E25: The Ego and the Self: Navigating the Inner World

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 most important thing that you can learn on your entire spiritual path is about your relationship with mine. Most people have the following relationship. It’s me. That’s the relationship. Well, that’s not a relationship, that’s an addiction mind. When you go back far enough and by talking about it, it’s just encouraging you as you move through your path to see the signposts of what it looks like at different stages. At first, your mind is extremely active, which as we discussed is natural. Why? Because you’re trying to solve a problem with your mind. The mind is very intelligent. It has data from past experiences and it has a problem. Your mind’s problem is that you’re not doing okay. Your heart doesn’t feel what you want it to feel. You don’t feel the inspiration, you don’t feel the joy, you don’t feel the love, you don’t feel the guidance. You’re just kind of lost, okay? Don’t take it personal, but you’re kind of lost and you try to be found with your mind.

It’s like asking ai, who you should marry, what you should do, what job you should take. It’ll give you very, very interesting answers and they’re good for flying rocket ships and doing different things, but AI doesn’t know you. Only you know for start there only. Why? Because you the only one in there. Mommy’s not in there, daddy’s not in there, husband’s not in there, wive’s not in there. Kids are not in there. You’re the only one in there and you’re the one who went through these experiences from the beginning of your life, youth, baby, this, that, all the way up. You had experiences. Only you had those experiences your husband didn’t have, wife didn’t have ’em, kids didn’t have them. So you’re conscious and you are programmed with the experience that you had. So you’re very, very unique and only you know, do you understand that?

And only you will know you ever. I don’t care what vows you take, they’re funny and all that stuff. The only one that can know you is you. Even today, you had a day. Nobody else had that day. So you’re taking in this data, you’re taking in this experience, and you’re going to find out you’re not okay. Why? You’re not whole. You’re not complete. You don’t feel fulfilled. You feel like something’s missing, love is missing, joy is missing. Guidance is missing, wisdom is missing. It’s just everything’s missing. And so you use your mind like you use ai. You ask questions. I don’t feel love. What should I do? You call that rational. That’s fine. That’s fine. Okay, we’ll start there. That’s what you do. I’m scared. What should I do? I dunno. If he loves me, how can I figure it out? What should I ask?

What should I do? How can I tell? What are the signs? What’s his body language? You’re using your mind to solve a problem. What’s the problem? I’m not, okay, can I go on? Do you understand that? That’s what you use your mind for? Is it wrong? Of course it’s not wrong. Nothing’s wrong. We’re going to talk about whether it works. We’re talk about what your alternatives are right now. You don’t know you have an alternative. I told you before, you only know what you’ve experienced, the books you’ve read, the movies you went to, the people you talked to, the experiences you had, that’s all you know. Okay? And I asked you the other day, I just want to see the light in your eyes to understand that’s what you know got what you experienced. How much did you miss everything else? You only know it if I drew a Venn diagram superset and put in the subset of what you’ve experienced.

There is not a place on the earth that’s big enough to hold the superset and a tiny place to hold what you’ve experienced. You have missed everything. My favorite thing, when people say, I don’t want to miss anything every single minute, you’re missing everything else except the tiny little drop that you’re experiencing. Now let’s talk about mine. Why is AI so good aside from the tremendous program that they’ve written? Because it has access to the full knowledge of every single thing that’s on the web. It does, okay? It’s a large language model. It reaches out and it touches whatever’s on the web. It touches and brings it together. Well, that’s a lot more knowledge than you have in it. That’s why we’re freaking out over ai. It’ll take our jobs. Okay, well that’s fine. That’s not the worry. The problem is will you wake up and realize you only know what you’ve experienced and that’s nothing.

You think it’s big because it’s all you’ve experienced. You think it’s really important what you know. It’s nothing. I’m not trying to degrade you. I don’t want people writing me saying, you made me feel so small. You have not experienced anything compared to what there is to experience. So at some point you wake up and you we’re talking about mine. That is the only thing your mind knows. That’s the data. I’m a computer guy. That’s your database. What you’ve experienced, and I’m going to say it again and again, I want to know the database, what you haven’t experienced, it’s so much bigger. Is that questionable? Okay, it’s 700 billion zillion times larger than what you have experienced there. So now you understand a limitation in your mind. Will you own that? Will you understand that It’s not a philosophy, is it? It’s a fact, a hard fact.

So now you go to that mind and ask it questions. It gives you answers whether they ask it or not. You’re always asking it something. You’re always asking it something. You’re basically saying, I’m not okay. What should I do? Should I take this job? Should I marry this person? Should I go out for a date? Should I call somebody back? What should I do about what they said? Should I question it? Did I understand it? Question, question, question. And your mind will always give you an answer, not an answer. Sometimes it gives you multiple answers and you say, I can’t figure it out. What should I do? That is called the personal mind. Now I’m not talking against mine. Mind is a great gift. I think your body is a great gift. 25 trillion cells, living cells talking to each other, working together to give you a body that’s phenomenal.

Your mind is phenomenal. What is it where to come from? It can think, it can hold knowledge, it can analyze, can it do those things? It can build bridges, it can design buildings, it can write music. It can do so many things, can’t it? Those are pure mind. That’s what we call the impersonal mind, the intellectual mind, the creative mind. That is a capability of mind. This tremendous capability. But the personal mind is what I’m talking about. What is the personal mind? I would like you to see your mind as a just supercomputer. You can remember recipes, you can do math. You can do many, many different things with your mind. Okay? There is a computer program inside. There’s a program inside the computer of your mind that is the ego. That’s all. The ego is just like there’s a recipe program, there’s an ego program.

The ego is not who you are. The ego has nothing to do with you any more than the recipe program or the math program or the science program. They’re just subset programs that can run inside the mind. How many can run it’s infinite. Your mind, you want to know infinite. Think about the farthest thing to think. You can go beyond it. There’s no limitation to what you can think about. Is there this beautiful? The mind is beautiful. Ram Krishna, a great enlightened master said the following, the purified mind is no different than the self that’s way up there. I said, we’re going to go different stages. That’s way up there. Maybe you’ll understand a little better when we finish. The purified mind is no different than the self. That doesn’t mean the mind doesn’t swear and the mind is always positive. That’s not a pure mind.

A pure mind is empty mine. A pure mind is a mind that is not doing what yours is doing. Trying to figure out what do I need to do to be okay? I just do it like that. I won’t say all the way you do it. What do I need to do to be okay? But you don’t stop at that. Ready? What does everybody else need to do for me to be okay? What do I need to do to be okay? What does everybody else in my life need to do and everything in the weather, every single thing. What does it need to do for me to be okay? Well, you just gave your mind quite a job, didn’t you? That’s why it’s broken.

You don’t realize it. You asked your mind to be psychic. You asked your mind omniscient. It’s supposed to know, should I have the party outside six months from now, I don’t know. It might rain. Yeah, but it’s really nice outside. What are you doing to your poor mind? How does doesn’t know each other? The party outside. It should say, I trained my mind to do that. Hey, mine, other, the party outside. It should say, I don’t know. That’s what it should say. I don’t know because it doesn’t. But it doesn’t say that does it? I’ll think about it. Good. Have fun because you won’t. You’ll get ulcers. You get neurotic. That’s what that’s due to. You have gone to this poor mind that has these amazing abilities and you’ve asked it questions about the fact that you’re not okay, but the mind should sit there and say, if you ask it, should I have the party outside?

Instead of rooming and thinking, figure it out and try to get the weather forecast. But you’re not going to get anyways, right? The minds just say, I don’t know. Why don’t we just be okay with however it is? Seriously, why didn’t it just say what’s the difference when you get there? If it’s rain and we’ll have it inside, we’ll have fun. If it’s not raining, we’ll have it outside. What are you going to think about for six months and bother me for six months to keep looking at the weather forecast and be neurotic about it? Why? Just honor and respect whatever happens. That’s how your mind should talk to you. That’s why I teach you what I teach you so that somebody’s giving you a sane answer. What you can do with your mind, that’s called acceptance. That’s called surrender. Your mind doesn’t do that.

There’s no way it accepts. It tries to figure it out and then manipulate. So maybe I should move during these six months because it rains less in Arizona. It will say things like that, won’t it? And then you’ll write me, Mickey, you think I should move? Leave me alone and I’m not being impolite. That’s your mind talking to you. I’ll represent your mind. Leave me alone. Just accept what’s going to happen. Have fun during the six months. Don’t ruin your six months because you figured it was going to rain or not. Okay? So you broke your mind. You broke this beautiful, beautiful instrument that you have. They cause you’re not okay and you’re trying to use your mind to figure out how to be okay. It’s like some of you broke your body. We all did a little bit. Some of you broke your body because you can’t handle life.

So you drink, you smoke because you’re nervous. You eat junk food because you didn’t have to do something that makes you feel better. That’s the same thing you did with your mind. You’re not okay. You broke your mind. So don’t ask me why the mind is so noisy. Why talk so much? It talks so much because it’s trying to serve you how you like that. It’s trying to answer the questions your heart is asking. I’m not okay. How do I be okay? I need love. I don’t feel love. I don’t feel the passion I want to feel with life. I’m scared. Those are heart things. Those are feelings. Those states of being. The mind is a computer. It doesn’t know anything about that junk, but it tries. It loves you. It tries. It makes me cry. When you finally realize your mind is beautiful. What a gift.

What a gift. Imagine if it didn’t think. Imagine if you couldn’t figure things out, if it couldn’t analyze, if it couldn’t take data and look at it different ways and create it. The mind’s amazing, but you admit it’s broken because you ran this personal program. It just basically filled all this data came in. You’re not okay and you try to take pieces of the data and put them together and you build what psychology calls a self self-concept. It is a self-concept. What is a concept? Mind is a concept reality. No. If it was reality, it wouldn’t be a concept. A concept is something you think something is. So when they call it a self-concept, they’re right. You took thoughts in your mind, put them together and built a you. That’s the ego. You built a you. Freud said, I ego, super ego. I love Freud.

In my first book that I wrote way back in 74 whenever it was called the Surf for truth, I go through this, what is the I? You could sit there and say it’s your body. It is not. It is your body’s representative. In your mind, your mind says, I’m hungry. Your mind says, I need sex. Your mind says I need this. The mind doesn’t eat any of those things. The mind doesn’t eat. Your body’s needs and stuff like that get put into your mind so that you pay attention to them. Otherwise, you go by consciousness. Doesn’t have to learn that stuff. So the ID is the body’s representative in the mind. It talks about what the body needs and what the body wants. Okay? The super ego is society’s representative in your mind. Mommy said this, daddy said this. Your teacher said that. The rabbi said this, this happened that happened.

Your peer group said this and asked us in there talking to you, it started out there. Now it’s in here. You shouldn’t have done that. Oh my god. If anybody saw you, I can’t believe you did it. That’s the super ego. How’d it get in there? It is society’s representative in your mind. So the ID is the body represented in your mind? The super ego is subsided, represented in your mind and the ego is you built an eye. Okay, this is the eye that tries to live with all that Freud said. The ego stands in between those and tries to be sane. So the egos in there saying, well, but I want to do this. Don’t you dare do that. If you do it, don’t let anybody see. It’s like you got these different things in. They’re talking yes or no. Freud did very well.

Nothing’s perfect but an amazing analysis to break up those parts of the personal mind. That’s not the intellectual mind. The intellectual mind is not thinking about you, it’s thinking about science, it’s thinking about the universe, thinking about it’s thinking bigger than you. The personal mind is thinking about you. What should I do? What shouldn’t I do? What am I allowed to do? What I get trouble for it. It’s just basically how do I be okay? Even though I have all this junk in here? And so the ego tries to live in there and you think you’re your ego. I think it’s beautiful. They say the ego is your self-concept. They don’t say ego is you. The ego is the part of your mind that is saying I, I me, mine. That’s the ego. It’s a mental thought. Do you have trouble with your ego? Does it care what people think about it?

How do you know it cares to be accepted? Do you want to be accepted or rejected? Ego knows about that, doesn’t it? Because you made an eye, you made an eye out of it and now you built this whole model inside your mind. Your mind is not your ego. Your mind is the field, the computer in which the ego program runs and you’ll get to a point sometime where you looked at it long enough. That’s what witness consciousness and we’re going to talk about that. You’ve looked at that thing long enough from far enough back to say really, really? You drop something on your pants sitting on the planet earth, sitting in the middle of nowheres and you’re embarrassed to go back to work or you said something to somebody, you’re not sure how they interpreted it. They didn’t understand what you meant. Should I call them? Oh my God, what if they misunderstood what I said? That’s ego. It’s not you. That is a voice talking inside your head and it’s very hard to live with because it’s never okay. It can be short periods of time, right? Oh, she loves me. Oh my gosh, she loves me. Doesn’t even know you. You’re back there watching your ego say she loves me. Alright? And then you’ll hear your ego say, well, I’ve gotten hurt before. I better slow down. Go ahead.

I better slow down. I rush into this. I should go slowly. Should I let him kiss me? No, not on a first date, second date. Maybe this third I You want that going on inside your head? You can’t live your life. You got a maniac in there. And then if you say, yeah, third date and then he never calls you back, right? I should have done the second laugh really hard because you know that’s going on in there about everything. Have a conversation with this is witness consciousness at the start of it. We’ll get it all the way back, right? We can in phases, levels, have a conversation with somebody. I don’t care who it is and you tell me when you walk away, whether you’re thinking about what you said and whether you should have said it and whether they said something wrong. Have you noticed almost any conversation you have?

That’s how self-conscious ego is. How scared ego is that? I blow it. Oh my God, I shouldn’t have asked her. You want that going on in there? I don’t want that going on in there. That destroys your life and it does not have to go on in there. But that is what mind did. You were not okay and you tried to use mine to solve the problem of me not being okay. Of course it’s going to worry. It’s going to worry that it didn’t do it right. It’s going to worry. That missed an opportunity. Have you ever sit there? You’re talking, bunch of people are talking, they’re all contributing to conversation and you didn’t say anything and you walked like, why didn’t I think of that? That would’ve sounded so good. Should I tell them that I thought no, I probably should leave it alone. That’s ego. That’s not you. That is that program running that is basically saying there has to be a motive when you’re wrote a program. The motive of this program is I’m not okay, you brilliant ego mind, ai em, ego mind solve this and it took the job and that’s what that program is doing. And so when you talk it say, did you say the right thing? Is it a wrong thing? You could have said this. Oh my God, your fly was down.

Now you’re blushing for sure. So it’s like, hello, give me a break. You’re spinning on the planet earth in the middle of nowheres and little zippers down and you freak out for months afterwards. You don’t want to see the people that might’ve seen it trying to figure did they see that? I don’t know. I got too real. I does anybody have this problem? Yes or no? Do you define it as a problem? No. You go to ego to solve the problem that ego’s causing. Okay? So that’s what the ego is. It is a program running inside your mind that’s trying to be okay and trying to give advice and trying to figure itself out and trying to, oh my God, oh my God, oh my god. And it gives you advice when you’re 10 years old and you do it and then when you’re 15 you look back and say, how did I do that?

Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe I did that. Okay, you can’t live with that. That’s not healthy. That’s ridiculous. That’s a misuse of the gift that was given to you. The mind is wonderful, but you did with it is the problem. You gave it a problem. It cannot solve. The mind cannot figure out how you can be, okay. Why? Because it’s not the part that’s not okay. Your heart is the part that’s not okay. Your spirit’s the part that’s not okay. You don’t feel whole, you don’t feel complete. You don’t feel what you can be feeling. We’ll talk about that as we go further back. You’re the most beautiful thing ever. Walked the face of the earth. You’re filled with love, you’re filled with joy. You’re so high, it’s incomprehensible. Do you understand that? I know you don’t. You think you need to do something to feel passion, inspiration and love. You’re it. You need to not do something. The ego’s keeping you from feeling it. The egos make it so you can possibly feel love. Why? Because you’re scared. You’re scared to be open. You’re scared to feel. You’re scared to give. You’re scared going to be taken advantage of. You’re scared to death. Well, how can you feel love when you’re scared? Well, we can figure out how not to be scared. We’ll sign a prenup.

Oh this is fine, but please listen. So someday in your life you look at this and you say, I don’t think so. That is not going to get me anywhere. Alright? And so basically you understand with compassion what you’ve done to your mind, you broke it and you’re trying to solve it with mind. What’s hilarious, the reason you’re not in somad right now is mind. The reason you don’t feel the presence of God and Shakti pouring through is because that mind has taken your energy. You’re putting your heart and your energy into this mind process and therefore you don’t feel the natural flow of your energy and you go to that exact mind for the solution. And so you start to wake up that what’s happening inside your mind is just computer stuff, including the ego. Your ego is a program running inside your mind that cares about you and talks about you and makes everything be about you.

When I started getting really embarrassed and so I walked, somebody said, Hey, I got a new car yesterday. The mindset, I don’t need one. It’s totally natural, right? It is not. That’s ridiculous. Nobody asked you, oh Sally’s pregnant. Yeah, I don’t have any children. It brings everything back to itself. Hey, I got into such and such a school, alright? I didn’t. I wish I had. It sounds rational. It’s not. There’s a whole world out there, has nothing to do with you, but you relate to it from this eye, from this ego, from this self that pulls everything into it. What do you want to be when you grow up? What’s this? What’s that? What are your dreams? What are your hopes? He says, could you filled it with all this garbage? Is there anything wrong with dreams? No, nothing wrong with dreams, but I guarantee what your dreams are.

I dream someday it’ll be the way I want. Which one of you dreams someday? It’ll be not the way you want. Your dreams are made up of the fact that you’re not okay and you have preferences and hope and dreams and concepts and views and you dream that someday people will be the way you want them to be and their life will be the way you want it to be. And that’s what your hope is. I hope someday my ship will come in. What is your ship? Based on all my past experiences I made one up and my hope is that someday it’ll come in. So hopes and dreams are of mind. Show them to me. Point them. You make them up in your mind. Can they change? Has anybody’s dreams changed over the course of their life? They’re just things you made up with your mind.

And of course they give you hope because you think if they happen, my mind will be happy because I decided that’s what will make me happy. So if I hope for it, if I have hope, I don’t get depressed. I don’t give up i’s still hope. There’s always hope. There’s nothing wrong with, I’m not saying it’s wrong. It’s not wrong. We’re going to talk about different levels of your growth. If your choice is to be depressed and give up and think nothing works for you, please have hope and please set dreams and goals that will give you inspiration to try. But your mind is the one that’s going to do all of it. And your mind’s the one that’s causing a problem. That’s the yogi knows you’re already filled with Sha, you’re filled with love, you’re so filled, just ridiculous. You get to the point where if you wave your hand across your heart, all this energy comes pouring out there.

That’s how hard it is to be an ecstasy. That’s how hard it’s to feel Love. You are love. Your ego is blocking it. You’re blocking it by saying, I’m not okay. What do I need to do? I can’t believe she said that to me. Of course I don’t feel love. How could you have said that to me? You’re closing the portal that has the love and you’re going to the party that’s doing it and saying, what should I do about it? Leave him. Leave him if he’s going to talk to you like that. No, just leave him. Wonderful. Who decided you didn’t like being talked to like that? Well mommy told me if they talk to you like that, no. Okay. It is just something you decided you should look at ego for what it is a made up thing in your mind that’s saying respect me.

I’m ripe. I matter. I showed you in the beginning how important you are. You’ve had 0.01 the possible experiences and I’m important. That’s why Christ said he who is lash shall be first. The least amongst you shall be first. Alright? He’s not just talking about the poor. He’s talking about do you have the humility? Which of course ego does not have the humility. It can’t. Ego is about me. If I’m acting humble, I want something. If your ego is trying to be the most humble person, it’s just another way to get what you want. To have people respect you to fit into the clan. Okay? Ego is not humble. When you get rid of ego, there’s natural humility which is reality. You’re one out of 8.3 billion people on a planet. I want to be important. Yeah, you’re really important. And that’s planet earth. What about the rest?

I can’t help myself. 1.3 million earth fit inside the sun. How important are you? The sun is one of 300 billion stars in galaxy and there are 2 trillion galaxies. Look at me, I’m important. That’s because your mind ignores reality. That’s why I always tell you about that stuff, right? And it doesn’t do anything for you. How’d that help me? Because it will help you tremendously if it helps. Get rid of your ego. How dare you have an ego when you know nothing on a tiny planet in the middle of nowheres? How can you be important if you have one, you didn’t have any experiences compared to what there is to experience. You missed everything and you’re on a tiny planet in the middle of nowheres of which 1.3 million of them fit inside one star and there’s 300 billion stars and they’re really far apart. I I’m going to answer that now and then that’s one galaxy and the best we can estimate.

There’s 2 trillion galaxies. How important are you? You better work at it. Be important. Get respected. No, no. Ram Doess had the last book, what’s called Becoming Nobody. That’s a very high state. Becoming Nobody means You’re not your ego and who you are is God. You are the greatest thing in the universe. Addicted to staring at this little piddly thing called the ego and trying to make it be important and trying to make everybody like it and get accepted and not ever get rejected. And don’t ever get hurt. Don’t trust anybody. Careful. It’s absurd. The consciousness that is noticing your ego and you do notice your ego is God. Consciousness is God. Not Christ’s consciousness. Consciousness, that fabric of the universe that is aware, that it is aware of what it’s aware of is the divine force that created the universe. That’s what the yogis found out when they went far enough back.

And I told you I’m not getting into it. That’s what quantum physics is very close to. There’s a field down there that vibrates when it gets agitated and that’s what your subatomic particles are and the whole universe gets built out of that. That field is a field of consciousness. They don’t know that the more I said it the other day, I see it now. Right? Can your reflection in the mirror ever know you? Can your reflection in the mirror ever know you? No, it’s not real. Can the mind know consciousness never? Consciousness is what’s looking at mind. Mind can think all at once about consciousness and it’s still a thought. It is consciousness that knows consciousness. The only thing that can know consciousness is consciousness and you’re it. So it’s not that you’re little, you’re great, but you’re staring at is really, really little. So when I tell you you’re nothing, you’re really everything.

Everything is staring at nothing. So you shouldn’t feel little. You see that which I’m looking at. I’m going to devote my life to that. That’s all I ask of you. Look at that thing. The trouble it causes, it’s keeping you from God has the fall from the garden. You don’t have to go very far to fall from the garden. I’m sitting here in this chair conscious and I’m looking at that picture that I have to go away. That I get up from the chair, I have to go out there. No, I projected my consciousness. It didn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t say light doesn’t go anywhere, it just shines. I projected my consciousness onto the picture. God, the ray of God that you represent projected that consciousness onto your ego, onto your mind, onto your body. And now you think you’re it. That’s the fall from the garden.

You fell from the eternal ecstasy from the greatest thing. You’re one with God. Like Christ said Father, I are one. You are right now, but you only know what you’re conscious of. You’re staring down that is a fall from the garden. So fine. So now we understand or started with mine. What is mine is a field of energy that’s capable of creating thoughts. Fine, what thoughts does it have? It gets all this data comes in, it is supposed to come in. That’s why God created the universe to experience himself herself. Just like an artist paints a picture so he can see what its creativity ended up in form music that Beethoven heard music in his mind. He had to get it out so he could hear it with his ears as an artist, a pure artist. Okay? And so you are that God is that God is the ultimate artist.

So God expressed himself and you’re it. This whole thing you’re looking at, oh my God, it’s so unbelievable. You melt even to try to think about God is destroys your mind. Every single thing is that divine consciousness expressing itself into the planets and the black holes and people and every single thing is that coming out of the quantum field, which I would just go one step further than them. The field of consciousness, it’s so close. You understand that? I said last time they say it’s all coming out of this quantum field. They don’t know what the field is. But if it vibrates, it makes electron, proton, everything gets made, all of creation all over the place. How do yogis know more than quantum physicists? Because they are not using mine to try to figure out what the field is. They went back away from mind into the consciousness, into the seat of self and they realized, oh my God I it.

My father and I are one. I am this consciousness is the consciousness that created in the universe you are that the fact that you’re conscious makes you holy, makes you great. You’re so great. It’s unbelievable. If you’re depressed, you’re not depressed. It is that consciousness staring at a depressed mind. So the yogis are great ones. The great rishis of old did what they needed to do to let go of that and to merge yoga means merge your union. The drop of consciousness that’s staring at your mind let go died to be reborn. Every single thing Christ taught was yoga. And when that happens, your drop of consciousness falls into ocean of consciousness. You’ll never find it again. It merged. It’s one. Find a drop of water that dropped into the ocean. Come on, find it. You can’t. It’s not there anymore. Merged with the ocean.

It’s ocean and that’s who you are. So I told you we’re going to talk at different levels. Alright, well what is mine? Mine is a field of energy that is capable of creating thoughts and holding them. If you want it to, it’ll do whatever you want it to. You’re in charge of your mind. And so it holds onto these thoughts and builds structures. Like you build houses and you built the ego and you built the super ego and you built the ID and you built. Your whole concept of self is a concept. But it’s true, isn’t it? It’s just something you made up in your mind and now you have to fight to make it be true. And someone says that’s not true. You’re not married to him. So I’ll show you the license. No, don’t take away my self-concept. Don’t you dare. That’s a serious thing. I built this thing. Why do you think when all of a sudden you’re married and he says, no we’re not.

You break what breaks your self-concept. That thing you built in your mind can break. Yes or no? Has it ever broken? Anybody know anything I’m talking about? If everything out there is not within reason, the way you built it in here, you’re in trouble and you know it. So what you do is devote your life to making it be that way out there. You manipulate control, whatever the heck it takes right now. You understand what ego is. It is a structure that is built within the mine and you built it. You built it and you protect it. That’s not a joke. You’ll protect that thing. Okay? And I’ll tell you not to, I just want you to watch this builds you to true witness consciousness. Are you willing to notice that what I’ve been talking about is the truth? Are you willing to notice it doing that?

I don’t want you to not do it. I want you to notice. Just notice you can’t fight with it. You can’t. It will be ego trying to get rid of ego. It ain’t going to happen. The closest you’ll get is you’ll build what’s called a spiritual ego. I used to do everything I could to get what I wanted. Now I’m much higher than that. I’ll accept what other people do. I’m pure, I eat right, I’m wonderful. That’s just an ego. That’s just another ego. It’s called spiritual ego. It’s still that same voice talking inside your head. You just have different self concepts. Used to think you grew up with your family, that being rich was important, this and the other thing. So you had a super ego that said, oh my god, I’m not rich enough or I am alright. Then all of a sudden you become a hippie and you realize, oh my God, it’s ridiculous. Rich people are ruining the world, right? And all of a sudden you get a car and somebody looks at you and says, it’s not mine. I’m renting it.

Why are you not blushing? Alright, that’s just a spiritual ego. Is it not the same as the other ego? It’s nicer if you can be my neighbor. I’d rather have that one than the other one. So no one’s telling you not to do these things. I’m not. I’m asking you to watch. I’m begging you to watch. I’m begging you to be humble enough to notice that you’re full of it, okay? And that the regularly is full of it. The spiritually is full of it. You are not any of those things. You are the consciousness that is aware of what is going on in there. And you don’t get that by fighting. You don’t get that by complaining or struggling. You get that by noticing. If you notice, you will get to the point at some point where it looks stupid. That’s when you’re ready, where it just looks like I don’t want to do this the rest of my life, right?

I’d rather have people not like me than worry about whether they like me. And you start taking some risks that you never would’ve taken before and you start seeing that the ego can be whittled down. You don’t have to carry that thing. I remember in my early days I’d watch this thing and if he tried to sit down, I’d knocked the seat out from under him and don’t do that. You hear me? You have to understand. It’s much more subtle than that. But look, anytime he tried to sit down and went, bam, just knocked the seat out from under him, he got neurotic. Poor a guy. It’s not a healthy thing to do, okay? It’s like I’m eating bad, I won’t eat. No, no. It’s always the dao. It’s always a balance. So you bring wisdom into it and that’s why I try to teach you guys.

So now you understand mine. Mine is a field of energy in which thoughts can be created and they can be held onto or they can be released and mine, I always have to teach you guys when you release thoughts as they come through, experiences, doesn’t mean you didn’t learn from them, doesn’t mean you don’t have memory. Your computer has memory, has memory now big memory gigs and it can hold things. It doesn’t come back by itself. You’re not sitting there doing something else. All of a sudden you didn’t know what happened last year. So pouring up, that’s not pure memory, alright? The mind has memory and it can hold things, not just hold them. Everything and every experience is really in there. So hypnotism tells you that go back and hypnotize you and see all kinds of stuff that you never thought you knew. So basically it’s in there, but when you hold it, so it didn’t go through you, it didn’t pass through you, you resisted it.

His experience was too bad. I didn’t want to have it. You push it away. Let’s called it some scar that’s not pure mind. You’ve held a piece of reality that’s no longer real inside of you. Now you’re out of tune with reality. Yes, he said something yesterday, he was in a bad mood. He said it to you. It was not pleasant. That was yesterday. Today’s today, but not for you because you couldn’t handle that. I said you couldn’t handle what you felt like when not got said. And your ego said, you are not going to talk to me like that. I’m not putting up with that. You’re defending your ego. I know I can’t handle this. If you’re going to be like that, I don’t have anything to do with you. You’re sleep on the couch. Ego is like this. It will protect itself and defend itself.

And I told you physically yes, that’s different. You have responsibility to physically protect and defend your body. I’m talking about defending your ego. That’s ridiculous. Ego’s the worst thing in the whole world’s destroying your entire life. Let’s defend it. Let’s make sure nothing touches it. Let’s make sure it gets what it wants. Okay? When you get to the point where you start saying, this happened, you said something, you were in a bad mood, you ate some bad pizza. I don’t know what happened. You had a bad phone call, a bad day at work. You said something, it didn’t feel good when it came in, right? I’m okay with that. It will pass through. I do not want to build my ego based on that. I don’t want the next day to say, why did you say that to me? I want it to come in, pass through, learn what I need to learn.

Now if you do it 10 times in a row, I’ll start questioning what’s wrong with you, okay? But I’m still going to handle it so that when I deal with you, it is not the fact that I couldn’t handle it. That’s dealing with you. I wasn’t able to handle it. Where do you see what’s going to happen to you tomorrow? I was able to handle it and the vast majority of the time, when you’re able to handle it, there’s nothing to do. You had a bad day. So what? Be kind. Be compassionate, be loving. You don’t have to manipulate everybody. Just sit there and say, I can handle it. So this is how you work with ego. You allow the world to unfold. Now we’re going to talk about can you get rid of ego? The masters say there’re always going to be a little bit while you’re in the body, you’re going to identify with your body and that which you identify with.

Your body’s going to have an ego, but it can be a lot smaller than it is. How do you shrink that thing, not by fighting it, not by making the world change to match it. My ego’s okay, when it gets what it wants, how is yours? So let’s go out there and get what we want. No, it’s going to destroy you and destroy everybody else. So how do you dwindle down? I’m sitting getting rid of dwindle down the ego so it’s not so noisy. It’s not causing such trouble. It’s just a cute little thing there that, okay, here I am. He, you can get that ego where it wouldn’t ask for anything. It doesn’t answer for anything. It knows it doesn’t want anything. It just wants to be happy, just wants to feel love. And as it dwindles down that energy, you spend feeding the ego and fighting the world’s pure Shakti. And all of a sudden the ego realizes, wow, this is nice. MNOs once said, you’ll reach a point where nothing can come in from outside. That’s higher than what’s already going on inside.

That’s when ego thins out a lot. It doesn’t want what it wants, it knows it doesn’t want it. What it wants is to stand of the way. It’s her friend. Now, the Gita sounds like that one should raise the self with self not trampled down the self for self, which is self friend can become self foe. It’s talking about the higher self, the achman and the lower self, the ego. You raise it up. You don’t beat it down and rip it apart trying to get rid of it. You just have compassion for what it is. It’s a lost thing that’s trying to protect itself. You let it know you’re okay as a he thing. You say to your ego, ego, I’m okay. Whoa, you’ve never said that to your ego. You said, I’m not okay. Fix it, fix it. Figure out how to do it.

Figure out how to make me okay. When the self gets a little bit higher and you’re back here and you’re feelings from Shakti, you just say to the ego, Hey, hey, I’m okay. I’m okay. Don’t worry about it. I’m okay. We’re okay, we’re okay. And then lift it up. And once the Shakti is strong enough, it will not ask for anything. Then if something happens that it gets a little bit offended or something, just relax through it. You let go. That’s where letting go comes in. It’s let go. It’s okay. It’s okay. If somebody says something that bothered your ego, don’t say bothered you because you’re back in here because ego gets bothered pretty easy, doesn’t it? Come on. It doesn’t take much. It’s extremely sensitive. It won’t be later. It will enjoy the Shakti. It gets bathed by the Shakti and it becomes a friend.

You transmute that energy up and all of a sudden something happens. The ego goes like this, you let it go. You know better than that. You’re wise enough. Somebody says something, somebody you love and they say something, it hurts you a little bit. And you sit there say, I’m not going to give up love because ego got insulted because ego got hurt. I can handle it. I’d rather handle the hurt and feel the love than give up the love because I felt the hurt. He started becoming wise. I remember Ru, he said one of the favorite quotes from Rumi yesterday. I was clever and I was trying to change the world today. I’m wise, I’m changing myself. So you have that choice. Remember always, if you don’t like something, it takes two to tango the event and you not liking it. That’s not a given.

You don’t like it. That’s just ego. That’s just programming from the past. The event takes place. You give it respect. It had the right to take place. Why it took place. Can I handle it? The answer is yes, I’m having difficulty. Good. Have difficulty. Work with yourself. Learn to let go. You don’t beat ego up, you don’t deny, you don’t renounce it. You gently let it go. You relax through it. You relax through it. It’s going to get hit. Things are not going to be the way ego wants. Why they’re not supposed to be. They’re supposed to be the way they are. That’s why they happened. How can he wear red? Oh my God, my mother died wearing red. That looked like, how could he do that? Give me a break. He didn’t know my mother, he doesn’t know. I’m like red. And so you just understand the world is the way it is.

It’s not supposed to be the way you want. It is not supposed to be the way you want. It’s supposed to be the way it is. Now the question is, can you handle that and then deal with it? In the case of ego, no, of course I can’t. Why? It’s not the way I want. And if it’s really not the way you want, you really get hurt. And so little by little you don’t start with the big things. I always teach you that you little by little learn to relax through the feeling that it’s not what I want. It’s like the kid that’s through a tantrum. You don’t spank him, you don’t anything like that. You little by little with compassion, try to raise him up. You get him interested in something else, right? You don’t give him what he wants. You find a way to work with the energy and raise it up.

It’s called transmutation of the energy. You start working with the energy. You start working with your ego. You’re not your ego. It’s just a mental pattern that’s going on inside, which is attached to the heart, doesn’t it? Your ego controls your heart, doesn’t it? And your heart controls your ego. Those two. That’s a conspiracy. Something bothers your mind. That hurts, doesn’t it? And so you start practicing relaxing through that. You have to be willing to relax through the pain of the death of the ego. You don’t kill the ego. Life does. Life will do this. And so basically you honor and respect that what you’re going through is what you need to be going through. And of course, ego doesn’t think so eventually you’ll cross that line. And the shakti, we feeling strong enough to where ego does think so it knows it’s not necessary.

It’s like a tail. The tail falls off in evolution. It’s not necessary. Life is unfolding. You’re okay with it. And ego can get happy. He gets much more happy. The highest self-concept that ego can have. I asked Ram Krishna, do you still have an ego? He said, I’m with God all the time. And when I’m not, I’m the servant. Ego literally becomes the servant of life. There’s nothing at once. It just helps. It just serves whatever’s in front of it. It just helps. It just does that. Doesn’t need anything. Doesn’t care. So that’s what’s left is a servant. So now you understand what mind is. Now you understand what ego is. Ultimately when you work with this that the levels I’m talking about is just a private thing you’re doing inside. You don’t sit there and tell the person, I accepted what you said yesterday.

Aren’t I great? No, you did not accept it. If you’re saying that you’re trying to manipulate them so they don’t do it again. Your work is inside your teacher’s, outside. Your work is inside you. Just keep relaxing through it. Relaxing through it. But relaxing through it doesn’t mean you don’t act. You’re part of creation. You have a dharma, you have action to do, but your action is never a reaction. It’s never a reaction. What’s a reaction that happened? It came in, I couldn’t handle it, and I’m reacting accordingly. A reaction means I’m acting based on the fact that it hits something inside of me and I couldn’t handle it. And that’s my action is the reaction that I couldn’t handle it. Alright, so what is right? Action. It comes in. Of course it can hit stuff. Don’t sit there and wait until it doesn’t hit stuff.

If stuff’s there, it’s going to hit it. The question is, can you handle it? And so you come in and you relax. Okay, you go, had a problem, talk to it. Use whatever technique you want. Breathe. Now, tap your head. I don’t care. Put a helmet on. It has nose and shoot things. I don’t care. It’s all wonderful if it’s done for the right reason. If you’re doing it to get what you want, that’s the wrong reason. Put the helmet on. I can attract everything to me that eagle wants good. Mazel tough. Okay? But I can put the helmet on so that I can handle what happened. Fine. Handle, handle. Now, once you can handle it, not clean, it will never be totally clean, but at least your intent is right and your first action is right of relaxing. Then look to see is there anything I can do to help this situation?

Not to help me with the situation. I’ve already handled the situation. Is there anything I can do to bring love, to bring caring, to bring guidance, to bring light to the situation. You can’t do that If you’re trying to fix yourself. Then it’s all about yourself. And so you just start practicing this. Eventually, like I said, what happens is all the energy, the qi, the Shakti you’re using, imagine how much energy, if a thought is a thing in the universe that’s made out of energy, Einstein said it’s all energy and it is made out of energy that’s taken a lot of energy and then you hold onto it, that takes energy. Then you suppress it so you never experience it again. Denial, suppression. That takes tremendous energy. So now you’ve used all the energy inside to do this stupid thing, to build this stupid self concept and defend it.

And no wonder you don’t feel Shakti. The only time you feel Shakti is when you get ego get won and it opens up. Oh, I feel so much love. I’m so inspired in my new job. Just wait. Just wait. It’s not always going to be the way ego wants, is it? But ego, Roman, I don’t hear that. It’s supposed to be supposed to be this way. I was supposed to have a woman boss. I really liked having a woman boss. Now I got a man. I’ve always had men, bosses. I don’t want to leave there. That’s your ego, that’s your self concept, your relationship that way. Money is that way. Every single thing is that way. It runs everything. So little by little you learn to let go. Not I say you can’t rip the skin off a snake. That’s the molt. It’s so little by little you let it go and the more you let it go, the shakti gets free to come up.

Instead of you’re using it to fight, you’re using it to struggle. You’re using it to get what you want. And the Shakti is very strong. Shakti’s most beautiful thing, the whole universe. It’s what you call love. What is love Shakti pouring through the floor chakra. What is clarity of mind and inspiration? Shakti, coming up into the fifth, sixth, and seven chakras. What is the spiritual state of feeling? Divine God pouring through you, Shakti, pouring up through the higher chakras. Everything is Shakti, right? What is sex drive Shakti pouring through the second chakra. I said it. I never talk about it. Alright, it says where is it going? What is it doing? And none of it’s right or wrong. You just understand, please understand what’s going on to live in there and you’re living with mind. But you can purify that mind. That doesn’t mean don’t swear.

As the mind gets pure and pure, it doesn’t need anything. It doesn’t ask for anything. And then it releases its hold on the self. And then it’s a natural state that the consciousness doesn’t get pulled down into the human mind and human heart because it’s not devoted to that. It’s not holding onto it, okay? Eventually the kid stops throwing tantrums. Why? He got happy doesn’t need the toy. Alright? Or your love fixed it. You’d rather have your love. And so basically the Shakti naturally goes up and you start getting pulled into deeper state spontaneously. It’s good to meditate, but this is everything. Everything purification is everything you let go. And then ultimately, now you’re talking about who are you that was looking at mine and I wanted to close there because I never talked about that. You will get to the point where you can see around the edges of mine, you’re back far enough when you fly up in the air, you can see what’s going on below down there.

When you’re down there you can’t get the perspective. So it comes up and all of a sudden you just see mine. You see it as a thing and you feel mine. You’ll get to the point where when mine starts to create a thought, it’s not that you see it. You experience a shift in the energy. You feel the chemical change. That’s how subtle together they’re called RTIs. You call those the vibrations in the mind. You start to experience that and you let go of that. Instead of letting go of the thought, it doesn’t even become a thought. You just feel that little shift and you just let go. And then the Shakti keeps going up instead of expressing itself in the mind. There are times you should use your mind and you’re creating doing math, but there are a lot of times you should not be using your mind.

It’s ridiculous, right? You’re just using it. You’re not okay. And it will get quieter and it become clearer and it becomes beautiful and then it doesn’t clinging to the self. The self doesn’t get distracted by it. And that’s when you start to realize who you are. You’re back there. I tell about witnessing going to close it instead of mention witness consciousness, what you all call witness consciousness. It’s not witness consciousness, it’s mine. Trying to witness what it’s looking at. You’ll see that I should be looking at this. I need to let it go. That’s mine. Okay? Nothing wrong with it. It’s a stairway to heaven, not a leap. So you’ll take these different steps. Eventually you will realize that noticing, not studying, not thinking, not trying. You’re just notice and do nothing about it. Not I caught it, I notice it, I let it go.

No, no, no, you’re not touching it. That’s witness consciousness. You just notice and it doesn’t pull you down into it. It’s just like the white lines on the road. You don’t stop and study them. Okay, I guess I can go. You don’t catch it and then let it go. That’s what you do. You catch it and you let it go. That’s not witness consciousness. It’s very good, better than getting caught in it. Eventually it will just be you notice everything and your mind is no different than the clouds, and it’s no different than the white lines on the road. It’s just you notice it so you’re not catching it and then doing something about it. There’s nothing to do about it. It’s very beautiful. You’re very great beings. Do you understand that? You’re a very great being. You’re as high as Christ. You’re as high as Buddha. You’re God descended by God. You’re so beautiful. But what you’re staring at is a mess, and you have to learn how to let that go. So now we had a nice discussion about mind. Do you know more about mind now? It’s about your relationship with mind. It should be a very respectful relationship. You should respect that mind because of its intellectual capabilities and creativity, but not use the mind to try to fix what’s wrong inside of you, because what’s wrong inside of you is mine.

Very good.

Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to The Michael Singer Podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael’s body of work and all back episodes, please join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True: waking up the world.