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: With transcendence, mystical teachers, all the deep teachings, very deep teachings, talk about transcending this world of obtaining deceit of permanent transcendence. It’s very misunderstood. It does not mean you leave the world. It does not mean you don’t deal with the world. That’s what transcending means. It means that when you’re in the world, whatever happens, happens and you’re at peace with it. You have transcended the yang, the duality of life. You don’t have to leave life to do that. Great masters were married. They had children. They were in businesses, said a guru is very shrewd in business affairs, so don’t think the transcendence means leaving, getting out. It really means getting in, but being okay while you’re in. That’s what true transcendence is. You don’t have to do anything. Whatever unfolds unfolds and you remain in equanimity, you remain at peace. That’s what transcendence is.
You transcend the variations that life causes inside of you, not you transcend the variances of life. Nobody’s going to even out life. There’s storms, there’s sunshine, there’s billions of things going on all the time. A master doesn’t stop that they’re okay with it. They’re at peace with it. The state that they reach, the state of transcendence, it’s an inner state and whatever’s going on in the world, they experience it and they remain at peace to then not have feelings. I’ve been telling you this, a beautiful Rama Krishna who is completely transcendent, a very young age, like six years old, who’s fallen to samati spontaneously. They asked him, master, does an enlighten being ever feel anger? And he said yes. He said, it’s like writing on water like you fill the bathtub with water and write an essay. How long does it last? As soon as your finger passes over it, it’s gone.
That’s what happens when you’re in a deep seat. Emotions can happen. The world can happen. Different things happen and they come in and you don’t stop them. There’s no reason to stop them. Why? Because you’re okay with them. You don’t express them. Why? Because there’s no need to express them. They don’t get caught when you express things. I’m talking about the lower human emotions, the reactionary emotions. It’s because the energy came in and you couldn’t handle it, so you resisted it, and when you resist something energy, when you resist a flow of energy, it shoots out. That’s what you call expression. That’s why you have trouble sitting at peace with things and you have to either suppress a normal human being either suppresses or expresses. You’re either not liking what’s going on and unable to handle what’s going on, so you’re pushing it away, pushing it away so you don’t have to deal with it or it comes up.
It doesn’t have to be a negative emotion. By the way. Drives and different situations that come up that you can’t handle. You can’t allow them to flow freely through you experiencing them fully until they merge into your being. If you can’t handle that, then you push it away, not suppress it, but you hold it back and then it shoots out and that’s what you call expression. That’s what goes on. That’s very important to understand. It’s not wrong, don’t feel guilty or think it’s wrong or anything, but you do hear what I’m talking about. There are energies that come up in you and you have to express them or you have to suppress them. There’s a thing called transcendence. There’s a thing called transmuting the energies. What do you mean? Instead of them coming out as anger that come in as anger, something happened, it hits you wrong, it hit something inside of you that wasn’t comfortable with it.
You let it go, meaning you push it out. No, you work it out. No, you let it come in and pass completely through you until it merges into your being. I’m telling you that lately if you have a really, really, really transcendent beautiful experience, you say things like, oh my God, it was so beautiful. It touched me to the core of my being. Ever said that I felt like I was in the presence of God. You were. Why? Because you allowed the experience to come all the way inside with no resistance, no pushing it away, no need to let it out out of your lower energy centers, so it came all the way up like a river flowing into the ocean, into the sea. It came all the way up and merged back into your soul, back into your state of consciousness. You fully experienced it.
We very rarely fully experienced things. Why? Because we’re scared and we have problems, so we hold them back. Even love, come on. You know that you can be into the moments and you’re kind of not comfortable and there’s talking in there. Yes or no, okay? Because you can’t let go because you don’t have the ability to allow these energies. That’s like people do drugs. They think they’re doing fine, they could drug themselves and maybe they can have some experiences. I don’t ever tell you what to do with your life, but you shouldn’t need drugs. Okay? You need drugs because you’re not okay letting life happen, and so somehow that alters your brain and your consciousness and your resistance and stuff like that. It just basically things can happen. Hey, who cares? Well, I guess you drugged your brain drug yourself, okay? The truth is you really do care.
That’s why you had to drug yourself. Do you understand that? Transcendence is when you become so open, not just transmuting the energy, true transcendence. You are so open inside that you woke up and you realized that the experience, not what it gets, you not getting accepted or like that, but the experience itself is powerful and beautiful. What experience? All experiences, all experiences are worth having and that is tough for you all to hear. Every experience you have in your life teaches you something. If you hadn’t had that experience, you wouldn’t know what you know. So if you see a snake, you are better off than a person who never saw a snake. Why? Because you are a knower of snakes. Doesn’t have to pick it up to pick it up. You have to take it home, right? But the fact is you had this experience.
You’re going to go hiking in the Rockies. Do you want to go with a guy that never saw a snake or one that saw one? You wouldn’t even ever go with the guy or the gal, and so basically every experience you have, if you allow it to come into you, merges into your being and you become a knower of that experience, but we don’t do that. We don’t know how to do that. Now I want to talk about that. Why aren’t we transcendent? The experience happen. You don’t have to pedal. How hard did you work to make experiences happen by themselves? The sun comes up, rain comes up, weather. People talk to you. They say nice things. They say mean things. You better work at it and you do. By the way, we’ll talk about why. Otherwise they’re going to say what they say, aren’t they?
They’re going to do what they do. Have you noticed they’re going to look like what they look like? They’re wear what they wear. It’s just life’s going to happen in front of you. It comes and goes. Why can’t it come in and let it touch you and you enjoy and touch and experience the depth of all the experiences? You’ll say, well, what if somebody you love dies? You feel sadness. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with feeling sadness? It means you love them. You don’t feel sadness for all the other people that died, do you? I know you like to think you’re very compassionate person, but you don’t because a lot of people die every day, so it’s beautiful to feel sadness. I shared with you the funeral march.
It was really sad in it, very heavy. They played at the funerals Who wrote that? Chopin. It took one of our greatest composers to capture that feeling of sadness and loss and put it into music and it moves you there, doesn’t it? It’s a very beautiful thing in its own way. Everything is beautiful in its own way. They’re all creations of God. They’re creations of the universe. They all got here. Keep talking about the quantum field. They all came out of these vibrations in the low level fields that made atoms and made molecules and then here they are. They all came from the same place and you’re having the honor of experiencing whatever you experience, people standing, but there are things I want to experience and things I don’t. That’s the problem. That’s what Buddha taught you. He said The cause of suffering is preference.
The cause of suffering is desire. You have a way you want the experiences to be when they pass by you. Guess what? It’s not going to be that way. You know it’s not going to be that way. That’s why you kill yourself trying to make it be that way. You get ulcers, you get anxiety, you have tension, you get headaches, everything, right? Because you can’t handle reality. You have to make reality be what you want it to be so that it can tend to pass through you, but it doesn’t always pass through you because you worry about it. Then you think it will stop. Even if you get what you want, your words, you lose it or it’s not exactly what you want. Oh, if only anyone listening, okay, so the problem is that you don’t know how to transcend. By the way, transcendence does not take will.
It takes will to resist reality. It does not take will to accept reality. He said shouldn’t. Saturn has rings except that work on it. You have to do anything. Yes, Saturn has rings. Yes, it’s raining. Yes, she left me. That’s pretty big. That’s graduate school, right? Yes. Things happen that I just generally don’t like. That’s fine. It’s fine if you don’t have preferences and you can handle what happens. It comes in, it passes through and you learn from it. There’s not one of you that have not had what you thought was a terrible experience in your life that later on looked at it and said, that helped me. I grew from that. I learned how to deal with energies better than I used to. I went through a relationship. I didn’t do well. I got hurt. I hurt the other person. I know if I do another relationship, I’ll do better this time I learn from it.
Yes or no? Okay? That’s what you’re here for. Earth is a place that souls us sin to evolve. You’re supposed to be having experiences and guess what? You are having experiences. The problem is you decide what experiences you want to have, guess what you’ll lose. There’s not one of you that always, every moment that a folder in front of you is what you wanted. In fact, you’re lucky if once in a while you work your butt off to make it be what you want and they get all excited that maybe it will be and it’ll last. How long? Go and get a new car, buy a new house, see what happens, how long and the economics were taught the law of diminishing returns. The more you have something, the less you care about it, so you’ve got to keep peddling as hard as you can to try and be okay.
Transcendence means we’re going to go work our way down, but the high state of transcendence means the world is unfolding. Yep, it is and part of it unfolds in front of me. Not much. Very little of fold in front of you. I told you I love it when people say to me, I don’t miss anything. You’re missing everything you’re missing. 99.9 9, 9 9 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 9% of everything that’s happening all the time. Your only experiences tiny little things in front of you. That’s all you’ve ever experienced, okay? That moment of folding in front of you is very special. It’s the one you get to experience. There’s only one moment you can experience the one in front of you and it’s been going on for your entire life and yet you can’t depreciate and honor and respect, oh, this is my moment. It is your moment. Who else has ever experienced what you are experiencing right now?
Literally the angle you’re sitting at everything like that. Who has ever experienced that? The answer is nobody. You’re the only person experiencing it. It never happened before. It will never happen again, and so you get to the point where you start to respect and honor that this moment is unfolding in front of you. You’re not judging it, you’re not wanting to be a certain way. You’re honoring and respecting that this is, I can’t impress that upon you enough. Did you understand what I said that this moment never happened before? Is that right or wrong? And it will never happen again. Never happen again. Time doesn’t go backwards and only one experiencing it is you. Yes, in this room we’re listening to this talk, but no one’s hearing the same as you. No one’s at the same angle and when you leave this room, they won’t leave you going where you go.
You have a unique path through life and those are the experiences you’re experiencing. It’s like pearls on a necklace. Those are the experiences of your life, but you can’t handle them. You decided the way I want them to be. You’re not willing to say, wow, I get to go down to the planet earth in the middle of nowheres and have experiences. I get to go to Disney World and there’s rides which doesn’t make what happens. It’s fun, it’s exciting. That’s what it means to live transcendent. It doesn’t mean you’re not having the experiences you’re meant to have the experiences. In fact, they’re meant for you. How about this? The universe call it God v want bothered to create all the moments there are. You are the only one experiencing that moment that got created in Einstein’s time, space continuum. That moment is yours and you’re missing it by not wanting it to be there.
Therefore, nobody experienced it. Nobody watched the movie that God made. Alright? I like to tell you, you are God’s ambassador, Emissary, for the moment in front of you, your consciousness alone is experiencing that and that’s what’s meant to happen and you’re busy saying, no, I don’t want to have it, and you’re thinking about something else and dealing with the past. Then with the future, not accepting and honoring that my God, I have a job to do. You have a job to do. Experiencing the moment in front of you, that is your ultimate job. No, I want to think about the things that bothered me in the past. Go on, have fun because you won’t. No, I want to be afraid and worry about things that might happen in the future. Great. Have a good time because you won’t when you guess what here now means when you get to the point that you understand you have a job, God gave you a job, God came down through your consciousness and experience the moment that’s unfolding in front of you, that’s be here now.
That’s what it means to live in the now. You’re not busy sitting saying, I want something else going on. I’m honored to have the experience I’m having. Let’s say it’s not a nice experience. I’m honored to have a not nice experience. I’m honored to have the experience I’m having and now the key is let’s say somebody comes up to you and disses you. You don’t even know them. Just walk up to you. My I’ll give this person I never saw in my life. Get off the earth. You don’t belong here. You pollute the place. Okay? Somebody says something like that to you. It doesn’t feel good, but why does that stay stuck in you? Why can’t it not feel good like Robert Krishna with anger? It doesn’t feel good. It comes in and then the next moment happens. Nobody ever stood there for the rest of your life saying that to you except you did because you couldn’t handle what got said.
You kept saying it to yourself inside your head. Wake up what living the now means. It means the world will unfold. There will be something in front of you. Can you honor that respect that no matter what it is, I’m giving you a graduate class here, birth, death, rain, snow, hot, cold, nice, not nice, mean really saintly. It’s all here. It’s all part of the yin yang and part of it will unfold in front of you. Are you okay with that in unison? Of course not. Alright, and now you get down to what spirituality means. What does it mean to honor and respect this moment that’s unfolding in front of you? Regardless how it feels, it means you have to decide why you like some things and don’t like others. It’s always going deeper. Like people say to me, you say let go of preferences. There’s in patriarchy the great way’s not difficult for those having preferences and they say, well, how do you get rid of preferences? You don’t. You do not get rid of preferences.
You get rid of the reason you have preferences. The Buddhist say work at the root. There is a reason you have preferences. If you go down at that level and you work with that reason, you’re going to find out you can live the life I just told you. When you walk out into the world every moment saying, oh boy, I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen. You wake up in the morning, look, it’s still there. The bed is there, the dress is there. The quantum field is still making vibrations that create the atoms that were there yesterday. Thank you. That’s very nice of you. Don’t you ever think that God created the heavens and earth, God is creating the heavens and earth. It didn’t get created and left was holding it together the same force that made it be what it was is making it be what it is all the way down.
But what happens is you in your mind for some reason, which we’ll discuss for some reason, decided that you like some things and don’t like others, and now when the world unfolds, you either like it or you don’t like it. The person next to you loved what you hated last year. You didn’t like what now you’re just madly in love with. Have you ever changed your mind? Have you ever changed your mind? That means you changed your preferences, you changed what you like changed what you didn’t like. Some people go through, I had this experience was a life changing experience. I came out on the other side like a totally different person. What does that mean? You were neither the consciousness inside having the experience and because you built up these preferences, all that you mean when you change is you changed your preferences. I used to going out and partying and drinking.
Now I like meditating. Congratulations, very nice. Please be my neighbor. But the truth of the matter is it’s just another preference. It’s just another thing that you decided to or not like. It’s deeper than that. It’s getting down to saying, why do I have preferences? Why can’t I honor and respect reality as it unfolds in front of me? I’m going to tell you, you already so good at it that you don’t even know how good you are. You honor and respect 99.9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 raised to the 997 billion power amount of reality every moment of your life, the stars, the moon places you’ve never been the 8.3 billion people you never met. You just let ’em be the way they are. Wow, you’re really high being, you’re totally transcended trying to run everything, but yet there’s a little problem with the 0.0001, the part that’s in front of you.
You want to run that. Which one of you is not okay? That Saturn has rings, which is not okay, that Jupiter’s made of gas and it’s got this giant storm. Oh look, it’s interesting and then you let it go. Why can’t you handle the reality in front of you? Is it not true that you’re supposed to be able to handle reality? Did Darwin not teach you that? An evolution of species, that adaptability is what evolution means. You’re adaptable to your environment. Are you adaptable to your environment? Heck no. I fight it every moment of my life. I’m scared to death what it’s going to do. I don’t like what it did. I’m unable to adapt to my environment. Well, that’s silly. It’s supposed to be the highest species, so you start to wake up and what’s happening, there’s a very high state and you are not only capable of it, you live it with 99.999% of your life, which is I can handle reality.
Look how much reality you can handle. Look at me. There are 2 trillion galaxies. Each of them having 300 billion stars of which your son is one. Can you handle it? That’s a lot of stuff you just handled. Oh my God, you’re a great being. You transcended complaining about reality. That’s the vast majority of all the reality and you’re just fine with it. Why are you not fine with the moment in front of you? The answer is understandable, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The moment in front of you is no different than any other woman that’s not in front. Alright, take a breath. I want to make sure I’m looking in the eyes. The moment in front of you is no different than any other moment in the universe that’s not in front of you. It’s a moment in the universe. It didn’t change its nature in front of you.
If you think it did look to the right, it’s not in front of you anymore. That one’s bothering you. The moment in front of you is exactly the same. I mean it’s not the same, but it’s the same thing as any other moment in the universe. It’s a moment in the universe. The fact is you can’t handle it in front of you. That’s very silly. I tell you, if you don’t like it, look up three degrees, there’ll be a different one. Look to the left, look to the right, look down. Look anywhere. There’ll be a different moment. If you can’t handle a moment, look at another one. But you can’t do that, can you? Right. So now you get down to why is it such a mess? Why can’t I enjoy and appreciate and live and put my whole being into every moment of my life and do what I’m supposed to be doing, which is being the emissary of consciousness.
I’m the only consciousness experience in the moment in front of me. It’s going to be gone. It will never happen again. I have a job to do and so why can’t I do that? It gets very deep. He’s very spiritual. I’m a Jewish person who loves teaching of Christ. But in the Old Testament there’s a thing called the fall from the garden that’s metaphorical, but it’s talking about the truth and what we just talked about is the original sin and the fall from the garden. What is that? You were and are in truth right now in a state of complete transcendence, you are the one universal creator. That’s what your consciousness is. It’s one with everything. There’s no problem, no argument. You’re just experiencing all of creation within your own being. That’s who you are, universal consciousness and you created for whatever reason out of yourself, you created a universe and you are dancing with it.
You’re looking at it master rose, song, spirit and nature dancing together, consciousness and form dancing together. And when you’re in the garden, there’s no problem with that. You’re just enjoying and experiencing your creation. You’re enjoying experiencing everything that is. There’s no difference between. Well, the truth is you’re everywhere. I won’t get into that because you’re not focusing on one thing. You’re experiencing everything. You’re one. You’re one with my Christ and my father and I are one. You’re one with everything. Fine what happens for some reason, but someday you’ll find it for yourself. Something happens and it pulls your focus down to that thing as opposed to everything. Right? Now, how do I get this to you? Can you feel your entire body at the same time? Not with your hands, just with your feeling. Can you feel your body? Can you feel your feet, your hands, your nose?
Yes or no? Why? Because your consciousness is everywhere’s equally in the body. If I stick a pin in your finger, you can’t feel your whole body anymore because your consciousness has been distracted by this distinction of that pain in your finger. So all your conscious goes that finger. That’s why you’re not seated in universal consciousness right now because you focused your awareness on one thing versus willing it to be equal on all things. A master is merged with the universe but still can deal down here. Alright? That’s what Christ meant. My father and I are one. He just is the universal consciousness focusing or at least focus enough to be in this body. You are the same thing right now. You’re seated in God, you’re one with the universe, but you have become distracted by the stick in your finger poking your finger. You became distracted by something that caused you to focus your consciousness down on that small, tiny little thing like your body.
My God, your body’s a tiny little thing. It’s nothing is it in the realm of things. It’s one of 700 billion, trillion things in the universe, but your consciousness is focused, distracted by and focused on your body, on your thoughts and on your emotions, and because of that, they get distracted by the world unfolding in front of you. You are distracted by things that other people are not because of this stuff you have going on inside your mind and your emotions. So I jumped. What happens is that the original sin is the first thing that your consciousness was not able to stay union with God because that thing happened. It pulled me down to it and now I am separate. It’s called the tree of self-knowledge. Now you know yourself as not God. You know yourself as the individual thing you focused on, which in truth is your body, your mind and your emotions.
They draw all your consciousness to them. So you can’t experience who you are right now. You are seated in al consciousness. This whole thing of use it to go to God. You’re already in God, you’re already one. There’s no going anywheres. You have to stop leaving. See the difference? Why am I leaving? I’m becoming distracted. My consciousness is distracted by one thing versus everything. What one thing? Me? I mean mine. It just pulls down. And your ray of consciousness. I don’t have to leave this chair to focus on that picture, do I? And if I become fixated on that picture, there’s nothing else in my universe but that picture, could I do that? And that’s what you’ve done. Nothing else is in your universe except you. Your body and the feelings that it has and your emotions and your thoughts, you’re just fixated on them and that holds your consciousness down to this tiny object.
And then what do I do? I find out that there’s certain things that feel good. Yep, that’s natural. That’s certain things that feel bad. Some sounds are loud, they’re not comfortable when they come in. Some sounds are soothing. Some people touch you in a way you don’t like. Some people touch you in a way you do like there’s different in creation. The Buddhist, everything has its nature. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’re not trying to change that. You’re not trying to make it so everything’s the same. It is what it is. It’s part of creation. Now you’re experiencing it. Are you able to experience it without making a big deal of the fact that it happened? Or do you have to go down there because somebody said something and think about it for the next four hours and then bury it down in you so it screws up the rest of your life and never like the person again?
And the answer is yes, you need to do that. No you don’t. Alright? It’s basically you can let events happen and they come in and you experience them. So transcendence does not mean not experiencing. You experience them, but they’re always stuck inside of you. They come in and they pass through and now you’re ready to do the next moment, but you’re not. Why? Because you did this thing called resistance. Something came in, it caught your attention. If it doesn’t catch your attention, it’s like the rest of the universe pass it right through. It’s all equal. But if it catches your attention, you focus on it and then you hold it inside. Either goes really nice because it wasn’t nice, but you don’t want to keep what’s not nice right in front of you. So you shove it down and that’s what the subconscious is where you took the energies of nature of reality that came into you and you couldn’t handle them.
So you pushed them away. And that’s all of psychology. That’s what your subconscious is. There’s no such thing as a subconscious. There’s just the area of your mind that you don’t want to look at. The day you stop being like that, you’ll stop having a subconscious. Are you hearing me? It’s not that the mind is broken up into parts. Here’s a conscious mind, the subconscious mind that mind. That mind. Alright, the ego mind, the it mind and the super ego mind. No, those are programs running inside the mind. Here’s a society made you think. Here’s what your body made you think. Here’s what you developed a self-concept. Those are just things in your mind. There’s only one mind and the fact that you can’t handle things and you use your will to push them away, then you built a part of your mind. You don’t want to look at, well, the subconscious, that’s how psychology fits into yoga.
They’re just layers of how real you want to be. So now you’re sitting in there, you’re having these experiences, but you learned to push them away. You learned to say, I don’t like that. I can’t handle that. You say it all the time. I can’t handle what you said. I can’t handle what you did. I can’t handle that. I can’t handle the weather. I can’t handle the heat. You don’t need to think about it. I can’t heal the heat. I can’t heal the cold. What does that mean? It means you can’t deal with it. You’re not okay with it. You can’t let it come in and pass through. You have to do something with it and so you manipulate it, try to work with it. Fine. Anything you ever touched like that, it’s still in there. You did not let it come in and pass through you and merge back into the universe where you’re free to be free to experience it.
I pointed that out. It’s not renunciation, you’re not experiencing it. You’re fully experiencing it. The trouble is you’re experiencing everything fully so you don’t end up with preferences. If every single thing that came into you, every food you’re going to eat from now on is going to blow you away. Every single one, every portion you take, you take, oh my God, this is so good. Which one do you want? Get? Who cares? Are you listening to me? It’s the opposite renunciation. It’s complete acceptance. It’s complete honoring and respect in the beauty of all things. And they come in. Now you don’t have a preference because it’s all beautiful, it’s all moving. It’s all deep at all touchy to depth of your being. So which one do you happen next? I don’t care. Your mind will naturally stop doing that if you were in a state like that, that everything was that beautiful.
Look, you’ve been in love someday. I know you have been in love maybe in fifth grade, but anyways, you’ve been in love where you just felt, I don’t care what happens ever again for the rest of my life as long I’m with you, yes or no. Okay, well, you’re a liar, okay? But it’s okay. You found out that it wasn’t true, okay? But if you didn’t care and you really were that high and that filled with love and joy and depth, you wouldn’t care because everything was feeding you everything. Imagine what’s that song from by your lady on the street where you live? People stop and stare. They don’t bother me. There’s no place else that I would rather be, right? You just sing it because you live on the street that I’m here. It doesn’t matter what anybody does. It doesn’t matter what happens.
I’m just in a state of ecstasy. Why not be that way about everything? If you were that way about everything, you listened to me, you would not have preferences. There’d be no reason to. But as a preference, I’m not okay. If something happens, I’ll be okay. So I prefer that that happens. I not okay, and if something happens, I’ll be worse. So I prefer that doesn’t happen. How about I am okay? I am always okay. Every single thing blows me away that, oh my God, what do I care What happens? What do I care What happened? If I look back on my past? Oh, I forgot. I don’t. Why would I? The moment is so enthralling and so beautiful, so special. Why would my mind drift back to other times that were beautiful? Can you imagine what your photo album would look like? Why bother having one?
What you have in your photo album or the great moments of your life? What if every moment of your life was blowing you away? Ever new joy? That is who you are. That is what you’re capable of. The problem is you’re not in that state of joy. At least you’ve lost it. They fell down from it. That’s the fault of the garden. So the question is how do I get back there? Can you get back there? Absolutely. But you don’t understand the terrible things they’ve done. It doesn’t make any difference and don’t you dare let them tell you it makes a difference. You let it go. It’s gone. It’s because you hold it inside of you. You have a bunch of junk in there, don’t you? A bunch of things you’re guilty about, sad about, afraid of. Well, imagine having to go live in there.
Instead of getting distracted by food and this and that, relationships and movies. At least I can distract myself from myself. What if you couldn’t? There’s hell for you. That’s what basically you wake up and you realize I’m a great being. I’m a being of great light. I’m a being of ecstasy. Such an anand is the nature of my being. Eternal, conscious joy. What have I done? There were situations that happened at some points in my life about all the points in your life. Different things happen that when they came in me, the consciousness was not able to let them flow into me. The river wasn’t free to flow into the ocean, into the sea. So what happened? We damned it up. What happened? It floods. You understand that? Go damn up a river and see what happens. It’ll be dry downstream. It’ll be flooding upstream.
That’s what you did with these experiences in your life. You couldn’t handle them. And so you push them away. That is equivalent to blocking them inside of you. They will stay inside of you. They’re like a virus on a computer. They will multiply and grow deep underneath you and they’ll keep trying to come back up, don’t they? Right? You dream about them. Somebody reminds you of them. You tell somebody. I don’t like to talk about that. Why’d you bring that up? There are things that you stored inside of you that if something reminds you of them now, even though they’re not happening, it bothers you. How ridiculous is that? It is not even happening. That’s how you need to look at it. Don’t let them make you babies. Oh, poor thing that happened to you when you were five. How old are you now? 65.
Wow. It’d bother me too if that happened to me. No, no. That’s unacceptable. It’s not happening. It shouldn’t be bothering you. It should be dealing with the moment in front of you and learning to love it and enjoy it and open it. But you didn’t do that. You pushed it away inside suppressed it. That’s Freudian stuff. You pushed it away inside. It’s still there. The energy did not get to finish its journey through the universe. It made it through every place else. It didn’t make it through. You made it through all the people next to you. They don’t think about it at all. But you think about it all the time. Isn’t that silly? It didn’t finish its journey because you blocked it and so now it’s causing all that trouble inside of you. And now anything that reminds you of it, you don’t like it.
So I have a preference. I prefer that nothing reminds me of the thing that I couldn’t handle when I was five and it doesn’t even when you were five. I prefer that when I go home, nothing reminds me of the bad day I had at work. Come on, I had a bad day. Treat me this way. Don’t talk to me like don’t do that, et cetera, et cetera. You just do it all the time. All the time because you couldn’t handle your day at work. You come back with an attitude you couldn’t handle when you were five. You carry this with you your entire life. How many of these do you have? Oh my God, I think you have more than there are stars in the sky. You resist everything. And then what happens is once you can’t handle things, then you resist all the things that remind you of it and everything reminds you of it.
Go have a bad day. Have your boss yell at you or say something and see what happens. Don’t talk to me that way. My boss talked to me that, well, your wife’s not your boss, but it still sounds like it doesn’t. You’re picking on me. And so you wake up and you realize that the reason you can’t live in ecstasy and joy and transcendence all the time is because you stored all this stuff inside of you. And now the reality of life can’t make it through you. Pretty much nothing can make it through you. Now everybody has to be exactly. We want them to be. When do you want them to be that way? Everything. Oh my God, you’re so specific. All of those specifications are because of past experience with your suppressed inside of you. That’s why you like this. Don’t like that and why?
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, yes, there’s some of it biological, yes. But as far as psychological things, what you like about people, what you don’t like about people that is not genetic. I don’t care what they tell you. You have built up stuff inside of your psyche, inside your mind and emotions over the course of your life that you don’t like and anything that reminds you of them, you don’t want to happen. That’s where your preferences come from. I told you, you do not get rid of preferences. You get rid of the cause of preferences. That is the cause of all your preferences. If you cleaned out and did not have that stuff inside of you, you would walk into the world and think it’s the most amazing place. Everything that happens, it’s like, oh my God, look what happened. Isn’t that far out?
This is going to be interesting. Now, that doesn’t mean I want you to hit me, say, but aren’t we supposed to interact? Yes, yes. I told you you’re here to interact with that moment, but not because you can’t handle it. There’s different reasons you interact with the world. One of them is I can’t handle what happened, therefore I have to manipulate and interact with the world to make sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s extremely personal, isn’t it? I’m not doing anything to help anybody else. I’m doing something to help me. It’s all about me. Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t act like that. Don’t stand so close to him. Don’t dance with him. Don’t make that right. I’m jealous, I’m scared. I’m insecure. Therefore, you are to change. You better be the way I need you to be. Now you’re out there interacting with the world, you’re really interacting for yourself.
There is a state in which you’re fine. You’re not doing that. You’re filled with love. You’re filled with joy. By all means, bring it into the world. See what you can do to help others. See what you can do to raise the energy. But that’s not doing it. You’re not okay and you’re trying to do something to make you be okay, which is why almost everybody does everything they do. I’m not okay. So you better be like this. I need to make the money. I need to do this. And you’re like me. I need every single thing. I need what I use the right word, every single thing I need. What does it need? If you’re totally okay inside, any needs, aside from your biological food, clothing, shelter, no. A need means I’m not okay. And I need you to be a certain way to take care of the fact that I’m not okay.
And you better get with the program if you’re having fun because it’s not fun and it will never lead you to a state of joy and wellbeing or God or anything like that. It will just lead you into ulcers and tension and anxiety and worry because you need things to be a certain way. Well, why do I need things to be a certain way? Because you’re blocked. Because your natural shakti flow, your energy flow that should be flowing freely inside of you, lifting you to the highest states of your being all the time. That’s where master lives all the time. It’s wave upon wave. You want to be there, you’re capable. Every one of you are capable. That is your natural state, but you’ve blocked all this garbage inside. So what do you do? It’s obvious. You get rid of it and you don’t put any more in.
It’s called cleansing. You let go of the garbage is stored inside. And people ask me about how can you do that? Now we’re talking about transcendence. This is how you transcend. Transcend what the garbage is stored inside. The only reason you don’t like the world of falling in front of you is because you stored stuff inside of you that says, I don’t like it here. You went to camp when you were little and you didn’t swim well. Everybody was swimming better than you. I don’t like swimming. I don’t want to go swimming. When you’re 30 years old, go to psychology, man. This is some of his learned experiences. You built this thing in here based upon your past experiences. Do you have to, no.
Things should come in and be experienced and feed you and learn and then come out and interact with the world. Open, loving, giving, ready to go, rare and ready to go, but more knowledge than you were because you had the experience. So every experience you have makes you wiser and you come out here and bring that wisdom into the world for no reason. You have no particular reason to do it. You’ve transcended. You are capable of this state. It’s the only state you will ever reach that will ever be totally fulfilling. How do you do it? I always get here. I hope you don’t get bored. Why? Talk about it if you don’t know how to do it. Are you capable of doing it? I know you think you’re not. You’re a mess in there. You’re scared. Am I scared? I wanted to talk about something specific but just got there. Is anybody afraid of being rejected? Has anybody feel sensitive about being rejected? Anybody worry after they talk to somebody as they walk away? Go over what they said and maybe it was stupid. And who knows what the people thinks about what they said. Oh my God, I wish anybody wish I didn’t say that. Or I wish I did say that. Oh my God, that would’ve been a smart thing. Anybody? No.
Okay. Why? Because you need to be accepted. You have a deep need to be accepted. And psychology says to you, oh, that’s part of your social animal. It’s a natural thing to be accepted. It is not. It is not because there’s something wrong with you. You’re holding a plea within yourself. You are free to express yourself freely open because I’m going to do it once Deep people are not accepting or rejecting you. They’re accepting or rejecting themselves. Now that sounds very new. Age talk. Watch. My mother was a certain way. My father was a certain way. My first girlfriend was a certain way. Your hair reminds me of what my first girlfriend who dumped me was like, therefore I don’t like you. I don’t not like you. I don’t like what happened to me. Or the opposite. You look a lot like the girl I dated in fifth grade.
Oh my God, I’ve been looking forever since I was so beautiful relationship. She left before we ever had an argument or anything. And you look like her. Can we go out? They don’t like you. They like themselves. They either like the part of you that is stimulated inside themselves something they were. Are you listening to me? Okay, watch. Oh, I love how you look. Look at all your tattoos. Oh my God, what are you weird. You got tattoos on your tongue. It’s not you that they’re judging, it’s themselves. It’s their patterns that you are stimulating and they’re either liking or not liking that. And how true is that? You’re that way, aren’t you? And so what are you going to do? Everybody’s different. I’ve been teaching that lately. Psychologist says, man is the sum, has learned experiences. It’s not true. I’m the consciousness watching this idiot down there.
That’s the sum of learned experiences. But he is. He’s the sum of his learned experiences. What else could he be? Right? He got programmed by the experiences he had. So is everybody else. So if you stimulate something inside of somebody that they get turned on, you just turned off the other person that was standing there, how are you going to please everybody? Stop it. Liberation and transcendence means, I understand you’re not liking me. You’re liking you. Now imagine that I wore exactly the dress or suit or ripped pants. Alright, whatever it is you like and you got turned on, you say, oh my God, I love you to peace. I love what you’re wearing. I don’t know what to put on tomorrow. I can’t wear the same thing. Right? You hear me? You worry immediately all the time because you’re trying to somehow impress somebody to like you.
It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them. And even if they like you because of something you did, they won’t like the other thing. You better worry about it. It’s the lose lose situation to care about what people think about you. It does not make any difference. When people think about you, it matters who you are. It matters what you’re doing inside yourself and what you’re feeling and experiencing. And what’s really funny is if you did that and let go, they all love you. Imagine being with somebody who’s not judging you and doesn’t want you to do anything for them or anything like that. They’re just completely whole within themselves. They have flocked you like flies. Wake up. You don’t want to carry this with you for the rest of your life. It does not make one single difference when people think about you.
It matters how you’re doing inside yourself and how you’re dealing with yourself. And so how do you get to a state like that which you are all capable of? Wouldn’t that be nice if I’ll go into the world to be real and don’t have to worry if you burped or sneezed or if you drop some ketchup on your pants at lunch. You are whole. So how do you do that? It’s all because you stored all this stuff in there over the course of your life that now you have to carry this burden and you have to make things fit and be the way you want them to be. Otherwise you’re not well, you’re not doing well. So you start. I do it in the new book, living Untethered. You start by saying, okay, I’m a mess because I stored all this mess inside of me.
Over time it’s going to take time. It’s been in it for a while. You made a collection of everything that ever bothered you in your life. You collected bad experiences, well then you’re not going to be very happy. You can be a mess. So you start by waking up in the morning every single morning and saying, I ain’t putting no more in here. It’s bad enough. I got all this in here. Lifetime worth of bad experiences. I’m going to go through this day like a game, like a video game. I’m going to go through this day without storing any more bad experiences. Well, what if somebody says something I don’t like? I’m going to learn to let it go. Now you understand what I mean by letting go. It doesn’t mean you interact with the world letting go. It means inside you let go of what you would’ve stored because you couldn’t handle it inside say, I can handle this, I can handle this, I can handle this.
The perfect mantra for the western mind. Give it a shot As you walk through your day and you’ll see how often it wanted to say, I can’t handle this right. And you just use positive thinking, breathing, letting go whatever you want. Do not let moments that unfold during this day. Get stuck inside of you. Be able to leave that moment. Imagine living in the now. There’s the moment I had with you, with whoever talking school, this, that business, whatever it is. And then the next moment happened. Can you go to the next moment without carrying the last one inside your garbage? Or do you have to process it? Well, we don’t even know how to process it. You’re taught really in high teachings, right? Process the moment so you don’t carry it with you eventually you won’t have to process it. There’s no reason to carry it with you because you don’t care what people think about you.
And it’s very different than, I don’t care what they think about me. You do. So you just hiding it. What if you really don’t care? I really, really don’t care that I’m free. I’m free to enjoy my life. I’m free to interact with you. I don’t have to walk away. I wonder if she thought, oh my God, how would you like to be free of all that? You’re capable. You just do it little by little. Every day you handle the moments that are unfolding in front of you. You let them go. You’ll see the tendency to touch them, to push them around, to clean them. What about nice moments? That’s postgraduate school. I don’t like to talk to you about it, but people ask me, there’s negatives, some scars. Those are the patterns you hold negative and there’s positives. Some scars. Both will bind you.
What do you mean? I met you. Oh my God, I met you was so beautiful. I haven’t felt good for weeks and all of a sudden just say met you. I looked somehow you opened me up. It was so beautiful. What do you do about that? You say thank you and you move to the next moment. No, I want to see you again. I don’t want you to leave. Stay here. Right? Why can’t I just like the fact that I had this nice moment? Why don’t I have to own it? I don’t think I have another one. I’ve had so few of them, you hear me? So I clinging to them little by little. And again, you can keep your nice moments. That’s graduate school, okay? But at least the ones that bother you that hit your stuff, let go right then to the best of your ability.
If you can’t then do some breathing at the end of the day, sit down and see did I let go? What did I bring with me from the day? Because you’re going to have another one tomorrow. Watch it. If you start collecting that stuff, it’s going to be great burden. Okay? There’s a line in, I think it was Raiders of the Lost Ark or something. It’s not the years, it’s the mileage. How much did you collect instead of letting go? Because what bends you over in life? Okay. And so you practice in the morning, it’s committing myself. I’m not going to put any more in here. No matter what happens, I’m not going to. And then in the evening you sit down and you try to let go. I used to call it neutralizing, but so-and-so said so-and-so. Is that okay? I give you the methodologies I’ve learned to use so-and-so said so-and-so.
I say Hello, make listen. Don’t shut up. I don’t shut up. I don’t do that. Are you sitting on a little planet spinning in the middle of nowheres? There’s 8.2 billion people. One of ’em has said something and get off the planet for a minute. How big is the planet? I don’t know. 1.3 billion Earth inside the sun and you care what happened. That little dinky little spot that’s circling one star and there’s 300 billion stars in your galaxy and 2 trillion galaxies. Whoa. That was for a big event, wasn’t it? You try to neutralize it, use your mind, you couldn’t use your mind. That’s the ultimate positive thinking. Expand your frame of reference until it looks like nothing. Then come back and have fun. So at the end, neutralize let go. Don’t carry this stuff with you. Alright? You won’t be perfect. No, it’s you’re not perfect. When you try to play the piano or when you try to learn a sport, you practice.
You practice at letting go of the situations that unfolded during the day that you had some difficulty with. So you don’t carry them with you and keep building inside. If you do that, I am mourning you skull and crossbones. Don’t tell me, I didn’t tell you. If you stop putting more in there, the old stuff’s going to come back up by itself. That’s what we call a life o stack last in first out. So the last things you push down there are going to be the ones that you dream about. The one you talk about. If you stop doing that, you become more open. Then that garbage doesn’t want to be in there. God, I really talk about it in living untethered. Your body has an immune system, does it not? Why? To try and keep foreign matter out. Bacteria and viruses and all that does an amazing job.
Your mind and your heart are way more intelligent than your body. If you live in cells, your mind, it is brilliant. Look what it learned about everything. And your heart is, oh my God, it’s the greatest thing. It doesn’t want that stuff on top of it, you shoved this garbage on top of your Shakti flow, on top of your brilliance, it will try to push out by itself. Do I have to go to therapy? We never tell anybody not to go to therapy. We’re never telling anything to anybody. We just talk about the truth. Do you have to go to therapy? No. Can you go to therapy? Of course you do whatever. It’s helps you do you understand that? But the fact is, if you stop pushing more stuff in there, it’s coming back up. I guarantee you. And you know it will. It’ll come back up.
Don’t push it back down. But it hurts. Of course it hurts. It was stored with pain. It’s coming back with pain. There’s not a chance in the world that you stored that from your childhood, that took your blanking away too soon. All of a sudden you find yourself crying. You’re 65 years old, you’re blanky, whatever it is. It doesn’t be specific like that. But the stuff you store down there is coming back up because it’s blocking your Shakti flow. It’s blocking your energy. It’s blocking your greatness. Eventually you will say, thank you. I want it to come back up. I don’t want it to stay there my entire life. Why would I carry all that garbage inside of me for my entire life and it will come back up by itself. So what do I do? Breathe, relax, release. Use positive affirmation. You go from, I can handle it. I’m trying to handle it. You’re really not, but it’s okay. That’s you’re in between state. I’m trying to let it go. Really while, are your hands moving? Alright. Or the next stage up is, give me a moment. Give me a moment.
Okay, I’m better now. You had to deal with it. Good. It’s good to deal with it. The next stage, you start looking at it because you’ve gone through enough to say, what’s behind that is so beautiful. It’s like you’ll never get tired anymore. You’re filled with enthusiasm all the time. That’s kind of nice. It’s worth it. Women have babies, it hurts. They go back for seconds and thirds, don’t they? You’re birthing your soul. So all of a sudden, it’s a beautiful experience. You start to welcome it and I told you, stay there. I never imagined he existed. You look at it coming up and you apologize to it for shoving it down there. You did that. It didn’t want to be down there years ago. You just shoved this down to the darkness. Of course it’s screwed up. And you take ownership, you take responsibility, and you apologize to it, and you help it up.
The Gita says, one should raise the self with self, not trampled down the self for self, which is self friend can become selfe. What does that mean? It’s talking about Atman with a capital A and Atman with a lower, a higher self, lower self. One should raise the self, the lower self with your higher self, with your consciousness, with your awareness. Help it up. And all of a sudden you become friends and you can work with it and your whole life changes completely and all of a sudden you realize, I don’t need anything. I’m filled with love. I’m filled with Shakti. Literally waves of Shakti pouring through you all the time. And now you can come out and give. Instead of being a taker, you’re a giver. But it’s natural. It’s to think about it.
That’s what it means to transcend. I am transcendent. You’re not closed, you’re not cold. You need give up life. You still live your life fully, but you don’t live your life fully because you’re not okay and you’re trying to compensate for the garbage you stored inside. You live your life fully because you are okay and you’re expressing the beauty that has opened up inside of you. What is it? The Woodstock song, Crosleys for the Nash. We’ve got to find our way back to the garden. When you found your way back, every one of you can find your way back.
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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