E21: The Art of Being Done: A Life Without the Struggle of Ego

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.

Tami Simon: Welcome to The Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes, and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com

Michael Singer: Ative. Some people think that making themselves feel big, seem big, make something bigger themselves is a way to find wellbeing, peace, happiness in life, a truly great being and we’ll get the gap in between knows that being nobody is the most beautiful thing in the whole universe. It’s total freedom. Now, it depends on how you mean and how you get to being nobody because nobody wants to be nobody. They get mad at me when I talk like this and my psychiatrist and therapists teach me to think highly of myself and to be positive, et cetera, et cetera. And then you tell me to be nobody. It’s subtle and we talk about it. Why not? If you want to be somebody and you practice being nobody, it’s tremendously unhealthy because you’re suppressing the part of you that wants to be somebody. If you want to impress people and you’re trying not to try to practice humility, that’s false humility that really you want to impress people, especially if you think by looking humble, you’re impressing people.

You hear me? We’re going to talk deep. So that’s not what’s meant by becoming nobody. What’s meant by becoming nobody is that actually there is nothing inside of you that wants to be anybody in hiding. Somebody once said to me, it was very beautiful to watch her grow, but she once said to me when she was in college, she decided she just wanted to be average because it’s safer. She has to prove herself. She doesn’t always feel that she’s being challenged. This particular person was very brilliant, very smart, very competent human being, but she was busy being average. Why? Because it was safer, right? It’s just a safe place to be and you’re not trying to impress people because then you might not impress them. Then you feel bad. If you’re happy being average, then nobody judges you. These are the tricks of ego and we’re going to talk about ’em because they interfere with your spiritual growth.

So wanting to be nobody is not the same as being nobody wanting to be somebody, but practicing humility is not the same as becoming the nobody I’m talking about. If you get to the point where you’ve just seen enough, experienced enough, they call it being done, you’re just done. You’re not tired of it, you’re not mad at it. You haven’t had enough of it, I’m done with you. No, that’s not being done. That’s basically I want more, but I know I can’t have this so go away. I want to be alone. That’s not being alone, that’s being afraid of being with people. That’s not being comfortable interacting. Just leave me alone. I feel better talking deep. There’s a deep state in which you’ve just seen enough, you reading a book, life is your book. You’ve seen enough and forever for the rest of your existence.

There is no reason to impress anybody that what you get from impressing somebody is a cost because the next time you meet them, you have to impress them again. You have to maintain that impression. Do you understand that a wise being has gotten past all that? They don’t have to try to. They just saw enough. If you eat food that makes you sick just because it tastes good, eventually you stop eating it. Why? It’s not worth it. It’s not worth the taste, right? And at some point you’re going to find out that impressing people is not anything. It’s just absolutely nothing. What it does is give you a cost. You have something to pay back. You go there, you do a concert, everybody claps, you’re nervous to do the next one because they might not clap. And you’ve already built your ego based on the fact that I’m somebody people clap about.

And that goes for everything. That goes for deciding. This is what I want the future to look like. These are my dreams, these are my hopes, these are my views, these are my concepts. Now I talk to you this way, these you’re mature enough to understand. It doesn’t mean you don’t do things. It’s not about doing or not doing. You’ve heard that it’s about being about so done that you can stand in the presence of any of this happening and there’s nothing inside you that wants anything from it. Not that you’re not supposed to, not that you suppress, not that you renounce. You just seen here when you were young, you played with toys. I usually use Barbie as an example and I’m glad she came back. So, oh, you know who Barbie is now? Okay, but girls, maybe some boys also played with Barbie, okay?

And you liked Barbie and the whole thing was Barbie. Where’d Barbie go in the attic somewhere? Well, that’s not nice. She was your best friend. What happened? You outgrew her. You didn’t announce her. Basically you outgrow things. You just see through them. You just mature past them. You realize that that was through giving you, they don’t do anymore. You don’t need them anymore. That’s a very beautiful state. It’s called being done, not wanting to be done, not trying to be done, not trying to act like somebody who’s done or not even understanding. That done is a very high state. It’s a very, very good state. Well, what if I’m done with relationships? Meaning you got a divorce, you got so burn, you don’t have nothing to do anymore. No, that’s not done. They say that. I’m done with that. No, that’s not the done I’m talking about.

That’s the human done, not the spiritual. Done. Alright, when are you done with relationships? When you’re done with relationships, like you’re done with Barbie, are relationship wrong? Is Barbie wrong? Is your toy wrong when you grow up? No, it’s not wrong. Is nothing wrong or right? You’re just done. You’ve done. You’ve finished that part of your being. It did what it needed to do and now it’s not there anymore. That’s what done means, not the kind of done we used the word for. I’m so done with school. I’m so done with this job. So done with this boss. So done with the politics. I’m so done. Hey, that’s not done in any way, shape or form. You’ve just sat there and said, I’m so not done with it that I can’t handle it. The difference, it’s so important to me and it burns me and I can’t handle it, so I’m done with it.

Don’t use that word done on spiritual audio. Yogi as that. Buddhist, because that’s not done. Done is done is sit. Arthur, I have gone through this process of life. All of it has put me through my changes and I don’t feel need anymore. I’m not judging it. I don’t mind if other people feel it. I just don’t feel need anymore. But isn’t that hollow and dark? No, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to wake up in the morning and realize you’re fine and to look and you don’t even think about what’s going to happen today and you don’t even think of what happened yesterday. You’re done. You didn’t expect anything from it. You didn’t want anything from it. You didn’t get hurt by it. You just we’re here now and walked through the moment as it happened. And when it’s done happening, it is done. That’s what Dun means.

Be heard now is the epitome of done. But be heard now is not something you do. When that book first came out in the late sixties, early seventies, you tried to be here. Now lemme tell you a, if you’re trying to be here now, you’re not trying to be here now like this. Pay attention, focus on it. What did you just do? No, no, no. That means you’re not here now, but you’re trying to be here now. Fine. It’s a wonderful thing to do. Eventually you’re done with that. What does it mean? There’s no other place for you to be. There’s nothing in your mind that’s saying, oh, I’d rather be doing this or I should be doing that. Or Why didn’t I do this? And then you look back on the day and sit there and what did I get done? What didn’t I get done?

What should I get done? Meaning I’m not here now. I’m there then I’m going to be somewhere else later. I’m not here now. When you are done with it, how can you be done with it? It’s a very deep talk. How can you be done with it first, if you care when other people think of you, you’ll never be done. Why? Because you’re busy trying to please them or avoid them or justify or defend. You’re busy doing something because you’re not okay, and the relationship you have with others is either making you feel better or making you feel worse. And so you’re not done with that. You’re not done with your relationship. I’m not talking about close, intimate relationships, any kind of relationship, work, play, school, this, that driving everything. Just the example of the driving. Someone’s driving slow in front of you. Can you handle that?

Are you done with getting upset by the way people drive? Are you done with the weather? Are you done getting upset because it’s hot or humid because it’s going to storm? Okay? Have you gone through enough hurricanes to where it doesn’t mean you don’t prepare, doesn’t mean you don’t deal with what’s here now, but you’re not worried, you’re not anxious, you’re not scared, you’re just in harmony with whatever weather unfolds. Why? Because you know can be with it. You’ve been with it enough, you’ve experienced enough. So a done means you’re not done with the thing. You’re done with your worries about the thing. You’re done with your hopes and dreams and COEs and views and fears and desires about a thing. Then you’re done with it. See the difference. But if you have all that stuff going on in there, you’re not done. You can make believe you’re done.

You can try to act like you’re done, but you’re not done. Alright? It’s so beautiful. Done means you don’t even have to talk about it. You talk about the white lines, you’re done with them. You’ve seen yellow ones, you see white ones, you’ve seen dotted one dash ones, you’ve seen solid ones. You’re done with them most days. Your weather is fine. You don’t even think about it. The weather’s what it is. Doesn’t mean you’re not interacting with it. Doesn’t mean you don’t deal with it. Doesn’t take an umbrella. Every weather says it’s going to rain. It’s not that you’re not interacting with life, you’re not interacting with life with a motive. This is very deep. Lessness is being done. That’s not a word is actually such a word. The dictionary lessness, there is such a thing in the spiritual dictionary as a very deep state.

You have entered into this moment without a motive. Just stop for a second. I’m not trying to make it so it’ll make me better later or make up for what happened before or make amends or I have no motive. Oh, chills, it’s a very high state. I have no motive for why I am interacting with this moment. Are you interacting with it? I would have to have a motive to not. No. By the way, God, I hope you’re listening to me. I’m not interacting with it. It’s interacting with me. I’m interacting with the weather. The weather’s interacting with me. It’s in charge. I just happen to be here in this way. I’m just here experiencing what is going on. Do you have a motive, an experience? Of course not. I’m just here interacting with the weather. I’m here walking in the rain. I’m here sweating.

I’m here shivering because I’m cold. Does that mean that if there’s a blanket, I don’t take it? No. That would have to be a motive. I’m so tough. I don’t need blackness for the cold. That’s a motive. You’re trying to show how tough you are. That’s a motive. God, I’ve never talked to this three guys before. The word motive is a phenomenally deep word from a spiritual point of view. You’re getting it, okay? You have walked into the moment except you didn’t walk into the moment. The moment came to you. You don’t walk into any moment. Now I don’t know why I get this and I never see your faces as you get it. Alright? You think you’re the doer and people write me, are I supposed to do anything? Are I supposed to look for a job? I’m supposed to get married, have children do this.

But come on, I don’t understand what you’re teaching. Let’s just take a moment. I’ll take more of a moment than usually do and talk about what you’re actually doing. How much of what happens is actually your doing? Okay? Are you making your heartbeat? How much time do you spend during the day making your heartbeat? How about making your lungs go in and out so you can breathe? How about there’s 25 trillion cells that make up your body, that talk to each other, interact with each other, secrete things. Do you doing that? You must be busy. Get busy dude, and do this like, oh my God, how do you keep up with all this? Oh, you’re not doing that. You, is it happening? Yes. Does it affect your life? Yeah, it certainly it does. But you’re not doing it. Are you holding the planet together so that when you standing on it, you don’t fall through bonding all the atoms, doing everything?

You have a wife, did you her? Were you there for her childhood? Were you there for all her formative years? But what interaction did you have with your wife? She’s 27 years old, you’re getting married, you’ve been together for two years. What interaction did you have with her for the 25 years that made her not to mention her parents, her birth? What interaction did you have with that person? Zero. So we have no interaction with your body, no action with your breath, no action with your heartbeat, no interaction. Making the earth stay together so you can stand here. How much of what’s actually happening are you doing? How about point minus billion? That’s how much you’re doing and you think you’re the doer. So there’s s about doing and not doing very zen, very deep stuff. They’re not so complicated. You happen not to be the doer.

Does that mean that you’re not moving your arm? Have you moving your arm? Did you make your arm? Did you make the muscles that make your arm move? Give me a break. At some point you wake up, you realize it’s all happening around you. It’s happening to you. It’s what is from the past inherited into your moment. And you take that and the other one I give you is here. You’re having a moment. Whatever it is, every moment you’re having a moment, how big is that moment in relationship to how many moments there are happening at the same time? How many moments this size are happening all over? Laua, Gainesville, Florida, United States, earth, Mars? How many moments are you missing compared to the one moment you’re having? You are missing. Oh my god, there’s no number that’s big enough. Is it? You’re missing everything. Why do I have to tell you?

The ego is nothing. It’s a lie. It’s a joke. What if you’re done with ego? It doesn’t mean ego’s done with you. You’re done with the white lines. You still see ’em, you pay attention to ’em, right? But if you’re done with ego, what if you’re just a state where anything it says it’s ego, you understand it, it’s nothing. Here’s your relationship with ego. Everybody’s got one. Yeah, special. Here’s it special. Everybody’s got one. It’s hilarious. So it means nothing. You’re done. You’re not trying to get what it wants or avoid what it doesn’t want or prove yourself to people or make sure that what you want for the future happens. There’s no ness going on in there. Is ego still there? Sure, but you’re done with it. That’s why the word done is so important. You’re not fighting with it, you’re not trying to change it, you’re not denying it, you’re not suppressing it.

You’re not elevating it, you’re not proving it, you’re not defending it. You saying that you’re just, you’ve been around the block enough times to see the things. What it’s worth. You know what it’s worth? Nothing is it? It’s a pain in the butt. All it does is cause trouble. It’s just busy wanting and needing and proving and defending it and you actually do what it tells you to do. You just constantly behave in accordance with this thing. Just like Barbie was a thing. This ego is a thing and you can be done with it. I’m just trying to teach you, it’s different than getting rid of it. It’s different than it’s done talking to you. Who cares what it says, right? Somebody says something to you and it’s insulting to you. It may not be insulting to somebody else, but it’s insulting to you because the way your mother used to talk to you very personal.

Insulting is a very personal thing, right? So somebody assaults you and your ego goes, ah, it doesn’t, it starts talking about what it’s going to do to defend itself and how right do they, oh my god, it starts doing that and it got one of those just me. No one’s got one of those. Answer me. Alright. It just starts doing that. I call it vomiting, okay? The ego vomits into your mind and it just goes on and it wants you to tell that person off. It wants you to make sure it never happens again. People who are not done with their ego do not even know they’re defending themselves. They think it’s perfectly reasonable, logical. How could you say that to me? You’re wrong. Somebody who’s done with their ego realizes the thing gets hit. It’s an ego. We’ll talk about it in a minute.

It gets hit. It’s going to do its thing. A snake does a snake thing. The cloud does the rain thing. The sun does the heat thing and the ego does the ego thing, but it’s just the ego thing. It’s the Barbie thing, it’s the ego thing. It’s meaningless. It’s just a thing in the universe that does its thing. What if you’re done with it, then it does its thing and you don’t do its thing. You don’t suppress. Its thing you don’t fight. Its thing you just don’t do its thing here it goes again, seen you before, been there, done that, and you’re able to sit there until it stops vomiting. It will stop if you don’t give it energy, if you don’t go with it, if you don’t put your heart and soul into it, it’s going to stop. It stops. Maybe it’ll be tomorrow.

And then the happens is if you think, well, something was bothering you, so it don’t do that, don’t do that. Don’t poke the dragon because I guarantee you if you do that, it will remember it. It’ll start all over again, but it’ll come right back. That’s right. In other words, you’re not done. You couldn’t handle it. You have to do something about it. The beauty is when you’re done, you don’t have to do anything about it. It just does this little thing. You go about your business and then it falls off. Then it stops talking like that and you realize that the less you have to do with it, the more you’re done with it, the more it’s done. It doesn’t it’s big deal. Somebody a insult, my ego.

How many other things just dare you? You’re only thinking about you ego come straight with ego. It only thinks about itself. How do I know that? That’s what ego is, is that which takes everything and relates to it to itself, doesn’t it? Every single read the newspapers. How you doing? Eagle’s got something to say about it. Go to another country we’ve never been before. Eagle relate to. They don’t speak English. I don’t know. I’m not comfortable, right? The eye is always there. It just takes the whole world and brings it back to the center of its universe, which is the ego. I told you once why it does that. It’s not wrong and you can’t make it not do that. That’s a form of suppression. Why does ego do that? The consciousness. You hello in there, dropped into the body and got lost. It doesn’t know where it is.

And all these inputs are coming in all these sight and sounds, all this kind of stuff and there’s a body and all this and it’s just very disorienting. You have talks like that when the soul drops into the body, it gets disoriented. Even in the womb it’s relatively quiet. Okay? You come out, there’s spanking you, okay? No wonder you cry and then all of a sudden there’s all this stuff going on. It’s all foreign to you. Sight and sounds and this and that and touch and everything is like wow. So what does the soul do? It tries to protect itself. It tries to get, orientation tries to orient itself. It tries to make sense out of things. That’s what it tries to do. So it cls to mommy and it clings to daddy and it cls to the crib and it cls to the blankie and it clings to the toy and it just starts holding on to external things so that it can feel more comfortable being in there.

So you’re going to quote the ego, the masquerading self. The self drops in and builds a mask out of mind, out of the experiences that it had. I showed you once, if you understand what I’m talking about and don’t do it, don’t you dare do it. They should arrest you. Take the baby and every single night, put it in a different crib and have a different woman pick it up every single night and every single day. You don’t want to meet that kid when they grow up because it wasn’t able to build a self-concept. It wasn’t able to build that model that it hides behind. This is my mommy. This is my daddy. This is my crib, this is my house. This is my doggy, this is my blanky. Do you understand that? It’s building a ma, it’s building a mai. The experience that’s happening, right?

And it clings bud called clinging. The self holds onto that thing for dear life. What happens if something’s different? It can’t hold onto it. It gets all freaky. Understand that mommy’s not there anymore. She had to go to therapy for 40 years. I ask Freud, it wasn’t able to build the mask, wasn’t able to build the self-concept that lets it feel comfortable in there. At least relatively comfortable in there. It does that your entire life. It never stops. It’s not like when you were little did that. How do you know? I like extreme examples. They wake you up. You’re married and you live with somebody. You got two kids. You live in this house. You come home every day from work this day. You come home from work, you’re very happy. Turn the corner and something’s wrong. The house is not there. You mean it fell down?

No, it was never there. The neighbors are. There’s no lot. There’s no place where it was. No know exactly what you’re going to do. Stop. Go. What? You’re going to go back out to the street you turned onto and make sure it’s just straight. Is this 25th? What am I tired or so I turn the wrong and you can see, yeah, it is 25th. All right? And you go turn back there and the house is not there. How you doing? And so you go up and knock on a neighbor’s door where your house used to be a neighbor, but now those other neighbors are neighbors to each other goes, there’s no house. You knocking on the door and your neighbor, who’s your friend comes out and says, how can I help you? What are you doing here? How you doing? I’m telling you, not too good because that what you were holding on to, which is this is me, this is mine.

This is what’s real just broke. You won’t know what to do with yourself. Your mind will go berserk. What’s going on? It totally gets so uncomfortable. There’s no discussion when things break like that and change like that. Even little thing not that big. We have trouble, don’t we? If all of a sudden you’re married to somebody or you’re friends with somebody, you’re at work and they treat you a certain way and the next day they come in, they’re treated totally different. That’s hard isn’t it? Gets weird in there. That’s ego. That’s ego clinging to what it calls its norm. It’s a self concept. This is where everybody belongs and everybody’s related to ego. China has something to do with your ego because you read it in the paper. Somebody told you something because you met a Chinese person. As your ego developed this concept about white people and black people and foreign people, and you’re right, you know you’re right.

You have all this data. Everybody has this. This is your ego. All of it is your ego. Don’t ever say that’s not your ego. That’s not a spiritual state, a spiritual state. You understand? I’ve had experiences in my life. My daddy taught me this month this. That’s what all your opinions, if you think your opinions are right, you want to argue with somebody. Nobody loves to say a Wiseman never argues for what purpose. You’re arguing with somebody’s ego. You’re arguing with somebody’s past. You’re arguing with somebody’s concepts and views. Why would you bother? The problem is do you see yours that way? Do you understand that you’ve been programmed, your ego has been programmed by your past experiences, but everybody had totally different past experiences and tomorrow you’re going to have another experience you can change in a second. Ego is nothing. It’s nothing. So it makes me laugh my head off.

It’s so absurd that you would build this fake model to make yourself feel comfortable and the only thing that doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable, now everyone has to agree with you. The moment somebody says they just, oh, you’re wrong with your politics, right? You don’t understand. Everybody’s going to be different. They all had different experiences. Who’s right? Nobody needs to be a song from the sixties. How can anybody be right when everybody’s wrong? It’s just ridiculous. That’s your ego. You think it’s, you think it’s worth defending? It’s the bane of your existence. What does it mean to be done with that? That it’s not there. It’s going to be psychology says your self concept, your ego is a sum of your learn experiences. Whatcha are you going to do not have experiences? No, but you can watch. I love it. You don’t like this certain religious people or nationality or something like that, that all of a sudden meets somebody.

You don’t anything about them and for some reason love happens. You just feel this love and you find out that there are that nationality or that religion which you always poo-pooed, and all of a sudden you don’t mind it so much, do you? Oh, love changes a lot of things. All of a sudden you feel way more comfortable there. All attitude changes and ego is a chameleon. It will change in 1000000000th of a second to anything that makes you feel more protected and that makes you feel more comfortable. That suckers changing. So now you’re getting an understanding of this ego thing, but we’re so lost in it. We don’t see it as a thing. We see it as me and I’m right. Anytime you say I’m right, boy, you ain’t nowheres. You think you’re right and don’t talk to me like that. All that attitude, every drop of it is ego.

And then people say, I have no ego. I’m done with ego. No, no, I don’t think so. That is all ego. When you’re done with ego, somehow you see its edges. That’s all I can tell you. You’re back far enough. You didn’t make yourself get back far enough that don’t work. You just have been through enough life experiences and learned about the stuff going on inside of you and outside to where I’m doing my hands. There’s this little circle in there and the eagle fits in that circle. But there’s all this room outside the circle in which there is no ego, and now you’ve seen it for what it is, the collection of thoughts that you were lost in and that if it doesn’t get what it wants, boy it’s hell to pay and guess what it wants. So now it’s like a drug. You’re addicted to ego.

If I don’t have it, if it’s not getting what it wants, I’m freaking out. I can’t live with myself. I can’t live with anybody if it’s getting what it wants. Okay? That’s what drugs do. So you’re addicted to ego, but when you get far enough back naturally by letting go, I’m telling you, you see it as a collection of thoughts. You don’t think about it. You see it and there’s all this space outside of it, and eventually you’re done with it. You’re done with it. It can throw its little tantrum and you don’t even pay attention. It’s just funny. It’s just not even a meaningful thing. Then all of a sudden it changes what it’s thinking about or this or that or somebody. I love. We’re talking about your relationship with the rest of the people in the world. Your relationship with the rest of the people in the world is how do I relate to them?

It’s an them situation. How do I feel about them and them? It could be a single person. How do I feel about that person? How do I like how they treat me? How do I like what they said? How do I like what they’re doing? How do I like what they’re wearing? Every single thing comes back to eye, doesn’t it? It all comes back to eye. I once used an example. Someone comes in, man, you can’t believe it. Yesterday I got a new car. It’s really, really neat. All right. You know what Jamiah says? I don’t need one. I got one last year. Come on, just watch. It relates everything back to you. This ego is always defending itself. It’s always building itself, maintaining itself, but we’re so lost in it that we don’t see that and we just try to do what it says to do because it’s much more comfortable. So eventually when you’re mature enough in your spiritual growth, you get done. But done with ego is a big thing. It’s a very big thing. Why? It’s everything I teach you all the time. You can’t make it not be ego.

Don’t try to make it not relate to itself as the eye. That’s what ego means. That which relates to itself as the eye. It brings everything back to itself. So it does that. The question is, can you handle the different states that eagle gets in? Just like the weather, it’s inner weather. I want you to see it’s inner weather. Can you handle the wind? Can you handle the rain? Can you handle the heat, the gold? Can you handle weather? Can you handle weather? I tell you right now, if you can’t handle the weather, you can’t handle the ego. If you can’t learn that the weather is what it is. I don’t like humid. It makes me hair fizzy. Oh my god, it’s so hot today. Alright, if you can’t handle the weather, you ain’t going to handle that thing inside the inner weather. That’s saying I don’t like what she said.

I don’t like what she’s doing. I don’t like what she looks and I can’t believe it does. It’s just judging, judging, judging, comparing constantly. The whole thing, isn’t it? I mean mine. So you have to be able to handle and it’s not even tolerate. Tolerate means I don’t like it. Handling done means it has nothing to do with liking and not liking, right? Can you handle mosquitoes for example? Can you handle mosquitoes? Doesn’t mean what you do about it has nothing to do with whether you’ve been nice to them or kill them. Has nothing to do with that. The question is, can you handle that? There are mosquitoes or they freak you out. Their buzz bothers you. You’re afraid they got in the house, they’re in the car. You can’t be at peace in the presence of mosquitoes. That’s what handling means. I don’t have to do anything about ’em.

At peace with it. Now, deal with it. Maybe you need to get it out, meaning to kill it. I don’t care. I don’t care what you end up doing when you’re done. That’s why you can’t judge the behavior of somebody who’s done. It’s amazing. Somebody’s great masters that are done. You don’t want to hear because you can’t handle, they don’t behave the way you think they should. They don’t behave that everything’s put in boxes like you like to put them. Now what you think a master is someone who’s boxer, well-defined and fits perfectly inside of them and never goes outside of them, has mastered the box game? No, no, no, no. A master, a true master is someone who’s done, done with what? Everything. They’re done with their ego. They’re done with concepts, views, opinions, preferences, hopes, dreams, rights, wrongs, judgment, anything. They’re just liberated.

Oh my god, liberation means done, done, real, done. So the ego is a key from being done because it’s very strong when it throws tantrums, it’s very difficult to deal with. Therefore, you try to interact with people in a way that they like. You don’t. You’re trying to be accepted in that night. So you’re trying to create a world, trying to create a world that works for you. Again, it pulls it back to me. It’s all about me. Do I like my job? Do I like my boss? Do I like my clothes? Do I like how people think about me? Do I like my relationships? Do I like this? Do I constantly comes back to the eye being done, really done with a very rare state is it’s not that. It’s not being an ego, it’s that it doesn’t even catch your attention. Just like the weather, the weather comes and goes, what are you doing?

This thing comes and goes. It doesn’t make you change anything. It doesn’t affect you. It doesn’t do a single thing. There are snakes, there are mosquitoes. Now, I’ll tell you what, just to be fair, I’ve talked about ego. That’s a thing in the universe. Now I’m going to list all the other things. There are mosquitoes are modelos, possums. Oh shoot, I’m tired. How many things are there? 800 billion zillion things. They just are what they are. They are what they are. They do what they do because they’re not in your frame of reference. They don’t even affect you. Are you judging them all? Are you judging how armadillos behave or kangaroos, which you’ve never seen one, they’re terrible. They carry their kids. What do they call it? The kid’s name? Jimmy. Joey. What? Joey? They carry Joey in a little pocket. Get that thing inside. Awo.

For God says it’s the matter with you carry a kid in a pocket. Do you do that with everything? No. Then why do you do it with anything? Because it affects your ego. You understand that you didn’t build a concept about Joey or the kangaroo or the possum or nors, but you build a concept about what she’s wearing. Why? Because of you build the concept. Every single thing. Get at a scale, weigh a few pounds more or less. How you doing? Nobody has anything to say about that, right? Ego can’t handle anything. Why? Because it built these self concepts about itself and in sense, everything has to stay the same, but then it gets bored. There’s no win. I don’t want to talk about it. There’s no win with ego and it guess what it wants. It’s afraid it’s going to lose it, and it gets what it really was.

I’ve always needed. This is scared to death of saying something wrong. Doing something wrong looking. You get older, you look in the mirror. I wonder if you still loving me or she’ll still love me. I don’t look the same as I used to. Oh my God. It doesn’t fix anything. Ego is never okay, and so you eventually catch on. This is how you get done by noticing this thing is something else. I spent my whole life serving that thing and it’s still talking. It’s still demanding, it’s still complaining. It’s still getting hurt, right or wrong, it’s still doing its ego, stupid thing. Try my whole life to make it be okay and eventually you look at it and say, you know what? I could handle the weather in here. Just do your thing. Do whatever you want. I ain’t doing it out here, but in here.

You need to throw a tantrum. Throw a tantrum. I’m fine. You want to get all excited about something. I’ve been there, done that, seen that. How long does it stay excited? How long have you get everything that you wanted and finally came? How long is there nothing else before you want something else? When was the last time you got what you wanted and you never want anything else? Ha ha. What a joke. That’s what it needs to be done. You’re not suppressing, you’re not denying, you’re not renouncing. You’re just done. When you’re done with something, what’s the person renouncing it? It’s not causing any trouble. It’s done. It can be here, there or sideways around time and it’s fine. That’s the state you get when you work with things. You work with being okay with things. Why? Because you’re not okay with things but work with being okay?

And what will happen is you practice me. Okay? You don’t have to realize I can handle the weather. I can handle the heat. I can handle what you just said to me. I’m not even sure what you said, but my ego said it was insulting, so it probably was because usually it is. And then you got that crap going inside your mind, making yourself miserable. What if somebody says something and you notice your ego start to do this? You just get a little kiss, kiss in the head, it’s okay and it’s over. It’s over. There’s nothing to do about it. You’re done. Are we getting a feeling for done means? How about if you were done with everything? It doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. It just means you’re not forced to react to the fact that you’re not done. How about that? When you’re not done, you have to do something about it, don’t you?

If you don’t like the heat, you better go your house, move away from the south and go somewhere and you have to do something because you’re not done with it. If you’re not done with the ego, you have to do things and most important thing I’m telling you in psychology will teach you. This is your acceptance. I’ll ask you, how do you feel about being accepted versus rejected? That’s a big test. I’ll make a psych test for you. You won’t want to take it if you feel pretty strong about acceptance, don’t you, about being liked, about being accepted. You feel pretty strong about being rejected, about being disliked. What if you find out that you, I heard that Mary said that Fred heard Saul say that Paul was thinking badly about you, but you don’t know Mary. You don’t know Saul. You don’t even know Paul still bothers you.

Do you understand that? Why? What did I do? God, I wonder if somebody told him something that I did, but I want you to see ego. I want you to get a light on it and see what a ridiculous thing you’re sitting in a little planet spinning a little black empty space, caring about what somebody thought that somebody thought that somebody said. How are you going to ever be okay? Never. Alright, but you can’t change the nature of ego because then you’re busy still doing something. It has to be. I’m okay with the reaction that ego had to what you just said. I can handle it. I’ve learned to handle it. I’ve learned there’s nothing to do about it. It’ll be what it is. If Saul bur Joe doesn’t like me, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t care. I don’t care. But it’s not, I don’t care defending yourself.

I’m strong enough to handle. No, I literally don’t care. I can handle whatever happened. I’ve been through my life. I’ve been thrown up and down and dump. My God, all kinds of stuff’s gone on. You know what? I’m still here. I guess I can handle it and I’ve been letting go of the garbage. I store it inside. I can handle it now. If you can handle it, who cares? Whatever’s going to happen happen. But I’m afraid to drive in a car. What if we get in an accident? Well, your poor neurotic person can’t enjoy driving in a car. Other people do it. What’s wrong with you? Grabbing everything, jumping everything, and eventually you say, so what if we get an accident, get an accident? Who cares? I’ll be fine. I’ll learn about doctors and hospitals and about broken bones and boy, this will be fun.

I’m done. I’m done. Not wanting or wanting or being afraid. Fearlessness does not mean there’s no fear. It means you’re not afraid of the fear. A human can feel fear, so it’s just another type of weather. It’s just another thing that can come up inside. I am not afraid of experiencing it. It comes, it goes like everything else. Do you see a difference? I’m done. What if somebody says, I should never say it by the way, but I’m done with fear. They think that means you’re fearless or nothing will scare you. No, it means I can handle fear. I don’t have to do anything about it, right? And so always sit there, say, you know, love your wife a lot. She’s going to die. Why’d you say that? What it means? No, no, no. She’s going to die. Yeah, I know what’s going to happen.

Whatever happens. Will you be sad? Whatever happens. I can handle sad. I can handle death. Does that mean you don’t feel anything? No. I can handle what it feels like when these situations take place. I’m done, done these. I don’t have to do anything about it, especially not now when it hasn’t even happened. What chance do you have in life if you can’t handle what you think might happen? A great being. If they can handle the unfolding of the days of their life, why would they worry about the future? That’s how you get done. I teach you that. Handle today, handle this minute, then this hour, then this day and the day starts to tie together and you realize I could handle them. Does that mean everything went the way you wanted? Of course not, but I could handle how it went. I didn’t bring today into tomorrow and I sure didn’t bring 17 years ago into today.

Why? I couldn’t handle it back then things happened, but a problem. I got hurt. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t done yet. So what happens now? Ready? It comes back up. Why does it come back up? You don’t have to hold it down. Why? Because I’m done with holding things down there because I’m done with me having trouble with things that happened 17 years ago. That will never happen again. Your childhood will never happen again. I don’t know why in the world psychology has to get it out of there and do stuff, right? It’s done. It’s over. It doesn’t matter because you can’t handle it. So what happens is you learn, I can handle today, tomorrow. Now all of a sudden I can handle that. The past is coming up. You see what’s happening? I’m done. I’m done suppressing. I’m done holding onto things. I’m done worrying.

I’m done. I’m done. I can handle whatever it is. I’m sitting back here in the witness consciousness. It’s all coming up. It’s all passing through and I ain’t stopping the thing with it. I have no motive. Back to motive. I’ve no motive. Oh my God, if he doesn’t like me, then maybe when I go to get a job, he’ll tell somebody no. That’s motives. Hear me. I have no reason to manipulate what anybody thinks about me. I’m not looking for anything. I’m done. But that does not mean I don’t interact with the world, but a beautiful thing to interact with a world with someone who’s done. It’s so beautiful. There’s just no noise. There’s no commotion, but that doesn’t mean that somebody’s not working, doesn’t mean that somebody’s not taking their whole. Really. When you’re done now, you have the right and the room to take your entire heart and soul and mind and devote it to the moment that’s in front of you because you have no reason to do anything else.

It’s like art. The moment becomes an act of creativity, of art. Your total being is present in it and there’ll be so much inspiration. There’s so much coming down because you’re not in the way. Look how much commotion the fricking ego makes. If you want to say, how do they make decisions, and if somebody teaches somebody who’s done teaches, you’ll know when you need to know because all the forces of creation will come together and nobody’s in the way and you’ll just be part of the whole and we’ll just unfold that way. Is it inspiration? You want to call it that quote, inspiration, right? What it is is being done.

You’re out of the way and then the moments unfold and there’s no one interfering with them. How does the planet stay in orbit? Who’s doing that? How does all your cells remember back to that? How does all cells in your body talk to each other and so on? It just is that way. It’s the nature of things. Everything works except when you’re in the way and you have motives, all the human problems, every drop of them is because of motives, is because everybody is ego. Everybody’s trying to get things to be the way they want it to be so they feel, okay, well boy, that will make some serious commotion. Since everybody’s different. These formulas are so easy. The psychology is right and every person is the sum of their learned experiences. Their psyche is the sum of their learned experiences and they are right.

Just look at yourself, what you like, what you’re all your past experiences building up to your views and everybody’s different now, throw ’em all into a planet together. All 8.5 billion of them. All completely different because of all some of the learned experiences. How many experiences have you had? So did everybody else and they were totally different. Nobody had the experiences you did now thoroughly together, and instead of having to be done having to be completely not done, they’re only okay if they’re getting what they want. They’re only okay if they’re avoiding what they don’t want and everybody’s different. Go on throw ’em together. Tell me how wars it going to be. Tell what commotion is going to be. Tell how much disturbance is it going to be all over the place? You understand that that’s what it means being done. What you understand that you are not part of that you didn’t bring that into the show.

That’s pretty special. All of a sudden lesson of the peacemakers, you don’t have a motive. You’re just here and you see the ego for what it is, but you know that other people don’t. So what happens? You feel compassion. My definition of compassion I see is different than Webster’s. To me, compassion is you’re done at least in that area and you see the suffering that it was when you weren’t done and you look upon others and realize they’re just not done and you feel compassion. You feel understanding. You understand you don’t have to suffer like that, but I know you do right now. How can I help? What can I do to lift the suffering? Which doesn’t mean anything in particular. It just means you understand. That’s so deep. Isn’t it beautiful? True spiritual state is just gorgeous, but I’m telling you what it’s about is being done.

It’s not about doing this work or doing that, but it doesn’t mean you don’t do the work, but you don’t do it. You’re not okay if you’re out there being an activist because you can’t handle what’s going on. Mazel tough. Good. I hope you do well, but you’re bringing as much commotion into the world as you’re taking out because there’s activists on the other side. Whatever you’re pushing if you’re done, that’s how it’s like, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t partake in activities, but it’s not because you’re not okay. It’s just because your compassion drives you, works with you to work with things. So talked about the deep state of being done, but we also talked about it properly. It takes a whole hour. Just that because you think I’m done with this. I’m done with him. I’m done with her now. I’m sorry.

That is the opposite of what being done means. I’m done with. I am done with this job. Beautiful. That’s ego. That’s not done. You’re not done. And so basically you get to the point where you understand how does one get done by going through the experiences that life puts you through. Every experience, every single experience you have been through and you’re going through and you will go through is to help you mature enough spiritually to realize, what am I doing? It’s so meaningless. I dropped some ketchup on my pants and I don’t want to go back to work. I’m trying to cover it. I’m talking to the boss. My hands are over it like that. Hello. You’re sitting on a planet in the middle of nowheres circling around one star out of 300 billion in one galaxy of which there are 2 trillion, and you’ll care about the ketchup on your pants.

There’s ego for you. How would you like to be free? How would you like to be free? Not free to do whatever I want free from that thing that wants just free to be there. You have no idea how powerful a real being is. Like all everyone else has got their concepts and trying to fit within the boxes. When they meet someone who they see is not doing that, whoa. It’s amazing to watch their reactions. It causes just to be that way. Changes them. They have to adjust. They never seen such a thing. He’s sitting there with ketchup in his pants in a job interview. Why? Because he went to lunch and he draw some ketchup up in his pants. He doesn’t seem to care, but yet he’s very intelligent and present. Wow, I wonder if I could do that. I’d be embarrassed. What I’m saying, you present it to the world, something that doesn’t exist. I don’t know how to interact with that. A done. Alright, so I’m done. Are you done?

Alright. I close it up saying you can’t make yourself be done. You go through the experiences you’re going through and let go of what it is that’s not done. That’s making a commotion out of this stuff. Can you handle the moment that just happened to you? The more you can handle the moments that are happening to you, the more you won’t be afraid that they’ll happen again. Well, I would be afraid of that which I handled. Are you listening to me? You know what I mean by handled? Pass it through it made it through me. Then you’re done with that. That builds as eventually you realize I could handle the weather. I don’t care if it’s 97, I sweat a little bit. Can you be okay with the reality of life? And then you realize I can. That’s a wonderful awakening. Every party says I can handle this. I mean, you can say that about everything. You’re free. You’re free to be free to love life, free to give free to experience fully. Very good. Well, no,

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 at MichaelSingerPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True: waking up the world.