E32: Transforming Struggle into Strength: The Art of Conscious Living

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. Life, all of life can be extremely difficult or extremely wonderful, interesting, exciting, aspiring passionate and people don’t believe it, but it can be that way all the time. And the reason we don’t believe it is because we have a very, very deeply ingrained concept of what’s going on. It’s as follows, if I want something and it happens, I get happy. If I don’t want something and it happens, I get upset there. Go home. Has anybody noticed? Seriously? Has anyone noticed? Okay, therefore, because you notice that you spend your entire life trying to get what you want and avoid what you don’t want, trying to have the moments in front of you, turn you on and not turn you off. There’s two ways to approach this. One is a very, very shallow way of living and there is a very, very deep way of living.

One works the does not. It takes two to tango. It says, if I get what I want, I’m happy. If I get what I don’t want, I’m upset. There’s two sides that equation, but you don’t look at it that way. People don’t look at it that way. One is, how did I decide what I want? That’s the root. How did I decide what I want so that when I get it, it makes me happy. I don’t pay attention to that. Life becomes a struggle. What do you mean? I have to struggle with the moments in front of me, not just the moments in front of me. I have to struggle with what I think will be the moments in front of me in the future. Because if that doesn’t look good, even though it hasn’t happened yet, I’m not happy and if I think about something I don’t want to happen that might happen in the future, I get upset.

Correct? Likewise, what about the past? If I didn’t like things that happened, I didn’t want them to happen. I want them not to have happened. I’m in trouble. Well, I guess they happened. You don’t look at it that way, but they weren’t supposed to happen. I’m sorry. I don’t care. They happened. I’m a scientist. You can’t say they were supposed to happen. They’re from upset that they happened. They’s the silliest thing I ever heard of because they’re never going to not have happened and never will they not have happened. If they happened, they happened. Until you get time machines, you ain’t going back to undo it. They took place, they happened, but I don’t want them to have happened. There we go. Therefore, now there’s something you don’t want that happened and you’re never going to change it. And likewise with the future, something I don’t want might happen.

No, don’t tell me that. I’m going to tell you that I don’t know what’s going to happen, nor do you, but something you don’t want might happen. Something you want might happen. Something in the past that you wanted happen made you happy, MLEs off. Congratulations. The point is you have to decide, and this is the entire spiritual journey. Do you want to continue trying to control and manipulate what unfolds in front of you and what unfolded in front of you? What might unfold in front of you, past, present, and future? Do you want to be in control of that and try to manipulate that so that it matches what you want and doesn’t match what you don’t want? And don’t get scared. Do you want to question why you want something and why you don’t want something? Because that’s a hundred percent up to you.

The other is up to everybody and everything that will ever happen, every person that talks to you, every person who wears certain clothes, every person, every single thing outside is now your responsibility versus if I question the very deep s deep spirituality, right? How did I decide what I want? Not that’s God truth. I wanted one is I’m working outside to be okay and that’s very relative. It takes a lot of stress and anxiety and worry and fear and all kinds of stuff. The other is I’m working inside. I understand that is the spiritual journey. Are you working outside to sometimes relatively be okay and very often not be okay? That’s why you suffer because you decided how you want it to be and it wasn’t that way. You suffer because you decided how you don’t want it to be, and it was that way.

If you don’t get what you want, you suffer. You get disappointed, you get upset, you get anxious, you hear me? And if you get what you don’t want, what’s wrong with God? I don’t even believe in him. Why would we do such a thing? That’s it. It’s right there in front of you. So you have a choice. Everyone has a choice. You spend all of your will and all of your effort and all of your anxiety, et cetera, et cetera, trying to manipulate and control what was in front of you. I laugh at that one. What is in front of you and what will be in front of you? And don’t tell me you don’t do that all the time. That’s what’s going on. Or you make this drastic amazing shift in your consciousness to say, wait a minute, what if I decide to like it?

That’s cheating. That’s not even fair, right? That’s like picking up the golf ball and dropping in the hole. Well, why not? Hurry, we’re going out to the stadium at night when there’s nobody on other side and keep passing the football across the goal line. Hooray, hooray, and get a whole bunch of people to go out with you and cheer. Let’s do that. It’s a lot of fun. Why did you have to make it so difficult? Why don’t you just decide to things? That’s our discussion tonight. Who said you can’t do that? What’s wrong with that? I don’t know. There must be something wrong biblically incorrect or something. I don’t know. There’s nothing wrong. You can do it ever you want. You’re inside out here. You can’t do whatever you want. You get in trouble in here. You do whatever you want. So if it’s true that if you get what you want, you’re happy.

What if you get what you really, really, really want? You get really, really happy. Who’s telling you that you can’t be in charge willfully consciously to the decide I want it. I like it. I’m driving down the road. Somebody cuts me off. I ram on my brakes, I skid around. I don’t hit anything. It’s so exciting isn’t that? It’s just exciting. And if I do hit something and we hit something, then we get to meet the insurance people and we get to meet the police. It’s exciting until you say it’s not. If you understand that you understand spirituality, it’s not meditation, it’s not gurus, it’s not this, that and the other thing. It’s that you realize I’m in here. I’m the only one. Are you not the only one in there? Is mommy in there, daddy in there? You passed in there actually literally in there.

No, you are living in here. You’re the only one in there. I call it a single occupancy apartment. That’s where you live. You’re it. You’re it in there. You have to fight with anybody. You have to do anything. Okay? If you messed it up in there, then you did it as your business. Why? Because you no one in there. If I go into your house and there’s just dirt and pizza, crushed and junk all over the place, then you don’t one lives there. Ever live there. Whoever goes there. Guess who did it? No, my mother means treated me. No, mommy’s not here anymore. You did it. That’s what your inside is. You’re the only one in there. If it’s a mess in there, guess who made it a mess? Oh, but things happen that I didn’t like. There you go. This is what a normal human being’s like, but things happened outside that I didn’t like and because they happened, I didn’t like them.

I suppressed them. Freud, I suppressed them, I stored them. I kept them. What the things I didn’t like. Well, that’s very intelligent. I wonder what it was going to be like in there. If you suppress and store every single thing that ever disturbed you in your life inside of you and you have, you’re going to be disturbed, so why’d you do it? Nobody ever talked to you like this. They talked to you about how to attract yourself, what you want, how to be strong, how to be healthy and how to be pretty handsome and how to impress everybody and how to get everyone like you and how to get what you want. That’s what they taught you and that’s what success looks like. Really? That’s not success. That’s momentarily managed to get what makes you feel good. It’s called conditional wellbeing. Is it conditional because it’s conditional.

It’s conditioned based upon having money and the market not crashing and somebody liking you and somebody clapping. When you walk in the room, everybody thinking you’re special. You get in the corner office. It’s conditional on you getting what you want. If you lose it, what happens? You get to the corner office, I says, oh, we didn’t mean to give that to you. That goes to John. Get out. How you doing? A little bit different than when they gave it to you. You are doing this and only a wise person wakes up and realizes, wait a minute, if I want to be okay, and the balance, the formula for me, okay? Is that what I want is happening is what I get. Why am I out there trying to manipulate the outside world? Why don’t I just wake up in here and realize it’s called positive thinking.

By the way, it’s not that weird. Okay, it’s going to rain tomorrow. I want ’em to go camping. I want to go hiking, right? Wow, it’s going to rain. That means they’ll refresh food in Publix. Who cares about hiking? You get to do that. Don’t think it’s cheating. It’s called wisdom. If you are the only one in there and you are deciding the state of your happiness, the state of your wellbeing or the state of your depression, why don’t you wake up and question how it is? You have decided what you want instead of plotting and planning how to get what you want. Now, by the way, I’ll show you, it doesn’t mean you’re not out there working with things. I’m telling you, you should be happy all the time, all the time inside. How can I be happy if someone I love died? Because you appreciate and welcome the pain.

It’s not that you don’t feel pain, you’re not suppressing anything. You just welcome life’s experiences as wow, that’s awesome. How the heart can feel like that and other times it’s so elevated and it can feel like that. I don’t feel like that. I’m noticing a heart that feels like that. That’s witness consciousness. That’s what it means to awake spiritually. You are the consciousness inside experiencing an elevated filled with love, an excited heart. Ever felt it, ever felt it. Boom, we got there. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Right? And you are also the exact same consciousness that is feeling it break when somebody hurts you or leaves you or dies. It’s the same you in there, okay? Then wake up and realize if you appreciate and honor life, all the experiences of life, whatever they are, and you honor that and you say, I was born and I’m going to die, and in between there will be moments unfolding in front of me that I either don’t like resist suppress or I learn to appreciate the experience of life and say thank you to all things that come, including the pain.

And people say you can’t be happy all the time. You in there can be happy all the time. You can be elevated. You can feel Shakti all the time while you’re experiencing your humanness of sorrow or pain or loss. Nothing wrong with that, then you’re a very healthy human being. You suppress things because you can’t handle them because you don’t like them. What you said to me yesterday, I can’t believe you said that. I would’ve never said to anybody. Why’d you say that? Look at that now. I’ve said all day, aren’t I? Why? Because one out of 8.3 billion people on the planet earth said something to me yesterday. That’s crazy. Why don’t I sit there and say, whoa, I wonder why she would say that. Whatever. And look at my ego. It got all upset. Cute. Look at that little thing I tried to teach you over and over again.

I know you’re bored of it, but you shouldn’t be. You’re sitting on a tiny little planet spinning around the middle of nowhere getting upset by what? One of 8.3 million people uttered out of their mouth. You keep it going for days. How could they say that there’s something wrong with you? There’s just something that happened on a little tiny planet in the middle of nowheres. I just try to get it through to you. 1.3 million earths fit inside the sun and you’re so hung up on some tiny moment that happened on the planet that you screwed yourself up and you’ve done it every moment of your life. If you didn’t like it, you suppressed it and kept it inside. If you like it, you want to happen again and you got disappointed because it didn’t happen again. You have made a complete mess of the whole thing.

Instead of saying this is a pretty nice planet, we’re looking all over the place. I’ve seen nothing. Mars, Jupiter everywhere. We have probes, we’ve landed on these planets. You understand? We’ve landed all the planets. Here’s what we found. Nothing. When was the last time you saw nothing in front of you on the planet earth? Never. And instead of saying, wow, I won the lottery, I won the jackpot. There’s colors and shapes and people and things to do and computers. Oh my God, and there’s hospitals and people that take care of you and x-ray machines and MRIs and oh my God, what an exciting thing to have be involved in, right? You have the right to do that. Nothing is stopping you but you. And so you wake up and you realize if I want to be okay, I can be okay, but not conditionally, okay, not I’m only okay if you say what I want you to say and wear what I want you to wear and don’t hold hands with what I don’t want you to hold hands with.

In other words, I can’t handle myself, so you better watch it. How about I can handle myself, in fact, I can handle anything that will ever happen in front of me. I can handle it. Whoa, come visit me when you get there. We’ll put a picture on the wall. People say, well, what’s a master? What’s a master of golf? Someone who mastered the game of golf. What’s a master artist? Alright, a master pianist. Somebody who mastered that. What’s the master? Someone who mastered the art of life. What does that mean? That they succeeded? No, because they could fail. Alright? That they are completely at peace in harmony and ecstatic with every single moment that will unfold in front of them. They don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen. They know they’ll be okay. That’s what I want you. How do you undercut worrying?

I’ll buy insurance. I’ll make sure you took vows, you took marriage vows. I’ll make sure it’ll be the way I want. So I have to worry. Good luck. Anybody ever notice it doesn’t always work out. In fact, what if you find out that your insurance company’s in trouble Now you worry about the insurance you bought. There’s no stopping worrying because anything can happen. So as long as you can’t handle what might happen, you’re going to worry. I’m make a statement to you, alright? I’m not cursing you telling you the truth. As long as you know that you can’t handle something that might happen, you will worry. You will worry. It might happen. What if there is nothing that you can’t handle? There’s nothing you doesn’t mean you still can work with it. It doesn’t mean you have to make it happen or anything like that.

You still can work with it, but you work with it not out of worry and not out of fear, out of love, out of excitement, out of joy. Life is an interactive sport. If you’re playing a sport and you hate it, you’re not very sporty. The sport’s supposed to be fun. This is exciting, but it’s challenging. It’s supposed to be challenging. Would an NFL football team enjoy playing against kindergartners? No. Why would they do such a thing, right? Well, life is life challenging. It’s exciting, it’s challenging. Hey, we go in the Olympics. I don’t know why we do this. They’re so stupid and we set up these obstacles. They’re called hurdles on this path that you have to run. Why would you do such a thing? Because it’s exciting, it’s challenging. That’s what life is. Every moment of your life is an opportunity to get turned on, to get the best of you, to bring it forward, but not to get what you want, but for the joy of interacting with life.

That’s what it means. Be open to be high and whole and complete. Then you interact, you wake up. I told you, how does a great being wake up every morning I’m back. I wonder what will happen today. I have no idea what it’ll be. What if you enjoyed it? First of all, let’s start that way. Don’t worry about it. You can do it or not. Wouldn’t that be fun? Wouldn’t it be fun to wake up every single morning, not worry about a single thing, but you’re at camp? This is going to be fun. Why? Because I’m going to make it fun because I’m able to handle it. I’m not afraid of anything. I like challenges, whatever it is. So basically you’ve raised yourself to that state. If you understand that that’s a beautiful life. That’s the only life with no worry, no anxiety, no suffering, no anything.

Who talks you this by the way? Not me. Who talks you this? Buddha 500 BC Buddha said the following four noble truths. One, all life is suffering. You didn’t mean to break your arm all the time. Your husband leaves you, you suffer. You’re scared, you’re insecure, you’re jealous. You got problems. If you don’t have ’em now you’re afraid you’ll have ’em later or you’d worry about what you had before. All life is suffering. That was your first statement. First noble truth of Buddha. You wouldn’t be negative. You’re just looking at objectively rich people suffer. Poor people suffer. Sick people suffer. Healthy people suffer. Young people suffer. Old people suffer. Okay, there’s Buddha. All life is suffering. What’s the second noble truth? Me? I have to talk for hours. He’s just little sentences, right? He gets it all down. Second noble truth, the cause of suffering.

Whoa, one sentence. Few words. He’s going to tell you the entire cause of which suffering, sickness, interpersonal relationships. War. No, he didn’t say that. The cause of all suffering. Whoa. I dunno. If you ever take a look at Buddhist teachings, that’s pretty bold. Sit there and say I understand and will pass on to you the cause of all suffering that ever was, will ever be for everybody. That’s the second noble truth. The cause of suffering is preference. Sometimes that’s translated as desire. Great zen patriarchs choose the word preference. I do also why? Because you think of desire as passion. Extreme lust, greed. What he means is preference. A desire is a preference, isn’t it? I desire this happens. Desire that doesn’t happen. That’s a preference. You have a preference that’s much cleaner. So the cause of all suffering is preference. Whoa, what does that mean?

I just told you, you drive down the road passing white lines all the time. Okay, suffering. Sometimes they’re yellow, sometimes they’re dashed, sometimes they’re double. You’re freaking out. You got a problem. No, because you couldn’t care less. You do not have a preference. Does that mean there shouldn’t be white lines? No, there should be white lines. They tell you when to pass and not pass. They’re safe things to have around but you can handle them. You’re perfectly comfortable handling that. They change because you don’t have a preference. I told you the story Once upon a time there was a white line painter in the road and he sat on the back of this little trailer and he pulled the handle and that’s what put the white lines and he knew when to make ’em dash, when to make ’em solid. He dug his job but he wasn’t very good at it and he used to dribble a lot.

You’ve seen the ones that dribble and he got fired. Poor guy and he had a preference not to get fired. I’m telling you that that person can’t handle the white lines. If that person drives down the road and he sees a couple of dribbles, he gets all upset. Did that guy get fired? All of a sudden he has a preference that is based on these white lines. So he’s not okay. So all life is suffering the cause. Suffering is preference. Was Buddhist sin telling you? If you don’t have a preference, you will not suffer. I don’t want to die. It’s really smart. Okay? Because you’re going to die. I am sorry to tell you, right? But people aren’t there. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to think about it. Fine. Then you’ll suffer every time you get a funeral notice you suffer every time when your friends die.

Oh my god, I’m getting older and people are dying all around me left and right. Oh, I can’t handle this. I’m freaked out. So the end of your life will be freaky. So if you have a preference about anything you suffer, you will suffer. So basically Buddhist said the cause of suffering is preference and the third noble truth is very powerful to end suffering. End preference. He literally told these things 500 bc. In other words, you want to not suffer, work on your preferences, not try to manipulate the life so you don’t die. They’re try to manipulate life so nobody says something you don’t like. They’re trying to manipulate the life so that everybody thinks you’re special and they clap whenever you walk in the room. Wouldn’t that be nice? Hey, here she is. Okay, what if I work with that and I understand I can be okay with everything.

I don’t have to have a preference. Not having a preference doesn’t mean you renounce the world. Deep spiritual teaching are not about renunciation, they’re about acceptance. If I say I can only be okay by renouncing what I want, I renounce it. Get away from me. No, don’t talk to me. Don’t say that to me. I can’t handle it. I have to go into solitude. You’re not okay. You’re suppressing stuff. How do you know what to deny that what you prefer? I’m going to make sure I renounce it, I deny it. Right? So you still got preferences. What if you didn’t have preferences? How is a Thursday? Patriarch had a beautiful opening line that’s called treat the faith mind goes as follows. The great way, meaning the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences and it goes on very beautifully. From there I give the talks and I say that I really understand all of that, right?

I see people get a lot of resistance. If I don’t prefer anything, I won’t be happy. Why would I get out of bed? Why would I do anything? Okay, you win. We’re I’m probably in trouble. We’ll change the first line of one of those beautiful spiritual lines ever written. The third ain’t patriarchs. Treat us have faith in mind. Here’s how it’s going to go, but don’t tell me I did it. Alright? The great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything. Do you understand now why they teach you that the opposites are the same. So if you have no preferences or if you prefer everything, that’s the same. Isn’t it? Isn’t that beautiful? So you’re welcome to keep your preferences as long as you prefer everything. Just don’t get selective because you’re going to suffer the minute you some of the later lines in that poem.

The great way is not difficult with those under preferences. When love and hat are both absent, meaning liking and disliking, everything becomes clear and disguised. Make the slightest distinction. However, and heaven and earth will be set infinitely apart to set aside what you like for what you dislike is the disease of the mind. Avoid such pursuits. In other words, make any distinction. Just say, I don’t want to die. Just say I don’t want to have a car accident. Seriously, it’s the only preference I have. Anything else can happen. I don’t want to get in a car accident. You are going to worry what time you get in the car. You trust anybody. If you hear a sound like a brake screeching you, a tire screech, you get all freaked out. One preference will destroy your life. Do you understand that? I don’t want to get sick.

I don’t want to get sick. I don’t ever want to get sick. Okay? You better watch what you eat better. Watch where you go. Better wear the masks. You better watch every single thing. You better check out where you’re going to visit. Foreign country. Oh my god, a lot of sickness around there. It destroyed your life. You can’t live your life freely can you? Because you said I don’t want to get sick. How about this one? And people say this, don’t tell my said so I don’t want to get old. I don’t want to get old. I don’t want to get wrinkly. I want to stay as beautiful or handsome as I was in my twenties. Just don’t want to get old. And you wait and see how much you suffer, how much you worry, how much you freak out or little gray hair, oh you get the first gray hair, right or wrong? Look at me. That’s what Buddha taught you. That’s what I’m teaching you. If you have preferences, you’re going to suffer. But I want to go deeper into what would it be like to live without preferences. I don’t do that anymore. I told you, I’ve turned it around for you. What would it be like to prefer everything? To prefer life, to prefer the challenges of life, to love getting old. It’s so much fun. You don’t have to care what people think about you. They know you don’t look good.

They know you can’t walk real well. Okay? But they know you burp. Alright? It’s not difficult. It’s really, I’ll tell you, it’s a lot of fun getting old, right? I used to have a lot of hair. It was a hippie. All right, so I don’t have any hair anymore. I have to worry about it, right? Have fun. Watch this as an expression. Have fun for God’s sake. That’s literally you want to go to God, you better have fun, otherwise you’re caught in all this junk and you freak out. So basically the great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything. Alright? Now we’ve talked about it enough. Wouldn’t it be fun? Tell me the truth. I know you don’t think you can do it, but wouldn’t it be fun to wake up in the morning and realize the day’s going to be fun? Why?

Because you said so and that there’s nothing that anyone can do that will make it not that way, which doesn’t mean that their heart can’t hurt. Doesn’t mean you can’t get sick, doesn’t mean everything goes the way you want except the way it goes is what you want. It’s a new experience. Okay? How do you get there first? And that’s why I spent the first half hour attempting to convince you that you want to get there. Otherwise you want to manipulate people, places, and things the way you want. Do you see it? See the difference? Go on out there. Make every single person say what you want them to say when you to say it. That’s what you’re doing. That’s what you wear, what you wear. You drive the car that you do, you say what you say you try every single thing you try to impress everybody trying to get control.

Control. We all like control don’t we? Trying to make sure. Why do we want control? We’re all control freaks. Don’t kid yourself. Why do you want control? So that I can manipulate and control people so that when they do what they do, it makes me feel good. I want control. I’m not okay with things and by controlling you and making sure you respect me and you do what I want you to do and you say what I want you to say. When I want you to say it, then I’m okay. But if you don’t, then I’m not okay and neither are you by the way. Okay? That’s what it’s all about. If you wake up and I hope you do, I hope you do from the teaching, you get nothing else. Wouldn’t it be nice to be okay with everything instead of saying I’m only okay with a few things and I have to make them happen.

How small your list is of what will turn you on. I mean really turn you on. I say, oh hey, nice day. Somebody comes up and say, how was your day? Oh my god, I have rarely had a daily to my entire life. It was so beautiful How many days you had like that? Not minutes, days. You count on one hand your entire life, every minute should be like that. Alright, so you make this list of what God. God comes down burning bush. Whole thing, man. And says, what do you want? Five things. What are your top five? Okay, well you put down, spend all the time you want, put ’em down. You know what you just did? You just limited your life to those five things. Now write down how many other things could happen other than those five things.

800 billion, zillion and only five of them will turn you on. What a silly way to live your life. What’s the probability that those will happen? Well wait, I better yet, what’s the probability they will happen by themselves without you doing anything? Damn well, it’s zero. So get to work. Get to work and that’s why you’re anxious. That’s why I have anxiety. That’s why I have worry. That’s why I have tension. Hear me? You know what you want. It’s not going to happen by itself. You better get busy and so you’re going to do it the wise being wakes up and says, it’s not about going out there and trying to decide what five things will turn you on and then trying to manipulate and control every minute so that they happen and that, by the way, what’s the list here? This is a nice one.

Well, God said, well look, I really love you a whole lot. So we did our five things. What will turn you on? Pretty limited, but okay, tell me what it is that might bother you and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen. How many things are there that might bother you? Look at me. Way more than five, isn’t it? You better get rule because of that list. There’s not enough paper in the world to write the thing down and probably you forgot a few anyways, look at the difference of what will turn you on and we’ll turn you off. Okay? So you just wake up and you realize why am I making a list? Why don’t I learn to honor, respect and appreciate and have gratitude that I’m alive and that I get to go through these moments of experiencing the unfolding of the universe at this moment in time, gotten into teaching you and I don’t know if I get it through.

Do you understand that the moment you are experiencing right now in this room, you are seeing me from different angles. No one has ever experienced the moment you are experiencing right now. No one and no one ever will take a breath and you’re going to go out there and have an experience that no one’s going to have. Where’s my shoes? I can’t buy my shoes. Oh, no one had not that exact experience for those shoes at that moment right there, the sun is setting. You see it. Nobody else is there. You’re seeing that every single moment of your life. You are the only person that is experiencing that moment. No one ever has, no one isn’t and no one ever will. And you’re asking for more. You’re getting a private showing. Do you understand that God is giving you a private showing of creation at that moment and all you do is complain. Why? Because it’s not what I want. There’s your preference. So you’re missing the whole meaning of the whole thing. You’re very special. You’re special enough to have a moment created just for you. And what do you do? You complain about it, you miss it.

You miss the moment by saying, what? I don’t like what happened a moment ago. Son, I can’t express this moment. I want what happened a moment ago to happen again. I love you. No, I don’t want you to go to work. No. I’ll keep thinking about you and knows you missed the next moment. How many moments have you missed? You understand that? And so God, I finally got it. That’s the first half hour. You want to learn this. It’s a wonderful life to sit there and say, I want to learn to honor, respect, appreciate, and have gratitude for every single moment that passes in front of me. Are you capable? Yes, you are completely capable. Don’t understand. They took my blanking away too soon.

Why is that still in there? They took a blanking away a long time ago. I love Freud. I really do. I love psychology. What they’re doing is spending all their time trying to help you because you screwed yourself up. The blankie’s gone. Mommy’s gone. The boyfriend’s gone. They left a long time ago. The moments are passed. Why are they still inside of you bothering you because you decided to keep them. That guy with the white lines, he could say, oh boy, I got fired. I wasn’t very good at it. And from then on, the white lines do nothing different to him than anybody else. You did not have to keep that inside. Do you understand? You’re doing it. Things come in. They don’t all feel good, do they? Rattlesnakes don’t feel like butterflies and things have their nature. Buddhists talk about having their nature. Things come in, you experience them great.

Congratulations. You get to have experiences. When you experience things. You learn before you experience something. You didn’t know anything about it. When you experienced it, you know something about it. That’s great. That’s the purpose of your life, to grow, to experience, to become greater. So they come in but you won’t let them. You in there your consciousness. You have this power called will. You have hands in there that can push the things away. If you don’t want them to come in, they still happened outside, but you don’t have to let them all the way in inside. That’s the part I finally get somebody their eyes light up to realize. Have you ever had a moment that is so special that you melted in that moment that you weren’t even there. You just, your heart opened and everything melted. You used the word, it touched me to the depth of my being.

Have you ever had such a thing? Those are really nice, aren’t they? Of course they are. Touch the depth of your being. Do you let everything touch the depth of your being? That’s pretty funny. Again, one hand, five fingers. How many things have touched the depth of your being where you completely melted just went away, melted into it. It was that beautiful you said. I felt it was in the presence of God because you let it all the way in. Every single thing can go there. Every single thing is meant to go there. But why can’t it? Because I can’t handle it. I push it away. That’s what suppression is. That’s what Freud tried to talk to you about. But he mostly talked about what happened because you suppressed. He didn’t talk about who suppressed. There was a force in there suppressed that stuff in there.

You do it all the time. You push it away. You protect yourself, you rationalize, you justify. You defend. Get away from me. Do you or do you not push stuff away in there? It stays in there because you pushed it away. It stays in. It will not go away. It will not go away. Hypnotism will bring it back up. Life will bring it back up. Is it not true? The worst experience you ever had. Keep coming back up. Somebody reminds you of you see a billboard, somebody says something, somebody looks like somebody else, like their hat looked the same as the guy who dumped you in high school. We all got dumped in high school. Don’t worry, it’s in there because you stored it in there. Why’d you do such a silly thing? And by the way, while we’re at it, I want to get it down.

That’s where your preferences come from. You did not decide what you like and don’t like. You’re programmed by your past experiences. If that person who dumped you in high school had a certain kind of hat they wore, I’m telling you 20 years later you see somebody in that hat, you don’t feel good because you couldn’t handle that experience. So you stored it inside and therefore you have a preference not to be around people. Wear those hats. Your ex-husband’s name was Ben. It was a real schnuck. Finally he left. Good riddance. You’re at a party. All of a sudden you hear people screaming out, Ben, Ben, where are you? I’m telling you, your heart will skip a beat. I don’t care if you’re in Italy when it happens. That’s because you stored that in there. Now you have a preference against bin. Certainly that bin. I’ll tell you that right now. You got all this stuff stored in there and your stuff, if it was a positive thing you stored, you want it to happen again. Preference if it was a negative thing you store, you don’t want it to happen again. Preference, that’s where your preferences come from. So if Buddhist said the great was not difficult, those have no preferences. Now I understand why you have preferences. Something you’ve never ever experienced before here. Would you like to eat some what? I don’t know. You want to try it? Sure, try it. Disgusting. I’ll never take again.

You hear me? It was wonderful. What was it? What was it again? Can you say it again? No, I can’t Say it again. Am I telling you the truth or not? That’s where your preferences come from. You’re programmed by your past experiences. Where else would you get ’em? So now you’ve stored all this garbage inside of you. So you can’t be here now. You can’t experience the reality of the moment because you’re busy trying to make it be what you want and make it not be what you don’t want. And so you wake up and you realize if that’s the problem, then that’s the solution. Yes, there’s all these techniques and I love them all. It’s wonderful. You should meditate. You should do this, you should do mantra. You should breathe through different nostrils. You should go to put a hat on your head that sends little signals through your brain.

Yes, yes, yes. Do every single thing that helps you. If it helps you, I’m all in favor. Lemme tell you a secret until you stop pushing that stuff away and learn to let it pass through and touch you and learn what it’s like to be touched by things. Even things that are not pleasant. You understand that, right? A roach is running across the floor. We don’t like roaches. Okay? How are you dealing with that? Did it ruin your day? I’m not going home ever again. There could be roaches in the wall. Yes there could. You can ruin your life because a roach ran across the floor. Or you can look at it and say, do you know that as one of life’s oldest living creatures back to the dinosaurs? Really? That is the evolution of that roach. Oh my God. Doesn’t mean you have to kiss it.

It doesn’t mean you can’t pick it up and take it outside if you’re into killing it, okay, deal with it. Whatever it is. It doesn’t mean you can’t deal with it. It means you enjoy dealing with it. It’s called respect. I respect that there’s this creature running around on a floor. It’s old way older than you. You understand that? Not that particular one, but it’s heritage is way beyond human beings. And so you start with some respect and then you just, once you’re not freaked out over it, you let it touch you. Oh my God, look what’s here. And you deal with it. I’m not going to tell you to deal with it. That’s not my business. It’s your business. I told you once, if you go to Mars, you’re Mars. You’re by yourself. No one else made it. You sit in there in the middle of the dirt, dust, red dust, there’s nothing there. It wouldn’t take hours. Maybe you’ll give you a couple of days and somehow a roach made it in the ship. Alright? And it comes running across the sand. I’m telling you, you will chase that roach, but not to kill it, to make friends to have company. Hi, where’d you come from? Oh, you’re from Earth. Oh boy. A fellow Earthling.

Why can’t you be that way now? And the answer is, you can. You just have to stop shoving down there things that you can’t handle. So how do you do that? Learn to handle things. If the only thing you shove down there are the things you can’t handle either make sure they don’t happen. We talked about that all day. Or learn to handle things. Learn to handle reality and you’ll be way better off if it’s raining now and you don’t want it to be, you are suffering. If it is raining now and you think it’s neat that water falls in the sky on this planet, on Venus, sulfuric acid falls in the sky. That’s what falls in the sky and the planet. Venus, when it rains, I think we can be a little grateful that water’s falling from our sky. Instead of complaining about the rain, I try to teach you over and over again.

You can change how you look at things and if you change how you look at them that you like them, you will like them. Why? Because I like them. I told you. I told you so many times I have to do it again. It was back in the early seventies when I moved out here to be in solitude or I failed. But anyways, to be in solitude, it was hot. I had a VW van. It wasn’t air conditioned. I live in a house. I had no air conditioning and it’s the summer in the Florida, 97 degrees. So it was hot. And he make you used to complain. Alright? Finally one day looked at him, complaining, complaining, complaining. I stopped him. I was meditating. I was able to do that. I said, Hey, you in there? Why is it hot mom? A nice discussion. You have to push your mind away.

We can talk to it. Why is it hot? So he said, because the sun is hot. I said, what is the sun? He said, there’s a star. Do you know that The little twinkles you see in the sky at night, that’s one of ’em. Exactly one of those. You’re just close enough to a star to feel its heat. Ever think about that? That’s pretty neat. Who doesn’t like stars? You’re close enough to a star to feel the heat that’s pouring off that ball of fire. And guess how close that star is? 93 million miles away. Miami’s 360, 90 3 million. And it’s so hot that you’re complaining. Wow.

You get to do that with your mind. You get to use your abstract mind to understand reality and sit there and say, that is neat. It’s neat. I told you, you do not get sunburned. You get star burned. That’s a whole nother attitude, isn’t it? I’m so close to a star that will gets red far out. And so you just start using your intellectual mind, your higher mind. I have nothing. That’s the mind, the personal mind that’s full of your junk that you shoved down there over the course of your life and then built all these concepts and views and opinions and preferences and hopes and dreams. All that garbage you built in your personal mind. Why is it garbage? Because he built different ones. She built different one, and you’ll have different ones tomorrow. There’s just nothing. You love somebody tremendously until somebody tells you something about ’em. I don’t know if I like ’em anymore.

One more experience. Your mind changes. This doesn’t change. Suns with 93 million miles away for 4.5 billion years. Give or take a few miles. Let’s have your foundation be truth. Therefore, you can handle reality because your foundation is truth and for reality is truth. And so now you are enjoying, I swear since that that time, if I get out of my car and it’s hot out, which is quite often, I can’t not stop face the sun, feel that heat pour on me and think I’m sitting on a planet, tiny little planet of which 1.3 million fit inside that star. And I’m just ing that star. Somebody. What’d you do today? A 360. What’d you do this year? A really big 360. That’s all you orbited the sun. You just orbited a star. Don’t worry, you only have 89 day of them. You might as well enjoy ’em. You can do this, can’t you?

What’s stopping you from doing this? Absolutely nothing. Nothing. And then I don’t know why it turns me on so much I’d like to share with you. That’s a star. You’ve seen pictures of the star out in the red burning with the flares, right? Pretty far out, right? Okay, that’s the star. Alright, how many are there? Oh, there are 300 billion in your galaxy. How many? 300 billion of those things in the Milky Way galaxy. Well, how far away is the next closest to us? How far away is that? Alright, 4.3 light years, which means nothing. That’s a nice number. 4.3, right? What’s the light year if I took a beam of light, held it above the earth. You got it? I have it in my finger. Let it go for one second. It’s circumnavigated the globe seven and a half times now. Fast enough for you. What’s a light year?

That speed every second for a year and 4.3 light years is the next closest star. Alright? Ever. Think about it’s the next closest star and there’s 300 billion and you’re worrying about what exactly is freaking you out. There’s something wrong here because there’s nothing to be freaked out about. It’s kind of far out reality, isn’t it? But you got pretty myopic, didn’t you? Every little thing bothers you. Why don’t you try expanding your frame of reference into what reality? I think for a moment, that’s the closest store. There’s 300 billion, they’re all the far away and there’s 2 trillion galaxies. What are you worrying about? Why are you getting so caught up in nothing? Nothing for the few years You’re here in the middle of nowhere spinning through space and you make a fricking mess of your life, didn’t you? Alright, work with yourself, raise yourself. I just gave you away.

Science can help you. Science is wonderful. It is. You don’t have to be a scientist. Just pay attention to what they found. Pay attention to what’s happening out there with the Hubble and the James Webb and this stuff. It’s like, please, I beg you. They were looking at reality. What you’re looking at here is the 0.1 minus 7 billion part of reality, and you’re freaking out over it. You decided to like or not like it. How about we open up? That’s what it’s called to be open. That’s what it’s called to expand your frame of reference. People talk about expanding consciousness in the sixties. We talk about that expanded consciousness. Let’s not talk about expanded consciousness. Let’s talk about not contracting consciousness. Consciousness is already expanded. It’s universal. Well, why don’t I experience that? You have contracted your consciousness down to this tiny, tiny little thing called your thoughts, your feelings, your body, what you like and what you don’t like.

Oh my God, how much of the universe is that? I like to call it this statistically insignificant. That’s what it is. Learn not to do that. Work with yourself. Raise yourself if you do that. Look, I gave you all kinds of clues on how to do that, but do it every moment. It’s not just meditating or doing this or that. Yes, meditation is wonderful. I don’t talk against it. I talk into meditation. I do not. I meditate. But I’m telling you, you spend much more time not meditating than you do meditating. So I would like to tell you what to do when you’re not meditating. Okay? Let somebody else tell you what to do when you’re meditating. Plenty of people, but I’m telling you that you can change your entire life almost instantaneously by doing what I’m telling you about. See, they say you change your life by getting what you want.

No, you change your life by expanding your consciousness so that you’re in awe that any of it exists. There’s a person over there, I don’t know her. That person has 25 trillion, 25 to 30 trillion living cells making up her body. Wow. Trillion, right? They’ll talk to each other and that’s what your body is. There’s not something there, but these cells binding themselves together. Wow. How do I not respect her? Well, she has different views than me. Well, I don’t care. Why do people have different views? You’ve just been through an election. Why do people have different views? People say, how could somebody go for that? How somebody, because your mind is the sum of your learned experiences. Your mind is her mind is her mind is his mind is what else is going on in your mind, but the sum of your learned experiences. So don’t say, I don’t understand why somebody can think like that.

Don’t ever say, I understand how somebody do that. You can’t understand because some of your own experiences is what you built in your mind. And guess what it seems right? Doesn’t it? Why I have evidence. I have evidence that it’s right all my life. I have total evidence. Well, so do they. That’s called compassion. That’s called right understanding. Now that doesn’t mean you don’t work for what you see. That’s the game. If you play golf, you try to get the ball in the hole. So you’re here to express yourself, but don’t not pay attention to what’s going on. Your mind is nothing. Your mind just says something. Learn experiences. I teach you all the time compared to the experience you’re having. How many are you missing? 700 billion, trillion, zillion to one. How many other experiences are going on right now? Everywhere. They’re missing ’em all, aren’t you? I love people. They say, I don’t want to miss anything. Well, you’re missing everything.

You are missing everything, and you will be missing everything. Therefore, appreciate what you’re not missing. Appreciate the experience you’re having no matter what it is. Because the only one, you’re not missing. And so what you do is you let it come in. You got to touch you, but you have to learn. You have to learn how to do it. You have to learn how to stay open. You have to learn how to not push it away. You push it away all the time, but you push it away. Even it didn’t happen because it might’ve happened. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to see, I don’t get along with my parents. I don’t want to see them. You’re pushing away the thought of everything, just pushing away, pushing away, pushing away. Why? Because you store all that drunken in there, but a tough childhood.

Are you still a child? No. How old are you? 43. When do you think you stopped your tough childhood? Well, I left home in 16 or 17. Okay, well that’s like 30 years ago. So the fact that you had a tough childhood, I don’t understand why it’s relevant. And don’t you dare tell psychology. I said that it’s relevant because you stored it. It’s relevant. You couldn’t handle it, which is understandable. You’re only young, right? But fine. You stop playing with toys. Why do you stop storing your junk? Okay, you couldn’t handle it. So you push it away and now it’s still in there, isn’t it? All the psychology agrees with me. Totally. 100%. You couldn’t handle it, so you push it away. It’s still in there. It’s going to determine your entire life. My parents got divorced. I’m not getting married. Why? It was painful for me. I don’t want to put my child through it. You don’t have any children. I know I’m not going to have any because I don’t want to put ’em through it. Congratulations. Isn’t that what happened to you when you’re 12 years old, determine rest of your life. Right? Stop it. Okay? I love calling you stupid, but I am isn’t.

Doesn’t it seem stupid if you look it that way? What a stupid thing to do. Store what you don’t like for the rest of your life and then determine everything you to do. No, no deal with it. Alright? And the question becomes how people used say to me, maybe you don’t teach techniques. Well, it’s true. I don’t teach this, that or the other thing, but I do teach techniques. Here’s my technique. A moment’s going to unfold in front of you all the time. Learn to be okay with it. There’s a technique, and if you can learn it to be okay with it, I’m telling you what’s going to happen to you. You’re going to start having more and more nice moments because you didn’t judge the moment you honored and respected that it exists. Like I said, I don’t know her, but she’s a summer learned experience.

That’s fascinating. She’s a whole wealth of knowledge. I know nothing about, okay, I don’t care if in prison. I don’t care what she did that says, wow, she had experiences I never had. And her body’s made up of 30 trillion cells talking to each other. And you just start respecting life. You expect everybody you expect. Doesn’t mean that. If a drug dealer comes up to you and say, Hey, I want some drugs, that you say yes, but you understand that the guys get a problem. If person has problems, right? Hate them. You’re afraid of them. Doesn’t mean you stop and talk to ’em. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Nobody’s telling you what to do other than first honor and respect what’s happening. Then decide how to deal with it. If you come from that place of clarity, you can’t be wrong. There’s no right or wrong answer.

Do you understand that? It’s not some rule. It’s about are you open and clear and not acting based on the garbage you stored inside? My parents had drug dealers. Drug people are terrible. There’s have nothing to do with, and they’re disgusting, wiped out the face of, okay, fine. If it’s your parents talk to you, you don’t have to react to that. You can understand, well, mommy and daddy weren’t too open. And so you wake up and you free yourself. It’s called the untethered soul. You free yourself by letting go of the stuff you stored in there. You’re allowed to walk through your life, open, clear. You’ll make much better decisions, you have a much better life. And guess what? So with everybody else who interacts with you, what will happen as you open up, you’ll start feeling more energy. It’s amazing. You start feeling the Shakti flow, just, it starts welding up inside of you.

You wake up in the morning, you don’t wake up. It’s just whoosh, just flowing inside of you. There’s the start of your day. How about it should be so high inside of you when you wake up in the morning, you don’t need the rest of the day. You’ve already experienced higher than anybody could ever expect to do. Then brush your teeth and have fun with the buzz of the toothbrush. They need your breakfast, and so where did it come from? It grew on the land, on grass. I can’t get into it out of time, alright? But every single thing that’s happening is a miracle. A corn seed dropped into the ground and a stalk came up. How do you not understand? It’s a miracle. It’s truly a miracle. It took dirt, sunlight, and water. Who did something inside that kernel? I didn’t do it. The farmer didn’t do it.

It did it by itself. It took these minerals and stuff and it broke down and put together molecules and grew this entire cornstalk out of dirt and water. Wow. How can I blow your mind? Everything is like that, but you’re too busy being caught in your own stuff, in your own preferences and hurt and pains and desires, but you use your mind, your intellectual mind, every moment, little by little. Learn to appreciate, honor and respect the moment falling in front of you. That’s my teachings. That’s what I advise you. You’re going to find out that they’re more fun if you honor and respect them and appreciate them and accept them, whatever they are, and then learn. You can handle somebody saying something that doesn’t feel so good. I told you, the Lady Saints who gave us the durga statue ti, she passed some years ago.

Very holy, very beautiful. One day she leaned over to me. She usually didn’t talk personal, but we’re very close and she said, Mickey. I said, yes, mother. Don’t you just love when they yell at you, there’s so much energy. She was able to take it. She didn’t care. She took it and transmitted it. She just got filled with a lot of energy coming out. When people, right or wrong, what if you could bring it up and go into ecstasy because of it? Don’t tell anybody. You have the right to live very high and eventually you’ll get higher than higher and you’ll realize I can handle things that you didn’t usually be able to handle. Then I can handle more things and because you’re high, you can handle more things. It’s called the ascent. That’s the ascent. If you were filled with love here, you just fell in love, madly in love with somebody more than you’ve ever been in love your whole life and somebody just walked up to you and dis you.

Who cares? I’m in love. It’s just roll off my back. It will be squat to me. Get there. Get there and bring that down for everybody else to experience. Get so high inside that nothing can bring you down. What if it starts to, what if it hurts? You learn to let it go. Why? I don’t want to come down. You don’t need drugs. I don’t want to come down. I’m not coming down. People have to do drugs and drink because they came down and how to go back up. You’re a very high being. You’re extremely high being. I mean beyond your comprehension, the beauty that’s inside of you, but you start all this garbage. Let it go. By handling the day in front of you. You’ll learn to let go. Then stuff will come up by itself. You’ll let go. You let go. Eventually. It’ll be so beautiful that you will never not let go.

Then come down and deal with things. It’s not that you don’t deal with them, but deal with ’em from a face of love, clarity, inspiration, beauty. Now make some decisions. Alright, I’m out of time. Oh, I hope you understand. Do you feel the passion with which I want to understand why, because I know how beautiful you are. You’re not depressed. You’re a very high being staring at a depressed psyche that got depressed because you blocked your energy with all the garbage from the past. Learn to let go of the easier things, the weather, the this, the that. Somebody driving, how they drive. They do. Then you’ll finally, you can do something bigger. There’s something bigger and eventually you realize, I can handle this. I can handle some pain. I can handle anything. Oh, talk to me. I can handle anything. I can handle anything. There’s a nice affirmation. There’s a nice mantra. I can handle this with a good mantra for the western mind. Imagine I can handle this. I can handle this. I can handle this. Handle what? And didn’t matter. I can handle this right. Raise yourself.

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.