E26: Why the Outside Affects the Inside: Finding Inner Freedom

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

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

Michael Singer: Ative, Jai Masters. It’s very meaningful to understand the reality of what you’re going through. Otherwise, everything just becomes reactive to try and be okay understanding why you’re not okay. People understand that if certain things happen outside, they feel better inside. They understand that certain things happen outside, they feel worse inside. They also understand that if certain things don’t happen outside, they feel worse inside. That is such a deep truth that everybody knows, but nobody’s questioning. Nobody’s paying attention to it. Why does the outside affect the inside? You’re inside your consciousness inside. Why does what happens out there affect how you’re doing in here? It doesn’t to a great master. That is one of the things that you can tell somebody’s enlightened. Somebody’s in a great state, the outside’s there, you can work with it, but it doesn’t affect the inside. There’s no reason I’m going to make a statement and challenge you.

There’s absolutely no reason that the outside which is way out there that comes in through your senses. Otherwise, if you close your eyes and go to sleep, the outside’s not out there, not that outside. Okay, and then you’re only affected by your inside, but why does the outside affect the inside? It’s so beautiful. Most teachers, even spiritual teachers, they just teach you how to get it outside and certainly life coaches how to get it outside. So you’re doing better inside. You need to change your relationships. You need to move. You need to do this, you need to do that. Find success. What is all of that? It’s all outside again. Do you know why the outside affects the inside? Because I’m going to tell you a secret. There’s absolutely no reason that the outside affects the inside. Like how about this? Maybe it’ll help. 99.999999999% of the outside does not affect your inside.

You drive by cars all day. You see people drive by. There’s stars out there galaxies. An entire galaxy is being eaten by a black hole. How you doing? Saturn’s rings are half as bright as they used to be. How you doing? There’s a whole universe out there. You can see it. You can look at telescopes. You can look at the Hubble and the James Webb pictures. It doesn’t affect your inside. Why? Why are you so affected? And by the way, you’re not even affected by everything outside on the planet Earth. There’s all kinds of stuff going on in China, in Russia, and here and there and timi not affect it all. Why does what’s in front of you affect the inside? You get down to understanding ego, understanding what’s actually going on in your mind, but it’s so powerful. It’s so strong that very few people ever get out, ever understand and ever are able to achieve a state of total wellbeing. I’m not going to use the word should. It’s not about shoulds, but you are capable of wake up in the morning completely free, no anxiety, no worry, no anything, just I’m back. I wonder what will happen today and darn well that no matter what it is, you’ll be fine. No matter what it is, you’ll deal with it. There will be different things that happen outside and inside. You’ll feel peace inside. You’ll feel love inside you feel compassion inside. You’ll feel what you felt before it happened.

Why does the outside affect the inside? The answer first of all is you understand you did it. Nobody else did it. God didn’t do it. Your mother didn’t do it. Your father didn’t do it. You did it. So I like to paint the picture from the beginning. By the way, this is the picture of the Garden of Eden, but I won’t get religious on you. Alright? You are fine. It is absolutely fine. You filled with joy, filled with love, filled with enthusiasm, filled with passion for every single thing you see, every flower, every this, every that. For birth, for death, every single thing is fascinating. It’s unbelievable. It’s where to come from. Wow. You’re just blown away by every moment of your life. That is what it means to live in the garden. How would you like to be there? You’re still experiencing it, but it’s not bothering you.

You’re enjoying the experience. You’re having the experience. What happened? This is called the primal sin. You in there that’s experiencing that out there just once resist. I’m telling you the slightest resistance, it’s amazing to watch how it happens. Just I didn’t like that. Why? I don’t understand. I thought it was just all unbelievable, but there was a rattlesnake out there and it was coiled up. It was rattling. Maybe it was a safe distance, but I didn’t like that. But this thing about what is that? That’s different than experiencing. That’s saying I’m experiencing it but I’m judging it. I’m doing something about the experience instead of just experiencing it. Let’s come down to earth. Somebody hugs you, okay? If you’re open, if you’re receptive, it’s a beautiful thing. If you’re not open and you’re not receptive, you call the police.

There’s this thing called resistance. Life comes in through your senses. We’ve discussed this before. You’ll just do it once more. You are not looking out at this world ever. You have never ever in your life looked out at this world. You are not looking at me. You think, and that’s the key word, that you are looking through your eyes and seeing me. That is not true. Ask any physicist, ask any doctor who studies the reality of things and they will tell you the following. There is light in this room. Those photons that are light rays bounce off atoms that make up my body, that bounce off all the atoms the same? No, the ones that are just the side of it goes right by the ones that are just right there. It bounces back, okay? Because it, it didn’t make it through those. What do you mean it bounces back?

Light isn’t just coming this way, it’s bouncing back because it hits stuff it couldn’t pass through. Otherwise, I’m invisible. If it goes right through me, it’s not hard. Someday they’ll make it invisible. If the light rays, the beams, the photons go right through this, you don’t see it. You see the air. Theres, they’re just the same as my body. It’s just made of molecules that are bonded together in such a way and molecules that light can make it through and so you don’t see it. Why? Because it’s not lit up. It’s lit up and it’s not bouncing back. It’s not reflecting back. Okay, we got that down. Okay, so if it hits something that it can’t pass through, it reflects back. So what? Your eyes, not your hand, not your nose, not your toes, your eyes are what we call photo sensitive. What does that mean?

It means that when photons hit it, it gets stimulated. It picks up the difference between not photons and photons. So when the photons that bounce off of me off my body hit your eyeballs, your retina, it stimulates the photosensitive receptors inside your eyes and that stimulates the nervous system and just like a network, when we send data back and forth, we encrypt it and we send it back and forth. We digitize it. I like that. We digitize this outside world when it hits the receptors of a computer sensor and it comes back and it stimulates wave patterns, neuron exchanges within your nervous system, your optical nervous system, and those patterns get sent back to your brain and you, your consciousness, see it in there. You are not seeing it out here. You’re not looking through your eyes. You’re sitting in here like an end user in front of a computer and you are seeing what is being sent back and the brain.

I won’t get into this because science doesn’t understand this stuff the way yogis do. The brain is a central nervous system. It’s a bunch of neurons, central nervous system that receives the stimulations of all the nerves throughout the body, all the sensors, everything. It then is passed on to this thing called the mind. The mind and the brain are totally different things. One is made of physical things, atoms, et cetera. The mind is more etheric. The mind’s a higher vibration, but these vibrations pass between each other just like the outside world passed its vibrations to your nervous system and it passed up to the brain that then is received by this amazing field of energy called mind and it recreates what you’re seeing out here in the mind. How do I know that? Because you can close your eyes and see the same thing in your mind without having to look out here.

What do you think your dreams are? That’s not happening because it’s being stimulated in your nervous system. The mind is capable. Can you visualize a boat? Go on, visualize the boat bigger Queen Mary. You can visualize in your mind that’s not the brain. It’s coming back. That is something you in there the consciousness are doing with this field of energy called your mind. When you take it from what’s happening in the outside world, the outside world is energy. Light bounces off of the tightly bound molecules comes in, comes in. Your nervous system, hits the brain. The mind is stimulated again. That’s a line. They talk about the blood brain barrier. They don’t understand the brain mind exchange. Psychics do spiritual people do people out of the body experiences. You didn’t take your body with you. People have near death experiences. They didn’t take the body with ’em.

They didn’t take the brain, excuse me, have to borrow my brain, your consciousness and your mind. There are higher planes of vibrations. Consciousness is the highest than the mind and the emotions than the body. What yogis called ous way back thousands, thousands and thousands of years ago. Yogis wrote about this. I’m not sure I get it right. I’m study that stuff, but kosha is the body. Prana myo. Kosha is the energy body, the emotional body. Mono myo. Kosha is the brain body and Anand Kosha. Anand means ecstasy is the highest vibration of pure ecstasy, but that’s not the highest thing. Somebody’s experiencing the ecstasy. Somebody’s experiencing the emotions. They’re experiencing the thoughts. Somebody’s experiencing the body. That’s the highest thing. You the indwelling being the soul of the self. That’s what’s going on. So we’re starting here where the light photons from the world from light bounce off, everything come in, stimulate nervous system, come into the brain along with everything else and they manifest in the mind.

It is similar to when you are sitting in front of your TV and you’re watching a ball game. The ball game’s in San Francisco, you’re watching it here in Florida. How does that happen? Because light molecules bounce off the atoms of the ball game out there in San Francisco and they don’t get picked up by your eyes first. They get picked up by the camera’s eyes. They do the exact same thing and they stimulate that which is photos sensitive in the camera, which it then digitizes and it sends to a satellite or whatever system it uses. That’s the equivalent of your nervous system, the network that’s being used to send those images, which are not what you’re actually looking at. They’re just energy through wherever it goes and they’re coming down and they’re being rendered in your tv like being rendered in your mind and you’re sitting there watching it.

The same as if you’re out there in the ball game, but you’re not in the ball game. That’s exactly what’s happening out here. That’s when you start to understand who you are. That alone, it’s really beautiful. Who are you? I am the seer, the witness, the consciousness that is experiencing what the mind is creating and the mind is able to make images right now, I’m telling you, I know it’s tough for you. You are sitting in there so far away, further than San Francisco way back there. You are sitting in there looking at what is being rendered in your mind based upon the photosensitivity of your eyes of your optical system and your auditory system, et cetera, et cetera. It’s all being passed back there and you’re sitting in there watching that. You have never looked out here. Isn’t that crazy? Go check out. Forget the part of a brain of mind.

You just check out whether it’s true that you’ve never looked out here. It’s being sent back into you and you’re seeing it inside. That’s why very few people really see why because on its way back through the mine that mine ain’t empty, that mine has stuff going. Before you looked, she looks like my mother. I didn’t like my mother. I don’t like her. I should have been nice. I love my mother, I love her, but that’s how easy it’s to change. Rarely do you ever actually see because it has to pass through what’s in your mind in order to get back to you and it’s tinged by it, isn’t it? Everything’s tinged by. I like this. I don’t like that. I don’t like somebody named Ben I stuff in there. Don’t you? Both subconscious mind and conscious mind what comes in has to pass through that so you’re not seeing what’s going on.

I look close, I just wonder for a minute. I just don’t stop. Do you understand? You are not looking at me out here. It’s so hard to get that perspective. You’re in here and it’s been rendered in your mind exactly like the dream is, except this one was rendered due to the stimulation of the outside world. The dream was rendered just within the mind by itself. But I’m telling you just for a minute, you’re in here looking in here and it’s being sent in and rendered in there. Okay? That’s very important for understanding what’s going on. That’s where we started. Do you understand what’s going on? Really the answer is of course I don’t. Of course I don’t. I believe the appearance of things, it appears that I am looking outside. You don’t have to get into metaphysics or weird stuff. Do you believe in other planes?

No. No. Just science will tell you that what I’ve just told you is the truth. That you are in there looking that they may say, oh, it’s your brain that’s looking at your brain. I don’t care. They’re still saying it’s inside, but the patterns are being sent inside and they’re rendered inside and you experience them inside. You never look out here. I used to when I talked about this all the way back when I taught at junior college back in the seventies, right, and I didn’t stop with the eyes, the ears. I did a good one, which is do you understand that no one has ever touched you? You’ve never felt anybody touch you that what is happening? Your hand is made of atoms. Everybody knows that atoms have electrons on the outside of the nucleus and electrons are negatively charged. Well, guess what? So is everything else.

Every single physical object is made of atoms and every single atom has electrons on the outside and pretty distance in between from the nucleus, okay? And they’re all negative. What happens if two negative pulls of a magnet go together? They repel each other. That’s what you feel is something’s touching your body has made of atoms. There’s electrons, the fingers made of atoms. They don’t touch ever. Nobody’s ever touched you. What you feel stimulated in the nerves of your sensory system, of your tactile system is that repulsion. It pushes back and then it stimulates the nerve and it gets passed back to you and you think you touched something. I used to tell the students, therefore you’ve never touched your girlfriend or your boyfriend. Don’t worry. No one’s ever touched you. Do you understand? I’m telling you the truth. Go study science. It’s all just forces stimulating the nervous system and it’s all coming back and you are living in that lie.

The truth is you’re back in here. That’s why witness consciousness is the most natural thing in the whole world. That’s where you are. You’re in here looking at what? Receiving, what’s coming in through senses and then what happens? I started talking about the original sin, right? So you’re in here and you’re in the garden. Just everything’s beautiful. It’s like, oh my God, what a creation. There’s colors and shapes and farms and things. Wow, it’s all better than Hawaii. It’s better than Disney World. It’s just like, wow. Every day is different. Every day is who’s bored. How can you get bored and a single moment that ever repeats itself never has and ever will. I told you, earth is God’s idea of Disney world. Well, it’s exciting. There’s all kinds of stuff to do, all kinds of animals and colors and shapes and oh my God, anyone to get into what happens?

What happens is at one point, whether it be Adam or ve, I’m not going to blame one or the other. Alright? Somebody resisted something. What does that mean? It means I’m here experiencing it. I don’t want to experience it. Why? I don’t have to answer you. I don’t want to ever see a rattlesnake again. Why? It didn’t feel good. It’s just a feeling. It’s a feeling. There’s lots of feelings. Just like there’s lots of notes in music. Aren’t there? High notes and low notes and chords and disharmonies and discords. Isn’t that exciting? No, I don’t like they don’t feel right. Well, the minute you don’t like it, who doesn’t me? The self experience. I don’t want to experience it. That’s what resistance means. I don’t want to experience this. What do you do? You protect yourself from it. How You push it away, don’t you?

In there I told you, you’re in there experiencing, even though obviously you already experienced it, it wouldn’t be in there or that’s what’s so silly. That’s secondhand. When you decide you don’t want to experience it, it wouldn’t be in there if you hadn’t already experienced it. It comes in and you react to it, you push it away. That’s the key. You have hands in there. You have hands of will. You can push away the energy that came in. You can’t push away the event. It’s out here. It already happened, but the event came in through your energy system and it rendered within your mind and your hearts, your emotions, and you can push it away. You do it all the time. All the time. Somebody says something, somebody doesn’t say something. When you push it away, where does it go? It happened. It stimulated your nervous system.

You didn’t stop into that, did you? Right? Came all the way back, hit your brain, rendered in your mind. Otherwise you wouldn’t be dealing with it. Where did that energy of the event go? Where should it have gone? It should have gone back and touched you to the depth of your being. Have you ever said those words? Oh my God, I saw the sunset. It was so beautiful. I felt I was in the presence of God. It touched me to the depth of my being. You let go. It came all the way in and touched you. The depth of your being. It’s a heavenly thing, isn’t it? It’s touches depth of your being. Boy, that’s special stuff, okay? That’s the garden of Eden. Truth is all of life should touch the death of your bee. It’s just God’s creation and you just experience all the different aspects of the divine by experiencing life.

All of life, unbelievable to do that. I know you can’t even imagine it, but the point is, when you don’t let it come all the way in and pass right through, you push it down. That’s what Freud discovered with suppression. Yogis knew this. Thousands and thousands. They meditated. They saw what was going on in there. When you shove it away, it stays in there. Stays where in the energy of mind and the energy of heart and your emotions. You suppress something. Freud was very great. He didn’t ever get into who’s in there doing this. He just told you what happens and the effect of what happens. Freud studied. What happens when you shove that stuff down there? What effect does it have and how does it get warped and et cetera, et cetera. He didn’t ask who’s in there putting it down there, okay? He would the ego, but the ego is your mind.

It’s something you builds in your mind. You’ll see that when we get done. So in any event, you push it down, I’m telling you, and you should know it stays there. No, you know darn well. It stays there. It comes back up and your dreams, it comes back up to somebody. Mes somebody’s name. It comes back. When you drive past your house where you grew up, it comes back when you go, go to a high school reunion and see if it’s still down there. Wake up. Just don’t pay attention to what’s going on. It’s still there, all of it. No, of course. But the thing that somebody said when they stole your boyfriend or girlfriend, the thing that something had had to get a better grade than you. This thing that somebody did, they got the first string quarterback and you wanted that. It’s still there big time.

Why? Because you held it there. Is it really still there? Of course not. It happened 30 years ago. A single Adam that’s doing the same thing that did 30 years ago, but it’s in you, isn’t it? It’s in your mind. You stored it. If you do that just once with anything, your whole life will be a problem. If all you did was do it with that snake that you experienced and otherwise your total ecstasy, you have just created fear. What do you mean worry? I might see a snake again. I heard a rattle, I saw a rope. Are you listening to me? All of a sudden, everything comes in. You relate to with that which you stored down there. Why? Because it has to pass through your mind to get to you so that the experience has worked. Totally. Because this thing you stored in there, I could build your whole mess based on one suppression.

Yogis called us from scarra. The thing you resisted and held down there is called a samskara. Usually they’re negative things. You hold down there. I like to talk about positive ones because you all like positivity. Why would I say there’s positive? Some scars. Let’s say it wasn’t a snake. Let’s say it was a butterfly. A butterfly while people were watching flew around and landed on your arm and sat there and fluttered. How you doing? Huh? You like it? Okay. I’m telling you, you are going back to that place where that happened many times to try and have it happen again. You will tell people years later that that happened to you. You’re the butterfly whisperer. You can’t now live your life. Normally you have to move to be near where it happened. So it might happen again. Are you’re hearing me? That’s why positive and scars are a problem, but not as much of a problem as a negative one.

So just forget that I talked about that. You’d have plenty of positive experiences, but someday you’re going to realize that you want them to happen again, don’t you? Then a single positive experience you had that you don’t want happen again, and the more positive it was, the more you want it happen. Again, the we’re going to look for it just like you’re going to look for the snake. It affected the clarity of your mind and by the time you’re done with everything, you can’t be here now. You have to be there then either to keep away from what you didn’t like or to get what you did so you can’t experience life. You got ready to accept what’s happening. You get disappointed, go have a positive experience, you get disappointed. Don’t you get that happen again? It’s fucking deep to you. So when you push stuff down there by resisting reality, it stays down there and it just multiplies and you didn’t just push one down there.

How you think. You get down there, you do it every single day of your life. The driver in front of you bothers you. Therefore you don’t drive down a road anymore. If you see a car that looks like it, I ain’t going down there. It’s like you just are a mess. And that’s why because you couldn’t handle the reality of what took place and let it come in and experience it and appreciate and love all of creation. That’s the garden. And instead you push certain things away and clung to other things and now you have in your mind all these patterns of like and dislike of preference and disdain. Okay? You like people, you like some animals and not other animals, mosquitoes. Oh my god, how many things you got in there? You’ve built a world in there and so what you do is the most important thing I ever teach you.

So now you store that stuff down there, it’s going to come back up. You know that the forget to keep it down so you’re pretty busy and you are right. You literally want to manipulate the world so it isn’t ever be the way you don’t want it to be, and so it’s always the way you want it to be and you devote your entire life to that. You have devoted your life to the lowest part of your being. The part of your being that couldn’t handle reality otherwise it went right through. But if it didn’t go right through because you couldn’t handle that, it was so nice. You want it to happen again or it didn’t go through because no, I don’t want this coming close to me. Stay away from me. Now you devote your life to making sure it doesn’t happen or it does happen.

That’s what your entire preference system comes from. That’s where your likes and dislikes come from. So you take your past experiences, most of ’em go through then they don’t affect your life. You experience ’em fine, but the ones you didn’t, you stored down there very few. By the way, it’s a very small amount of all the experience that have come in through your senses. I’m talking about how much comes through your senses. The way you understand is that there’s a rattlesnake down there. Is that all? There is? No, there’s grass, there’s leaves, there’s sounds, there’s sky, there’s clouds, there’s lots of things aren’t there? No there’s not. There’s a wrong sl. So all the rest went right through except for the part that you didn’t let go. You held it. Now you started to build in your mind these blocks of stuff you didn’t let go through.

Well, they’re not comfortable. Why? Because they weren’t comfortable. That’s why you stored them. If you stored it with pain and you’re holding it down there, you can’t handle it and it comes back up, it’s going to be painful. Well, I guess that’s what you stored the pain. It’s coming back with pain. Freud knew that. My therapists know that. Everyone knows that. Okay? Why does that have to be like that? Because if it wasn’t that way, you wouldn’t be storing anymore. You say it hurt yesterday, it doesn’t hurt anymore. Well then let it go. No, it still hurts. Why? Because you stored pain. You store it with pain, you stored pain, you stored the energy of pain. If somebody rejected you in high school and it really hurts you terribly, you stored that hurt. If you see that person again or somebody talks to the person again, you’re going to feel that hurt.

You stored the thing and so that’s going to come back. Okay? So now you’re sitting there with all this stuff down there, so that’s in your mind. You’ve now polluted your mind with all this garbage. So now everything that comes in stimulates that and you have to fight and make sure the right stuff comes in. Don’t you have to make sure people say just what you want them to say and never say what you don’t want them to say. And if they say what you don’t want them to say, they have to apologize. Why? Because you couldn’t handle what they said and somehow they had their job to make it so you can handle it. Or if you apologize sincerely enough and do this for a long time and prove it to me or something like that, okay? You’re still not letting it go. If somebody, I don’t want to tell you this.

If somebody did something that hurt you, you can learn to cope with it. You can learn to accept it. They’re still in it. Next time they do it, guess what you say? You told me you wouldn’t do that again. You didn’t let it go. You tolerated it, you coped with it, you tolerated it, you forgave them. But does that mean I’m not going to keep bringing it up? Don’t think it’s not still there. Baby, your boyfriend or girlfriend went out with somebody else, didn’t tell you about it. You get jealous, you get scared about the relationship. They say they’re sorry, they’ll never do it again. Nothing really happened, et cetera until eventually they don’t sleep on the couch anymore and you just, okay, we’ll go on. That’s not a chance in the world that you just went on, if you see him not coming home at the same time at night somewhere, you start right away thinking, is he out of that again?

I’m teaching you what’s going on in there. You stored this stuff. It’s not so easy to let it go. Is it because you’re afraid of what you stored? And life is difficult now. And so what you do is you develop and it happens slowly along the way. You develop what’s called a self-concept. An ego. What is that? Let’s get that down once and a for all. What is a self-concept? What is an ego? It’s something you built inside your mind. Freud knew your ego was in your mind. Understand that he didn’t say it was you as an it ego, super ego. There are aspects of your mind. There are thought patterns in your mind. Your ego is a thought pattern in your mind. I like this. I don’t like this. I’m open to this. I’m afraid of that. Use an I the thoughts, aren’t they? They’re thoughts. The thoughts you built inside your mind. You held them inside your mind. You built them out of that stuff. You stored in there. Every one of those things you store is like a brick and you built a house in there and psychology calls that house your self-concept. Something you made up in your mind about who you are. Have you ever said to somebody, no, no, no, no, don’t leave. Don’t leave. I can change. I can change. How do you want me to be?

What do you saying it’s not real? Then I say to you, well, you can’t just make up what you want to be. I made the old one up. I can’t make up a new one. Okay? It’s not real. It’s just the patterns that you set up in your mind. Patterns of thoughts that are about Ah, you made it an eye. This is who I am until you don’t want it to be. Then you’re somebody else or you have an alter ego. People have different aspects, don’t they? Other personalities. You’re not the same person on your parents as you’re around your best friends. So basically you just have these different aspects of stuff you made up about yourself. And if you’re living the librarian life, you feel all clumped up and someday you rebel and run away from everybody and people do that run away from their family and hard to talk about was true.

Do you understand that? How’s that happen? Because you’ve been suppressing, you’ve been suppressing somebody and it built up all this energy inside that you were having trouble living with and know anything about it and you kept shoving it down or shoving it down until you didn’t shut down so well anymore. And then something happened. You met somebody or somebody says something, right? And next thing you know you’re drinking or you’re doing this or doing that because I can’t handle myself. And next thing you know, it just goes south. Anybody understand that’s what’s going on? So you build this model inside your mind and you say, that’s me, but it’s not you. You’re the one who’s noticing that you’re the one who knows it’s in there. You’re the one who experiences your emotion. You’re the one who notices. Do you have thoughts? How do you know there?

That’s the highest question you can ever answer in your entire life. And the answer is because I’m in here. Who’s in there? Who’s in there? Can’t be your ego. You’re watching your ego. Don’t you watch your ego? Do you have an ego? Anybody got an ego? Everybody feel pride? Ever feel embarrassed? Everybody feel ashamed? Everybody feel scared. Ever think, oh, I can say this. They’ll be impressed with me if I say this and they’re trying to impress people, they’re trying to get what they want. Who knows that that’s happening? How can you look at me that’s happening? How do you know? Because you’re the consciousness, the witness, the indwelling being, the self, the Oman, and you’re watching your thoughts but you’re so addicted to them. That one, you don’t want to watch ’em. You want to do what they tell you to do. If your mind says, I’m not comfortable here, I want to leave you, leave, you do whatever it says, okay, let’s get honest and look what’s going on in here.

It doesn’t matter what’s going on in here. I want to know who notices. That’s called witness consciousness. You’re a very great being. The one who notices is the highest thing. The whole universe, consciousness is the highest thing there is. It doesn’t get dirty. What’s looking at no more than a light gets dirty. It’s shining on something. Consciousness is pure. It’s always pure. It doesn’t matter. Whatever happened no matter whatever did because the conscious never did anything. It’s just witnessing experiencing. But when you suppress and you push this stuff away, you build a mess in your mind. Why? To try and make it easier to live in there. That’s why you build an ego. That’s why everybody’s got a personality. It’s not good or bad. It’s sort of like this is how I think of myself and if I can get what I want, I feel better.

I started by saying to you, right, the basic understanding is if I get what I want feel good. If I don’t go what I feel bad, what? I don’t want to feel really bad. So you get to the point where you start noticing this. That’s what it means to wake up. It means you’re in here and you know got an ego. That’s a good first step. Yes, I’m in here and yes, I see this thing, some monster they got built in here that needs things to be the way it was or it throws a tantrum and it just keeps melding and changing and trying to do whatever it can to get what it wants. It lies. It just makes it whatever it wants. It’s a hilarious world we live in now. It’s just like say whatever you want again. People agree with you and then all of a sudden it’s the truth.

And so ego does all of that. You see ego on, it’s pretty strong nowadays, isn’t it? Okay everywhere. But if inside you have to be able to see it. And so now you’ve built this ego. I’m telling you, the ego is made up of the stuff you held onto. What else could be made up? It’s not made up of the white lawns in the road. It’s not made of the clouds that pass by. It’s not made of the people that walk by that it’s not made of the 99.99% of things that you just let pass through. It’s made of the stuff that you didn’t let pass through. That’s the data that’s being held in your mind and your heart. And now what you’ve done is built a person in there in your mind, you’ve built a person that you said, okay, I’m going to present this person to the world so I can get what I want or I’m going to hide from the world so I don’t have to get what I don’t want.

And there’s a person in there doing that, isn’t it? Somebody once has Yogananda. What is the ego? An enlightened master, fully enlightened master, no treatise, no books, nothing. He called it the masquerading self. Well, I just built your mask, didn’t I? And you can change your mask anytime you want, can’t you to get what you want, okay? What you really want is to feel okay inside and so you to change the ego, change the ego and you rationalize and justify and lie and manipulate and do all kinds of stuff to be okay. So eventually you wake up and you realize this is not going to work. I ain’t going to get any worse with this. Why? I have to struggle and fight with every moment that passes before me. No, that was too easy. I have to struggle and fight with every moment that passes before me, with every moment that ever passed before me.

You can’t handle the past either. The past bothers you so you can’t handle the present unless it’s what you want it to be. You can’t handle the past because it wasn’t what you wanted it to be and you sure as heck can’t handle the future. You’re projecting what you don’t want that might happen in the future or what you do want. That’s all you worry. Do you worry about the future? Who worries about the future? I don’t understand. Hasn’t happened yet. How can you worry about it? It doesn’t even make sense. You worry about something hasn’t happened. What you’re doing is projecting your suppressed stuff that ever bothered you and thinking it might happen in the future. How do I make sure it doesn’t happen? What if it does? Oh my God, I’m so anxious. I’m scared. It’s not like going in the morning, I’m back Yoga. Oh shit.

Oh my god, I can’t handle this anymore. That’s because you’re fighting and resisting and took on the responsibility of making everybody and everything in the world around you. Be the way your ego wants it to be, the way you made up and if it is, you’re okay and if it isn’t held to pay, alright? And so that’s why the outside affects the inside because you built this barrier inside that said, the outside’s going to affect the inside. I want it to, but I only if it’s the way I want and so I’m going to manipulate the outside to make it so that when it comes in I feel better and I manipulate the outside so that when it comes in I don’t feel worse. A great being, believe it or not, does not do that. A great being has done the following. Oh, look at that garbage there in my mind I can’t even see reality.

I just see the reflection of myself. When I look out there, I see people I like and people don’t like. I see somewhere I want to go. I see where I don’t want to go. I don’t see what’s out there. I see what’s in here. A minute ago I told you what’s out there gets reflected in here. What’s really funny when you have psychology to it, that’s what we’re talking about, the psyche of the mind right now. What’s in here gets pushed out there. I see definitely. There’s no way you see what’s out there because you’re making it all up in your mind. Even the party things real, it’s coming in, it’s coming in and then you’re manipulating inside your just doing this whole dance inside your own mind. That hilarious. That’s why the yogis and the great ones teach meditation. They teach to work.

Come on, get stuff together in there because there’s no reality except for what you’re doing in your mind. There’s reality. I don’t like the way he’s sitting. Why you like doing? My father used to sit like that. He didn’t treat me so nice. Can you get out? Yes, of course. First of all, you are already out. That’s like saying I’m sitting on a TV watching a ball game in San Francisco. Do I have to? Of course you don’t have to get up. Just get up and don look. What are you doing? Why are you watching? I really want to see what happens. I know I can get up and look and I want to because I have things to do, but I really want to see who wins. I really want to see whether my favorite player is going to play and do it. Okay, well then if you really want to, then that’s what you’re going to do.

That’s all that’s happening in there. Are you willing to realize that every single thought that passes in your mind is the same as any other thought? It’s just a thought. It’s just a thought created in the field of mind. Just like every cloud is just a cloud, but it looked like Uncle George and Rocky. Okay, fine. It wasn’t Uncle George rocking here. It was a cloud. You projected Uncle George onto the cloud. When you stop doing that, things just are what they are. A thought is a thought. An emotion is an emotion. That’s what’s going on out there from an inside ecstasy, joy, bliss, appreciation for the dance of creation that’s happening outside of me and inside of me and just blown away with the awesomeness of all of it. You’re not judging. You’re not liking and disliking. Do you understand that? It’s hard for people to imagine now because you think, well, I want to like and dislike because if I get what I like, I feel better.

If I avoid what I don’t like, I feel better. So why would I want to give up liking and disliking? Because if you call feeling better is like keep with toys. It is ridiculous. All you’re doing is, how do I put it? You are an ecstasy all the time. You’re the highest being ever walked to face of the earth, but you are blocking that experience because you’re looking out away from your ecstasy at that which is not ecstasy, which is your mind and your emotions if per chance, the outside world unfolds in a way that when it comes into your mind and your emotions, you feel more open in your mind and your emotions. You actually experience a slight drop of your true being. You’re no longer fighting and closing. So what you call love is what you’re made of, but you only feel it if the person says the right thing at the right time and where’s the right thing?

Everything has to be exactly right for you to open so you can stop closing. People always ask me, I don’t know how to open. You’re talking about opening. How do I open? And I told them, don’t close. If you don’t close, you will be open. And that is your natural state. It’s dark in here. How do I get light? Open the blinds, but I want to open the blinds. Okay, then it’ll be dark in here. If you open the blinds, there’s this thing called the sun. It’ll come in all by itself, but not if you close the blinds. If you close your heart, you’ll not feel who you are because you’re having to watch a closed heart, which is not very pleasant and you’re having to watch it disturb mine, which is not very pleasant. And the only way you know how to get your heart open is if situations outside match your stuff inside.

That’s why the outside affects the inside. Okay? He reminded me of Uncle George. I really loved Uncle George. He died when I was young in my house and oh my God, the hair looks just, yeah, of course I want to go out with him. Holy Mac was a mess. Murder. It’s nothing to do with the Uncle George. I do. You hear me? I told you once, I never had enough time. And again, don’t listen to me. Just live your life, but pay attention. That’s all I ask. Go out to a dating site and they’re going to ask you questions. Do you like this kind of person? Do you like that kind of person? Do you like golf? Do you like this sport? Do you like this? Do you like that? Do you know what they’re asking you? What are your some scars?

What are your some scars? Why do you like golf? My mother played golf and she’s really good and we had the most fun. Why do not like golf? Because my mother played golf and she was terrible and she threw the clubs at me. You dare think of something you made up is stuff that got left in there and you’re answering all these questions. And now what I’ll do is I’ll take the patterns that you stored inside of you, some scars and somebody else’s patterns and I’ll let a computer, Hey, I let a computer decide who you should get along with. Guess what? If you took that test, answer those questions five years ago, you would not have answered ’em the same. If you take ’em five years from now, you’ll not answer ’em the same because you have more experiences, different experiences. In fact, you found out why something happened that really bothered you five years ago and you opened so much with so much compassion for the person who said that and you didn’t even understand what they were saying.

Now answer the question versus how you would answer it five years ago. Every day of your life having different experiences. So that’s why when you go ahead and let the AI decide who you should marry, the problem is you should not let your, some scars decide who you should marry. But that’s a whole nother discussion because they will. And so now it matches it all up. And you go out there and you get a divorce in five years. Why? I told you why you are not going to be the same and he or she is not going to be the same. And you didn’t know them to start with. You thought you understood them. You thought they were what they projected to you because they liked you. So they presented that person well, who else was in there? You don’t want to know. They don’t want to know.

But no worries coming back up. Alright, we’re having an honest talk. There’s nothing wrong with any of this. Just be conscious. Be aware. Don’t get scared, don’t not like it. Don’t change everything. That’s the thing I’ve learned in 50 years, right? Just notice. Notice what’s going on and you’re going to see that we just talked about what’s going on. Doesn’t mean you should renounce, doesn’t mean you should deny. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get married. That’s fine. Get married, get divorced. You’ll learn from both. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Just watch. And as you go through your life being the witness, you’re going to find out that it doesn’t have as much pull. What you’re looking at doesn’t have as much pull as it used to. Remember I said if you’re watching the tv, you can just get up. But not if you’re really interested in the tv, then you won’t get up.

You can, but you won’t. So now you’re watching your mind, you’re watching some scars, you’re watching the patterns, you’re watching your heart, aren’t you? You’re watching all this stuff. You’re very attached to it over time because of the marriage and because of the divorce and because of the birth and because of a death and because of getting fired and because of getting hired, because of success, because of failure, you’re going to mature. Earth is a place of so sense to evolve. You’ll learn that what you’re looking at isn’t really an answer to anything. It’s like the sirens just calls you into the rocks. Doesn’t ever turn out the way it looks like it’s going to be. Well, I guess it was never that way. You were projecting onto it, weren’t you? That person wasn’t who you thought they were. Okay? And the job wasn’t what you thought.

Oh, it’s a perfect job. My God, I finally got a woman boss. Oh, go man, it’s cool. Well, she got fired yesterday. This maniacal egotistical guy took over. Who doesn’t like women anymore? It can’t be what you want it to be. Well, I guess it is what it is. It’s just everybody’s a sum of their learned experiences and science. Some of it’s learned experiences. I getting into it. What does science say cause effect. Everything is what it is because of what made it be that way. How’s that? How’s that first statement? They’re science. Everything is what it is because of all the forces that coalesce together to make it be that way. Okay, very good. So it’s not going to be the way you want it to be. And you mature if you’re wise because you’re watching, you’re not fighting, you’re watching, you’re learning, right?

And more and more you say, well, what if I appreciate the way it is? What if I can, instead of me bringing me into the moment, I allow the moment to come into me and learn to respect it. To honor it. There’s rain. Yes. I don’t care that you didn’t want it to rain. I don’t care that you don’t want it to be hot. I don’t care. You don’t want it to be cold. I don’t care that you wish that fall came later. I didn’t think it’d be 45 in Florida in the middle of October. You have these preferences that you created in your mind based on your past experiences. What if you grew up north? There’s always just cold in October. What if you grew up with the islands? It never does. And now you think it’s supposed to be that way? You’re wrong.

It’s supposed to be the way it is. That means it’s good. It’s moral to it. It’s right. Doesn’t even have to stay that way. But if it happened, it was the sum of all the experience that made it happen. And you stepped into the moment with your stuff and said, no, I don’t like it. Okay? And therefore you suffer. You did not suffer. It was cold. You suffered because you didn’t like being a cold. If you liked being a cold, you’re having a lot of fun. Now you understand spirituality. You understand the whole basis of the entire journey. Well, I like to quote Rumi, the quote from Rumi that says the following yesterday, I was clever, so I was trying to change the world today. I’m wise, so I’m changing myself. That’s what happens. It doesn’t mean you’re supposed to, doesn’t mean you’ll go to hell if you don’t.

It means you woke up and realize, wait a minute, it takes two to tango here. It takes the outside event and me deciding whether I like it or not, and if I like it, I’m happy. If I don’t like it, I’m not so on. Don’t just like it. Oh, it’s cheating. No, it’s not. It’s perfectly legitimate. You made up whether you like it or not. Anyways, it’s just some you learned experiences. How much more fun would it be to like things you liked them there, you went to dinner and you ordered something and the size of the serving was too small or the waiter didn’t do something right or someone was smoking in the back, right? It just ruined your dinner. No, it did not ruin your dinner. You ruined your dinner. You, your preference is this junk that you built inside your mind couldn’t handle.

You could sit there and say, well, the poor guy’s so nervous that smoking makes him feel better. I think I can handle that, right? Just don’t let reality ruin your life. Now, once you do that, can you mention to the matri to, or somebody thought it was a no smoking thing, they’re allowed to smoke, right? Not yell at the guy, handle what’s going on. You’re perfectly fine to mention it. You’re perfectly fine to mention if you feel you’re supposed to mention it to help other people. Not because of you. Not because I couldn’t handle it. That’s why I said something about it. I handled it. But to be fair to others and so on. You mentioned something. Do you see the difference? One is you can’t handle things, so you’re acting accordingly to try to manipulate them and change them so you can be better, feel better.

I want you to feel wonderful. I want you to feel ecstasy all the time. Now come out and see what you’re doing to help. Not, I’m not okay. What you guys better do to help me. You guys better change. You guys better be the way I need you to be. For me to be okay. That’s a heck of a life, isn’t it? Because there’s a lot of people and they change all the time, and you’re going to have a very, very hard time living here, aren’t you? Whereas if you work on yourself, how do you work ultimately? And I got one minute left. What is the spiritual path? Stop storing that stuff in there. That’s the bottom line. If you don’t store the stuff in there, it won’t come back and bite you later. It won’t come back and ruin your life. And if you don’t store new stuff in there, as you go through your everyday life, little stuff, anything, the old stuff will come back up. Why do I want to do that? You don’t want it in there. It’s blocking you. It’s ruining your life. Well, we’ll come back up. Those of you who know economics and business, because it’s a life o stack. Last in first out,

It’s inventory analysis, right? When you shove stuff in there today, I didn’t like the rain. Then the stuff that was in there before gets pushed further down. It takes time for it to come up. If you don’t push more stuff in there, that stuff’s going to come up by itself. Can you use a therapist? Sure, you need a therapist. Use a therapist. But I’m telling you, it’ll come up by itself. You just have to be willing to say, I don’t want it in there. I don’t want mommy in there. She’s been dead for 20 years. Okay, I don’t need that. I don’t need the high school to be in there. I don’t need all these things to be in there. I want to live my life now. I want to be real. Okay? Well, you can’t be when you’re manipulating everything. So you relax and release.

You relax and release stuff happening today. Be positive, relax and release. Don’t store more. Then the old stuff will start coming up. That’s fine. Welcome it up and keep letting go. It’s called purification. And ultimately when you let enough go, you’ll reach a point where this energy flow starts flowing inside of you, which energy flow, shock D, spirit quality, whatever you want, that which is in there and what’s made the Garden of Eden be the garden of Eden. That is your natural state of such an un eternal conscious ecstasy. Well, why don’t I feel it? Because you shoved all this stuff on top of it. You damned it up. And now as you’re letting it go, you’ll start feeling it more and more for no reason. No reason. You walk outside and you go into ecstasy. A bird will chirp. Oh, it’ll hit you to the core of your being.

Everything will start hitting you to the core of your being. Why? Because you’re not blocking the core of your being that you’re only letting in that what you want. You’re not letting your mind destroy your life. And this is spiritual growth. We started off by talking about what would it be like to find out what’s really going on in there? Who you really are, what your relationship with yourself. What’s your relationship with everything else? Why does the outside world affect the inside? Have we answered that? Do you understand? Work on letting go and everything will change.

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.