E64: Mastering Life: The Art of Handling Everything

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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 general, people make a mess out of life, out of spiritual life. They just basically make a mess. When in reality things are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very simple. You have two choices. You either handle life or you don’t handle life. There’s nothing in between. Things happen if you haven’t noticed all over the place, every single moment and all of Einstein’s time, space, continuum, there is something going on. Pluto, Saturn Galaxy is far, far away. Next door inside your stomach, things are going on. It’s a happening place. Either you can handle it or you can’t. It’s just as simple, okay? It’s not simple, and I’ll tell you a secret. If you can’t handle it, you’re not doing well. If you can handle it, you’re doing fine. Now, let’s define handling. Not handling for a moment. Being able to handle something does not mean you don’t do anything about it. People misunderstand, surrender, acceptance. They are inner states. What you’re surrendering is your inability to handle it and surrendering it.

You’re surrendering your inability to handle it. What you’re accepting is what came in. You have no choice. It came in. You can deny it all you want. It still came in. You can suppress it, you can repress it, you can resist it. You can not like it. You do anything you want with it. It’s your choice. Once it’s inside of you, do what you want, guess what? If you can’t handle it, you’re messed up. And guess what? If you can’t handle it, you’ll not deal well with it, right? Here’s a parent that their little two or 3-year-old is throwing a tantrum in a department store. They can’t handle it. They’re not going to do well with that child. If they can handle it, I’m not going to tell you what to do. You got to figure out what to do. It’s your child, it’s your department, it’s your life.

You know what’s going on. I don’t know anything. So you have to decide what’s the best thing to do. But if you can’t handle it, I know what you’re going to do. You’re trying to make it stop because you can’t handle it. So your motive was not to deal with the situation. Your motive was not to help the child. Your motive was, I’m not okay. What do I need to do to make me feel better? You will do that every single time. If you can’t handle it, there’s no condition ever that your inability to handle it will end up with the best solution to the problem. You’re not even trying to find the best solution. You’re trying to feel better. You’re trying to feel comfortable. You’re trying to make it go away. It’s not going to go away. It already happened. It’s inside of you.

That’s part of be here. Now. The reality unfolded. It is now inside of you. There’s an inside. Inside. You know that you have an outside, outside. There’s an inside your mind, your emotions, all kinds of stuff goes on in there, doesn’t there. Once it comes in, it’s yours. You ain’t making it not come in. You can deny it, you can make it pay, apologize. You do anything you want. It still happened. So your only choice, your only choice every single moment, every single time is I can handle it when it came in or I can’t handle it when it came in. And if you can’t handle it, that is why you are suffering. That is why you have problems. There are no problems. There are no problems. There are just experiences that come in from outside and they come in inside too. You can create your own.

You have fun, okay? They’re not problems. They’re events that are happening on the planet Earth, but they shouldn’t be too bad. They are. Well, good does it do to say they shouldn’t be? What good does it do to say can’t handle it? It doesn’t do any good. It makes it so you can’t handle it, right? So spiritual growth is very simple. It’s about learning to be able to handle it. You’re going to just fully enlightened being He once said, if you can’t handle your life here, this is a gross plane, man, there’s higher planes going on. How are you going to handle the higher energies? You can’t, can’t even handle the lower energies there. So meaningful discussion is not about how to find God, how to go to God, how to be enlightened, how to be self-realized, sorry, master. It’s about what am I doing playing with energies that I don’t know anything about and I probably can’t handle when I can’t even handle this.

I can’t even handle what’s in front of me. Most people, if they even get on a spiritual path, want to use God, self-realization, enlightenment because they can’t handle it here, I’ll be okay once I’m enlightened. Well, you’re not going to be enlightened until you’re okay. You understand that. So you come down to the work. What is the work learning to be able to handle it? Let’s just start in the beginning. Can you learn to handle things? Can you learn to play the piano even you never touched it. Can you learn to play some on the piano? Sure. Can you learn to play tennis, golf, cricket? Now you know how to play cricket. Can you learn to play cricket? You can learn things. You’re a very intelligent species. You can learn to handle things, but you don’t take that attitude. You take the attitude. This is just the way I am.

I’ve always been this way. I can’t handle that. I’ve never been able to handle that. Stop it. This is how I am. That’s like saying I can’t play the piano. It’s just how I am. I’ve never even seen that sport. I can’t play that sport as the children are like, okay, if you can’t do it perfect the first time you weren’t supposed to do it. It’s not true, is it? You can learn. Well, guess what? You can learn to handle things. I don’t care what’s happened in your past. I don’t care what you think your limitations are. I don’t care what anybody ever told you. You can learn. I feel so silly having to say the word over again. We know we can learn sports. We know we can learn instruments. We know we can learn math. We know we learn all kinds of things, but we don’t think we can learn how to handle life. I will prove it to you. Every single one of you, every day of your life is trying to make life unfold the way you can handle it instead of you learning how to handle it, you’re trying to manipulate. Come on. Do you have dreams? I’m a bad boy. I don’t quote dream spiritual.

I don’t call hope spiritual. Why? Because I know what you hope. I hope someday it’ll be the way I want. How many of you hope that someday it won’t be the way you want? Nobody you hope someday will be the way you want? What do your dreams? I dream that someday my ship will come in. What does that mean? In other words, I’m not okay and I ain’t changing. I want it to change. And it’s really big. It’s every moment, by the way. It’s every moment that’s unfolding in front of you, which you mean. I want it to be the way I want. You do want it to be the way you want. Don’t you want it to be the way you don’t want? Never. You want it to be the way you want. Always notice you’re not changing. You’re saying I’m glue. This is it, man.

Take it or leave it. And the only way I’m going to be okay is if everybody and everything all over is a way that when it comes into me makes me okay and doesn’t make me worse. Have I told the truth? Be honest. That amazing. It’s embarrassing, okay? But you don’t just mean it about the moments unfolding in front of you. You certainly mean it about that. You mean it about the moments that are going to unfold in front of you. You really mean about those, don’t you? It’s supposed to be the way I want in the future. It certainly better be the way I want and it better not be the way I don’t want. And if that was enough to make it neurotic, you don’t want the past to be the way it was.

That should not have happened. That hurt me. It was wrong. And you remember that for the rest of your life. Okay? Now, do you understand why it’s a mess? Now, do you understand why you’re a mess? Spirituality is not about getting it to be the way you want. If you did that with God, I feel sorry for you. I want things to be the way I want. I’ve tried my best. It’s not working. Oh, please. Oh, please. Oh, powerful one. Make it be the way I want. Okay, lowered God down to a little wishing well or something. I was like, oh my God. Alright, so there’s the foundation where we’re starting and it’s not very high, is it? And guess what? People say, why are there wars? Why is politics the way it is? Why is everything the way it is? Because that’s how everybody is.

They’re just trying to make it be the way they want. And if you have power, you can make a big mess. If you have no power, you get really weak and withdrawn and so on because you figure I can’t make it be the way I want. What is depression? Do you get depressed and everything’s the way you want? No, you get depressed. Well first, if everything’s the way you want, you’re fine. If it looks like maybe I can make it be the way I want, I have hope and I’m trying. If you get to a state and you’ll all been there at some point where it looks like I can’t get it the way I want, it’ll never be the way I want. You get depressed.

We can do better than that. All of that is assuming one thing, it has to change. I can’t change what’s assuming I am the way I am and therefore I better manipulate, control, fight, hide, whatever the heck I need to do to make it out there. Be the way I want. I’ll dress accordingly. I’ll act accordingly, talk accordingly. I won’t talk. I’ll do every single thing I can. So people respect me, they accept me, they love me, they treat me the way I want to be treated, and that is the purpose of my life and that’s what I’m going to do every minute of my life. Try to get it so the outside is the way I need it to be so that when it comes in, I’m feeling good or at least feeling okay and not feeling bad. I don’t do seminars. I don’t If you want me to, I would never do ’em, right?

You couldn’t handle them because all I would do is that sentence I just told you, I’ve said over and over again, right? All you’re doing is assuming this is fixed. That’s not therefore my job. And you’re taught this how to control the outside so that when it comes in, I feel better. It’s all about me. Period. And you know why it’s about you because you’re not okay if you are okay, it could be about somebody else. I’ve got lots of food. Who wants some? That’s not even giving. If I have lots of it, it’s just going to rot anyways, here, please take it. Okay? But if I don’t have any food, it’s about me. And if I’m not okay inside, listen to me. It’s about me. And some people say I don’t have an ego. Ha ha.

Every single thing I’ve talked about so far is ego. It is I’m in here. You in there. Hi, I’m in here and it ain’t okay in here. And I in here ego. It’s about me. Need to figure out how y’all need to be so that I’m okay and that is one heck of a job. And I always take a moment at this point, and I know you don’t like it because you’re all into laws of attraction and all this stuff, which by the way are true. It’s fine. But that doesn’t impress me. It doesn’t impress me that you can attract what you want. It ain’t about getting what you want. It’s about being able to accept life. That’s basically saying I can’t accept it the way it is. So I’m going to use different powers, whatever they are to make it be the way I need it to be.

Your ego will never go away. Your defining spirituality as getting things the way I want. No. Spirituality is about honoring and respecting reality, being able to handle reality and then coming out and serving, not yourself, not getting what you want. It’s not about renunciation. I realize we have a deep talk here. It’s not about renunciation. If we talk about not getting what you want doesn’t mean you’re announcing, you’re changing your inside to be whole, to be complete, to be okay so that when you walk out into this world, you don’t need anything. You are fine, you’re fine, you’re happy, you’re filled with love, you’re feeling Shakti, you’re feeling spirit flowing within you all the time naturally. And it’s okay how it be outside. It’s not affecting the inside that way. If you’re that way, when you come outside, you’re a beam of light. You’re a great being.

You’re somebody that can help others. You’re somebody that can raise the energy you’re not busy taking for yourself there. Now don’t tell me begin. Believe in the law of attraction. I do. I just don’t give it great credits. I would rather here let Rumi speak for me. Rumi was a high dude, okay? Rumi said yesterday I was clever. So I was trying to change the world Today. I’m wise, so I’m changing myself. That is spirituality. That is spirituality. So the starting position of you are the way you are. It’s like saying, I don’t know how to play the piano. You can be any way you want inside. You’re the only one in there. If I had to take out a task which said there’s 8.3 billion people in the world running around like maniacs, make them be the way you want them to be, or there’s only you in there, fix the inside.

I wonder which one’s going to work. I wonder which one makes sense. So you get to the point where you realize, I’m in here. I can work with myself. I can change myself. I can make it so I can handle reality. When it comes in, then I’m telling you it doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. You do. You come out and serve. Try to raise the energy. Do what you can to make the world a better place. Not do what you can because you can’t handle the thing. It’s a whole different situation. It’s the foundation of spirituality. What we just said. You have finally woken up and realize you say it all the time. Why can’t things be the way I want? You’re intelligent people. I’ll tell you why. Put your fingering hat on a thing called a law of cause and effect. Have heard of it.

Something happens and it causes something else to happen. The moments unfolding in front of you have a history. They’re the result of cause and effect. Every single thing that’s unfolding in front of you is a reason, scientifically, psychologically, whatever you want to talk about, it has a reason. That’s the way it is. If somebody’s yelling at you right now, there is a reason. And guess what? Very little of it has anything to do with you. They had trouble when they were go talk to Freud. They had trouble when they were young. Somebody died that they loved yesterday. This they ate pizza, that they was sick. I don’t know, but they’re not doing well If they’re yelling. When you’re yelling, you’re not doing well, are you? Well, they’re not doing well. Guess what? You had very little to do with that. Maybe you said something. You mentioned something about their father and they didn’t have trouble with their father.

It’s like maybe you hit their stuff, not purposely. You’re just being who you are, okay? And now they’re yelling. So I always tell you, and I love you to get there. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you’ll not feel somebody’s yelling at you. You’ll feel you have to be standing at a place on a planet earth where somebody’s yelling. That’s called not taking a personal. I made that statement. That’s one of the things we don’t like. When I say nothing’s personal, nothing’s personal. It all just is what it is. You’re taking it personal, see a difference. You’re taking it personal. It just is what it is. It is the result of all the forces in the universe. It rained yesterday and the guy wanted to have his birthday party outside and so he is in a bad mood or something happened. Somebody just told them that they love him more than anything in the whole world.

And usually this person’s not nice to you and all of a sudden they’re being nice, has nothing to do with you. Another person’s behavior has very little to do with you. There’s all this psychology. There’s all this genetics. There’s the weather, there’s the events that happened before. Imagine how many things determine what’s happening in front of you and you think it shouldn’t have rain on my birthday. How about taking things first? Now you understand. I told you, go to the University of Florida. There’s a whole science called meteorology. Read every book that was ever written and see if it talks about your birthday yet you mean it when you say, why did I have to rain on my birthday? It didn’t rain for three weeks before that and I play this party outside. Dammit.

Do you or do not do that? You are projecting your problems into this world outside that has very little to do with you. It has to do with itself, has to do with physics and chemistry. And psychology has to do with science, okay? You say, no, it’s terrible what he said to me. Three other people are standing right next to you. It didn’t bother one iota. So you eventually get to the point where you realize there are going to be moments unfolding in front of me and I have a choice, handle ’em or don’t. Okay, I see that I don’t have the ability to handle ’em very well. Can I learn? Yes. How do you learn? Usually likes it. Usually the end of the talk. I talk about this, right? I can only share with you my experience. I don’t read books and so on.

I tried everything for 50 years, right? So this is what if you want to play the piano, you don’t start with Beethoven, Mozart. You start with the scales. If you want to learn, listen to me. Nobody will teach you like this. If you want to learn to handle things, it’s exactly the same as learning a sport. It’s exactly the same as learning a piano. You start with the scales, you start with the coach, you start with a practice ball. You start with very simple things where you can learn to handle them. And then you go to more advanced things. Well, I don’t understand. How can I do that? I you take the weather.

In my opinion, the weather’s your guru. Why? Because you can’t change it, but you don’t like it. Well, that’s pretty silly. It’s a perfect example of something unfolding in front of you that doesn’t have a darn thing to do with you except that you take it personal. I don’t like the heat. I don’t like the cold. I don’t like the rain. I don’t like wind messing on my hair. I don’t like humidity. It gets frizzy. You are doing that. It’s a perfect place to practice the scales. I’m serious. I’m going to go slow today. Do you see that? It’s the same as practicing the scales. It can’t hurt you. You can’t change it. And you’ll learn. You’ll learn by being able to handle the weather, being able to handle other things. But I don’t like the heat. I understand, but I can’t play the piano.

I want you to do that every time. Your mind from now on says, I can’t handle it. I can’t play cribbage or whatever the heck it is. Okay? There’s things I don’t know how to do. We’ll learn to handle things and you and everyone around you will be much better off. They imagine going into the house and somebody’s complaining, Hey, they so hot. Oh my god, I’m so hot. That’s air conditioning. But it wasn’t out there and I had to drive. Oh my God. What fun is that? To dump that on people. The fact that you couldn’t handle the weather and you do it inside yourself all the time. It’s so hot. Oh my god, I heard it’s going to be hot tomorrow. Oh my god, I won’t like it. It’s not even hot yet.

You answer me. Do you do this? I’m telling you it matters. It’s like the child says, I don’t need to play my scales. I want to play the Beatles. No. Play your scales. Play the scales. If you want to learn, you play the piano. If you want to learn to handle things, practice handling things isn’t amazing. No one told us that. They told us if you can’t handle the heat, move to Alaska. I can’t get a job in Alaska, but it’s not hot. My wife doesn’t want to go. Yeah, but it’s not hot. You make decisions based on the stupidest things in the world. And so you basically come down to say, I’m going to learn to practice whether it’s one place. I always tell the story. I like it a lot. And it’s true. And not all of you heard 16 times. I moved out here in 71, 72 in a Volkswagen van as hippie and there was no air conditioning in the hut, no air conditioning in the van, anything.

And it gets hot in Florida, maybe you’ve noticed. And so he would be meditating, doing what he’s supposed to be doing. But he complained of about heat. So one day I stopped one day and I asked him outside, it’s hot, it’s hot, it’s hot. Okay, why is it hot? He’s a smart guy. Went to school. He said Because of the sun. Because of the sun. I asked him, Mickey, what’s a sun? And he said, A star. Whoa. I mean one of those twinkle little things in the sky that you see, the big dipper and Orion and all those things. It’s one of those. And you’re close enough to one of those to feel its heat. Whoa. He got quiet real quick. He likes that stuff. Alright, really? I thought stars underneath. Everybody likes stars. You’re so close to one of those. You ever think about that?

You’re so close to one of those stars. Then they asked him, how far away is it? He said, 93 million miles away. How far away is Miami? 360, something like that. 93 million miles away. If all of Miami caught fire, the temperature up here would not change one degree. That thing is 93 million miles away and you’re complaining about the heat. How hot must that thing be? Well, all of a sudden it became fascinating, didn’t it? You rose yourself, you rose your level of thinking, you rose your spirit. This is important. You can do that with everything. And you sit there and realize, oh my God, wow. Right? And then I ask them, is it good that it’s out there shining? Every single thing on earth exists because that thing’s out there shining. Man. I only like it when he’s shining up to 86.

Maybe we need to deal with that. Not deal with how to put a sunshade over the thing, right? Can I learn to handle it now? He changed. He’s never been the saint since we had that discussion. It’s called having a sit down with yourself. Now I get out of the car, the hotter it is, it hits me in the middle of summer. I stop. I just go like that. I can’t help myself just, oh my God, I’m feeling this star. Wow, is that neat? You can do this with everything. You can learn to be okay with things and not only, okay, you can learn to appreciate and respect and honor things. What things? All things. All things are the way they are because of all the things that happened before that made them be that way. But some things are really bad. Yes they are.

And if you can’t handle ’em, you can’t help. If I’m in a car accident and you can’t stand inside of blood, I hope you’re not the first person there because you’re not going to help me. That goes for everything. Even the really, really big things. How people treat each other and the terrible things that happen in this world. Do terrible things happen in this world? Are you sure? Okay, well can you handle it? If you can’t handle it, you can’t help. So you start off, don’t point out to me how, but wait, you don’t understand how terrible I do understand, but it’s real and either I can handle it or I can’t, can’t handle it. It’s a problem. Now, how to handle what you do once you can handle it, you may have to fight, but it’s not out of the fact that I can’t handle it.

It’s out of the fact that this is the most constructive thing that I can do to help with this situation. I’m working to help the situation not I’m working to make so I can handle the situation. Do you see the difference? And those are the people who changed the world. That’s Gandhi, that’s king. That’s Christ Buddha. Not one of ’em said they couldn’t handle it. They handled it. I mean, Gandhi’s a perfect example. He handled that. This was a terrible regime that was going on. Okay, it’s what it is and what do I do? And he practiced. He practiced what he practiced and one man freed the country. He’s like, give me a break. And king was the same way.

Doesn’t mean by the way, that’s very good. I teach acceptance. What is the opposite of acceptance? Resistance. So non-resistance is acceptance. It’s just another way to look at the coin. People say to me, how can I accept everything? Well, I understand that you’re thinking judging, but if you don’t have to resist, if you resist, it’s not going to help. If you work to change it, that’s not resisting it. That’s being open. Seeing what you can do to, I can’t handle the fact that you’re prejudice. That’s wrong. It’s terrible. I can’t even talk to you. Okay? You’re not going to change a single thing. Not a single thing. I saw maybe somebody who saw it a long time ago, but I’ll never forget it. I saw something on one of those 60 minute shows or something like that, and it was about this kid when he moved to Georgia, Alabama, wherever he moved to, he was like 14 years old.

He was a black kid and he moved there and he wasn’t used to the south sometime ago. He wasn’t used to being prejudiced against. And it fascinated him. What a kid. It fascinated him. And he would literally walk up to people of that type and he would try to talk to them and they of course wouldn’t treat ’em well and so on. But little by little he kept doing this and kept walking up to people. And Eva would walk up to clans people and I’ll go, there’s a whole story. You can look it up. In the end, this reporter that was doing the story at him walked into the kid’s house, the kid was grown up now walked into this guy’s house and there were grand master sheets. What are they? Grand. What are they call robes? Whatever it is, head guys. And they’re the robes.

You have mannequins with these things. And the guy walked in said, what are you doing? What is this? He said, these are the robes that people took off because we became friends, he changed them and the reporter interviewed some of those head Klansmen and they talked about the kid and he just dared to talk to them. He dared to be that, right? So some things can’t change so much, alright? But they ain’t changed at all if you can’t handle ’em. So no matter we went from the beginning of the weather, now you’re out there to extreme terrible things happen. I have a friend, very beautiful, beautiful soul and he was head of Amnesty International in the Washington DC office during real terrible things down in South America, all kinds of stuff. And he was involved in what was called extreme mediation. And they would go over to countries in Africa where these warlords kidnapped people’s children and cut their arms off literally so that they would fight for them and there was no life left and they’d never right.

And after that whole thing was over, he would go over there and bring the children and the perpetrator, the terrible people that did this and the parents together. Imagine sitting down at that table. Imagine sitting down at that table, right? And the attitude was, if we don’t get along and forgive, it’s just going to keep happening from the other side. You understand that one extreme will do the other, then we’ll go get you and you’ll get us and so on. And they would sit down and try to bring about a state where you work through what you need to work through and you could live together. That happened in South Africa after apartheid and stuff. It was an attempt to get even and then there was an attempt to learn to live together. So that’s what I’m talking about. So I like rather talking about the car in front of you.

I do being able to handle the car in front of you, being able to handle the weather. But you all challenge me with this stuff, okay? We’ll talk about this stuff. It’s the same. It’s the same. You went from scales to kowski. It’s the same. You’re hitting the notes except you learned how to do it. It doesn’t matter how big it is, how terrible it is. Either you can handle or you can’t. But I don’t want it to have happened. But it did. Hitler did happen. And if you go study psychology, I’m sure they psychoanalyze that guy up the kazoo and there are reasons that he hated Jews and there are reasons that he this and right or wrong, I didn’t say good reasons did I? You all think a reason means that’s reasonable? No, they’re very different. Words are reason and reasonable. There are reasons for every single thing that ever happened and ever was and ever will be.

And if you can’t look at the reasons because they’re not reasonable, you will never help. There are reasons why we can’t fly. If you accept the reasons gravity and study them and study aerodynamics, you can work with them. Do you understand that? And all of a sudden you can overcome that. It’s that way with everything, but if you can’t handle it, you can’t walk that road. Alright? So we’re practicing. I’d drive in front of you. I like very much. How many of you ever had a driver in front of you that was driving not the way you wanted? Now I have a serious question. Have you ever talked to them? Not road rages, not got out without getting out. Have you ever talked to them? Hey buddy, nice blinker, come on. You see the speed limit? You’re 10 miles an hour. I got a place to go.

Maybe you don’t. Yes or no. I want to make sure it wasn’t just me. Alright, so you’re sitting there, it’s not doing any good, they’re not hearing you. It didn’t change a single thing that the person ever did. Yeah, you made yourself sick. Can you do better than that? How? Maybe it’s your grandma. It’s your grandma driving. So last year she can drive, she’s old. Go on tailgate her and be better. Oh no, take your time. It’s okay. Find something nicer to do with yourself than what you’re doing through habit. We’re not okay, I’ll talk about that in a minute. We’re not okay. So everything bothers us. If you have a stomach ache, you don’t feel good. Everything bothers you. If you’re not doing good inside, if you’re worried you’re anxious, you’re scared, you had bad experiences, all kinds of junk in there, then you’re not going to do good with the driver in front of.

You’re not going to do good with even the sun. You’re not going to do good with anything. You get upset, things bother you. So what you do is just learn that this became a habit. Negativity is a habit. And how I know it, because there are people that teach this thing called positive thinking. Why? Because I’m negative. Why would I need to be taught positive thinking if I’m not negative and I believe a positive thinking, it’s wonderful, wonderful technique. But understand if you’re having trouble with positive thinking, it’s because you’re not having trouble being negative. It’s a habit, isn’t it? And how’s it feel in there being negative? Negative feels icky. Alright? And because I’m negative, I can’t handle things. Everything irritates me. Everything bothers me. Every little thing. I don’t like the way you looked at me, I don’t like the way you’re sitting.

I read your body language help. So comes down to this. How do I learn to change the inside? He said I don’t be one of techniques, I meditate. I don’t teach meditation, I don’t teach all these things. Alright? That’s for you to figure out what works for you. I want you to want to change to see why it’s important to change. And by the way, I’m going to talk to you why it’s negative in there. I know I’m very psychic. I know every single one of you. No, I’m serious. You’ll see and I didn’t read any books. I know why it’s negative inside of every single one of you, okay? What we just talked about is, okay, it’s negative, what can I do about it? You can do techniques to make it feel a little bit better even though it’s negative. You can enjoy the sun, you can enjoy the heat, et cetera, et cetera.

It’s wonderful and you’re going to do these things. There’s a deeper path. Doesn’t mean you don’t do those. Just because there’s deeper doesn’t mean you don’t do the others. Don’t say me because they don’t meditate. I never said such a thing. What’s the deeper path? Why is it negative in there? It’s not negative in there because the sun is hot. It’s not negative in there because the driver in front of you is driving too slow. It was negative in there before you met that driver. It was negative in there before you walked out to the sun, wasn’t it? Okay, why is it negative in there? Why is it disturbed in there? And the answer is very, very, very, very, very simple. It is negative in there because you stored every single thing that ever bothers you inside of you. A Pandora’s box, somebody said something to you yesterday you didn’t like, is still going on in there.

If you see them again, what happens? Whoa. You stored every single thing that ever bothered you inside of you so that it could keep bothering you. Did you do it on purpose? I think I’ll go down to earth. I’ll have experiences. Some of them will bother me and I’ll store those inside. So they always bother me. You did do that, didn’t you? Guess what? It’s not just that I’ll store the ones that bothered me, the ones that bother me the most. I’ll store for sure and if they try to come back up, I’ll push ’em back down because plants grow well in the darkness. That is why you’re not okay, period. That is why you’re not okay. If you didn’t do that ever, you’d be an ecstasy right now. There would be all this shakti pouring up inside of you. You’d be enlightened. There’d be nothing holding you down.

If it was a hot air balloon that has helium air and hot air in it and it’s not going up, it’s not because it doesn’t have helium in it. It’s because it’s tethered to the ground. You cut those tethers, it’s going up. You stop doing that now I’m talking to you. You stop doing that store everything that ever bothered you inside of you. It ruined you, it ruined you inside. If you store everything that ever disturbed you inside of you, what’s going to be like in there disturbed. And it is, isn’t it? But you think No, it’s not disturbed. If he loves me, I’m not disturbed. If I get what I want, I’m not disturbed. If I have enough money, I’m not disturbed. See, you’re disturbed. But conditions can happen to make you feel better so you don’t feel as disturbed before. What if you lost your money?

Oh, I’m disturbed. What if they left you? Ah, it didn’t fix a single thing. That’s called conditional wellbeing you did not fix. If you’re married for 40, 50 years, you have a beautiful relationship and you were insecure to start with before you met this person. And oh it was so wonderful when they die on you, they said they wouldn’t, but they did alright. They’re in trouble when they die on you. I’ve had people tell me I felt the same way they did before I met her 50 years ago. All my fear and insecurity came back up. He was my savior. In other words, you didn’t fix a thing, you hit it, you compensated for it, and you’re shaking your head yes. Do you really hear me? Then for every single thing, you’re going out there fighting for good luck and ain’t fixing anything. The fact that you need it means there’s something wrong psychologically.

There’s food, clothing, shelter you need, okay fine. But it doesn’t to be a million dollar house. But this concept that there are psychological needs, there are not. They’re not psychological needs. You’re whole and complete within yourself. The most beautiful being ever worked at the face of the earth. But if you’re out there trying to get what you want, it means you want something. It means you’re not okay. I need love. Give me love, give me love. Why? Because I don’t feel love. When you get love, where do you feel it? And your eyeball and your hand and your car inside of you. Therefore it is inside of you all the time. How much you should be able to wave your hand across your heart and have so much love pouring out of your fourth chakra out of your heart that you need to lay down and it’ll last as long as you want.

That’s who you are. Every single one of you, I don’t care what you ever did, that is the reality of who you are. You are a beam of God, descended down, experiencing God’s creation as to literally who you are. You are the creator of the universe, the ecstasy of the divine infinite one looking down to experience the creation it created. And all you’re doing is complaining and not being able to handle it. And poor God, you’re not getting a very good movie and nothing you will ever do or ever have done will change that. The trouble is what it can do is build a cloud in between your being and what you’re experiencing. If there’s a cloud, you don’t see the sun, it’s still there pure. Nothing you will ever do will change the fact that you are God descended, that you are pure light, that you’re the highest you ever walked the face of the earth.

It’s so funny. Christ said that, which I am so also you and these things that I do used to do these and even greater things, literally exact words were as I sit by the throne of my father, so you shall sit by my throne and these things that I do, you should do these and even greater things. A throne is not a chair, it’s a state of consciousness as I sit with God. So you shall sit with me at that state. That is who you are. Why don’t I feel it? Because you blocked yourself. No, my mother did it. No, your mother did terrible things and you stored them. See part of it, yes people your boyfriend did think this happened. That happened. All kinds of things happen. I agree. We’ve all had experiences. Yes or no. We all have a story. We didn’t have to store it.

That’s not story means storing. You have a past. You know why it’s called the past. It’s over, but it ain’t over inside of you is it? Look at me. So the event that happened, you didn’t do, it happened. You were young, anything you weren’t able to handle it, whatever it is, okay? Is it happening right now? No. Why is it still bothering you? Because you stored it. Because you did that. You might as well just said, you did that to me when I was five. I guarantee it’s going to bother me for the rest of my life. I’ll get even with you that will bother me for the rest of my life. Don’t you ever whatcha doing? Is that reasonable? Is that rational? Sit there and let something happen 50 years ago still be bothering you. No one taught you not to. No one taught you how not to not just a poor little child.

Of course a child’s innocent doesn’t know how to do these things. But even at school and even in college and even in life in marriage, no one taught you you don’t need to store these things. You’re married. Somebody had a bad day, they come home, they weren lovey-dovey. They had a bad day. They just went right into the bedroom and closed the door, slammed the door. Alright, can you handle it? Of course not. I will not be treated like that. Come on man. Cut some smack. Can you handle that? Can you handle that? Oh my god, I’m going to cry. If you can’t handle that, of course you have trouble with relationships. Of course you’re not getting along. Of course we used to feel love, but now we don’t. Of course not. You can’t handle someone else’s behavior. Do you hear me? But no one would like if they did that, fine. It happened. Not do I like it? Can I handle it? And the answer is, okay, fine. He had a bad day, right? Fine. So bring some love. When he gets out of the room, I sit there and dump on him. You couldn’t handle it. Anybody listening? Oh yeah. Okay, good.

And so you get to the point, you realize you don’t do that. You store this, you store this. Let’s say you were married in something. You don’t get along, you get divorced, alright? And you need reasons. You have to have, what was it called? Irreconcilable differences. That’s a catchall, right? That doesn’t count. That’s cheating. Alright, so if the lawyer asks you somebody, well what can I use? Right? You’ll start listing. Well on our honeymoon, he went on in there and they did alright and you start listing every single thing ever bothered you over the course of the last 20 years. Can’t you do that? Oh yeah, I forgot. I forgot the timing. He didn’t open the door for me.

That’s why you’re not okay. Not because somebody’s not doing this because money, not because you don’t travel. That’s not why you’re not okay? Those are an attempt to compensate for that. You’re not okay. You’re not okay because you stored this garbage inside of you. Period. And guess who said so Freud, he looked and he saw, oh my god, yeah, that stuff stor in there and it’s messing you up. You suppressed it. He didn’t get into who suppressed it Well, who’s in there that had the experience that couldn’t handle it and pushed it down. Now you’re getting a little bit higher or talk about higher in there. Did they have to push it down? Is there really super glue in there so that once they push it down, it stays in there? Or do they have to keep pushing it down? Whoever pushed it down to start with will, right?

Your interstate. Does it have to keep pushing it down? The point is, there is no subconscious. What does that mean? I don’t like you guys on that side of the room. I am never going to look at you. That’s the subconscious. You created the subconscious. What is the subconscious, the part of your mind that you don’t want to look at? If you let things out of your subconscious into the conscious, there’s no longer part of the subconscious. If you let everything out of your subconscious, you don’t store things, they come in, they pass through, then your whole mind is one. It’s not divided into these different pieces. You see what I’m saying? The subconscious where you store things that you can’t look at consciously. That’s why when you go to sleep, they come up out of your subconscious. Alright? Guess what? When you’re not doing that, a master doesn’t have that.

The whole being is one. It’s all merged together. Nobody pushing any of it apart or holding this together. Okay? So fine, doesn’t matter. You want to have a subconscious. You have a subconscious, but don’t put anything in it right or wrong. And that was your psychologist teaching you how not to put things in the subconscious. So don’t bother you. Spirituality says, don’t put anything in there. Wait to see what happens. Then there’s no blockage. Then all of a sudden this Shakti flow, where do you see starts flowing up inside of you and you realize you’re made of light, but you were blocking it with all this garbage you store in there. So basically, what does it mean to grow spiritually? One, stop putting stuff in there. Two, if the stuff starts to come back up, welcome it. But you won’t be able to do that until you learn to handle the little things, till you plate the scales.

You can’t play Beethoven. Please understand if I’m teaching you right, it matters that you can’t handle the driver in front of you. It matters. You can’t handle the heat, it matters. You can’t handle the cold. It matters. You can’t handle that. You think somebody maybe said something but you’re not sure. I guarantee you your mind will tell you they did and it was negative. The very fact that you even cared means you’re afraid and you’re going to come up with a negative reason in your mind. You need to work with this stuff. If you walk by, I told you, if you walk by, you say, hello, Sally, dear friend of yours, Hey Sally. And she keeps walking. You can’t handle that. You have to figure out why. What’s going on? Did I say something? I tell my mom, Mickey, 8.3 billion other people didn’t turn around either.

You can’t handle that one person. Maybe we shed earbuds on. See if my mind, it doesn’t do that. But if it did that I would immediately, I know better. I know better than let you think. Maybe George. Oh my God. Three years ago I told George something about her. He promised he would never say anything. Oh my god. Maybe she talk. I’m not going to do that with my mind. Your mind is a beautiful thing. Why use it to ruin your life? If it started to do that, I would immediately say, oh, she had earbuds on. I’m going to make something anyways. I’m going to make something nice up. You obviously don’t know why she kept walking. You should be nice with your mind, right? But you can be strict is how it goes. Oh, mind, why did Sally keep walking? Do you know?

I’ll figure it out. I’ll think about it. Well, that means you don’t know. Just tell me honestly. We have a nice relationship. You or do you not know why she kept walking? No, I don’t know. Okay, then make up something nice. Either forget it, let it go. It doesn’t matter. Or say something nice. Okay, mine. She had earbuds on. Yeah, she had Airbus on there. It’s over. You have to do this with yourself, don’t you? It’s called working with yourself, raising yourself, practicing being okay, instead of trying to make everybody else be the way you need them to be because you’re not. Okay. What a change. That’s where we started. Can you handle life? And the answer is not right now, but I’m going to learn to. There is an honest statement and guess what? The more you practice, the higher you’re going to get and the more you practice, the more you’re able to handle it because you practice handling it.

And now you can handle Sally walking by and you can handle the sun and you can handle the driver. Now all of a sudden something happens. Hey, you’re in school and you’re like a straight A student and you get a B. No, I want to go to Harvard and the B is not going to work, right? You got a B, can you handle it? No. There you go. And all of a sudden your mind says, well, I thought I understood everything. I guess I didn’t. I get to learn if I got something wrong. It means I can learn more than what I thought I knew. So it’s a good thing. Guess what it is? It’s a good thing. If you already know every single thing on a test, why waste your time? If you think you know a math test and you go and you do it and you get some stuff wrong, that’s wonderful.

Don’t tell your teacher, I told you that I always took that attitude and I was a good student. That’s wonderful. I want to learn. I want to learn. I don’t want to just have applaud because I know everything. So if something’s wrong, I want to go study it and learn. And then you’re a better person. Do that with all of life. If you’re sitting there a problem with somebody, if they did something, you don’t like it, but you’re being spiritual, you breathe. I have to go talk to them. And I’m not going to talk about a subject because it’s a sensitive subject and neither of us do good with it. We’ll find some, we’re being really good, clear. We’ll find some area common that we, I’ll just bring up those subject. We can get along and talk and so on. You breathe, meditate a little bit before you go see them. Okay? You go in there and within 15 seconds you mentioned the exact same thing.

This is what’s going to come up, right or wrong. Okay? If that happens, good. That’s another aspect that’s judging yourself. No. If you’re sincere in wanting to grow, all that can happen is you learn not wrong or right. You learn. So you went there, that happened, you stepped back, did it again, and you try to see what happened. Well, I wasn’t I clear enough to be able to work with that. You’re practicing. It’s your piano piece. I’m telling you it’s your scales. You have the right to learn. Are you perfect right now? But then you better learn and if you judge yourself while you’re learning that I did wrong for a spiritual person who’s trying to grow guilt and shame do not belong anywhere. There’s just, I learned, thank God, I was given the opportunity to learn. And if I hurt somebody, I’m sorry. It was not my intention. I’ll learn a machine and I’m moving on. Because guilt and shame, you can’t move on. You understand that? Yep. Okay. And that’s what you do with your whole past. I’m giving you therapy. What do you do with your past right now? If you made it here, you’re working on yourself, okay? Compared to what’s going on out there, you guys are doing great. Okay?

You at least reach a point of understanding. You can grow. There’s something beautiful inside of you. Okay? Now, when you look back at your past, I don’t care. One I owe to what you did, I don’t care. You should look back at it and say, thank you. You made me the man or woman that I am today. If I had not gone through that experience, I would not have learned what I learned. And I’m sorry if anybody got hurt, there’s nothing to do about that. The baby poops in his diaper. Should he apologize to the mother when he grows up? Oh, you poor thing. I peed on you. Oh, I’m so ashamed of what I was like when I was two months old. I’m glad you’re laughing. Take that for all your past years. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. My first marriage, boy, I see now, I could have done much better.

I honor you my ex. I know you won’t let me say it to you. You won’t talk to me, but I pna to you and I thank you for the growth and I’m sorry that’s how you deal with your past. I want you to look back at your past and be grateful that every single thing happened. You have the right to go through it. And then from now on, when it comes back up, you welcome it because you don’t want it in there. Just welcome it back up. You should be able to think about anything in your past. You don’t even need to, by the way. You don’t even need to. You don’t just think about your past. But if it comes back up, you throw it a party. Come on up. Come on up. You had things that happened to your psyche in the past that instead of dealing with them, you shove them down into the dark.

That’s like locking a child in a closet because they misbehaved. When they come back up, they’re not going to be nice. It’s going to be painful. It’s going to be uncomfortable. Why? Because you stored uncomfort down and locked it in a closet. You get to the point where you’re stop being afraid of it. Gita says, why don’t you raise the self with self? Not T trample down the self. It’s your job to raise that up. You need that energy to go to God. Then none of it can be down there. So when it starts to come back up, you welcome it. You relax, you reach your hand down. Really, you get to that point, you reach your hand down. The first thing you do is apologize to it. You don’t hate it. You’re not afraid of it. You apologize that you are not evolved enough.

When that event took place to handle it and you reach your hand down and you say, let me help you up. Let me help you up like you would’ve child and you’d be compassionate to it. There’s all the deep teachings, alright? And eventually you’ll learn. You don’t want that stuff down there. You’re a beautiful being. You’re a being of great light. And you can handle everything. You can handle everything, okay? Can you work on yourselves? People want to raise the world. You raise the world by raising you. If you can’t be up, how can you expect anybody else to be? And then everyone you interact with is better off. I’ll stop. I can. It’s hard for me to stop. I once taught the following. Here’s the highest life you can live, is that every single person you meet has just met the most beautiful person they ever met. How would you like to offer that to the world? Okay, work on yourself.

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.