E8: Achieving Inner Awareness by Letting Go

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session. 

 

Tami Simon: Welcome to The Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes, and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com

 

Michael Singer: Jai Guru Dev, Jai Masters.

We make life very, very complicated and it’s because we’re not okay inside. You can talk about God all you want. You can talk about all sorts of things in life, but the reason that life is so complicated is because we are in trouble. Every one of us, except for great saints, we’re in trouble. We’re not okay inside. We don’t feel love. We don’t feel joy. We don’t feel enthusiasm all the time. In fact, we very infrequently feel these things. Why? It is not because there’s not beauty inside of ourselves. There’s so much beauty inside of you. It is incomprehensible if I even try to talk about it. I know you can’t comprehend all of the energy of all the galaxies of the entire universe can be inside of you, can flow deep inside. It doesn’t come down to the body. The body will blow up.

Alright? But you are a very, very, very great being. You’re filled with Shakti. You’re filled with love, you’re filled with wisdom, you’re filled with everything. The best I can say it and I don’t know that people understand is right this moment. At this very moment, every single one of you are sitting in the divine state of complete oneness, complete enlightenment, complete merger with the whole universe. You’ve been there the entire time, but you’re conscious. You’re aware of being aware I am that I am. That’s what you are, the conscious being who is aware. That’s what you’re aware of. Aware of what? That’s the problem. If you’re just aware, I’m just aware I am that I am alright. That’s what burning Bush said to Moses. Moses asked, what God’s name should I say if I go under the pharaohs and say let everybody go, he said, I am that I am.

That’s my name. I am that. I am. I am that which is I was in the beginning. I will be in the end. There was never a time I’m not. There’s never a time I’ll not be. There’s just I am. That’s who you are. That’s what your consciousness is, that you are focusing your consciousness. Believe it or not. Willfully or subconsciously, you’re focusing your consciousness on something instead of being aware of being conscious. You’re aware of what you’re conscious of. That is the deepest spiritual teaching you’ll ever receive. Alright? If transcends all religion, it transcends all teachings instead of being who you are, which is consciousness. That’s what you are awareness of being. That’s what I am, awareness of being. You are busy, being aware of what you’re aware of and what you’re aware of are called objects of awareness. You are aware of your thoughts, are you not?

This is very deep, very spiritual. It sounds mundane and silly to talk about. You are aware of your thoughts. Who is aware of your thoughts? You care more about your thoughts than you care about who’s aware of them. If you were not aware of your thoughts, you wouldn’t know they were there. Period. There’s all kinds of stuff you’re not aware of. You don’t know what’s there. Well, your thoughts are just something you’re aware of. Which thoughts? All thoughts. All thoughts. If you teach a child there’s a fish. What kind of fish? It’s just a fish. Well, is a salmon a fish? Yes, but it looks different than a shark. It’s a fish. A thought is a thought. It’s a thing. It’s a noun. A thought. Which one? I don’t care. I don’t care. It’s just a stupid thought. Alright, but what if the thought says, I don’t like this.

It’s a thought. The thought says, I really like this. That’s a thought. The thought says, I never thought I’d ever have experience like this. It’s a thought. What if the thought says, I don’t ever want to have experience like that. It’s a thought. Every single thought is a thought. You’re conscious and you notice there’s this thing called a thought that pops up in there, doesn’t it? Who the heck knows what it’s going to say next? Whoa. It just says something, doesn’t it? It got something to say. Let me a piece of my mind. Right? Well, you’re conscious and you’re conscious that there are thoughts. There’s nothing else you need to know and you already know it. Don’t you? Go home and study and make sure that you know that you’re conscious of your thoughts. You’re wasting your time. I’ll give you a better assignment. Be conscious of your thoughts and write down every one as it comes up. Not a paper, a pen in the universe. Alright? For each one of you, you are aware and you’re aware there are thoughts right now you’re having thoughts. God, I don’t understand this. Why is he talking about this? He always talks about this.

Are you not having thoughts? Yes or no? Are you making them happen or are they just kind of popping up in there? You’re not thinking about having a thought. You’re aware of having a thought. You can think about having a thought. You can create thoughts, create the thought. Hello inside your head right now. Over and over. Lemme say over and over again inside. Is it happening? How do you know? Because I’m in here and I see the word hello going on in there. Okay? You can also create thoughts visually. There are two types of thoughts. Audible voice, talking and visual. Is there a boat in this room right now? No. Put one in your mind, put a rowboat in your mind. Is it there? Make it become a speedboat. Alright, now I want you to see a cruise liner. Now the Queen Mary, can you create a thought in your mind of a boat?

How do you know? Do you know it’s there? Look at it. Look at it. Now there’s a queen. Mary, are you the boat or are you the ones looking at the boat? Because the boat can keep changing. You don’t change. It’s the same. You heard the word a low same you heard goodbye. Same you who saw every size boat that you can make in there. There’s just one consciousness inside. It’s just tons of objects of consciousness that it can be aware of. That is what spirituality is about. You have a choice. Do I pay attention to what I’m aware of or do I pay attention to the one who’s aware?

See the difference? One is taking you away from yourself. There is taking you back into yourself. If you learn to do this and you can, I don’t care what you call it, meditation or just what we just did, I don’t care. Practice being you. How was that? Did you do your practices today? Which ones practice being you? Did you practice being you today? I don’t have to practice being me. I am be good. Know that. Alright, because you can’t do it. Why? Because a thought pops into your mind and your consciousness focuses on it. When it focuses on it, it emits its consciousness away from the seat of self onto the object. Just like light. That’s what they call it, the light of consciousness. It’s like light. What do you mean? I’m going to turn a bulb on here. I have a light and I’m going to shine it at you.

Did it leave where it is? The light is still sitting right here. The bulb is sitting right here. It did not leave, but it’s able to emanate its nature. God, listen to me please. It’s able to emanate its nature. Its nature is light and all of a sudden that light which stayed here, fell on you. Did it not is shone on you? Okay, how did it do that? It’s magic. Your body can’t do that. You can’t be there and be with air, but light can do that. That’s the nature of light. So light has a source bulb, something. The sun light has a source but it radiates its nature away from the source. Out from the source and it falls upon objects. Okay? A light bulb can do it. The sun does it all the time. It falls on objects. Did the sun come down and fall on the object?

No. It radiated its nature which is light onto the object. That is what you are doing with your consciousness is exactly like light. Your consciousness does not leave the source, the seat of consciousness, but it’s able to emanate its nature which is awareness. In the case of light, the nature is photons. The nature is light. Light for consciousness. The nature of consciousness is awareness. It’s aware, it emanates its awareness onto the object. I’m sitting here in the chair, but I can emanate my consciousness onto the picture. I didn’t leave. You’re so used to it. You’re not paying attention. When you close your eyes, your consciousness was inside. You’re focusing on thoughts. Okay? Hello boat. When you open your eyes, the exact same consciousness emanates onto the outer objects of consciousness. It doesn’t leave. What I’m going to get back to is for the light bulb, you know what the source of light is?

The source is the bulb. We’ll call it a bulb. The source is the bulb or the sun. The sun does not leave the sky to emanate light onto the earth. The bulb does not leave. Its encased, made its socket in order to emanate its light onto the objects. You don’t leave your source ever in order to emanate, radiate project, call it whatever you want. Your consciousness onto the objects of consciousness. So the fact that you become aware of a thought is the same as the light falling on a picture. The light falling on a person, the light didn’t leave, it didn’t do anything. Your consciousness is at all times seated in the seat of consciousness, emanating, radiating its awareness onto the object of consciousness. If you get that, you get all of yoga, you get all the paton, you get all of every single thing that is ever been tried to be taught to you.

And if you’re inquisitive and not going to answer you right this second, but I will in this talk, where is the seed of consciousness? It’s radiating onto the object of consciousness. That’s what I’m busy being aware of. I’m where are my thoughts? I’m aware of what coming in through my eyes, my ears. I’m aware of objects of consciousness all the time, aren’t I? What is the source of consciousness? What is the seed of consciousness? The bulb, the sun. We can tell we look, it radiates from there. Alright, but what do you know about the source of your consciousness?

And if you tell me, oh, I read about it, then you’re radiating your source of consciousness onto words on a book, Iran, your source of consciousness onto the thoughts that got created in your mind as you read a book. Nothing about the source of consciousness. I have ideas about it. That’s a thought. I have concepts. That’s a thought. I have a view. In fact, I’m so open. I have many views. I’m open to all views. Good. There’s just moving light bulb from one place to the other. Not the light bulb, the radiation of light. That’s how they teach you. Spirituality is not about concepts and views and opinions and religions and books. It’s about the one who’s in there, the source of your being. The soul quote it that if you want the essence of your being is your consciousness, but the problem is it radiates out onto the object of consciousness.

It projects the object consciousness and you get lost. If I sat there and there was, okay, there’s a beautiful man over there. He’s hands on these beautiful alum pieces, so much so that I can’t take my eyes off of him. Okay? I’m fixated on him. I can’t think of anything else then that’s my world, isn’t it? If I literally cannot take my awareness off of that person or off of that car or off of that thought, that’s my world. Can somebody get so lost in the thought that they can’t get out? Can somebody get traumatized? A child get traumatized early in life. They see their parents die in a car accident in front of them or something like that and never come back. You can’t talk to them. You can’t get them to interact again with the world. Can that happen? That’s because their consciousness got fixated.

It was so strong. The power of the object of consciousness was so emotional, was so strong that the consciousness got fixated frozen to staring at that. If you can get them off of that, they can come back. Alright? Not easy. Have you ever gotten fixated anything? Have you ever had a thought that you couldn’t get rid of? Have you ever had a thought that governed your life for a while? It determined what you wanted to do in this and usually, unfortunately they’re negative thoughts. Usually it’s some trauma, something that happened that you can’t get out of your mind. But sometimes they’re beautiful, sometimes you fall in love or something happens and just all he can think about, he can’t work anymore, he can’t do anything. You say things like, oh my God, I don’t care if he has any money or anything like that. We can live in tents in the rain. It’s fine with me. And your parents are saying, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before. Come tell me how long that lasts. Alright, why doesn’t it last? Because at some point the fixation on that emotion or on that thought generally will fade as other things will happen and all of a sudden that what you said was the beginning and end of your entire life, you’re getting divorced.

I’m going to ask you a question. How many people do you know that when they walked up to that altar to get married knew they were getting divorced? They love each other but we won’t. We’ll hate each other, throw things at each other, war the roses and it’s going to be really ugly, but let’s get married. Nobody, nobody. They believe this is the person that God gave me for the rest of my life and my God, I would do anything with this right or wrong. And yet 50% of all marriage and divorce wake up. That’s what’s happening. What’s happening is your consciousness becomes fixated on things other than itself. Enlightenment. Enlightenment means that you’re a self-realized being. What does that mean? You have realized the source of self. You have realized the source of the light of consciousness, which has a name God. That’s what they mean by God.

That’s what Christ meant when he said, my father and I are one. I have merged back. I came back to the source of light, not stayed absorbed in the object that the light was falling on and basically the source might as well get it out. Now the source of your consciousness is exactly the same as the source of everybody else’s consciousness. There is just one. The sun falls all over the place. It lights up good people, bad people, food and this and that and right or wrong, alright? It’s the same sun. By the time you follow those beams back, I know this one’s shining on your special person and you love the radar, just follow that light beam back. You can get back to the exact same place that every single light being came from. That’s exactly what’s going on inside. We’re talking deep. Everyone wants to talk about how do I fix my life up?

How do I get what I want? How do I attract myself what I want? Have fun because you won’t. There’s only one place of complete wellbeing and that is to stop being lost in what you’re paying attention to and to explore and return to the source of your being. You have ecstasy. The nature of the source of your being is incomprehensible. In India, they have a name for that state sat eternal conscious bliss. That’s the nature of your being is sat the eternal conscious ecstasy. Well, why don’t I feel that? Because you’re focusing on something that is not that your thoughts, your emotions. They’re not that are they? When was the last time your thoughts were eternal conscious Bliss. When was the last time your heartfelt eternal conscious bliss? Eternal conscious ecstasy is the nature of self. It’s the nature of consciousness has a nature.

Everything has a nature. The nature of consciousness is awareness. Aware of what? Aware of itself. What’s the nature of itself? Bliss, ecstasy, love, light all the time, always has been, always will be. Then where did darkness come from? Shine that light on something dark. Shine the brightest light in the room through dark, dark filters and see what it looks like on the other side. It didn’t cease to be the most beautiful light that ever was. You shone it down on something that wasn’t so bright, wasn’t so eternal, it keeps coming and going. Alright, so now you understand spirituality. Spirituality is returning to the source of consciousness. I don’t like those words. Returning to source of your being. The being who watches your thoughts. I don’t want you to say consciousness, that’s just a mental concept. Go look it up in the dictionary. What’s consciousness? Alright, who watches your thoughts?

What watches your thoughts gives you a job? Every moment of your life you get to go to God any moment. Either you can get lost in the thought or you can be aware that you’re aware of the thought, but they’re strong, aren’t they? And I purposely haven’t used the E word yet. Emotions. Does anybody know what I mean when I say the word emotions? Point to one. You can’t. But every single one of you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Okay? Because they’re objects of consciousness. There’s something else that consciousness is capable of being aware of these things that emanate from the heart. Don’t they?

I help. Can you get lost in your emotions? We say I lost myself. Wow, you said it right? You just didn’t understand how deep. What Jesus said was I lost myself in my anger. I lost myself in jealousy. I lost myself. I am the self, but not then. I wasn’t. Alright, I am a light, but I’m focusing on a picture that’s making me upset. Well then don’t come on home. Come back to the seat of consciousness, the seat of self. So that’s what’s going on is consciousness, is everything, literally everything. What’s all said and done? Consciousness is everything and you are that. You are God, you are to me the most beautiful words Christ said as I sit by the throne of my father, that’s a seat of consciousness. That’s where he’s at. As I sit in that seat of consciousness, so you shall sit by my side, you are that you are the exact same consciousness, alright?

As I sit by the throne of my father. So you sit by my throne and these things which I do, you should do these and even greater things. No, you’re not a sinner, you’re not evil, you’re not dirt. You’re the most beautiful thing that ever could possibly exist and there’s nothing you will ever do that will make it not be that way. If this light, this gorgeous shines to a bunch of dark filters, did it stop being as gorgeous as it is? Its seat did not change one iota. It’s just is it willing to come back to its source? Or is it busy getting all upset? It looks dark down there. By the way, that is the fall from the garden. It’s that easy. You’re merged in ecstasy, one with God, one with your being. It’s all there. And then you looked out at something and instead of just saying, oh, there’s creation, there’s what I made, there’s the dance of reality.

There’s the dance of creation. You looked a little too close and all of a sudden you’re not up here but you are up here. You’re never not up here, but you’re looking down there. That’s the fall from the garden. The minute you stop being who you are and you look down at these emotions, in these thoughts, in this body and this world and you get lost in it to where you don’t even know who you are, you don’t even think about who you are, you just think about how do I straighten this out? How do I make her like me? How do I make this happen? How do I get this way? How do I stop that from happening? How do I stop from getting old? How do I get old? Oh God, are you having fun? Yet? In the Bible it says that when you fell from the garden, now you must work by the sweat of your brow.

For what? Everything, anything. Don’t you have to go find love, go find happiness, go find peace. You are love, you are happiness, you are peace, you are ecstasy. But you left to get involved with what you’re looking at. And now you have to make what you’re looking at be who you are. And you can’t possibly do that because in order to look at it, you have to leave who you are. I wonder, everybody understands there’s this call returning to the seat of self, become established in the nature of your being. Socialization and enlightenment. Call where you want. You are there right now. Well, I don’t feel like it. Of course you don’t because you’re staring at feelings. And now all you care about is making your feelings feel better than they feel. Now I want to have positive thoughts. Fine work on your thoughts wherever they come from to make them positive. You’ll get ulcers.

You must work by the sweater of your brow to make your thoughts be nice. You must work by the sweat of your brow to make your emotions be nice. You must work by the sweat of your brow to make the world unfold in front of you away such that when it comes in and make your emotions or thoughts be nicer. Don’t you have to do that? Don’t you have to make people be a certain way and make your job be a certain way and make you look a certain way and make every single thing, make the weather be a certain way when you want. Don’t you have to try to manipulate the outside world at all times such that when it comes in, your thoughts and emotions are nicer.

That’s called being caught. You’re caught now you’re caught to struggle with the world because you can’t handle your thoughts and emotions because you don’t know who you are because you think you are your thoughts and emotions. If you ask somebody who they are, you know what they say? Oh, I’m Mary Jones who’s married to Paul and this is my children. And that’s not who you are. You existed before any of that happened. Even in your life. You didn’t exist when you were 10. You didn’t have children yet. You didn’t meet Paul yet. No, you don’t understand. I’m the one who played Dorothy of the wizard Oz in the fifth grade.

These are experiences you’ve had. They’re not who you are. You’re the one who had the experience. Do you see a difference? Did you not have experiences? You’ve now defined yourself by your experiences, haven’t you? I’m the one who got hurt so bad and I had this traumatic and I went to the war and I had to. That’s not who you are. Those are experiences you had. Who had the experiences you did, didn’t you? The same. You had experiences when you were 10 years old. Experience when you get married, experience when you got divorced, experience when you got sick experience, right? It’s the same you in there experiencing every single thing you experienced, but all your experiences are different, aren’t they? You have pulled those together into what’s called your psyche or self-concept and a thought pattern, self concept of how I think of myself and how Freud define the ego, how you think of yourself.

That’s your self concept. Talk to psychology. You’ve pulled these experiences together, made a cage and said this is me. That’s who I am. The one that had these experiences. No, no. Those experiences you had, you are always the same being in there, but you got lost. That’s the fault. You got lost in your experiences. You got lost in what you saw and what you heard and what you thought and what you felt. And you are completely lost that way every single moment or every single day. And because you’re not paying attention to who you are, which is ecstasy, you have to work to try to be okay.

It’s sad once you touch a place inside yourself, even once, I don’t care what you’ve done through your whole life, anything for one second. If you touch your being, you will never be the same period. It will never be the same. Why? Because you realized, wow, there’s something really beautiful in there. What am I doing? Putz around with this stuff out here. The only thing the outside can do is take away the greatness, but it doesn’t have to. And that’s what we’re going to talk about. So now you get an idea who you are. Now you get an idea how beautiful you are. You indeed are in the seat of you’re one with God. You are one. That’s who you are. You always were always will be. Nothing can change that. But you do have the ability to stare at something other than yourself and identify with it.

Can I use that word? Don’t you identify with things here. Let’s get really bad that dude don’t me talking about you should leave before I talk about it. What about falling in love with somebody? It’s a wonderful thing. Do it by all means. It’s very spiritual, it’s very beautiful. Alright? It’ll help you grow, believe me. Alright, what happens when you fall in love with somebody? If you really fall in love, you project your sense of self onto them. It’s just another experience, isn’t it? I experience love. I experience my heart being open. I experience melting every time I looked at somebody. It’s an beautiful experience but it’s an experience, okay? And when you do, it’s so powerful that you identify yourself with the experience. That’s who I am. I’m this person’s lover and this is my whole life and I projected my sense of self away from myself onto that.

And that’s very beautiful. And by all means, go through the experiences. What happens when it breaks up? See, I told you I don’t want to talk about this. You fall apart, you fall apart, your heart breaks, you fall apart, you get lost. You don’t know who you are. If it really bad can get like that, right? You lose your whole sense of purpose of life. Why? Because you defined yourself as something you’re not. But I loved her so much. Yes, that’s wonderful. It’s a beautiful experience. By all means have it, but it’s not who you are. You existed before you met her and you exist after, but you don’t like what she looks like in there. You like what it looked like in there while you were with her or him, but you don’t like what it looks like in there when they left you do you, but it’s still you looking.

So that’s why we have so much trouble in life because we are projecting our sense of self onto the experiences we’re having. And we say that’s who I am. I see ego. I’ll show you a piece of ego to pay attention. I’m going to buy a new car. I go into the car room and the showroom and there’s all these cars and people are walking around, sitting on ’em, sitting in ’em doing different stuff, right? And it’s fine. And now you go and you talk to the salesperson and you say, I like that one. You park for the price a little bit and you go in there and he gives you a piece of paper and you sign the piece of paper and you walk out of there, get off my car.

What? They’ve been sitting on the car the whole time. There’ve been people in get out of my car. Just you signed a piece of paper and all of a sudden it’s my car. Did you make it? Do you know where it came from? Do you know anything about the thing? What if you had signed a piece of paper for a different car? Get off of that car. Don’t touch my car. Do you understand that? That’s how quick the self-concept owns something. It defined itself as the car it the car before. Please listen. That’s the same thing you do with your relationships. Same thing you do with every single thing with your job. I wanted a corner office. How come she got it? You’re just, oh, I would never live like that. That’s why I moved out to the woods 50 years ago. No, I ain’t doing that. That sounds like a non winner to start with. Just to find what it is you think everything should be like and get upset when it’s not. Just make up in your mind something like, that’s my car now get away from my car. What if you get ’em all over from your car and you drive away and you park it and you come back out and there’s a scratch on it?

How do you know there’s a scratch? I have a magnifying glass. You laugh anybody? And don’t you blush? Anybody ever see those two-sided mirrors that they have in the hotels? 600 magnification and regular magnification? Well, why would anybody want to do that to themselves? I don’t think your face looked really good at a 600 time magnification. Oh my god, there’s a black spot. You use them, don’t you by the way? That’s my car. That’s my face. No it’s not. No it’s not. It’s just something you look at in the mirror. And guess what? It keeps changing doesn’t it? So obvious it’s not you because you’re just same one. It’s looking at it. Did you look at your face yesterday? Did you look at yourself in the mirror yesterday? Did you look in the mirror a year ago? Did you look at the mirror 10 years ago?

Didn’t look the same. Did it seeing you looking? Do you understand that? That’s who you are. You are the consciousness, the indwelling being and you’re aware of your thoughts, you’re aware of your emotions and you’re aware of comes in through your senses, but you’re not Those things you are aware of. Break the sentence down, subject, object, verb. You are always the subject. There’s just one subject. It’s always been in there who you are, but you project your sense of self onto objects and thoughts are objects and emotions are objects and form is objects. And by the time you’re done getting lost in your thoughts, your emotions and what’s coming through your senses, you’re pretty lost. Alright? That’s the lost soul. That’s the fall from the garden. So what do we do about that? What doesn’t sound much fun? Well, it’s not okay. It is a struggle.

Is it not? Even when somebody’s happened the way you want, you’re afraid it’ll stop. Don’t you struggle if somebody says, oh God, I love what you’re wearing. You just try to be careful what you wear next time, don’t you? It’s no end. Alright, go give a lecture or be a musician and play a set that, oh, everybody claps, right? Yeah. So she want to go back next time. What if it doesn’t happen? Next time you hear me, you can’t be okay projecting your sense of being onto something that’s not you. And then you have to try and make everything right about that thing. I don’t even know how to talk about it. How are you going to manipulate the world so that every moment unfolds in front of you? It makes you happy because you don’t even know what will make you happy. You have trouble deciding what you want, do you not?

That’s so telltale. Wake up if you have trouble deciding what you want, what chance do you have to make everybody and everything around you be the way you decided you want? It’s hard enough. Even decide what you want now. Make you be that way. Go on, decide what you want to do tomorrow. Now make sure it doesn’t rain. Make sure it’s not too hot. Make sure the person that’s coming with you don’t get sick. What does the word disappointed mean? It means you made something up in your head. It ain’t happening. So what’s the answer here? The answer is not to identify with your thoughts. To develop an ego that’s so strong that anytime anything’s not the way it wants. It gets weird, doesn’t it? It complains inside, it gets upset and sometimes it complains outside big time, doesn’t it? And it’s just why live like that when you’re the most beautiful being that ever walked the face of the earth.

And so that’s what spirituality is about is come back home, not try to make the world be the way you want. It’s so frustrating to watch people teach you that so big deal. You can attract yourself everything you want. Now what better keep doing it because you keep changing. It keeps changing and you get upset if it doesn’t work. What am I doing wrong? How come I can’t ever attract myself what I want? I want to attract money. How much money? Well, I don’t know Elon’s poor compared to what I want. I want to be famous. How famous? I don’t know George Washington level. I want to be remembered. I don’t want to die and have people forget me. Good. Have fun because you won’t. It’s not about making stuff up that you think will make you be okay and then trying to make it happen.

It’s about finding out why you’re not okay. And I just spent the whole half the talk showing you why you’re not okay because you left the seat of your being. You’re left the core of your being. So what does one do? Relieve the world. Renounce the world. Meditate in the mountains. No, no, no. You find out why you can’t handle that. You’re conscious and there’s things you’re conscious of. Fine. There’s nice sauce and there’s not nice sauce. There’s really, really nice emotions and there’s really, really uncomfortable emotions. Wow, I dig it. Variety is a spice of life that wonderful. There’s people who love you to pieces and people who hate your guts, they can’t even think of you without vomiting. Hooray, hooray. Isn’t this wonderful? What’s it got to do with me? Nothing. The light can shine on that picture of that picture down or up.

It doesn’t change the light one single iota. That’s where you’re going. That’s what you learn, not how to avoid everything so it doesn’t bother you. What’s the ding? Trying to avoid everything so it bother you or trying to get everything so that it makes you feel good. Same. You’re busy as could be for both, aren’t you? It never ends. It’ll be that way your entire life. And I don’t want to go to a nursing home. No, don’t put me in there. Don’t worry. It won’t stop. Check it out. You got grandparents, you got parents, you got brothers, sisters, anybody who’s in enlightened who’s filled with ecstasy all the time and you wake up and you realize I did this. I’m seated in the most beautiful place it could possibly be, but I can’t handle looking at what I’m looking at. Does that mean I shouldn’t look at it?

I should renounce have nothing to do with anything. No, it does not mean that. It means you should learn to be able to look at it and be comfortable looking at it. To me it’s like the white lines on the road. Can you look at the white lines on the road without freaking out? Or do you pull the car over, cry and pull your hair out because it went to dashes or because they’re yellow instead of white or because they’re double. Oh my God, who wants double ones? You are capable of handling, experiencing the white lines. Are you capable of handling wind? How much wind? Five mile an hour. 10 mile an hour. How much capable of handling? I love it. Blow me away. It’s like blow my hair straight back like bows. It’s like can you handle the rain? I love the rain. Can you handle no rain?

I love no rain. Can you handle heat? Oh, I love heat. It’s so high. Basic. Go to the beach. Can you handle it being cold? I love bundling. Can you experience what you’re experiencing and be able to experience it without freaking out? Because if you can experience it, you don’t have the white line stored in there. No psychiatrist is going to go into you. Oh, you got this white line thing. Most things that you experience in your life, go right through. I’m going to throw a percentage out. 99.9% of every single thing that ever came in through your senses went right through the trees. You drove by the people you walk by every blade of grass, every leaf on a tree, all these things. You experience them, they go right through. They just, okay, thank you. I experienced thank you. Very nice. Thank you. You go at your business, it’s all supposed to be that way. You don’t not experience it. You just be able to experience it without freaking out. But what happens is that 0.1%, that 0.1% is all these people walking by, but that one looks like your girlfriend walking with somebody else. It’s not by the way, but it looks like your girlfriend walking with somebody else. How you doing?

I couldn’t handle it. And some people are so weird. We’re all weird. But some of ’em are so weird that when they go home and they see the girlfriend, they say, I saw you walking with somebody else. No you didn’t. Yes I did. Don’t lie to me. Well I wasn’t even there. You were. So they believe what they thought more than reality. It bothered them so much that they can’t let it go even though it didn’t happen. There are people who have dreams that screw up the rest of their life. I dreamt I got in a car accident. It was terrible. I died and I left my children alone. It was terrible. I’m never going to drive again. Hooray. It didn’t even happen. But it could. You don’t want to talk about could happen anyway, listening. The key is not to not have experiences. The key is to be able to handle the experiences you had here.

Lemme do it slower. The key is to be able to handle the experiences you’re having. This experience I’m having, okay, there is having it. Very good. Thank you. Hello. Namaste. You’re welcome to come in and to pass through, right? My door is open, my door is always open here comes in, passes through. Right? Not only can you not do that with the experience you’re having, I hate to say this to you, you feel bad you can’t do with the experience you already had. They’re over. They’re over. They’re not going to happen again. The exact same experience will never happen again. They atoms can’t come together the same way they never do. But you can’t handle what happened 20 years ago. You can’t handle what your parents did when you were five. If you can’t handle reality, you’re not going to be okay. So spirituality is not about pronunciation.

It’s not about attracting to yourself what you want. It’s about learning to handle reality. If you want, you have trouble handling the realities in front of you. I know that. Why do you have trouble handling? What already happened will never happen again. You don’t understand what my mother said to me. She died 20 years ago. She’ll never say it again. Don’t you worry one drop about it. Alright, well my sister, when we were growing up, we didn’t get along real well. We fought a whole lot. Now we get along great. But if I ever think about the old times, I can’t even look at her. What are you doing? It’s not happening. It’s not going to happen. Why are you screwing yourself up? So if you can’t handle what already happened, you probably can’t handle what’s happening, right? Okay, so those two, you’re not doing so good with.

How about what hasn’t happened yet? And you have to make up what might happen. Can you handle that? Oh no. Oh no. I can’t handle that. I make up really bad stuff. You got real quiet. So funny. You got quiet, didn’t you? Why? Because the future hasn’t happened yet and none of it, none. It has happened yet has it? So what do you mean you can’t handle it? So you’re making up with thoughts, a future that hasn’t happened and you’re freaking out over what you thought might happen. Well, by the time you do that with your past, you do it with your future and you do it with the present. I wonder how well you’re doing. I wonder why you’re struggling. Do you see it? Right? Spirituality is not about renouncing. It’s not about this. It’s about saying, I can handle this. That’s your mantra.

Say it with me. I can handle this now while you say it. Right now I don’t do retreats. I don’t do this stuff. I’m do it for you. The first I ever did it, right? While you’re saying I can handle this, think about what’s going on right now that you can’t handle and say, I can handle this. I can handle this. I can handle this over Aurora. I can handle this. You see, just change your mind about it. Someday you’re going to say, I can handle it. You’re going to realize the reason you can’t handle it because you said you can’t. Your mind saying, I can’t handle that. That’s the only reason you can handle your past. Why can’t you handle your past? It already happened. It’s over. Good. You made it you star. No, no. You’re traumatized by it. Why? Because you couldn’t handle it.

You stored it inside of you and you kept it in there, didn’t you? And it comes back up by itself. People say things, don’t say things, and all of a sudden all this stuff’s coming back up inside. That is a non-starter. There’s no reason for that. I don’t care what psychology tells you, it’s in there because you held it in there. There’s no super glue inside. It’s empty in there. It’s beautiful. It’s just light. There’s pure light. That’s all it is inside until you start storing garbage in there. You store this stuff in there because you didn’t like it. I think it’s hilarious because you didn’t like it. You kept it.

You better laugh, you get a go. Laugh at that one. The more you didn’t like it, the more you kept it. I will never forget what you said to me. It will ruin the rest of my life. I’ll make sure it does. You’ll feel so bad. I will be so screwed up because what you did, I will never let that go. There we go. Spirituality is the opposite of that. It’s been saying the world is unfolding. It’s been unfolding here on the planet earth for 4.5 billion years. I didn’t ask you to handle 4.5 billion I you handled 90 or a hundred at the most. Can you handle it? 4.5 billion, a hundred. It’s a big difference, right? Can you come down to the planet earth, tiny little planet in the middle of nowhere, nice planet, trees, frogs, clouds, weather, computers, things to do. People love relationships. It’s just, it’s quite the place, right?

If you don’t like it, go to Mars. See how long you last there? We haven’t seen anything anywhere. We have tremendous telescopes, don’t we? The Hubble, the James Webb looking thousands and millions of light years. We have never seen anything but burning fire and gas and dirt. That means it’s not out there somewhere. But we’ve been looking for a long time. We ain’t seen nothing. Is that what it’s like around here? Nothing ever happening. Just really boring place. Okay? And you can’t handle it. That’s the problem. The problem is not what’s happening. The problem is you can’t handle what’s happening. And because you can’t handle it, one, you fight it to try and make it be something you can handle, you’re in trouble. Why? Because the person next to you doesn’t want it to be the way you want. Have you noticed that? So now you’re really fighting.

You’re not fighting nature. Okay, here, I want to go camping. Today it’s raining. I don’t want it to rain. It looks like it’s going to rain. The farmer wants it to rain. That’s your next door neighbor. Okay? Now do you understand the source of all conflict? People say, why is there so much war? Why isn’t there more? You’re all making up what you think will make you be okay and no one agrees because you’ve all had different experiences. Therefore you stored different stuff in there. You stored totally different stuff than your husband or everybody else. You had different experiences, they bothered you different ways. So everybody’s totally, completely different. Nobody is the same, not even close. How many people think had the same experience you had in the last five minutes? These people aren’t, they’re looking from a different place. They have different mindsets when they came in.

Everybody has different experiences all the time. Therefore everybody stored different things inside. Therefore everybody’s different in there. Therefore everybody decides what they want to happen. It’s different. Therefore, lots of conflict. And it will be that way until someone stops doing this. Stops doing what? Stops. Storing things that you don’t like inside. But sometimes I’ve experienced, I don’t like good. I can handle this, I can handle that. It rained during my birthday party when I was six. I’ve hated the rain ever since. And I hate God too because my parents said God made the rain. Well, okay, that’s it for God. And you do that when you’re six and I guarantee it’s still in there. So you wake up and you say, wait a minute, this cannot work. Do you see it can’t work, it can’t work, can’t work inside of you. It can’t work in society.

It can’t work that we’re all doing this. So you be different. You sit there and say, I can handle this. Somebody walks up to you and says, I don’t like what you did. You didn’t even do it. Somebody else did it. I can handle it. I can handle that. He said it. I can handle that. I felt yicky when he said it. That’s the key. It’s not like getting it, stopping him from saying it. Can you handle what came up in your emotions and thoughts because you got blamed for something you didn’t do. I’m not saying you do anything about it. We didn’t talk about that yet. I’m just asking you. If you can’t handle it, you shouldn’t be dealing with it. I can’t handle having my face be in water. Well then you shouldn’t go swimming. I can’t handle a sight of blood that don’t be the first person in my car accident.

If you can’t handle something, you’re the worst person to deal with it. Does it make sense? And you all the time say, I can’t handle this. And then you try to handle it by making it not happen. Make sure it never happens again by making you sorry that you said it. You hear me? So it’s like wow, spirituality, because we talked about where you can go who you are. You have to able to handle reality to not get caught in controlling, manipulating, and getting lost in yourself. So fine, someone accused you of something you didn’t even do. It feels weird when it comes in. You get these emotions start going out in there. You feel defensive. That starts going like that. Can you handle that? I’m begging. That’s why I try to teach you not can you make it not happen. Can you handle that? It happened, not that you feel good about it. Can you handle that? It didn’t feel good. Can you handle it? And the answer is, of course not.

Can you learn to handle it? Let’s say you never played the piano in your life. I sit you down, play Beethoven. You don’t even know what to do. Could you learn potentially, you don’t have to be a concert pianist. Could you learn to play something? Yeah, but I have to practice. You can practice learning to handle things. I’m going to cry. I don’t care that you think you can’t handle it. You can’t play the piano, you can’t do all kinds of things you haven’t learned. Can’t play tennis. You’ve never touched a racket. Can’t play golf. You’ve never played before. But you can learn. You can learn to handle things. That’s the highest spiritual technique there is. How you go about it, that’s your business. But I’m telling you, if you’re out there trying to avoid things in the name of spirituality, you’re not learning how to handle ’em if you’re blaming everybody else because you can’t handle it. You’re not learning how to handle it. So you’re in here, take a breath and when you wake up in the morning, here’s your technique ready. You wake up in the morning and you say, things are going to happen today and I can handle them.

I can handle them. And then you go through your day trying to remember that you’re supposed to be handling them well. Why is it hard? Because they’re strong and they pull you out of your centered seat of consciousness. See, when you’re centered, you’re saying, I can handle this. You’re not enlightened yet, but you’re centered. See the difference? My consciousness is sitting in a seat that’s aware that this is what I’m doing. I’m learning to handle things. I’m centered. That seat eventually will let go and go way higher. We’ll do that in a second and never enough time for you guys. So you wake up in the morning, I can handle this. I can handle this. I’m going to handle the day. You go through the day. Every once in a while maybe you sit down for lunch. Maybe you just come back and realize I didn’t do very good so far.

I couldn’t handle the smell that was flowing in the air. I couldn’t handle the car in front of me. That was driving slower. I couldn’t handle the fact that it was hot out. I couldn’t handle the fact that I sweated. I couldn’t handle the fact that I said something that I think was stupid, but I’m not sure I want to look it up. People may think I’m stupid. Oh my God. Wow. It’s awesome, isn’t it? I got some work to do. I got some work to do. Learn to handle things. Start with little things that bother you for no reason. They just bother you because you decided they bother you. And practice letting go. Just how do I learn to handle it by relaxing, relax in the face of what would’ve made you close. The driver in front of you is driving 30 miles an hour in a 55 zone and you’re in a rush and you can’t pass.

It’s a single lane. It’s busy traffic. Alright, you have a choice. Get uptight or relax. It’s binary. I’m a computer guy. There’s no other choice. Well, you’re making a stupid choice to sit there and get yourself all upset and altered and complaining and then go to work and tell everybody how slow this stupid driver take down the license number. I’m not going to tell somebody there’s going to be laws against this stuff. Wow, you did a lot of good there, right? Catch yourself. Practice letting go. Practice letting go. If you can use affirmations, they can sit there and say, well, that could be my grandmother in the final years that she gets to drive. I’m not going to tailgate her. I’m not going to beep at her. I’m not going to send bad vibes and say, okay grandma, I’m fine. I’m honored to give you the space to drive the way you need to drive.

You can do that instead, can’t you? That’s practicing the piano. That’s practicing being okay, practicing being okay. I can’t help myself a little bit. It’s like when it’s hot out, it’s been hot out, right? I’ll do it very quickly, right? Why is it hot? Well, there’s the sun up there, 93 million miles away. What’s the circumference of the earth? I don’t know. 23,000, something like that. 93 million miles away and it’s sort of hot. You’re complaining, wow, that thing’s hot and is it the sun? No, it’s a star who doesn’t like stars that night? It’s so romantic. The stars are shining. I want to see a shooting star. How do you not love the fact that you’re so close to a star? You can feel its heat. Did you realize that’s what’s going on? There’s lots of stars out there, but you’re close enough to one and it’s so hot.

Did you feel it’s heat? Love it. You don’t get sunburn, you get star burn. Who doesn’t want to get star burn? Just open up and look and realize that’s a star. That’s a star during the day. Enjoy it. You can do that with everything and little by little you learn. I can handle it. I can handle that. She didn’t say hello when she came home. I can handle this. I can handle that. I can handle that. Husband gets in moods, fine, had a bad day and a mood, so who cares? Because you understand what’s going inside of him. The same is going inside of you and you start letting go, letting go of the part of you that’s holding all this garbage in there and all of a sudden you’re happier. Why? Because you’re not strong. All that garbage in there. It’s like taking away those dark filters that the light has to shine through.

Eventually you take enough of ’em away and I’m telling you, I guarantee you start practicing with this stuff enough and all of a sudden something bigger you can handle because you learn to let go first. Do you not deal with it? Of course you can deal with it once you’ve let go and you’re okay, this is reality. Is there something I’m supposed to be doing? Most of the time? There’s not. Most of the time the reason you have to do something because you’re not okay with it. There’s nothing to do about the fact that the star is out there or that somebody’s driving a different way or that it’s raining. There’s nothing to do. Just stop complaining and you start relaxing through it and next thing you know, you can handle things, but it’d be beautiful. Why is that important? Because then you don’t store them when you can handle them.

They’re like white lines. You don’t store ’em inside. You go there. You had a little dispute with your kids or your wife, your husband in the morning, but you let go. Yes, that’s fine. Come on man. People have disputes, right? You let go. So when you come home, you don’t bring it with you. I said, let’s continue that one because I didn’t like what you said. What did I say? You don’t even remember. What did I say? You hear what I’m saying? Learn to handle things. Why? If you can handle them, you don’t have to store them. They don’t leave scars. They don’t leave marks and scars. And now you’re a happier person because you’re not carrying this garbage inside. And if you do that, the old stuff’s going to start coming up. I’ve always warned you guys, somebody wrote me the other day, said, you were right.

If you don’t keep shoving more stuff down there, there’s room for the old stuff to come back up and you want it to come back up, you don’t want it in there. Then you learn to handle that and you keep letting go. And at some point you’re going to find out that you really are filled with Shakti. You’re filled with joy, you’re filled with love for no reason. Somebody says to you, oh God, you look so beautiful. You’re so filled with joy and love. What happened? I don’t know nothing. I’d rather have you say, I don’t know, than say, oh, I met somebody. I want you to be happy unconditionally for no reason at all. Inspired, filled with love. That’s what happens when we let this garbage go. If it’s not in there, the light that you are makes it through and you start feeling that.

And that’s not even high. Now. You think you’re high. I feel love all the time. That’s nothing. That’s nothing. That means you stop blocking yourself so that the light is shining down and you feel it. You get filled with light. You become a being of light. You do. You become a being of light. Other people feel it. It radiates, healings take place. All kinds of things happen because projecting the light. But that’s eventually you’ll just let go and let go and you’ll be there and you’re fine. And you’ll not only feel this light coming down. At some point you’ll feel something pulling you up. It’s like a vacuum. It’s just pulling you up into it. That is your source, inviting you to not go down at all to come home, to come back to your seat of consciousness and it starts pulling you up. And as it pulls you up, you expand.

It’s not expanded consciousness. Consciousness already fully expanded as the entire universe. It’s ceasing to contract your consciousness. See the difference in the sixties? I The sixties, boy, right? Let’s expand consciousness. That’s ridiculous. Let’s stop contracting the consciousness. It’s already expanded and it starts pulling you back into it. It’s your natural state and now you’re getting somewhere. And the great ones an enlightened being. Mayor Baba said when he merged, what does that mean? That his individual consciousness merged with the source of consciousness. He said it was like a drop of water, my consciousness, a drop of water staring at me. That drop fell in the ocean. Find it, go on, try it sometime. It does what’s called merge You were yoga means union merger. That’s the merger we’re talking about. That’s what Christ talked about when he said my father and I one. That’s what bud went and we merged into Nirvana.

Your individual sense of self Christ taught, died to be reborn, right? Every word Christ taught was the deepest yoga that could possibly exist is what every master taught. Alright? So it pulls you up into it and you’ll see it’s not easy to die, to be reborn, to let go of yourself, but you learn to and eventually a very, very great being. Urges, urges with who you are. Then what? Then you are a blessing on this earth. No ego. There’s just that light that source emanating. But the amazing part is that’s who you are. You’re not this beggar, this little struggling little person trying to be okay in hilarious. You’re the entire universe. You’re everything. Alright? So I gave you the way out and I can handle this. I can handle this. Learn to handle things and you don’t have to get caught in them. You don’t have to store them. Alright? And the next thing you know, it just starts going up by itself. The ascent takes place. Work on these things. Ative.

 

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.

 

© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2024 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.

 

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