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. A very important thing not to learn but to realize is that when you’re open and we’ll discuss what that means, everything is fine. You’re fine. The world’s fine. Everything’s fine. When you’re closed, nothing is fine. You’re not fine. The world’s not fine. You see it all the time. Something happens and your heart opens. How are you doing having fun yet something happens, your heart closes. How you doing having fun yet? This is yoga. This is Shakti. This is chakras. You don’t need all the mystical discussions. You live with it Every day of your life have something happen and your mind opens. What does that mean? You’re comfortable with it. You’re understanding. You’re open and the mind is not complaining. You’re open, you’re doing fine. It’s a wonderful day, wonderful time close. Have something happen that closes your mind. Have it start complaining and getting all hot and anxious in there, then everything’s terrible.
That’s all you need to learn. That’s the entire secret of life. The problem is you all know that. Everybody knows that. They don’t have to think about it. They know it. It’s just an intuitive understanding. When things are open, I’m happy. Things are wonderful. I feel good. Life is great. When things close me, when I’m closed, then it’s terrible. The mistake that humanity makes is let me then go out and make sure that what opens me is happening and what closes me is not happening. That very act of going out and struggling closes you. If somebody is nice to you and you feel open, but you’re afraid that they’re lying to you or they might turn on you or not be loyal to you, you close. You did it. You can do it by yourself. You don’t even need help, do you? The problem is this concept that I have to outside of me to open and outside of me to not close.
If I’m eating food that I like, I open. Therefore, I want to have food that I like. If there’s a smell that I like, I open the smell I don’t like I close. If somebody’s talking to me in a way that’s pleasant, I open. If they’re scolding me or talking to me in a tone that I don’t like, I close. If I’m standing near, not even standing near, if I see a person that I like, I open. If I see a person I don’t like, I close. If when I see a person that I like, I open, but they’re talking to somebody that I don’t like, I close. You deal with it every single day of your life. The problem is you think you don’t even think about it. It’s instinctual. You think that the answer is to get the outside to be a way that opens you and to not be way that closes you, and that is a lot of work because almost anything can close you and almost nothing opens you.
It’s not that easy to open. Is it not so easy to fall in love with it? Pretty easy to fall out. All they have to say the wrong thing. All they have to do, all they have to do is think that someday they’ll say the wrong thing. Closing’s easy, but meantime you don’t know how to open. You need outside situations to somehow magically cause you to open and then you have to worry about closing. Spirituality is about exactly that. When we talk about a worldly person, spiritual person, these are negative terms. Don’t ever think about it that way. A worldly person thinks the answer is in the world. The answer is finding somebody that will open me. The answer is having finances where I can travel wherever I want, get excited and do things. The answer is having good lawyers and protecting myself so that things don’t happen.
They close me. It’s a worldly situation and you’re very busy. A spiritual person has caught on, wait a minute, I’m the one who’s opening and I’m the one who’s closing. I don’t. Anybody’s help when I’m open, I feel joy, love, inspiration inside of me, not outside. It’s not out there on the floor. It’s not in somebody else. Love is not somebody else. Love is happy inside of you, and the same thing with closing. It is a state of my heart. It’s a state of my mind, closed state of my heart, closed my heart, my mind. Why do I need to go outside to manipulate, control and worry about whether people are going to be the way I want them to be or everything’s going to be the way I want it to be. In order for me to have what’s happening inside of me, I should send you home.
That’s all you need to know. And then you get to the point where you say, okay, it’s true. It is inside of me. Why can’t I be in control of it? You can are in control of it. How you like that? I said to you a minute ago that you don’t know how to open, but you sure know how to close. They don’t have to know how to close. It just happens. All these things seem to happen automatically, right? The heart open, the heart closes, minds positive, minds negative. No, believe it or not, you are doing that. You’re not doing it directly. You’re not going there saying, fine, get negative or hard close. No. What you’re doing is building a structure inside yourself that allows opening and causes closing, so it’s a second reaction type thing. You hear from somebody that there’s a guy named George out there that likes you, but he’s a real schnook, but he may try calling you and visiting you.
You now are predisposed to not like this guy. You don’t want that phone call. You get upset when it rings. You don’t even know the guy you never met, the guy you built inside of you a trigger that will cause closing. And believe it or not, when you fall in love or like somebody, you built a trigger inside of you that would open your heart. They remind me of my sister. They were like this. Oh, they like what I like. Look, they’re the same thing that I am. In other words, you built inside of you a structure that will cause opening and you built inside of you. A structure will cause closing so I have the right to say you did it. You don’t have the ability to open close, but you have the ability like dislike, have a dream, and in that dream, something terrible happens and you’re looking during the day for it to happen.
You’re having a closed day. You did that. Nothing’s happening. It’s all inside your head. So in spirituality and yoga, oh, it’s being taught to you is learn to open your heart, learn to open your mind by yourself. You do not need, I’m going to be very on social. You do not need anyone or anything in this life. You need food, clothing, shelter, but you don’t. Your body does. That’s it. Food, clothing and shelter. Not a whole lot. You do not need anything else. You are whole and complete within yourself. You’re the most beautiful being ever walked to every single one of you, period. I don’t care what you’ve done. Every single one of you are the most beautiful thing you ever walked to face of the earth. You filled with love, you’re filled with joy, you’re filled with inspiration. You never close. You’re just blister.
It’s so open. You have to learn how to handle how high you are and you know that because you can fall in love and get scared because you can’t handle that level of energy. It’s out of your control. You like having control, don’t you? Your high being, why don’t I feel that? Because you have built a structure inside of yourself that blocks your flow, that blocks who you are, so now you need situations to happen outside relationships, finances, travel, jobs, this, that, whatever it is, you need things to happen outside that will compensate for the fact that you close yourself inside and that’s the great secret of the humanity doesn’t understand. You don’t need anything. There are no psychological needs. Yogis went out to the caves in the Himalayas and went into ecstasy higher than anything you’ve ever felt ever, okay? The difference is you have not been taught that you are great within yourself.
By the way, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with relationships, nothing wrong with traveling, nothing wrong with jobs. You just don’t need them. The difference is now you’re trying to get something from the world. I want the corner office. I want more finance. I like to travel. I need a relationship with somebody. Trust me and as close to me, I can always trust them. Come on, make the list. Make the list you make when you go to those dating sites, that’s quite a list and it’s 15 pages long, but what do you like? What do you not like? What are you saying? I’m closed, but those things will open me. I’m open and I don’t like if they do this. No, I don’t want that. I don’t want a carnivore and you’re doing this. You’re labeling what it is that will open you. That’s what you’re entertaining sites, that’s what you’re doing.
Nothing wrong with ’em, and then nothing I’m saying means you should or shouldn’t do anything. I just want you to understand what’s going on. So when you go there and you fill out that list, you’re putting on the piece of paper what your stuff is. You stored stuff that makes you open because somebody’s a vegetarian. You stored stuff because it makes you open because somebody eats meat. You stored stuff because you’re like a redhead. You stored stuff because you’re like women. It’s like men. You like tall people. You like short people, like people in Beethoven, like people in jazz. Every single thing you put down, there’s you. They’re the things that will open you. Well, why are you not open? Why is it only those? I don’t care what big the list is. There are way more things in the universe that could happen than that list and what you’ve basically said, which is the saddest thing in the world, but you don’t see it.
These are the only things that will open me. I feel sorry for you. What if other things happen? No, no. I don’t want him to slurp his soup or a bow tie or I forgot to fill that part out. You’re just putting a projection of where your stuff is. It should be that. If God comes down and says to you, here’s a piece of paper I will give you whatever you want, put down what it is, it’ll open you. You hand back to a piece of paper blank because the answer is everything because what I’m doing is I put anything down here, what will open you? A person who tells me they love me all the time, okay, well we can do that, but what happens the rest of the time? Oh, I forgot to answer that. Hear me? Anything you’re asking for, it’s limiting your openness.
It’s limiting your life, not expanding your life. It’s saying, I will only be okay with these things and that’s what you’ve done. Forget the dating site. You’ve done that with your whole life. No matter what it is that you think will give you passion, it means the rest won’t. Why don’t you just learn that passion about everything? Why don’t you learn to have passion about everything? Who said you can’t? It is your natural state. It’s because you limited it to say, I only like green and orange. Then the rest of the colors don’t turn you on. Why’d you do that? Why don’t you say, I love every color, but what if one color makes a stomach cry? I love my stomach hurting. Why? I love everything. If you want to be happy, why not love everything? Why limit it to these few things and then try to attract those things to you or try to manipulate the world to give it to you?
Yogi doesn’t do that. Yogi sits there and says, why am I closed? Not what do I need to open? It is your natural state, your natural state I’ve been describing to you, your natural state is so filled with an energy flow called Shakti that just pours through your being. Just move a hand and bam, it flows through you. Okay? That’s who you are. There’s nothing that any one of these masters reached or attained or had that you are not that right now, but you are blocking it. You’re blocking it with this stuff you stored inside of you. You’re literally blocking it because you want something, not others. You limited your flow. You sometimes get blown away. Beautiful sunset music can blow you away, right? Just the right tone and this and that, but what’s funny is the one that blows you away is when you fell in love in high school and that was your song and now you hear the song 20 years later it opens.
You done that unless he dumped you and it closes you. It’s the same song. It’s the same song that opened you when you were dating. It’s the same song. Now you’re doing it, okay? Yoga spirituality is a waking up and realizing that’s a very stupid thing to do to limit my happiness and expose myself to pain and worry because I built the structure inside myself that was turned you on. You’re twins that was turned you on and guaranteed it turns her off. You have not had the same experiences there. That’s the foundation of what the spiritual path is about, learning to not do that anymore. You mean renounce? It has nothing to do with renunciation. Well, I would renounce. What I’m passionate about turns me on. The point is if it all turns you on, there’s nothing to renounce and there’s nothing to clinging to.
Every minute is an unfolding that blows you away. The fact that the sun is shining, wow, it’s still shining. Look, it shined for 4.5 billion years. It made another day, right? I told you when somebody asked you, what’d you do today? What’d you do today? You did a 360 on your axis. What’d you do this year? A big 360 around a star. You took a lap around a star. Believe me, only going to get 80 90 of ’em. That’s a very small number and you’re ruining it by sitting there saying, I’m only okay if during that lap she likes me and doesn’t like him and forgets that she once liked him. I don’t want to hear about that. You are doing this. Don’t tell me life did this to you. It did not. Life unfolded and you couldn’t handle it, but you had a relationship and it broke up.
You had a relationship and something happened. Some people get married, some people, they’re very proud. They got married. We’ve been married for 65 years and then Irving died. How are you doing? I’m very sad. There’s no reason for me to live. In fact, I feel now all these years later, the same as I felt before I met him, and you think that’s an expression of love. That’s an expression of you wasted your life. If you went 65 years married and it didn’t change your heart to where it’s strong and able to feel love and excitement all the time, then what you did was compensate for the problem you have inside yourself and it stayed there, but you managed because Irving’s a good guy. You managed to get away from yourself and now that he’s died, you can’t get away from yourself. People say that I’ll live and I’ll be okay, but I’ll never have joy again in my life because my partner died.
You think that’s romantic, that it’s not romantic? It’s sad. That’s not devotion. That’s basically proving that it didn’t work, but it should do. If I feed you and you eat food and you tell me I’m hungry, there’s something wrong with this whole situation. You weren’t supposed to be hungry after you ate. I met the love of my life, my soulmate. Good. That means your whole, you’ve had finally the experience that freed you for your heart to be open forever with everybody and everything. No, no, he died now I’m miserable. Alright, there no one ever talked like that before, did they? Is it right or wrong? If something works, you’re supposed to get better because of it. Not become dependent on it, addicted to it. Why do you get addicted to something? I have a problem and the thing made me feel better. Did it get rid of your problem?
No. It was like a bandaid on top. Alcohol, drugs, relationships, not all of ’em, but I’ll teach you how to not have that kind of relationship, but it can be that, can’t it? I’m sad. Nobody loves me. I don’t feel acceptable. I don’t feel people treat me the way I want to be treated. Now meet somebody who dotes all over you or they better keep doting the minute they stopped dotting what’s going on so it didn’t fix anything. They just compensated for your problem. Things are supposed to fix things. The whole purpose of your life is to evolve, not to cope, not to be, okay, okay. How was your day? Okay. I once had an experiment back in the seventies walking up to people saying, how you doing? I’m okay. How you doing? It’s been worse. How you doing? Not too bad. That’s considered positive. Not too bad. You feel, Hey man, that guy’s doing good. That’s not good.
You hear me anytime somebody, I got in habit and it’s true though. Anytime anybody ask, how are you doing? I say, ecstatic. That’s how you should be doing. Ecstatic. You’re in this beautiful planet spinning around the middle of nowhere. There’s black empty space, there’s colors, there’s sounds, there’s things, there’s people, there’s things to do. There’s nice people, there’s mean people. There’s kind of everything. It’s so exciting. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? When was the last time nothing was happening in front of you? Never. So you wake up and you realize you’re doing this. It’s not true that you need things in order to be okay. You think you do, therefore you do. I think I won’t be happy unless I have this 67 Mustang that’s in mint condition. I’ve always wanted it. Someone in TV drove it. Very good. Well, you’re going to suffer for the rest of your life.
What are you doing? Why don’t you enjoy every car? The fact that there’s a car, the fact that you get to have one, you get to decide whether you’re happy or not. You said, no, I don’t. The world decides when I’m happy or not. The world’s just doing its thing. It’s a bunch of quantum vibrations in the quantum field manifesting to atoms and molecules making what you’re looking at. It’s not determining whether you’re happy or not. You do. Is it true that something made you happy yesterday can make you sad today? It’s true. Some made you sad today can make you happy tomorrow. It didn’t change the exact same thing, but you’re an older person and you don’t do a whole lot of flying, a little bit scared, so you all set up to go visit the grandkids, a plane ticket, everything. You’re all happy, you’re excited, and then all of a sudden on the news it says, oh, there was a crash and six people died.
Now you don’t want to go. Nothing changed. Nothing changed, but your mind cars, more people died driving cars every single day than planes, but your mind got in it plane accident. Now you don’t go visit the grandkids. You did that. The statistics didn’t change one iota. It says you didn’t know about ’em. You are ruining your life with your mind. Deciding what you like and dislike is the most absurd thing in the world. Why? Because you don’t control life. You don’t control the world. It’s going all over the place and so at any moment something can happen. It happens, weather happens, things happen. Somebody dies, things happen, and you decided if certain things happen, you’re not going to be okay and other things happen. You’ll be okay. Why not be okay with everything? Why not be okay with everything? What does that mean? That I’m joyous and happy because my love died?
No, you’re sad. You feel lost. What’s wrong with that? It’s beautiful if you’re open, believe it or not, that’s what it means to be open. It’s called unconditional wellbeing. There is a state like that. That’s what enlightenment is. That’s where the great masters live. What does unconditional wellbeing mean? It’s unconditional openness. You get a job, they told you you can play a certain part in the play. You’re all excited. Then you go in and they tell you, no, we gave it to somebody else. You feel disappointed. Both are fun. There’s nothing wrong with feelings. Anybody have any feelings? There’s nothing wrong with thoughts. Anybody have thoughts? What’s wrong is that you decided not to like certain thoughts. You decided not to like certain feelings. You limited your openness. I’m not open when this feeling happens. I’m really open when that feeling happens. They’re just feelings.
They’re vibration rates of energy. A feeling is just an energy vibration. The other day some friends of mine gave me a beautiful thing with a IC table. I don’t want to get into what it’s, but it has every element in it. It’s beautiful. I look at that and I always challenge you guys, the entire universe is made out of those elements and there aren’t that many, whether 96 natural, something like that. It’s not a big number. Which one of those do you like and which ones do you not like? Everything you deal with is those. There’s a whole bunch of ’em put together one way or another and you’re freaking out or you’re getting all passionate, excited, there’s something wrong here. You have the right to enjoy your life. Inner work means you have woken up. Like I said, it’s not taking vows, it’s not renunciation, it’s not a religion.
It’s just wisdom. You wake up and say, this is my world in here. They’re your emotions. Whose else’s are they? Your mothers, your fathers the preacher. No, they’re your emotions and they’re your thoughts and only one person lives in there. You only you live in there and there’s things in there like in the house. There’s these emotions. There’s these thoughts. They’re yours. You say they’re yours. Well, why not clean your house? Why not enjoy your house in there? You don’t need anything for you to be, okay, so how did it get like this? I explain it to you every time the world belongs to itself, the world belongs to science. The world belongs to cause and effect. People are the way they are because of psychology. Weather is the way it is because of meteorology. Form is the way it is because of physics and chemistry.
No one is in charge of that. That’s the way the world is. You can play with a little bit. You’re there. You have some will makes a couple of chemicals. You didn’t make the atoms, you didn’t make the chemicals, you didn’t make the bonding. You didn’t make covalent bonds. If you had for a moment thought about, here is the world around you, how much actually has anything to do with you? The ground, the trees, the sky, the 35 trillion cells inside your body. Even your body’s not yours. It belongs to them. So you catch on the world belongs to itself. Go off the earth for a minute. Which part of all that, all the 300 billion stars in your galaxy and the 2 trillion galaxies, all with hundreds of billions of stars, how much of that has to do with you but somehow the moment in front of you does you wake up and you realize reality.
Okay, the world belongs to itself. Things from the past move forward and made the present and they’ll make the future and you wake up and you sit there and say, fine, why can’t I enjoy my life? Why can’t I enjoy the handful of years? I just only given 80, 90 years? You should enjoy every second of your life. Otherwise it’s a waste. Go on a vacation and don’t enjoy half of it. You wasted your money, you wasted your time. Drop down onto the nicest planet that anyone has ever seen or imagined. What’s going on on Mars? What’s going on on Saturday? What’s happening with Dr? Nothing? You drop down for free. By the way, what’d your body cost? What did it cost to have a body? What did it cost to have a mind? What did it cost to have emotions? What did it cost to have a heart?
They would just give it to you for free. It dropped down on this amazing planet with all kinds of stuff going on and you’re miserable. The very small part of your life. Are you happy? Are you blown away? How much of life have you? It’s so blown away you couldn’t handle it. Am I making sense to you? I am telling you, look at my eyes. Every single second of your life is precious and you should be open enjoying it, challenged by it. It’s like a sport. That doesn’t mean that what’s happening outside is what you wanted. You think now you can only be okay. Is the outside matches what I decided inside challenging you to wake up. You should be enjoying at some level every moment in your life, but night now you only enjoy if it’s what you want. Why did you make up what you want?
Third in patriarch to set aside what you like from what you dislike is a disease of the mind. Have you set aside what you like from what you dislike? Have you noticed? Therefore things happen, you dislike, you’re not happy they have you do and so you’re not even 50 50. The answer is not to make the outside world match the neuros you created inside yourself. It is to clean up inside so that you’re able to appreciate and respect all of life. You came down here, you visited this planet, you’re leaving, but I want to leave. I told you it very complicated for me. Older people, not just older people, people don’t want to die. You know that some people don’t want to die. The odds are way against them. There’s an example of making yourself miserable. I don’t want to die. I don’t like thinking about death.
I don’t ever want to die. You’re going to die. So if you do that, you just lay the groundwork for not enjoying your life. I’m afraid I’m going to die. I don’t want to do that. I might die. What are you doing? Don’t live your life. They’re try and not die and the funny part I look at is no, they don’t want to die, but it’s amazing. All they do is complain. Well, they’re here. They go to an old nursing home with older people. There tends to be a lot of complaining going on, but I don’t want to die. You are capable and I’m glad I said it this way. Otherwise you’re constantly going to go back to how can I be happy? All people remind me, how can I be happy all the time? Look what happens. Things happen. There’s wars, there’s this, there’s that.
People get sick, blah, blah, okay? And I’m not saying that everything you want is going to happen and therefore you’re going to be happy. I’m saying you gave up on this want not want thing that you’re doing inside yourself. You opened and don’t ever close again. Take the hinges off the door. Don’t have your heart open because something opened it. Get the door off the darn thing and just leave it open all the time. But maybe somebody will not treat me properly. Handle it, enjoy it. You have to stay there and get abused. No. Use a sport when you’re having a competitive sport. The other team doesn’t do what you want. So now I’m dealing with people that are not doing what I want. It’s a challenge. Either I fix it or I get out of there, but I don’t complain. I don’t want to make me miserable.
I don’t be unhappy for the rest of my life because something happened when I was a five years old. You learn to handle things and literally once you can handle them, you’ll notice they have a certain challenge to them. They have a certain beauty to them, but they bring out the best in you. But if you can’t handle things, that’s what it comes down to. If you can’t handle life, you’re going to set aside what you life. When you dislike and you’re not going to like the things that happen that you don’t like and you don’t like the things that happen, you do and you tell me what the percentage is. So the question becomes now how do you do that? You can have a beautiful life, but you have to learn how to be open. You have to learn how not to close. When you close, the energy comes in, it hits your closure and it stays there.
I touch that over and over again. If you are closed, it’s like putting a dam up inside. I don’t want this to happen. I don’t want to feel it. I don’t like it. You pushed it away. The energy of the event came in, it hit that blockage and it circled around it. I told you Yogi a thousand years ago, yogis called us a samskara, a pattern of energy that got caught inside of you. That’s why you’re not okay. That is the only reason you’re not okay. If your parents got divorced when you were five and you were fine with that, you had fun yet. Now I have two fathers, okay, and two mothers and two places I can live and I get a lot of Christmas presents. I have like two, three Christmases. If that was your attitude, you’re fine. If you didn’t like this and you didn’t like that and so on, now you’re screwed up for the rest of your life and they teach you that.
Divorce is tough. You have to cope with what happened to me. Cope is a four letter word. It means I couldn’t handle it, so it’s stuck inside of me. I have to learn to live with that inside of me. You do not. You do not. There’s only one reason that your past is still inside of you. You’re holding it there. What do you mean prove it? Does it try to come back up? Do painful experiences ever come back up? Do you? Do you push ’em back down? No, I don’t like to talk about that. Give me a minute.
I need to meditate. Okay, I’m better now. What did you just do? You’ve pushed it back down. That proves that you don’t hold it down there. It wants to come up, doesn’t it come on your dreams? It comes up for all kinds of places because it doesn’t want to be there. It’s not natural for it to be there. You’re supposed to be open. Your heart wants to be open, your mind wants to be open. That’s a natural state. I told you. It’s just like your body has an immune system that automatically takes care of itself within reason. Your heart has an immune system that doesn’t want every bad thing that ever happened to you stored inside of it. Why would it want that? That makes sense. It’s difficult to live with that, so it keeps pushing it out and you keep pushing it back down and same thing with your mind, your neurotic mind that worries all the time is scared all the time and does all this kind of stuff is because of the stuff stored in your heart.
The heart’s trying to release it and the mind is like the chimney that it comes up into and the mind spews all that fear and negativity and insecurity and self-consciousness and embarrassment. The heart feels it. You won’t express it, won’t release it. Therefore it gets expressed in your mind. The root of the mind is in the heart. The root of the personal mind is in the heart. Some people say, why is that voice in my head so negative? That’s why because you stored negativity inside of you. You stored every single thing ever bothered you inside of you and so now you’re bothered and you want people that things to fix you. Nothing going to fix you. You’re just going to compensate. But if everyone’s nicer to me and they give me what I want, I’ll feel better. Yes you will, but you won’t be better.
The very fact that you need that to happen means you’re not whole within yourself. You’re living off some other energy. So what do you do about that? How do you get to a state? It takes time, but how do you get to a state where always okay, and it keeps stressing to you. Not everything you want happens. You’re just always okay with whatever happens. How You don’t start by saying big thing, dumbly, this happens. Somebody dies. You do it. Then you’re not ready. It’s like playing football through a kindergarten team and you’re going to play the NFL. You’re not ready to deal with the bigger things, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t. It means you need to practice. If you want to learn an instrument, what do you do? You practice, want to learn a sport to get out there and play the pros.
You practice, you want to learn how to always be okay. You practice. How do you practice? I tell you all the time they yell at me. I always use the same examples, right? I’m telling you the weather is your guru. People say, how do I find a guru? You got one. It’s natural. Why? You can’t handle the weather. It’s too hot, too cold, it’s windy, messed my hair up, too humid. Oh, my hair got a little frizzy. I don’t like it. Anybody ever complain about the weather? Learn to be open about the weather. You got to practice field. That’s like the tennis ball shooter that helps you practice every day. The weather will be what it is, but having a guru means it’s not under control. You respect this person enough and they tell you to do you do it. That’s it. Well, the weather’s not under your control.
It’s a perfect guru. You wake, well, you know what it’s going to do. It can do anything nowadays for sure. It could be 82 degrees, 85 degrees in the afternoon and 56 in ninth keeps changing, does it not? And it’s not under your control. That’s wonderful practice being open to every single type of weather as you interact with it. If you’re driving and it’s sunny out and you go to do something that needs the sun to be out and as you’re driving it starts pouring rain. Love it, love it. Why? Because it’s reality, but it’s not what I wanted. Let it go. See why it’s your teacher. You can make yourself a mess about it or you can say, this is good practice and I’m serious. It is good practice to sit there and say in the morning, I’m going to handle the weather. Just the weather be good enough.
I’m not going to complain about the weather. I’m going to allow the weather to be what it is. A hurricane’s coming. Okay, we’ll have a hurricane. No. Yes. You don’t even have a choice, but I’m like in the sandbags and I don’t want to think and it might be right. Yes, yes, yes. That’s what it means to have a hurricane. They okay? The answer is yes, but don’t start with hurricanes. Start with drizzles. Start with the hot temperature. Start with this. Start with practice. Letting go of yourself instead of trying to manipulate the world to match yourself. That’s the essence of everything I’ve ever learned. Practice being okay with what’s unfolding in front of you. Why? Because it’s unfolding in front of you. You can’t not have it unfold in front of you. If it’s unfolding in front of you, then that’s what’s happening. Be okay with it.
Practice being okay with it. Instead of trying to make what someone in front of you match the stuff you stored inside yourself and you start realizing, I can let this go. People write me from all over the world. It works. Of course it works. Why would it not work once you decide I’m not going to be bothered by the weather, okay, don’t be bothered by the weather practice. Learn how to do it. Use affirmation, enjoy, so whatever. Eventually you won’t have to do anything, but you won’t even notice the weather is what it is. It’s really fun to realize you used to care about all this stuff, but it’s hot, so on. It’s hot. I told you once, I remember exactly when this whole hot thing, because I lived out here with no air conditioning. Back in the early seventies, car van didn’t have air conditioning.
How air conditioning, well, Florida got hot in nineties, this and that. He used to complain. He doesn’t ever complain anymore. Not a single thing. In fact, it’s the opposite. He steps out of his car, it’s 95 degrees out and that sun is shining. He just wants to open, just do this. It’s beautiful. It’s like sunbathing. How’d you do that? I sat him down when he was complaining. I was very strict with him in those days with the mine. I said, oh mine. What’s wrong? It’s hot. Okay, okay, why is it hot? Well, guess the sun is hot. Mickey, what is the sun? A star. A star. Like one of those little twinkle twinkle things at night. The big dipper and this and that. Orion, it’s one of those. He said, yeah, and you’re close enough to one of those to fill its heat. That’s pretty neat.
He likes that stuff. Isn’t that pretty neat to be close enough to one of those stars? And I asked him, how far away is it? He said, 93 million miles. Whoa, what’d you say? 93 million miles away. How far away is Miami? 360. If all of Miami caught fire every building, you would not feel the temperature change up here. That thing is 93 million miles away and that’s how hot it is. That’s fascinating, isn’t it? And I told him, you don’t get sunburned, you get star burned there. It was over all of a sudden. It’s pretty neat. And then you can mention to him, by the way, because that thing is shining out there. There’s food in Publix, there’s produce, there wouldn’t be anything, and all of a sudden you become a star worshiper. Yoga, they did sun salutations. It changes your entire attitude because you changed your attitude.
Your experience changes. The sun did not change. You just used your higher intellect instead of your personal mind. The personal mind, the rooted in the heart, the intellectual mind. It’s in inspiration, it’s in logic, it’s whoa. It’s a beautiful thing and it’s not limited to you, your intellectual. Look, you just understood your intellectual mind, understood what I just talked about. The possums did not. You have a brilliant intellectual mind. Don’t use your mind to close you to make up things that will close you. Use your intellectual mind to raise yourself. Raise yourself to not let your mind bring you down. So these trigger points that close you, you set them. You’re the one who decide you don’t like orange or you do like orange. Why? Something happened with orange. Okay? Wake up and realize that you have ruined and are ruining your life. You’re the only one in there.
You’re the one who feels the emotions. They’re your emotions. You’re the one who thinks the thoughts. They’re your thoughts. The work is inside, not outside. If you do the work, inside the outside becomes miraculous, becomes unbelievable. People look for miracles. I hear there’s a tree somewhere in Ireland or somewhere that the bark looks just like Mother Mary, okay? I want you to compare that miracle to the fact that a single microscopic cell gets put down somewhere in a womb, gets put down somewhere, and nobody does anything. No doctor, no visit, nothing. And it turns Twinkies and Coca-Cola into a baby. They can do it. It wouldn’t be a very healthy baby, but it literally has the ability to take whatever the mother eats and the sunshine in the water, break it down chemically like in a lab and turn it into proteins and B and this and that and put them in the right place and just make a baby out of nothing.
That’s beyond a miracle. You’re walking around in miracles. By the way. Everyone you meet was once that little cell and now it’s talking to you and you don’t like what it’s saying. This is what it means to learn to be open. Learn to stop closing. Stop setting aside what you’d like for me to dislike, be in Marvel over it all. I’ve given lectures like that. I never have enough time to say anything. I would love to say to you, alright, the black forest is not on the coast in Germany. It has trees for millions of years. How’d they get watered? I don’t understand who set up the sprinkler system who went out there with the bail and poured it down there on? Well, I don’t understand. It gets water. How? Because of the miracle irrigation system that is built into the planet because that sun is hot enough to evaporate water from the ocean, salt water, but it doesn’t take the salt.
It purifies it and pulls it up and then forms a mist of it. Enough of it up there, and then the wind blows it across the continent and then it drops down and waters. The black forest happens everywhere all the time. You see what you can do so it’s better with your mind, and so you start to honor and respect reality. Every bit of it. Of course, some things feel good and some things feel bad. That’s wonderful. I remember the day I realized that the funeral March Chopin wrote that. That was one of our greatest composers captured the feeling of death, of sorrow, of loss. Isn’t that beautiful? Everything’s beautiful. Not D, beautiful but beautiful. It moves you. It touches you. Every emotion is beautiful. Every thought is beautiful. The trouble is they’re not beautiful to you because you can’t handle them. You can’t handle that emotion.
Some people tell me sometimes that something happens in a relationship. I heard that something can happen in a relationship that makes your heart hurt. Never heard about that. It’s a rumor going around that that can happen. What is that? Nobody’s in there sticking knives in your heart. It feels like razorblades. What is actually happening? It’s Shakti. It’s a very Shakti. That yogis work with pouring up inside of you. Your heart was open, therefore channeled that energy out toward the other person. It’s beautiful. You connected. You had relationship. That’s what it is. The energy was passing through your heart and their heart and all that’s going on. Then all of a sudden it’s not going on anymore. The person’s not there or they dumped you or you couldn’t get in touch with them and you’re scared that energy now, your heart didn’t stay open. The energy can’t flow.
What you feel is those razor blades and pain in your heart is that energy hitting where it can’t flow. Just like if you take the win and put stuff against it, it’s going to pit it and all kinds of stuff’s going to go on. That’s what you feel. They don’t teach you because they don’t know. Oh, it’s hormones. No, it’s not hormones. Proof how the person call you after you thought they dumped you and apologize that they’re going to touch with you. How long does it take before the heart opens and you feel love again? 1000000000th of a second. What is that telling you? You’re doing it. So when you block energy, it hits things, creates trouble. So therefore you learn to even appreciate that pain. You understand? It’s yoga. That’s bruise. I have a chakra. It’s not open, but I got one. Okay? Everything has its beauty.
Everything in creation has its beauty. It’s all god’s expression of God. Every single thing. You are the one that closes over some things that opens over others. Stop it. How? Practice. Practice not closing. When you’re able to do it with the weather, able to do the car in front of you, able to do it with this or that that happened. Next thing you’ll know, something bigger will happen. Somebody will say to you, Hey, tonight when you come home, I want to have a talk with you. And guess what happens? Nothing all day. You’re perfectly comfortable not knowing what they want to talk to you about. Your mind’s not in there trying to figure out. Have you noticed that? When your mind tries to figure out why something is going to happen is always negative. What did I do? You’ve already got the whole thing figured out what they’re going to say and what you’re going to say back, you’re ready.
I’m not going to let ’em talk to me like that. I did not do that. But it does that right or wrong. Now you go there and have a talk and first some people they figured out how to defend themselves, figure out how to deal with it, and they talk first. Look, I know you’re going to bother me. He didn’t even know what you’re talking about. There wasn’t words to talk about. And so you get to the point where you get high enough to where somebody, well hey, when you come home, I need to talk to you a little bit. You say, fine, we’ll do when we come home and it doesn’t bother the rest of the day. If they want to talk about something that you did that bothered them, I want to learn about it so it can be nicer and so on.
If I want to talk about something that you did they’re really happy with, fine, we’ll feel good. It’s not a problem. I can handle it. If you can handle it, you don’t have to worry about it. You worry about that. It might be something you can’t handle. What if you’re perfectly fine? If the weather’s anywhere between 58 and 92, you’re perfectly fine and the weather forecast says today the weather’s going to be 65. Thanks. I’ll know what to wear. But if you can’t handle 65, worry about, see, you have to own. If you don’t feel love all the time and you don’t feel joy all the time, you don’t feel as beautiful Shakti pouring through your being. Anytime you move, alright, you did it, but you’re not ready to fix it yet, but you have to at least own that. I am the only one in here and if it is not okay in here, has nothing to do with anybody else has to do with me.
And so it doesn’t mean you’ll still go about your business trying to help people help you. You’re going to do your thing, but while you’re doing that, will you please do this? Please at least start practicing. Being okay is if you do it works and you’ll do more. And then because you’re more okay, you’re stronger, you’re more capable of doing more. They’re more capable of doing more. Until you get to the point where nothing can happen that you’re worried about, nothing can happen that’s going to bring you down. You just go through it. Who gets fine? You go through it. People go through things that you wouldn’t imagine they could go through and they go through just fine. And then I told you, I think I said it the other day, how would you like to know that no matter what happens to the rest of your life, you’ll be fine. I want you to know that because it’s the truth, because you’re the one who decided I’ll not be fine. Okay? I had a nice talk. Please. I care about you. 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.
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