UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Welcome to The Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes, and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com
Michael Singer: Jai Guru Dev, Jai Masters. Deep spiritual states by definition, transcend the mind, but the mind can be very, very helpful in leading to the edge of that state. When the mind understands deep enough that it can’t go there, but it’s inspired to explore the mind is very, very helpful. The mind can help you get there, but it can’t go across. What’s the difference between a mind that is blocking your spiritual growth and a mind that is helping your spiritual growth? So let’s take what I consider to be a very, very, very deep example of what the mind can understand about enlightenment, about liberation, about freedom. Your consciousness am not going to get into where it comes from yet or anything like that, but you are a conscious being and you have the ability to do what’s called concentrate. Concentrate a concentrated orange juice, okay? It’s the orange juice pulled into a very tight space.
It is concentrated consciousness. That’s what concentrating is. Concentrated consciousness. You have the ability right now, you don’t have to turn your hedge look in front of you. You see a lot. You don’t see a lot, but you see a lot. Okay? So you’re seeing a broad spectrum of what’s in front of you. Do you have the ability to hold up your hand and stare at your hand, try to focus on every little bit a part of your hand, the lines that are in it, everything like that. Could you do that theoretically, deep enough, concentration that it’s all that you see. You don’t see anything else. Even if you just mess with it. It’s pretty much all you see rather than seeing everything. So consciousness can concentrate down to a focal pin. Very much like when you buy a light bulb. A floodlight has degrees. You’ve seen that, right?
30 degree, 15 degree. So if you buy a broad beam, it shines in the big space. If you buy a narrow beam, it focuses it’s the same light, same electricity. It’s just set to focus. Well, you have the ability to do that with your consciousness. You can focus your consciousness. When you focus your consciousness, that’s all you see. Why? Because you’re conscious. You are consciousness. The only thing you take in is what you’re experiencing. So that’s the only thing you’re experiencing you can do with music. So lost in sound in music that you don’t hear anything else. That’s all that’s going on. You can do that with taste. You’re there in a party and everything, and all of a sudden you put something in your mouth. It’s just so delicious. The world goes away. That’s because your consciousness, consciousness, which is what you are, consciousness, the end user of this whole thing is able to focus its consciousness, concentrate, focus.
Its consciousness on either a small object or a broad spectrum. If you understand that, and that’s not beyond your comprehension. It’s something you do every day. You understand a lot about spirituality and a lot about enlightenment and a lot more than you think about the entire spiritual path from beginning to end. What if you practice this consciousness stuff, concentrating consciousness to a very narrow beam throughout your life? Will you have experienced as much as you experienced so far? The answer is of course not. If psychology says that man is a sum of his learned experiences, your learned experiences got very, very narrow. If you were in a group of people, you only saw one, or maybe you only saw their nose, then that’s the sum of your learned experiences. That’s what you have inside your mind is just those experiences. Will you be a different person?
Will you think differently? We have different opinions. Don’t ignore this. I’m telling you, this is as deep as anything you will ever hear. So obviously if your consciousness is focused on a very little amount, then that’s your life. That’s all you saw. That’s all you learned. That’s all there is. If it’s expanded, it just naturally expands. Why? Because you cease to contract it. Who’s focusing your consciousness down at a point you are. You have the right, you have free will. You have the right to focus your consciousness or not focus your consciousness? Okay? If I took your mind, that was made up because your whole personal mind will be made up of what you focused on throughout your life. It would be very small. Your ego would be very small. If you’re all about one person or all about a nose or all about whatever you were concentrated on, that is the only thing that’s in there.
Please understand that it’s not like, oh no, I’m playing around. No, you’re not playing around. I’m a computer guy. That’s your data. That’s the only data you took in. Therefore, that is what your mind is doing. Your personal mind is your mind capable of more. Of course, if you didn’t narrow it, it would’ve taken more in. If I could just teach you this, I did my job. You have built a personal mind. Was it personal mind, the part of the mine that knows what you know? Is there a bigger mine? Yes, it’s infinite. The mine can do anything. The mind can think of the galaxies, the mind can think of, but you don’t know anything about galaxies if you’re only focused on noses. So the potential for mine is extremely large, isn’t it? But you have the ability to build what we call a personal mind.
A subset of mind is the ego mind. That is the stuff that you took in and held onto and built this model of life. Life is about one person at a time. The life is about the nose, whatever it is, okay? That’s what your ego, what your self-concept is, your entire concept of who you are. I’m the person that met this person. I’m the person that went to this festival or had this or that because I didn’t see anything else. I only saw that. Therefore, your self-concept, your personal mind is going to be built out of the things that you saw that you experienced. Have I gone too fast? Too far? Alright, now look how small that is. It’s not your mind. That’s what we made. The distinction mind is just infinite ability, infinite awareness. It can go anywhere. It can do anything. Your mind can do that, but your personal mind can’t do that because you focused it on these tiny objects and you built this thing.
Well, why would you want to do that? I don’t want to do that. I’d rather experience, well, you guys experienced, I’d rather see it all or at least as much as I’m able to see, which didn’t very much by the way. It’s going on outside down in Gainesville or Rover in Afghanistan or, okay, you only take in a little bit. Oh, I’m letting that cat out of the bag here, right? So yes, you didn’t just take in the one thing you focused on, but you did just take in the few things you focused on. Is it a lot that you focused on? I said all the time, some people sat, don’t want to miss anything. How much are you missing right now? 99.9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9, 9, 9 9 racer 9, 9, 9, 9 9. Nine is power of what’s going on and that’s on the planet Earth. What about every else? You’ve done what I just said.
You didn’t do it by just one person focusing, but you’re consciousness focused on what you took in and focused on what you took in every moment, which was nothing. In other words, nothing. If you were just focusing on the little nose that you saw, you would say that person knows nothing about life. You’re focusing on just this little bit that your senses take in, which is absolutely nothing compared to what there is. There was a word for it, statistically insignificant, and you built your entire life and your self concept and your personal mind based on that, just the same as that person did who was focusing down to tiny little bit. That is your ego mind. That is your personal mind. That is why psychology says man is the sum of his learned experiences. It’s not true. Your consciousness is who you are, but you are focused on the sum of your learned experiences.
If you weren’t focused on the sum of your learned experiences, you would be enlightened if you were not staring at that tiny little model that you built inside your mind that says, I’m so-and-so’s wife. I’m so-and-so’s husband. I’m the person who played Dorothy in the fifth grade. I’m the one that got in a car accident was I’m the one that fell the tree. I’m the one that had this for my mother. I’m the one that didn’t like my father. In other words, I am the experiences I had. You are those experiences you held onto and built in your mind, this subset, which is tiny, what’s going on, and you’re staring at it just the same as I had you stare at the nose or at the tiny focus. What’s the difference? I’m staring at you. I’m seeing the whole thing. I’m seeing the whole thing.
That’s why they say at the moment of enlightenment, the moment of satori in the Buddhist sense, they laugh. That would be like if all I saw was this tiny little thing and then all of a sudden I stopped staring at that and I saw this. You are enlightened. It became much lighter. L-I-G-H-T. Did I expand and I just talking about expansion of consciousness. I don’t call. I will never do that again. In the sixties, we talking about expanding consciousness. No, you’re expanding your consciousness. You’re seeking to contract it. That’s a vast difference. It’s not like I’ve contracted my conscious. How do I expand it?
You’ll probably get hernia. You keep struggling and stretching. I want to expand my consciousness. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll read more books. How many books are there? What there other than books and you’re not going to get anything. You’re not any better. I don’t care how many places you go. I’ve visited 20 countries, big deal. What about Mars and Jupiter and all the countries you didn’t go to. Nothing you’re going to do called expanding. My consciousness is doing a thing compared to what’s actually going on. So you have to learn to cease to focus your consciousness, contract your consciousness down to you because you are a very, very small part of what’s going on there. There are what? 8.3 billion of you running around right now. Here’s your probability. I know the lottery has very bad probability winning, right? But it’s not one in 8.3 billion.
I’ll tell you right now, there no one playing lottery, but the chances one of 8.3 billion, that’s who you are. It’s not who you are, but that’s who you’re busy being. I have collected the experiences, my consciousness has collected the experiences that had not, by the way, you didn’t even collect all your experiences. You didn’t collect every white line you drove by in every cloud you ever looked at, did you? No. You collected the most strong experience that you had, the ones that bothered you the most and the ones that you liked the most be. That’s what your ego’s made out of. It’s not the sum of your learned experiences. Some of your held onto experiences. So something really made it big impression on you, which we’ll talk about why that’s different, but it made an impression on you. You kept it if you were little and it took your blanket way too soon.
Freud says, oh, you had all this stuff going on, so if it bothers you or if you really liked it, you either suppressed it or clung to it. You either held onto it with your will. What is will? What is will? I got this beef? I really, you know that I love quantum physics. I love the physicists. To me, there are priests nowadays, right? Well, I’m not going to do it this time, but they’re way down there. Take my word for it. And they said there’s four forces, four that built the entire universe. Gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. That’s what they’re just, because you all know what electromagnetism is. You deal with stuff, electricity and magnets. You know what gravity is. You deal with it, right? The strong nuclear force sounds really complicated. You better be a quantum physicist.
No, no. Have you noticed that when you were taught about the nucleus of an atom, that there were neutrons which were neutral in charge and there were protons that were positive in charge. What happens? They take two ends of a magnet, try to push ’em together. If they’re both positive ends, they repel. Well, how come that nucleus is not falling apart because there’s a bunch of positive stuff in there. How in the world is it being held together into this tiny little space? Oh, there must be a force stronger than magnetism plus MiSiS. Electromagnetism must be a force stronger than magnetism that overcomes the repulsiveness of positive. Positive, let’s call it the strong nuclear force. That is what the strong nuclear force is the force that must exist in order to hold the positives together. What’s the weak nuclear force? Well, sometimes they don’t hold together in radioactive material.
They kind of fall apart, don’t they? Alright, well there must be another force that’s causing that to happen. There you go. Gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear. Weak nuclear, and they will die on the standard model of particle physics or physics. That those are the forces. Those are the forces. Well, they came up with a hicks bows on, but let’s not talk about that. It’s not anything great importance. Alright, now I want to ask them, you’re the physicist. You’ve isolated down to these forces. Here is a glass. It’s sitting right there. See, it doesn’t matter if you see it or not. Sitting right there, okay, it now has moved for something to do that requires a force. Did magnetism move that? Did gravity move? That gravity stopped it from moving. I had to overcome gravity, didn’t I? Was a strong nuclear force that holds the nucleus of an animal together, caused that to move the weak nuclear force, there must be another force called will.
Yes or no. Can you overcome gravity? Of course you do. You jump up the air, you’ve just overcame gravity. I picked a glass up, I overcame gravity. Can you overcome magnetism? Can you sit there and push magnets together? Hold them so they don’t go flying apart. You have the ability to overcome these things. Strong nuclear, weak nuclear. When they do this large hetero collider over there in cern, they hit protons against protons. There’s tiny little things and they bombard them and they fall apart. So we have the ability to overcome these forces that deal with these forces, but none of that explains how that glass moved. How did they ignore that? Well, it’s not a physiological force. No, it’s not. It’s a spiritual force. Believe it or not. It’s a force that came from inside of me. Well, because you ate food and it gave you energy.
Who directed that energy to make that happen? So don’t you dare let them tell you don’t have free will you use every moment here. If I do that, I just use free will to overcome the force of gravity and everything else. So there is another force called will. What is that? When you meditate deep enough, when you spend enough time in there, in there, not out here in there paying attention, not just meditating even every day as you work through life, you watch, you notice, you will see that this force of will is concentrated consciousness. If you don’t concentrate, if you go deep in meditation, you’re not applying will and nothing’s happening out here and we still have in the inside, but it ain’t happening out here. But when you concentrate your energy, your consciousness, consciousness and energy are the same thing. And the ancient who punish at the ancient yogis called it chi shakti, chit shati conscious energy.
That’s from thousands of years ago. I guess they knew they’re in there. So when you focus consciousness, you’re also focusing energy ti. Sometimes they write that as one word ti just like not so long ago, a hundred years ago, whatever it was, we thought that magnetism and electricity were different forces. Then they found out they were same force. Now it’s called electromagnetism, the electromagnetic spectrum. They’re the same force just looked at from different angles. Consciousness and energy are the same force when, well, it’s the cat fully out of the bed. You know what else they call chi shockti God, that’s another name for God. In the yoga tradition, ti unconcentrated expansive. How expansive, infinite and eternal energy is God and it’s ti, but it can concentrate. And guess what? You are that force concentrated on your thoughts, your emotions, your body, the whole God of the universe is focusing on yours.
On yours and yours and yours. And that’s what’s going on. And that force, because it’s concentrated consciousness, is concentrated energy which is will. If you want to think and hold a multiply 243 times 12. If you try to do that, you’re going to concentrate and you’re going to feel it wear you out. Can you get tired from concentrating? You’re expending energy. Can you have trouble concentrating? Can you see it in your mind and it goes away. You have to try harder. You have to assert your will, which is the same thing as focusing your consciousness. So you have this consciousness and you focus it. You’re focusing will. That’s what happened when I moved that glass. That’s the energy to move that glass now. Yes, yes, my body had energy. Yes, the muscles have energy. Yes, I expended energy. I know all this physiological stuff, but it didn’t do it by itself.
There had to be intent, there had to be volition, there had to be will. So all of a sudden spirituality merges with physics except they won’t look at that. I can’t measure it, so it’s not there. You don’t want to ask them, how do I move the glass? That’s something else altogether. You’ll talk to psychology. So basically that is what it is. When consciousness focuses along with the focus of awareness, there’s a concentration of energy which is will and that’s what’s making this all happen. Basically, if you focus your consciousness on something small, you feel you’re small because that’s all you’ve experienced. If you focus your consciousness something bigger, you feel you’re bigger. If you don’t focus your consciousness at all, you are enlightened. It ceases to contract itself. It expands. I don’t want to quote expands it, it ceases to contract. Do you see the difference?
It’s just that’s what happens when you go deep enough in meditation, you start to feel it letting go and the ones that can really go deep gone, bye-bye someone I’m honored to say the dear friend who has the ability to do that. It will. It’s amazing thing to see and I’ve seen him do it many times. He used to do it a lot. Doesn’t do it now he does it himself, but he doesn’t do it public, right? But I’d watch, he’d be sitting here, does Asana, he’d doing some asana and he’s there and he’s doing this. I once took him, I did prison work for 30 years and I used to, if he’d come by to visit, I used to take him into prison with me and there’d be 20, 30 guys with maximum security prison in there for life. But they were into the teachings.
I’d bring this beautiful being in and he would ask, would you like to see me do some mos? And he would start doing some mos and I could see it. He’d be there, he’d be there little by little the energy would get funny in a room and then all of a sudden gone, he’s gone. He’s gone. Just melted into the universe, melted beyond himself and everybody felt it. He would sit there afterwards and ask to share your experience. And when we say, I just saw this blinding light, so that’s who you are. Do you understand that? That’s who you are. There’s no difference between that person or enlightened master or Buddha or Christ and you. There’s no difference except you’re concentrating on you and they weren’t concentrating on them. When Christ said, you must die to be reborn, you now have a foundation for understanding that you must stop focusing on you.
This thing you made in there. And by ceasing to do that, you’re reborn in spirit. Okay? So all of a sudden, all his teachings, all the master’s teachings make much more sense When you understand what’s happening, what’s happening is you are the divine consciousness focusing on this thing you built inside your mind. Call me, I am me mind. This is mine. Don’t touch that. I like that. I don’t like what you did. So why would you do such a thing? Because there’s another name for God in the yoga tradition sat eternal, conscious, ecstasy. Anybody want some of that? There’s no drugs, just eternal conscious ecstasy. But that means it’s going on all the time. It’s the only theory. That’s what Buddha called nirvana. Eternal conscious ecstasy is nirvana. It’s the state that the great ones went into. You are in that state right now, period, but you’re busy looking away from it at the chunk you built in your mind.
I’d rather look at this mess that I made inside instead of experience who I am. That’s called self-realization. That’s called enlightenment, that’s called liberation. You call it whatever you want. MTA a liberated soul. Do you understand? I’ve never talked to you this strong about. That’s what I said, mind can help you if your mind can understand. I gave you good examples. They’re things you can understand. They’re not spiritual mumbo jumbo. You can become inspired to make a meaningful thing of your life, which is stop focusing on stupid old youth. It’s not so much fun, is it? Alright? What is when the world you’re looking at doesn’t match what you want? Don’t suffer When it does match, do you? But if you have something inside your mind that you made, which you built out of your past experiences which are nothing and you feel serious about it, you’re totally addicted to watching it.
It’s so important to you. It’s the beginning and end of who I am. I want that car, I want that job. I want that person, I want that baby. It’s who I am, some meaning of my life. Then you are completely concentrating on that and the world comes in. If it doesn’t match that, how you doing it depends on how serious you were about wanting it or how serious you were about not wanting it. I don’t ever want to see a snake. I got so scared when I was little. I don’t ever want to see a snake so I don’t walk in the woods. I don’t go places. I don’t go to the zoo because there’s snakes in the aquariums. Could you be like that? Why? Because you’re focused on that completely and even the thought of it freaks you out. You suffer when the world or your thoughts don’t match what you want or do, match what you don’t want. That’s what you’re doing in there. And instead of realizing, which I now have encouraged your mind to do, wait a minute, the consciousness that’s looking down at this thing here is God is ecstasy. What did Christ mean? My father and I are one. In other words, your consciousness is the consciousness. They all taught that. Oh, the great mantras, right? They’re in Sanskrit so we don’t use them.
I am bravo hum, I’m Shiva T. That’s thou art. So hum. I am he. Those are what they masters talk to their disciples. You understand that? Say who you are. Stop with this staring, wasting this beautiful conscious energy that’s will, that’s ecstasy and focusing it on this tiny thing you built inside your mind. That’s not your mind. It’s a subset of your mind. It’s like a computer program. The computer can run everything can it? It can run lots of things. You have lots of programs, it can go lots of places, do lots of things. Run a program inside the computer that is so addicting to you that you can’t not run it. I give you examples but I won’t. Some of ’em are and you just end up all the time just looking at that. Is that what your computer is? No. No. Your computer can do anything but you can’t let it because you are, your consciousness is addicted to staring at that aspect of this beautiful machine that has memory that can go anywhere as it can do anything.
Where do you want to go today? You know where you’re going. Alright? You’re going to some game that you’re playing that you want whatever it is. The next thing you know, woo. And that’s what you’ve done with your mind. You took this gorgeous, beautiful mind that’s capable of, oh my God, look what you’re capable of. Your mind was capable of understanding what I just talked about. You have a brilliant mind. It’s capable of doing brilliant things. You have the human mind. It’s brilliant. It created rocket ships. It built the large collider. My god, it split the atom. Brilliant thing, isn’t it? And this is what you’re doing with it, staring at some of your learned experiences. I wish he liked me. I don’t like when that happened to me when I was little. Never bothered. It bothered me forever. I was like a traumatic experience that I had.
I was in love when I was in fifth grade and he loved me. I’ve never been the same. Why are you doing that? You’re great, you’re amazing. Your mind can go anywhere but you’re staring at that and your consciousness can go anywhere. At least go with an open mind is bad enough that you limited yourself to staring at your mind because you are not your mind. You’re the one that’s staring at it, but at least let it be expansive. At least let it be open. At least let it have a play pen to play in, not that it’s addictive and focus on this chunk. I have a question to ask you. You’ve had experiences in your life. Have you not, have any of you had bad experiences? Are you glad they’re over? Okay, you had bad experiences very times in your life. Are you glad they’re over?
Did you keep them inside yourself and they still bother you? Yes or no? Why? They’re over. They’re not going to happen again. Mommy and daddy are not going to divorced again. You’re 62 years old. Why in the world would you hold that inside of you? It doesn’t make sense, does it? And so instead of feeling the ecstasy of your being or the expansiveness of your mind, you’re busy contracting and focusing yourself on this garbage that you stored inside that will never happen again. And it’s over there. I yelled at you. Do you understand what I’m saying? Is it not true? The entire science of psychology is based on the fact that you’re doing that. If you were not doing that, Freud would come up with the philosophies. He came up with that. That’s what happened. You suppressed all this stuff and held it in there and now it’s affecting your whole life. He was wrong, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t. Explain why you’re doing that. You don’t have to do that. What do you mean I don’t have to do that? To hold an event inside of you that is not happening in front of you requires willpower.
It doesn’t require willpower for it to come in, it comes in. That’s what your senses are for, but the fact that it’s not coming in anymore for you to have held onto that experience requires will. And it requires your Shakti and your energy and you’re wasting it not only for no good reason, for a terrible reason, you’re making yourself a mess, but nobody will tell you that you don’t have to do this and don’t tell me it’s natural. It is not natural. It’s not natural to do something. Take a knife, start cutting yourself every night. It’s natural. It’s not. What do I do that for? Then? Why are you doing that to your mind? Why are you doing that to your soul? Why are you doing that to your consciousness here? Consciousness. Eat that. Eat what makes you most sick. Do you understand? That’s why you are not enlightened.
You’re not not enlightened because there’s something wrong with you. You’re not enlightened because enlightened means not to focus on this tiny little part of your mind. And now at this point, I want to see if you get it. Okay? You understand the universal consciousness. I don’t even like the word. The natural state of the universe is infinite eternal consciousness. You give it a name, God, it was here in the beginning before this was created. It’ll be here in the end after all this falls away. There was never a time, it was not. There’ll never be a time. There will not be. I told you I don’t study books and that kind of stuff, but I read little articles on the web from great physicists and different people and somebody wants to ask for a very brilliant physicist, quantum physicist before the big bang, which they say is what created everything that’s here and now.
Right? What was there before the Big Bang before 13.8 billion years ago? I’ve read at least four of them say the same thing. There just was infinite, eternal. It just was always there. It has always been there and there’s no beginning and no end. That’s what’s there. Oh my God. That’s what the yogis found. That’s what bra is. That’s what Nebi Samati is that you enter the state before creation took place, the great void, the Buddhist call it the empty wow. And then a vibration happened and the whole universe is it form expanded out and they’re chasing it. That’s what they say was there to start with. So you basically have taken that expansive, infinite, eternal thing which you are and focus that consciousness down on how small is that garbage going inside your mind all day? I don’t like this. I wish you didn’t do this.
Oh my God, I’m so concerned. What am I going to do about this? The little tiny place in the little tiny planet this I teach you what I teach you. 1.3 million earth fit inside the sun. Please take a breath. 1.3 million is a big number, isn’t it? And you’re worried about one spot on the planet, 1.3 million earth fit inside the sun and the earth has been here for 4.5 billion years. How long been here? How long you going to be here? What are you doing? You took the pieces that you experienced of the nothing and put them together into this little thing called yourself concept and you stare at it all day and you do every single thing for your whole life to try to make the outside world match this little thing you built in there, unbelievable that that’s what you would do with your consciousness.
And by the way, the 1.3 billion earth from inside the sun, the sun is one of 300 billion stars in this galaxy and there are 2 trillion galaxies. And what are you focusing on? No wonder you are neurotic. No wonder you feel lost and tight and anxious and I’m in a cage. Oh my God, you took the greatest conscious of the whole universe and focus on, I can’t even talk about it. It’s unbelievable. You’re the greatest thing. I walked the face of the earth. But you’ve limited yourself down to something very small. That thing is so small, I can’t even think about it. That thing. I don’t care who you are. That thing you’re watching is so small. Nano isn’t good enough. It’s a plank, the scientist, it’s a plank measurement type stuff. And yet if you let go and stop staring at that, it goes instantaneously. Why?
Because you were holding it down on that. It’s like a rubber band. If I’m holding a rubber band and I get really stretched out, I want it to go back to not. Well just let it go. How long does it take? Bam. Boom. That’s what they tell you about enlightenment and they tell you about liberation. Bam. Why? Because you cease to concentrate it. It expands back to where it is. So the question becomes if that’s the truth and it is a truth, and I like that your mind, your mind can understand that candidate, then your mind can help you. The mind’s not evil. The personal mind’s a major problem, right? So what is the path? What is path to liberation? Stop it one way or another. That’s your business. You are staring at something and it’s making you little because if you’re staring at us tiny, how about we stop staring at it?
Well, not a question becomes, it is easier said than done. Well, so is stop drinking. So is stop drugs. A lot of things. It’s hard to do, aren’t they? But you’re better off doing it, aren’t you? If you’re busy lost in the drug, then your life is really small. It’s all about the drug. If you’re really lost in liquor or alcohol because you can’t be okay without it, then your life is about alcohol. Well, your life’s about every little thing you’re addicted to watching. You have to get out. You have to liberate yourself. Now you understand what liberation means. You free your consciousness, you free your soul from staring at the personal self. Alright? Okay, first, now we understand how do you go about that? Because it’s not going to happen just because you want it to. That’s like somebody going to AA saying, oh, you’re right, I should stop drinking. Okay, I’m done.
What happens is addictions. What is an addiction? Something that draws your consciousness into it and it’s not easy for it not to do that. Are we addicted to ourselves? Are you addicted to your ego? Are you addicted to what you like and don’t like? Do you get upset when something you don’t like is happening? Do you get excited when something you like is happening? Well, that’s just like a drug addict. They get when they get their drug and they get really upset when they don’t. So I’m telling you, your consciousness is addicted to the psyche of your ego and it doesn’t get what it wants. That heart hurts, doesn’t it? It doesn’t get what it wants. The body gets nervous and everything gets tight and it go what it wants. The mind complains incessantly and if it gets what it wants, the body relaxes and the heart opens and the mind says, Ooh, nice old things.
That’s the same as an addiction. That’s exactly what’s happening. Of course you’re caught up in that. You allowed by the way, you have just understood and very few do the fall from the garden. If you are the infinite consciousness experiencing such a non eternal bliss and you fell down for your consciousness is the same. Consciousness is focusing on her thoughts and her emotions and her bodily feelings. That’s the fall from the garden. You’re narrowed. It’s called the tree of self-knowledge and what does it say when you fell from the garden? Now you must work by the sweat of your brow to be okay. Know anything about that. You work by the sweat of your brow to get it the way you want and make sure it isn’t the way you want. I don’t want you to live like that. I know you’re much greater than that every one of you, but what if I did bad things?
You were lost. You were addicted. The minute you’re out, you don’t have to worry about what it was like when you were in. If you failed math in the third grade and had to do third grade over again, but now you have a master’s degree of theoretical mathematics. I don’t think you need to worry about having third grade. You used it to learn so they were so mad at Christ. I forgive your sins, I forgive your sins. If you let go of that garbage that you’re holding inside, it’s gone. It has no effect on your life. Your karma and the seeds of your karma is the garbage you stored inside your personal self saying, I did this wrong. I did this right, I hurt this person. Fine. Then it’ll affect your entire life when you’re free. They say at the moment of enlightenment, all karmic seeds burned those.
You understand the philosophies. Why? Because you let them go. You’re holding onto them and say, I’ve got bad karma, but let it go. I always teach people when they say I have regrets, the things I did and I hurt, right? Doesn’t matter. Here’s my question. It’s the same situation happened again. Would you do the same thing? You know what they say? Of course not. Of course. Then you learned. Don’t you dare let it hold you back. Fair enough. You have the right to learn. So what you’re here for, so that when you are an alcoholic and you did terrible things and now you’re not, you straightened yourself up. You get to little five-year chip, don’t look back and make a drink again. You understand that you’re a great being. It doesn’t matter. So basically, why are we so addicted and how do we get out?
And at some point you realize it’s the meaning of your life. That’s why you’re here. Earth is a place where souls were sent to evolve. Earth is a place that souls were sent to evolve. How are you doing? Well, I’m not doing that. I’m trying to make it so I don’t have to evolve. I’m trying to get what I want so I can stay stuck in my addiction. I want to avoid what I don’t want so I never have to feel bad even though I’m addicted. So no, I’m not trying to evolve. I’m trying to be okay. Unevolved doesn’t sound nice, but is the truth. I’m trying to be okay even though I’m not involved. I’m trying to be able to handle my liquor and not have people give me trouble about it and find that balance. They call it balance. Find that balance and only shooting up once a day instead of three times and laugh all you want.
People do it with Coke. I was the generation before I joke was going on, but there was businessmen, there’s, I don’t know what age it was, but they were doing coke and saying, it makes me better. I’m a better business person. I make good decisions. I’m a better everything. I feel better. I’m sharper. You’ve heard it, okay? Yeah, after a little while, what happens? You get addicted and it mess up your whole life. Okay? So that’s what you’re saying about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want. If I get what I want, I’m okay. If I don’t get what I want, I’m not okay. So why are we so addicted? Because we’re not okay. Why are we not okay? Because we left the state of okayness because we buried ourself down to the personal self and the body’s got all kinds of problems and the world doesn’t behave the way we want.
And so of course you’re not okay, and so therefore you’ve noticed you’re not stupid that when I get what I want, I’m okay and don’t what I want. I’m not so guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to make people be the way I want. I’m going to control them. You see control freaks you want around here, right? I’m going to control them and make it all be the way I want and force everyone to be the way I want. People have the most power. They don’t mourn anything else. I mean people that don’t have power, they wish they did and everybody’s trying to get what they want and that’s why there’s wars and that’s why the whole thing is a mess, isn’t it? We all want different things. We all have different experiences. Okay, so first, now you understand why you’re addicted because it makes you feel better.
It makes you feel worse. And of course you want to feel good, but it’s just like the alcohol. Yes, it makes you feel better, but you ain’t going no worse. So how do I free myself? Do I have to renounce the world? I am sorry that notion ever came up, but it’s okay. People do lots of things. Of course not. You have to use the world to let go of your addiction ultimately in the world or not of it. Ultimately, you’re able to deal with situations that used to freak you out, but you learned how to release. You learn. I teach, relax and release. Somebody says something, you don’t like it, it starts to bother you. You don’t have to do that, but it hurts. Of course it hurts. You’re used to making things be the way you want and taking it personal when it’s not personal.
There’s nothing personal people don’t like when I say that. They don’t like that at all. None of it is personal. You’re sitting on a planet in the middle of nowhere spinning some black, dark, empty space. It ain’t personal. There’s just stuff going on. I told you once, if somebody’s yelling at you, they’re not yelling at you. You just happen to be standing in a place on a planet earth where somebody’s yelling. It’s just it’s happening. Everybody’s some learned experiences in there. They don’t know to deal with themselves a big deal, but I go to smaller things than that now. Always give the same examples. Have you ever been bothered by the driver in front of you? Better yet, have you ever talked to the driver in front of you? Come on buddy. I’m in a rush. Where are you going? 10 miles. The speed limit come.
What are you doing? You didn’t use your blinker, your blinkers on all the time. How do I know what they don’t hear you. You’re doing that for no reason. How about we take that and stop doing that? How about that spiritual growth. How about I care more that you learn to handle the moments in front of you like the driver, like the temperature. Oh, well I can’t handle the heat. Like the rain that you learn to handle those is as important as meditating for two hours. If you meditate for two hours and you come back and do that, you wasted your time because you didn’t evolve. You just had a vacation. You have to be able to handle reality. You’re the highest species on the planet. Why can’t you handle reality? Because I’m more interested in handling this junk I built inside my mind that said what I want and what I don’t want.
Do you understand that? I’m not telling you not to meditate. Meditate is a wonderful thing to do, but I’m telling you, you better be doing this. You better be every moment of your life every day saying, I can handle that. If I can handle that, I send a little plan. That’s why I teach what I teach you. I sitting a little plan in the middle of nowhere. I can’t handle what somebody said I can’t handle. I’m an elevator, an extra person got in. Come on man. Just let go Instead of changing it, let go of you. Let go of your addiction to yourself. Learn to be more open. Learn to not focus on the stupid little part that you, why’d you say it about the elevator. My father was really serious about that. He was to get so upset when too many people got in the elevator.
Okay, now you can be like that. How about we don’t how? Relax through it when it comes up. Relax. Now you’re growing spiritually. That is literally spiritual evolution. The fact that you can now handle, not handle life, handle what your inside did about life, okay? If you’re okay with it, it’s okay then be okay with it. How? Learn. Practice. Practice being Okay. I beg you. Just like you practice a piano, just like you practice tennis, just like you practice anything. If you practice, you get better at it. Don’t you? Practice being okay, so what happens? What’s that about? It means that there’s some of your learned experiences. You’re not giving energy to it when it comes up because daddy did this and mommy did that, and you’re able to let it go. It goes. It’s always staying in there because you’re holding it in there.
There’s no super glue in there. There’s no granite that is carved in. It’s your willpower. Now we’re getting the why. Watch what I did. You are focusing on it. Well, no, I’m not. I don’t think about it because you’re pushing it away. I don’t ever think about it again. I don’t ever think about it. Yes you are. You’re pushing. We never talk about that around your father. Well then there’s something wrong with daddy. Okay, what did daddy do? Daddy pushed it away and now it’ll hit. If you say something and he has to get upset, you don’t want that stuff in there. That’s why you’re addicted because you stored the stuff that you have the most trouble with. How about we let it go win every moment of every day, every second. Well, what if it’s too strong for that good? That means you’re playing Tennessee.
You hit the net. Let’s try again. Just keep working on it. Don’t ever give up. Don’t ever give up. Some things are big, they’re hard to handle now, but you can learn. There were some things that happened before that were hard to handle, weren’t they? But they’re not happening now. Let those go when they come up. Welcome them. I said I learned. I used to push it away and try to be, who knows. Then I got the point, okay, I’ll handle it. Then I got the point. What’s wrong with me? I have to welcome this stuff. I don’t want that stuff in there. I don’t want stuff in there that happened to be 30 years ago or 10 minutes ago. I don’t want it in there. So if it comes back up by itself, throw a party. Rejoice, but it hurts. Of course it hurts.
Hey, if you go through detox, does it hurt? Right? Go on, be hooked up on some drug. Haven’t put you through detox. You’re going to go through some stuff, aren’t you? You’re going through detox on you, so of course it hurts. Restore with pain. Coming back with pain. You want that pain? That’s a pain that ends all pain, so you welcome it. You have a party, you talk to it. I’m so sorry. I’m swear to God. That’s what I got and that’s what it really worked. When I got a point, I looked at it, I said, no, it’s not bothering me. I did this. I shoved that thing down in the dark for years. I couldn’t handle it, so it’s trying to come back up. Be kind to it. Welcome it. Apologize to it. That’s a great state. Apologize. I’m so sorry I pushed you down there.
You can come up now. I’ll take your hand. Help it to get. It says one should raise the self with self, not trampled down the self. Its everything we talked about, all the entire talk. You’re in there, but what you’re doing in there is using your will to create a mess. Use your will to let go. That’s what it means to raise yourself from self instead of T. Trampoline down the self when it comes up, welcome it. Offer it. Offer it to God. Do whatever you want. I don’t care, but don’t push it back down. But what if I not ready to let it go? Do your best. Anything you do will let go a little bit. Next time, turn your hand a little. Then when you hit the ball may not go on the net. Next time, maybe it will. Okay, fine. Do it again.
Don’t ever quit and eventually you’re going to find out that underneath that garbage that you stored has all the Shakti, but that’s not really what’s happening. I teach that. That’s not really what’s happening. What’s happening is because you can handle it, you don’t focus on it. It’s not distracting your attention. If it doesn’t distract your attention, it doesn’t distract your attention. Now all of a sudden you’re not so focused on the garbage and it evolves up. It doesn’t pull you down. What you’re feeling when I say the Shaktis behind it is you’re feeling yourself liberate yourself and feeling the shakti of your being, feeling the sat a little bit, not all at once because you released. You released staring at the garbage. Now you start to feel who you are and you just keep doing that all day, every day under all situations and the best of your ability.
And it was you help evolution take place. Not I fight it by trying to get what I want and so on. And what will happen is you’ll find out you’re a very great being and it’s not all at once. Stairway to heaven, not a leap. I want that every morning you wake up, you’re a greater being that woke up the morning before. That’s all. That’s good enough. My favorite part is not when somebody tells me, oh, I saw Jesus in mood. Me holding hands in the vision. Fine. Notice it was past tense. I saw there’s the one that moves me. I went to work today and something happened. I didn’t realize until I drove away. That would’ve bothered me. That would’ve bothered me just even months ago. I didn’t even notice. Now, no day you grew. That’s not a struggle. That’s not fighting. It’s not forcing, right?
You grew, you handled something that you couldn’t have handled before that other people couldn’t handle. That’s great. You’re going to feel more energy. You start to feel more liberation and then eventually you’ll get inspired. Say, what we doing wasted my life trying to get what I want. It doesn’t last for two seconds, does it? That’s how you got what you want. Do you want anything else? A clue in? You start getting that energy flow. That’s what it means to fall in love with God. You start feeling that energy there. You say, whoa, that’s nice stuff and it’s free. Okay, I think I’m going to keep doing what gives me more of that, and it doesn’t ever stop. Jesus says, higher and higher and higher and higher until eventually you find a way. You’ll find a way. It’s not like you find a way to let go.
Instead, you’re not being pulled down. When Christians said, the world has lost its salt. What he means is those things don’t pull you down into them. They can still be there. You can still have money, you can still be married, have children. All those things. They have nothing to do with those things. They have the fact that you’re addicted to those things. That’s the problem as you’re not. They have it naturally and you just live your life. But inside there’s ecstasy going on until eventually because it’s so beautifully inside, it’s natural to let go, and that’s for the great ones. It’s very rare that somebody can let go at that level. You understand that, and there are those. Mayor Baba was so high that he’d go into these great states. Robert Krishna even used Robert Krishna. They’d go into these great states and they would just stay there, but they didn’t eat.
Their disciples would come down and whisper. He was such a great bean. They would whisper in his ear Krishna’s name to try and go fishing to find his consciousness and bring it back so that he would eat Mayor Baba when he would go to sleep. Mayor Baba was an avatar. A disciple would’ve to stand outside his door and periodically look inside to make sure he was wiggling his big toe, his true story. He had to wiggle his big toe all night or he wouldn’t be there in the morning. He had to have something that tied his consciousness down to this plane, that beautiful. That’s why there are pictures hang on the wall. That’s why I told you, your mind can help you. Now that you understand better. It’s not weird of who you are and what’s wrong. Find your way out. Don’t come to me and say, well, I was doing a meditation, but now I’ve fell in love with somebody and I just around them.
I feel so much energy. What should I do? I would never answer a thing like that. Go through what you must go through to learn to free yourself, and it may be business, it may be marriage, it may be children, it may be nothing. I don’t know. Your stuff is different than mine. You need to go through what you need to go through, but you need to do your best to let go. You do your best to let go, and my experience is you do your best to let go yourself, and somehow the world helps you end up going through what you need to go through, even though you didn’t think you needed to go through it or even though you really needed to go through it. That’s what I say to people. If you can let go, let go. If you find out that you’re married and you didn’t know how it happened, it was supposed to happen, and then you go through it and you just keep letting go and growing and releasing and doing whatever you can to free yourself, free yourself, it’s a beautiful thing. So the main point of this talk was do you see that? If your mind understands where you’re going, it helps a lot, doesn’t it? It helps you understand the path. 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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