’s just they’re not okay. And you start catching on. That’s your spiritual path. It’s called purification. Purification means being pure and wearing white all the time and never swearing.
That’s not purification, purification. You stored this stuff in there, you stored this stuff in there. Of course you’re not. Okay. How would you feel if you stored everything that ever disturbed you inside of you? How about disturbed? At the core, it’s disturbed. Therefore, you have some work to do. And I started by saying, look, mantra techniques, all these things, they’re wonderful techniques for learning to not have your conscious distracted to the lowest part of your being.
Should you read the Bible of the Gita? You know, I say to that, people ask me that, if that keeps you from being distracted by the lower parts of your being, then of course is wonderful. Is it liberation? No. Liberation is to sit there and say. Why would I ever wanna do anything to hurt anybody else? Why would I ever wanna lie?
Why? Why do we do these things? ’cause I’m not, okay, well, am I not okay? ’cause I store this garbage? Then what’s the answer? Ready? One, don’t store anymore. I can’t say to you, let go of the garbage. You don’t understand a chance. That’s like saying a drug addict. Don’t worry about withdrawal. Just stop using it.
So you start by saying, I struggle this garbage in here and it’s ruining my life. I’m neurotic. I’m scared on this. I just made a whole mess of everything. So what do I do? One wake up in the morning every single morning. This is your Saddha. So you can do other sa. You meditate, you can do mantras, you can do sadana otherwise, but this is a real saddha.
You wake up in the morning and you say, I’m going to go through this day without storing more stuff in there. Wow, there’s a video game for you. I’m gonna go through this day and if the driver in front of me is driving slow or keeps stepping his brakes, or he is driving 15 miles below the speed limit and it’s a single lane and I can’t pass, I am not gonna sit in there driving myself crazy just because that’s happening.
I’m gonna say, okay, time to relax. There’s things you can say. For example, oh, that’s my grandma in front of me. She’s driving for the last year of her life that she’ll be able to have a license. I’m not gonna tailgate her. I’m not gonna beep. I’m gonna say, okay grandma, I am honored to give you the space to drive however you want.
How’s that feel? And you start doing that with every minute of your life. You start working with raising what’s happening in there. When the outside comes in, you raise it up, you neutralize it positive, whatever it is, okay? You can do that. Doesn’t take any time. It takes just as much time to be negative.
You make a mess of yourself and then next thing you know, you get to the end of the day and you sit there and say. How did I do? And the answer is terrible. Okay. I did terrible. So and so walked toward me. I got scared. I said something stupid. Okay, fine. Don’t worry about it. Just do your best. It’s like learning how to play the piano.
You don’t know how to play the piano. You can learn, does I keep teaching this? You can learn to be okay. I know you’re not, you’re not. You stored all this stuff in there. You can learn to not store the stuff in there. You can learn to accept the fact that it’s hot. I run outta time. I, I love how back in this early seventies, I taught Mickey to stop complaining about.
Out here. I lived out here, no air conditioning in the middle of the woods and open fields and car air conditioning. How in air conditioning, it was pretty hot out here. 95 degrees in Florida summer. And I got him once, I have to tell you the story. I alluded to this. He, I said, huh? Right? And I, I said to Mickey, Mickey, why is it hot?
’cause he likes all that astronomy stuff, right? Why is it hot? He said, because of the sun. I say, how far away is the sun, Mick? 93 million miles. 93 million miles away, and you’re complaining about the heat. Well, what is the sun? A star? You’re telling me you are so close to one of those twinkle, twinkle things you see in the sky that you feel it’s heat 93 million miles away.
And he goes, yeah, that’s pretty neat, isn’t it? What you’re feeling is a star. You’re feeling one of those stars. You’re close enough to it. That’s like now when I get outta the car, if I feel that he has a wall, man, hit me with it. It’s like beautiful. And you start expanding your consciousness to include that.
That’s a star. And you happen to be spinning around. It can’t help myself. Did you know? Most of you don’t know. I remember the moment I found out during the summer. The earth is the furthest away from the sun, and during the winter it’s the closest to the sun. Why? Because it’s the tilt, not the distance. As it orbits, it tilts and it changes its tilt.
It’s pretty neat. You get to do that with your mind, which is better. Who’s stopping you from doing that? Who’s stopping you that somebody comes up and says something that’s not so nice. Instead of, oh my God, you can’t talk to me like that. I don’t have put up with this. I thought you, my friend, he said there’s like, oh, he had a bad day.
Hm. Who said you can’t do that? Which way is better off? All of a sudden you’re making it nicer in there. Then you don’t have to make it nicer out there. ’cause it’s nicer in here. And then you, at the end of the day, you sit down. How’d I do? And if you see things you held onto, you don’t wanna carry ’em to the next day.
Let ’em go, neutralize them. And if you’ll do that regularly, people write me from all over the world. You changed my life. I did not change anybody’s life. I told you, wake up. What are you doing in there? And they said, I started ing practice. I’m so happy I’ve, I was wonderful. And it’s like your whole life will change if you change your interstate.
’cause that’s what’s responding and reacting to what’s coming in. Make it nice. Why not? You’re only here for a few years, spinning a little planet, middle of nowhere. It doesn’t matter if you can handle it and have fun with it, have fun with it. Why can’t you? No reason. You just didn’t bother. So you go through your days that way, but I’m warning you if it won’t take long, if you sit there and start having fun with what’s happening and make it fun, whatever it is exciting.
It’s an exciting journey at some point. Stuff’s gonna start coming up from inside, not from outside. It doesn’t need the outside to hit the inside, does it? You have one thought. All of a sudden you see a sign, a poster on the side of the road. This stuff starts coming up. Okay, now you got some work and now it’s time to clean up the inside.
How do you know? ’cause it’s there. It does it by itself. Yes, you’re gonna have therapies. Yes, you can do different things. The heart knows how to cleanse itself. The mind does not want that chunk in there no more than the immune system wants the bacteria in there. It will cleanse itself. All you have to do, I’m telling you the truth, I’ve been doing this 55 years.
All you have to do is be willing to say, I’m going about my business. Then this thing came up, let it go. Why? Because I don’t want it in there. Not ’cause it was right or wrong, or justified or fair. No, it had nothing to do with that. I don’t want it in there. I wanna feel the ecstasy and the joy. How about you?
I wanna feel this beauty inside of me. I can’t if I keep the garbage in there. So if it wants to come up, I’m gonna learn how to do mantra, how to meditate so that while it’s coming up, I let it go. But it’s all about the cleansing. All the spirituality is about the cleansing. The techniques are just about how to keep your consciousness working while you’re cleansing and so on.
If you do this and let go of that garbage that’s in there, the best, you won’t be perfect. Believe me, that old stuff’s hard to deal with. Alright? I don’t want you dealing with it. I want you to letting it go. Well, I don’t know what to do with it. Let it go. No, you don’t understand. I dunno what to do with it.
I told you what to do with it. Let it go. Well, how do I know what to work on next? It’ll let you know, wound it. It’s a natural process. Spirituality is a totally natural process. It will come up and you just. Relax, do your mantra. Breathe. Just don’t touch it. Don’t do that. Push it back down stuff. And you will go through the withdrawal.
The withdrawal of what really matters. The withdrawal, the garbage that made you do the drinking and drugs in the first place. Okay? And it will get higher and higher and higher and higher, and wait till you see how high you can get. And you’re not doing it. Life is doing it. God’s doing it. It’s reaching down there and pulling this stuff up.
But you said, I want it out. Come and get it. I want it. I’ll come and get it. But it hurts. Of course it hurts. It was stored with pain. It’s coming back with pain. Can you handle it there? I’ve expressed why it’s that way inside the fact that it’s not really that way inside, but you’re looking at something that’s, that way inside your psyche is a mess ’cause you’re stored a mess in there.
And now I’m telling you how to cleanse, how to let it go. The more you do this, the freer you get. Alright, had a nice conversation. Thank you for listening.
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.
