UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Welcome to The Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes, and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com
Michael Singer: Jai Guru Dev, Jai Masters. What causes suffering? One type of suffering is very easy to explain. Physical suffering. You have a nervous system. It’s sensitive to touch. It’s sensitive to passing signals and some of those signals are difficult. They’re painful, they come back and by the time they come back to you, they hurt. They’re difficult. That’s physical pain, physical suffering. What do you do about it? Whatever you can. You go to the doctors you eat better. Do what you can to keep the body healthy. Do yoga, just, I don’t need to tell you what to do. There’s so many things you can do and there are things you can do that make it worse and things you can do make it better. People ask me, what if I, you just have terrible chronic suffering. It’s terrible. It’s such compassion for people that are being forced to suffer. Maybe they have to take narcotics, maybe they have to take things that make it bearable.
Maybe they can try different techniques, holistic things and so on. Don’t judge people. Different people have different tolerances to pain. Don’t judge. Just do the best that you can to keep the body healthy, keep the nervous system healthy and how you go about it is your business. It’s just you need to take care of yourself, but that’s not most of your pain. That’s not most people suffering. There’s this inner suffering, psychological suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering. Look at me. You have complete control over that 100%. You are the cause of it and you are the solution to it, and they will not tell you that. They will tell you the world is causing your mental and emotional suffering. Somebody else is causing your mental and emotional suffering. Things that happened to you 20 years ago are causing your mental emotional suffering. Yes, obviously it’s true, but it doesn’t have to be true.
That’s the nice thing about getting to talk to you. You do not have to suffer, period ever. Not that type of suffering. Are you listening to me? You just have to understand, just like we understand what’s going on with physical suffering, we have all kinds of things that can help with it and we study it. We understand the nerves and the neurons and all the chemicals and all kinds of things, right? Well, inner suffering, those who have come to understand it, the Buddha taught it. Buddha is for snowball truth. All love is suffering, okay? It’s like it’s been studied for a very long time by very, very great beings and you can study it yourself. Why? Because you’re you. You’re in there. You live in there. Listen to me. You do not have to suffer. You do not have to suffer. Alright, so what causes suffering?
Let’s take modern times. Some of you all were very happy with the election. Some of you all were very unhappy with the election, the same election. I don’t understand. Well, you walked into it with a set of preferences, expectations, preferences. The third Zen patriarch said the following, the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. In other words, if you walked into it like a martian, you didn’t know what was going on. You just walked into this thing and this stuff’s going on, you’d be fascinated. Oh, look up, you’re open. You have no preferences. Now, don’t close down. No prefer I talk like this. Don’t close down until you hear everything, okay? Do you understand that if you did not have a preference, you would not suffer. You may have been disappointed. You know how you get disappointed by appointing something, okay, you got disappointed.
You appointed something and it didn’t happen. So that’s what’s going on. So that’s the bottom line. And again, I know you don’t want to live like that now. You can’t live like that. I don’t understand. I just want you logically to understand that if you did not have a preference, you would not suffer. You would not be disappointed. Okay, so there’s the basics. So where did you get your preferences? I know you think you made them up. That is not true. That is absolutely not the truth. You are programmed with your preferences exactly the same. I’m a computer guy. You know that exactly the same as you programmed computers, we put lines of code in and it behaves accordingly when it runs by the lines of code. Your mommy treated you a certain way. They took your blanket away too soon. Your first husband left you, your child died.
Things happened to you. They programmed you. Psychology says, man is a sum of learned experiences. That’s not true. That’s not who you are. That is what your psyche is. That’s what your mind and emotions, your personal self, your ego, your preferences, your hopes, your dreams, your concepts, your views, your beliefs. They are things that were programmed in you, in your mind, emotions based upon your past experiences. If I take a computer, no matter how brilliant it is, and it has no data, guess what? It knows nothing. The only data you took in was what you took in. What you have inside of you is what you took in. Where’d you get it? I read a book. You took it in. I saw a movie. You took it in. I had an experience. You took it in. How much do you know about what you know? Nothing about?
As funny as it sounds, you need to listen to me. You have had experiences. How often do you have an experience? Every moment of your life, you have an experience. Did anyone else have the same experiences, exact same experiences as you’ve had during the sequence of your life? No one did they? Not your exact twin, not your parents, not your husband, not your wife, not your kids. No one. Not only did no one, no one ever has, and no one ever will. Moments don’t repeat themselves. It’s just coming and going. It keeps changing, keeps changing, and you see the moments that you see, you experience the moments you see. I’m asking you a question. I know if you get it because it blows your mind. You’ve experienced a certain number of things. How many of you missed how many things you’ve not experienced that actually took place?
700 billion zillion quillian and you are only programmed with the one line of code of the experience that you had. Then you had another one, then another one, then another one. Okay? Now you understand where your preferences come from. They’re not holy, they’re not evil, they’re not sacred. They’re the sum of your learned experiences. We’re moving into a world now where we have ai, which is pretty amazing what it can do. If I took, I won’t do it, I promise, but they will believe me. They will. Alright? If we took every experience you ever had and you fed it into that ai, it would act like you. If I change one experience that I put into it, it will behave somewhat differently. If I change one experience that you had, you’ve had a different one or you didn’t have that one, it could be different. I try to show you how tenuous this is, because you believe that what you think is truth.
Yeah, it’s true to you because those experience you had to take the most amazing computers ever built, brilliant, and put in one set of data and keep asking the questions. You will get the same answer. That’s the only data it has and that’s the only data you have. I’m talking about you, right? I told you it’s not true that you are the semi learned experiences. Your mind, your emotions, your psyche are the sum of your learned experience. They were programmed. Who knows? This psychology knows this. Alright? Freud figured it out. That’s what got put in there. Then that’s what’s going to come out. But that’s not who you are. Why? Because you know you’re the sum of your learning experiences. You can watch your mind tell you stuff and know where it came from. You are the consciousness. That’s who you are. You are watching your mind and your emotions be the sum of your learned experiences and out of that you’ve developed a mindset, a mental set.
All these experiences don’t necessarily mesh together properly, right? You met someone in high school named Ben. You really got along and then you got married to a Ben and you didn’t work out so good. So you’re kind of bifurcated about bends and so you’re sitting in there programmed and you got to live in there. The self-consciousness has to live in there, but it’s very trier, bi quar traded, alright? It’s all over the place. It’s hard to live. So you make up a set of those learned experiences and you say, that’s me. This is what I believe. Until I met somebody that believes something else, I really love him. So I changed my beliefs. Yes or no. Have you ever changed your mind? Have you ever changed your mind? That’s how tenuous the stupid thing is. It’s just you took pieces of stuff. We’ll talk about it more a little later.
You just took pieces of stuff of your learned experiences, you put them together and you created an ego. You created a voice inside your head that’s telling you what you believe and what you don’t and what you like and what you don’t and what shouldn’t happen and what shouldn’t happen and it’s constantly talking. That’s where it came from. That’s what it is. So it’s been programmed into that. So it’s not true that you are the sum learn experiences, but it is true that your psyche that you live with every moment is the sum learn experiences. So you have preferences, you ended up with preferences. Why do you like this? And he likes that and you don’t like that. Why? And by the way, you’re married, you better laugh, okay? Why? Because some things that came in from the outside world, it comes in. Your experience comes in when they come in, they feel good, don’t they?
And some things when they come in, they feel bad. We can get into that a little later. I get into this very deeply in the new book, living in Tethered, alright? Very down to detail. Alright, why this happens. So they come in, they feel good. I’m going to make a prediction because I’m a psychic. I’ll bet you prefer that the ones that feel good happened again. I’ll bet you prefer the ones that feel bad don’t happen again. Did I get it? It’s just so logical. It’s so ridiculous. You’re being programmed by what’s coming in. And the problem is that if you don’t like something, please listen to this. Things are going on all over the place and things are going on in front of you. There’s people here, there’s clouds, there’s weather, there’s everything going on. Some of it just comes right in and goes through what part?
I haven’t figured it out. I know it’s at least 95%. It may be 99%. Every single thing that ever came through your census passed right through the white lines on the road. The cars on the road that you never owned one, you don’t know anything about it. The trees, the this, the weather, the cloud. Look how much just coming in. But some of it, like the car, I do that to the soul, right? The car that looks like your girlfriend’s car and there’s somebody snuggling in there, at least it look like it. They were just bending over to pick up a Kleenex, right? But that’s what you saw. Alright? Somehow that car stays in there somehow all the other cars drove by, all the other people drove by. But next time you see your boyfriend or girlfriend, something to be talked about and it wasn’t all the other cars and it wasn’t the white lines and it wasn’t the clouds.
If it doesn’t feel good when it comes in and you’re separated it, by the way, that car, same end of the car to everybody else, it comes in. If it doesn’t feel good, you don’t want to feel it. I have to qualify, but explain it to you. There are times you really do want to feel something like you turn the corner and the sunset is so gorgeous, you just meld. It blows your mind. Use words like this, it touched me to the core of my being. I felt like I was in the presence of God. A hug can do that. A kiss can do that. Nature can do that. Music can do that. It can just take you away and melt you completely into it, can’t it? It’s beautiful. That is because you let it come in, you let it come in. That’s its nature.
It comes in, comes in through your senses, passes through your psyche. It doesn’t get blocked. It doesn’t hit anything in your psyche from before you’re open. That’s what the words mean. You’re open, you’re clear, you let it in those sixties words, it comes in and it touches you. It literally touches you in there. Your soul, your consciousness, the essence of your being and it pours into there and it’s the most beautiful experience you ever had. There’s no experience more beautiful than being touched to the depth of your being is there. You know how many times you’ve been touched the deputy of being? I can count on my hand. It’s always there. What is your consciousness is always there. Why doesn’t everything touch the death of your being? Because you don’t let it. There’s no way. If it starts coming in and it doesn’t feel good, you’re pushing it away.
You have hands in there, don’t you? Have you ever pushed away a feeling or a thought because you didn’t want to have it? No way. That’s going back to the depth of your being. Is it? I don’t let that all the way in there. No way it happened. I can’t stop from happening, but I don’t have to let it all the way in. You’re in there doing this, are you not? How often? Every moment of your life it doesn’t feel good then I don’t want to feel it. It’s just a form of suppression. I call resistance. Do you resist things in there? Well, lemme clue you in if you resist the name coming all the way back. That’s the purpose of resistance, isn’t it? I don’t want it coming all the way in. I don’t want it. My favorite sentence is this. I don’t want that to have happened.
What does that mean? I don’t want that to have happened. It happened. If it didn’t happen, you wouldn’t not want it to have happened. It did happen, but you can’t accept it. You can’t allow it to come in and pass through, so you resist it, you push it away. You do it every moment about all kinds of things, don’t you? Doesn’t take much for you to push away that I didn’t feel good. It’s raining. I don’t want it to be raining. Push it away. Well, I’d have to rain on my birthday. It didn’t know it was your birthday. I swear to God it did not know, but you push it away. Anything. Here’s psych. I’m going to cover every single psych course from 1 0 1 to 6,422 advanced graduate PhD postgraduate. You ready? Here’s a psych course. If you push it away, stays in there.
Anything you push away stays in there. You’re supposed to go camping. It starts raining. I guarantee you, two hours later or five hours on the phone, you’re going to tell someone that it rained when you wanted to go camping. Well, white lines went by, clouds went by. All kinds of things happened. But that stayed in there, didn’t it? You didn’t talk about everything, but you talked about that, didn’t you? Why? Because it stayed in there and it came back up. It disturbed you and you kept the disturbance. That’s how I tried. If I can get this through to you, why would you want to make a storehouse of your mind and your heart of every single thing that ever bothered you? If you store every disturbance that you ever had inside of you, did you have any disturbances in high school? They’re still in there.
How do I know? Go to a high school unit. I advise against it, okay, but go to a 20 year high school reunion and you, where do you feel how you feel about those different people? It’ll be exactly what you stored in there and don’t quote that memory. The computer has memory. It doesn’t throw it back up by itself. It doesn’t keep the, I don’t like it. It’s just memory. White lines, people things, age things. People said store ’em fine. By all means they store naturally. You have a built-in memory system in there. Hypnotism says they can go down there and find it. Every single thing, every experience it’s in there. You have a memory system. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about some stuff came in that you didn’t want to experience and so you push it away. That gets stored in a different place than pure memory, pure intellect.
That’s yoga, coso, sim scars, patterns of energy that didn’t make it through. Sort of like the Hoover Dam stopped the Colorado River when whenever it did, it’s still happening. That river wants to flow through anything you ever afraid to tell you this. Anything you ever pushed away is still in there and not just still in there as memory. It’s that if you drive by a sign and some pictures on the sign or drive by a McDonald’s or anything like that and you had some experience 20 years ago in high school and you embarrassed yourself, you dropped some ketchup and kids laughed at you, alright, it’s coming back. That’s not pure memory. That’s a pattern of energy that you stored inside and so it stayed in there. It’s like I explained it again, the books, I will try to write it to you. You have will, you have Will can do things in there, can’t you?
Alright, you push things away, you can express will out here. You’ll lift your arm up. Will you have a power called will somebody. You’ll understand. You go deep on meditation. You’ll understand that it’s a power of consciousness. Concentrated consciousness has a power of will for you to apply. Will you have to concentrate. You have to apply the focus like a magnifying glass out on the field. There’s sun everywhere. Put a magnifying glass out there. It’s burning the leaf underneath it. Concentrated energy. Your will is your consciousness focusing and you have this power of will. You just used it to block the energy that was coming in from outside. So a pattern’s coming in, it comes in. It’s supposed to make it through and feed you. It doesn’t make it through. Why you stopped it. It will keep. I always do the same thing. I feel bad, but you need to listen.
Alright? That will is like the Hoover Dam. That energy needs to keep going through the universe. It’s trying to make it through you, but it can’t. It hit a blockage. That’s what a blockage is. If you asserted will, no, I don’t want to feel this. Well, what happened to the energy that was passing through? It circled around your will. That’s how energy stays in one place. It circles around itself. That is what a some scar is, has a very deep understanding of yoga as essence of deep yoga teachings or get rid of these some scars. Why? Because they’re in there waiting and trying to come back up. That thing that you stored in there from high school or from 10 minutes ago because somebody sat where you wanted to sit or was wearing what you wish you had bought and you couldn’t afford it. You do this junk in your head, don’t you?
Okay? And so the energy of it, the discomfort of it is blocked by your will and now it circles around and stays there. You have stored that stuff in there and so it keeps coming back up and you have to keep fighting with it and struggling with it. This is inner suffering. I told you there’s inner suffering. What inner suffering is, things happened outside. That’s what happens. It rains, it does. All kinds of things comes in. There’s roaches run across the floor. Yes, things happen. They have, we noticed they come in and they’re supposed to pass through, but it doesn’t mean you don’t deal with them. If a roach runs across the floor in your kitchen, you don’t freak out. Oh my god, it’s a terrible thing has happened. No, a terrible thing didn’t happen. A roach ran across the floor. You feel it. You see it. You have understand that. I told you once before, that’s one of the oldest living creatures on earth. They were around with the dinosaurs right here. Did you know that? They’re serious stuff. Those Ros. That’s why they survived and live in your kitchen.
So it runs across the floor. You deal with it, but you feel it. You experience it. It’s a real thing that happened. You don’t have to block it and never go back into your house again or yell at everybody or do something right? It’s just an event that took place. You want to kill it. That’s your business. You want to spray it. It’s your business. You want to pick it up and carry it outside. I pick ’em up in cuffs, she picks it in her hand, picks the thing up. I can’t get him to do it. So we all deal with it differently. But the point is, first you accept it. First. You accept that it happened. You have no right not to accept something that happened like it happened. You’re a very intelligent person. You can’t make it not have happened. I don’t want that road to have run across my floor.
I’m sorry it did what you do about, it’s your business. But to sit there and they’re wanting you denied and let it ruin your life that something happened. That’s crazy. So energy comes in and because we resist it, it stays stuck inside. And if you store it with pain, somebody asked me, I said, if you store it with pain, it’s coming back with pain. I said, why? Why does that have to come back with pain? Take the color red and put it in a cup and go back in. Three days later it’s going to be red. Why? Why is that to be red? You stored it that way. If you take pain and you push it away, it stays pain. It doesn’t become love. So if it’s stored with pain, it’s going to come. Does it not come back with pain? If you had a bad experience in the past and you suppressed it or resisted it and something reminds you of it, don’t you feel happy and all excited and it came back, oh, I missed you so much, thanks for coming back up.
Do you do that? So what’s happening is you’re storing pain. That’s what psychological pain is. It’s events that took place that you couldn’t handle. So you push them away and stored them. And so now you have all this stored pain in there. And so if different things happen that bring the pain back up, you don’t like it. You don’t like it the first time. I don’t like it the second time. So what do you do? You devote your life. If you’re a normal human, you don’t want to be one of those. You devote your life to manipulating the world outside of you so it doesn’t hit your stuff. Do you understand that? It is literally nothing should say anything and remind you of your stuff. We don’t talk about that around your father. Why? Because daddy couldn’t handle his past. And so we don’t talk about anything that reminds him of that because don’t believe me.
It won’t be a very nice evening if you do. You’re sensitive. You’re not sensitive. You stored garbage inside of you and it’s sensitive. Why? Because it’s trying to come out. It comes up by itself, doesn’t it? In your dreams, does it come back up? I love it. Psychology’s beautiful. Just go a little deeper and realize you don’t need to do this. As I said, if you suffered mentally or emotionally don’t feel guilty getting enough problem, right? You didn’t. It’s not the nature of things the nerves have in nature. Yes, things push ’em too hard. They send pain up. But the psychology stuff you did, you’re the one who couldn’t handle the reality that took place. If you could handle the reality that took place, I was married, I was in love. It was wonderful. I fell in love then who knows what happened. But he’s a snook.
I’m a snook. I don’t know, but boy did it get ugly. But you seem perfectly comfortable talking about it. Of course, what happened six months ago? Why would I talk about it? In other words, you’re healthy. You’re healthy human being. You handled the situation that took place. Isn’t that what health is? What did Darwin say about evolution? The survival of fittest, adaptability to creatures adapted and then survived. How’s your adaptability to reality? Terrible. You can only handle what you want and if anything happens that bothers you before it bothers you again, we’re not adaptable. Do you see that? Somebody wants to ask me, what is spiritual evolution? That’s spiritual evolution. Just like physical evolution, you evolve inside to be adaptable, to be able to handle reality. If you can’t handle reality, ask Darwin. If a species as it was evolving couldn’t handle reality, is it still here?
See, it’s not so complicated, is it? The ones that couldn’t handle reality are not here anymore. The ones that adapted and could handle reality and humans supposedly are the highest level of this thing. I don’t understand it at all, right? Being able, you can live in the desert. You can live in the rainforest, you can live in the cold, you can live in space. Mike, you guys are amazing. You can eat vegetarian, you can be a Breatharian. I heard about that. Anyway, it’s cheaper, right? You’re so adaptable. It’s amazing. Okay, what about inside? This is spiritual evolution. You evolve by being adaptable. You’re able to handle reality. We just said you are the sum of your learned experiences. So is everybody else. But we also said nobody has the same experience as you. Therefore no one is the same as you. No one looks at it the same as you.
They don’t. They can’t, not your husband, not your kids. They’re all having different experiences. They’ve had different experiences. Are you adaptable enough to handle that fact that not everybody sees it the way you do that they can’t possibly see the way you do? Or do you sit there and say, how could you do that? I never would’ve done that. I never would’ve said that to you. Well, you didn’t have the experiences I did. Maybe if you had the experiences I did, you would’ve said it to me. It’s called wake up to reality. So if you are going to sit there and push away the things you didn’t like, then you’re going to be very sensitive and you’re not going to be able to handle things. They hit the things you don’t like. And so eventually you get to the point you catch on. That’s what suffering is. Suffering is that I stored pain inside of me. I didn’t have to, but I did because I couldn’t handle it when it happened. I couldn’t handle the reality of the moment. I stored pain inside of me and now I need events to unfold outside that. Don’t touch that. And I also stored nice things inside of me. There are moments you’ve had in your life that were very special. How many compared to the moments that bother you? You’re bothered all the time. When was the last time the driver in front of you turns you on?
When was the last time that you were driving down the road and the lights just, you went to ecstasy because the red lights weren’t around? When was the last time you caught every single red light and you went into town? You freaked out. I told everybody about it. How could it be like that program, these lights? It is ridiculous. Or the driver in front of you bothered you. Nice blinker, buddy. It’s fun laughing. Okay? Because everything has to be the way we want it to be, for us to be okay. Sometimes it is. Sometimes you meet somebody and they just, man, alright, don’t worry, it won’t last because you’ve had 800 million, billion other experiences or you’ll have another one at work. Come home and not like the way he or she’s right, even though I can’t even finish the sentences. So absurd. The way we live is it up?
Okay? So you are now out there with very few really nice things in there that you want to happen again and a whole bunch of stuff that you don’t want to happen again. And you’re out there attempting to manipulate the world so that what you want to happen happens. And so what you don’t want to happen doesn’t happen. Anybody guilty And that is not a fun life. And by the way, it’s all predicated on fear. Fear that something I don’t want to happen will happen. So I’m very busy out there trying to protect myself, trying to earn the right of money, trying to look the way I want to look, trying to do that, trying to do that, trying to always say the right thing. I’m going to disappoint anybody. You see what I’m saying? You’re very, very busy. My God. It’s almost like every person you meet, you have to sell yourself.
You got to make sure they like you. You got to make sure accepted, make sure it’s this and that. You don’t like rejection or all do you? So because you’re in there carrying this bundle of problems of pain that you stored inside of yourself, you have to make sure nothing touches it and then even the positive stuff is a problem. Why? Because you want it to happen again. You just appointed it as a positive thing. So you get disappointed. You get disappointed that it doesn’t happen again. You came and you told me you loved me so much and it was so beautiful. I says, Mel, there’s so much. Can you do it again? It didn’t sound the same as last time. I’m not sure I believe you. Okay? It can never be the same because you’ve already experienced it the first time. It was a surprise.
You’re totally open, you’re not expecting it. There’s nothing in there blocking the experience and it comes in and someone walks up to you say, I haven’t told you it since kindergarten. I just thought you walk on water. You’re so beautiful, you’re so special. I was just embarrassed to ever tell you. That’s pretty nice, isn’t it? Okay, what if he does it every time, ever since kindergarten, every time I say again, I want you to laugh. How true is what we’re saying now, do you want to live like this? Spirituality says to you, you do not have to live like this. It is not about coping. That’s ridiculous. It’s about waking up to what’s going on in there and you’re participating part of that and how to work with yourself at a higher level and evolve to where you’re not doing this thing of storing every single thing that ever bothered you and storing everything that turns you on because I’m telling you, it’s just as bad someday you’ll catch on.
It’s just as bad. If you really, really want it to happen again, it’s not going to happen again. Something I went through all the dissertation doctrine in economics, they tossed the law. I’ll never forget such an important law. You know what it’s called? The law of diminishing returns. Ever heard of it? Guess what? It’s true. The more you experience the thing that you like, the less you care one I owed about it don’t mean nothing to you anymore. So it’s not about getting what you want because what you want is just the stuff you stored in there that made you happy last time. It’s not about avoiding what you don’t want because what you don’t want is the stuff you stored in that made you sad last time. Now I understand. Be here now. Are you willing to come into the moment and honor it, respect it, appreciate it, get blown away that it even exists.
That’s why I take you on that trip. 1.3 million earths inside the sun and the whole galaxy. It’s so big. It’s so big, so you stop being caught in yourself, you stop living your life. Everybody has to be the way I want. Come on. It’s bigger than that. Or we talk about quantum physics. Nothing’s here anyways. See if you understand that they proved it. There’s nothing here. They built giant SuperColliders to prove there’s nothing here. It’s just light. There’s wavelengths of light and it appears to be this and you’re getting upset about what you can use your mind for greater things than screwing yourself up.
Really, there are higher things you do with your mind than think about what I want and what I don’t want and how to get it and how to manipulate and control everything and get all upset. I didn’t get it and get scared because I know I didn’t get it this time, but it might happen last time. Anybody worry about anything to worry about? You worry that what you didn’t like will happen again or you worry that you won’t get what you liked last time. Again, you don’t have to do this and this is spirituality. This is why we have these talks. That’s what it’s about. You can have a beautiful life and not even struggle to have it. You do not have to suffer inside. Like I said, physical pain, okay, I respect. I understand it. Do what you can. Be healthy. Do what you can.
Help each other. Yes, we should help each other with physical pain. Psychological pain is self-inflicted. You did that by setting aside what you like from what you dislike. You decided I want this to happen. I don’t want that to happen. What happens if what you want to happen doesn’t happen? I get disappointed and I get depressed. I don’t think it’ll ever happen again and she loved me. I don’t think anyone will ever love me, okay? Or I am scared to death that something will happen. I’m so scared. I wake up every morning scared and I try to see what I can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I devote my life to the lowest part of my being. The part of your being that was not able to handle reality. As you grew up all the way up, you have now devoted your life to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
You want to go back and visit your house where you lived before? No, I do not. Why? It was a terrible experience. I don’t even want to go back to the state. There are therapists. I don’t blame them. I’m not picking on anybody. They’re a therapists that if somebody had a bad relationship and got divorced and really got hurt by it, it’s fixated on it and so on and so forth. They literally tell them, you have to move. You can’t live in this town anymore because every time you drive by the restaurant, it reminds you every time you go here it reminds you when you get hurt over and over. No, you’re too sensitive but just to find another place to live and it’s perfectly logical. Why? Because you are too sensitive, but that is not the answer. The answer now already. Can you live a life with no psychological suffering?
Forget that. That’s non-negative. That’s not good enough for me. Can you live a life that every single morning you wake up and you’re so excited that you woke up and that the progress’s still there and that everything’s still there and you basically get excited to go through the day and you don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be exciting? Well, I guess something’s going to happen. Can you be that open? Would you like to be that open? Would you like to enjoy every moment of your life? But what if somebody says something and doesn’t feel good? Can you be open enough that reality fits inside of you? Well, people say to me, but what if someone you love dies? You can be happy that someone you love died. You can honor and respect and appreciate the experience of pain, of that type of pain, of sorrow. Your pain that you feel because that person died is equivalent to saying, I love you. The same heart that said I love you is saying, I love you. I miss you. You can honor and respect just because it isn’t what you like feeling. It’s a deep feeling. I always tell you like the funeral marsh, you know that one right was written by one of the greatest composer ever lived. Chopin wrote that.
What are you telling me? I’m telling you, he caught beautifully that vibration, didn’t he? And it’s beautiful In his own right, he caught a beautiful vibration. It’s a low vibration. Rites of spring is much higher vibration. Why can’t you honor them all? Why can’t you be open and let it pass through you? It doesn’t mean you’re laughing, but it means you’re richer. If you never ever had anyone die in your life you don’t know squat. Somebody who’s experienced the death of a loved one is more educated, is more whole that had a richer life. That’s true of every single experience. Someone whose kid took drugs to school and got expelled. That person had to deal with something that other people don’t deal with. Is it difficult? Yes. Is it special? Yes, it’s special. It’s a special experience. Every single experience is a special experience. Did you grow from it?
Did your child grow from it? Try how you handle it. If you honor and respect that this experience is the one that was picked, it’s the one you’re having. It must have been picked for you. Is it karma? I don’t like one IO that people talk like that. Karma is not a punishment. It’s a teacher. If you’re going through something and you’re having difficulty with it, it’s teaching you how to go through something and if you go through it and you learn from it, look back and say, thank you though I had bad karma. Oh my God, I don’t how live because I think I built all this bad karma from the past. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Just learn and learn and learn and learn and learn and learn and learn and learn. That’s what you’re here for. That’s how you evolve by handling reality and if you didn’t handle it before, don’t judge yourself from before.
If you were not as conscious before in high school when you were growing up with your parents, when you were eight years old and things you did were not nice, were not pleasant, you look back at them, you should be saying thank you. If you look back at ’em now and you say, I can’t wait to do ’em again. No. Then you have karma. But if you look back again now and you say, I can’t forget if I did that. I feel so bad, right? Good. Then you learned you grew. Don’t feel guilty. Be grateful when you went through algebra. You know how to do calculus. Maybe you failed math in fifth grade and then you became a math professor. Don’t look back and judge yourself. Look at what a psychological mess we make ourselves. You’re building that junk inside yourself. Learn to walk into the day every single day.
Wake up and say, I’m back. I’m back and experiences are going to happen. You bet on it. I have control. I don’t have time to tell you what I’m going to tell you. 25 to 30 trillion living cells make up your body, liver, pancreas, pineal, gland, every single part of nerve cell, every single part of your body is a living cell. Did you do it? Which one of those did you make? Which one do you do? You don’t do anything. You do 0.01% of what’s going on and you think you’re the doer. That’s ego. Some people have minds that are smart. Did they do it? I’m not talking what they learned. Just some minds are smarter than others. Some people were taller than others. Some people more athletics than others, some didn’t do it. It was a gift that was given to you. Your whole body was a gift that was given to you. Your mind was a gift that was given to you. Your heart is a gift that was given to you. Do you have feelings? Did you make them? Did you decide I’ll create feelings? No. All of these are gifts. Start by waking up and honoring the reality that you’re living with. So you wake up and you say, I’m awake. Thank God I don’t know how I woke up. I don’t know my body. Thanks cells.
You might try it sometime. You get all upset if your liver has a problem or if your attest have a problem. When’s the last time you thanked them? They’re living cells working for you day and night and they communicate with each other. There’s a whole system going on in there. When was the last time you said thank you? This is what it means to grow spiritually. You get out of your head of what I like and what I don’t like, which is just stuff you made up based on your past experiences to suppress and held onto and you start living in the now. You start sitting here saying, wow, I’m on a planet. Really nice. Planet would rather go to Mars. You’d rather go to Jupiter or Saturn. Their gas just fall right through. There’s nothing happening anywhere else. Did we not send the James we and the Hubble telescope up?
They can see from millions of light years, billions of light years away now. There was no sign of any living thing ever. We went, we had probes running around these planets. What have we found that would interest you more than five minutes? I still hear the story. When we first flew one of those robots of to Mars and they showed it, it was the first time we landed on Mars, right? I’m telling you the truth. They had little shovels. The robots had shovels so they could dig in little ones, they could toy shovel that they could dig in and get soil samples. It was so boring after a while that they gave names to the ditches. Snow White. They did the snow white names. Okay, that’s really interesting. When was the last time you named the scuff you put on the dirt? Alright. You are on the most exciting planet that anyone ever could dream of.
It’s like God, the idea of Disney World. That’s what you’re on every minute. There’s something going on. There’s all kinds of things to do. Why can’t you live like that? Why does it have to be that you couldn’t handle some of the things that happen? You stored them now. You don’t want to happen again, so now you’re not accepting and honoring reality. You want reality to be what you want. I’m telling you, it ain’t about getting what you want. It’s about honoring and respecting and appreciating reality. It’s pretty far out in it, every bit of it. The fact that you have a mind, the fact that there is a heart, the fact that there’s a body fact to other people’s have them. The fact that you can talk to, oh my God, there’s so many things. Every second should blow you away. You’ve got your consciousness out of yourself.
It’s no longer attached to, I can’t handle this. Therefore, I have to think about it all the time, and so what do you do? The bottom line of everything we’ve talked about so far is you resisted reality throughout your life, your childhood high school, every day you are resisting reality. You don’t want to experience this. You clinging to what you want and you resist what you don’t want and they’re both stored in there and then you’ve made a whole you out of them. You want to grow spiritually. Real spirituality don’t do that. If you don’t do that, it won’t be in there. If it’s not in there, you’ll be in the now. Naturally you’ll be here present blown away that there are clouds. Not, oh, it might rain. I don’t want it to rain or it’s hot. It’s hot because you’re so close to a star.
You are so close to a star. You feel it’s heap. It should blow you away. You sit there, oh my God, this is unbelievable. Imagine being close to a star, one of those big burning, gorgeous things and then think you’re 93 million miles away from that star. How hot is that star? How are you not blown away by this? Why don’t you just go, oh my God, this is far out. I’m circling a star. This is called using your abstract, intellectual, impersonal mind. That’s what we’re talking about, yoga. There’s a personal mind that was you. Stuff you kept from the past and stored in there and built a U out of the thing and then there’s this great mind and you all have it. You all have the ability to think about that. The star is up there. Possums can’t think about that. You’re evolved enough to have a mind that that evolved. Use it. Okay? Think about that kind of stuff. Like I say to you, what’d you do today?
Oh, you’re feel I didn’t did this. I like this and this happened to me. No, you did a 360 on your axis 1, 360 on the axis of the earth. That’s what you did today. Wouldn’t that be fun? If that’s how you looked at it, how was your day? It’s great. What went wrong? Nothing. What’d you do this year? I took a little lap around the sun. That’s what you did this year. You took a lap around the sun. Now put your whole heart and soul in the moment. Don’t nod. It’s not renunciation. You interact. It’s an interactive sport, but you don’t interact because you’re not okay. If I can get one thing across, you don’t interact with life. You’re not okay with the way it is and you need to manipulate it to be the way you can handle, which is how we all interact with life.
You interact with life because I am okay. I’m filled with love and joy and I’m going to express it. Have fun because you will. I’m going to sit down and play the piano and I’m not good at it, and if everybody laughs and walks out, I had just as much fun as if they clap because I wasn’t doing it for them to clap for me. I was expressing the beauty and the music that’s inside of me. I’m just not as good as Beethoven or kowski and you’re just having a blast expressing the beauty that’s inside of you because that’s what’s inside of you, and if you’re not experiencing that beauty, you blocked it with that garbage you stored in there. If I take dark glasses and put ’em on, the whole world turned dark. If I store garbage inside of me that I’m afraid of and I look out through that aura into the world, it’s stark.
If you really want to grow, stop storing this stuff in there and that’s what the great masters taught you. Purification, getting rid of some scars. If you stop storing this stuff, how do you do that? You can’t start with the hardest part. Of course, you can’t handle the stuff you couldn’t handle and stored in there, by the way. It doesn’t just store down there. It rots down there. It gets worse and worse. It’s like storing a virus inside the computer. It just touches everything. You had a bad experience in the past and now somebody else says something and it has nothing to do with it, but it reminds you of so you don’t like that person and then yes, it’s just all, so don’t start with that stuff. Don’t start with that stuff. Start with the simplest, tiniest little things that there is no reason in the world you need to resist, but you do anyways.
You’re driving down the street and a skunk was around before you got there. Oh, okay. That’s right. That’s a perfectly natural reaction for a minute now. Oh my god, where’s that skunk? What the come machine really skunks. What kind of guy I’m going to fuck is my vote? I want to go get rid of skunks. What did you do? You couldn’t handle the bad smell for a minute. You have to make a whole thing out of it. Let it go. It’s a tiny little thing. The cost benefit analysis is keeping. It is a hundred percent cost. Letting it go. There’s no problem, no cost, zero cost. That’s your choice. That’s your choice about heat. That’s your choice about rain. You know who your guru is, the weather. You’re all busy. You want to find a guru. Often the time, a mountain, you learn to let the weather be your guru.
You will evolve tremendously. Why? Because you’re not in charge of the weather. Can you handle it? It’s just weather. I can handle weather. Then do then handle it. Then be happy about it then appreciate it when it’s raining. I would say it this way. You know what happens when it’s raining, when you don’t want it to be, there will be food produce at Publix. Okay, but now when I don’t want it to rain, it should rain when I want it to rain. No, it shouldn’t. It should rain when it rains and you need to appreciate it. Work with yourself. If you’ll work with yourself with these tiny little things, you don’t realize how much negativity story in there. Somebody walks by you call out to ’em. Hey Sally, how are you doing? No response. That bothers you. You think about that. What did I do wrong?
She had earbuds on. She didn’t hear. You just let go. This is the art of learning to let go instead of what I just spent an hour talking to you about. If you can let go of things, you’ll learn to let go. Now you can let go of the rain and the weather and the driver in front is very important and the red lights and these stupid little things that you bother yourself about. You let them go and next thing you know you’ll call out to Sally and she’ll turn around and say, I don’t have time for you. Oh, she actually responded, but you don’t like what she said. That’s bigger than she didn’t respond. Then I have to figure out why she didn’t. Now. Oh my God, she dissed me. Handle it because to not handle it means you get another one of those in there.
Is that what you want? Another samskara, another thing. Now you can’t like Sally because she said, I don’t have time for you right now. Handle it. Let it go. Let it go. Once you let it go, you did a great thing for you and for the other person. Become open with the little stuff first. Then you’re going to find out that you actually, just like you practice a sport. You get better at a sport, don’t you? If you practice a sport, do you get better at it? Don’t mean you’ll be a pro, but you get better at it, don’t you? If you practice an instrument, do you get better at it? Practice letting go. Practice handling reality. Start with the small stuff and all of a sudden you’ll be better at it. Something will happen. That’s bigger than my favorite thing. When someone comes to me and says, I don’t know a mechanic.
I went to work and I found myself driving home and I realized something happened at work that would’ve bothered me. I didn’t even notice. Oh my God, I guess I’m growing. Yes, that’s growing, so basically practice letting go. I dare you and then it’ll be something that you can’t do. You didn’t let go. You saw I tried to let go. It it bother me. I said, I dreamt about it. I woke up in the morning. I was just as mad. I was good. Good. Notice. You couldn’t handle that. You weren’t ready to handle that yet. Don’t judge yourself. Don’t get mad at yourself. Just say, okay. I hit the ball into the net. I thought I was better than that. They went into the net. Great, I’ll get better. That’s how you should live every single day. Every single day. You’re a better person than you were before the day started.
When you wake up every morning, you should be a different person because you let go and then what’s going to happen when you start handling the day? Now, I have to warn you, the stuff that’s in there going to start coming up. Why? Because you’re not shoving stuff on top of it. If I can’t handle Sally, she say hello. I’m talking. Then I’m not worried about my mommy did 20 years ago, but if you start handling it and you’re not shoving stuff back on top of it, I’m telling you it’s going to come up by itself and that’s wonderful because you’re going to start finding out you don’t want that stuff in there. You do not want that stuff in there. Not only does it cause all kinds of problems and worry and negativity and anxiety and all kinds of stuff, it’s blocking your natural Shakti flow.
Want to talk yoga. You have a beautiful, beautiful, ecstatic flow of energy inside of you that’s always there. The only reason you don’t feel it is you push the stuff on top of it. The only reason there’s not light coming is because you close the blinds. If you stop closing the blinds, light comes in and then this stuff starts coming up and you start complaining. They write me, I was doing so well. I was so happy and I don’t know what I did wrong. All of a sudden, this stuff from the past, I’m driving down the street and I’m crying. All right, congratulations. You’re growing. You want that to happen. You do not want that stuff in there, so you’d be willing to go through the growth of releasing the garbage as you stored in there and then all of a sudden you start feeling higher and more love and more beauty and say, whoa, it’s worth it.
Women go through childbirth. I hear it’s painful. They go out for seconds and thirds. Guess what? You’re going through Soul birth, going through soul birth. You’re birthing your soul. Alright? I told you I never have enough time. I would keep at you. I hope you’re listening. Life is a beautiful experience, but not the way we’re living it. I started by saying, that’s psychological suffering. We stored it in here, so of course we have it. Let it go and you will never suffer. You’ll just have deep experiences. Alright, thank you for listening. Work on yourself in Jai.
Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to The Michael Singer Podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael’s body of work and all back episodes, please join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True: waking up the world.
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