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. It’s not hard to notice that people have trouble with life. All people except for enlightened beings, great masters, liberated beings. Why do people have trouble with life? Because things happen that they don’t want. How’s that? I’m psychic. Have I got your peg? Because things happen that they don’t want. Why does that cause suffering? What is that all about? What does that mean? I wonder how willing you are to let go of getting caught in what you don’t like and understand why it feels weird. Why is it a problem getting what you don’t want? First of all, what does it mean to get what you don’t want? You know what it means that you’ve decided what you want. That’s the starting position. You decide I don’t want it, and then it happens and it feels bad. Why? Because you have inside of you, you’re a very great being.
Period. Every single one of you, you’re a very great being. You have inside of you a tremendously beautiful force. Yogis call it Shakti. It’s a force of energy and it’s always flowing inside of you. It’s love. It’s filled with love. It is love. So as you feel, when you feel love, you feel this beautiful energy come up into your heart. That’s that energy so that you feel, when you feel joy, you feel this upliftment, but you feel inspired. You want to go do something, you just, oh my God, I can’t wait to get there. That is Shakti. Everybody feels Shakti. You don’t have to do something special. You feel Shakti, but you only feel Shakti when certain things happen. What things? The things you want, I just said to you have problems when something happens that you don’t want, but you don’t have problems when something happens that you do want.
That is so rich. That’s so deep. It’s so important to understand that. So that is because a flow of energy is able to flow freely inside of you when you are open, when you’re not closing, when you’re not resisting, when it’s receptive, you are receptive than the energy flows inside. But what you mean by receptive is receptive to what’s happening outside. Eventually you’ll find out it means being receptive. Inside is the inside that closes, not the outside. The outside does not close the outside has weather, nice weather, stormy weather, all kinds of things go on outside. It doesn’t care. It’s just physical reality. It just goes about its business. There’s birth, there’s death, there’s light, there’s darkness, there’s bugs that bite and there’s bugs that are butterflies. That bugs too. There’s just life. It’s always been there. It’s everywhere. Every single place in Einstein’s FaceTime continuum, there is something there. That’s what it is. What do you care? You understand? You don’t care about 99.99, nine 9%. You don’t. Don’t care what’s happening on Mars. You don’t care what’s happening. I mean, every dot on Mars do you care? Jupiter here, there galaxy is far, far away. You don’t care about anything. You don’t even care what’s happening in New York right now. There’s 700 billion things going on in New York. You couldn’t care less. Everywhere is everywhere is you only care what you decided to care about and then you suffer when it’s not what you want.
That’s so deep. Wake up. So when you are open, there’s a Shakti flow. You have felt it. You feel it all the time. You feel it. Intimacy. If you’re open, you fill it in. Somebody says something nice to you, you feel it? If you win, rewind yesterday, okay, and you just think people get all excited, what is that Shakti? That’s energy. It can change in one second, can’t it? Right? Something happens to you. Oh wow. Oh nope. Pay attention. It’s just energy flowing inside of you. So basically that’s what’s going on and what happens is that you have the ability inside to open or close that energy period. You can feel love if somebody says something or wears something or does something that you like. You can close and not feel love and feel disdain. If somebody says one thing you don’t like, even though you said you love them one second ago, yes or no, right there you are and intimate a moment. Oh, I love your saying. I love you so much. I can’t even handle how much I love you. To which the person says, yeah, I love you too. They said they love you. I don’t understand what’s wrong, not the right tone and not at the right time and not in the right way.
One, you open the other, you close. Do you do that? Okay. Have you noticed that when you close it doesn’t feel real good? Have you noticed when you close you don’t feel enthused, you don’t feel excited, you don’t feel love? Have you noticed when you open you do feel excited, you do feel love, you do feel good? Yes or no? Am I totally in the right crowd? Yes.
That is what it’s all about. That’s what whole journey your whole life is about. What? Making a choice not do I want to open or close? That’s silly. Do I want to feel yicky or I want to feel good? That’s what opening and closing does. Okay, so now we’re down to the foundation of why people suffer. They suffer because they close. Now I’m putting aside physical suffering. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about psychological suffering and that’s how people suffer all the time. People have to suffer with physical suffering, have compassion, do everything you can to help people say. But what do I do if I have an ailment and I’m a suffering physically go to a doctor. Listen to them. I don’t care if it’s a naturopathic doctor or allopathic, I don’t care. That’s your business. But for God’s sakes, you have a body take care of it to the best of your ability. It’s your pet.
You would take your pet so you take care of the thing to best of your ability. Well, what happens if I do that and I’m still suffering? You do your best to handle the suffering. So I have compassion. Have compassion for people that are physically suffering, psychological suffering. That’s a whole different ball game. I just told you why you psychologically suffer because you close. There is no psychological suffering without closing. In fact, there’s psychological ecstasy with opening and you are choosing why There’s nobody else in there. There is nobody else in there, but you are the conscious entity that lives in there. Mama don’t live in there. Dad don’t live in there. Kids don’t live in there. Husband, a wife don’t live in there and you’ve been in the whole time you, were you in there when you were little, when you were in there, when you were 15, when you’re in there in high school, not so much fun, was it?
You hear me? You’re in there. You’re just in there. So if it’s not nice in there because you closed, no, he said something. I understand that you think there’s a reason to close. That’s what you’re doing. You’re saying there’s a reason that I closed. Alright, but you’re still closed. Somebody else didn’t close. Your neighbor’s wife left them. I never liked the guy. Anyways, you go got what he deserved. It’s all about why you close and why you open. And the answer is because you close and you open. Don’t you dare think it’s automatic. Don’t you dare think it’s essential. Don’t you dare think it’s natural. I like that. You know what natural is? Ecstasy. Ecstasy.
That’s a natural is in India, yoga tradition. If they ask what is the nature of self of you in there? Self’s not some weird thing. You in there. You in there. Hi. Yeah. You notice your thoughts, you notice your emotions. You notice the outside world. Who does? You do? Okay, there’s a self. It’s not complicated. You Alright? What is the nature of self? Eternal, conscious, ecstasy. Eternal, conscious bliss. That is you. That is your nature. Why I’m not feeling it? Because you close. You close to what? You close the Satya. Well that’s pretty stupid. Why would you do such a thing? I closed so I can learn to open? No, no, it doesn’t make any sense in any way, shape or form. I close because you said that apologize and I’ll open.
So you start to get what’s going on. People suffer psychologically because they close. That is a statement of fact. You suffer psychologically as you close. No, I suffer because my husband left. What if your husband was an SOB, but you’re Catholic and you can’t get divorced and you come home and there’s this letter sitting on the table that says, I’m leaving. I’m just leaving. You can have the kids keep the car, keep the house. I’m leaving. You go into ecstasy. Pay attention. It is you inside that have decided whether you psychologically suffer. Now you don’t feel that way. You don’t think you have that choice. It just happens so quick. It happens so natural if you will, right? Why? Why? Because if you get what you want, you feel good. And if you get what you don’t want, you feel bad. So is this question not of what happened is a question of whether you wanted it to happen, a question whether you didn’t want it to happen.
That is something you’re doing inside yourself. The trouble is you’re not deciding at that moment. You have a history of making decisions of what you like and what you don’t like since your childhood. That is the entire science of psychology. They say, man is a son of learned experiences doesn’t start to you. In other words, you have had experiences in your life that were comfortable to you. Some things are comfortable, some things are not. You’ve had experiences in your life that are very comfortable. Fine what you did with those, you stored them who stored them. You did. Don’t you dare let them tell you it’s natural. It is not natural. You let 99.99% of every single thing you see here or touch or feel fest right through every single thing. Clouds, trees, cars you don’t know. People you don’t know. You hold onto 0.0001 of everything that happened to you.
You drive by white lines in the road all day. Don’t you keep ’em? No, I’m telling you pay attention. It comes in and it passes through. But some things don’t. Why? Because you hold onto them. Don’t you dare let them tell you you’re not in there. Don’t you dare let ’em tell you you don’t have will. Of course you have will. You know you have will. Can you hold onto things inside? Can you sit there and inside yourself just something beautiful happens. Butterfly, I use the example, I’m sorry, a butterfly lands in your arm and people are watching, oh, she’s the butterfly whisperer.
So now we’re double the butterfly with the people being impressed with you. All kinds of things happen, right? Okay. The butterfly flies away. You don’t ever think about it again. Do you go back there? You bring friends with you. In other words, you held onto it. You didn’t do that with the white lines, you didn’t do that with the clouds in the sky. You didn’t do that with 80 billion things that happen and come in through your senses. You do it. You wanted to hold onto it and when things happen that you don’t like, you don’t want to feel them. You do not want to experience them. So you push them away inside, don’t you? You don’t let them come all the way in. You push it away so you are in there using will to cling. That’s a Buddhist term to clinging and to resist.
Freud called suppression, repression, denial, resistance. I want to know, I like Sigmund. I would like to ask Sigman. I understand there is suppression. I understand there’s repression. I understand there’s denial. I understand there’s all this stuff going on there. Who’s doing it? Who’s doing it? Don’t say ego because ego is something you held onto and you built in there who built it and you realize the itself did. They don’t understand that. Okay? You in there, the indwelling consciousness have power, you have energy, you have will and you can clinging to things in there so they don’t just go away and you can push them away so you don’t have to experience them. That’s what suppression is. It is you in there using will to resist. That’s where all of your preferences came from. You did not decide what to like or dislike. It was based on the experiences you’ve had including a movie or a book where somebody told you tend to be a direct experience.
Those are experiences too. They came in, you saw a beautiful movie. I want to be snow white, but I don’t want to be grumpy. And so you just kind of experience things and then you hold onto some of them and the ones you hold on to become part of your personality, become part of your ego, become part of your self concept, right? I’m the one who likes grumpy. I’m the one who doesn’t like this. I’m the one who liked that experience. I’m the one that doesn’t like that experience. That’s who I am. No, it’s not who you are, it’s what you held onto from the experiences that you had. And then you built an ego, a self-concept. That’s how I think of myself. I’m 22 years old and I won the beauty model with a handsome model and basically now that’s who I am. I’m a very attractive person and everybody likes me and now I’ve gotten old and I have wrinkles in my face.
I have white hair and I don’t like it. You are just the one in there experiencing the white hair. You’re the one experiencing beauty contests. You the one having these experiences. That’s not who you are. You wouldn’t exist if you didn’t have the experience. Your ego wouldn’t be the same because you didn’t hold onto the same thing. If you win the beauty contest in high school or whatever it is, you built an ego about that I’m attractive of, I’m special, blah blah blah, blah, blah. Alright? If you didn’t win, you came in second place and you resent your whole life, there’s almost one. That’s where your ego came from. It’s not who you are, it is the collection of things that you didn’t let pass through because they either felt too good and you want to keep ’em or they felt too bad and you didn’t want to experience them.
And so now you have that stuff inside of you and that’s your self-concept and that’s where your preferences come from. People say, well, I like my preferences. That’s the silliest statement of the whole world. You like your preferences because when you get them matched, you feel good, but when they’re not matched, you feel bad. So they’re kind of both sides, isn’t it? So basically that’s where they came from and so now the world unfolds and you either feel good or bad, but you’re not in control. It’s based upon what you said to me, what somebody did or how somebody else looks or somebody wears the same outfit to the parties as me. I thought I had, oh my god, they’re so unique. They told me there wasn’t any other one. Go on, get upset, go on, get upset because it’s raining. Go on, get upset, it’s cold.
Go on, get upset because it’s hot. Go on, get upset, have fun because you won’t. So the world unfolds, it comes in. That’s how it’s supposed to do. It unfolds. It comes in through your senses. What do you do with it right now? Now you guys are special. We made it here. Congratulations. I’m not picking on you, but right now for 99.99% of the people all the time, what comes in hits, what’s in there? Why is there anything in there? Because you stored it in there. But I’m in here. Yes, you experienced things, but first it has to go past what you stored. It has to go past your psyche. It has to go past the fact that you held on to, oh my god, I don’t like snakes. Oh my god, I like butterflies. Oh my God, I hope I never see my ex-husband ever again. He was so terrible and you got all this stuff in there, don’t you? No, because the wrong crowd,
You got it in there because you held it in there. You have to take ownership. What’s basic? Psychology doesn’t do that. They say, oh you poor little thing that happened to you. Oh my god, how old were you? Three. How old are you now? 73. Oh, I feel so bad for you. Let’s all feel bad. Let’s say I started a blog. No, it’s like whatcha doing? It happened 70 years ago. What’s that doing in there still? Because every single time it came back up, I pushed it back down. I and I didn’t go see the people that made it come back up and I just developed this whole me. I don’t go to that state anymore. That’s where all maxes live in Texas, so I don’t even go visit. There were a lot of ’em I run into.
You understand? Right? You did that. You built that in there by what? By not being able to handle the things come and go. They come and go. Yes, there are things that happen that don’t feel good. They don’t stay in there except you hold them in there. You use your will to hold this in there and then things happen that feel good, that’s wonderful not for you because you want ’em to happen again. The better they feel the more screwed up you are. No, am I kidding you think that only the negative becomes some scars, these patterns that only the negative ones cause trouble? No. Your positive ones cause just as much trouble. Why? Because you want them to happen again and you judge everything based on it. Here’s the first kiss. Oh my god, I melted completely. Yeah, I wasn’t prepared for that. I said, oh my God, here’s the second one, third one, fourth one. I don’t think you love me anymore.
Ha ha ha. Of course not because you’re comparing it against the new experience. The first experience, the more you do something, there’s a low diminishing returns in economics. The more you experience something go on your first boat ride. First speed boat ride. Wow, it’ll blow you away. Okay, now go on your second and your third, then your fourth, then buy one. It’s going to stop doing that. You got used to it and you compare it against what was the first thing. The more you hold onto things inside, the more you develop preferences, you develop what I want to happen. You develop what I don’t want to happen. And now you can’t have experiences because when they come in they have to pass through your psyche that to pass through your preferences that have to pass through that veil. You are to look at your psyche as a veil, like clothes that you put on, you’re behind it inside of it, but what comes in from outside has to pass through it, doesn’t it? And your psyche opens when the past experiences were pleasant with what happened now and it closes when the past experiences were not pleasant. What happened now, okay? And what’s neat is it doesn’t even anymore, oh I don’t want to do this to you. It’s so sad what we’ve done. It doesn’t anymore even take the experience to happen to cause the problem. You just have to think about it.
All that has to happen is a thought come up and you’re closed or you’re open. And I’m telling you, don’t get all excited about, I do get excited about the open. I want you to learn to stay open. But conditional opening is a problem because you start looking for what will open you and you start looking for it opened you in the past, but you were 12 and it come on. Okay? So this whole thing is sitting there saying that you are in there and you are doing all of it. Now you sit there and say to me, I did not do this. He said this and it hurt me. But you built the ego that couldn’t handle what somebody else said. You have to own it. I was standing right next to you. I heard him say it didn’t bother me. Yeah, well you’re not a relationship with them.
So you have stored your past experiences and now you can’t handle the current moments that are happening. So now you have to go out and manipulate everybody and everything, don’t you to try and make sure that what you don’t want to happen doesn’t happen and what you want to happen happens. It’s a lot of work in there. You wonder why there’s anxiety. You wonder why there’s tension. You wonder why there’s all kinds of psychological problems. Of course there is because you stored most, I’m being nice by saying you stored the nice things. The ratio is not even close for every one nice thing you stored. You store 2000 not nice things. Take a moment, take your breath and find out why is that? Why is it that for every, I mean come on, give me a list. How many things happened in your life that blew you away? Not give me a list. How many things bothered you?
Happens every single day. Why is that? Because you decided what you want. Here it is. That’s what I want. What is the probability that’s going to happen without you doing anything? 8 billion, trillion things happen all over the place all the time. Only one of ’em was what you wanted, right? So you got an 8 trillion to one ratio, okay? What about what you don’t want? You don’t want anything to happen that can bother you and you have a list that’s much bigger than what you like. And if anything happens that’s even close, you relate to it with that list. It doesn’t even have to happen. If you see a rope and you don’t like snakes, you get scared. Should the not like expands out enormously. Another way, I’ll say it this way. If what you want to happen happens, you’re excited. If what you want to happen doesn’t happen, you’re disappointed.
Let’s just do it that way. Okay? Alright. If 800 billion, trillion things could happen at this moment, that’s just the nature of things and only one will turn you on. How many will disappoint you? 800 trillion. You have stacked the odds so against you. It is ridiculous and that’s why we have so much trouble. That’s why people are not happy. Does it make sense? So it’s all what you are doing in there. It’s what you have done in there. So basically how do we not suffer? Buddha talked about that. That’s really neat. It was Buddha’s entire search of his life. Why is there suffering? Everybody’s suffering. Rich people, poor people, young people, old people, everything. You know what he came to Buddha? Deep respect for? The noble truths he came to exactly everything we’re spending an hour to talk about and he said it in one sentence.
First noble truth, all life is suffering. Okay, we already caught onto that. Okay? The cause of suffering is preference. It’s usually the translators word desire. The third term patriarch and many others said, well you guys in the western world think desires, lust, greed, that’s desire. No, no, no preference. What is the desire? A preference. But preference gets more scary. Do you have preferences? Ha And Buddha literally said the cause of all suffering is preference. That’s what we’re discussing tonight here, isn’t it? If you didn’t build that model inside that said what I like, what I don’t like, what I want to happen, what I don’t want to happen, you would not suffer. Things would happen. They would come in, you would experience them. Why? Because your whole psyche is built out of what you stored in there. There is no psyche. There’s just consciousness experiencing reality.
That’s an enlightened being. There’s consciousness experiencing God experiencing reality. Here it is. Alright? And the zen, the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences, when love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised make the slightest distinction. However, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart to set aside what you like from what you dislike is the disease of the mind. Avoid such things carefully. Now you understand it. I prefaced it. I’m not saying you have to do it. I’m not saying don’t be scared. You can have your preferences, okay? If we talk, I dunno why you want them, but anyways, is it not the truth? To set aside what you like. What you dislike is the disease of the mind. It’s not natural. What’s natural is nature. It’s raining. I don’t want it to tough. Who are you?
I don’t even understand. It has nothing to do with you. It’s raining out. You want to find out why it’s raining. People say that. I got really upset. It didn’t rain for two weeks. It rained on my birthday. I can’t believe it rained on my birthday. I didn’t have to rain on my birthday. Go study meteorology and you’ll find out why it rained and there’s not a single thing it’ll say about your birthday. So you have caused yourself to suffer about a meaningless thing that has nothing to do with you. The weather has nothing to do with you. The nature has nothing to do with you. And basically I’m going to tell you a secret, nobody else has anything to do with you.
I’ve given this lecturers lately. I keep falling into it. So obvious. Does psychology not say that you are the sum you learned experiences, not say he’s the son, his learned experiences. Have you all had the same experiences? Yes or no? Has anyone in this world ever had the same experiences as you? Oh, I see, so we’re different. Oh then you’re not the way I want you to be. Oh, hello. Have you noticed that those toys out there, the people are not the way you want them to be. That are some of the learned experiences, some of your learned experiences, so some of your own experiences that I want you to be this way. Their learning experience is tough. I’m the way I am. And if they don’t say tough and they say no, I’m exactly like you. They’re lying. Not like you, not your husband, not your wife, not your parents, not your children.
How can they be like you? They have not had the same experiences. Not even close. Not even close. Every moment you’re having experience, then you have another experience, then another experience. Nobody’s having those experiences. Even if everybody’s in the same room, even right now you’re not having the same experience. You’re looking at me from different angles and you came in with a different mindset. So things I’m saying are making you happy. I’m saying make you scared. No one’s having the same experience. Then you walk out there, you’re having totally different experiences anyways, and then next and next, no one is having the same experiences. No one ever did. No one ever will have the experiences you’re having. You are unique. That’s either beautiful or scary, but you are unique. Look how unique you are. No one has ever experienced what you’ve experienced and no one ever will take a breath special in it. And what are you doing with it? Suffering. Why? Because I think that I’m right.
I have proof that I’m right. I wasn’t born yesterday. I had these experiences and so we talk. Well, everyone else had different experiences and they think they’re right. Let’s go to war. That is a cause of all conflict. So basically you have to realize that yes, your psyche is the sum your learned experiences, but so what is everybody else’s? So what does it mean to be open? I can handle that. The sum of your experiences are different than the sum of my experiences. Whoa, what a novel concept. Because guess what? You can’t can’t handle people who don’t think the way you do. You can’t handle people who don’t like the same thing that you do. You get very upset you. You’d be real quiet
Because it’s so obvious, it’s so logical, it’s ridiculous. That’s why the subtitle of the new book is Beyond the Human Predicament. This is the human predicament, is it not? The psyche is the sum of your learned experiences. Nobody else’s is the sum of your learned experiences. It’s some of their learned experiences and you can’t handle that and you suffer. So you have two choices and I know which one you chose, but I’m trying to change it. What? Go out there and manipulate. Manipulate. So you get your way. Just absolutely. You want to say that to me? You’re on the couch for two weeks, you did that. No dinner for three days, two kids, no dinner for like, whoa. Let us go out and manipulate the world so that they either afraid of us or want something from us so that they’ll behave the way we want them to. Is that not what everybody’s doing? Go read the newspaper. Will you please? Those have the most power, the most money, the most good looks, the most this, the most that the most popularity. Alright, they get what they want. So therefore that’s how to not suffer, keep your psyche and make everybody else either afraid or jealous or needy or whatever it is so they will behave the way you want them to.
That’s one choice. Having fun. Yet there’s no fun in that is actually fear the use of that power. He says they’re afraid of getting hurt because they won’t get what they want and so they have to use all the power they possibly can to make sure they don’t get hurt. You see it, don’t you see what’s behind that is fear. That’s why people lie. That’s why people cheat. So people steal. Everybody’s trying to get what they want and it’s just how you go about doing it. But still it’s terrible. It’s terrible suffering. I’m so sorry for you. It’s a terrible, when you wake up, you’re scared, you wake up, you have to think about what you’re supposed to do and what you did wrong. You wake up and are afraid of what you did wrong Five days ago you might have offended somebody. There’s 8.3 billion people on the planet Earth.
I mean you offended somebody. That’s a problem. It is to you because they might not give you what you want. They might treat you wrong. Something might happen that you don’t want because you offended somebody. Do you see that? So we live in fear causes so much trouble. So we said that basically you have these preferences, you have two choices. Go out there and manipulate the world to make sure that it be the way you want it to be. Which it will never be that. What’s the other choice? Take a look inside and say if the cause of my suffering is preferences, why don’t I get rid of my preferences? It sounds a lot easier than making you all behave the way I want you to. Alright? But because people have a resistance to getting rid of their preferences. Why? I love it. I love it because getting your preference makes you happy.
So why would I want to get rid of my preferences? I just told you why, but I don’t want to give up being happy. There’s a way to have your cake and eat it. I’m going to tell you the cheating method. Are you ready? Third Zen patriarch for enlightenment. So the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. I’ve looked at this really carefully and because I have compassion for you all who like to get high with your preferences, I have come up with a solution that bounces both. Alright? A third gen pat, don’t get mad at me, I’m going to change your most famous. Here goes the great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything.
There’s the way around. You can have everything. In fact, not only can you keep your preferences, but if you have more of them, I mean a whole lot of them, everything will blow you away. Oh boy, it’s raining. Oh boy, I have to get out and get wet. I get a free shower. Oh boy, she doesn’t like me. You made it. The great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything. Now, which work do you want to take on the one that every moment in your life from now on you have to make sure that the moments in front of you match what you want. Get to work and it’s never over is it? Or do the work of working with yourself and never have to work on anything ever again. Enjoy every single thing that’s happening, including your death. You wouldn’t speed it up having a lot of fun, alright? But if you’re lying in your deathbed, this is how you’re lying in your deathbed, oh my God, I get to find out if I’m still going to be there. The greatest mystery of all of humankind, I will in three minutes.
I’ve waited my whole life to solve this mystery. Everybody’s tried to tell me the books to this, the preachers, the rabbis. Everybody tried to tell me, I don’t know what they know what they’re talking about. They’re not dead. How would they know? Believe in somebody else who wasn’t dead because those that are dead, I don’t write the books. I’m going to find out. That’s how I want you to be. I want every single thing to be the most exciting thing that could ever be. You are capable of that. How? Work on yourself. Work on myself to do what? Make myself acceptable to everybody. There’s no way you’re making yourself acceptable to everybody. One person loves what you’re doing. The other person hates what you’re doing. One person loves the way of your hair. The other person hates the way of your hair. One person loves what you believe the other person is.
Oh my God, arrest them. So you can’t win, but you can win. Stop this silly game of holding on to past experiences and just sit there and say, I can handle anything and everything I can and I will. Alright, but I need to learn right now I can right now I don’t have that ability to handle everything. So you don’t have the ability to play polo either. You don’t have the ability to do all kinds of things. Look how many things you have the ability to do lots of things, but you can learn, can you not? It doesn’t mean you can be an expert, go to the Olympics, but you can learn. You can to play the piano, you can learn to play the guitar, you can learn to play the flute. You can. I may that sound very good, but you can and if you practice, it’ll get better.
Those are the two most important spiritual teachings you’ll ever hear. What? That you have the ability to learn. Yeah. And I told you that practice you’ll get better. Yeah. Alright. Why don’t you practice handling life, practice, handling life, practice, handling a training, practice, handling it’s hot practice handling that he didn’t say what you wanted to hear when he came home from work because he had a tough day practice handling her moods or his moods because they are moody. Practice handling, getting old practice handling that you can handle. A car accident, practice handling that. There’s a siren behind you and you’re going 80, oh boy, I get to meet the cops. This is be very exciting practice handling things. And guess what? If you practice handling them, you’ll get better at it, won’t you? And guess what happens if you do that? Oh, I enjoy life.
Why? Because I learned to not, it has to be what I want based on my past experience. It’s hard for me to talk about it now. You want life to be what you want based on your past experiences. Do you know how absurd that is? Life has nothing to do with your past experiences. The moment in front of you doesn’t even know what your past experiences were. So how in the world can the moments unfolding in front of you match what you want for your past experiences? They do not. Once in a while they will. As they say, a broken clocks write twice a day. Have you noticed? It just doesn’t happen like that because it’s not supposed to. Your psyche is the sum of your learned experiences. The moment in front of you is the sum of its learned experiences. That’s called physics, chemistry, science.
The moment in front of you is the result of all the cause and effect. Things that cause it to be that way. It does not know anything about you, including your husband and wife. They are the way they are based. Go talk to Freud. They are the way that they are because of all the different stuff that summed together to make ’em be the way they are standing right there. Alright? I’m just asking you to be intelligent, rational if you don’t want to suffer. That’s where we started this thing, right? So basically you understand that if you practice acceptance, see now it sounds different. People say what are the acceptance? Just let the world run over you. It doesn’t sound like that now does it? Accepting reality doesn’t sound so stupid after all. Doesn’t sound so weak. It’s actually fairly strong that you have the strength to be able to handle what he said.
I’m centered enough and strong enough and powerful enough inside of myself and content enough with myself to handle what you did. Okay? Now what do I do about it? It doesn’t mean you don’t do anything about it. It means you don’t do something about it. You couldn’t handle it. That’s a totally different act. I can’t handle what you said. Get away from me throwing things. I don’t want to see you ever again. Oh, I see you couldn’t handle it and that’s why you’re behaving the way you’re behaving. Okay? I have learned to handle that. People say things that I don’t like I’ve learned to handle. Is there people who don’t agree with me? I’ve learned to handle that. Now what? Now that I can accept that and honor that. Is there anything I can do to bring about harmony in this situation? Because obviously we don’t see things the same.
I’m not reacting to the fact that I couldn’t handle it. I am acting out of the fact that I could handle it and now I can bring some love, some peace, some harmony. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t. Doesn’t matter. The point is I don’t have to dump my stuff on. You ever have stuff dumped on you don’t feel so good, does it? Then you pass it around, dump it on somebody else. How about I learned to handle it? Now I can come down to deal with it. That’s the difference. You’re not reacting, you’re centered, you’re clear, you’re acting. That’s a very beautiful thing. It doesn’t mean there’s a particular way you’re supposed to act. I have no answers, nor does anybody be in the moment. Be clear and do the best you can as opposed to be in the moment. Freak out and dump that.
Dump the junk that you have stored in there that’s making you feel terrible on everybody else. Does it make any sense? Are we being rational? See, spirituality is not irrational. It’s not about faith, it’s not about just total blind acceptance. Intellect is very good thing. Pay attention. You have the ability to have a beautiful life and to help those around. You have a beautiful life. Why should I? They didn’t do what I wanted. That’s really, really good. Or the one I really like is if you leave me, it will hurt me so much. You don’t understand. I will never be okay and I’ll blame it on you for the rest of my life. You’ll live with that. You’ll live with that. That you made me suffer. No, you will live with suffering. They probably couldn’t care less. What are we doing? It doesn’t make any sense.
So what does it come down to? It comes down to waking up and realizing you are the only one in there and you have control in there. And right now it doesn’t seem like you do. I understand that I have compassion. If something happens that you don’t like, it feels terrible and it shas you of all your strength. You get weak and you get tired and you weepy and depressed. And what’s depression? Something happened that I don’t like and I closed because I don’t want to feel it. That’s what we started. Us talk, didn’t we? Well you said when you close you don’t feel good. Yeah, but I didn’t feel good so I closed. That’s the silliest logic I ever heard about when I closed. I don’t feel good. Something you did made me close. So now I don’t feel good. No, you closed. Learn not to.
There’s the ultimate. Can you walk through this life without closing? Because if you can walk through the life without closing, you don’t suffer. The great way is not difficult for those who don’t close. And the only way you’re not going to close is to prefer everything. And I love that. It’s like a video game. The kids, they play video games. They’re hard and they’re trying to this and that. Try different things. You walk into a video game every time you get out of bed and because you sleep at night and then have dreams. You walk in video game every time you go to sleep. It’s a fun one. By the way. People want to interpret dreams, which is fine. Don’t think that anything I’m insane means you shouldn’t do things. Do whatever you’re doing, but be conscious. Alright, so people like to interpret their dreams.
They like to talk about their dreams. They like to, oh my god. So somebody wakes up and says, oh my God, this terrible dream. There was this monster. Oh my god, I’m afraid. What are you doing? It’s a dream. Let it go. If you can’t let your dreams go, you’re not going to let life go. Holy mackerel. It’s got physical form. You can’t handle your dreams. You don’t know why? Because Freud’s right? Because you suppressed life but you didn’t like and it doesn’t want to be down there. I have compassion, not just for you, for the stuff you suppressed. It was energy, it was life. It came into you as a gift and you couldn’t handle it. So you shoved all that energy down there. It doesn’t want to be down there. It keeps coming back up, doesn’t it? In your dreams. That’s why psychology such as your dreams.
That’s what you store down there. If you don’t store anything down there, where do you see what your dreams are? Like if in fact you even have them. If you are open completely, when you go to sleep, you want to find out where you go, you go very, very deep master. You’re going to how to put it this way. This is your conscious world. Then there’s the subconscious. It’s a funny way. I don’t want to say it like that. Your consciousness. You’re just experiencing the outside world. When you go to sleep, there’s a subconscious. You experience the subconscious world. When you go past the subconscious world, he called it the semi super conscious. Why? Because he was in a super conscious state. What does that mean? Merger with God yourself is liberated. You’re not even staring down at yourself at all. The consciousness is. That’s what liberation means.
Mta. You’re a liberated soul. What does that mean? Your consciousness is not staring at your mind conscious or subconscious or your emotions or your body. What is it doing? It has returned to the source of consciousness. Everything has a source. I’ve talked all day about you in there. Where’d you come from? There wasn’t mommy’s womb. That’s where the body came from. Where did the indwelling being come from? That’s where great masters went. When they meditated so deeply, they let go of the senses. They let go of the emotion. They let go, not suppressed, let go. Didn’t look at stop staring at, stop being distracted by. I like that better. Their consciousness stopped being distracted by this. You know what I mean by this, right? Your thoughts, your emotions, your body, your senses. Well, what happens to it? It floats back naturally. You don’t do anything if I’m not distracted by something.
Where am I? Where I was before I got distracted, right? There’s a Cohen in Zen. What was your face before your mother was born? It’s supposed to be something that the zen master asks you. So you stop thinking, you go and think about it. What was your face before your mother was born? The funny part is there’s an answer. If you’re not looking down at your mind and you’re not looking down at your emotion or looking out into the world, your consciousness is not distracted by those things and therefore it returns to its source. It just floats back to its, you know what your undistracted state is. God, how would we do it that way? You are sitting in ecstasy, divine oneness, the whole universe staring at your stuff. You’re everything. You’re the whole universe. There’s just one consciousness staring at yours, yours, yours, yours, yours, yours, yours, yours.
Yours. Like little rays from the sun. Every ray from the sun. Let’s say you were so ignorant way back before any science even figured anything out. And you say, where does light come from? Because you look, there’s thing’s falling over there. There’s light over there. Where does it come from? You don’t have any idea. Every single ray of light comes from the same place. It shines on a different place, but it comes from the same place. Consciousness is one, just one consciousness. God, universal consciousness. That’s all there is. It is the underlying force that is creating all of creation. Is consciousness, right? Whose consciousness? Yours? No God. Consciousness. Same thing. Consciousness is consciousness. There’s no difference. There’s no distinction between anybody’s consciousness. There’s a distinction. What it’s conscious of, a flashlight shining on anything is the same light. It’s just shining on different objects. Consciousness is consciousness.
There’s no high consciousness, low consciousness, bothered consciousness. No. There’s consciousness staring at something bothered, staring at something high. But consciousness is the primal force of the universe. Consciousness and you’re it. Who said this to you? Christ, my father and I are one ray of light. The sun and I are one, isn’t it? So your consciousness is already there. You don’t have to expand your consciousness, you have to stop contracting it by staring at your thoughts and your emotions and so on. So basically when it’s released, it merges to what was your face before your mother was born? Oneness. There’s actually an answer, but you can’t think about it. You have to go there and you’re capable. So we’ve talked about not suffering with that. That’s a pretty low bar. But let’s at least start there. We start there. You the entire universe staring down at this piddly little thing on this tiny little planet in the middle of nowheres and getting all lost in yourself.
Why now we can work backwards? Because you couldn’t handle what unfolded in front of you. If you can handle what is unfolding in front of you and let it pass through, experience it by all means. Experience it fully. Let it merge into your being. Then you don’t do that. Then you don’t have that stuff stored in there. Then you don’t get distracted. Then you’re naturally in this state, a great master, enlightened master is not pushing the stuff away. They’re just letting it pass through. Someone who wants to ask Robert Krishna fully enlightened, highest as they come. What a great being. Does an enlightened the master ever feel? Anger? He said yes, but it’s like writing on water, writing like script. When you write on water, how long does it last? What does it effect? Does it have, what impression does it make? None. So it just comes and it goes through.
Passes through. Sure, human says, think a little bit left. You wouldn’t be here. Just passes through. Everything comes in, it passes through, everything comes in. It passes through. The bag is one of the deepest things ever written. Most people never read it. It’s wonderful. It’s fine. There are some things in there that say in words what we just talked about so beautifully. They’re going to close by quoting, not exact quoting. I’m paraphrasing a slogan out of the Gita at that point, A Christian is a Godhead. He’s Godhead. What does that mean? He’s God descendant. He’s God talking to you. Alright, fine. Hey, he’s like the burning bush. Okay, God’s talking to you. That’s Krishna. And then Arjuna is his spiritual son. And I get into the whole story, but they’re sitting in a chariot about to go to war and Krishna’s driving the chariot and Arjuna is a warrior.
And at some point they’re having a discussion. And Krishna explains to Arjuna that there are some very enlightened people around people. Human beings a very high thing. They can be enlightened, they can be merged with me. They can be one. They can be great souls. And Arjuna was amazed and he said to Krishna, how will I know him if I need one of those guys or gals? How will I know? Does he walk, sit, talk, act like anybody else? Krishna said. He walks, he talks, he like any other man or woman, if you would know him, known as such, enjoys. He’s not overjoyed and sorrows, not over sorrow. He lets goodness come when it will and when it will depart. He lets darkness come when it will and when it will depart. He walks as a sojourn or stranger amidst the qualities of nature, just as all the rivers and streams of the earth pour into the ocean.
But the ocean does not overstep its bounds. So the world of sense pours into the yogi and leaves him as a fountain at peace. Serene content. Equanimity is yoke. Is that not we just talked about? Is that not just the summary of what we’re talking about? If you can handle what’s happening to you, it doesn’t get stuck inside of you because you didn’t hold it. The more you do that, the easier life is. The more open you are, the more you don’t close. And when you don’t close, you feel ecstasy. You feel joy. How do I learn to do that? By practicing. How do I practice? Every moment of your life, things happen that you close over every moment. The tiniest thing, it’s too high, too cold. Drive in front of me that use this blinker. He keeps stepping on his brake. He’s going 15 miles above the speed limit.
Oh my God, I dropped some cash up on my pants. I have to go to work. It’s always bothering you. Practice letting go. Practice positive thinking. Practice enjoying that. You have a spot on your pants. I’m serious. Okay, I got a spot on my pants. I have to go back to work. So practice enjoying the spa and practice enjoying the embarrassment. Don’t stop there. Don’t say, oh, I shouldn’t feel embarrassed. No, no. Feel embarrassed. Remember riding on water. Then finally looking at him, he’s in there on a little planet in the middle of nowhere being embarrassed. There’s a spot on his pants and it says, let him go. Practice, practice, practice. Practice acceptance. Practice surrender. That’s what surrender means. It doesn’t mean you don’t do your job. It means practice inside learning to enjoy your life. And guess what? You’ll enjoy your life. And the more you let go, the more you can accept, the less it gets stuck.
And then after close here, the old stuff will start coming back up. Why? Because you didn’t push new stuff on top of it. Well, what should I do if the old stuff’s coming back up. Love it. Love it to pieces. Welcome it. Apologize to it for shoving it down there. You shoved every single thing you didn’t like down in a dark spot. When it’s time for it to come back up naturally, honor it. Respect it, apologize to it. Help it. One should raise the self with self. Not trampled down the this is what it means to work on yourself. Alright, work on yourself. Ative.
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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