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: The mind is a very, very great thing. It’s very, very important both in life and especially in the spiritual path, and you understand the mind truly and understand how to use it, understand how to have it healthy, understand its purpose, et cetera. The problem is when you’re drowning in water, you don’t even know you’re in water. You’re just trying to stay alive. You’re just grabbing onto anything you possibly can. You can’t understand the nature of water, the nature of the ocean, the nature of waves, et cetera, because you’re drowning and you’re in panic. That is where almost everybody is inside their mind. You can’t understand mind until you get out. You have to get a distance from it. Then you can look at it. You can come back in and you can understand what’s going on, but when you’re lost in it, you can’t see it.
They say you can’t see the forest from the trees. You have to step back and we don’t know how to do that. First, let’s talk about why we don’t know how to do it because we’re drowning and that’s the truth. Everyone’s drowning. They don’t know it because they’re grabbing onto things that make it feel like they’re not drowning. If you lost those things, which you have is sometimes in your life, you’re drowning, so you’re doing what the Buddhist call clinging, that’s the term clinging. The most hilarious part of it is mind is what you’re drowning in and you’re grabbing onto mind in order to not drown. You’re in that mind. What do I need to do? How can I do it? What should I, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You’re struggling. You’re struggling. How do you know you’re struggling? The mind is telling you you’re struggling.
It’s telling you this is not okay. That could go wrong. Oh my God, be careful, and you’re going exactly into the mind that is telling you. You’re struggling to say, how do I stop struggling? And the answer is very simple. Have your mind stop telling you you’re struggling. Stop drowning in mind and then you don’t have to grab mine to stop drowning. You’ll understand when I’m done how truthful that is. Alright, first of all, what is mind? We discussed this before. Let’s just get it very quickly. When you step back out of mind, what you see is it’s a field of energy like the ocean. Imagine a still lake or the still ocean. No wavelengths, no nothing, just still, it’s not disturbing, it’s just there. It’s a certain level of energy that exists. That’s what mind is. All of the minds are the same in that state.
It’s like all the waters the same. It’s just there. It’s there. It’s something that exists. Why does mind exist? That’s very, very deep. Maybe we’ll touch it. I’ll give you a clue. Robert Krishna, fully enlightened beings said, the purified mind is no different than the self of the self is consciousness. It’s you in there. You in there that’s watching mine. You in there that’s noticing the emotions you in there is looking through the eyes. That’s self, okay, don’t talk about it. It’s just there. It’s the essence of your being and it happens to be an emanation of the infinite spirit. That’s what your consciousness is. It’s one with the infinite consciousness, but it’s focusing. Consciousness can focus. It’s focusing on this, I’ll call it you. It’s focusing down to a point. That’s what your witness consciousness is. Witness consciousness is a beautiful state. Very few people can reach it.
Where you’re there noticing that, you’re noticing that you’re noticing your thoughts, you’re not your thoughts. You’re noticing the thoughts. You’re not your emotion. You’re noticing the emotions. You’re noticing that you notice. That’s wonderful. It’s not a very high state. The great ones went way, way past that. That is a state in which the consciousness is focused down to one point, which is your seat, your seat of consciousness, your witness, and then it’s noticing what it’s noticing. What if the consciousness doesn’t focus down to one point, which they it? Your soul, your witness, your the you in there, your atman with a lower case, A What if it doesn’t do that? What if it remains expanded, not expanded consciousness. I would tell you that in the sixties we talk about expanded consciousness. Now I understand it’s a non-contracted consciousness. You’re concentrating that contracts the consciousness. It’s already fully expanded.
Just stop concentrating on you and you’ll find out who you are. The source of consciousness is universal. Consciousness is God the whole, so that consciousness is focusing down to one point and then looking at what it sees. The problem is you are so destructive of what you see that you can’t even get back to that point. You’ve spread out. It’s like you’re a flashlight and there’s a core, oh, LED, whatever. It’s where you come from. That’s what’s eminent light, but then it broadcasts the light, radiates the light out onto objects. If you don’t care about the objects, the light can just move around and just sees the objects, but you still know that you are the light. If somehow it shines on an object that you are so distracted by, so involved in, so attached to, then you think you’re the object. You are the light aluminum in the object, but you’re more interested in the object than you are who you are.
You’re so distracted. Your consciousness is so distracted but is looking at that it actually is more interested in what it sees than who it is there. I said it. Can you understand that? That’s the essence of understanding deep spirituality. You’re more interested in what you’re seeing than who sees it. You’re more interested in what you’re experiencing and who’s experiencing it. You are not the experience you’re having. You’re the being that’s experiencing the experience. You’re not a car, but you can get so involved in the car because it got crashed because it’s so beautiful or whatever the heck it is, that you lose your seat of awareness. You don’t realize I’m in here. No, I’m out there. No, you’re not, but you’re distracted so much by what’s out there. Your consciousness is it’s always you. It’s all that’s in there. Your conscious is distracted by it and then you collect things.
You have this field of energy, but then you fill it with this stuff, you fill it with this stuff, you fill it with cars, you fill it with people, you fill it with this, you fill it with that. You fill everything. It’s just full of stuff. So when Ramo Krishna says the purified mind is no different than itself. He doesn’t mean the mind that doesn’t swear or doesn’t think bad things. That’s not purity means it means it’s still. It means it’s not holding objects inside of itself. You can’t really hold a car in your mind. You can hold a mental thought of a car, which is just a vibration, a form that gets made out of this field. This field emanate that vibrates and it makes the form of a car. It’s not a car, right? That’s what a thought is. It’s a form that gets formed inside that field and so you’ve dirtied the field, if you will, with all of these thought patterns that you made out of the field and that’s what’s going on in there.
The purified mind is the one that isn’t doing that. It’s back to its natural state. It’s pure. It hasn’t built false forms that you held onto and he says the purified mind is no different than the self that is as deep as it comes. What it means is where did that field come from? The field of mind. It is no different than the field of consciousness. It’s all the same thing. Non-dualism. There’s only consciousness. Just like there’s here, there’s vapor. If I cool the vapor down, there’s water. If I cool the water down like this morning, there’s ice. It’s the same thing. It’s just vibrating at different rates, but it’s all water. It’s all H2O. It’s the same thing. It’s all consciousness, but if it concentrates even a little bit, it gets denser. Its vibration is slower. That’s what concentrating does. It takes that which is broad vapor and turns it into ice.
It just becomes, if you focus on something in your mind, it concentrate on something. It means take that which is broad and bring it down to a point. As it does that, its nature changes. It turns in dice, it turns in this or that, not a bad thing. So when pure unformed unmanifest consciousness concentrates even the little, it becomes the field of mind, the field of emotions, the field of form as it slows down, that’s all it is, but it’s all consciousness. It’s all the same thing. So the purified mind is no different than the self is saying. If it formed that concentrated first step down but didn’t build objects out of it, it’s pure. There’s no different. So that’s what mind is. We started there. Mind is that field of consciousness which has slowed down enough to where it can make forms, not physical forms, mental forms.
Okay, alright, that’s wonderful. It’s a gift. You can hold things in your mind, you can create things, you can be inspired. My mind can do so many great things. It’s great. It’s neat that the water can be still, but it’s also beautiful that it can make wavelengths and can do all kinds of things. Like quiet is beautiful, but out of quiet you can create vibrations that are beautiful music and so on. And same thing with colors, same with everything. The mind is a way that the creative force God is able to create at all kinds of levels. So now it can create in the mind. The mind is extremely creative, isn’t it? Like Beethoven, Beethoven heard people think Beethoven wrote music. He was a composer. He would argue with you. He would say, I wrote down the music that was going on in my mind all the time.
All I heard was this music and I had to get it down and he cried. He was in pain when he went deaf, when he was going deaf of all things, a great composer couldn’t hear. He cut the legs off his piano, he put it down on the wood floor and tried to move his ears where he could hear the vibration of the floor as he hit the notes, he couldn’t live without expressing what was going on in his mind. Mind is a great thing artists. Artists don’t start by putting it on a canvas. They see it in their mind. That’s so beautiful. Mind is a great thing. It’s a great thing. So what happened? What happened? Why are we drowning in mind? You’re drowning in mind because you got too distracted by a particular thing in the world. You looked at it, the form outside form came in. It created a form in your mind. I guess I have to tell you that I do this. I don’t know, I can’t help myself. Let’s get down to biology health.
Look at me. You’re not looking at me. You are not looking at me. I know it’s tough. You’re not looking at me. Light is bouncing off of the atoms that make up my body but not bouncing off the air. The air is subtle enough toward light doesn’t bounce off of it, but the light bounces off my body. That light hits your retina, hits your visual sensors, and it stimulates the nerves and comes back and creates a form in your mind. This form. That’s what you’re looking at. Take a breath, check it out. That’s not yoga, that’s not spirituality, that’s science. Your consciousness is looking at the form that got rendered. That’s the word we use that got rendered in your mind because of the light that got sent up. If you’re colorblind, what rendered isn’t necessarily the color that’s out there. If you’re afraid of me and you’re looking at me, you’re not seeing the same thing as somebody who loves me.
Why? Because it passed with the filter of your mind that wasn’t clear and pure and all of a sudden fear has distorted. I have horns or I have angels, whatever it is. Alright, so it had to pass through the filter of your mind, right? It had to come in and pass through your mind. There was already something in your mind and it distorts your view, but the point is, it’s all happening inside your mind. That’s how great mind is. There’s nothing else going on. The world is light bouncing off and then you’re receiving it and it renders. It’s exactly the same as is a ball game going in San Francisco as a camera. There’s your eyes shooting the ball game, sending it through the satellites or through the wires, whatever it is, transmitting it, and then it hits your flat screen tv, which renders it and it looks like you’re watching the ball game.
You’re obviously not watching the ball game. You’re watching a rendered image of the ball game that was digitized and then transferred and then rendered. That is exactly what is. When you look outside your eyes, you do not look out your eyes. There are cameras that are receiving the light and sending it back to you. Isn’t that neat? This is how great mind is. Look what it’s doing. So these images come in to they form in your mind. Why? Because it’s capable of doing that. I told you it’s capable of making forms out of that subtle energy, which is truly self, right? Slowed down, self slowed down consciousness, and it makes those forms. Then it goes away, and then the next thing be here. Now the camera scans the ball game. Focus on different things. How would you like it if when it watched somebody at bat do baseball, somebody at bat and they go hit the ball and the camera goes to follow, right?
But the batter is still there on top of the image. That was supposed to be the ball going to the home run and then it all stayed there mushed into each other and it’d be terrible, wouldn’t it? Well, that’s what your mind’s doing. There are images that came into your mind that are not there anymore. Not where my mind. Well, they’re in your mind, but they’re not outside anymore. You clung to them. You didn’t let it dissolve when it was over. Who did that? Did the image do that? The image has no ability to do anything. The image is light bouncing off of images outside coming in and forming in your mind. Did your mind do that? No. Your mind did not do that. You did that. The consciousness that was watching the image said, oh my gosh, she’s beautiful. I don’t ever want to enough think about her, right?
Well what about the rest of your life? I don’t care. I only have eyes for you dear. Alright? In other words, the image got made in your mind and if she went away, went away. She’s not there anymore. I mean she won’t come back, but she’s not there anymore. What’s there? There is what’s there. She’s there. He’s there. The sky’s there. The power is there. There’s all kinds of things that are there. The thing that is there, what’s there be here now. But you can’t do that. Why? Because there are images that got formed in your mind that you either didn’t like or did. It’s so simple. That’s the essence of the deepest spiritual teachings is that it’s all about like and dislike. It’s all about the fact that you couldn’t let that image go. It’s gone. I don’t understand. The light is no longer bouncing off that image coming into your eyes, but you have the ability to hold it in your mind even though it’s gone.
Like I said, imagine watching the news and there’s a broadcaster. Then you change to a movie, but the broadcaster still there superimposed on top of the movie. That’s what’s going on inside your mind. You did it. There is nothing going on inside that you’re not in charge of. You’re the only one who lives in there. Nobody else lives in there. Not your mother, not your father, not your kids, not your husband, not your wife. You live in there. So whatever’s going on in there, and people don’t like me saying this, whatever’s going on in there is your house. That’s your house. If you got to hold onto this image, hold onto the image. You want to see a snake once in your life. Rattlesnake just took a step. All of a sudden this rattler coiled up close to you when you were little. Now you won’t walk in the woods ever again.
You won’t do anything. You won’t go to the zoo because there’s reptile things in the zoo. Ropes scare you if they’re coiled up, rattles baby, you did that. No, the snake did that. No, the snake did not do that. The snake’s gone for 40 years. Why is this still going on in air? Because you held it there, you held it there. You the consciousness, the indwelling being, the self, the optimum, the consciousness is the only power that’s in there and for whatever that gets deep as to why you did that, why you’re not evolved enough to say, okay, I saw a snake. There are snakes. I’ll be careful there. Now let’s go about our business. Let’s live our life. No, it made its image inside my mind so strong it won’t go away. No such thing. There’s no super glue in there. There’s no concrete in there.
There’s nothing that will hold anything inside your mind except you, except the focus of consciousness. If you focus your consciousness on something it can’t pass through because you gave it the energy of staying. Don’t you find out that if something’s stuck in your mind, that keeps drawing your attention to it, keep holding onto it. It’s all about that clinging of holding. So basically there are things that because they’re not evolved, it’s all question. I can’t talk about anything without talking about everything. It’s a question of evolution, physical evolution. No, you’re pretty evolved. Way more involved in armadillo or an amoeba, definitely an amoeba. No question. You’ve gone through the evolutionary process. You now have this beautiful body has thumbs and there’s all kinds of things. It can stand erect, it can move, it can do all kinds of things. It’s got a mind. Oh my God, you’re so evolved.
Don’t worry about that. You’re fully evolved, but inside the self, the consciousness, God, that focus down to one point and then is looking at your thoughts, your emotions, your form, what’s coming into your eyes got lost. That is the fall from the garden. That’s what they’re trying to tell you in that story is you were with God, you are with God. My father and I are one. That’s who you are. That’s what your consciousness is. It is the whole universe and it created all of creation and then came down to play to experience itself. Like an artist painted something, wants to look at it. So the divine force vibrated, created the quantum field, manifest it all up and then came down to look at it and you’re the eyes, you’re God’s ambassador for the moment you’re looking at some of these things, I say, do you get it?
The moment you’re experiencing nobody else is experiencing even right now, you’re all looking at me from different angles and different things. Then you’re going to go out and go somewhere else. Not only is the moment you’re experiencing, you’re the only one experiencing it. Literally. You’re the only one experiencing that exact moment. No one has ever experienced it and no one will ever experience it because it’ll never happen again. Wow, that’s quite an honor. That moment was made for you. If nobody else ever experienced this moment, you’re having a moment. That’s a very romantic thing. We had a moment. That’s how special you are. That’s what you’re meant to be. The body emanated from the quantum field and all came up in the atoms and all formed into all your parts of your body, liver, this and the whole thing, and now your consciousness is looking down into it.
God is experiencing his creation through you. You are the consciousness experiencing the consciousness creation fine being in the garden. It’s all beautiful. It’s all awesome. It’s like God wants to experience everything. God’s everything. He experience everything. So the reality is there’s just consciousness expressing itself and consciousness experience the expression of itself and that’s who you are in there. It focused in order to experience the moment you’re experiencing, but you can’t do that. Why? You got too close. That’s the fall from the garden. You tasted the tree of self knowledge. You stared at something and either you couldn’t handle it. It was too scary. The vibration was such that you weren’t able to, it distracted you too much. It distracted you so much that you held onto it. Something distracts you. If you like something, you don’t like something, you don’t let it go. You keep it formed in your mind.
Now all of a sudden you have competition. For the current moment right now it’s here now. No. I have these things I built in my mind that are left over because I couldn’t handle them, handle me. Use the words, do you understand? If you like something so much, you can’t handle it. It’s not just the things you don’t like. You can’t handle, you can’t handle that. You liked it so much. You were married and you went out to a tennis pro and he was really cute or she was really cute and all of a sudden you can’t get him out of my mind. You couldn’t handle the love. You couldn’t handle feeling wonderful. You couldn’t handle positive and you couldn’t handle negative. You couldn’t handle the strength of a strong experience. So what did you do with it? You held it inside of you. You formed it in that form of mind.
Now I’m telling you, there’s competition with reality. What your mind, I never stop it. I talk so fast. I’m going to stop for a second. Do you understand how deep that is? Now you are in there experiencing what is which with is what the reality is out there coming in or the one you held in your mind from before you have this whole thing going outside your mind. Which one are you paying attention to? Because it is rather distracting, isn’t it? Wow, if you got that, you just we’re talking about mine, you got something so deep. So that’s what’s happening. The self, the consciousness now has two worlds. They can pay attention to the mental world with all of its past objects that you built in there that aren’t happening anymore or the ones that are happening now. What it does is smush ’em together.
Oh my god, you’re so beautifully. Hair hair’s. Like my sister’s and I had this experience with my sister always. I saw her brushing her hair. I just felt so much love. It’s always inside of me. And now you reminded me of that she’s not your sister, it’s not your sister’s hair. You’ve just polluted reality with personal. Alright, so now the consciousness is lost. Is it my sister? Is it this? Should it mean she’s special? Should I marry her? She’s a serial killer. You don’t know anything. You just painted the world with the brush of your mind of the brush you held in your mind. You can’t see straight. You can’t see straight anymore. I want a new relationship. When I was in high school, I had this relationship with this guy or gal and it was so beautiful and I’d just been looking not for them and I know I can’t find them, but for something like that, I want it to be like you just ruined your life.
That was one experience in your life. How dare you hold onto that experience and try to paint life with that experience. That’s a positive experience. I dated this guy. He seemed really nice and then he started turning on me and he told everybody terrible things about me. Oh my God, I don’t remember his name, Ben something. Well, now I want to fix you up I this beautiful blind date for you. Oh, it sounds wonderful. What’s his name, Ben? No, I’ve had enough Ben for my entire life. I mean do laugh. How true is that? This is what I’m telling you. This is what you’ve done with this great thing called mind. I’m going to build these objects inside my mind that aren’t there anymore and I’m going to hold onto them as either good or bad, positive or negative, like or dislike. And then I’m going to paint my entire life based on I want the things to happen in front of me that were similar to the ones that I liked and I don’t want the things to happen in front of me ever that were similar things I don’t like.
And so I’m going to go out there and fight with everybody and everything, with the weather, with everything to be the way I want it to be and to not be the way I don’t want it to be. Aren’t I going to do that? That’s what I started to talk by saying, you’re drowning. You’re drowning and trying not to drown and look what caused the drowning, the way you misused your mind and guess where you’re going when you say, I want to manipulate the world to get what I want and avoid what I don’t want. You’re going to the mind and saying, oh mine. Who’s causing all this trouble? What should I be doing to solve it? You find your way back to the garden, you won’t be confused at all. You’ll be settled into this beautiful state of ecstasy, of total wellbeing where everything is expressing itself and everything is experiencing itself and that’s just beautiful.
That’s spirituality. There’s really only one commandment. Thou sht remain in ecstasy, but you created this junk inside your mind, which again, that’s what the fall from the garden is, was eating. That fruit is, and that’s what self-knowledge is, et cetera, et cetera, right? You built this stuff, but that’s just patterns that are held within the mind. And then it says those things and then the self is so lost that it believes them and I left the emotions out. They’re the same as mine. They’re just another vibration level of a field of energy. That vibration creates jealousy, insecurity, fear, love. It creates the vibrations of emotions. You know what another name for emotions is? Feelings. You feel them. It’s just another level of your being that can pick up these other layers that are consciousness having slowed down. It’s all consciousness and you don’t like certain emotions and you do like certain emotions and they can make life really interesting, can’t they?
And then your mind starts to think, how do I not feel this emotion? What do I need to do? This guy’s messing around with my woman. Mind starts thinking that. In other words, let’s go to the sick mind for solutions of what to do for the disturbed emotions. You know how true that is? Okay, thank you. Alright. Now you’re going to feel what mind is. You understand what does it mean to be drowning? What does it mean to fall from the garden? I was talking about evolution. If you are more evolved, what does that mean? You’re able to handle the different vibrations of reality. You’re able to handle the emotions, you’re able to handle the things that come in. A snake comes in, it’s scary. It’s supposed to be scary. It’s rattling for a purpose. Fine. You had the experience. Someday, if you’re evolved enough, you honor and respect every single experience you ever had or ever will have.
Why? They’re your teachers. If you didn’t experience something, you don’t know anything about it. If you did experience it, you’re knower of snakes. You’re a knower of relationships that didn’t work. You’re a knower of beautiful relationships that did work. Be a knower. It’s a beautiful thing. That’s what you came here for. Earth is a place the souls are sent to evolve, not to hide, not what they want, not to yell and scream to evolve. What does it mean to evolve, to be able to adapt to reality? Isn’t that what Darwin’s evolution is? Survival of the fittest, those that can adapt. How well are you doing? It’s really amazing that spiritual evolution is just very similar in process to the physiological evolution. If your environment is not giving you what you want, when you’re a certain species and you had that mutation, you’re going to die off. If it is giving you what you can live with, then you can be a stronger species and go on. It’s the same with you. If you can’t handle somebody who’s different than you, you don’t do well here. You freak out. You’re having trouble. You can’t survive properly. And proper survival means you’re in ecstasy all the time. You’re in joy all the time. You’re appreciative all the time. You’re filled with love all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time. But what is, there’s fear. You love fear.
You’ve adapted to the reality of the environment. That’s spiritual evolution. The adaptability that you can handle reality as that for a definition of spiritual evolution, this being is more evolved than that one. Why? That one could handle the relationship, could handle the divorce, could handle getting sick, could handle the death. Not that you didn’t feel lost, not that you didn’t have problems. You were able to handle that. These vibrations were happening inside your emotions and inside your mind. You didn’t marry them. You didn’t glue them down. I’m never having another relationship as long as I live nothing, I don’t care. You hear me? So now we have why you’re drowning in mine because you can’t handle reality and because you can’t handle reality, you hold onto it. I always give you an example. Go to a restaurant and order some food and get good and sick. It just doesn’t sit with you at all. It says something was wrong. Okay, what do you do? Well, the proper thing to do is ask for a doggy bag, take it home and you have a room called the sick room. Take it and put it in the sick room. And it is very important. Every single morning when you get up, go into the sick room and taste some of the food because you don’t want to forget how sick it made you. That’s what you’re doing with your mind.
The things that bothered you the most you decided to keep so you never forget how much it bothered you. And guess what? They keep bothering you inside even though they’re not happening anymore. Alright, that’s really smart. Right on man. Very, very inte thing to do and that which you really, really, really didn’t like. Really, really, really bothers you for the rest of your life. Okay? You clinging to you hold onto you. Use your beautiful mind to make a form that keeps what bothered you the most inside your mind. Does it come back by itself? Yes. Why? It has the same power. If you didn’t like it, it had certain power emotionally and everything like that didn’t feel good. It still, you didn’t just store the form, you stored the vibration, you stored the smell, you stored the touch, you stored the emotion, the whole thing.
Well, by definition, you obviously didn’t like that emotion. You obviously didn’t like what it was. Now that you’ve stored it, it keeps happening to you, doesn’t it? What’s this still good inside of me? I got divorced 15 years ago. I might as well not have gotten divorced. He’s still causing me trouble in there. He’s still running my life. Everyone I go out with, I compare to him. If somebody slurps their soup like he did, I know you’re off the list. Wake up, realize what is going on, how you’re using your mind. That’s just mine. Everything we talk about is over is mine. It’s mine. It’s not you. You’re the one who’s living in there, okay? And having a lot of trouble the way you’ve used your mind. The mind is not a very nice place to live. So the question becomes now, do you understand a little bit better?
What’s going on in there? It’s not you. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re the consciousness. What you have built with your mind, which was capable of building anything. Your mind is beautiful. Your mind is the greatest. Oh my God, it built rocket ships. What did the human mind it flew to the moon. It really did. It figured out there’s nothing out there. There aren’t even particles. And that’s what you do in your mind, right? No. Why did he say that to me? Oh my God, I got Zi on my face. I don’t want to go anywhere now. That’s what you do in your mind. Congratulations.
You have the greatest gift, just the human body. What a great gift. Yes, certain animals have features that are better than the human feature. A cheetah runs fast than you can, alright? A dolphin swims better than you can, but there’s no one that has altogether the features that you have, that body you have. It’s just an amazing, amazing thing. More amazing than flying on the moon. You got livers and kidneys and pancreas and all kinds of stuff. Really? What is it? What is that body? 30 trillion living cells communicating and working together. That’s what your body is. It’s not your body, it’s theirs. Okay? And oh my God, I can’t even talk about it. It’s an amazing thing. More amazing than flying on the moon, okay? That thing’s unbelievable. Who did it? It did itself. A single cell. A single cell turns into a baby. I’m sorry mother, you didn’t do it. When they look at me weird, I say, okay, here, here’s 300 billion. Make me an eyeball.
It makes itself, my God, this is an amazing thing. You are given that gift of the body and the mind is greater than the body. You have all these gifts and what do you do with them? Make a mess. Look at the world. It’s because they stored this stuff in their mind and they’re not okay. They stored all the garbage they didn’t like, or either they stored the garbage they didn’t like, or they’re not getting what they got before they liked you. Hear me? The mind cannot help you with this. It wasn’t meant to do that. It was meant to create. It was meant to express. It was meant to intellectually solve problems. It’s a very great thing. It was not meant to figure out how you can fix the mess that you made inside of itself. The mind is not good at that. It will never be good at that.
Alright, so what’s the answer? The answer is very, very simple. Stop misusing your mind. How? Okay, let’s take, alright, here’s a way to talk about dealing with mind. There’s a word. Let’s see. It’s called worry. There’s anybody just even roughly know what I mean by the word worry. Okay? Alright. Your mind is telling you what to worry about and then your mind is doing the worrying. Now I’m getting back to my drowning example, but that one you really understand, don’t you? Well, you are worrying about we one A could tell what you worry about. I don’t dunno what you’re talking about, right or wrong. You’re worrying that the things that happened in the past that you held images in your mind about might either not happen or might happen. You’re not a single thing. I’m psychic. Not a single thing that any one of you are worrying about except I store something in my mind that I liked.
What if it doesn’t happen? Oh my God, I’m afraid it wouldn’t happen. I store it on something in my mind I didn’t like. I’m afraid it’s going to happen. Is that not the only thing you ever worry about? What else to worry about that what I like is going to happen. I don’t worry about that. That what I don’t like won’t happen. I don’t worry about that. I worry that what I don’t like, what I don’t want to happen might happen and what I want to happen might not happen. Okay? And that’s all based on the fact that you held these past images inside your mind about what I liked and what I didn’t like. Is it true or not? It’s just, it’s beyond your comprehension or behind your mind’s comprehension to imagine not doing that. Okay? That’s why you kind of sit there a little stunned.
Alright, what if I didn’t do that? What if I here, okay, I’ll give you an example that will help you drive this home. You’re driving down the road and the white lines in the road. Have you noticed that? I hope you understand. Some of them are solid and some of ’em are dashed and there’s rules about those when they’re dashed. You can pass if they’re dashed on your side, but it’s very complicated, but none of they’re dash, dash on the other side, okay? Alright, and so you got these rules right? In the meantime, you in the past had a terrible car accident because somebody in the other tried to pass when they had a solid line and head on a terrible accident in hospital for a long time. It was a terrible, terrible thing. Okay? You now have an impression in your mind about dotted lines and solid lines because there was a whole lawsuits and it was all about the lines and who was doing what in photos. Oh my god. You imagine what that looked like when they went through all that stuff and you have now a thing about lines that other people don’t have. Okay? When you’re driving down the road, you’re not just driving like we all do. How many times do you really pave that much attention? You notice that it’s dash. It’s not dash. You don’t stare. No, I can’t talk right now. I’m looking at the lions.
This person that had that accident is not only saying I can’t talk right now. I’m looking at the lions. They’re looking at the line on the other side and seeing if somebody’s going to violate it, trying to look ahead. They’re worried about the lines. I just talked about something. You don’t worry about one single iota because you left that impression in the mind. It makes you worry about it. Don’t you have those? It’s not you, it’s your mind. You’re aware that the mind is like that. Who is you are? That’s the seed of self. You. That’s aware that what I’m talking about is the truth is your consciousness. That’s noticing. Yeah, the mind’s like that. Okay, alright. How do we solve that? How do you solve worrying? If I were to ask your mind, how do you solve worrying? You get out there and get to work and make sure that what you’re worrying about doesn’t happen.
Come on, wake up early, get up earlier. Work harder, get more money, get elected. Have power, have control so that what you don’t want to happen, that you’re worrying about doesn’t happen or what you want to happen. Your worry won’t happen. You make sure it happens. That’s all. You don’t love me, alright? Here’s $7 million. Love me. At least make believe you do tell everybody you do just lie. I just love people to think you love me. Just power, power, money, control. You want control, don’t you? Everyone wants control. Somebody wants that to me. That person has control issues. Everybody has control issues. What do you mean? I’m trying to get it the way I want. That’s called control. Why? Because it is the way it is. It’s raining. When it’s raining. I don’t want it to too bad. I don’t like what she said to me.
Well, what she said to you was a sum total of all experiences our entire life coming to a culminating point. At this moment when the words are coming out of her mouth, go say it shouldn’t be happening. So there’s woman to get rid of. Worry. Control. Oh, I can’t believe I’m talking to you this way. I always wanted to talk to you this way. That’s why you’re drowning. First of all, the mind created the problem to start with because it held onto the past images and created like and dislike. Like and dislike are not natural. You like a certain kind of art. You like modern art bow things that makes him sick to his stomach. He don’t like it at all. He likes classical art. Okay? People can like and dislike you. What if you liked everything? What if you looked at art and it made your stomach sick and you like that? I love the fact had that impact on me. What’s his name? Scream. The famous painting like ah, maybe so people watch horror movies. I don’t. People watch horror movies. They like to get scared. But then why don’t you like to get scared in real life? Don’t worry. Life is funny, scary.
Alright, so one way to handle worry. First of all, the reason I’ve talked this much is because the root of worry is your mind, but it’s not your mind’s fault. You are the one who stored all this stuff in your mind. Doesn’t know what to store. A camera doesn’t know what took a picture of. You’re the one who store the album. Same thing inside. That’s a good example. By the way, if the camera takes a picture, it doesn’t know good or bad or right or wrong or better or worse or like dislike does it? You do. And so you make picture albums so you can look through them. That’s what you did with your mind, isn’t it? The camera came in, you saw it, it created in your mind very nice. Your mind made an image for you so you could see what the outside world was and you started taking snapshots and building an album, but you built a scary one.
How many of you have albums sitting on your table of every single thing that ever bothered you, but you all did it? You see it now. You made the album inside your mind. You built a beautiful picture album of everything that freaked you out. Alright? You’re just totally scared to death and that’s what you have going on inside your mind. And then in a little corner you have of the nice things, right? Alright, so how do you get rid of worry? First of all, you understand what caused it. You did. Otherwise there were white lines, the lines, somebody went across the line when they weren’t supposed to. I don’t have to make lines the meaning of my life now. It’s happened once. How many times did it not happen? That’s the other thing is you don’t understand with mine, it has no concept of proper statistics.
Alright? I was driving down the road 7,000 times. I drove past this light every single day in my life. All of a sudden somebody ran the light. I hit them. I didn’t even hit ’em. I skidded. They’re always so scary. But I didn’t hit anybody. Alright? I ain’t driving that road ever again. Wait, you drove down the road 7,000 times, nothing happened once. What’s the probability will happen again? One in 7 million or whatever. Heck it is proper probability. No, it’s a dangerous road to you. It is because you stored that one stupid incident inside your mind and you can’t get it out and you’ve just, in fact, you’re writing letters to the commissioners. That road needs to be changed. It’s dangerous, right? Well, people, I have no words. You made a thing out of it in your mind and now it stands out in your mind.
But statistically, there’s nothing going on. Alright? How to get rid of worry work so hard as you manipulate everything so you think I made it so it’s not going to happen or it’s going to happen. That’s one way to do it. It doesn’t work. The more energy you put into it, the more it becomes the focus of your life. Go on, go on a rampage. The line shouldn’t be white. They should be that fire engine green that scares you to even look at. It just has to be bolder and neon. You now have made your whole life be about the thing that bothered you the most with a tendency, don’t we? Okay? What’s the alternative? Is there a way to get rid of worry? Yes. There’s a way to get rid of worry. How? Instead of trying to make the world not interact in a way that you’re worried about.
How about learning to honor and respect and accept reality? What if I sit there and say I’ve been afraid of relationships. I got hurt once and it really, really scarred me. It scarred me means I held it inside of me and it keeps coming back up. Right or wrong? Okay? The problem is not that it happened, the problem is that I couldn’t handle that. It happened. I said it again. I know it’s hard for you. The problem is not that it happened. The problem is that when it happened, I stored it. Why did I store it? I couldn’t handle it. What if I could handle it? What if I could handle? I saw the snake. I saw the snake. Thank you snake. Thank you. You didn’t bite me. We had a nice relationship. You’re scared the hell out of me. So I know there’s a thing called snakes.
I know to be careful. I am fine. I’m fine. I’m a no of snakes. I learned something, not I stored it in there as a terrible experience that I don’t ever want to have. Who’s listening? So either the perfect example, either I’m now going out there and I don’t have to worry because I won’t get near a snake. I’ve got guards around the house and I got all kinds of exterminator people inside the house and give thing. And I don’t go out much when I do their boots up to here. I made my life be about the snake or I worked on myself inside to say, fine, I saw a snake. It was scary. I can handle that. If you can handle it and you know can handle it, you don’t worry about it. Why? When you ram run your brakes and skid around when somebody ran a red light and you didn’t hit anything, why didn’t you walk away saying, God, I drove really well.
I can handle this. I don’t have to be as scared as I was about other cars and what they do because was able to handle it way healthier, isn’t it? It’s your choice. It’s your choice. And I just described to you earlier that spiritual evolution was the ability to handle reality. It’s all saying the same thing. Why don’t you learn to handle reality? But no buts. No buts. Why don’t you learn to handle reality? Well, you don’t understand. My mother gets sick a lot and she wants me to spend time with her and I don’t know what to do. I have to go to work. Okay? There’s reality. First. Handle it. Don’t get mad at your mother. Don’t get mad at work. Don’t quit. Don’t just handle the reality that this is what’s happening. Instead of resisting why? Resistance is what you use to store.
The some scars. Those patterns are called some scars. The patterns you hold in your mind, consciousness resisted them, therefore they stayed. When you resist something, it doesn’t pass through, does it? It’s your act of resistance that locks it inside and makes it be the meaning of your life. Acceptance. What’s the opposite of acceptance? Resistance. Now you’re getting the teachings. Relax. Accept honor, respect, appreciate, open, open, open, open. Not resist, resist, struggle, fight. Let it come through. Let it go through. Doesn’t mean you don’t deal with it. Yes, you need to deal with your time factors, things that are pulling on you, but you’re way better dealing with it if you’re clear and it’s not some emotional reactive thing that you’re just fighting inside yourself. Believe me, if you are healthier and not resisting, you’d find out you have way more time in life than if you’re busy complaining and resisting and talking about it.
Look how much time you waste worrying and telling everybody what’s wrong and watching blogs that agree with you that this is wrong. Alright, well not one of you, not one you in this room right now watches a blog that talks about the white lines. Why? Because you can handle ’em. But that person that had the accident day, they find other people that want to talk about these white lines and how they should be different. So the answer to worrying is acceptance. The answer to worrying is to work on yourself and say, I can handle it. Handle what I want. This Robert Christian used to say, help the skelter, come with me. Come on, bring it on. Bring it on, right? And so you just learn to be open. You learn to work with yourself. You’ll learn to not store things inside. Doesn’t mean you don’t deal with them first.
Let them go get neutral. Neutralize them so you don’t build a thing out of them in your mind. Now your mind is clear. Now do you need to deal with it or not? I’m telling you, 90% of that which you worry about and think about never happens and you wasted your time. That’s a great mind. It could have been doing great things. Alright, now we’ve talked about mind. You can have a healthy mind, just like it’s a healthy body. If you eat stuff that makes the body sick, then complain to the body. Sick, stupid, right? If you keep doing things that make your mind sick, that makes it crazy. And then you say, okay, my mind’s crazy. Now what do I do? Right? Take this or do something that quiets your mind down. No. Yes, do it. I’m not telling you not to, but I would rather have you work on why your mind is not quiet than how to quiet it.
See the difference? There’s a reason your mind is a mess. Not it’s a mess. What do I do about it now? You’ll feel guilty. You don’t meditate enough. There’s another thing to play around with or it’s not working. How come it’s not working? I’m doing this mantra. I don’t feel any better. They’re just another thing to make the mind sick about, but do it. I’m serious. You need to do these techniques. But Buddhists say work at the root. The root is the fact that you stored this stuff. If you don’t store, this stuff comes in, passes through. I’m not talking about not having memory. Lemme finish it here because you give me arguments, right? That stuff I talk about that you store with all that patterns and resist. That’s not memory, that’s a some scar, that’s a suppressed thing that you held in there. Memory is a natural function of mind.
Your mind is just like your body has all kinds of systems that you don’t have to deal with. The word with memory is it gets stored. And as things come in, they pass through and you can bring ’em back if you want to, but they don’t come back by themselves and haunt you for the rest of your life. You resisted them and stored them. They didn’t make it all the way through. So I hope this helps you understand things that you can do to fix the mind, the real things you can do. And you just start with small things in your life. Like the weather. I don’t want to rain. I can’t believe it’s going to rain. I don’t want to rain tomorrow. Well, I’m sorry, that is not a good thing to worry about. Well, you have no control over it and you should be able to just say, okay, if it rains, we’ll do this. If it doesn’t rain, we’ll do that. Fun. It’s fun. Alright, we have this big Thanksgiving outside, 400 people coming in once it rained.
So it was so much fun. We tried to move all the food inside the building. Couldn’t handle that many people and it was just so much fun. It was ridiculous. Alright, just stop defining success and failure. Success is what matches what I want. Failure is what doesn’t match what I want. No, life is life and I’m fine. Wouldn’t it be fun to be like that? Just go the morning and say, come on, what’s going to happen today? Oh, it would be fun. And I’ll do my best. I’ll do my best to play. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Alright. Okay. God, I hope you understand. It’s a new year. We just changed years. Let this year be the year you put your energy into something that works. Otherwise you’re going to be out there forever fighting with life, trying to make it be what you want. Let go of that. Alright. Thank you for listening. Jai.
Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to The Michael Singer Podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael’s body of work and all back episodes, please join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True: waking up the world.
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