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: Jai Guru Dev, Jai Masters.
The essence of living a spiritual life, a meaningful life can be said in very, very simple terms and then we can discuss why it’s so difficult to do and how to do it. Accept life, then serve it. That is the entire spiritual path, the entire meaning of life. There’s nothing else that has any meaning. Everything else is mind. What does it mean except life? It’s so trite and so simple. It seems silly to talk about you are not in control. This concept of control, it’s hilarious. We take anything you want to take. There’s 25 trillion living cells that make up your body, not that are in your body. That’s what your body is. 25 trillion living cells. Your skin, your organs, your everything are just living cells. They talk to each other. They interact with each other. You have your whole endocrine system. You have nervous system communicating to everything.
The brain, which is also part of the cells. That’s what it is. It’s not your body, it’s theirs. One cell goes rogue and define the rest of your life. It’s called cancer. You are not in charge. Sure you can eat a little bit better. Sure you can not drink and smoke. Little things you can do to make life a little easier for the cells that are making up your body. If any of them don’t operate properly, that’s the end of you. That’s the end of your body. So to say that you’re in control. If they’re in control and they create your body and they keep your heart beating, they keep your lungs going in and out. You don’t do that. I once had a discussion about that. You like to think you’re in control. You want to be in control. Learn how to make sure that you’re breath goes in and out and make sure that your heartbeats, that’s the end of your life. If you have to do that, that’s what doing all the time. You don’t even have spare time for doing anything else.
How would you like to have that for a job? Well, it better keep going or you’re not going to be here. You’re not doing it. People think it’s some spiritual talk. To say you’re not in control, that’s a joke. You’re not in control. So that’s how you have to start looking at things. What’s actually going on that is essential that you’re not doing. Do you create the atoms and bond them together that make the earth solid so you don’t fall through it? Life would be very, very difficult and different if you took a step and it fell through. So full time, you make your heartbeat, make your breath. Go in and make sure you don’t fall through. You have time for relationships. No, this is not a joke. It’s the absolute truth. You are not in control. Which one have you made the hurricane happen?
Which one? It could stop from happening, which we made the sun come up, which made the moon. What are you doing? How about nothing in relationship to what’s happening, all of which is extremely important for your life. You don’t have a life without the sun. You don’t have a life without the earth in and of a life without air, and yet you want to be in control. You’re not in control. The amount of control you have is about 0.01% of what’s essential for your life to exist and yet you make a big deal out of that. That’s so important. How about we not talk about the body and about the entire environment that exists around you that you don’t make at all over the world and then all over the universe? If Jupiter went out of orbit, bye-bye not to Jupiter to you. If that thing don’t stay in orbit and bounce the whole solar system.
You either go too close to the sun or too far away and earth doesn’t sustain life anymore. How much are you dependent upon? Everything you know nothing about, of which everything’s going on, but you don’t think about that. The only thing about you that’s a problem. So let’s talk about your brain or your mind. I don’t care. People want to argue with me. Is it a brain? Is it a mind? Is it consciousness? I couldn’t care less. Really. I talk and we can understand the deep truth, but the reality of the fact is you’re in there. Do you have thoughts? How do you know? Do you have emotions? How do you know I’m in here? I feel them. I notice my thoughts. I feel my emotions. Who does what if you weren’t in there? Nothing has any meaning. If you’re not conscious of it, if you’re not aware of it, then the whole universe means absolutely nothing.
Did you make your consciousness? Was it in there yesterday? Wasn’t there last week, a month ago, 10 years ago when you were five years old? Did you have 5-year-old thoughts? Were you aware of them when you looked in the mirror when you were five? Did it look like now because you look, wasn’t it? Where did that come from if that wasn’t there? Nothing has meaning. If you’re not aware of things, doesn’t matter where they come from. You’re not aware. When will you wake up and realize you ain’t doing squat? Everything’s happening, isn’t there? Here’s a moment in front of you right now. Look, there’s a moment in front of you. Where’d it come from? Do you do it? Do you make that person, that person, make them be here? Do you make the beams, make the light, everything, everything all around you? Everything? No, no.
It had nothing to do with it. You are not the doer. Reality is there. It happens all the time. Moments come and moments go. They’ve been doing it for oh, 13.8 billion years all over the place. How long you going to be here? 90, 80, a hundred. When will you accept reality? I started by saying life is about first accept life, then serve it. You got to start with acceptance while you think you’re in charge, well, you think you’re the doer. Alright, let’s take something’s very personal. You’re alone. You’ve wanting to have a relationship. You’re lonely. You don’t feel love. You’re walking into the supermarket and you’re not paying attention because you’re lonely and you’re lost and your cart bumps into somebody and you look up as love at first sight. Did you do that?
You didn’t make the cart, you didn’t the supermarket, you didn’t make the person, you didn’t make your heart open. You didn’t do anything. It just happened, didn’t it? And you take credit. I met somebody. No, no, no, no. You ran into somebody. You didn’t meet somebody and basically then this, I talk about this. Psychology says that man is the sum of his learned experiences. They’re right that your psyche, the way you think, the way you feel, your opinions, values, views, all that kind of stuff, you can just make ’em up. There’s some of your learned experiences, things have happened to you in your life and they left impressions on you and you built a you based on those things. The person who likes this, the person doesn’t like that. The person who wants this to happen doesn’t want that to happen. Why? Because you had experiences in the past and that’s your data for making up your psyche.
So it is the sum of your learned experiences, very good. That person you bumped into, are you the sum of their learned experiences? You don’t know anything about the experiences they had, do you? Every single moment you were having an experience, they were having a different experience and you think you know them when you date ’em long enough and they finally do something you don’t like, you sit there and say, how could you do that? I would never do something like that because you’re the sum of your experiences and they’re the sum of their learned experiences. When will you wake up and look at reality and so you finally, I won’t belabor it. You may think I already belabored it. I could do it much more. Okay? It’s so easy to talk about. It’s so obvious. You are not the doer. You’re the experiencer of the moments that are folding in front of you.
That’s what you are the experiencer of it. You’re the experience of the weather, the experience of the driver in front of you, experiencer of what happened when you bumped into somebody, what happened when they turned out they were married. You got all disappointed. You’re the experiencer of every single thing. That’s who you are. The experiencer of life that’s unfolding in front of you. As long as you think that you’re in charge and that you’re doing it and then you’re going to make it happen, you are going to suffer. You are not the doer. Reality is the doer. Things happen. I always talk you about this. So if man and woman are the sum learned experiences, which you’re not, you’re the consciousness looking as your psyche, which is the sum of learned experiences, that’s okay. Right? The moment in front of you is not the sum of your learned experiences.
Your mind is, your emotions are, but the moment in front of you is the sum of its learned experiences. It’s called science. Things happened in the past. They coalesce together and they create the moment in front of you. Why the hurricane happen? Well, the golf is so hot because well, we can’t discuss it. The golf is so hot because of different things and then basically there was wind that blew from Spain and who the heck knows? And the point is it had nothing to do with you, but the moment that took place was the sum of its learned experiences. It’s called science cause an effect. It’s just so obvious. Why did I get sick? There is a reason. Why did the plane crash? Why did this happen? Why did that happen? It’s not about right or wrong. The moment in front of you is the sum of its learned experiences.
It’s called cause and effect and it goes all the way back in time. If you’ve got in a car accident because your brakes gave out and you have a Japanese car, there was somebody in that factory who had a fight with his wife the night before and wasn’t paying full attention and didn’t torque the bolt down to the level it should be and it took five years for it to loosen up. So it really wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t on purpose. It was the sum of his learned experiences. If your coffee took 15 seconds longer to brew because the element was made someplace and it didn’t hold up, so it took 15 seconds longer to brew and you were driving down the street, you missed getting in an accident by those 15 seconds, somebody ran a light, you’re jamming on your brakes. If the coffee had taken 15 seconds shorter, you would’ve been in an accident.
Every single thing is the sum of the events before it that made it happen the way it is and they are not your events. All of these things are things that just happened independent of you. You weren’t even there. You don’t know the guy in Japan who didn’t tighten the thing or the guy who was drinking and drove the car. You don’t know anything. So your preferences, your hopes, your dreams, your concepts, your views, your needs, this whole psyche thing that you have is the sum of your learned experiences. You were programmed by the different experiences you had. That’s how you have your views and opinions and preferences and hopes and dreams. Okay? You dated somebody in high school, his name was Ben. You loving the pieces and he moved away. You have a proclivity toward Ben. If this guy’s name Ben, your heart opens a little bit and the same goes the opposite.
You’re programmed by the experience that you’ve had and that’s why you have the opinions you have. And I say the views, don’t you dare think your views are right. I have to get serious with you. Your views are just your views. They feel right because you have a foundation behind them. The sum of your learned experiences. Yeah, I dated a redhead once. She was just nuts. I ain’t doing that anymore. That’s absurd. But you say, no, I know I’m not stupid. I’ve had this experience. How many experiences didn’t you have? How many red heads did you not meet? How many people with different nationalities, different religions, but you meet one person and say kind of people’s no good. So that is what it means that your thoughts, your emotions, your concepts, your views, your opinions, your preference, your hopes, your dreams are the sum of your learned experiences.
Have one more experience. Fall in love with the guy you ran into the supermarket and start telling everybody about him and all of a sudden you run into somebody and says, you mean George. That’s who you’re talking about. Oh my God, you better go talk to Sally. He hurt her so bad. He’s crazy. How do you feel about him? Even when she just said those words to you, it changed, didn’t you? The sum of your learned experiences. If she didn’t say those words, your learning experiences are different. Anybody willing to understand what I’m talking about? It’s so prevalent and overwhelming that you don’t even think about it. Your thought patterns, your opinions, your politics, your concepts, your views, your hopes, your dreams, the whole thing are the sum of your learning experiences and you think everywhere else is wrong. Why? Because they didn’t have your experiences.
Go tell them about your experiences. Big deal. They’re just your experiences. Other people had different experiences. So what I just taught you is that your psyche, your whole psyche, your ego, the whole thing is the sum of your own experiences. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. It’s going to happen. You had those experiences, you didn’t have other ones, okay? You the moment unfolding in front of you knows nothing about your experiences. It wasn’t there. It’s the sum. Its learned experiences. What’s the probability they match? The probability that the moments unfolding in front of you are going to the sum of the learning experiences that you decided you wanted ’em to be. Have you noticed they don’t? Have you noticed how hard you have to work to try to make it be the way you want? Anybody out there trying to get what they want? Anybody out try to avoid what they don’t want?
Why? Because it’s not going to be that way. It’s not the natural order of things. Natural order of things is that that zen flowers are red, water is blue, grass is green, I go home. That’s a zen master we teach you, but is he telling you things are what they are? It doesn’t matter what you want it to be, they are what they are and your psyche is what it is. Whatcha going to do about that? Well, if you’re not very smart and you may have caught on, now you can make yourself crazy and be scared and worry and be neurotic and be anxious, et cetera, et cetera, because you think that the way you want them to be is the way they should be and you go out there and fight with everybody and everything, whether this, that, oh my God, why does it have to be two or kinds in a row?
That’s ridiculous. I can’t put up with it. Fine, suffer. I guess there were two and nothing you’re going to do about it is going to change the thing other than screwing yourself up. What does acceptance mean? Doesn’t mean you’re passive, doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. I said you start with acceptance, then you serve. So let’s go back to that. What does that mean? You start by realizing it is not going to be the way you want it to be. Why it is not supposed to be. It is supposed to be the way it is. If you don’t like the hurricanes, talk to a meteorologist and find out why they’re there When they show up. It has nothing to do with you. Life is following its own laws, it’s following nature. It’s following even the person’s behavior. Go study psychology. Well, Freud tell you that maniac who’s killing is the sum of the learned experiences.
Mommy did that. They took his blanket away too soon. Daddy did that. Do you understand that? Psychology, physics. Science, meteorology, every single thing we study says what? I just taught you that things happen for a reason. Go there if you want to know why it ran on your birthday. Well, after it ran on my birthday, I said, okay, you want to know a serious question? I know you meant it. Go there. Study meteorology. And when you’re done reading all the books, you show ’em how many of ’em said that had anything to do with your birthday and yet you say it and yet you get upset. Why has the rain on my birthday? It’s absurd. We’re supposed to be the highest species, most intelligent species on the planet. We’re idiots. Why? Because we believe that the sum of our learned experiences makes a difference and it doesn’t.
It’s just one drop of water in the ocean. There’s 8.3 billion human beings on the planet earth right now. Every single one of them has had a different experience than every other one, but you still believe that what you think is right now, what you think is what you’ve been programmed to think is what life programmed you and the moments in front of you life programmed them based on the science, based on physics, chemistry, psychology, all that. And those two do not match. What can I make the match? Can I make the world be what I want it to be? Well, since there was a way it was going to be based on reality. For you to do that, you have to be manipulating and fighting and conjuring and lying and doing whatever you need to do to try to manipulate people, placing things so that the moment of fools in front of the way you want it to be, you have to work at it.
Don’t you seriously work at it? Okay, what if you succeed, you’re proud of yourself. That means nobody else got it the way they wanted it to be. Here. Actually I read once that years ago, Russia, Moscow was in trouble, weren’t in enough visitors, et cetera, et cetera, and they found that there’s too much snow. So they set their scientists to figure out how to keep the snow from snowing in Moscow and to snow on the outer banks in the suburbs out there. And they literally were talking, they were going to pass a thing that said they’re going to do that. And finally somebody stood up and said, wait a minute, you start screwing out with the weather that you know nothing about. How do you know what the repercussions is going to be? How do you know what effect it’s going to be to not snow in Moscow but have snow go over there?
You touched something that you shouldn’t be touching. It all bounces the whole climatology doesn’t it? Right? They didn’t do it. I dunno if they could have, but they didn’t do it. That’s what I’m telling you. You touch it. You said, I know more than reality. I know what the orbit of the planet should be. The point is you don’t know anything. You think you know something, but then there’s always things that cause that and you screw everything up. So a wise person learns this word acceptance. What is that? The opposite of everything we just talked about. But wait until I finish. It’s not about you don’t do anything. What is acceptance? Reality wins. Reality has the right to exist. It is the sum of its learned experiences. It’s cause an effect. This is what happened in the new book, living Untethered. I define reality. It did not take an essay or a treatise.
Here’s the definition. Reality is that which already happened. You ain’t changing it. Whoever changed, it already happened. Nobody. You need a time machine, something like that. God forbid they get that reality is that what’s already happened. So you start with acceptance. What does that mean? If it happened, I have two choices. Accept it or reject it. What good is it to reject what already happened? It’s like denial. I can’t believe you said that to me. I will not accept it. What will you do with it? I’ll suffer. I’ll not like you. I will resist that it happened versus I can’t believe you said it to me, but you did. Now I better deal with it. I accept the reality that it took place, right? That’s a whole different thing than saying my views, my opinions. What I want is what should happen. What happened is what should happen.
Do you understand that sometimes I make a statement that I know none of you like in any way, shape or form, which is every single thing that ever happened is exactly what was supposed to happen. Not morally, not fair, not just the forces that caused them to happen. Have history. Your grandparents had these kind of genes and they passed them on everything causes everything, doesn’t it? And so you look at it and you say, that happened because of all the events that caused it to happen. If I say it’s wrong, I have to say all the events were wrong. It was all wrong. Everything’s wrong. Who are you? Isn’t got a dictator. You think you’re right. I think it’s the funniest thing in the whole world. People think they’re right. Okay? So you look at reality eventually and we could talk about how to do it and you sit there and say, my beginning position of living a meaningful life is to accept reality is to say it rains.
When it rains, it snows. When it snows. It’s cold. When it’s cold. It’s hot. When it’s hot. People are nice when they’re nice. They’re mean when they’re mean. Car accidents happen. When they happen. They don’t happen. When they don’t happen. Different things happen in life. Doesn’t mean we don’t deal with ’em. But you better start with acceptance. Why? Because everything is built upon reality. If you don’t like gravity, you don’t have anything to do with gravity. Don’t try to fly. Don’t try to figure out how to build an airplane that flies because they studied gravity to the bottom of total understanding and they have to accept this is a law. This is what is now, what can we do about it? How can we work with it? You actually work with gravity when you fly you have to work with gravity. You understand that? So you get to the point where you understand I have no right to not accept reality.
It’s meaningless. It already happened. What am I doing? Are there things that happened in your past that you don’t like? Are you going to change them? Can you change them? Can you change that they happened? No. Do you suffer because you didn’t like them? Do they come back up? You have nightmares. Are you afraid of things? Okay, so you stop and look at it logically and you say, I probably would’ve been better off accepting that I got on a cracks and accepting. I fell out of the tree, accepting that my parents got divorced. If I was capable, I dunno how to yet, but if I was capable then it’s over. It’s over. It is over anyways. You understand that your parents got to work 30 years ago and you fell out of the tree 40 years ago, whatever. Why is it still bothering you? Because you didn’t accept it.
You resisted it. You said, I don’t want this to have happen. It rained on your birthday now you’ll never have a birthday outside. Never. You went to the zoo and saw the reptile. You didn’t want to but saw the reptile exhibit and you saw a rattlesnake. Okay, you now fell in love with somebody and they want to move to Arizona and you check it out and you find out that is the most rattlesnakes. That’s a lot of rattlesnakes in Arizona. You literally don’t marry the person. You can’t handle that. You got scared when you saw her house day. It’s a natural thing. These things are dangerous. Good, I’m glad you had the experience. Glad you learned something. It shouldn’t run your life. The fact that you couldn’t handle it should not determine your life. What should determine your life? You your present here and now You’re being not these past experiences that you couldn’t handle, but if you has psychology who ask Freud, he will tell you the past experience you couldn’t handle.
What are running your life, your suppressed things, the things that you’re afraid of, the things you want to happen again and so on, they run your life that determine every single thing your past runs, your present and your future. What are your dreams that which happened before that I liked that I want to happen again. Would you like to happen? I don’t know what it is. See, you have to have experienced it. Know what it is? It could be a movie, it could be a book you read, somebody told you that’s an experience, but you have to have decided. I like that, I like that. I want that to happen. So I’m going to attract it to myself. I’m going to project it out and make it happen. So you basically get down to understanding you’re fighting reality and that’s why there’s so much stress.
That’s why there’s so many problems and that’s why wars happen. That’s why everything happens because we are unable to come down to ground zero and say the truth, which is if it happened, it happened because of all the things that caused it to happen. And I can handle that. Doesn’t mean I don’t do anything about it. We’re going to get there in a minute. Don’t be scared. Give me an activist. You get married, you have children. Nobody’s saying you don’t do things, but you don’t do them because you couldn’t handle them. That’s not a motive for doing something. I stored it from the past, I couldn’t handle it and now I’m determining everything I do based on the garbage that I store inside myself. If you sit there and say, I couldn’t handle what he said, you’re in trouble. Well, he said it and you better be able to handle it.
Okay, he had a bad day, okay, mommy did this 20 years ago. There’s reasons that people do what they do. Can you handle that and then deal with it? And the answer is of course not. I don’t even try to handle it. I try to push it away as if it didn’t happen. Go sleep on the couch. That’s the difference. So I told you there’s two choices that you have when, so an event happens because it happened, I understand it happened. I can tell you it happened. We wouldn’t be talking about it. If it didn’t happen, it happened. Now you can accept that it happened or you can make believe or resist or fight or deny or I don’t know what you want to call it. Suppress. You can push it away and make believe it didn’t happen. Well guess what? If you accept it, you can deal with it.
If you refuse to accept it, it will ruin your life. Every one of you had experiences that were bad enough that they seriously affected your life even though it happened years and years ago. You did that. You didn’t do the event. Nobody said that. But the fact that you couldn’t handle the reality of the event somebody died, something happened. Somebody dumped you in high school, always happened in high school, right or wrong. I a real serious place, high school. But nowadays it’s probably junior high. But net result is things can happen that hurt you. Doesn’t make them right or wrong or good or bad. It means that happened. That happened. Somebody said they were nice to me and then they were talking terribly gossiping about me and I heard that it hurt me terribly. Okay, that’s reality. Could you handle that? No, no, I would never see that person again and I’m scared to go back to school.
I’d heard they were talking about me. I’m going to start taking courses online. You actually adjust your life because you couldn’t handle an event. Okay? And so basically you come down to realizing you have two choices about the real that’s unfolding in front of you. Accept it or resist it. And if you accept it, you can start to work with yourself and work with the event. If you resist it, it will suppress inside of you and it will destroy your life. And that’s the truth of everything. Just drive down a road and here driving down a road had to be a lot of traffic. You don’t lot traffic, you don’t think twice about driving down that road again. You understand that. You literally let what bothers you the most guide your life. And so eventually, like I said, you wake up and the beginning of spirituality is when you catch on.
It is not about getting what you want. Spirituality is never about getting what you want or avoiding what you don’t want. It is about honoring and respecting reality. Doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong or good or bad, it’s not a value judgment, it’s an event. Reality is a big word, isn’t it? I dunno if you feel the same way I do about it, reality is God. It’s that which is I am that I am. That’s what reality says to you. I am that I am. This is the reality of what took place. You okay with it? So you start with acceptance. How do you do that? The whole purpose of these talks we have is to wake you up and you can start to work on it. You start to realize how absurd it’s to not accept and how do you work on it? You let the world unfold in front of you because it’s going to do it anyway.
It’s going to unfold in front of you whether you like it or not. And you sit there and say, I can handle it. I can handle reality. And there’ll be some things that disturb you so much that at this point of your evolution you can’t handle them and you start crying or resisting or running or throwing pots and pans and because you couldn’t handle it fine. But there are things you can practice that, I dunno, I teach this, alright? If you want to play Beethoven, don’t sit down with the music and think you’re going to play it. You have to start from the beginning and learn scales. You want to play tennis, you want to play a sport, don’t you have to practice? Don’t the people practice, do they practice for an instrument, practice for a sport, practice for a test. You practice, you get better when you practice.
What I don’t understand is why don’t you practice acceptance since it’s so absurd to ruin your life by resistance, can you learn to practice acceptance? It’s hot out practice being okay with it. How? There’s a million ways. Do it however you want. Be positive, sad. I love the sun. It’s a beautiful ball of fire on the sky. I tell you it’s a star who doesn’t like stars. Do you look if bit nice? You tle, tinkle little star. The sun is one of those, but you’re close enough to it to feel its heat. Dig it. It’s 90 feet million miles away and you’re cooking. I told you, you don’t get sunburned, you get star burned. Wow. Look, I’m star burned. What’d you do today? I was so close to a star that my skin turned red. That’s how hot it was. All of a sudden it’s a neat thing.
Change how you’re looking at things and start to honor reality. I always driving, I had to deliver some stuff and it started raining. Why does it have to rain when I had to deliver something? What are you doing? It rains and it rains. So what do you do when it starts raining? Instead of sitting there complaining and sit there and saying, oh good rain gives you food. Cool. The planet off does all kinds of things. Do you like drinking water? And so you just start changing how you look at things. Then all of a sudden you’re not resisting them, you’re respecting them. You’re honoring them. Do you appreciate the rain? You better? It’s pretty important. I’m begging you start at that level. Practice being okay, practice appreciating and respecting and enjoying reality. I want you to treat reality like a relationship. Guess what? You have a relationship with reality, don’t you?
It’s always in front of you. Live with it, you sleep with it, you live with it. Reality is your world. You have a constant relationship with reality. Why not fix that? Because all you’re doing is complaining. What if you had a relationship with somebody and all you wanted from them was to be exactly the way you want them to be? You don’t meet them, you want them to be you. How’s that relationship work out? That’s absurd. The relationship’s supposed to be about, well, here I am. There you are. Let’s get to know each other. Let’s see if we can share lives. Let’s see what we can do together. Let’s go play golf. Let’s go do something together. Not be the way I want you to be or I’m leaving. That’s what you said to reality. You’ve said it your entire life. The moment in front of you is supposed to be the way I want it to be and it’s not supposed to be.
I don’t want it to be. Well, you’re wrong. The moment in front of you is reality. It has its meaning, purpose, whatever it is, and your wants and not wants. There’re just made up. And so acceptance means that it doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. It means my starting position with the moment. I’m glad we’re talking about this. It’s so devotional. You should love the moment in front of you. It’s the result of every moment that ever happened to the beginning of time and it’s right in front of you. Lemme ask you a question. Who else has experienced exactly the moments that you’ve experienced throughout your life? Nobody. Even if they were there, they looked from a different angle, then they saw something else. It’s your private showing. Literally, you’re so unique. You’re being given those moments and nobody else ever had them is having them or will ever have them.
That is what your relationship reality should be. It’s like, thank you. Wow. But you’re going to find it. You can’t do that. Why? You got too caught in this thing about some of your learned experiences. You got caught in your preferences. You caught in thinking, I’m more important. What I want is more important than reality. That’s like, okay, go to relationship and have that total idea of relationship. I am more important than other person. What I want matters. What they want doesn’t matter at all. It should be the way I want. Congratulations. I don’t think a relationship will be very good. That’s what you said to reality. You are supposed to be the way I want you to be. And if you’re not, whoa, I will hate you. Change your attitude about reality. Learn to appreciate it. Respect it en it. Welcome it. Now, that’s nice to talk about, become fun.
If you could do that, wouldn’t it? It’ll be fun to wake up in the morning. I wonder what will happen today. It’ll be exciting. Whatever it is, and you just use the whole day to grow. The problem is we’re not ready. I’m not going to sit there. You haven’t played the scales yet and I’ll have you play Mozart. You have to start from where you are and practice accepting, honoring, respecting, appreciating that there’s a moment in front of you and that moment was made for you. And how do I say it for me? No one ever had it that moment. Never existed before, did it. And you’re the only one experiencing it. It’s your moment in relationships and you say, oh, we had this amazing moment, Eric, you are always happy, an amazing moment. It’s yours. So you learn to love it. You learn to appreciate it.
Alright, now we get into the deep teachings, but what if it hurt me? What if I didn’t get what I wanted? That’s how you have to practice accepting. You put reality first and you understand that a part of you can’t do that because you’re too caught up in yourself. That’s called the ego. Well, when Christ said you have to die to be reborn, that’s exactly what he meant. You have to be willing to let go of yourself so that you can respect something greater than yourself, such as reality. Otherwise, you’re going to try and make reality match you. I want you to have a relationship with reality. Just like you have a relationship with a person, just like you have a relationship with a lover, to have a relationship with anybody, anything, with your child, with anything, that reality is the most important thing in your life.
It is your life. Learn to love it. Learn to respect it. Learn to honor it. So there are all kinds of techniques. I talk about a lot of them in living untether, how you can work with yourself on a daily basis, not just meditation on a moment to moment, daily basis. Every single day try to accept reality, but I can’t believe what he said. Well, believe it. He said it. Now there’s your reality. Can you honor it and respect it? So you start working with yourself little by little to change how you deal with reality. You start respecting reality, honoring it. Instead of fighting reality, you let go of yourself. You start saying, oh, these are my opinions. They’re obviously not real because they didn’t match reality. Reality wins right now what? That’s what I want to get first. You accept that at the end of it.
Some people read the surrender experiment. Think I’m telling ’em, don’t do anything, just accept everything that happened. No, that’s absurd. Okay? Inside honor and respect reality now has unfolded. That moment that unfolded, like I said, you’re the only one experiencing it. It’s special for you. Now, are you willing to serve the moment? What does that mean? It means because you’re not reacting, because you’re not resisting, because you’re not grabbing because it’s not about you. It’s about the moment. You’re appreciate the moment you see the moment you will start to see things you didn’t see before. Now all you see is your reaction. I like it. I don’t like it. Can’t believe that happened. I don’t want that to happen. It’s all about you. That’s how everybody lives. It’s all about me. When you are through and it becomes about the moment, this is the reality that happened.
You’ll be able to see on a regular basis things that you can do to raise the moment to bring love, peace, honor, respect into the world. But you can’t do that if you can’t handle reality. What you’re going to do is be like everybody else fighting with it and you want it to be your way because I’m right. You think you’re right. The ego thinks it’s right. I told you you have to accept your ego. It’s just another part of reality. Do you have an ego? Do you have preferences and hopes and dreams and co views? Okay, accept that doesn’t mean you go with them, doesn’t mean you devote yourself to it. You look at it and you say, is this helpful? I’m in a relationship with you. I love you, you love me, but you came home late. You forgot the anniversary. You didn’t do something.
You wore a bow tie and I hate bow ties. You slurp your soup. I didn’t know you slurp your soup. I can’t believe I’m dating some of slurps or soup. Okay? And you start seeing that you can’t handle relationship because you’re really having a relationship with yourself. So you accept that. You look at that now, now that you’ve looked at it and you’re not reacting to resisting and getting upset and leaving. You look at yourself and then you sit there and say, okay, I can handle my reaction. I can handle the reaction I had to what you did. Now I can handle what you did. I have no right to judge. Really, this is some of your learning experiences. I can handle my reaction to what you did. See the difference. I can handle it now. Now that I can handle it and accept what you did, accept my reaction.
Is there anything I can do to raise the moment to make it more beautiful because it happened. That’s what a great being does. They don’t sit there and try to make it be what they want. They’re okay with it. They’re at peace with it. How can I help? How can I raise this moment? Sometimes it’s a smile. Sometimes it’s not mouthing off that you raised it that way. It didn’t express your reaction. And next thing you know, you’re going to find out you’re bringing love into this world. Not because it was the way you wanted it to be, but because you could handle the way it was. Once you can accept, you can serve. Otherwise you’re serving yourself. If you can’t handle it, everything you’re going to do from that moment forward is to try to manipulate and change it so you can handle it.
It’s going to be about you. If you learn to accept reality, you can serve reality, you can raise it. You can do so many different things. And people ask. There’s a part that’s difficult for people. How will I know what to do? I’m telling you, when you’re clean and clear and it’s not about you, it’s as obvious as the sun comes up. It’s called the Dao, your dharma. There’s an action that will naturally take place based upon the interaction of your clarity and the moment of folding in front of you. There may be nothing you can do other than love it, honor it, respect it. Or there may literally be, you’ll start seeing you’re being called upon to bring peace, to bring love, to bring beauty, to bring understanding and compassion. You’ll start seeing that people are changing. People are changing because of how you act in it. But you didn’t do anything you didn’t do. You just were there. You came in harmony with reality. And reality is God. Reality is God. Reality is God expressing itself. And the entire purpose of creation is that everything be raised back to God. That’s why we’re here. That’s everything is, but we’re too busy serving ourselves. We’re too busy being caught in the ego.
It started by saying first, accept then serve. It starts with acceptance. It doesn’t start with service first. It needs the acceptance that reality wins. Reality is God. Reality is expression of God. And the moment in front of you, I’d like you to look at it this way. The moment in front of you is your moment. You are the ambassador to God of experiencing the moment he created and you’re the only person that experiences it. If you can experience it and interact with it, it’s wasted. It’s gone. Nothing happened. Your consciousness is God. Consciousness experiencing the dance of creation. An artist painted a painting and is now looking at it. That’s what creation is. God created the heavens and earth, the whole creation and came down to see it, to look at the beauty of what he created. You are that. You’re the emissary ambassador of this moment.
Don’t miss it. That’s what be here now means. But we’re so busy trying to make it be what we want. It’s really beautiful. Spirituality is very deep and very beautiful and you’re a very beautiful being. But we’re caught up in ourselves, aren’t we? Okay? You can’t rip it away. You can’t throw it away. You just little by little practice accepting practice, finding a way to honor and respect the moments that are unfolding in front of you and what you’re going to find out, I’ll do it very quickly. You can’t always do that. No matter how hard you try, some moments are going to happen that you either got so grabby you wanted them or you got so scared you didn’t want them, that you’re going to get lost. You get lost. Then you’re going to go through the learning experience of what it’s like to get lost.
What it’s like to try to make it be the way you want it to be. And if you won’t admit it a lot of times, but at different times you’ll look back and say, gulp, what did I do? Okay? Because you let the lower part of your being, the part that couldn’t handle reality. Guide your life, make the decisions for your life. And people say to me, how do I make decisions? Let go. But then there’ll be no decision. That’s not true. Do the best you can to let go of yourself and then whatever clarity you have, try to look and see what’s best for the whole. Try to see how you can serve. So it’s about acceptance and service and you will get there. Life is here to teach you. Earth is a place where souls of sin to evolve. And so as you’re going through different situations, you’ll grow.
You have your whole life, right? You learned all these different things by going through them. Just don’t let them become burdens. Don’t carry the past inside of you. What do you do about your past? Say, thank you. Thank you. What do you do about terrible things you did in your past? Did you learn? Yes, thank you. No guilt, no shame, no embarrassment. Would you do it again? No. Then fine. You learned. I hit the ball into the net. I want to play tennis ever again. No, I hit the net. Learn how to hold your hand differently and your wrist differently and how to follow through and then look back and say thank you. Thank you. The you hit the net because now we don’t hit the net anymore. That’s what life is about. You’re growing, you’re evolving, and ultimately you’ll eventually get to the point. We understand this talk. First you accept, then you serve. That’s all it will be, is acceptance and service. And eventually because there’s no resistance, you don’t even know you’re accepting. Sun comes up. Accept that there’s a moon and it’s phases. Accept that you don’t even have to accept because there’s no resisting. Then you’re a servant that all that’s left is service. Jab once said, and through the eyes of these God smiles upon the earth. You’re living selflessly giving. Alright.
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.
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