E54: The Sacred Time Between Birth and Death

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: Ative, Jai Masters. To live life properly in the highest possible way, one has to keep stepping back on a regular basis and remembering, seeing, realizing what’s going on. It’s not enough to do that at New Year’s. It’s not enough to do your birthday. It should be a regular process, certainly at a minimum every morning and every evening to get your priorities straight, to get your head straight as to what’s going on. Like in meditation, which is wonderful, but people think the mind’s supposed to stop. You’re supposed to get quiet. You’re supposed to see lights, supposed to have all kinds of experiences. It’s wonderful if you do. It’s very, very nice. The real work is what’s done every day, every minute of every day. Meditation helps tremendously with that. I can give you nice inspiring experiences, but until you realize I was born and I’m going to die, that’s the ultimate truth.

I was born, I’m going to die. I was born. I’m going to die. If you don’t like it, that’s too bad. If you don’t like that, you were born too bad. If you don’t like who your parents are, too bad. If you don’t like that, you’re going to die too bad. These are the bookends. You’re born, you’re going to die. So you can sit there and say, that’s what your life’s about. I’m going to born, I’m going to die. That’s what’s going to happen. But then there’s this time in between. It’s not a lot of time you don’t pay attention to that, but 80, 90, a hundred years, that’s nothing. That’s nothing. The earth has been here for 4.5 billion years. Do me a favor, don’t do it now because I’ll lose you. Go to a corner and count. What do you want? 90. Give it a hundred.

Count to a hundred, take one second each. How long? It’ll take you a minute and 40 seconds. It’s just more than a minute and a half. Now, count to 1.5 billion. You’ll be dead before you get there. That is how small this time in between is. So I want to know, not are you born? Are you going to die? You know that. Why waste your time? Where was I before I was born? Where will I be after I die? Guess what? You’ll find out where you’ll be after you die, and if you’re not there at all, until you believe this is it, I’m not there at all. So what? Then? There’s no problems. I don’t understand. People complain every minute of their lives about what’s going on, and now all of a sudden you have an opportunity to have no complaints. There’s nobody there. You go, oh, you turn the light off, fine.

It’s not a problem. Okay? You’ll understand why you think it’s a problem. It’s because you’re not okay during your entire life and you’re trying to be okay, and that becomes an ending point that I didn’t succeed and now I’ve lost my opportunity. That’s why people are afraid to die. If you’re an ecstasy your entire life just filled with fulfillment, everything, it’s just so beautiful. Fine, I’ve had a wonderful life. Everything has to come to an end, but you don’t want it to come to an end. Why? Because there’s stuff I didn’t do yet. I have a bucket list. What’s your bucket list? It’s a major problem. It’s the things you wasted your life not doing that you think if you hadn’t wasted your life doing them, you’d be okay. Did you get that? That’s what a bucket list is. In other words, a bucket list is proof that you’re not, okay.

These are the things that I think might make me be okay, and I didn’t get to do ’em. There’s no bucket list. You’re fun. It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. Had a great time or you will be there. Whichever master and great being said, well, what’s that going to be like? Guess what? You’ll find out? It’s a once in a lifetime experience. So that is a once in a lifetime experience, and then you find out what the heck goes on afterwards, you’ll find out what’s the fun of going to Hawaii and going on the web or using VR to do the whole thing that you want to do so you know you want to do it, you wasted it. You lost all the fun, you lost all the excitement or the newness. So let death be death. Let that which happens afterwards. Happen afterwards. That’s not the point of your life.

Life, the time in between your birth and your death, it’s very sacred, is something that was given to you. A gift from all of life. It’s your life. That’s your parents’ life. That’s your preacher’s life, that’s your boyfriend’s life, your husband’s life, your children’s life. It’s a precious thing that you were given this thing called life. What is it? It’s not that I breathe. It’s the time between your birth and your death. That’s what your life is. So at some point you step back and stop being neurotic about everything and say, what do I want to do with the time between my birth and my death? If you look honestly, it’s not hard to figure out. I want to be happy. I want to feel love. I want to feel enthusiasm and inspiration every minute of my life. Everything else is what you think will give you that.

Everything else. I want to get married. I want to have children. I want to get rich. I want to have something named after me. I want to prevent something. I want to win a Nobel Prize. Why? Because I’m not okay, and I think that will maybe be okay if people respect me a whole lot. I walk in the room, they all get quiet and bow their head. Well, that’d be a lot of fun, alright? Or if everybody looks at me and says, oh God, I love you so much. I can stand looking at you, then wouldn’t that be great? Okay? Only because you don’t feel love and only because you don’t feel respect. You need something from outside to make you feel what you’re missing inside. And so if you’re honest, you’re going to sit there and say, what I want with my life ultimately of my life is that every single minute, not church or synagogue or meditation, every single minute of my life, I’m so filled with joy and enthusiasm and inspiration and love that I can hardly see straight.

Who would like that? Okay. And LSD won’t give it to you, nor that other stuff. I forget what it’s called. Alright. What’s funny is people who do psychedelics and different drugs and stuff like that, they say they have a beautiful experience. Are you having it every moment of your life? No. Only when I do these drugs or only when I do this or do that or go to Hawaii or get married, it was really great getting married. Have an album on my desk, on my puff table. All the pictures on my album. I look at it all the time. Why? Because I want to recreate the moment. That was so beautiful. No, I want you to have that moment with every moment, every moment of your life there. That’s a very fulfilled life. And guess what? That’s what you want. You just get lost saying, well, I watched a movie and this person got a Ferrari or this or that.

Have I had one of those? They were really happy. You got programmed to think that these outside objects and outside circumstances will give you what you’re looking for and even if they do, it doesn’t last. Do you understand that? How mature are you in life? Things don’t give you what you think they will. And even if they do, it doesn’t last. The thing doesn’t last. You wish the thing lasts. The feeling doesn’t last. It doesn’t stay the same. You don’t feel the same enthusiasm, you don’t feel the same newness, you don’t feel the same excitement. Things have to keep changing for you to feel inspired by them. I always give you an example. Here’s a food you really like. You have more than anything in the whole world. These are favorite food, period. Alright? I’m bringing in the finest chef in the whole world from all over the world to make that food for you.

It’s the best you’ve ever. Oh my god, it’s so unbelievable. It blows you away. Alright, how do you like that? I love it. You want it tomorrow? Yeah, of course I want it tomorrow. How about the next day? Yeah. How about for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week? Give me Brussels sprouts. There’s a law of diminishing returns. Something that turns you on is not going to continue. Do I have to preach on this? Have you been through enough experiences? So you have to keep looking for new things as people get into all the extreme crazy things because they become, nothing’s turning them on anymore. They think they need money. They think they need relationships. They think they need all these things in order to feel love, in order to feel inspiration, in order to do things. The jet sets that have breakfast and Rome and this and spoiled kids, they’re not getting anything.

At some point you’re not getting anything. So you wake up and you realize why don’t you ask for what you actually want in the time between your birth and your death? I’m not saying you’re going to get it, but at least let’s ask for it. If God comes down and says, I will give you three things that you really want, anything you want, you’re so silly. You’ll say, I want this car and I want that relationship and I want blah, blah, blah. Okay? And you get those things like God laughs at you. Why don’t you sit there and say, I want ecstasy, joy, and love unending at the highest level. I could possibly have it there. Give it to me more intelligent, isn’t it? Instead of asking what you think will give it to you, ask for what will give it to you. Ask for it itself there.

Are you afraid to think that high, that broad, that real to understand that you get to ask for that. It’s not true. You don’t get to ask for that. It’s not true. You have to beg for these little things that you think will give you something and most of the time they do not give you squat as they do, they give you headaches. If you got exactly what you wanted in a relationship more than anything you’ve ever had in your whole life, you’d be afraid of losing it. That’s what gives jealousy. I need you. I need you. I can’t lose you. Where’d you go if you were filled with love and ecstasy all the time? It’s beautiful to have a relationship. You don’t need it, but it’s beautiful to have it. It’s beautiful to share. It’s beautiful to express, but you don’t have to worry because it’s not coming from outside.

You’re already experiencing it inside. I want you to reach for the gold and don’t you dare think that that state does not exist. They tell you that There are people who tell you, oh, no, no, no. You can’t appreciate positive till you feel negative. That’s ridiculous. There’s a state inside of you that is inherently ecstatic that the time filled with love, filled with joy, a constant ever new joy master called ever new joy. It doesn’t stop. You never get tired of it. It’s new every single time you feel it every second of your life. Don’t sell yourself short. Not only is that inside of you, it happens to be your natural state. You want to raise your hand. You don’t know me, I do know you. I know it’s your natural state.

The problem is you’ve done stuff to make it so you don’t experience your natural state. What stuff? Wanting things outside. Wanting things that you think will make you be okay because you’re not okay. So the time between your birth and death, you have two choices. Either you go out and try to figure out what from outside will make you feel okay. Inside temporarily it’s called conditional wellbeing. Or you find out why you’re not feeling this ecstasy, this joy, this inspiration, this love all the time. What went wrong, which is inside. Since those experience or inside love is filled inside, inspirations felt inside, point to love, point to your heart, point to inspiration, point to enthusiasm. They’re Shakti yoga has a name for every one of those things, Shakti. It’s an energy flow that comes up inside of you and feeds you. It may express itself through different centers, through a love center, through inspiration center, through great thoughts that are transcendent to what you usually think.

Alright, so basically you catch on or you don’t that you’re either going to spend your entire life, the time of your birthing and death trying to get what you think you want in order to be okay or you’re going to do the real work which is inside to find out why I’m not experiencing, what is your birthright? Every single person at your birthright, ecstasy. It’s the nature of your being. So how do you do that? First you start off, I always teach you this by looking to see what is taking away your joy. You’ve had joy before. You had a new car, you had a new relationship, you had something. You had people that were proud of you or impressed with you. You’ve had situations that made you feel high. Why did they go away? That’s how you grow, not how do I get it again?

Why did it go away? It’s not natural that it go away. You have the right to experience this. Let’s call unconditionally all the time. So you learn to watch here. Somebody said they love you, somebody gave you something, you won something, you earned something. People are proud of you, whatever it is, you had a great time, you felt wonderful. Why did it go away? And you’re going to find out you did it. You made it go away. Your mind said, oh my God, this is really nice. How do I keep this? That’s it. It goes away. I want it to happen again. How do I make it happen again? You’re not now paying attention to the beauty that you’re feeling. You’re busy in your mind trying to figure out how to feel it again, if it’s in your mind trying to figure out what did I do that they were so proud of?

How do I do it again? Go pick up an instrument and play it. Have everybody clap. Oh my God, you’re so good at this. We want you to play again. You’ll be afraid to play again because you don’t know what made it so good and it becomes a problem. How do you like that? Things that you like are a problem because you want them to happen again and you have to figure out how to make that happen and it creates tension and anxiety. Have you noticed? So if you do bad, you lose. If you do good, you lose why we play this lose lose game when the truth of the matter is there’s beauty inside of you. So you start noticing why it goes away when you feel joy and love and so on and you will see that you are doing it. It is not from the outside.

Well, she told me she loved me and then she went and talked to somebody else. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you, that your mind did that. Your mind said, what if she’s telling somebody else she loves them or she doesn’t really love me, I might get hurt. That took away your love, that took away the ability to feel the joy you were feeling. You are ruining it. Nobody else can ruin it. You’re the owner who lives in there. That’s your house. Nobody else is in there. So if it’s having trouble, you did it. If you’re tense, if you anxiety, if you have fear, if you have jealousy, all these things are because you don’t feel what you want to feel inside. You’re trying to make the outside be that way, then you’re trying to cling to it, hold onto it, make it happen again, et cetera, et cetera, and it creates tremendous tension and anxiety and that becomes the time between your birth and your death.

What are you doing? Struggling. You know what I’m doing? Trying to get what will turn me on outside. Now why do you do that? Because you’re not stupid. You’ve noticed that the outside can turn you on. That’s the second place you start looking. How come what turns him on, turns her off? How come what turns him on yesterday turns him off today. She said she loves you. Oh my God, I feel so wonderful. Tell your best friend I said, are you kidding me? Go talk to George. She destroyed his life. She tells everyone she loves him. How do you feel now when you meet her the next day? Okay, it is not the outside that is doing it. It’s how you process the outside inside. So I gave you a million examples, but you live them every day of your life and you will see that you are doing it.

You are the one who decided what will turn you on. You are the one that decided what will turn you on. Things don’t turn you on. You decide they will turn you on, then they happen or you decide they will turn you on. Then you hope you live off the hope that they will happen and you live off the disappointment. If they don’t, you’re doing that. Otherwise, everyone wants the same thing. They don’t all want the same thing. You’re madly in love with somebody. Love at first sight. I didn’t feel squat. I don’t understand. It’s because they reminded me of this and I saw a movie once and it was like that and the car they drove was the one I always wanted to have and I had a dream once and there was something in it that was similar. I don’t know, but if you take a look at it, you realize you had a predilection toward this event.

You had thought about it before. There’s something in your mind, something experience you had and now something outside is reminding you of that and it was positive. What if what you thought about was negative? Then something happens outside and makes you feel negative so you start to catch on. It doesn’t take a lot of time. You’re wise enough to understand you are wasting your life to try and find things and make things and create things and force things and push away things so that you’re getting what you think you want because you’ve seen already, if you get what you want, you want more things. When does that time you got something you wanted and never want anything else? Answer me. It’s going to be like that your entire life. There is no such thing as your ship coming in. There is the hope that your ship will come in.

You can get good energy off of that, but there’s a disappointment that your ship didn’t come in. Also, it’s yin young. You’re playing with the opposites. There’s no solution in sitting there saying things can happen outside that will put me in that state. We just talked about where I’m unconditionally, okay? By definition it can’t be unconditional because it required the outside to be a certain way for you to feel it. Therefore it’s conditional and then you all know what it’s like to live that life. What you don’t know is another life. What’s that? You start watching and you start seeing there are things that I am doing that are making the world turn me on or turn me off.

When I was in fifth grade, I tried to have my birthday party outside, maybe younger second grade, tried to have my birthday party outside and I was so excited and it rained and ever since then I hate the rain. I just don’t like the rain. I don’t like rain. It’s not a good thing. It’s not a godly thing. Why would God do that? Why would God make it rain on my birthday? I don’t know if I like God either. I don’t believe in him or I don’t like him. You do that with one experience because it rained. Guess who tells you You do that. All of psychology Freud. Everybody they tell you you do that, don’t they? If you didn’t do that, they wouldn’t have a job but it’s therapy. Figure out what you did that about before and try to work it out. What if you don’t do it?

That’s the state that we’re going to get to in this talk. What if you didn’t do that with things so you don’t have all that garbage stored inside of you so that the world unfolds and you appreciate and respect and honor the fact that you get to have this moment. I’m way ahead of myself, but I’ll go there. The moments that are unfolding in front of you are precious but they’re not always fun. That’s right, but they’re not always what I want. That’s right. Sometimes they’re what I don’t want. That’s right, but you did that. You made up what you want and what you don’t want. Eventually you’ll catch on, but I always try to teach you there are moments here. This is a moment. We’re having a moment. We we’re having a moment. I’m not sure you like it, but we’re having a moment.

Okay, how many other moments are going on on the planet earth right now? 700 billion, zillion. These things just take a space. How many other spaces are there? 700 billion, zillion. Different spaces are going on a planet earth not to mention. How about on Mars? How about throughout the whole universe? How many spaces are there? Hundreds of billions and zillions of quills. Of trillions, okay, this is one of those. This is not any different than a moment on Mars or a moment in California or a moment in Mexico. There’s just moments everywhere. You just happen to be conscious of this moment. If I pick you up, you’ll be conscious of that moment. There’s nothing more important about this moment than any other moment except it happens to be the one you’re seeing. I’m going to pick you up and drop you in a restaurant in France. Then that’s your moment.

I like what people say to me, but I don’t want to miss anything. You’re missing everything. Do you see how much you’re missing? You miss every single thing except the moment you’re experiencing, which is 0.000, I can’t even put it off. Thing of what’s going on. Okay, there is something very special about this moment. Nobody else is experiencing what you’re experiencing right now. You’re looking at me for a different angle. You’re the only one actually experiencing what you’re experiencing. Then you’re going to get out and you’re going to have your shoes experienced and you’re going to have your car experience. Nobody else in this room’s having the same experience as you, so you are having unique experiences every moment of your life that no one is having, no one ever had and no one ever will have. It’s never going to happen again, is it?

This is a special moment. It’s the moment that’s meant for you to experience. It’s not the moment that’s meant for you to get what you want. It’s just a moment, but it’s special. It’s the moment that was made for you. If something’s happening and you’re the only one that’s experiencing and no one ever did experience it, no one ever will. It was made for you. I know that I get that so deep that every moment blows me away. I sit there and say, wow, look at this moment. Look what’s happening even if I don’t like it. Well look at that. That moment I’m in the hospital, I’m this, I’m that. Well, what a moment. It’s just a moment that has been made for me. It’s special. People like to be special. They there’s nothing more special than I just told you. Is there that literally the universe is creating a moment and you’re the only one that’s going to experience it.

The trouble is we don’t experience it. Why? Because we’re more interested in what we’d like and what we don’t like than we are with the reality of the moment happening in front of us. We judge that moment. Is it what I decided I wanted? Is it what I decided I didn’t want? How close it maybe it will become that we just do every single thing in our mind instead of experiencing the moment and what happens is your mind, that part of your mind is a major problem. It’s not a solution. It made up how it wants everything to be and then you say, why can’t it be the way I want? It can’t be the way you want. It’s part of the whole, every moment in front of you has a history. There’s a reason it’s happening the way it is. How did you end up in this room tonight wearing what you’re wearing with the mindset that you’re listening about.

You could write 50,000 volumes your entire life led you here. Right or wrong? Just everything and that’s true of every one of you. The moment is the sum of all the events that ever happened that made it be the way it is. That’s called science, isn’t it? I’m going to repeat that. The moment in front of you is a result of every single thing that ever happened that coalesced together to make it be the way this moment is and then the next moment, then the next moment, the next moment. It wasn’t meant to be the way you want. It’s not supposed to be the way you want. Somebody said, why can’t it be the way I want? Because it’s supposed to be the way it is. It’s science, it’s physics, it’s psychology. Even people’s behavior. Why can’t you behave the way I want you to?

I looked at you reminded my sister and she was really nice and she didn’t do this or that and why aren’t you doing that? Because I’m not your sister. The fact that you’re projecting something that you want or don’t want onto the reality, it’s unfolding in front of you. No wonder so much tension and anxiety. You’re projecting what you want and what you don’t want. This goes slower. It’s so important. Do you not project onto the moments of folding in front of you whether you like them or don’t like them and whether they have something in it for you and something that might bother you later, they cause worry, anxiety, need hope. Those are inside things, hope, concepts, views, opinions, likes, dislikes. Those are in your mind. They’re not out here. Go point to a hope, point to a to a dislike. They’re things you make up in your mind and then you really honestly expect that the outside moments unfolding that a result of all the forces and cause that made ’em be the way they are, that it should be what you want it to be there and I want to know I very rarely slow down.

Okay, do you get that? Does it make sense to you, your logical person that understands go on out to Fisherman’s Wharf and want to see some whales and get upset because you didn’t see the whales. You brought a mindset that said, I want to see whales. I heard there were whales. Well, it just so happens is a nice place and there’s a Pacific ocean and there’s wind and there’s birds and there’s maybe even seals, but there’s not whales. You ruined the moment that was being given to you. You do it all the time. It’s what I’m talking about is what you decided to do between your birth and your death. Well, suffer. Suffer. There were no whales. There’s one incident you had go there, have no whales. Then go tell somebody that you didn’t see any whales and they’ll tell you, oh, I saw 50 of ’em yesterday. You just went at the wrong time. Now you’re double depressed.

I love that you laugh. Is it true or not? What I’m saying? Every moment unfolding in front of you, you project what you want and don’t want onto that moment and judge it and deal with it and it has that effect on you so if you project something you really want and you see it’s happening, oh my God, unbelievable. I was hoping it would rain and look at that. It was supposed to rain and here it’s the most beautiful day and I get to go hiking. God loves me. That’s ridiculous. Don’t you dare lay that on God. You did that. You made up what I want and what I don’t want and if it is there, God loves me and if it’s not there, I don’t know why I don’t even believe in God. You built this model inside your mind that said, I’m only okay if I get what I want and I’m not okay if I don’t get what I want.

Let’s pull God down there into this tiny little spot called your mind right where you made up in your mind based on your past experiences. How’d you get those preferences? Do you think you decide what you like and dislike? Do you think you’re independent? You just decide. I think I like this. You had experiences in your past that you didn’t deal with well and you held them inside of you. They bothered you. If they bothered you, I don’t want it to happen again. If they turned you on, I want ’em to happen again. Psychology says, man is the sum of learned experiences. It’s not true. You’re the consciousness watching your psyche be the sum of your learned experiences, but it is the sum of your learned experiences. There’s nothing holy about what you want and don’t want. There’s this experience you had in the past that left impressions on you that you think if they happen again, I’ll be happy If they happen again, I’ll be miserable.

You did that plus, which those experiences were just moments. What if you didn’t have that experience? What if you didn’t have? I always use the example. I hate the game, but it’s a good example. You’re 10, 12-year-old driving a car with your parents on a vacation. You’re in the back of the car, you and your sister are there and you’re playing, I spy. You’re in the little game I spy and all of a sudden you say to your sister, I spy an oak tree and she looks out the window. There’s an oak tree going by and your sister says, I spy a solid white line in the road and you look at an exact moment, there’s a massive car accident. People blood dying terrible and you’re traumatized for life. You can’t ever get in a car. You don’t travel on a plane, you don’t do this.

You haven’t talked since it happened. Could that happen? So an arbitrary moment if you had looked one degree sideways, if she had said there’s a bird, then you’re fine feel it. Isn’t that rather insulting for your entire life that one arbitrary moment has determined your entire life and it’s so if you just look the other way, if somebody said something to it really hurt you and you don’t trust them anymore. The reason they said it was because they got a phone call earlier from their boss and said, I want to talk to you all morning. I’m not so happy what you’re doing, so they were in a bad mood so they said what they said. If they hadn’t gotten that phone call, they wouldn’t have said that to you and the whole relationship would work. Is it not that tenuous but we accept that. That’s what’s going to determine how my life is.

These random little incidents that just happened to happen. I happened to be standing there when it was happening. Anybody understand? I really want to know if you understand because if you do, you can do something about it. It does not have to be like that period. It does not have to be like that. You are the master of your own ship. You’re not the master of life because you’re the master of the inside. There’s nobody else in there and if you’re not paying attention, it’s going to be the way I said you’re going to have things happen outside that are just happen to be happening just at that moment something happened or that moment, something didn’t happen and you’re going to give it that amount of weight. Somebody says something that you don’t like. You sit there and say, Hey, had bad pizza last night and you let it go and that’s what I teach letting go, acceptance, surrender, breathe.

You do not have to store these things inside. You have to experience them because something brought those two things together. You and the experience, you experienced it. Now what? Learn to be okay with what you experience. I’ve cut through the thing early. What if every single thing that happens to you, you honor the experience, kiss it on the forehead and say thank you and let it go. Does that mean I don’t have memory? Memory’s totally different than what we call a samskara. A samskara is a pattern that you stored inside because you couldn’t let it go. You stored the emotion, you stored the thought. You stored the energy. I liked you so much that I want to keep thinking about you. I don’t want you ever to leave. I held onto the moment. I didn’t let the moment come and go after the moment that I saw you and felt such love.

There’s another moment happening but I’m not experiencing it. I got lost in my mind. I stored it in my mind with power because I held onto it. That’s called a samskara. The positive samskara. I usually want negative ones. Something happened. You said something, you did something, experienced something. It didn’t feel good. What did you do with it? Instead of letting it go and saying in every life some rain fall, you sat there and said, oh my God, this is so terrible. I think I’ll store it. That’s what Freud taught you. That’s a suppression re impressionist. Something happened to you, it wasn’t comfortable and so you pushed it away and kept it inside of you. Does it come back up? Does it come back up in your dreams? Does it come back up If something reminds you of it, do you feel the ying? Can you cry because you see your room or a blankie?

You’ll do that, right? Your mother pulls down the blankie that you had when you were little. What are you doing? Well, the psychology will tell you was taken away too soon. You should have let me alone, blah, blah, blah. Everything drive by the house that you and your ex-husband or wife used to live in 15 years ago and see if it changed your emotions. Why? Because you stored it inside as a negative experience or you stored it inside as a positive experience. I don’t only talk about the positive ones. If you can let go of the negative ones, you’ll learn about the positive ones yourself. Why is storing a positive experience a bad thing to do? It’s not a bad thing to do. Why does it mess up your life? Because you want it to happen again and because you want it to happen again.

You miss what’s happening. You miss the possibility of another beautiful experience because you’re busy trying to have the one you had before and the fact that you already had it before. It’s like the food that I said the chef comes breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s never going to feel the same the second time as the first time. Have you noticed that because it was surprise. Somebody walked up to you and said, oh my God, I love you so much. I’ve always loved you since kindergarten. I just was ashamed to tell you I didn’t think you would like me. You always liked the fur with the guy or girl and all of a sudden you’re blown away. Okay, now let them do that to you every time they see you, oh, I love you so much. Get away from me. Okay? You see what I’m saying?

You build in your mind what you want and what you don’t want based upon the experiences you had and so if you fill your mind specifically with negative things, you fill your mind with things you’re afraid of, then you’re going to project that to the outside world. You have a lot of trouble in your life and so what you’re doing with your life is so counterproductive. You’re storing the negative things and then say, I don’t want that to happen again, and then you’re projecting what you don’t want happen again onto life. You remind me just the way you talk reminds of my ex. I’m not comfortable with you. It’s just amazing, so I stored it and I’m projecting it and then I’m wondering why life is such a problem. Life’s not a problem. What is life? A sequence of experiences that you get to have there it is.

I wrote a whole treatise on life. Is that not true? That’s a treatise on life. What is life? What is life? A sequence of experiences that you get to have no. What if they’re not what I want? What if they’re what I want? They don’t want ’em anymore. I get stuck holding onto it and he seems so special that I married him and oh my God, he is a schnook. What do I do now? I’m embarrassed to tell him and my parents will get upset. You did all that. You did that by making up in your mind, storing in your mind what you like and don’t like based upon your past experiences, which I told you are just random events. You just happen to have that experience and then you stored it and now you’re living your life by looking outside and attempting to manipulate the moments unfolding in front of you now and in the future so that they match what’s going on in your mind.

Now I want to know, do you get that? Do you see that? And don’t worry, your society teaches you to do that. You really want this. It will make you happy. We’ll get it and so I want you to get it so bad. I want you to live in ecstasy. I want you to live in unconditional love and unconditional wellbeing. All of this is about being conditioned. You’re conditioned by the past experiences you had, which already showed you are one in a trillion. Zillion just happened to be the experience of what was happening when you were there. You on an extreme. I tell people nobody’s yelling at you. You just have me standing in a place where somebody’s yelling.

You’re the one’s taking a personal. I guarantee you there are more reasons inside that person that they’re yelling than anything you did. They have a whole history of getting angry, have a whole history of what they like and don’t like and you just happen to be there hitting that button, but I made a mistake. People make mistakes and nobody say yell at you, they can help you. It’s got to do with the person. It’s got nothing to do with you. Do you understand that? It’s such a healthy way to live. That’s why I teach you what I do. There’s moments unfolding. Everywheres you just have be standing there and that’s the moment that you happen to see. It’s not personal. People have a lot of trouble when I say that. It’s not personal. You take it personal because you’re busy being personal, right? Instead of being wise and being understanding.

There’s a quote from Ruby that I really like. He said yesterday I was clever so I was trying to change the world Today. I’m wise, I’m changing myself. The expression takes you to tango for you to get upset by something’s happening outside takes what’s happening outside and what’s happening inside of you. You brought into that moment here I am out there in New York in the winter and Rockefeller Center and people are skating and I’m traumatized. Why? Well, when I was little I lived up north and I fell down and everybody laughed at me and I’ve never liked skating ever. You don’t have to be like that. Why make it so I never see skating? No, it’s not about getting the outside world’s moments to unfold the way you want them to. You’ll never do that and by the way, just in case you don’t totally get it, you not only care what’s happening in front of you now, you care what will happen in front of you later.

You do the same call worrying. You literally try to manipulate now to be the way you want and so that it will lead to what you want. Good luck. That’s an awful lot of anxiety and tension and struggle. You are worse than that. You actually don’t like what happened before. Well, you ain’t changing that. You try as hard as you want. I can’t believe he said that to me when five years ago. That’s why I got divorced. Why are you talking about it? Because it happened. You’ve guaranteed that you won’t be happy. You took the things that happened in the past that bothers you and you don’t want them to have happened are the things in your life that you wish had not happened. You’ve just destroyed your life. There’s no way to not have happened. They happen and they’re never going to have not happened and the fact that you don’t like that they happen mean you have problems inside of you.

That’s all the psychoanalysis I’m giving you. Did you or did you not store things inside of you you didn’t like in the past? Do you wish they didn’t happen? That seems so innocent. It’s not innocent. It means you’ve programmed your mind saying, I’m not happy. I’m not happy because the things that happened, well I can’t fix that. You’re doing that. They’re not happening anymore. Who’s willing to be that open and that real and realize there’s some work you got to do in there because what you’ve done in there does not lead to a nice life between your birth and your death does it? It leads to suffering. It leads to anxiety, it leads to tension, leads to struggle. It leads to all kinds of things. Can there be nice moments? Yes. If the moments match what you want, you’re deciding what the nice moments are.

I just give you example after example. Your boyfriend gave you a necklace. You hate it. That is ugliest neck. I don’t even ever want to wear it, but I have to wear it. He gave it to me, right? Somebody steals it. Are you upset? You’re ecstatic. Are you kidding me? I don’t have to mess with a necklace anymore. Boyfriend gave you the necklace. Oh, you love him? Oh my god, it’s so beautiful. Somebody steals it. You freak. You are deciding what effect the experiences that are happening in front of you are having on you. They’re experiences and I’m going to go all way off the edge. Now, I’m not one of them. You may not be one of them, but there are people who are warriors and they like being shot at and they like the excitement of being in war. They sign up over and over and over again.

That’s fine. There has to be all kinds of people in the world. It’s wonderful, but they’re very different than you. You don’t like being shot at. You come back with PTSD. They don’t No serious. These are serious. They were meant to be warriors. It’s wonderful. There should be every cast that could possibly be. I’m not being negative at all. I respect it very, very deeply and so just look how different you can be. It’s not that something is the way it is, it is the way you take it. So your choice is you either continue going out there fighting with life’s, fighting with people struggling worrying, anxiety, everything outside or you decide to do this stuff called inner work. You want to call it spirituality. I don’t care. You want to call it I don’t care. It’s called logic. It’s called reason. It’s called let’s do something that might work instead of continuing to do something that doesn’t work, which is trying to get everything the way it was, the way it is, the way it will be to be the way you made up you want it to be because that is what you’re doing and so how does one do the inner work?

First of all, can you do the inner work? Of course you can do the inner work. The other thing I say that I never know if people get it. If I say to you, go pick up that 5,000 pound barbell, you may not be able to do it. You’re now trying to do something you may not be able to do. Don’t try to pick up the barbell. Nobody could not be able to do that. You can always not do something, but you can’t always do something. That’s the inner work. Don’t store the negative things that happen to you. Don’t store them, experience them. Give a kiss on the forehead, say, thank you, bye-bye. Right? So I’m telling you to not do something and I’m telling you, you don’t realize it. You are capable of not storing that stuff. You are capable of having a healthy mind and a healthy heart.

Well, how do I know that? Because you’re the one that made it unhealthy. See the difference? No. My mother mistreated me. How long ago? 25 years ago. Where’s your mother dead? If that’s still bothering you, you are doing it because mommy ain’t doing it anymore, so what do I need you to be happy? Stop doing it. How do I stop my mother from doing what she did 25? You don’t. You stop resisting. You learned to change your entire, that’s a paradigm shift by the way. Total paradigm shift of how you deal with yourself, not with everybody else and you sit there and say, let’s start with the past. The fact that the past bothers you is seriously a problem. Why? It can’t be fixed. All you can do is let it stop bothering you. Let’s the best you can do is’ it how? Let go.

There’s no reason it should be bothering you. It will never happen again. You just don’t understand You’re capable. Why? Because you’re the one who’s holding it in there. It doesn’t stay in there. There’s nothing solid in there. It’s more etheric than air. If it’s stuck inside of you, you’re holding it inside of you. How do I know that? Because when it tries to come back up, you push it back down because you make rules in your household. I don’t like when you’re talking about that you don’t like when you’re dressed like that. I don’t like when you’re talking on the phone too long. I don’t like when you do something I don’t know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. You’re sitting there saying, I got all this stuff. You change out there. I can’t handle what you’re doing. Instead, you sit there and say, I don’t want this garbage inside of me.

I don’t need to carry my past problems into the present of the future, but I don’t know how not to do it and the amazing part about it’s they generally don’t teach you how not to do it, but true yoga, true spirituality, that’s what it’s teaching you. How does it teach you? Right? So now I’ve spent an hour, however long I talked and I have a few more minutes. That’s how long techniques take. Now, they take longer to do them, but it’ll take longer to teach them. Here’s the example. Have you ever complained about the driver in front of you? I want to know. Has anyone ever look at me honest? Has anyone ever talked to the driver in front of them? Come on. You see the speed limit sign is 55, you’re going 40. I got places to go. Come on buddy. Yes or no?

Guess what? They don’t hear you. Did you ever see that? They don’t hear a word you’re saying. Alright. It doesn’t bother them. They don’t get upset, they don’t feel insulted. Nothing. How do you feel bothered? You are bothered that I told you Oprah, when we did the new book Living Untethered, she picked out some very, she’s deep, some very deep sentences said, these are my favorite parts of the book, and one of ’em was as follows. The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You’re bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. Is that true about the driver is not bothering you, he’s just driving the car, but you’re bothering yourself about it because it doesn’t match what you want. Why didn’t we start there? That’s how I want to advocate for practices. Start with the simplest little things in the world that you are capable of not doing.

You are capable of catching yourself, getting upset because how the driver in front of you is driving, you are capable and I need to learn this really good too, of not getting bothered because you get every red light driving into town, you’re capable. It doesn’t take Hercules, it’s not a herculean effort. You just don’t bother doing it. You just let that happen. You just let another, there are people that if they drive down a road and they get every light on the way down, they don’t drive down that road anymore. There’s something wrong with the lights on that road. You’re letting your stuff determine the quality of your life between your birth and your death. Do you understand that? And we come right back down. You’re talking about what are you going to do with the time of your birth and your death ready? Bother myself.

That’s what I’m going to do and store every single thing. It’s a good idea. I’ll store every single thing that ever happened to me that bothered me so can bother me again and again and again. Oh boy, I can’t wait. Wow. Wake up. So what do you do? This is a practice. You sure you meditate, do mantras, do all those things they teach you. Alright? What I’m trying to teach you is when you’re driving in that car and somebody’s not driving the way you want, they’re using a blinker. They use step their brakes all the time. They’re going slow with the speed limit or they’re passing you like a maniac. Honor and respect the experience because the alternative is to resist the experience. When I teach acceptance, people say, but aren’t there things that happen that you shouldn’t accept? First, understand what is the antithesis of acceptance?

Resistance. If you’re resist it, it stays inside of you. I’m not telling you to accept everything that happens outside. It’s not that thing. A drug dealer comes up to you and says, Hey man, you want some drugs? I don’t make sense. Surrender. No, no. What happens is it comes in and it doesn’t feel right. Fine, you decide somebody’s glad I’m went for those drugs. I’m waiting for you. Right? Everyone has different reactions to these things, okay? In your case, as you’re growing, you let your first reaction be, I can handle this. I can handle, the driver is driving in front of me the way I wish they weren’t. I don’t really need to store it. I don’t need to make a thing out of it. I can handle that. It’s hot. I can handle that. It’s rainy when I have to get out of the car.

Oh my God, it wasn’t raining five minutes ago. I wish. Do you see how much you ruin your life because it’s not matching what you want. Now, the low hanging fruit, these are things that are easy to do. You just don’t bother doing them. Learn to stop resisting life. If you resist life, it seems like it’s fighting you. It’s not fighting you, you’re fighting it. This is a difference. The sun is not purposely making you hot, okay? It’s just shining the same all the time. There’s no day. There’s no nights out there shining. Learn to appreciate things. That’s where a positive thinking comes in. Learn to sit there and say, oh, that’s great. The sun’s 93 million miles away. How hot must that sucker be? And 93 million miles away and start enjoying it. Say something nice. Thank God the sun is shining. Okay? Or the driver in front of you. I always just give you these examples. They’re probably tired of driving in front of you. That could be your grandma. And last year she’ll get the driver with her license. She’s losing her size, she’s losing the thing. Go on. Beep at her. Go on. Tailgate her. Going pass.

Do something constructive with your thought patterns, the ones that allow you to honor, respect and accept the realities unfolding in front of you. You’re going to find out they were right, me from all over the world. They said, oh my God, I’m so much happier. We were going to get divorced and now we’re staying together. Yes, because you stopped complaining about each of you were doing, which is so ridiculous. All of a sudden everything changed because you changed. I spent this entire talk showing you that it takes two to tango. It takes the outside, not matching the inside for you to get upset. Change the inside. Now, how far are you willing to go to say, I will accept and honor and respect the moments unfolding in front of me Here, I’ll do it very quickly. It is not true that acceptance, surrender means you do not deal with things outside.

You just don’t deal with them outside because you’re reacting inside. It hits something inside of you here. Somebody started talking about something you don’t like. I’m talking about notice that change inside how? Relax, breathe. Let go. Let go. Not of what they said. Let go of what came up inside of you because you stored it there a long time ago or even five minutes ago. Alright, let it go. Practice letting go. That’s what letting go is. Then when you’ve reasonably come to balance inside to where you’re not reacting to your garbage, look to see if there’s something you’re supposed to be doing outside. Nobody’s saying life is not an interactive sport, but it’s not a sport. You’re supposed to be just taking your stuff and dumping it on top of it. And so you sit there and get clean as much as you can. We’ll be perfect, but on the spot, try to let go first.

Then look to see, do I need to do something about the driver in front of me? Do I need to call the police? Do I need to get the license number? Some people do that, get the license number down and turn them in for driving 10 miles hour blue speed limit. Or worse yet, do I need to get out and practice road rage to make sure they’re going to do what I want next time? They said, no, I don’t need to do those things. I can handle that. They’re driving not the way I want and I’m going to practice letting go, and then I’m going to look and see if’s something me to do. And you’re going to find out 95% of the time there’s nothing for you to do except handle it. And if you can handle it, you don’t cause all kinds of trouble.

This is spiritual growth. It’s called evolution. Then they had to do it with bigger things, then bigger things, then bigger things and just do the best you can to clean up inside. And what will happen is as you let go of the little things, the bigger ones will come up by themselves. I’m mourning you. They can obviously call it a life stack. Last in first out those which just happened, are the ones that bother you right now? The little fish swimming around when you stop putting more stuff on top, the old ones come up how? By themselves? No. Yes. You want them to. I always end my talks lately that way. You start off with, can I handle it? Oh my God, this hurts. Of course it hurts. You start with pain, it’s going to come back with pain. The question is, can you handle it?

Do you want to handle it? That’s the whole person of my talks is to inspire you to say, I want this junk out of here. Because what happens is underneath all that junk is the ecstasy. The junk inside is like a cork stopper that’s stopping the shakti from flowing that blocks the energy system. As you clean that out, all of a sudden you start feeling joy for no reason. He’s looking at the sun. You feel joy. There’s your bird fly. You feel joy, you fit everything. You Shakti the saint who gave the dru statue back in the seventies. She once pulled me aside, she said, very quiet, said Mickey. I said, yes, mother. She said, don’t you just love when they yell at you, there’s so much energy. She felt the energy of you yelling and it made her go to ecstasy. You are a beautiful being filled with Shakti, filled with spirits, but you’ve blocked it with all this garbage we talked about all night.

So your work is every minute of your day, your spiritual growth is every second you get to let go of this garbage. And as you let go, boy, it’s going to get higher. And that height will give you inspiration to handle the more stuff that comes up. And then all of a sudden you find stuff coming up you didn’t know you had held down in there and you start by handling it. Then you start by welcoming it. Then you start by loving it. And I told you the point that I’ve gotten to, which is really interesting is I didn’t even imagine such a thing. You start by apologizing to it. You took part of your psyche and you shoved it down in your subconscious into the dark for 30 years. No one of the things upset. You did that, and now you start looking at it with compassion. I’m sorry, come on, let me help you up. I’ll end with the Gita. The Gita actually says, one should raise the self with self, not trampled down the self for self, which can be self’s. Friend giving of self foe. It’s talking about you in there, the higher self lifting that mess you made in there with your ego, that lower self. You lift it up, give it a hand, take it. Love it, love it.

That’s what you do with the time between your birth and your death. You’ve been messing it up so far. Now you clean it up. And where do you see how beautiful being you are? 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.