E96: Untethering Consciousness: The Path Back to Your True Self

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

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

Michael Singer: Ative. Life has a way of causing trouble. If you haven’t noticed, the trouble can be physically with the body, can be emotionally, things going on with the heart and it can be mentally, the mind negativity, complaints, worries, anxiety, regrets, and it can be all three at the same time. If you haven’t noticed, if you’re clear enough, that teaches you everything about evolution, everything. The lowest level of evolution is an amoeba, zoa, low level amphibians, et cetera. They have bodies. So seeing the amoeba has a body, it excretes, it eats mi sizes, divides, and that’s his entire life. I once had an experience I won’t get into in detail where I met with very, very brilliant genetic scientists. They invited me to see what they’re into and so on, and they made a statement, which my God has shocked me. It was during the time when they weren’t allowing stem cell research because of religious values.

The government wasn’t. There was a time like that and I was talking to them and of course they didn’t like those policies because they were doing research and one of them said to me, I don’t understand what the problem is. It’s just chemicals. That’s all that’s there. And maybe it’s just chemicals. Yes, the chemicals make up the body. The chemicals don’t make it want to eat the chemicals don’t make it get away from fear. If you start poking at it, it doesn’t like that there’s somebody in there, not much, but there is an intelligence in there and it carries out the processes that life carries out. It has birth, it has death, it has procreation different than people do, but it divides in mitosis, et cetera, and it eats and it secretes. It does these functions. Why does it do these functions? Why would a chemical care about dying?

Why would it try to live? So the problem, if you will, with our society, our science, not all of it, our science and they admit it, it’s physical science. They’re dealing with the physical plane on the physical plane, which you see is chemicals. They can break that down and tell all the chemicals it’s made of and see the chemicals interact with each other and so on. It doesn’t explain why they do it. It doesn’t explain whether there’s a motive to live. The lowest animals have a survival instinct. They try to live. So you have this beginning understanding that what the dance of creation is, is form matter, physical form, but somebody’s living in there. I say somebody, you call it whatever you want. There is awareness of being. If you poke a pin and an amoeba, it moves away from it. It does not let you poke it.

It attempts to get away from it. It doesn’t want to have that experience. That’s because there is consciousness in there and I’m going to go all the way with you guys. How much consciousness, how about I tell you the entire universe’s worth of divine enlightened consciousness is what is inside that amoeba. The same consciousness inside of you, same consciousness inside of a lightened master. The same consciousness inside of Christ. There’s only one consciousness, and all consciousness is exactly the same. Water’s the same. It can be in the form of steam, can be in the form of ice, can be in the form of liquid. It’s the same. It’s H 12 molecules vibrating at different rates. Is amoeba as conscious as your are? No, of course not. The consciousness is. So what’s happening? These are the basic fundamentals of spiritual understanding. The most important thing. Forget all your practices, all your philosophies, all your teachings.

Consciousness gets distracted by what is conscious of you know that you get distracted by your thoughts. You’re distracted by your emotions, it distracted by your body. That is the same consciousness that’s distracted by your emotions. How about positive emotions? Same negative emotions. The emotion is different, but the consciousness that’s distracted by it pulled down into it so that it focuses on it is the same. Well, in an amoeba, it doesn’t have thoughts and emotions and much of a body oneself, that’s not much of a body. You have 35 trillion of them and the media has one, they’re amazing, but it’s still conscious. So its consciousness is limited to being distracted by this body, by whatever’s happening in that cell. That’s its world. It doesn’t know another world, it doesn’t know you’re there. It doesn’t know there’s planets, it doesn’t know anything. It only knows the immediate interaction with what is stimulating and attracting and distracting its consciousness.

So even though the consciousness here, here’s Einstein’s consciousness, I mean mine, it’s brilliant, brilliant, alright, but he’s staring at a pin and he never takes his mind off the pin. How smart is he? Nothing. Because he’s not using the rest of what he’s capable of being conscious of. Well, ameba only has what is coming back from the sensations of the body of that cell, single cell. So it is completely distracted and focusing on the functions of that cell. Therefore, its world is the size of a cell. That is its universe. Is it the universe? No, it’s not the universe. There’s an entire universe. Everywhere is galaxy, is planet just the same for the amoeba as anybody else? But if it’s not paying attention to it, if it’s focused on the limitations of that one cell, then you must understand that is its universe. I talked to you about amoeba so much today because I want to go from amoeba to you.

Okay, go the next step up in evolution. I’ll be Darwin. Go to the next steps up in the evolution and be a fish. Is the fish limited to a universe of one cell? No. A fish has eyes. A fish has the ability to experience much more of the universe. The fish lays eggs and the fish has schools and they hang up together. All kinds of things go on with fish. That’s way more than what goes on with an amoeba. Why is the consciousness in the end? You’re not going to like this in the end is the consciousness of a fish, the consciousness any different than the universal consciousness. There’s only one consciousness. It’s all the same. It’s not fish consciousness, it’s consciousness just like there’s water. Like I said, it’s in essence there’s a thing called consciousness. It’s an essence in the universe that is aware that it’s aware that it’s aware.

It’s the only thing in the universe that’s aware of itself. A house doesn’t know it’s there. A fish’s body doesn’t know it’s there, but consciousness drops down into it. That’s what happens. Life consciousness comes in into it. And because a fish’s body is more sophisticated than an amoebas, it’s able to experience a larger universe. That’s all that’s happening and they can explain it any way they want. There are deep truths here that you will come to know for yourself. Consciousness is always conscious. It’s just a question of what it’s conscious of. And we just went from consciousness to an amoeba’s little cell to a fish that has much more complex structures. So the body of a fish, this consciousness that is interacting with the body of a fish is limited to its world, which is way bigger than an amoeba’s. That is spiritual evolution. If people write me and say, I thought God was perfect, what do you mean the soul evolves.

God is perfect. It’s perfect. The sea is perfect. It knows the whole universe at once. It is the whole universe at once. Everything, every galaxy, every star, every planet, every single thing in the universe it’s conscious of that’s what Christ meant when he said not a bird falls in the tree that God doesn’t know. Now the hair moves on your head. That’s not some am missing psychic guy hanging out there. He is the hare, he is the bird, he is the ground consciousness created everything so that consciousness is aware of everything at once. Well then why amoeba fish? Human because the body start with the body. The body that is capable of being aware of and it’s distracted by. If you drop a hammer on your toe, guess where your consciousness goes. If it hurts enough, if you’ve been in pain, that pain is your whole consciousness.

It’s your whole world. It could be enough pain that that’s all you know about in your universe. There’s no more husband, no more wife, no more children, no more food, no more vacationing. There’s just pain. Is that true? Did the universe limit itself down to your toe? No. You limited your focus of your consciousness down to your toe. The toe isn’t any bigger than it was, but it attracted distracted your consciousness to focus on it. Now that is it. Okay, so that’s the evolution. The fact that the bodies that the consciousness is focusing on are more capable of experiencing a bigger world, the amoeba world, the fish world. And then I’ll skip the whole steps up the human world. A human body is the pinnacle. Is it perfect? No, there’s no perfection. But what consciousness can experience through that body is incomprehensible. It can move.

And amoeba can’t do much a plant go a plant. It’s kind of rooted in that it can experience some things that Venus try tries to eat things right? Plants suck up through the roots and there are people that have studied plants and said that they can feel emotions and they can communicate. They have auras. That’s a whole nother level. That’s not a physical body that’s starting to get into an energy body. Fine. It just keeps evolving. Consciousness does not evolve. Consciousness gets distracted. Start with just the body by what it is focused on. And in these different stages of evolution, it’s focused on whatever its physical evolvement is. So the human being can eat vegetables, it can eat meat, it can live in the tundra freezing. It can live in the rainforest. It has tremendous adaptability and flexibility. Therefore, the consciousness that is focused on your body, what is distracted by is a bigger universe than the amoebas or the fishes.

I just teach you something people will not teach you, which is you’re already enlightened, the highest being walked the face of the earth. You are so great, it’s incomprehensible. You’re the whole universe. But not if you focus on something as small as your body, which is what you focus on. Let’s just start with the body. Your world is limited to what you’ve experienced. It is not. The consciousness is everything, but it is distracted by what you’ve experienced. Therefore your whole sense of being starts with your body and what the body’s able to experience and see and hear and touch and taste all your senses. So the consciousness has now focused on something smaller than what it’s capable of. You are capable of the highest thing that ever was ever will be in there. The consciousness is God is what’s really meant by God. The complete creator. Every single thing that ever existed for the history of time and space, that is who you are. Guess what? Every master taught you that every enlightened being from every tradition said what Christ said, what my father and I are one.

That’s who you are, but that’s not what you experience. Why? Because you are getting distracted by your body and all of its inputs and all of its different feelings and drives and all that kind of stuff. And then what happens because you’re distracted by it. How I taught you the biggest spiritual worth and don’t sound spiritual are distraction and identification. If you are distracted by something long enough, you identify with it, you identify with your car, you say it’s my car, then my is a possessive pronoun. And if somebody touches your car is different than somebody touches somebody else’s car. Of course it’s not. They’re both pieces of metal. You didn’t build them. If it was a paper down, you always say it’s yours. That’s hilarious. So what’s happening is you’re focusing on it so much that you’re identifying with it. So the consciousness is distracted by the body, well all it’s input.

And then what happens is always it’s danger. The deer runaway, the animals run away. They feel in danger, they feel challenged. This danger now because you become more broad in your experience, you build a higher vibration called thinking and emotions so that you now have the ability to worry about danger instead of experience danger, you built another level of your being. You pulled it together. You have a physical body, now you have a mental body and an emotional body and you are distracted. The same consciousness is distracted by each one of those in a sense. In the sixties there was a whole movement, very spiritual sixties, all that stuff, but there was a whole movement that you should tune back into your body. But you’re an animal. You should be an animal that was seen as spiritual. Why is that spiritual? Well, so it’s not.

But in any event, because you got out of your mind, they teach to focus on your breathing. Why is focusing on your breathing spiritual? Because you’re not focusing on your thoughts, you’re not focusing on your emotions. Why is meditating on a candle? Spiritual? You’re not meditating on your thoughts. You’re getting out of your consciousness is escaping from the trap of being completely focused on your physical body, emotional body and mental body. And I’ve skipped the lower animals. They went through their own evolutions. I don’t know how much thinking of ape does, but it’s not as much as yours. Oh look, the monkey could drive a car. You could do a lot more than that. So it’s funny, I’m trying to see touch deep. You are not more evolved. Your body and your mind and your emotional bodies, we call them bodies are more evolved. Therefore, your consciousness is able to experience a broader universe.

You can think about galaxies. I don’t think a monkey can, I don’t know, but probably not. You have the ability of abstract thought. These are just a very evolved mental and emotional bodies. Your consciousness now is filling the bottle of what the bodies are capable of doing, but it’s not expanding your consciousness, it’s limiting your consciousness. It’s already fully expanded, but it’s focusing on what you’re looking at. So this thing called consciousness and objects of consciousness. Your consciousness has an object, what it’s staring at. You go to sleep, you have dreams. What are they? An object of consciousness. You do experience, you go to deep sleep and you wake up in the morning you say, oh my God, I slept so deep I didn’t have any dreams. How do you know you didn’t have dreams because you were there, weren’t you? The same consciousness that’s here experiencing the outside world through your senses was experiencing the world.

Your mind is creating mental body and your dreams and you wake up. You had those experiences in Pean’s yoga sutures, one of the highest yoga scriptures ever written. He says that even in deep, deep sleep, it’s not that you’re not conscious, you’re conscious of nothing. So your awareness has no object of consciousness. Therefore there’s a state of freedom. You can call that the semi superconscious state. When you go that deep to where you’re not being distracted by anything and very peaceful, total rest because the consciousness is not being distracted, pulled down by any object of consciousness. So we have consciousness and object of consciousness. The consciousness is not expanding the object of consciousness expanding. Therefore the consciousness is not contracting as much. How’s that? That’s what’s going on. So spiritual evolution is the ability for consciousness to not get distracted by the object of consciousness and therefore you meditate and that’s where all this stuff comes from.

What about mantras? Saying a mantra over and over again is very different than letting your thoughts drive you crazy. All the techniques are the same. They’re all about you’re distracted by your thoughts, you’re distracted by your body, you’re distracted by your drives, you’re distracted by every single thing, aren’t you? Every single minute of every single day, okay? Do practices that train your distractions to be less, limit the distractions that are pulling your consciousness down to them. How’s that? What spiritual practices do? Okay, so tell you not to do practices because you have to, but you only have to because you’re getting distracted by things that pull your consciousness down into your thoughts or down into your emotions or down into your body as opposed to your ability to let go of the object of consciousness and you’ll feel yourself being drawn back into the infinite, not all at once, but your world becomes broader inside because they’re not being distracted by the outside.

And ultimately that’s where the masters went when it stopped being distracted outside and motions and thoughts. The self, the consciousness self is not being pulled out of its state of pure awareness and that is what enlightenment is. That’s where masters drop back into the state of union with the whole universe. I told you that’s who you are, but you’re distracted away from it. I hope you understand this is the essence of all spirituality. Alright, so now we ended up with a very evolved body, a very evolved mind. Oh my God, it’s so evolved. You could talk about anything all the time and never stop right or wrong and very, very evolved emotions. And don’t you doubt it? Your heart emanates emotions. Your mind emanates thoughts. What do you mean very evolved emotions? Have you ever felt fear? You ever felt love? You ever felt anger, ever felt embarrassment, ever felt self-conscious, ever felt productive and proud?

These are feelings, the entire spectrum of feelings, aren’t they? You’re so evolved. Excuse me, you’re objects of consciousness. We can watch my words here. Your objects of consciousness are so evolved that it allows your consciousness to experience a broader array. Ultimately if your body is capable. And what happened is your mind became so brilliant, it took over your body. Your body can’t fly. Oh yeah, it can not because of your body, it didn’t do anything, didn’t sprout wings, but your mind was able to create things that let you fly, that let you go to the moon. So just see, you have a very, very evolved objects of consciousness at your disposal. You then there the self at your disposal. You can do all these physical things, these emotional things and these mental things and expand your conscious phenomenally. Again, expand your objects of consciousness phenomenally so that the consciousness has a larger universe to live in.

You have a way larger universe than your siblings other humans. A hundred years ago they had no idea that there was computers. They had no idea there was ai. I mean look what your consciousness and you’re totally comfortable with it. You learn in five minutes you can do stuff. Look at your universe. How much has expanded from an amoeba or from a fish or from anything? You are brilliant. You’re a great being. The trouble is your emotions are capable. Your emotional body is capable of total love. It’s capable of experiencing total, total blissful love pouring out at all times. But what if something happens that the physical body doesn’t like? Masters are transcendent of physical bodies. When Gandhi was shot most your too young to know what happened with a Gandhi, very great being and he was giving a lecture in India and some person that didn’t like his teachings pulled out a gun and shot him.

As he fell to the ground, he turned to that man and perna to the death of his being in forgiveness. How conscious do you have to be to have transcended your body to that level? So we are capable of great things. Alright, now let’s get down to that’s the potential. If you can handle everything that happens to you, you don’t have to get distracted by it. You deal with it when it’s happening, but then it’s over. You get sick, okay? Your body’s sick, you get distracted by it some, right? But you don’t come all the way down. Next thing you know you’re not sick anymore. It’s over, but it’s not over to you. Why? Because you’re afraid of getting sick again. You blame this. You blame that. You do stuff with your mind that keeps you distracted when it doesn’t have to be anymore. Let’s give a little example.

Do you ever think about your past things that bothered you in the past? Do you ever find that they come back up, that disturb you now they’ll never happen again. You were five years old, you’re eight years old, 10 years old, 20 years ago. Why are you doing that? You’re now being distracted not by something that’s happening, but because you used your brilliant mind, it’s brilliant. It has the ability to haunt you for the rest of your life. You had divorced 10 years ago, you don’t date anymore. I don’t see anybody. I don’t like it. I hate men or women. You can do that, can’t you? Can you do that with your mind? Is it distracting? Has it governed your life and determined what you’re willing to do or what you’re willing to experience and not experience? You did that. You held those things inside your mind, so now they distract you.

That’s why you’re locked in the cage of limited awareness. You can get so lost in your mind that you don’t even experience the outside world. That’s a trauma is the mind so scarred and so disturbed by something that happened years ago that the vast majority of your life is thinking about that and how to avoid that and complaining about it and so on. It is possible that a child can get so traumatized by seeing their parents in a car accident, something like that, that they never talk again for the rest of their life. What is that about? There’s nothing. It’s over, but it’s not over inside of them because they couldn’t handle what happened. They couldn’t handle the level of emotional and mental disturbance that got created due to that event so that now their consciousness is limited to that, to what they’re focused on and what they’re focused on is the trauma of the event.

So this is what’s going on. Evolution means that you are able to handle things so they’re going on when they’re going on physically, emotionally, mentally, and then they’re over. You didn’t keep them, you didn’t store them inside. If you want to bring it back, bring it back, you have a memory, but not that you stored all the emotions and all the problems so that now it comes back by itself, doesn’t it? Next thing you know we have nightmares. Next thing you know, somebody says something, you get all offended. What did you do? I ask you a question. Does your past run much of your life right now? You have no idea how much you think you like. Some things don’t like other things. It’s all because of your past experiences. If you’ve never experienced anything, you need to like it or not like it. So you stored this stuff in here and so now the world is hitting it and you’re either running toward it or away from it.

You’re not running toward the world, away from the world. You’re running either toward this stuff you stored inside. It felt so good and you liked it or you’re running away from the stuff you stored inside. The world is just going about its business, but it’s hitting your stuff. It’s so much so that your entire life is now lived from down there. What you want, what you don’t want, what you like, what you don’t like, who you like, who you don’t like. You get into a relationship with somebody. You feel love, you feel good. She reminded of your sister or this or that, or she liked the same. People sit there and say, oh, but she likes same kind of books that I like and that means nothing. Believe me, it won’t stay that way. Have you noticed? You are a very complex being in there.

Why? Because every experience you had that you weren’t able to handle, you stored. You stored it as something I like and I want it to happen again. Or you stored it somebody didn’t like, I never want to happen again. And so now somebody shows up and hits the bad one. You don’t like them. But if you hadn’t had that experience years ago, you would be meeting in a purse like anybody else. Your entire experience of the consciousness is distracted by this garbage you stored inside. So it’s distracted by your body, what experiences you’re having distracted by your emotions, both having and had and distracted by your thought patterns. So that’s called being lost. And by the way, that is a fall from the garden. What does it mean you are God consciousness. You’re the entire universe. Oh come, I don’t experience that. I experience fear and anxiety and I’m scared this thing will happen again.

And I don’t want to see my ex-husband. Why is that my universe? Because you’re distracted by the stuff you stored inside your mind and your emotions. And I’m telling you that’s the only reason that you’re not an enlightened master because you are. But what could it be to be an enlightened master if the master is sitting there staring at a picture and doesn’t ever take his consciousness off of it and that’s what you’re doing. So that is the state of a human being lost now distracted by what the conscience is looking at. And now let’s talk about how small. I said the me’s world was small, wouldn’t it? You all agree? Oh, maybe little tiny little thing. Plusing around doing nothing. Right? Okay, you live somewhere on the planet earth. How many people on the planet earth? 8.3 billion. Not million billion. So you’re really special.

You’re one of 8.3 billion of the things hanging on the planet earth that’s very small in the mean is not so far away, is it? How? By the way, how long going to stay here? How long are you going to stay here being nothing. One of 8.3 billion. Boy, you’re really special. One of 8.3 billion things on the planet Earth, right? What? 50, 60, 70, 80. I’ll give you 90, a hundred years. How long has the earth been here? 4.5 billion. So now what are you part of? Nothing. It’s so meaningless but you don’t think it’s meaningless, do you? Because you’re distracted by your thoughts about you, by your emotions about you, which are all built upon the experiences you have had. And I say this to you and I know you don’t like it, which are nothing. You have not experienced anything compared to what there is to experience every moment of your life you’re having experience, how many you’re missing, what’s the ratio of how many you’re having at that moment versus how many are going on everywhere that you’re not experiencing?

There’s no number. Small enough is there? That’s what you have going inside your mind and your emotions. You have limited yourself to this tiny world. Why is that different than amoeba? Right? And by the way, that’s just the planet earth. There are 1.3 million earths inside the sun. I had you down to nothing a moment ago now of that nothing. 1.3 million earths inside the sun and the sun is one of 300 billion stars in one galaxy and there are 2 trillion galaxies. You want to be important? Talk to me in the realm of things, what’s going on? You got lost being really small. You’re busy being really small, aren’t you? How many of you have a world that cares about what the weather is if it’s 65 or 75, if it’s humid kind of affection, doesn’t it? You care about it, don’t you? Look what you’re doing. You are a great being and look what you’ve done to yourself.

You’ve limited this universal expanded consciousness. How small are you staring at? What? Answer me? I want to know. Are you willing to once in your life look at reality. It’s pretty nothing what you’re looking at, isn’t it? But it’s everything to you. Forget weather. Hey Sally, how you doing? And Sally doesn’t turn around. How you doing? You freaked out all day. Next time you see Sally, I want to talk to her. You’ve limited your consciousness, which is very great and again, I’ll make this serious. I don’t quote you’ve ever done has nothing to do with it. Do take karma, throw out the window, take all that stuff, throw it away. You are an enlightened great being. That is one that just one with God. You are that that consciousness is God consciousness, okay? However, if you did something that hurt somebody three years ago and you feel bad about it and you can’t see the person anymore and you don’t know how to interact with ’em and talk to ’em, there’s your karma. You held on to something, therefore your consciousness is limited to that. Therefore, that’s who you are. That’s where you live and your whole world will be about that. They say that the moment of enlightenment, all karmic seas are burned. Of course they are because you’re holding onto them. You understand that?

I’m going to be really honest to tell you the truth. When I was really, really little, I probably peed in my bed. Should I be embarrassed when I was two years old, 1-year-old? Of course not. Why? It’s a terrible thing to do. Well I don’t want to karmically bound by that, right? Where’s the karma? You grew out of it. You don’t need to learn anymore. You learned how to hold yourself together. You learn how to do stuff when you’re in grade school. You did some stuff that wasn’t nice, right? And you grew up, you get to grow up when you’re little. You threw tantrums, you this and you learned it doesn’t work so good. You evolved. So it’s fine, it’s fine. The trouble is you’re busy focusing on what you held in there. The past is over. People don’t like it. If I say forget karma, right?

If not that, if you suppressed it so you don’t have to deal with it. I’m not talking about that. That’s just a form of mental layers. I’m saying if literally you were playing a piano piece when you’re in fifth grade and you made a mistake at the recital and you got really embarrassed and you kept it your entire life, no more piano, no more, no, I can’t play instruments. No, I never was good at you. Understand that that’s your karma. Not the fact that you made the mistake at the recital. That’s why you have recitals to learn. You’re allowed to learn, right? So you sit there and play now you play much better. Don’t you dare hold onto that. You should feel proud, say thank you, thank you for helping me learn. But you can’t because you’re not willing to let go of these things.

That’s what you hold onto. If you are able to let it go, it is not affecting your life. You have the right to grow. If you were perfect, you wouldn’t be here. Earth is a place of soul sin to evolve, but you won’t be willing to evolve because you’re embarrassed that you made a mistake as you said something wrong or whatever it is. Or you got to zit on your face at the high school prom and so you ruin yourself because you hold these things in your mind. You hold these things in your heart and you have this whole concept what your body’s supposed to look like and it’s not supposed to age. Come on, let’s be serious. Is anybody listening? Is your body going to age? Is it going to keep looking like it is when you’re handsome and beautiful at 20? Let’s come back at 85 and you don’t like it?

Alright, you built this thing called a self concept. Let’s just get down to the bottom, didn’t you? Psychology tells you, you did. You built an ego. What is that something you did with your mind? These are thoughts you held together in your mind based on your past experiences. I’m the person who likes this. I’m the person who doesn’t like that I’m the person. A terrible thing happened to. No, you are in there. You’re not your past experiences, you held onto them and then you built a whole model of who you are and what you like and what you want and what you don’t want. It’s called the ego. I love the psychology calls it your self-concept was a concept, something you made up. Self-concept is not who you are is what your mind thinks you want to be and you define yourself and then you get all weird.

If people agree with you, don’t agree with you. It’s very interesting, but it’s really not because all of it distracts your consciousness. You’re distracted by your body, you’re distracted by your emotions, you’re distracted by your thoughts and that’s the normal state when you step on the path. Spirituality is that you step back. You don’t suppress, you don’t deny, you step back a step, Simon. It says take a step back and notice what’s going on inside your mind and what’s going on inside your heart. You do notice, don’t you? But it’s so powerful. The pull is so powerful that it causes you to act according to that. If you had a bad divorce and then somebody said, oh, I saw Alan the other day. You get weird where I don’t want to go there. All of a sudden these past experiences that you couldn’t handle are running your life.

If you do that, you don’t cease to be distracted by the stuff that already happened and the next thing you know your whole life, where do you want to live? Well, I don’t want to live in Georgia because that’s where Alan was from. You do this all the time. I want to have the experience I had before. I liked it again. I don’t have the experience had before. I didn’t like it there. You just defined your life based on your past experiences. Your past experiences was to teach you how to not get distracted by things. Here, let’s say you’re watching the Olympics. Some people are very great at one area and you’re on the balance beam and you slip. You ever seen them? They spent four years of their life practicing this stuff day and night. They don’t budge. They just get right back on that beam as if nothing happened.

What? That takes real discipline. You didn’t allow the experience to determine the next money, the next moment of your life. That is called being able to not get distracted by something that’s happening on a tiny planet. That’s what I do. I learned a long time ago, anything that happens that starts to disturb him, I take him by the, I don’t yell at him. I used to. I take him by the hand and we take a little step on top of the planet, but the planet’s like my chair and he sits on top of the planet and he looks around absolute black, dark, empty space, which goes on everywhere for a long time. And you notice the sun and you notice that that’s one of 300 billion stars. What exactly is bothering you? Who said what? That assaulted. You have the right to do this with your mind.

You start using your mind to liberate you instead of bind you. It’s called neutralizing the thoughts. Eventually you get to a point where you’re married or you’re dating and if wonderful, you think a wonderful relationship with this person and they had a really bad day at work and when they came home they weren’t very nice. Their a normal loving little sweet person, right? Can you handle that? Can you handle that event? It’s a meaningless, meaningless event in the course of every other thing that’s going on in the whole universe. How small is that event? But you can’t handle it. You’re distracted by it to that’s all you think about for the next hour or two hours and then eventually the next day say, why’d you treat me like that? Why would you say something like that? I would never talk to you like that. What are you doing?

You couldn’t handle the experience, could you? But they teach you it’s normal. That’s what it means to be human. Well, you’re not human. You’re God descended. You’re a very great being and I would beg you that when an event like that happens, will you please put it in perspective in relation to everything else that went on at that moment? How important is that event? Because you’re distracted by your body, your thoughts, your emotions. That is the most important event in the whole universe, isn’t it? But it’s not really, is it? Are you willing to work on yourself to be able to let go of what you’re distracted by? That is spiritual growth. That’s the bottom line. Can you cease to be distracted by these meaningless things? And your ego is meaningless. It’s meaningless, but it’s not meaningless to you because if it gets what it wants, you like it a lot.

If it gets what it doesn’t want, you don’t like it a lot. So all of a sudden your ego with these concepts of how things are supposed to be run your whole life to the point where if I talk to you like this, most people can’t even understand how you could ever be that they think that to be that detached from your ego, you have to suppress it. But I don’t like when people talk to me like that. My mother talked to me like that. I don’t have to listen. Okay, fine. You want to live like that, live like that. Well, what do I do? Make believe I don’t like it. Make believe I do like it. No, you learn to let go. You learn. You can start by neutralizing. I’m telling you that thing I taught you about how small that moment was. Come on.

How small was that moment? That one person out of 8.3 billion on the planet earth said one word that hit your past stuff and if you hadn’t had that past stuff, it wouldn’t have bothered you. Look how little this is. I don’t want you to live like this. What it means to liberate yourself is to not be bothered by these meaningless things. But what I do then you would come down onto this planet every moment of every day of your life. Things would not bother you. You don’t suppress them, you don’t grab them. They come and they go. You’re able to handle it. Well, what if I had a problem when I was young and now somebody brought it back up and I felt this funny emotion. Fine. You felt a funny emotions. So what you have to do anything about it? It’s fine here it comes in, it goes.

It passes by you stop storing inside of you. Every time you do that, you grew spiritually. Why? Because you were able to handle the object of consciousness that took place so you don’t have to come down and hang out with it. And next thing you know, you’re not bothered by things. You say, I had a bad day. It’s okay. How would you like to be in a relationship with someone like that? You had a bad day. They’re fine. Had a bad day. It’s okay. That’s what you call it. Spiritually evolved being that can handle reality. That’s all that’s happening is reality. The trouble is reality is hitting your stuff and you store this stuff in there. So you start practicing this thing I call letting go. That is the bottom line of real spirituality. What do you mean life happened? I didn’t make it happen.

I did not. I just didn’t go about my business. Life happened. It hit my stuff. What do I do? Make believe I don’t have stuff. That’s ridiculous. That’s spiritually. Don’t even think about it. Push it away. So I have to feel it. No, it’ll stay in there if you push it away. Well, what do I do? It doesn’t feel good. Of course it doesn’t. It hits something you stored in there. Take food that made you sick three years ago and every day tastes a little bit so you remember how sick you got. You get be sick every day. You stored stuff that bothers you years ago. It will bother you again when it gets hit. Why? Because it’s so terrible. No, because you stored it. You don’t have to store it. Okay, fine. It happened. Fine, it happened. Okay, that’s called. It comes up and you let go.

How do you let go my experiences? You relax. That’s the essence of spirituality. In order to resist something, you have to tense and use energy to push it away. I’m resisting what you said. I don’t like what you said. I can’t handle what you said. I will not accept what you said or did. I’m in here resisting it. Then it stays. You didn’t let it pass. Letting go. Acceptance, surrender. These are interstates in which you learn. It’s not worth keeping this in here. There are people that something happens and it ruined their entire relationship. There are people that are married and somebody thinks they got cheated on. They didn’t by the way, but they saw something that made their mind think because they saw a movie once and it was like that. All that stuff gets in there, does it not? And now you think your mind’s thinking about it all the time.

Next thing you know your letter, you’re divorced. You did that. Well, how do I know whether you don’t? No, I would never be able to handle if they ever did anything. Well, maybe you need to learn, handle things you don’t know whether they did or didn’t. And you worry about it. You ruined your life and you ruined your relationship. What if I sit there and say, I love this person. They love me and I’m open and if something happens, I’ll deal with it. When it happens, I’ll worry about it. Think about it. Hire somebody to go check it all out and do everything. And do you hear what I’m telling you? You have to learn to let go. You’ll let go of a part of you that can’t handle reality and you just keep letting go. How? Relax. Now, what does that mean to resist?

You’re going to find out you tense something inside goes like this, pushes it away. If you do that, it stays inside of you. Why? Because you didn’t let it go. You didn’t get rid of it. You suppressed it. You kept that energy inside of you. It will bother you the next day if you call up to Sally to say hello, you shouldn’t turn around and say hello and defend you and you get bothered by it. Next time you see Sally that’s coming back up. Either you say something, Sally, why didn’t you say to me the other day? Well, I thought we were friends or I won’t say anything. That’s call suppression. What about I can handle it? That’s your highest mantra. I can handle that. This one person on a planet earth in one moment didn’t say hello. You should be insulted that you live at that level because you’re a great being and you’re bothering yourself by being distracted by meaningless stuff.

You don’t want to live like that. I don’t want you to live like that. But how do I not? You learn to let it pass. How? Keep your hands to yourself inside. But it hurts. Yeah, it’s got to pass through and you just keep letting go. Letting go. Alright. And then you’ll find out that it didn’t bother you. Next time you learn, it takes time, but you learn to not resist everything and fight everything and worry about everything and get uptight about everything you learn to honor and respect. I don’t know what’s going on. How would I know what’s going on? It’s like you’re basing everything you’re thinking based on your past experiences. Just look what you like, what you don’t like. I told you, what if you had a different past experience? What if instead of something happened in your past like this, it happened that you’d think totally different.

You’d have a totally different opinion of what’s going on, therefore you don’t know anything. Well, how do you live like that? I ask you, how do you not live like that? You get to a point where you realize I’m bothering myself about everything. I’m freaking out about everything. I have all these problems. Instead, you just sit here and say, okay, how could I know anything? I’m just in this little spot experience. What’s on this spot at any moment? Then I have a bunch of moments. God, I can’t say it enough. Do you get it? You don’t know anything. Look at me. I don’t care how many books you read, how many didn’t you read? And by the way, when you read the book, based on the experience you had a week ago, you’ll interpret that book differently. You don’t know anything in relation to what there is to know, which is everything.

And so you learn to let go and be open and be willing to experience realities unfold in front of you. You just get to have opinions and preferences. But don’t hold on so much. How many times have you wanted something and found when you got it it was meaningless? How many times are you afraid of something when happened? You realize, oh, it’s not so bad. You don’t know anything. It’s okay. It’s reality. Is it not reality? Statistically, some of you’re good statisticians, okay? You have one experience in this one moment compared to 800 billion zillion that you’re not having. Statistically, how important is it? Because statistically insignificant and that’s happening every moment of your life. You’re having one experience out of all the experience that could be happening. I’m not telling you to ignore anything, just look at reality. But your ego can’t live like that.

We’re not willing to live like that. So it makes up what I know, and this is, I had this experience and I know this for sure, and you don’t know squat had a different experience. You’re behaving totally different, total different opinions, likes, dislikes. So you get to the point where you let go of that part of you. You let go of this thing you built inside of you that’s destroying your life based on your past experiences. You become what’s called open. And now experiences happen. If they hit something, it’s a good thing. It means it was something in there to get hit. You don’t want it in there. You want to be open, be able to handle things. Remember, evolution is being able to handle things so you’re not distracted by them. So you practice letting go. You just keep letting go. Keep relaxing and releasing, relaxing and releasing so that you’re not storing stuff.

Does that mean you don’t interact with life? Of course you interact with life, but you interact with life by the reality. It’s unfolding in front of you. You look at it, and by the way, it’ll be totally different if you don’t go into a moment with opinions and preferences and hopes and dreams and constant views and fears. You’re actually able to experience the moment and you will know what to do. It’s intuitive. It’s inspiration. How do you interact now based on your preferences, your hopes and your dreams and concepts, views and opinions and fears? They’re nothing. Have a different experience would be different. That’s why the world’s a mess. It is. Everybody is lost in this little package and then they’re trying to make the whole world be the way they want it to be. That’s what wars are. That’s what all the messes. That’s all the imbalances.

That’s why imagine all the people living life at peace and what happen now. That stuff’s going on there. So you be something special. You’d be a spiritual being. Are you willing to be open? Are you willing to let go and then interact because you have clarity and centeredness? What happens if you do that? What I want you to get, how would you like to wake up in the morning instead of worrying thing that’s going to happen today to wake up and say, wow, I get to have another day on the planet Earth. I don’t care what happens. I can handle anything that happens. Doesn’t, man, I don’t go to work. Sure, you go to work, it’s fun. You have a relationship. They’re fun, have a relationship. But I’m not afraid that something will go wrong with the relationship or that something will go wrong at work.

I’m just open. You’re just there ready to experience reality. You can only get there when you finally can say to yourself, I can handle anything. Not by resisting, not by damping it down, but by letting it all can pass through me. You’re going to die. Some people, they’re 23 years old, they say you’re going to die. They freak out. I don’t want to die. You’re going to die. Why’d you say that? And now let’s say you’re in a situation and you have some terrible illness and the doctor says, well, you have six months left and there’s nothing we can do about it. Wow, okay. I can’t handle it. I want you to be able to handle everything and anything. Imagine that. What happens when you do that? You’re not being distracted by this world or by your mind or by your past emotions. When you stop being distracted, the consciousness isn’t pulled down.

You will reach a state where you feel it pulling up by itself and see all the ascend. Right now you don’t realize it, but you will. Soon. I help. Talk helps you. Your consciousness is always being pulled down. Look what’s going on. Be careful. It’s being pulled down to the thoughts, pulled down, the emotions pulled down to the world, always looking down when you can handle things, it doesn’t do that. You don’t have to do that anymore. The consciousness now ascends by itself, not because spiritual practices, because you ceased to do what’s making it not go up. And the next thing you know, it starts floating up. It starts going up. You feel it. You feel it pushing up, pulling up inside, and you keep letting go. And it will go up by itself. Like hot air balloon take off. Its tethers, untether it, and it will go up.

Untether your consciousness from being distracted by your body, emotions and mind. And it will go up naturally. So that’s the bottom line of spirituality to practice this help. Of course, they help anything you do that’s higher than what you would be doing otherwise, I’m all for it. Okay? So yeah, it’s not all one size fits all. But if your intent is to let go of yourself, to not be distracted by the ego, that’s a big one. By the body and by the emotions, that’s your intent. Then do the best you can and let it evolve. Excuse me. Let it cease to be devolved. Alright? I hope you understand some of it. They’re very great being. There’s a line in a shirt. My gee, we every morning for 50 years says, the man who has seen God see’s God everywhere. That’s they’re not busy looking at themselves. When your consciousness cease to look at you, it sees reality. It sees the wholeness. Jai.

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