Michael Singer: jai guru dev, jai masters. One question that is very prominent in the questions people ask, and I like it ’cause it just shows a real depth of sincerity is if I’m sincere and I understand this whole thing with these blockages and that they’re ruining my life and I want ’em. And I know it’s gonna be difficult, but I don’t wanna go the rest of my life with all this stuff in here.
That’s an awakened spiritual being, not someone who says, I want see the light. You know, I wanna touch God. It’s all said and done. You’ll merge, but it ain’t said and done. And if that’s what you’re doing, instead of working on getting it said and done, I say you’re wasting your time, but you’re having some spiritual experiences.
And after all these years, what I’ve been on a 55 year spiritual experiences. Yeah. They’re nice. You know what you do with spiritual experiences? Look at me, you tell other people about ’em. ’cause they cease to do anything for you is something you had at some point. And so it’s not the spiritual experience, that’s the understanding of why you don’t live there.
And experience is something that comes and goes as you know that a state of being. It doesn’t change. You have a state of being. It’s called ego. Your state of being is me. I, me and mine, but I like what I don’t like what I want, what I don’t want, but I’m sending boundaries ’cause this isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to handle this and what I want with my life and what kind of job do I want that will gimme passion.
What kind of relationship do I want that will make me happy. I, me, mine, I, me mine, I, me, mine, we’re so lost in it that we don’t understand. So I keep telling you, it’s like a fish doesn’t know they’re in water. ’cause that is the environment they live in. And so our. Current state of being as a human being, you know, wanna be one of those is the ego that got built, the psyche that got built in your mind, got built out of your problems, out of your desires, outta things that turned you on and things that turned you off.
And I already told you there’s like at least a thousand times more things that turned you off than turned you on. Just watch it during your day. Every little thing you complain about, I got something gonna say about every once in a while, something happens. Oh, I like that. Right? Take it every moment of your life and you’re gonna see the ratios not even close.
So you’ve developed this protection system. Ego is protection. It’s basically saying, I’ve had, let’s just take it from the bad. I’ve had bad experiences and they hurt, and I don’t want ’em to happen again. So I’m going to develop a protection mechanism called Eco that thinks and conjures and plots and plans and judges and resists and fights to try to make what comes into me.
’cause I live in here a way that feels good. So who’s not doing that okay. And not how it comes into me a way that feels bad. I always teach you this as a foundation of the teachings. How’d you decide what makes you feel good or bad? I’m not stupid. I’ve had the experience and I can’t get across with you.
At one moment in time and space, your consciousness was experiencing what was happening in front of you? How much was it not experiencing? How many other moments were happening? Forget over the whole universe. Let’s leave it on earth. A hundred billion zillion that if you turn that way, you’re having that experience turn that way you’re having that experience.
Go to Chicago, you’re having that experience. I don’t mean Chicago. Chicago, this restaurant, at that seat with that music plan, do you understand that there are billions of experiences going on at the same time? How many are you having at that moment? One, and you have developed your entire ego based on that one experience, not just the one, the one of that moment and that moment.
There’s two, just one. And your entire concept of yourself, what you like, what you don’t like, what you believe, what you don’t believe, what you wanna attract to yourself, what do you wanna set boundaries about? It’s all based on that meaning I call it, it’s meaningless data. My minor in college when I was through my doctor, was in statistics.
They had a name for that data, statistically insignificant. How does that sound? And you’re developing your entire philosophy of life preferences, hope streams, concept views based on each one of the little pieces of data instead of based on a broader universal set. Alright. I always like to run out. I’m about going further into that.
So basically that is a, a, not just your, but a human being’s state of being. The consciousness, which is something very holy, is being drawn down, distracted by that thing you built, which in general was built out of fear. It was built outta protection. It was built out of, I’m scared. How do I not be scared?
Way down inside. You should know that by now. Way down inside there’s fear. Very strong fear. You may have done very well ’cause you’re a competent person of building a world around you with relationships, jobs, finances, et cetera, et cetera, which makes you feel protected as long as those stay, which some people say to me, oh, I have a wonderful marriage, have a wonderful relationship with two children.
I don’t have any problems. Okay, the wife’s gone and they took the kids with her. How you doing? Why’d you say that? Why would you say such a thing? So you use that to distract you from what’s really going on in there, which is, I ain’t okay, and I need things for me to be okay, and I’m working for it. That’s what everybody’s doing.
Okay. And so you wake up at some point and you realize the problem is not what’s going on outside. The problem is my state of being. My state of being is I’m scared, I’m insecure. I have fragilities and so on and so forth. From fragile and, uh, sensitive. My heart’s very sensitive, my mind’s plenty sensitive, and I’ve built protection systems around it.
And so now I’m devoting my life to protect the protection system. But you wake up at some point and say, what kinda life is that right? Because in the end, you’re gonna die anyway. I don’t wanna die. People say that. Why do you talk about death? ’cause you’re gonna die. Don’t say that. Course. I gonna say that.
It’s the truth. You can’t be afraid of the truth, and so you just get to the point. You eventually realize what it’s about. It’s not protecting and controlling what’s outside so that it fits the current state of your being. It’s about evolving the state of your being, and that’s what spiritual evolution is, evolving the state of your being.
What does that mean? What did Darwin Divine Evolution as? Survival of the fittest. Adaptability. An evolved creature is adaptable. They don’t just have one thing they can eat, one place they can live, one temperature they can handle. They are adaptable. Well, spiritual evolution are exactly the same. Well, you’re very adaptable.
You can eat the diet you eat. That mean it’s good. You can live different places. You can live in the tundra. You can live in the rainforest. You can do all kinds of stuff, okay? But you’re not adaptable inside. Take a breath. And that’s what true evolution, that’s spiritual evolution. It’s not outside. You’re evolved plenty.
Your outside is done quite well. Evolving. Your inside has not. Why are you adaptable? Here’s how adaptable you are. Sally. Hey, how are you doing? Didn’t say hello. How you doing? Wow. That ain’t very adaptable. That seems kind of rigid, unable to handle a lot of situations. How many of those do you have every day?
The driver in front of you? The weather. I don’t want to get out. I’d have to rain. It wasn’t raining a minute ago. Why does I have to pour when I have to get, what are you doing? You’re not adapting. You’re saying the outside world should adapt to what I built inside myself to what I like. If I’m planning to have a nice evening with my spouse or a significant other, and I’m all excited about it, and they had a bad day at work, they’re not gonna come home in the same mood You want them in, are they?
How you doing about that? Oh, I don’t know about this relationship and this happens more time. I’m, wow. Not very adaptable. Do you see what I’m saying? You are not adaptable emotionally or mentally. What do you mean mentally? Somebody says one thing to you. You say something and it’s wrong. And once you say you really, oh, shoot.
That was, that was stupid. Right? And you defend it. You sit there and say, no, I’m right. I’ll, I’ll go prove it to you. And your mind goes crazy after that. And it keeps thinking about what you should have said. And, and should you yes or no? Anybody on a mind does that. Okay? That’s not adaptable. That’s not a very adaptable heart.
That’s not a very adaptable mind. So, God, I hate to talk through this way ’cause I love you, but it ain’t adaptable kids. It’s so unadaptable that you have to try to make the outside environment match what you’re adaptable to, which is very little. Don’t talk to me like that. You know? I don’t like to talk to me like that.
They’re just words. I tell you. You’re having trouble with that. There’s 8.3 billion people on the planet right now. They all said something and you couldn’t handle what the one in front of you said, why can you adapt to it? Can you adapt to the fact that they came home in a bad mood and just walked right in the house and slammed the door and then came out?
Expect you to be nice? No, you do that once more, baby. I’m outta here. In other words, I’m not adaptable there. I’ve never talked to you that way. How adaptable are you? How adaptable is your mind and your thoughts to what other people say and do and this and that and everything that’s going on outside? No, not really.
How adaptable is your heart? Are you kidding me? That thing is so sensitive. What makes you okay in your heart is so narrow. The subset of where you’re okay, that’s something oh boy, really turned you on your heart open compared to that experience. How often does your heart hurt? Do you close? Do you protect yourself?
Take a breath. Spiritual evolution is inside and we’re not very evolved inside. If your picture’s on the wall, ding, you did it, you got there. They are completely adaptable. A great master, and they’re not all enlightened, but a great enlightened master is completely adaptable. I quoted you from the geeda a number of times.
One of my favorite parts of the Geeda, I’m paraphrasing, and Orah asked Krishna Krishna’s Godhead, you know God’s wisdom? God represented God and Arjuna asked Krishna. Well, you just told me, Krishna, that there are these really high beings that are enlightened, that are done totally purified and merged with you.
How will I know them when I meet them? A lot of people run around. How will I know when Lose dudes or douses? He didn’t really say that. It’s okay. I told you. Just paraphrased. Alright, so how will I know or asked him? Since he walks, he talks again of the man and it’s so beautiful. Christian says to him, he walks, he talks like any other man.
If you wanna know him, know him like this in Joys. He’s not overjoyed in sorrows. He’s not over sorrow. He let’s goodness come into will and when will apart let’s darkness come on. It will and will apart He walks as a sojourner in the midst of all the qualities of nature, just as all the rivers and streams of the earth pour into the ocean and the ocean doesn’t overflow its bounds.
So the world of sense pours into the yogi and leaves them as a fountain at peace. Serene content equanimity is yo. Adaptability. Some people say, well, I don’t wanna go there ’cause you don’t have any feelings. Feelings are natural. If someone you love dies, there’s a sorrow. There’s a sense of loss. But you’re okay with it.
Oh, I feel lost. Isn’t that beautiful? You’ve adapted to these different emotions that you have. You see something, it turns you on. That’s beautiful and you keep walking. Why? ’cause you’re okay. You don’t need it. You don’t need things don’t happen. You don’t. These things do happen, and so don’t think you’re giving up your humanness.
You’ve adapted that part of your being is human and went through experiences and have built likes and dislikes, and that’s okay. It’s okay. So when he, one says it’s Ro Christian, a great master. Doesn’t enlighten Saint ever feel anger? And he shocked me. It was back in the eighties who read this right? And he said, yes.
But it’s like writing on water. As it comes up, it passes through. So what you’ve adapted to the fact that your heart can feel anger or can feel love, or can feel joy, but the self is not moved. The state of your being is beyond those fluctuations. You’ve adapted to it. When enlightened being is liberated, that’s what liberation means.
Mta a free being free of what? Free of the non adaptability that a human lives with so that they’re always at peace. Always serene. Always. You know, it’s so funny, I, I’ve met some high beings. I was very fortunate over the course of my life, and I can remember driving with somebody. That I know is a high being, and he’s just sitting there quietly in the chair next to me, never talking and just quiet.
And then I’ll say something. I’ll call him and, and you can see he comes back down. It makes me cry now. I didn’t always see it at the time. He comes back down and very naturally answers my question and talks to me, and then gone again. It’s like he, the in and out free, totally liberated. Alright, freedom.
You are all capable of that state, but you have to evolve. That’s what spiritual evolution is, is evolving by what? Learning to handle that, which you can’t handle. Sometimes people write me, they say, I thought God, if it’s true that the self is God descended, why does that to evolve? Well, God’s everything.
It wouldn’t be evolving because when you get caught in your mind, when you get caught in your emotions, that’s what you’re experiencing. If you don’t get caught. Then you’re experiencing your seat of self, but you do get caught. It pulls you down, it distracts you. So evolution is the ability to just like physical evolution.
The ability to handle situations without getting lost in them. Without freaking out. Like, okay, an animal, even a pet, you pick up a dog or something, right? And he’s from the kennel and he’s scared and he barks and maybe bites a little bit or something like that. You can train them to be okay, can’t you?
Ever worked with an animal, trained them. You are helping that animal evolve. They’re able to handle situations that they couldn’t handle before. Somebody goes to pet ’em. If they pull back, they’re scared. No, they’re comfortable. That is evolution. The ability to handle situations that you were reactionary to in your state of being was barking and yelling and screaming and anger, and get away from me.
Now, the exact same situation happens later, and you’re okay with it. To me, the ultimate is when somebody comes up to me and says, you know, I went to work the other day. I’ve been working in this place for a long time, and I drove away, and I realized, wait a minute. Something happened today that would’ve bothered me all week.
I would’ve drove away thinking about it, what somebody said, what I said. I. It didn’t bother me when Iona, I didn’t even remember. I hardly remembered it except to remember, Hey, I guess I evolved. That’s what evolution is. So it’s not a matter of picking some states of success spiritually that you want to have this experience to be able to do this or do that.
It’s the fact that you’ve actually evolved. It can handle reality. How do you do that? It’s nice to talk about, first of all, let me make a statement to you. Every single one of you’re as high, those people in the mall. Every single one of you is as high as the masters. You are a great being inside, but you are distracted by where you’re not evolved enough.
You’re not evolved enough to maintain that state of consciousness. There are people that they, they go to war torn countries, doctors and and other people, and they deal with all this illness and sickness and they’re okay. But Teresa was that way. She went and worked with the lepers and she ran and loved it and helped it.
They said, oh, you’re so special. Why am I special? I love doing it. She was evolved enough to where their sores or their problems and so on did not affect her at that level. All she did was feel love. That’s how great beings are, and you are that I’m like telling you that You look at me. You’re not some weak little thing that has to be careful what everybody says or does or what’s happening to you and controlling everything and, and freaking out.
You’re not evolved to your natural state right now, but your natural state to be able to handle everything and anything no matter what. Okay. Why don’t I have that? Because there are areas of your being that you’re not evolved enough yet. Okay. How do I know where they are? They will let you know this. I assure you.
You do not have to go find them and rip them out and do all kind. You can. There’s nothing wrong with getting help and doing aggressive therapy that I, you know, me, I don’t judge anything. Okay? As long as your intention is to evolve. But my experience is that yes, you can force, you know, rapid experiences, but they don’t stay.
You fall back down and you notice you didn’t get rid of why they were bothering you. Now, we’ve talked about why they’re bothering you, and I have to give you a whole lecture round, Don. I do it all the time. The things that bothered you before. Are bothering you now. You may not know it ’cause you suppress them.
It can bring Freud in. He’s my friend. You did this thing called suppressions and you pushed them away. They did not go away. They will never go away. They do not go away by themselves. Why? ’cause you won’t let them when they come back up. Okay? Don’t talk to me like that. You know what? I don’t like it. And it hits you and you feel again.
Made you push them down and you push ’em back down. So spiritual evolution, if you want to be an equanimity, if you want to be okay with things, you can’t have that stuff in there. That’s what it boils down to. You can use all technique you want when it’s all said and done. You don’t want that stuff in there, any of it.
Oh god. Don’t say that. Not what mommy did, not a sister did not what first boyfriend or girlfriend did not the fact that you got a B in a test that you wanted an A and the professor wouldn’t give it to you and know all the experience you had that bothered you, including the driver in front of you who’s driving 10 miles an hour below speed limit and it’s bugging you.
Every single one of these things. And don’t you think it’s not down there? You can drive down a road. I give this sample all the time. Drive down a road, you know, 34th. 34th around here. You drive down that road and be behind a car that is driving 20 miles an hour below the speed limit, and they will not go any faster.
Whatever you do, and it lasts for. Miles and miles. Okay? I am telling you, next time you go to turn down 34th, you’ll think twice.
Speaker 10: Sure.
Speaker 9: I don’t like this road. People dunno how to drive on this road. Do you hear me? It leaves an impression. Why? ’cause you stored it. Otherwise it’s just something that happened.
But it’s not something that happened and something you didn’t like and you resisted it and you shoved it down there and you tell everybody about it. Y’all, I can’t believe who I was behind. What are you doing? The sun’s shone too. And I told you what else was going on. Aside from the driver, there’s trees going by, there’s other cars on the road, there’s people talking to you.
No, no, no, no. That’s what’s going on and that’s what gets stored. And you’ve got all that stuff in there, and then there’s no sense of equanimity. There’s just basically trying to protect yourself. I talked about it. So how do you grow? What does it mean to evolve? Does it mean I just decide? No, I’m not gonna put any stuff down there anymore and any stuff that comes up, boom.
I’m letting it go. Well, if you can do that, you got something to teach me because that ain’t the way I know it works. What I notice is that when it comes up and it’s gonna come up, does your stuff come up? Okay. The slightest, it doesn’t even, somebody didn’t say something and your stuff came up. Somebody did say something.
Your stuff came up. You thought somebody might eventually say something. And your stuff comes up, it’s hard living in there ’cause there’s a lot of stuff in there. And what you try to do is protect yourself from yourself by pushing it back down and manipulating the world. You either push it back down inside or you don’t even wait for that to happen.
You manipulate the outside so that everybody behaves the way you want them to and expects ’em to. So you don’t have to push it down inside. Do we know of any such people? And so, okay, so now what do you do? ’cause it ain’t gonna go away by itself. You take on that the meaning of your life. I want you to understand, I call it intense.
The meaning of your life is not to manipulate the outside and everything in it so that it feels good when it comes in and doesn’t ever feel bad. And that’s a major paradigm shift because right now that’s where you’re at. Things should be the way you want them to be and they shouldn’t be the way you don’t want ’em to be.
That’s for sure. That’s a state of being. That’s a state of how you live your life. It goes nowheres. That stuff stays in there. You’re gonna die with it. Some people say when you’re dying, your whole life passes before you, not your whole life. Just the stuff you store down there. Which tends not to be so nice.
Okay. And so basically you shift, this is real. That’s, I did the talks I do all these years. There has to be a paradigm shift inside that says, I don’t want to waste my life being afraid or needing control or having these issues inside of me that get disturbed when different things happen. I wanna be liberated, I wanna be free, I wanna be free of all that.
I used to give a talk to would say, what is freedom? Is it freedom for yourself or freedom from yourself? If you heard that you’re ready for the teachings, because you don’t wanna carry this thing along with you that tries to manipulate and control everything to be the way you want it to be. So what do you do about it?
Notice. First of all, I’m very proud of you each step. I’m proud of you. One, do you see it? Do you see what a mess is in there? You see how sensitive it is. Do you see how much control controls? That’s a perfect retina. Do you have control issues? Everyone has control issues. Some people are enough to wear, you know, what’s it called?
A psychological disease, alright, and make a little maniac or something like that. But you all got control issues. You want to control people, placing things, events, every single thing. To be what? To be the way you stored. I like it. And not be the way you store. I don’t like it based on your past experiences.
Spiritual growth is first to wake up. That’s what wake up means, that we never used to find these things. There’s a real waking up, you wake up that you see that’s witness consciousness, say, see, that is not something I am gonna devote my life to. Who me? That ego, that noisy psyche that’s in there keeps talking and being sensitive and do all kinds of stuff.
I’m not gonna devote my life to that ’cause it doesn’t go anywhere. I see it like that hamster running on on the wheel. Come on baby. Run, run, run. They don’t ever get anywhere. Hey, where’s that hamster get? Oh bitch. That’s what your life is. You just keep running away or toward. From what you think bothers you, will bother you and what you think will make you feel better and you run, don’t you?
That’s what the anxiety is. That’s what the insecurity is. That’s what the tension is, and that’s what neurosis is. Of course it is. You’re running away from yourself. You stored this stuff in there, nobody else has the same stuff you do. And so you’re out there struggling with people, placing things. What do you do?
You decide that the paradigm shift is, and it’s not paradigm shift doesn’t mean all of a sudden everything changes. It’s that you notice, wait a minute, I have to do something. Just ’cause you see a sickness on your arm. The fact that you notice instead of ignoring it did not fix it. But it’s a major step.
If you deny it. I don’t wanna see it. I don’t wanna deal with it. No, it’s not a problem. Okay? It’ll go away by itself. After three years, you’re not dealing with it. But if you see it and you wake up and you, that’s all waking up, come on, get real. There’s a problem. That’s what it’s like inside. There’s a problem.
I can try and run away from it. I could try to do things to compensate for it. Why? Because there’s a problem. And so you stop all that mishegoss of rationalization and ignoring and suppressing and positive thinking, oh, oh, positive thing is a wonderful thing. But I always ask people, if you practice positive thinking, why?
Because it’s negative otherwise, isn’t it? And the good, you should use these things. You use all the detectors you can, but the realization that it ain’t so nice in there and that you’re running away from yourself. And so there you’re awake. That’s your next step. You notice it, you notice it, and then your next step is you commit yourself just private.
I don’t wanna talk to other people about you. Just commit yourself. I’m gonna do anything I can to have it be not like this for the rest of my life. I don’t wanna run away from myself for the rest of my life. Do I? I would like it to be nice inside. Is it possible to be nice inside? Of course you stored not nice.
Therefore, it’s not nice if you let go of what you stored, you store. Everything that ever hurt you is still inside. You stored it inside, and that’s the silly thing I’ve ever heard of. Oh my God, that hurt me. So I’m never letting this go. God, it’ll hurt you forever. I’m telling the paradigm shift. When you stop thinking like that, you sit there and say, I don’t care how it got in.
I have the right to be messed up. You should see what my mother did. You want the right to be messed up, mazel tough, have fun. Do you really wanna be messed up? You want the right to be messed up? No, I don’t wanna be messed up. I don’t care what happened. I want to be evolved enough to have been able to handle it, but I wasn’t.
Okay, fine. Of course you weren’t. You were a child. You’re this, you’re that. You’re learning. You weren’t, but you woke up. Now you see the problems inside, not outside. And I don’t wanna justify it. If you justify it, you’ve said, I want to keep it. I’m talking to you tough tonight. Do you really wanna keep the most terrible thing ever happened to you?
But you do justify it. They say things like, if this happened to anybody else, they’d be just as screwed as I am. Okay, good. No, you have to reach the point of saying, I don’t wanna rationalize it. I don’t wanna justify it. That’s just saying you can stay. I wanna stand up inside and say, look, I got some work to do in here.
And it involves not having you in there. I don’t care what put it in there, I don’t want it in there. I wanna be able to have handled what took place. I got judging myself that I couldn’t. It’s not about guilt or shame. Oh my God, I was fine and I couldn’t handle my parents’ divorce. What’s wrong with me? No, that’s ridiculous.
Just now you’re not five anymore, you’re 55, and your parents are both dead and you’re in there letting their divorce affect your life. People do that. I don’t wanna get married. Why? I don’t want, I’m not having kids. I’m having kids. I’ll get married, but I’m not having kids. Why? What I went through in my childhood, I don’t wanna tell you about, and I’m not putting that through any of the kids born onto this planet, and therefore I’m not having kids.
Congratulations, unless something happened 35 years ago that you were not able to handle. Determine how you’re living your life. And I’m telling you, everything is that. All your preferences, concept, views, opinions, hopes, dreams, they’re all based on your past experiences, and so you wake up and you look in there.
Honestly, no justification, no shame, no blame. Just I am seeing that it is not nice in there and it is not good to live in there. Who lives in there? How many other people live in there than you? Nobody. Mommy’s not in there. Daddy’s not in there. The husband’s not in there. Nobody’s in there, but you. So if it’s a mess in there, I wonder who did it.
If your house is a mess, ’cause you got a little depressed, you never cleaned up and everything like that, oh, go blame it on why you got depressed. Blame it on people. Your house is still a mess. Or you sit there and say, I live in there and I wasn’t able to handle what happened. I couldn’t handle the situations I went through, so I made a mess.
Are you okay with that? Can I talk to you that way? It’s not guilt, it’s not. I made a mess. I’m wrong. I shouldn’t have no. You’re evolving. You have the right to evolve, right? Otherwise, you hold yourself back. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not evolving. I was already fine. Well, okay, good. Don’t evolve. You have to go and sit there and say, what happened when it happened?
I couldn’t handle what I did with it. Suppress it, hold it, make a mess. But now I’ve woken up and I’m gonna work it out. So how do you work it out? That’s the fun part. That’s what’s the really beautiful. I realized that years and years and years ago, you don’t have to go down there and dig that stuff up.
You’ll go down there and figure out why it’s there and what to do to, to negate and so on. It’s going to come up by itself. Have you noticed It’s just gonna come up by itself. That’s what your moods are. When you get to a certain state, you don’t lose anymore. Only happy joy. That’s all you ever feel happiness and joy?
There’s no down, there’s no worry. There’s no mood, there’s no this. There’s no nothing. Why your moods are what happens? ’cause that stuff down there is trying to come up and people say that, I dunno what’s wrong. I was doing really well for years and now I feel the same as they did when I was 16. That’s ’cause you stored that junk down there when you were 16 and it’s coming back up and so you decide.
You decide I don’t want it in there. So now I’m ready for techniques. They’re not techniques that you get you, there are people that teach you how to cope with your issues. To me, cope is a four letter word. It means I’m keeping them, but I’m gonna try and have ’em not bother me as much. That’s what it means to cope.
I ain’t keeping. Hey, Yogi Yoy, that that’s a much higher state. I’m not keeping it. They’re there now. I’m not denying them, but they’re not gonna be there for the rest of my life, period. So how do you work with them first? You accept. This is the lay of the land. This is the state of being I’m in right now.
I got these issues. I got that, and I got these problems. I got stuff that was stored down there and so on. You wanna take it all on at once and not chance in the world. You take it all at once. Don’t even think like that. That’s hilarious. You shoved it down there for a reason, you couldn’t handle it. Then you built on top of it.
You built your entire E. Your entire psyche is made out of that stuff. Do you understand how powerful? I just said to you, you could have a lifetime of experiences that built your entire preference systems, like dislikes, what I want, everything like that, and one event happened and you’re a totally different person.
You’re wanting different things to happen and you don’t like this anymore. And that changes and that change because it was strong enough to push down the other things. And now this is the main topic. Somebody gets in a car accident or a divorce, you know, a terrible breakup or something like that.
They’re never the same. It makes me very sad ’cause I love people. I had somebody, an older person, tell me that when their wife died and he said to me, Mickey, somebody said to me the other day, I asked them, how did you handle the death of your spouse? And so he said, well, you learn to live with it, but you’ll never ever be happy again.
Oh my God, I rip my heart out. He’ll never ever be happy like you were before. He just learned to live with it. Yeah, that’s ’cause you couldn’t handle the fact that you had this beautiful relationship for 30, 40 years when we’ve been married a long time and you couldn’t handle that. They’re not there anymore.
Do you hear me? It’s not like, but I’m, I’m not supposed to be able to. I love them. No, I love the fact that I started to talk about evolving and evolve being is adaptable. How well did you adapt to the fact that some of you live for 40 years are not there anymore? Not very well. It didn’t adapt at all. I suppressed it and I tried to live with it in the morning that I could breathe and still be, no, I didn’t care.
And of course you cared, but can you handle the pain? Can you adapt to say. You know, if someone you love dies, you’re going to miss them. You’re going to feel a sense of loss For how long? That’s the question. Does it have to stay in there? If you suppress it? It does. I’m Jewish, but I don’t know the tradition very well.
I won’t go out very Jewish. Right. But there’s a tradition in the Jewish tradition. You tell me and you know where you sit. Triva for how long? 10 days. Huh? 10. God, I know where I fully did. Alright. That and then like, here’s a tradition that says, of course you’re going to feel the loss. Of course you’re gonna feel the pain.
Take 10 days with friends who are alone. Wear black. Do what you need to do to adapt to the loss. Then live your life. That’s beautiful. Okay, not 10 years, not 10 lifetimes. It’s like you don’t sit there and say, I can’t handle this. You sit there and say, it is difficult to handle. I’m adapting. I’m evolving.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but I can handle it. I’m going to handle it, and I’m not gonna shove it down. I’m gonna let it come up. I’m going to experience it and then get on with my life out of love for my loved one. I taught somebody once that if you really love this person that much, they don’t want you to suffer.
They’re not elsewhere wishing you suffer ’cause you lost them. Use that as inspiration to say, okay, you would want me to feel love. You’d want me to continue my life, instead of, oh, I love you and I’m never gonna love anybody else ever again. That’s my devotion to you. That’s not love. That’s suppression, that’s problem.
But how do you do this? We’ve talked about the fact that you’re a great being. Ultimately all of it can take place. You experience it, but it doesn’t screw you up and you get to stay here way up high. It doesn’t pull you down. How do you do it? By getting rid of the stuff that’s in there. You can sit there and say, I learn how to cope with it.
I learn how to substitute for, find another relationship. No. What is in there that is blocking your natural energy flow. ’cause that’s what’s in there, is your natural energy flow that you’re not evolved enough to not block it. And you realize, okay, I need to stop blocking myself. How do you do that? You’re not gonna do it right away with the big stuff.
You’re not. It touches one thing. You’re freak out and you get lost. And people were falling. I was doing good and then suddenly happened and I, oh my God, I know people. They were doing really, really well. Oh, God could see it. I was filled with energy, right? And something, usually relationship. Something happened 10 years later before they came to me, say, you know, I’ve been lost for 10 years, and all of a sudden I’m starting to see why I was coming to Temple and why I was working with myself.
But during those 10 years, I, I don’t know who I was. Can anybody hear me? That’s very sad. I don’t want you to be like that. How do you not be like that? We said it’s like letting go of that stuff. You can’t let the big stuff go right away. So you just be fair and compassionate with yourself and say, I’m gonna learn to let go of the small stuff.
People make fun of me. There are all the time. How do you keep talking about the crime in front of you? Why do you keep talking about the weather? Why are you talking about these small things? Don’t talk about the big things. What for? If you can’t handle the small ones, you can’t handle the big ones. Go out on a tennis court and play with someone, someone else who’s just learning tennis.
Then get to the Williams systems to play against you. What for? Are you wasting your time? You’re not evolved to that level. It’s the same thing. Start playing the piano. You do your skills a little bit, go into Carnegie Hall and play a, maybe someday you will, but you’re not to start with. And so what I teach and the deep teachings are learn practice.
Practice what? Practice. Letting go. You probably heard me say those words before. Practice letting go. What does that mean? It means it’s raining out and I don’t like the rain. I don’t like driving in the rain, but you are driving in the rain, but I don’t like it. How did that help? If anything distracted you from being a decent driver in the rain.
I don’t wanna get out and get wet. I have to deliver this. Why did it have, what are you doing? It doesn’t stop the rain doesn’t do any good to be like that, does it? How about practicing not being like that? That’s what it means to evolve. Can I evolve to the point that I can handle the weather? Be honest.
Say no. Whatcha doing this weather? I’m telling you the word evolution fits in your ability to handle the weather. It’s no different than Darwin’s survival and adaptability. Is it? Can you adapt to the Florida weather? Can you adapt to the fact that this hurricane sometimes can you adapt to the fact that it gets really hot out?
And in fact, sometimes it gets cold out without complaining. You make it through it anyways. You’ve all been through hurricanes, you’ve all been through storms, you’ve all been through heat, that’s for sure. You’ve all been through cold, you’ve been through everything. Why did you bother wasting your time and your shock and complaining about it the whole time?
Trying to make it not be that way? It’s a waste. And so you learn that’s, I call it the low hanging fruit. Why is it low hanging fruit? ’cause the cost of doing it is a hundred percent, the benefit is zero. Nice business decision, cost benefit analysis. I’m gonna pick the one that has a hundred percent cost and zero benefit.
Well, that’s how you are about the weather and the driver in front of you and the other, what I call low hanging fruit. How about we work with those? And so you literally take it seriously. I am not going to allow the habit that I’ve developed of protecting the part of me that doesn’t like the weather or doesn’t like this or that or the other thing.
I’m going to raise myself and say, how do you work with that? You’re sitting up. I tell you all the time. Actually, I have time this time. I tell you all the time though, you know the story. I literally remember back in like 72, I had moved out here in 70, 71. My house didn’t have air conditioning. We just built this HUD and my car didn’t have air conditioning.
It was an old VW Keppra van. I didn’t have any air conditioning. It was out here in the summer, just it’s in the middle of the woods and fields and so on. And he complained a lot. And he was supposedly meditating. He was offered to meditate, not to meditate on the weather. And one day I looked at him and I said, Hey Mick.
I just talked to him. Alright. Hey, just a minute. Why is it hot? I’ve told you this story before. I’m telling you it’s exactly like this. I asked him, why are you hawk? And he said, he answered back, ’cause the sun. I asked him, well, what is the sun? And he said the magic words. It’s a star. Oh really? I wish you didn’t call it the sun.
I wish you called it a star. That’s your nearest star. Can you imagine those twinkle twinkles out there that you see at night that when you get close enough to one, it’s that hot. Wow. And you are close enough to one, and it’s no different than all those 300 billion in your galaxy. And you’re close enough to one and it’s 93 million miles away, and you feel this heat.
How far away is Miami? 360, 90 3 million miles away, and you’re complaining about the heat of being that close. That sucker must be hot. Well, you all like stars and that’s pretty amazing that you’re close to one and you can feel the effect of being close to one. And he never said another word. He now, when he gets out of his car and his sun is pouring down there, I swear he just stops and does this.
Come on. I wanna feel, I wanna feel a star. And you start using your higher mind, your intellectual mind, your abstract mind, as opposed to what’s called your personal mind. Your personal mind is when your mind is talking about you, what you like, what you don’t like, and like that, alright? And your intellectual mind, your abstract mind is able to be bigger than you.
I was being bigger than me. I included not just me, but. The galaxy that’s bigger. It’s just as real. You standing there experiencing a moment means you’re missing all the other moments ’cause you’ve got distract down to that. I don’t have to go out and fly into the galaxy. I know there’s a galaxy and I know there’s hundreds of billions of stars and, and there’s 2 trillion of those galaxies, by the way.
There’s a lot of stars out there and you’re complaining about one, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Yeah. The one you’re complaining about is why there’s plants on the planet. Earth is why things grow, is why water evaporates out of the giant ocean that’s filled with salt, but when it evaporates up, there’s no salt and evaporates and forms vapor cloud, which the wind blows across to the dry land and drops the ocean water onto the black forest.
Let’s complain about it. This is how you grow. You’ve now evolved to be able to handle the natural heat of a star that you have to be circling around. You do that with everything. You do it with a car in front of you. He’s not driving the way you want. I watch him. He goes, nice blinker, buddy. I’m driving.
The guy just turns nice blinker buddy. How did that help? I was gonna handle it anyways, so why did my mind be negative about it? And then if it’s really negative, it tells somebody at work. I drove behind this person. I used their blinker. One Toyota, what are you doing? I was unable to handle the situation.
Which situation? Blink, blink, blink. You don’t have to be like that. You get to evolve. That’s literally evolution, isn’t it? I defined evolution earlier of being able to handle. Events. You just handle the guy you knew his blinker. You just handle the fact that the cell was hot. How? By not suppressing or complaining or making a mess out of it, I didn’t even think about it.
Twice. You drove home. Go working on yourself. You work on raising yourself and what’s gonna happen, aside from not being bothered by all this stuff, that’s no reason to be bothered by if you decided to, you’ve developed the strength. To handle bigger things. If I play tennis, I can sit the net all the time, but I keep practicing.
Eventually it’ll go over the net. I will have gotten better. I evolve if I play the piano and I can’t play anything, right, but I get the scales. I start practicing them. Eventually I play Twinkle Twinkle. And then for Elise, you will get better. Did you know that if you practice something, you will get better?
You become a master. No, I know I said that. Practice makes you better. You know that with music, you know that with sports, you know that with everything, don’t you? Well, it’s true of this too. It’s true of spiritual evolution. The more you practice it, the better you get at it, and eventually you’re gonna find out that, okay, I could handle the, so I could handle the rain, I could handle it dry in front of me, and then all of a sudden you’re sitting there and somebody says something and you weren’t exactly sure what they meant.
All right. Their body language is a little bit weird, and I don’t know if they were dissing me or kidding, or who cares? Who cares? ’cause I guarantee you, if you don’t make a thing out of it, they won’t either. Maybe they’re in a bad mood, maybe they didn’t even say what you thought. They said. Who cares? All of a sudden just handle a situation in front of you that you weren’t able to handle normally.
And you’ll keep growing. And one thing I tried to get a point across, I don’t know if I do, it’s not that you handled that, somebody said something, I handled the heat of the sun. It’s that the amount, listen to me, the amount of disturbance that it created in you, that’s what you handled it. That event did create a disturbance.
You don’t have to do anything. It created disturbance, did it not? You were uncomfortable with what the person said, uncomfortable what you thought. They said it’s because it came in. It created a vibration that was not comfortable. You learn to handle that level of discomfort to where it was no longer uncomfortable.
I handle that. That means that entire layer of discomfort, anything that happens that causes that level of discomfort, it extrapolates into those. So you’re really picking something up. If you could sit there and play a Twinkle, twinkle, you can also play row, row, row your boat. ’cause you learn, your fingers learn.
You learn how to read. That’s what this is inside. When you learn to handle low hanging fruit, the next thing you know, anything that has that level of discomfort doesn’t even bother you anymore until eventually you get to the point where you, you’re handling things that you didn’t think you ever could.
Like you’re going to work and your wife or husband says to you, Hey, tonight when you come home, we have to have a serious talk. Thanks a lot. And I gotta go work with that in my mind. Ain’t have trouble with it. You don’t have trouble with it. You feel a little anxiety and you look at it. You say, I’ve handled stuff like that before.
I’m gonna be okay. That’s what I starts saying, I’m gonna be okay. And then you come home and he, she says, we won a trip to Hawaii. I didn’t wanna tell you before you left. That’s what I wanted to talk about. You go, oh shit. I wasted my day making a mess. ’cause you don’t know. Your mind will always tend toward the negative.
Who’s noticed that it will always tend toward the negative. And so you learn not to do that. You learn to work with yourself. And if you can handle that level of discomfort, you let it go. You go through, you wait for the situation. Like at some point it gets exciting. I’m serious. When you start to really grow and you realize, hey, that’s neat.
I don’t have to be afraid of a whole bunch of things ’cause I can handle them, not ’cause they won’t happen. That’s the difference. People say, God will take care of me. I don’t have to worry about it. I don’t want you to think like that. I don’t need to worry about it ’cause I can handle it. God took care of you.
You evolved and got closer to God. Not I stayed where I am, but God will take care of me. Okay. And so you just keep evolving your ability to handle situations. How? My experience, which is just amazing as I’ve done this so long, is there’s this magic word called relax. What does that mean? Discomfort.
Discomfort is not comfortable. Did you know that inner discomfort is not comfortable? Don’t make believe. It is. It’s not comfortable. Well, what do I do if it’s not comfortable? Relax. Now I know you got trouble with that. How do I relax if it’s not comfortable, but they think I’m telling you is that that which is not comfortable should become comfortable.
Somebody says something to me, I feel discomfort. How do I make it feel comfort? No. No, they, you will not do well with that. It’s not high enough. Something happened. It’s not comfortable. How do you know? How do you know? It’s not comfortable. I’m in here. It’s not comfortable. You relax. Not what you’re experiencing relaxes you.
Who is experiencing it? Relaxes. You are there, your feelings not comfortable, just relax. I dunno how to say it to you, right? ’cause you don’t wanna do it. You don’t wanna, you wanna protect yourself. You wanna push it away. You wanna not deal with you. You wanna not to have happened. You’re busy resisting.
What is the opposite? Resistance. Relaxation. Resistance takes tension. Non-resistance is no tension. So back here, who’s experiencing how you meditate or you, you practice to get back here and stay back here, and then you feel discomfort coming up. You immediately relax. Relax your shoulders. Relax your tummy, relax your buttocks.
Just relax. Just relax. Then what? Relax more like yoga. You do asanas. Some of you gotta do yoga. Asanas. What does it yoga teacher teach you? Get into this asana. You can feel some tension. Feel it now. Relax. Uh, relax. Just relax Now, relax deeper. You can keep letting go, can’t you? And the more you let go, somehow it releases a little bit more.
It’s exactly the same inside. It’s like interosseous, it’s coming up. You feel the tendency to resist, to push it away, to not want to experience it. Relax, you won’t do all the big stuff to start with, but like I said, as you evolve, you’ll catch on. It’s much nicer to relax first than to resist First. It gives you some space.
If you resist, it just hits everything and goes worse. And all that chunk, if you relax, you get to stay in your seat of consciousness where you were as you relax. And then people say to me, does that mean you don’t deal with anything? ’cause you just deal inside relaxing and you don’t ever deal with what went on outside?
No, it does not mean that ever. It means first, relax. So you’re not acting outside out of resistance first. Relax instead of reacting, you get to act instead of react. Normally, if you’re not comfortable, you react. You throw the stuff out there, it only has one purpose. Your intent is take care of yourself.
To protect yourself, not happen to happen to say you’re sorry, and so you react to the fact that you can’t handle it. Well, that’s not evolving. First you relax. Is it gonna go away? It’ll go away a little bit. It doesn’t matter. The fact that your intent was every moment of your life. For the rest of your life, your intent is to let go of the best of my ability.
I don’t care if it comes back a thousand times. Each time there’ll be less. I’ll keep practicing the piano, right? I’ll get better. You just keep letting go. You do your best you can, and if you fall down, just get back up. And say, it’s okay. I grew. I’m growing. I don’t care. I don’t care. No judging. I like shit.
And yes, you fell as long as your intent was to practice and try. I used to teach like this, right? Stay up as long as you can. Without suppressing or fighting, just relax. Relax, and if you find out that you fell, come back as soon as possible and don’t judge it. Don’t say a word to yourself or anybody else, just okay.
That gap will get smaller and smaller and smaller until you reach the state where it doesn’t happen anymore. Just like pressing piano, just like learning. It’s exactly the same. You practice staying conscious, you practice evolution. It’s an evolutionary practice, alright? And so you will get higher and higher and eventually things that bother you and that will not bother you anymore.
You have to do anything. You don’t have to relax ’cause you’re already relaxed. Eventually, I, I’m sorry. After years and years you’ll reach a state where all you’re doing in there is relaxing. Every time there’s a fluctuation of heart, you just, you’re relaxing. You’re just relaxing. And since there’s all kinds of stuff going on in there, you’re just always taking a state of relaxing.
But then what? Then once you can relax your first, at least the first wave, you relax, then look outside and ask, is there something I’m supposed to be doing to help this situation, not to help me? Not to stop it from hurting me. That’s not your motive or your intent. My intent is, okay, I handle it. I’ve let go a little bit.
Is there something I’m supposed to be doing? And I’m telling you, I’m a percentage on it, but it’s probably 90, 95%. You finally, there’s nothing you were supposed to do. It was all because it bothered you. If it didn’t bother you in it, done anything. You drive by trees, you drive by white lines on the road, you drive by, you don’t know, but you can’t drive by somebody you do know and you just say, well, okay, drove by somebody I knew I beeped.
It didn’t beat back. I think I can handle it. What is it do if I handle it? Nothing. You know, sudden you, if you’re unemployed, it’s easy. You didn’t have to take on the job of you. The hardest job you’ll ever have is you, isn’t it Trying to make you be okay. Yes. Oh, I hope you understand. And you just keep relaxing the best you can.
And you come down, you deal with it. And if you messed up dealing with it, you learn. There’s nothing wrong with learning. The evolution doesn’t have boom, boom, boom. Do little things. Animals evolve. You can evolve inside. So I didn’t mean to, but we had to talk about spiritual evolution. It’s about as deep truck you’ll ever have.
Why? That’s why you came here. Where? To the temple? No, to the planet Earth. Earth is a place that souls are sent to evolve. Earth is a place of soul are sent to evolve. How are you doing? And so you keep working on it. Okay? God, I hope you can hear. It’s so beautiful. It doesn’t take time. It’s just an inner thing you’re doing in the midst of everything else.
Instead of grabbing and pulling and fighting, and you’re letting go, you’re letting go. You’re dealing with things, but you’re letting go inside. Every morning you wake up, you’re a different person than the one who woke up in the morning before. ’cause you let go stuff just like I told you, an event could happen and change your whole way of thinking in five minutes.
Okay, well, you do this little by little. It changes you over time and it becomes, but the important point, I’ll close there. It becomes your state of being, which each one you get to, you don’t go back down and you learn to handle it. If you learn to play the piano, you don’t forget. Stays there. If you learn a sport, you can play it again.
If you learn to let go, it becomes your state of being. Then it goes up from there and up from there, right? To work on these things.
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.
