E4. Finding Peace Beyond Fear and Desire

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.

Wise being eventually reaches the place where all they want is peace. You have to go through so many stages before the whole of your being actually reaches that stage. It starts with understanding, it ends with realization, and how long it takes in between is irrelevant. You just get to the point where you understand that all you want is peace. The fact that there be other aspects of your being that due to past habits, past karmas and samskaras are still activated and still reach out or in down suppress, hide the fears and reach for the desires, that’s what you come to see. Is that you want peace, that because you have fear and because you have desires inside of you that you can’t have peace, and that those are what disturb the peace.

It’s so subtle and you have to be very careful once you realize that. People speak about desires as though they’re wrong, as though they’re the devil, as though they’re just non-spiritual. Well that’s like saying a rock is wrong or a sunset is wrong or light is wrong or lightning is wrong or waves on the ocean are wrong. There’s nothing wrong and there’s nothing right. There just is what is. There are these energies that are inside of you. It’s not hard to see them, they’re in there, you can see them just as surely as you see anything else in your life. And those energies can basically be categorized in those two categories. You eventually get to that point where you see there’s fear and things you’re afraid of. There’s a desire and that which you want. And those things drive the lower self. Those are what are below you.

You sit in the self and you watch what there is and you will see there is that. At first you separate them into good desires and bad desires into wholesome fears and wrong fears. And you start playing with keeping one and getting rid of the other, et cetera, et cetera. And you play with your stuff, you just get in there and instead of taking the seed of awareness and just be in awe at the dance of the energies that is going on below you stay involved and you try to get the ones you want and you try to suppress the ones you don’t, you try to get rid of the fears that you think are wrong and keep the fears that you think are healthy. You’re still in there with both hands and your head and your feet, the whole ball game is in there messing around with this stuff and I don’t know how long it’s going to take in your evolutionary pattern before you reach the point of realizing it doesn’t work.

What doesn’t work? It doesn’t work to touch these things. It doesn’t work to play with these things. It doesn’t work to be involved in these things. We use the example in all the scriptures, ancient scriptures use the example of the Miracle Lake, peace is the Miracle Lake. Disturbance in that lake creates vibrations, creates waves, creates ripples. Doesn’t matter what disturbance, it’s the most beautiful leaf that ever fell on the face of the earth, fell on that lake. It would create exactly the same ripples as one that was half-eaten by the moths and caterpillars and was ugly and rotten and it would fall into the same thing. It doesn’t make any difference. The point is, peace is not about the leaf, peace is about the lake. And when the lake is crystal mirror clear, there’s peace. When anything moves within the lake or falls within the lake, it creates ripples.

Now you have to decide since you are a willful soul sitting in there, aware of what’s going on, you have the ability to make some decisions. Someday you’ll see the decisions need to be made at a much deeper level than the love you’ve been making them. The deepest decision one makes is, when the leaf falls into the Mirror still lake and creates the ripples, what do I do? What do I do? If it creates a ripple of fear, if it creates a ripple of desire and it doesn’t matter which ripple, the only difference is, I want you to look, from now on, I want you to see fear and desire, stop with judgment. There are two ends of a magnet. There are the polarities of a magnetic force, one attracts and one repulses. You are attracted to the things you desire. You want to pull away from repulsed by that which you fear.

See it as magnetism. There’re just polarities of a force and that force is inside of you. So it creates ripples, vrittis, they call them ripples in the crystal clear lake. What are you going to do about that? Because you are neither the fear nor the desire, neither the good fear nor the healthy fear nor the healthy desire or you’re none of them. You are the being who notices that there’s ripples in the lake where there wasn’t a minute ago. You are the one inside the consciousness, the essence of being who sees, now there’s fear, there wasn’t a minute ago, but now there is. Now there’s desire, there wasn’t a minute ago, but now there is. If you don’t know, then we don’t need to talk about it. If desire and fear come and move inside and you have no idea, they don’t affect you in any way, shape or form and you don’t notice any difference, there’s absolutely nothing happening, then maybe they didn’t happen.

Maybe you’re making it up, but that’s not what happens is it? You see fear, it’s clear and you see desire, you see attraction, you see repulsion. You see that what you’re drawn to and you see that which you want to keep away. You see it as clear as a brilliant light shining in your eyes, don’t you? That’s you, the one who sees. What are you going to do about the fact that you see this inside of you? The answer to that question is yoga. The fact that you’re even framing the question that way, means you have a chance of answering it, otherwise you’re lost in it thrashing around and the funny part about it is, when you get in it, and I don’t care how you get in it, I don’t care if you get in it to say this desire is good and this one’s bad and this fear is good and that one’s bad, and you start getting in there and picking up apart, every single time you stick your hand in that lake, what happens? You make more ripples.

Now you’re disturbing the piece. I’m telling you, if you touch it in any way, shape or form, you’ll make more ripples and it’s like one ripple, let’s take an example. You see somebody or something and it creates a desire, it creates a need, it creates a, I don’t care what you call it, desire, a need, an attraction, it’s all the same. It’s being drawn towards something. You want it, you want to be close to what you want to be drawn toward it. That’s all magnetism. You see that take place inside of you. Now, if you do anything, you’re going to make more ripples. If you decide that you need to get it and get involved in it, you will get thrashed into there, you’ll start thinking about how to get and what to do about it and blah, blah. If somebody else gets it, you’ll start feeling jealousy and this and that, all kinds of possessiveness will go on inside, you got it straight?

If you try to get and you can’t get it, you’ll feel resentment. What are you doing? You are giving names to the waves. Every time a new wave gets created, you call it a name, fear, jealousy, attraction, insecurity. Just every one of these things are just physics. I don’t know how to explain it to you, you got it? And so then you get spiritual, quote spiritual and you start thinking, “I’m not supposed to have these. I don’t want to feel those desires. I don’t want to feel those different things.” So now it disturbs the peace. The waves are sitting there, you judge it and now you feel guilt. Now you feel failure. Now you feel shame. What are those? You’re just getting in there, you’re touching it again, you’re creating ripples and the waves are somewhat different than the other waves and so you give them a different name.

You’re just naming the energy waves that you’re creating by the physics of the leaf falling in and of you touching it. All these things that you call emotions that they’re not emotions. I mean they are and they aren’t, they’re just words. They are disturbances in the force. There is a crystal clear lake below you when it’s in harmony. There are things that are causing ripples in the lake. Some of them are the outside world coming in and falling into the lake. It does, doesn’t it? Then it creates ripples. Some of them are from underneath like a spring that comes up and then makes ripples on the surface. That’s all the stuff you stored inside from before. It doesn’t need an outside object, does it? It can just ripple up by itself, can it? I’m not going to answer you what percentage is each today, but you’re going to be surprised.

Some of it is caused by you touching it. You got it? You touching the ripple that started and then you don’t want the ripple or you want the ripple and this and that and the next thing you jump in with both feet, the soul jumps in with both feet. So the psyche can cause ripples because it held all this stuff. The world can cause ripples because it comes into the senses and the soul can cause ripples by reaching down and touching this stuff willfully, every single thing that touches that leg creates ripples. So, you get to the point where you see this and you done with it. You just see that it is the cause of all disturbance. It’s not the way the world is that’s causing a disturbance, it’s not the way things were that’s causing a disturbance, it’s the fact that everything keeps touching this lake. And there’s this whole cycle that’s going on of the fact that you have this stored stuff in from before, which is going to periodically come up and cause disturbance, so you try to not have it come up so that creates more ripples.

You even try to control the stuff that’s suppressed, even if you don’t know it’s there. I’m telling you subconsciously, you are controlling it and you are attempting to control situations outside so they don’t happen, that’s stimulated, that cause ripples, because you don’t want the disturbance. And we’re very active of not wanting disturbance is what’s causing all the disturbance? Really fascinating. Close I came and talk we had a few weeks ago when we said you’re treading water to keep your head above the water so you don’t have to drown in the disturbances and you’re doing everything you can to keep your head above the water and you don’t realize that you’re treading that is causing the waves that are making you drown and that’s the truth. So that’s the picture I’m painting you, is you’re in this sea of energy and when it gets disturbed it’s not fun is it?

And you don’t understand, when I say disturbance, you think fear or pain, no, no, no. Desire and fear are disturbance. Those are the polarities of disturbance. Everything, everything is cycled around that. You say, “Well no, disturbance means my girlfriend left me and I feel tremendous pain going on in my heart.” That’s desire, you had a desire, you wanted something to be a certain way, you didn’t want her to leave, you wanted to be with this person. And what happened is that connection of that energy, you connected these waves you had inside. You tried to subside them by tying them into another person. Now when that person leaves or that person dies or that person says something, what happens to those waves? They become tsunamis.

The same waves that you were trying to stabilize by holding onto the person, are tied back. God, it’s just so easy to see you understand that. Stop seeing it as psychology and see it as physics. It’s physics. Someday they will be able to measure these energies like they can measure electromagnetic spectrum and they will start describing what’s going on. And when you have a disturbance and then you try to stabilize the disturbance by tying it into somebody else, you are literally connecting somebody else’s energy to your waves to keep it stabilized. As long as they behave within the frame that will work for you, you’re better. The minute they go outside the frame it creates more waves. But that’s outside, it doesn’t matter. You tie the outside to the inside in an attempt to control the waves. All of it just makes more and more disturbance. It just becomes absolutely unbelievable.

So your disturbances, all of them, all of them are tied around fear and desire, which is attraction and repulsion, which are natural, energetic, magnetic forces. Just like the weather is natural, these are natural. The fact that you give names to them, I think it’s adorable. That’s what you’ve done inside. And because you name them, you think they’re all different. You think that love and hate and fear and insecurity and jealousy, this and that, you think they’re all different things. No, they’re all the same. They are this energy field you have inside and ripples that take place in the energy field that I will repeat, are either caused because what comes in through your senses drops into that lake and creates ripples. Or what was suppressed held in from before floats to the top because they don’t want to stay down there and that’s going to create ripples or with will.

So forces, these are forces. They could be analyzed from a physics point of view, so your force of will can also touch that lake. It doesn’t have to but it can and it does and even in the name of stopping the lake from rippling, that is a force of will that will cause more ripples. So now you see why you’re lost in there. You’re inside of a game you don’t even understand and intuitively, instinctively you want peace and you try to do it by sledgehammers. I don’t want the ripples in the legs so I’m going to jump in and smooth them out, that’s how I see it. That’s truly how I see it. There’s this lake a leaf falls in, you can’t see your reflection anymore, it’s really bothering you, so you say, “I’ll fix that.” And you jump and splash with both feet and you take your hands and you start to smooth out the ripples. How are we doing?

That’s what you’re doing inside. And that’s why there’s so much commotion and that’s why it’s so hard to live in there and that’s why it’s so difficult, but you don’t know you’re doing that and so what you do is blame the outside for what it’s like inside. It’s just hilarious. You said this, you did this, you didn’t come when you needed to. Just every single thing outside is what’s causing all the disturbance inside. No, it’s not. Truth is, the outside is causing very little disturbance, very little. It’s equivalent to if you’re sitting there living on a lake that can be mirrored clear, but every once in a while leaf falls in or it rains, the amount of ripples that that makes compared to you jumping in trying to stop every ripple that ever gets made. That’s the comparison between how much the outside is really creating disturbance versus how much you’re creating.

In the natural state, the lake is clear, the world will fall into it. It will make temporary vibrations and then they will go away. It will make reflections, it will make things. [inaudible 00:16:51] used to say. He said specifically, he said, “A saint’s anger is like riding on water.” I’m telling you, all of this world’s influence on your inner state is like riding on water. All of it with no exception, except that you won’t let it be that everything that comes in makes the temporary impression equivalent to riding on water so that you can experience what came. In as soon as it came in, it’s gone leaving no impressions, no some scars, no anything. That’s the wavelets passing away. But because you touch it is your will that is causing all the trouble. Because when that gets made, you separate want from not want, like from dislike, attracted from repulse.

What is it that’s attracted to repulse you? Your energy, your shakti, your chi and so it sits there and it likes one versus the other. That which it likes, it tries to hold onto. That which it doesn’t like, it tries to push away. My God, if all you did was let it ride on water, it will go away by itself. But if you try to push it away, you have to stay involved in it. When you get involved in it stays, all right. In order to get rid of it, you have to keep it there to get rid of it, don’t you? It’s just hilarious. You want to get rid of this thing, so you grab it, and by grabbing it you keep it. Versus it would’ve just disappeared and faded by itself into oblivion, but you’re not going to let it, because you didn’t like it.

The very things you don’t like, you keep. What are your suppressions? What are your suppressions? The things you didn’t like, aren’t they? The things that came into your psyche, that you couldn’t handle, you didn’t like them? Well, some rational person, they don’t like something and they get rid of it. You kept it. You literally stored it inside of you because you didn’t like it. The effect is what I talked about yesterday. A dog is coming toward you, you’re afraid of him, he wants to run by you, because his friends are over there, but you can’t handle it, so every time he comes near you yell at him and push him away, but he wants to go to his friends. And so the very fact that you don’t like him and you keep yelling at him and pushing him away and scatting him back means you’ll be there forever doing that, doesn’t it?

As opposed to just let him go, let him go, handle your stuff, just let them run by you. But no, you’re too afraid and because you’re afraid you keep it. That’s what suppression is. It is these things that came in and rode on water that you couldn’t handle the experience, even the momentary experience for the time they would last and so you suppressed them and froze them inside of you and kept them so you didn’t have to feel them. You kept them so you didn’t have to feel them. You’re going to feel them for your entire life because you kept them. You’d be much better off letting them go. That is what’s going on inside. There’s an energy pool and these different things are hitting it. Normally they would just like riding on water come and go and dissipate, but you are in there with your will. Really, that’s literally all it is.

It is a system that should just come and go, but you are in there with your will, the will of your consciousness, imposing your will on these vibrations, thereby creating ones that stay, thereby pushing, pulling, fighting, creating more ripples than you got ripples on top of your ripples. You didn’t want this and you’re afraid it’ll happen again. Well that didn’t exist, that didn’t come in from that. Your fear that it will happen again, didn’t come in from outside did it? Remember when I said you jump in and you touch it, that creates more ripples. There’s an example of more ripples. Something happens, it’ll ride and it’ll go, but no. You not only don’t let it go, you keep it inside, which creates a lot of ripples and then it’ll keep popping back up, but you also create a new ripple that when there a start with called the fear that it will happen again. That did not come in from outside, that doesn’t exist. That one was totally internally generated. That’s you jumping in the water. That’s the ripples that came from jumping in the water and trying to smooth them out.

Then you have guilt about the fact that you have fear that it’ll happen again, because you were trying not to do that anymore, there’s another one. Look at it. That’s what’s going on in there from a physics point of view. And you need to start looking at your insides that way because that’s what’s going on. All right, so a moment ago we said, what are you going to do? You’re in there watching. There’s fear, desire, there’s the polarities creating the ripples. Here they come, there they go, all this different stuff’s happening, the outside is dropping in. The suppressed stuff is popping up. The tendencies to touch are there. What are you going to do? Well, you only got two choices. You either go in there and figure out some way to touch it and not make ripples. You never will, never. The more you touch it, the more ripples it makes. But what’s the choice? The choice is so simple and this is where you have to reach the stage in your life.

You realize all, “I want is peace.” We’re back to that. This is what is disturbing the peace. My touching it, is exacerbating the problem. I’m not going to touch it. I’m not going to touch it. I have no control over the unfolding of the world very little anyways, and there it goes. It’s going to come in, it’s going to do its thing, okay, fine, I better learn to accept that. I have no control over all this junk that’s stored in there, that’ll come up periodically. And I put it down there to start with but it’s not like I feel like I’m controlling it now. Well, I better accept it, better accept that I put this stuff in there and periodically it’s going to come up and create ripples.

The only thing I have control of is me, my current willful effort. Am I going to go in there and keep touching that stuff, try and make it better, which all it does is make it worse in the end or am I going to learn to keep my hands to myself. To sit back inside and watch this phenomenal Chitshakti Vilas, the play a consciousness, the dance of energy inside of me? Am I going to just sit here, watch the world come in, create the ripples, watch the tendency to touch them, but release that tendency and there they go. Watch the suppressed stuff, pop back up because something’s stimulated or something thought, oh my God, all these fears or desires are coming up and then the tendency to do something about it and get all involved, oh my god, it goes to drawing or you just let go of that tendency.

Let go of the tendency to touch the energy, the tendency to do something about it, because all it does is make it worse in the end and usually even in the beginning. Usually makes it worse, short term, mid-term and long term. It just makes it worse and you just learn that your best bet is to relax and release. Your best bet is to say if I want peace and that’s what I want, the only way to find it is to let the energies go back to their natural state. Which is, things will come in and then they will go, things will come in and then they will go.

Things will come up from the past and if I don’t touch them they will release. I don’t have to do anything. I just have to not do anything. Anything I do about the past when it comes up, is just getting more involved in it. The stuff that’s down there will come up. The stuff that is down there is going to come up, I guarantee you. It’s like if I take a balloon filled with helium and I push it down under the water and I hold it there, you do that. And I sit there and tell you, let the balloon come up. You say, “How? I don’t know how to get it up.”Stop holding it down. When you feel it trying to come up, “What should I do?” Pull it, put no, no. When you feel it starting to come up, let go. Don’t be involved.

“What do you mean? I thought it was supposed to get.” No, no, stop it. Don’t be involved at all and wait till you see what happens. Come right up, won’t it? Your involvement is what’s holding it down and your name of now I need to get it up. You’re just going to keep touching it and the very act of touching it keeps it down. I’m telling you, when you feel its force start to push against you, instead of being involved, release your involvement, release your involvement from that energy. That energy will come up, all of it will come up. I hope that’s not a frightening thing to you. All of it will come up. Whatever you store down there will come up. But it too is like riding on water. It would’ve been if you let it but you didn’t, but it can be again. When? The minute you let it come up, it’s like riding on water.

It will just come up dissipate until you touch it again. Don’t touch it. If you don’t touch it, it will come and release. It’s that easy, it really is. Okay. It’s a truth. The reason you go to therapy, which if you do is fine. But the reason you go to therapy is not in order to get that stuff to come up. It’s not, that stuff’s going to come up. You go to therapy in order to let the stuff come up, you go to therapy so that somebody gets you comfortable enough, “Hey, that’s down there. Don’t get scared. Dad’s down there, mom’s down there, you ready? You’re going to feel it. Let’s talk about mom and dad.” “No, no, it’s okay.” That’s what the therapist is doing with you. They are not really getting this stuff to come up. They’re getting you to be prepared to allow this stuff to come up.

If you are prepared and allow this stuff to come up, it’ll just come up. The only reason that stuff is staying down there, is you’re holding it down there. It is truly a helium balloon. It will not stay down there, it will not. I mean, Jung and the other ones taught us what? That during your dreams, it wants to come up so bad that you won’t even let a come in your dreams, so it disguises itself. It literally does, it’s awesome, it’s awesome, your mind is awesome. This is your mind serving you and so it disguises this stuff into symbols so that it can pass before your consciousness without you freaking out. You even, you got to this really weird dream that I was flying and then a big bird came. Oh yeah, well that was the incident that you had that you can’t think about.

Because no, you’re not going to let it needs to express itself. It needs to release because it doesn’t want to stay down there, it’s helium. I’m proving it, all right. If the fact that that thing symbolized itself just to pass before your consciousness while you’re asleep tells you what? It wants out, you didn’t make it do that, did you? You didn’t even know anything about it. The fact that it had to do that means that that part of your consciousness is closed to it and your closure won’t let it come up. Therefore, the ultimate of all the therapy is that you decide to let everything come up. And don’t say to me what it doesn’t matter what you decide to let everything come up. Whatever needs to come up, come up. Welcome, party time, we’re throwing a party. That’s what every single day of your life is. It’s a party.

I put up lights and happy welcome back. Is put a party, wake up in the morning, it’s time for a party. And who’s coming to the party? Whoever wants to show up is an open house. And every single one it starts to come up, you say, goody goody gumdrops another person at the party. And you just let it come up, it’s that simple. It’s helium balloons that you’ve been holding down there. If you do that, it will come up. If you open, it will, whatever’s down there will come up. So I always say to you, if you’re doing therapy or something, that’s wonderful, but understand what it’s for. It’s for you. It’s for your consciousness to begin to get comfortable to permit, to come up what you’re keeping down. And that’s what that situation creates as an environment in which you feel more comfortable so you’re able to let this stuff come up.

Should you decide to have this party every single day, it will come up. And it’s just beautiful to watch, it’s like popcorn. Incidents will happen in the outside world that have relatively little to do with the stuff that’s down there. She’s wearing green. Well, when I got in the car accident when I was 10, the highway patrol person in Connecticut was wearing green and then all of a sudden because I see her and I’m having a party day, up comes all this fear of a car accident, of pain and of guilt and right? Now the question is not will it come up? It will come up. The question is, will I let it come up? It’s a very different question, isn’t it? It’s not, how do I find what’s down? You don’t have to find what’s down there. It’ll find you won’t it? All right, you know it every day of your life.

Why? Because what you’re doing is trying to make it enough. You’re trying to push it away. You’re saying to somebody, “Sweetheart, I really don’t like green. I would prefer if you didn’t wear that, especially that dark green.” You don’t know why you don’t like green, but you don’t. I thought you liked me. Why would you wear green? That’s how you talk to people. That’s how you keep it from coming up. You manipulate people, places and things in accordance to your preferences and fears and all of those things are just all your stored stuff. And so you just get to the point where you say, “I’m not doing that anymore. I want this stuff out. I don’t care. I want peace more than anything else.” Period, and therefore whatever has to hit whatever it has to hit and you just welcome it and then you learn. The only thing you have to learn is how to relax and release.

How? To fall back behind these energies and not get involved in these energies. If you do that, you will let them come up. They will make the ripples, they will have their day in the sun and you just relax and release, relax and release. The more you do that, the less desire and fear will be what you’re seeing. And that will be a great teacher to you, a great teacher. Desires used to be really strong and a major problem and fears, oh my God, let’s not even discuss those. That’s a lot of stuff gets created all the time. It’s like all the time you’re either dealing with desires or fears, subtle or big or strong or weak or mixture, whatever it is, but it’s all the time. As you let go of this stuff and fall back behind it and just relax and release and let it go, you are going to see less desires and less fears, period. You’re going to see less.

And that’s how you come to see the dynamics of what’s going on. It is all this stored stuff that you stored in there that you can’t deal with that is subtly creating the desires and fears. You have fears and desires about very different things than she does, but they can all be traced back to your samskaras. They can be traced back to what you stored inside and they clue in. What you desire is that which helps you bring up your positive past experiences and release energies and feels good and what you fear is that which stimulates the stuff that’s down there that you don’t want to deal with. So truth is, desire and fear are above the samskaras. They’re caused by the polarity of desire and fears are caused by the magnetism samskaras, and so as you release these things they become less.

You don’t suppress your desires, you don’t fight with your fears. You don’t renounce things outside because you desire them. You let go of yourself deep inside and these things will naturally harmonize and start to fall out. That is yoga. True yoga is, take the seat inside. That’s the seat of the yogi. The seat that is behind the energy, is the seat of the yogi. And you watch these energies. Yes, there are desires, yes, they’re very strong. Yes, there are fears, yes, they’re very strong. Now, you’d like to raise your hand and say, “But what do I do about my desires? Isn’t it healthy? Shouldn’t you deal?” I will never answer you because you’re asking the question from the wrong perspective. You’re standing in the wrong place and asking a question. And while you’re asking the question from that perspective, there is no answer. If you understand that your desires and your fears are the result of your samskaras are the result of your blockages, the question is not what do I do about this desire? What do I do about this fear? That’s just some temporary thing.

The question is, why am I not open enough to release the underlying patterns that are causing these disturbances? And you work constantly on that and you will see that the rest works out. The rest just works out. It’s not renunciation and it’s not fulfillment, it is not anything. It’s not anything. It’s not. These fears are good and these are bad. You’re not separating, you’re not touching it and yet it still works out. While you work on yourself deep enough, the natural unfoldment of life will interact with you and you may slip a little bit or feel like you’re falling around, doesn’t matter, doesn’t make any difference. You will see when you look back that it did just fine. It just did just fine, without you in there touching it. Maybe you got married, maybe you had children, maybe you did this, maybe you did that. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.

It’s just all what happened while you were riding on water, but what you were really doing was working on yourself. That’s all you were doing was falling behind the energies and the rest just unfolds. There are no decisions. I know that’s the hardest thing for people. The only decision is the last decision you ever made, which is what I’m going to do is let go of myself. That’s the only decision you ever made and will ever make. That’s what I’m going to do under all conditions, no matter how big the situation is, no matter what happens, I’m going to let go of the part of me that is trying to touch the energies to try to make it better. Because it doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse. I’m going to let go. The rest will happen. You’ll do something, Don’t worry.

Something will become obvious and it becomes pretty simple. And what you’ll find most of the time, is that there is nothing to do. Not that you’re renounce doership, not that you’re afraid to do, not that you want to make sure you don’t mess it up, it’s not like that. But the vast majority, what appears like there’s something to do is because you’re trying to do something to quiet down your energy. You’re trying to use the world to make yourself okay. That’s why you’re so busy. The day you no longer are trying to use the world to make yourself okay, but you’re letting go of the part of you that’s not okay, there’s not so much to do. It took away about 90% of the motives for action. Which is how do I need to get everyone to be, to be okay? How do I need the future to be? How do I need to explain the past? How do I need to do every single thing? How does right now need to be? How does it all need to be for me to be okay?

That’s going to keep you very busy, isn’t it? And there’s a lot of decisions and a lot of action. The day you stop saying, “That my intention in life is to make everything outside a certain way so I’m okay inside, “which in essence is catering to your problems, is the day there’s not so much to do anymore. Christ said, “My burden is light.” I’m telling you something. If you did just that, you would say, “My burden is light.” The vast majority of the decisions you think you need to make and the actions that you try to do are because you’re trying to use the outside to be okay inside.

The day you stop doing that, and you just relax and release your problems inside to let them come up and leave and thank the world for stimulating them, that’s all the world is doing. And this stuff comes up and you just are letting go, and you just keep letting go. Now all of a sudden, there’s nothing to do except that every once in a while something will appear in front of you and you realize, “Well, I have to decide this. I have to make a decision,” not because I’m trying to be okay, but because there’s this fork and it needs to happen. And because you’re letting go of yourself, it’s not all a panic, because you really don’t care. Why would you care? You’re not trying to use it to be okay. It’s just what’s naturally happening. And what you’ll see is that it normally will pull you one way or the other, it just will naturally take place.

If you’re not in there messing with it. Look, the weather manages to come and go with nobody thinking. The earth stays in orbit with nobody thinking. All the animals reproduce with nobody figuring out whether they should or shouldn’t and how much is right and how much is wrong and… All kinds of stuff goes on when nobody’s thinking about it in there. It still goes on. It manages to happen, doesn’t it? Well, why are you any different? The vast majority of stuff managed to go on with no one thinking about it, doesn’t it? I mean, all the atoms bond together and look how much stuff no one thinks about or makes any decisions about, but it still happens, doesn’t it? Your life will become part of that if you are not in there messing it up. There’s a word for what I just talked about. What is it? The Tao, that beautiful statement I saw you all get it that we just talked about.

That is what Lao Tzu meant by the Tao. That magic place, the way where all of it is in harmony, no one’s touching, anything and in the way it all is still, yet it all unfolds. So this is yoga. This is deep spirituality. This is a place that you have to decide when, when? Are you willing to live truth? Because you’re not going to get anywhere touching this stuff. Remember that picture of treading water and making waves and drowning and then treading more. That’s what’s going on in there. You are the one who’s creating all the disturbance and then you try to fix it. If you stop creating the disturbance, the root goes away. And you’ll see it. There’ll be less fears, less desires. Does that make life less enjoyable?

If I could give you fear or desire and go play with them, or a sense of deep peace, contentment, and serenity, which one’s more enjoyable? Not even close. One, you’re on a battlefield saying, isn’t this fun? The other, you’re in Maui on the beach. There’s no comparison. You can have that while you live your life. You don’t have to move, your Maui is inside. You just have to learn about your relationship to these energies, and that is yoga. That is the essence of yoga, the consciousness’s relationship with the energy. Consciousness and energy dancing together. That’s what’s going on in there. You best learn about it, so you could do better at it. Jai Guru Dev.

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.