E60: Your Highest Aspiration: Finding Your True Self

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. In the deep teachings of surrender and acceptance, people get confused and they often ask the question about aspirations. What about aspirations? Okay, let’s talk about aspirations. But you really can’t talk about anything until we’re all sure we’re talking about the same language and words mean something to you. They mean different to everybody else and based on your experiences and your knowledge and et cetera, et cetera. So before we get to what aspirations mean and what meaningful aspirations are, let’s talk about the state of affairs. State of affairs is you’re a conscious being. You live inside yourself. Everyone should know that it’s not complicated. Ire in there. If I ask you, are you in there? You say yes. You don’t know where. You don’t know what you say, yes, I’m in here, but you don’t know where you are in there. You don’t know who you are in there.

You don’t know anything about yourself. The normal human being knows nothing about themselves. They only know about what they like and what they don’t like and how to get it and how to avoid it and how they feel, not who’s in there and what is the nature of self and where is the seed of self, et cetera. So that’s a clue about aspiration. Maybe you might want to know who you are, but we start running around trying to decide what you want. So we start with the fact that you’re in there. Well, if I’m in there and I’m me, I’m not everybody else, I’m me in there. What am I doing in there?

The whole topic purpose of the last book I wrote, living untethered is talking about that. Forget about who I am in there. What am I doing in there? Well, I know what you’re doing in there. You’re watching your thoughts, you where are your thoughts? Your thoughts talk to you. I don’t know if I like that. I don’t like what he said. I wonder if I should go here. I don’t know anybody got one of those? We got some. Those are called thoughts. You have ’em. Do you know that you have thoughts? How do you know you have thoughts? Because I’m in here and there are thoughts in here. If you weren’t in there, you wouldn’t know. There are thoughts in there. If you’re not conscious, you don’t know you’re in the room, you don’t know there’s anybody here. So you’re in there and there are thoughts in there.

You have to talk about nice thoughts, not nice thoughts. X-rated pg. I don’t care. Alright, there are just thoughts in there. There have always been thoughts in there. Did you have thoughts in there when you were 5, 10, 15, 20, 34, were they the same as now? Not a chance in the world, but there were thoughts in there. Is that the only thing you’re doing in there is experiencing your thoughts in there? No. There’s these other things in there. Oh, they’re called emotions. Anybody got any of those? Are they different than thoughts? Emotions are energy forms that happen inside. There’s love, there’s hate, there’s fear, there’s insecurity, there’s jealousy, there’s pride. I can’t even list them all. How do you know that? I don’t know you. I’ve never met you. How do I know that? You know what I’m talking about when I say jealousy. Anybody know anything about jealousy?

Does anybody know anything about jealousy? That’s a word. How do you know? Point to it. You can’t. Why? It’s inside and you experienced it. So you have thoughts in there which you experience. So one thing you’re doing in there is getting bombarded or paying attention to your thoughts. Another thing you’re doing in there is getting bombarded generally and paying attention to your emotions keeps you pretty busy, doesn’t it? There’s something else you’re doing there. That would be enough, wouldn’t it? That’s like a full-time job handling the thoughts and the emotions. Okay, but you also experience the outside world. Me in here experience what’s out there. Yes. That’s why you have sensors, oh, excuse me, senses. I’m a computer guy. There’s sensors. They pick up the outside world. Do you live out here? No. You live in here with your thoughts and your emotions, but you have senses that pick up the outside world, sight, touch, taste, et cetera, et cetera, and they come in and they send their messages back to you.

Isn’t that what your body does for you? Does your body not house your senses? If I were to ask you, I want to give a whole extra on this, what is the most important function of your body? Believe it or not, it is housing your senses. Take the senses away. There’s no world. Don’t bother visiting planet earth because you’re not going to experience it. Okay? So if there’s any meaning to life, it has something to do with experiencing life. If you don’t have senses, all you experience are your thoughts and your emotions in there. Could you still experience your thoughts and emotions in there? If they sniff that little place back there where all your senses come back in. Of course when you go to sleep, you’re not experiencing in the outside world. When you go deep in meditation, experiencing in the outside world, but you’re there, aren’t you?

Sleep told you sleep has so much to teach you. What’s meaningful to me as a yogi with sleep is it follows you go to sleep. You have dreams. Do you have dreams? I forgot to ask you, is that another thing you do in there? Have dreams? Do you experience your dreams? Can you be in your dreams and have things happen to you and fly and do all that kind of stuff? Well, what’s really far out is when you wake up you say to somebody, I had this amazing dream last night. I was flying. I could go wherever I wanted to. I could move my arms. It was the most amazing thing. How do you know that you had that dream? Because the same you who’s in there experiencing your thoughts, experiencing your emotions, experiencing what comes of your senses, experienced the dream. You don’t feel any different when you say, I had this dream.

Who’s talking me? Who had the dream? Me? Same you, isn’t it? There’s only one of you in there. There’s the essence of wisdom, of knowledge, of spirituality, of everything you’re in there and the same being who’s in there that watches your thoughts, feels your emotions, receives a sense from the outside world and notices the dreams that the mind’s creating. And you see them, don’t you? Okay, so we’re there. You’re in there. It’s you in there. Plus I talked about your body. The senses come in and you get to experience the outside world. I’m telling you now, it doesn’t mean we’re hedonistic. The whole purpose of life is feature senses, right? That’s not the purpose of the census. They have a purpose. The purpose of the sense is to experience the outside world is to have experiences. If they’re not there, there’s no reason for you to be here at all.

So another thing you’re doing in there, aside from experience, your thoughts, your emotions, you’re experiencing, what’s coming in from the outside world, what do you mean it comes in? This proves that you’re in there. If you were out here, you wouldn’t need senses. You’re experiencing here I am, here it is, but you have a whole system and that’s what your body’s about. I don’t know what you’re doing with it, I don’t want to know, okay? But what your body’s about is there are these senses, eyes, ears, nose, tactile, touch, taste, so on. Got it. They pick up the outside world. What do they do with it? What if the camera took a picture and no one ever looked at it? Kind of meaningless. So they come in, they have these cells that are sensitive, your sensor cells and what do they do? Do your eyes just see?

No, they send what they saw back to you. Well, how do they do that? They’re wired. Really. They’re wired. They’re wired with what? With nerves. That’s what your nerve cells are in your body. That’s why they have purpose. They’re there. So they connect what comes in and is sensed by your sensors. They send system back to your brain. So it’s a wired system, but for what purpose? To get it back to you so that you’re conscious and aware of what happened out there. And I’ve told you once before, if that’s all there was eyeballs and ear things and some skin puddled there on the ground, picking up what it could pick up and sending it back there. That’s not a very exciting life. Kind of like that’s where plants are. Well they’re better than that. They’re just blob down there, right? Well, I’d like to have some structure so I can see more than just blob.

Alright, well then you have an entire skeletal system and that’s its purpose. The purpose of your nervous system is to send what your sensors pick up back. The purpose of your skeletal system is so that you can stand erect and see more than just the puddle of sensors down there. So now you have a skeletal system so that the sensors can stand up. Well then I’m a plan. I’m planted. Okay? It is better than just being a blob. Okay, I’d like to move around. Well, we better give you a musker system. Give my drift. It’s all about the senses, being able to sense so that you have the experience of the outside world. Otherwise you’re just in there with your thoughts and emotions. It’s not so complicated, is it? They should teach health this way in fifth grade. Okay? And so now you have that.

Well, there’s lots of other systems like what? The digestive system. Why? What’s that for? Well, I don’t know. This skeletal system and this nervous system and these sensors are all made out of cells. They’re living, they’re living cells. Well, living things have to eat. You think you’re eating for you, you’re not eating for you. You don’t need to eat you in there. You don’t need to eat. Here’s this consciousness, but this thing here that was given to you, quite a gift by the way has, I don’t know, 35 trillion living cells that need to eat and breathe and excrete. Therefore there’s an ex expiratory system. Therefore there’s an digestive system. Therefore there’s a circular system. Every one of those systems is there so that your sensors can send back experiences. So you have another thing to do in there, aside from being aware of your thoughts, being aware of your emotions, you’re aware of what’s going on in the outside world, at least within the realm range of your senses.

Fair enough? Okay. There’s one other system in there that’s really fascinating that has nothing to do with your senses. It’s called the reproductive system. What’s the purpose of that? To clone you laugh all you want. That’s pretty unbelievable. It clones one of you guys or one of the pair of you anyways, alright? And it just builds it in there out of nothing, out of pizza and then the Twinkies and Coca-Cola, it’ll do it. I don’t want to be the kid, but it literally has a chemist in there. Think about that. It has a chemist in there. It breaks down what you’re shoving in this hole in your face that has the purpose of not feeding you. You don’t need to eat your consciousness. Consciousness has no body. It’s awareness. It’s awareness of being. But for this thing to be alive, it needs to eat. So you eat it did something smart.

It said you don’t care. You’re back in here, you’re going to get lost. Your thoughts and nice emotions, right? Well the thing will die. So what do I do? I’ll make it enjoyable. I’ll make it. When you put something in your mouth it goes, ooh, I want to eat and messages come back up from inside from the organs I eat so that you come back down there. They were great masters. Remember Krishna was that way. They went so deep in meditation they wouldn’t eat. They had to bring him back. Robert Krishna was so deep in there and samati form Samati, they used to whisper in his ear the names of Krishna to try and go fishing to bring his consciousness back so they could eat. So basically now you understand that that is what’s going on in there. That’s what’s going on. The point is, it’s all about you.

It’s not about your body, it’s not about your senses, it’s not about your thoughts. It’s the receiver of your thoughts. It’s all about you. Who are you? You don’t know. It’s hilarious. You don’t even think about it. If once I talk to you about it, you don’t think about it. What you think about is what can I eat? But you’re not saying what does my but a cell. Hey cells, 35 trillion cells, what do you want to eat today? No, I want some sugar, right? It’s all about you’re misusing the purpose of the set, not misusing, it’s fine, whatever you want, but basically that is what you’re doing with the senses. You’re bringing things in. I want to go to Hawaii. I want to see this. I want to watch that I in here, don’t know who I am, but I have this body, I have these senses.

There is this world and I want to experience it. Why? Now we’re into psychology, all of it. Spirituality, everything fits in spirituality. They’re all just the foundation of spirituality. Well, what is psychology? Psychology is pretty amazing in my opinion. What they have figured out, just like physics, just figure out great things. Psychology makes a statement. I’ve been using it lately a whole lot. So you know it and psychologists will tell you this, I don’t care what field of psychology they’re in, man is a sum of his learned experiences. That’s what psychology is based on. That’s what Freud’s based on. Mommy did this, daddy did this, somebody did that. You have better experience. So therefore you’re the way you are. You are the sum of your learned experiences. Now you’re not. You’re in there watching your mind and your emotions be the sum of your learned experiences.

Now that was deep. Is that not true? Are you in there? If somebody says something mean to you yesterday, are you in there? He’s not saying mean anymore. You’re not there. Are you in there aware that your mind is the song of your learned experiences and that was one of the experiences you had and therefore it’s talking about it. It’s happening all the time. You’re having these experiences, they’re over. Most experiences you have are gone. That’s what happened. Somebody said something, somebody did something, something happened. Somebody didn’t happen. Who knows, but you had an experience but you didn’t let it go. You don’t know what. Be here now means be there then means, okay, so you have an experience, it comes in fine. The census did what they’re supposed to do. They pass it on back, your ears heard it. If somebody saw it come back, here it is and you received it fine.

Well guess what’s going to happen next? The next experience. Somebody says something to walk away. Somebody hugs you, kisses you walks away, somebody yells at you, walks away. That is what it means to be here now having the experience that you’re having, but that’s not what happens. What happens is, and I’m going to say for some reason, but we’ll explain the reason in a moment. For some reason that experience, they stuck in you. It didn’t go through, it didn’t pass. It passed outside but didn’t pass inside. But I thought the purpose of the sense is what if you had a camera and when you went to take a picture and remember the last one, double exposure. You had a picture and go out too good, they got clear, right? Not a good idea. Take the camera and be fixed. That’s what you’re doing comes in, but it got stuck.

Does all of it get stuck? White lines on the road, clouds flying by. No, no, not all of it gets stuck in there, does it? People don’t think about the clouds that you saw three days ago, but you think about somebody said to you three days ago or somebody didn’t say to you three days ago or the way they said it, it gives you a clue. Why do some things get stuck in there and other things don’t get stuck in there. Believe it or not, you in there are not just the receiver aware of your thoughts, emotions, the world. You can do stuff in there, yes or no. Which one of you have this stuff called will that can push thoughts away, that can grab onto emotions and hold them, it liked them. Can anybody do anything in there or is it just passive living in there?

So don’t you ever, ever let them tell you don’t have willpower, right? They define any way they want. Will you have will you? The very, even when you were doing your dreams, you said I was in the dream, I could make it fly. I was amazing. You have will. You have the ability to do things in there, not just to receive what’s coming in from your thoughts, your emotions and so on. And so one of the things you do in there and you do it all the time, is clinging and resist as a Buddhist term. Cling. What does that mean? There are things that come in that when they come in you in there like them, you like them and you don’t want them to go away, but they went away. Not in here, they didn’t. I went to a place and there were butterflies all over.

It was amazing and they landed on me. Beautiful, beautiful butterflies. Okay? You had very nice experience. You can tell me about it. Think about it ever again. I’m the butterfly whisperer. You defined yourself, you hear me? So this experience comes in and you clinging to it not outside. You go back next time, don’t go back. If the butterflies aren’t there or you won’t like it, alright? But it came in you in there. You, I’m talking about you. I don’t want to give you a name. Soul self hotman you, I’m talking to you, okay? Comes in. The experience is inside. It gets formed in your mind. You experience it inside and you hold onto it as an act of will. I’m thinking about wait, I talked about you receive your thoughts. Can you create thoughts? I forgot to talk about that. Can you create thoughts? See a boat right now?

Boat, no speed boat Queen Mary, wow, you’re pretty powerful in there. Okay? This is what you’re doing in there. I’m just slowing it down so you get some idea of what’s going on in there and someday you’re going to wonder who’s in there doing all this receiving and expressing And so when things happen you can cling to things that you like, you do, you clinging, you hold onto, you have things in there from when you were five years old. My father took me to the ball game was the most beautiful time you held onto it. And then other things happen like lots of them that you don’t like. You understand that you could have a smell. You drove by a skunk when you were five and it’s still in there. Oh it is disgusting. It’s less than 10 seconds. No, I don’t like it at all. So why did you keep it if you didn’t like it?

So you either clinging to things you like or you resist things you don’t like. I don’t want that to happen again. I don’t want you to said that to me. I don’t even want to think about it. Then why are you say things like that? I don’t want to think about what you said to me, but it was five days ago. It was five years ago. It was 23 years ago. You still must be thinking about it. That’s called resistance. So the experience comes in, it forms in your mind, you have a mind, it forms in your mind and the mind does not do it. You think your mind, the mind is not doing it. It’s not true. The mind has a mind of its own. You in there are the doer, you’re the receiver and the expressor and you push things away and because you pushed them away, they’re still in there.

Why is that still bothering you? Because you held onto it. There is nothing else in there but you making a stay in there. But I didn’t like the experience then let it go. No. When you say no, that’s really funny, but I really didn’t like it. It’s the worst experience I ever had. When did you have it? 13 years ago. Well let it go. No, I will not. Why? Tell you why. I can tell you what you meditate. You watched all this stuff in slow motion. Alright? Why? Because to let it go, it has to pass through you. You’re in there, it comes in. It has to go into your consciousness and merge. Melt like the river flowing to the ocean. If you leave it alone, it’s been flowing in there for thousands, thousands, thousands, thousands of years. Decide you don’t want it to go in there, build a dam.

Oh boy, that’s what you did. I don’t want this bad experience. It didn’t feel good. I don’t want to feel it more for it to come all the way in. I’m going to feel it more. The way I can really get you is have you ever had an experience and it’s very rare, so don’t shake your head quick. That was so beautiful that it blew you away. It was just so maybe an intimate experience, maybe a sunset, maybe something in nature. And you came back and just said, oh it was so beautiful. It touched me to the core of my being. It just melted into you. I felt like I was in the presence of God. The sunset was so beautiful I couldn’t even talk because it came all the way in. No resistance at all. It’s very rare. No resistance at all, no thoughts, no emotions, no outside world, no senses.

Just this thing came in and it went all the way back and oh my god, I’ll never forget that forever. It was beautiful thing ever happened. Have you ever had an experience that touches the core, your being? It’s rare, isn’t it? That’s too bad. Guess what? Every single experience is supposed to do that every single experience that you have is meant to touch you. But what if it’s not nice? Let it touch you. Let it go through. What is something you love died. It generates emotions that come in and you’ve touched and they’re so real. It’s so unbelievable. That’s where a great master is. You dare think that if you’re spiritual, everything’s nice. If you’re spiritual, everything’s real. Oh my God, what happened with that experience when the person you love left you God, it hurts so much. Oh my God, I felt like my heart was being torn out.

What did you do? I felt it. I just felt it. I felt it was so real hard to hear and it that’s where a master is, alright? That’s what be here now means that’s what it means to be open. That’s what it means to experience life. Not the life you want. The life you don’t want life, you’re alive, you’re real, you’re whole. So basically we don’t do that. Do we resist what doesn’t feel good and we clinging to what? Where do we do that? In this thing called mind. I told you I had thoughts. You hold on to thoughts. You hold on to good and bad emotions and so on. Kind of hard to live in there like that. I start all this stuff I don’t like and I’m not experiencing the stuff I do like the stuff I wanted that I liked. I want to happen again.

It’s not happening. The stuff I don’t want to happen ever again might happen. And so I am in here as a normal human being. You don’t want to be one. What you’re doing in there is manipulating and controlling these things you held in your mind and emotions from the past. Some of your learned experiences. See that’s not the kind of nothing when I said it. Psychology says man, woman is a sum of their learned experiences. I just told you why? Because you held onto these experiences. Not all of them. The ones that were strong, positive, the ones that were strong, negative, okay, you held onto them and now you have to live in there with that which you didn’t like. You have to live in there not experiencing that which you did. That’s not any fun, is it? Therefore you’re very, very busy in there.

Very busy doing what? Making sure that nothing touches what I don’t like, reminds me of behaves accordingly and that it more likely will be the way that when it comes in, it will touch what I do. So you end up with these things called preferences, where our preferences, a camera doesn’t have a preference. It takes pictures, TV’s going to have preferences, but you build preferences in there. What are they based out? What I liked and what I didn’t like. There’s nothing holy about ’em that which you prefer. He hates that which he can’t stand. You think is just beautiful. All based on what you held in there. So you built this model of life how it’s supposed to be based on what you held in there. It’s called your self concept. You built a you in there. This is me, this is what I liked.

This is what I don’t like. This is what I want. This is what I don’t want. This is how I think I can get what I want. That’s what you’re doing in there. Now we’re going to get back to the word I used to start with. We’re getting close aspirations. Do you know what your aspirations are to create a world? That’s the way I like and make sure there’s a world that isn’t the way. I don’t like to get the job. I want to get the relationship. I want to have the number of children. I want to have them go to Harvard or not go to Harvard. Whatever it is that you’ve experienced, that you built in your mind that I like and I don’t like are what? Determine your aspirations that what you aspire for. I’ll tell you what, when I was, I don’t know, 22, something like that, I was in graduate school, finished my PhD in economics and I dropped out, just dropped out, left it all the dissertation trade a student just moved out to the woods where you’re right now moved out to the woods. That was not my father’s aspiration for me, but it was my aspiration.

Okay, so it’s just based why? Because I had a deep meditation. That’s all it took and all of a sudden it became aspiration. See what I’m saying? It’s some of your learned experiences. So basically what you’re doing in there is over the course of your life you’ve had experiences all the time. Some of them were neutral, they just passed right through. You don’t base your aspiration. I want to go to a strip of road that only has dump of lines and I want them to be yellow, not white. That tends to be your aspiration. Does it? Why you let it pass through? I want to see clouds that were the same as three days ago. None of you’re doing that, but if you had an experience that you held onto because you liked it or experience that you pushed away because you didn’t like it.

I know what your aspirations are. I don’t want that to happen again. I aspire to never have that happen again. I had a bad marriage, I got divorced. I ain’t never getting married again. I don’t want to ever fall in love again. There’s your aspiration or I had a nice experience and I wish I could have it again. And just defining the meaning of your life based upon random experience that you happen to have that when they came in you happen to like them. Lemme tell you something. If you had that exact experience, let’s say that one you melted into for the sunset. Oh, it’s so beautiful, right? If the day before your girlfriend or boyfriend took you out to the prairie and said, I need to talk to you, and the sun was setting and they dumped you, okay, you did not have a nice experience with it, maybe you’ll never have another sunset.

You will like again. Come on, talk to me some of your learned experiences. So it’s not just the experience, it’s what the experiences is coming in on top of their psychology. So you’re in there and you’re busy, a busy dude and do in there aren’t you? And what you’re busy doing in there is experiencing the thoughts that are the sum of your learned experiences that are generated based upon what’s coming in now and how it hits what you stored before and what your self-concept is. We like it and don’t like it and then resisting and fighting. You don’t just resist and clinging inside you to cling outside. Don’t leave. You don’t have to go to work today. Stay home. Cling, cling, right leave. I don’t want to see you again. You’ve externalized the thing that what you’re doing inside, you do outside so that when the outside comes in it feels good and that is what your aspiration of life is, that the world outside of you.

Listen to me, that’s everyone except for a very high being. That’s what their aspirational life is. That the world outside of me when it comes in makes me feel good and doesn’t make me feel bad. That’s my aspiration. I need to find a place to live. I need to find the weather. I need to find a person. I need to find the car. I need to find every single thing. You hear me? I need it so that when it comes in mean here, who lives in here is comfortable, not to mention happy and feels love and doesn’t feel sorrow or joy or pain or anxiety or tension. Guess what? If that’s my aspiration, I assure you feel anxiety and tension and worry. Why? What is the probability that the sum of your learned experiences, which is different for everybody and is different for you day to day? You have one more experience. What is the probability that the world unfolding in front of you is going to match that? How about zero? Why would it doesn’t even know you make believe It does. You say things like why is it to rain on my birthday? It doesn’t know it’s your birthday.

Why’d you say that? Because I had aspirations. I wanted it to be a party to be the way I wanted it to be and I wanted it to be outside. I had concepts of why’d you want it to be outside? Oh, when I was five we had an outside party with little horses. It was so cute. You had experiences where somebody else said rained under birthday party and it was terrible. And then, oh, I don’t hate the rain, I hate birthdays. Come on. The psychology, isn’t it? So they’re right. The trouble is they say you’re the learning experience. No you’re not. You’re the self. You’re the you in there. The consciousness that is experiencing the Lea experiences that you’ve held onto, aren’t you? You’re in there. Lemme ask you quick. We’ll get way ahead of ourselves. Do you have to hold that stuff in there?

Answer me then why do you? Because nobody teaches you how not to. So how about that for an aspiration, I’m going to jump way ahead of myself. That might be an interesting aspiration. I aspire the someday and all the stuff inside of me that’s screwing up my life, that makes me be anxious and worry. How about different aspiration? Right now, your aspiration is what you devoted your life to is being okay inside, feeling good inside, feeling love, being happy, not being sad, not being tense, not being worried, right or wrong. You all have different ways of doing it, right? So basically that model that you’re listening to is the sum of your learned experiences. Anyone will question that, okay? And what you’ve done is stored everything ever bothered you before and now you need to manipulate people, places in things. Don’t say that. I told you not to say that.

I don’t like when you say that. I told you I can’t handle that. You talk to me that again, I’m leaving. Okay? We’re married, he wants to have baby. She doesn’t. It’s going to be fun. Why does somebody want to have babies? Why does somebody not want to have baby? Beside the biological stuff? I had a big family, we all got along. I’m Catholic and so I want to have a big family. Alright, well I had a big family and nobody got along so we’re not going to get along. I’m telling you, this is what you all are doing with your lives. You just built these preference systems based upon your past experiences and now you defined yourself as that person. I’m the person who wants to have a big family. No, you’re not. You’re the self watching a mind that’s made of some learning experiences that says it wants to have a big family.

It’s still you in there, okay? You don’t have a big family, you don’t have a small family, you don’t want to get married. I’m telling you, you’re you. You’re the being in there experiencing things. But what you’re experiencing is the cellular experiences in your mind and you have these preferences that you’ve developed based on your past experiences and now you’re trying to project those into the outside world and you’re only okay if everybody’s exactly the way you want them to be and you’ll never be okay if they’re not the way you want ’em to be. And that is your aspiration in life. Well, what other aspiration could there be? Not having all that junk in there, talking to you all the time, worrying you, telling you you better get stuff the way you want. You’ll never be okay. Making you anxious, making you scared, making you self-conscious, making you embarrassed, making you fearful. Oh my God, you really want to live in there like that and then have to go out there and dump your stuff on every single person so that they be the way you want them to be so that you can be okay, well why can’t they be the way they are? Not a chance. I didn’t marry you to be the way you are. I married you to be the way I want you to.

You signed the license for better or worse. Well, I’m worse. Are you getting the drift? What if your aspiration was I would like to be free. I would like to be free. Free to get what I want, no free of me, free of all this garbage going inside of me that’s telling me I can’t enjoy life the way it is that I can’t love people the way they are free to experience reality. Free, free freedom. Okay, there is an aspiration that’s not the highest one, but that’s a good one to start with. We’ll talk about the highest one, but that’s a real good one to sit there and say I’m a mess. I don’t want to be a mess and I don’t want that. The only way I’m not a mess is if you be the way I want you to be because that’s very conditional and it ain’t going to happen. Life just doesn’t unfold that way. Life unfolds. I have this thing and I know no one gets it. If it’s true that your psyche, your ego is a sum of your learned experience, your preference, sum of your learned experiences.

If you study physics, if you study meteorology, if you study any science, it will tell you that the moment unfolding in front of you is the sum of its learned experiences. It is raining today because of what happened in Spain three days ago. It is cold the other day because there’s this arctic thing going down. You understand that there’s this thing called cause and effect and the outside world, every moment is a result of cause and effect, including what other people said and what they do caused some of their learning experiences. So the moment in front of you, I tell you all the time, has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the forces that made it be the way it is. There’s a whole package in there. Does that package have anything to do with you? You are busy because you have your stuff trying to impress their stuff. You took on quite a job around here, especially since their stuff will be different tomorrow. They had different experiences. When in the world have you taken on? No wonder you’re neurotic. Do you see it? It’s ridiculous. Alright, what about an aspiration that says if I have a moment to live in my life, I want one moment that that’s not what I’m doing. Fighting, freaky, controlling, manipulating everything. How many of you have a control problem? Don’t answer me.

Everybody has a control problem because of what I told you. You’re in there with these preferences and you’re not okay if you don’t get ’em and you’re really okay if you get what you don’t want. So you have a control problem. I have to make you be the way I want. Say what you want, wear what you want and be the way you want and don’t talk to her. When you’re with me, I have to control you. The whole world, the rain, the weather, every single thing for me to be okay. I don’t want that okayness. That’s called condition and the conditions are really big. A lot of conditions for me to be okay. And not only do you change, I change, but you said you liked me like this. Yeah, did yesterday but since I met her, I don’t know, try to look like her.

People do that, right? Alright, now do you understand what your aspirations are? Wow, that’s something else. Your aspiration is I’m not okay and I want to be okay. How we say it that way? I’m not okay and I want to be okay and you do it by what I told you. What’s another aspiration Midway? Why am I not okay? Well we just discussed it because you collected your past experiences that you liked and didn’t like stored them inside of you and built an ego that said I’m this. I’m the one who likes this. I’m the one who doesn’t like that. I’m the one had this experience. I’m the one had that. No, you’re not. You’re the experiencer, not the experience. And so you start by saying, I like to clean up in here at a minimum. Why in the world do you think it’s rational to hold inside of you?

Everything ever bothered you. If you hold inside of you, everything ever bothered you, you’re going to be bothered. So how about we start that way? Let it go Now you get the teachings, let it go. You don’t know how to, that is what the spiritual path is. You’ll talk about God later. It’s like, well you got that drunk in there. It’s only about you. Okay, so basically you start off with saying, I made a mess in here. If you make a mess in your house and you’re only one in the house, clean up, right? Learn to let go. Those are my teachings, right? One, don’t put any more in there. It’s very hard to let go of the big ones. You understand that? Don’t catch yourself. Makes no sense. We said, alright, try it. You’re going to find out there’s a reason you’re keeping that stuff down there because it bothers you and if it starts coming up, you push it back down as hard as you can, alright?

And you make sure nobody stimulates it or touches it and reminds you of it or anything. So basically you’re not going to touch that stuff right away. Don’t even try. Don’t worry about it. They will have it day. Alright? If you’re still putting more down there, worry about that, that you can do now. And you put stupid stuff down there. It’s hot. I don’t like that. It’s hot. Oh my god, I’m going to move. Where should I go? What are you doing? I made a mess of yourself because the weather. How about trying to accept the weather? How I try to sit there and say I don’t need to do that. I’m doing it, but I don’t need to do that. I can work with myself. You’re in there. I have will you have consciousness. I can enjoy the weather. I told you a little bit of time to do it.

It changed my life back in about 72, 73. I was living out here alone. There was another out here and it was hot. I didn’t have no air conditioning in my car, no air condition in the house and Florida gets hot in the summer. So he would talk about it and I didn’t like him talking. I was out here meditating. Somebody was shut up all but he was talking. I just stopped and instead of fighting with him, I said, Mickey, hello. Hey. Hi. Okay, got your attention. Why is it hot? It’s hot. No. Why is it hot? It’s the sun. What is a sun? The sun is a star. Really? You don’t like stars? Everybody likes stars. They twinkle in the night. When you do good at school, they put a star in your head, right? Everybody likes stars. It’s a star. Big dipper, little stars.

It’s one of those, you’re so close to one of those that it’s hot that you feel the heat from a star. Holy mackerel. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? How far away is that star mc? He happens to know 93 million miles. Oh, Miami’s 360. If all of Miami caught fire, you would not feel one degree difference up here. That thing is 93 million miles away and it’s hot all of a sudden. It’s neat, isn’t it? Ever since then, if I get out of my car and I feel the heat, I stop and I do this. You’re standing in the presence of a burning fire of a star. There’s 300 billion of those things in your galaxy and you get to be friends with one. You get to interact with one. You’re interacting with a star there. Call positive thinking, call it reality. Go whatever you want. It changed my whole attitude about being hot.

What about cold? He is cold in the winter. You know what? He used to think stupid in the Mickey, right? He used to think it’s cold in the winter because we’re farthest away from the sun. Did you know that we are closest to the sun in the winter. Earth is closest to the sun of the winter. It is the tilt on the axis that causes it to be hot or cold, but it’s kind of fun. Then use your mind for something meaningful. It doesn’t have to be full, is garbage about what I want and what I don’t want and what I like and what I don’t like and how to get it and how to avoid it and how to work. Whatcha doing man? You have a brilliant mind, don’t you? Okay, then you start using it. You have will. You left your mind alone.

It just became a habit of ego and that’s not your mind. You may not be Einstein, but you have a brilliant mind. You understood everything I talked about so far today. The possum didn’t. You’re brilliant. So you use it to raise yourself. You use it to raise your thoughts. That’s the first thing you do. Here’s an aspiration. How about this? Here’s an aspiration. I would like to be nice in here. Why is it not nice? You store all this garbage in there. Well then you start today. Everything. I always do. The weather, people yell at me. I always do the same examples. They’re good examples. You know what else you do it about? You ready? The driver in front of you. How many of you ever talked to the driver in front of you? Come on buddy. Use your blinker. Nice blinker buddy. It’s like whatcha doing?

You’re putting more garbage inside your head. You’re putting more negativity, more discomfort inside your head, right? What do you do? You sit there and think that the person’s driving 10 miles an hour below the speed limit. You can’t pass ’em. You can pass ’em if you want, fine. But if you can’t, then you’re there. Why bother yourself about it? Why just sit there and say, well that could be my grandma last year. She gets to drive. I’m not going to tailgate her. I’m not going to beep at her. You say, come on grandma, do it. I’m glad I get to be behind you. Make a nice space for you. You can do these things with your mind. Isn’t that amazing? They don’t have to be those ugly things that cause you so much anxiety and trouble and negativity. Do they there? How’s that for an aspiration?

Raise yourself. Work on raising yourself. Don’t work on getting everybody else to be the way you need them to be because you’re not raising yourself. So you start working on handling today, you wake up in the morning, here’s your spiritual practice. You wake up in the morning and you say, I’m going to go on my axis, A 360 today on the planet earth. That’s I’m going to do today and I am going to appreciate, enjoy, not resist or clinging to the moments that are unfolding in front of me. I’m just going to say thank you. I’m glad there are moments. It was on Mars. There wouldn’t be any. I get to be alive. I get to experience reality and I am going to experience it to the best of my ability and let go. Then at night, since you didn’t do real well, you sit down.

No seriously. Well the first time you play tennis, it’s going to go in the net. First time it starts the piano. I don’t want to hear you. You have to practice. They’re called your practices in spirituality. Say did do your practices today and they mean your meditation. That’s not what I mean. I mean, did you practice handling life? Did you practice little by little handling the events unfolding in front of you and you sit down at night, you see if, and it got stuck in there and you let it go. They not word find. The driver drove the way. The driver drove. Give me a break. I told you when Oprah interviewed me for the new book, she picked out a line. She’s deep picked out a line and said this is her favorite line in the book, it’s mine also. The moment in front of you is not bothering you.

You’re bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. Do you understand that the heat is not bothering you now unless it gets seen at 180 or something. The heat start melting. The heat is not bothering you. You’re bothering yourself about the heat. They’re right in front of you, is not bothering you. Traffic is not bothering you. The train you had to stop for it is not bothering you. You’re bothering yourself about it. Stop it. You’ll change your entire life. So there’s an aspiration. I said it wasn’t the highest, but it’s a really good one and you work with that one. Work with handling reality. Work with appreciated. You’re live, work with appreciating the events that are unfolding in front of you. And if they hit your stuff, appreciate that they found your stuff for you. You didn’t have to spend a thousand dollars an hour for a shrink and if it hits it, you sit there and decide, do I want this junk inside of me bothering me?

Been there all these years. I claimed I couldn’t handle it. I’m grown now. I practiced my tennis. I practiced my piano. I can do better. I can handle this. That’s your mantra. I can handle this instead of, I can’t handle this. I can handle this. And when it starts coming up, appreciate the fact that life is your guru. Life is your teacher, isn’t it? It’s going to hit your stuff. Welcome it there. There’s your next aspiration. I can welcome life that it puts me through and I need to go through to liberate me, to free me so I don’t have all this junk inside of me. Well, there’s an aspiration and we’re getting inspired here. I’m giving you some aspirations, alright? It’s multiple choice. So it comes up. You aspire to let it go. You aspire to love it. So on, right? Ultimately what happens when you start cleansing in there, you’re going to find out it’s really nice in there.

There’s this energy in there called Shakti that starts coming up inside of you. I don’t care whether you yogi nothing, it just starts coming up inside of you. Why? Because you were blocking it with all that stuff. You start realizing it’s not just nice non-negative positive in there. You feel it when you feel love. Why? Because you open. And so how about opening? Just be open. At some point you say, well, if the door is open, people can come in. I’ll try to leave the door open. No, take it off the hinges do I feel love? Then feel love. Sometimes you feel love and then you stop it because somebody didn’t say something because somebody said it. Not the way right or wrong. I thought you liked love. Yeah, but not no, no. Unconditional love. Unconditional wellbeing. It’s not based on anything. It’s just there.

And you start feeling that. Well, that’s a nice aspiration to feel joy all the time. Feel love all the time. It’s not high enough. It is. I will tell you it’s a stairway to heaven, not a leap. Just take your steps. So fine, we’ll start to cleanse. We’ll be appreciative for life. We start to feel the joy come out to feel the love, start to be okay inside. Eventually takes time immature enough to where that’s going on in there. It’s nice in there. And eventually you start wondering, wait a minute, who am I experiencing this love? You think love is great. It’s not anything. If no one’s experiencing it, who’s experiencing it? Who are you? Who’s in there experiencing these things? And you start to seek self-realization, you start to seek something very, very amazing, which is you awaken to explore the nature of consciousness.

That’s what yoga really is. Where am I now? I found it where I am. I’m the one who’s watching all this stuff. I’ve relaxed more, I’m fine. I feel all this Shakti, all this joy washing me day and night. Alright? And by the way, I think Christ and I’m a Jew. Christ says something like, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word to leave with the mouth of God. Oh, is he talking about you don’t just live off what comes in from outside that there’s stuff going on inside. I guarantee as we’re talking about right? In fact, he said something else was really funny. Now that we had our talk about you in there. Where did he say the kingdom was? What did he say? The kingdom is within you. Christ, great yogi. The kingdom is within you. You in there that I’m talking about the whole time.

Go back there, you’ll find it. So then you start contemplating the nature of self, the nature of consciousness. You get to the seat of consciousness. You’re experiencing all this beauty, and eventually you just realize, who am I that’s experiencing it? I’m not what I experience. I’m always experiencing it. And all of a sudden you’re going in instead of out. It’s an upward movement. Instead of a downward movement, we’re all going down, looking at the thoughts, looking at the emotions, reaching out to the world. It’s a constant downward thing. Most people have no idea what it feels like for it to be upward. That’s a very deep state when it starts pulling you up. There are beings who have not only worked your way through everything we talked about and started to get pulled up, but let go. That’s surrender completely. Let go of what? Of the sense of self, the sense of individuality, the sense of I’m here watching.

No, there’s a source of me. You want to talk about God. God is the source of you, the source of who’s in there. If you let go, all of a sudden, mayor Baba, first many words described my consciousness was a drop of consciousness staring at me. It fell into the ocean. Find it. Take a drop of water and drop it into the ocean. Find it you can. What does it do? It emerges. The word yoga means merger union. That’s what the whole, now there’s your aspiration. That’s the highest aspiration that can exist for any human being and only human beings can get there. You’re evolved enough. And Christ said, my Father, I one. You see, I don’t care if you’re an atheist, I don’t care if you’re a scientist. It’s wonderful, right? You’re in there and McDon said it perfect. Meditate on the self honor and worship your own being.

For God dwells within you as you. Okay? So I thought I’d finish with the aspiration. You are the greatest thing that ever walked the face of the earth. Christ said, as I sit by the throne of my father, that’s the state of consciousness. I sit in self as I sit by the throne of my father. What did he say? So you shall sit by my throne as I sit by the throne of my father. So you shall sit by my throne. And these things which I do through these and even greater things, I’m not really a Bible teacher. I read the Bible once in my life in 71, but as I grow, I never forgot it. And his words come back, which is really beautiful. And by the way, they’re the same words as Buddhas and the same words as all the traditions. So you are a very great being and your aspiration is self-realization. Your aspiration is to let go of this garbage and find the nature of your being. So don’t say I don’t teach aspirations. Alright, thank you. Thank you for listening. Jai guru dev.

Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to The Michael Singer Podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael’s body of work and all back episodes, please join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True: waking up the world.