Tami Simon: Welcome to Season 3 of The Michael Singer Podcast. Michael Singer is the author of the widely influential New York Times bestsellers The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment, and most recently Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament, produced in partnership with Shanti Publications. The Michael Singer Podcast brings you select recordings from the Temple of the Universe, a yoga and meditation center that Michael founded in 1975. This episode is on “Relaxing Behind Your Inner Disturbance.”
Sounds True would also like you to know about an extraordinary eight-part video course that we’ve created with Michael Singer. It’s called Living From a Place of Surrender: The Untethered Soul in Action. It’s an online course many people report to be utterly life-changing. You can find out more at michaelsingerpodcast.com. And you can save 15 percent off any Michael Singer program available through Sounds True when you use the code Singer15 at checkout. That’s “Singer,” numeral 1, numeral 5. And now, “Relaxing Behind Your Inner Disturbance” with Michael Singer.
Michael Singer: The more you grow—really grow—the simpler it becomes until it becomes so simple that it just looks absurd that people are suffering—that we are doing with our lives, what we are doing for absolutely no reason. And what people look for if they even wake up a little to say, “I want to have a better life. I want to suffer less. I want to feel more joy,” is they want these things called techniques. And I playfully always say, “I don’t teach techniques,” when the truth of the matter is that’s all I ever teach, but people can’t hear it. So let’s focus on that. I want to focus on the highest technique. Don’t expect to hear anything new, but I just want to clarify this. Just to give us something to work around, I’m going to start by saying the highest technique is relaxation. That is the technique—relaxation. What does that mean?
Well, certainly when you do asanas in yoga, it’s all about relaxation. You get your body into a position where there’s a balance of stress and tension and you relax into it. And if you’ve ever done that, you feel an energy change, you feel a chemical change. It changes you to relax past the point that you naturally would go, that you naturally would exist. Same thing happens with exercise of any sort, but specifically yoga because it sets up this balance of tension and relaxation, and then you relax into it and what you do is go past where you normally hang out. You’re getting past your comfort zone and all kinds of changes take place. I don’t do a lot of Hatha yoga. I do some by myself, but not a Hatha yogi.
But the more I grow, the more I see the changes in me and I see why that process is so important—why Hatha yoga has lasted [the] thousands of years that it has, and why it’s so important. And it really has nothing to do with exercise. It has to do with relaxation. It is about relaxation. That is what it’s about—is relaxing past where you would normally go. That’s very nice to do that on the mat and have that experience and sometimes you can get so intoxicated from yoga that you get up and long after that … That’s why yoga’s becoming so popular. It’s always been popular, but now it’s becoming very popular in the Western world because it’s not exercise. It’s way more than exercise. It is a change of your being because you are willing to relax past the points that you used to hang out with, changes your mind, changes your heart, changes your whole energy system and everything.
But when I say the highest technique is relaxation, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the following: Let’s start with your life. What is your life? What is your life? What it literally is is something very simple. There is a planet spinning around the middle of empty space. If you want to see a picture of it, I have it hanging on the wall as you come in—the entry wall—that’s not really just a black blank picture. There’s a tiny little ball there and that is a picture of your Earth from two million miles out. So go out there and look at that planet.
So what is your life? Well, your life is the fact that you come down—your consciousness comes down onto this planet. And wherever I drop you, no matter where I drop, you just pick a place on the planet. Wherever I drop you, there is what is going on there. It was going on before you came. It’s going out where you’re not. It’ll go on after you leave. There’s just stuff going on at every single point on the Planet Earth—the rainforest, the Antarctic, New York, the countryside, doesn’t matter. Anywhere you go, there’s something going on. Could be the crickets, could be rain, could be people. It doesn’t matter. Everywhere you go, there’s something going on on the Planet Earth. Very good.
So what your life is, is you drop down onto the planet and wherever you are things are going on. Those things come in and you experience them. That’s your life. You are experiencing what is unfolding in front of you at any given moment. That is what’s happening, isn’t it? It’s not complicated. You are in there and you are in your experiencing what is unfolding in the world around you on the Planet Earth, the parts you see at any given moment in your life. It’s just what’s happening at that moment that you’re experiencing.
Now, if I asked you how difficult is that? How difficult is it to come down onto that planet? Wherever you are, it doesn’t matter—the same thing’s happening. That’s what’s happening. Wherever you are at that particular point, that’s what’s happening. So I’m going to take you down and you’re going to come visit the Planet Earth. That’s what you should do every day is come down and say, “Oh, I think I’ll go down to Earth. It looks like fun. I’m visiting. I’m checking out the Planet Earth.” If I send you up to Mars, that’s exciting. You’ll be the first person that goes to Mars; you’ll check out what’s going on at Mars. Wherever I put you, there’s something going on. Not much, but something. You’d take notes and experience you got to be the first person on Mars.
Well, you get to be the person on the Planet Earth who’s experiencing what you’re experiencing. If I had you off the planet and told you I was going to take you down onto the planet and said, “How hard is that?” you would look at me like I was insane. How hard is what? That I’m going to drop you down on the planet and you just experience whatever’s going on wherever I put you.
OK, well where’s the hard part? Why is that hard? I don’t understand. It’s literally a non-sequitur. The word hard doesn’t come into that. I’m not doing anything. Is it hard to experience what’s in front of you? How hard is it for you to see what you see now and hear what you hear now? Working hard at it—it’s just easy. It’s what happens, right? It just puts you down in front of an ocean and your job is to see the ocean. And? No, no, and, that’s it. That’s your job. It’s a pretty easy job.
Well, what happens if the ocean gets wavy? See the waves. What happens if it gets calm? See the calm? I mean, I got no job. You have no job. Your job is to experience what’s happening in front of you. Wow. There, that’s what your life is. Your entire life is every moment there will be something else in front of you, right? Keeps changing and you will experience what’s in front of you. So there’s nothing complicated about this, nothing hard about this. So what the deepest technique is: relax into that. We’re going to go there. We’re going to spend time with you on this. I want you to relax into that.
What do you mean? If you are standing in a supermarket, then that’s where you are at this particular moment in your life and that’s what you’re experiencing. Remember, I came down to the Planet Earth and I dropped into Publix. That’s a place on the Planet Earth. That’s all it is. It’s just a place on the Planet Earth. And I dropped in there and I’m experiencing—what? I don’t know,—whatever’s going on. People are going by with carts. It’s weird, right? That’s going on the Planet Earth. It’s not going on Mars. I’ll tell you that right now.
So basically people are going by with carts and there’s cash registers and there’s different products on the shelves and that’s what it means to be in Publix. And so most people never experienced what I just told you. They miss the experience of being there, whereas the experience of being there is your life because that’s what you’re experiencing. That’s what’s happening. So what do you do is you go into Publix because that’s where you are, and at least for a moment, this is what I’m asking you—is your technique. You go to that place and you relax. Go to what place? That you have dropped down onto that little tiny ball on the Planet Earth and you’re experiencing what’s in front of you. That’s the technique I’m telling you.
I am experiencing what’s in front of you. I have no other job. There’s nothing else going on. My entire job in this moment is to experience what’s in front of me. And I’m telling you, you won’t be able to do it. You won’t, and it’s very important that you won’t be able to do it. You mean—I won’t see people rolling their carts by? You’ll see people rolling their carts by, and you’ll wonder what you should say to them, and is your cart in the way and do you look silly standing there. They’re going to be something else going on besides experiencing what’s going on. You kind of add it to the formula a little bit, kind of spice it up a bit with your … it’s like you’re going to find out that you can’t even stand there in Publix or in some supermarket or on the side of the road and just be there.
Don’t get mad at yourself. Don’t do anything. I’m just saying if you want to know the highest spiritual technique, I just gave it to you—is you practice being there, just being there. You practice wherever you are. You take a moment and you see whether you can be there and what you will find is that you can’t. Then I want you to see why and it won’t take you long because you’re going to see I’m here, I’m here, I’m experiencing it, but there’s something else here. There’s static. There’s the noise of my mind. It’s worrying about things—thinking I look silly. It’s being self-conscious, it’s being embarrassed, it’s being scared. That’s what it’s doing. You need to see that. You really, really need to see that. Why? Because you’re going to find out that you can’t experience your life when that’s going on because you’re experiencing that.
And that is what happens to our lives. It’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Your mind and your neurosis and your fear and your anxiety and all the noise of the personal self. You know what I mean by that? The you in there has stolen your ability to experience this simple thing that’s going on, which is what’s in front of you. And because of that, we get really weird. Because I can’t stand there and experience Publix; I’m instead experiencing my self-created neurosis. I’m worrying about things that happened years ago. I’m worrying about things that might happen later. I’m wondering whether I look silly, whether people like me, whether I should say something, or why did I say that? I’m just constantly creating disturbance in my life for myself instead of experiencing my life. And then it’s so bad that I don’t think that what’s wrong is that I can’t experience my life. I think that I need to go out there and control and manipulate what’s unfolding in front of me so that my mind and my emotions feel better in here because they’re bothering me so much that I can’t just stand there.
I have to talk to somebody. I have to do something, I have to leave. I don’t know. I have to do something so that I feel better. And so I can’t experience my life. And instead I have to struggle and be in a state of constant anxiety at one level or another.
So the technique I’m talking about is really very, very simple and at some point it becomes a lot of fun and it can’t not work. So what you do is wherever you are—I don’t care if you’re driving your car, I don’t care if you’re stopped at a stop sign, I don’t care if you’re walking in Publix, I don’t care if you’re walking down the street—wherever you are, be aware that I am in here and I’m experiencing what’s around me, and then you’ll see that there’s all this noise inside.
What do I do about that? The high being realizes that what I do about that every single time is relax. That’s not what you’re going to want to do, but you don’t want to relax into the asana either when it gets a little tight. You don’t want to relax; you want to get up. But it is relaxing past that point that takes you deeper within yourself—is the same thing here.
So if I’m standing there, I get to just stand there. I get to experience what it’s like to be at the Planet Earth with this going on. It’s kind of fascinating. Any place you go, it’s fascinating that this is what’s going on on the planet. But I can’t because my mind keeps telling me there’s something else I’m supposed to be doing. There’s something I did wrong, there’s something I’m going to do wrong. I don’t know. I don’t need to tell you. You got one going on inside of you, I’m sure. Right? It’s creating tension. That’s what it does—creates tension.
Everything you do, it’s telling you you should have done something else so that you can’t ever feel OK about what’s going on. So the technique of relaxation—which is going to take you a while to get it, but at least you’re practicing with it—is to say wherever you are, “Bring consciousness to bear.” What’s meant by witness consciousness and mindfulness is bring your center of consciousness back to the point of realizing I am in here experiencing what’s out there.
How about I do it that simply? I am in here experiencing what’s out there. Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I be OK with that? I’m on a date or out with somebody. I am in here experiencing what it’s like to be with this person. That’s all. Right? I’m sitting having dinner doing this or going to movies, whatever’s happening. That’s what’s happening—is I’m in here experiencing this experience and what you’re going to see is you can’t do that.
That there’s just all this neurosis, all this noise that gets created in the psyche, which stands between you, the experiencer, and the experience you’re having. Very good. Your mind gets weird and your emotions get weird so that you’re not able to just be there experiencing what’s happening at your starting position. The question is: what do I do about that?
So a wise being realizes that because it is uncomfortable. What’s uncomfortable? The wise person realizes it’s not the situation outside that’s uncomfortable. Situations are just there. They’re just Publix. They’re just a date, there’s just a movie. They’re just what’s happening on the Planet Earth where you happen to be. Be somewhere else, there’ll be something else happening.
You understand? Look to the left, there’s something else happening. Look to the right, there’s something else happening. It’s not what’s creating the disturbance. The disturbance is within you. You are creating that disturbance. Outside, there is just the experience of the moment. The question is: what do I do about the fact that I’m uncomfortable? You first realize—and this is like 50 to 60 percent of your entire spiritual growth—is you realize it really has nothing to do with what’s happening outside. If you pick me up and put me somewhere else, in a very short period of time, I get worried about that. I’ll be causing myself trouble about wherever you put me. It just changes what it says, but it’s never OK. It’s always scared. It’s always anxious. It’s always thinking it did something wrong. It’s supposed to do something; it needs something. It’s afraid of something. Do you understand that?
That’s where you get wise—where you realize, well … My friend of mine many, many years ago in the ‘70s said to me, “Just catch on. If it wasn’t this, it’d be something else.” I never forgot that because that’s true. Whatever’s bothering you right now that you think you need to solve, it’s a big problem today. If it wasn’t that, I guarantee you it’d be something else. Haven’t you caught on yet? It’s always something.
So the wise person catches on that it is not the unfolding of the situation outside of you at any given moment that is causing your issues. Even if that changed, you’d still have issues and so you realize this is a problem I am generating within myself. I am creating my neurosis. How do you know? Just stop in the middle of Publix. Just stop there and see if you’re OK. I mean there’s no lions or tigers in Publix. There’s really nothing happening that’s so threatening, but you’re not going to be OK. You’ll be embarrassed. You be self-conscious, you’ll think you forgot something.
There’s going to be disturbance inside, right? If it doesn’t, within the first 30 seconds, it’ll be given another 15 seconds. You start catching on and that’s what I need you to see. At any given moment, I’m experiencing what’s in front of me. That’s not the problem.
We’ll talk about there are extremes in which lions could be jumping at you. Then yes, what you are experiencing is a definite problem. That is like—what percentage of the time you’re being jumped on by a lion and what percentage of the time literally are you in danger? What percentage of your time, of your life, the moments that are unfolding in front of you, have you literally been in danger to where it is natural to be scared? There are some, nobody’s saying it’s not. There are some; it’s pretty small. I’m telling you, it’s not even 0.001 percent of all of your time that you’ve literally been threatened with danger.
What percentage of the time do you feel fear? Anybody want to be honest? Ninety-seven, 98, about all the rest of the time. So something’s way out of whack here. I’m challenging. You’re intelligent people. There’s something wrong here and that’s when you catch on. I am in here experiencing what’s going on on the Planet Earth in front of me. There’s not a problem with that. They’re not supposed to be a problem with that. If you want to take the extremes, I said I’ll give you a 0.01. Yeah, there could be a problem. We’ll go to that later if you want. I want to deal with the 99.99. There’s not a problem. You’re just experiencing the reality of what is unfolding in front of you, driving down the road. Yet inside I’m experiencing problems, always. I’m experiencing fear, I’m experiencing anxiety, I’m experiencing self-consciousness, I’m experiencing need, I’m experiencing embarrassment. You name it, you got it. Jealousy. I don’t know. You name it, there’s something going on in there.
So it’s not the outside that is causing that. That is a great breakthrough when you realize that. And I’m telling you one way to realize it is just stop at any given moment and honestly look out there. What’s out there? Nothing. There’s some cars driving by. There’s nothing happening. There’s nothing, OK? Really at this moment—yet inside there’s tension inside. Inside there’s disturbance, inside there’s fear, need, whatever. OK? There’s disturbance inside.
So you first separate the fact that the outside is not causing this disturbance inside. It is something you are doing yourself. That is a major breakthrough. And until you realize that—I asked you a moment ago, what are you going to do about this disturbance? Until you realize—and you need to practice to see this yourself. It is not happening outside, it is happening inside. I am doing this because otherwise you’re going to see you’re disturbed inside. You’re not comfortable with it and you’re going to try to solve it by changing things outside. And that makes me sad to even say it because you’re just gone in such a wrong direction. I can’t solve anything, and that is how almost everybody lived their lives—is to sit there and say, “I’m not comfortable inside. Therefore, something needs to change outside so that I’ll be comfortable inside.”
There’s nothing I can teach you that’s more important than daring to look at that because otherwise you’re going to waste your life. Why? If the problem is not outside, the solution can’t be outside. If it is true that 99.9 percent of the time if you stopped and just looked at what was going on out there, there’s no reason to be scared. There’s nothing going on that is causing a major problem, and yet you’re uncomfortable, yet you’re disturbed almost all the time.
You are creating your disturbance yourself by what you are doing inside of you. Once you see that, the concept that what I should be doing is working to change everything outside of me so that I’m OK inside of me starts to look insane. The problem is not outside, so the solution can’t be outside. And so what you end up doing if you’re not careful is you’re not OK. You feel scared, you feel left out, you feel embarrassed—whatever the heck it is—and so you try to create situations outside that for a moment [to] override that.
If somebody comes up to you and says, “God, you look so handsome standing there, you remind me of some movie stars,” for a moment you feel good until they say just kidding or whatever, until somebody else says something, or until your mind says something. “God, I wonder why I look this way. What am I wearing? I need to get more of these.”
It’ll do something to cause more disturbance because somebody made you feel good. So if you try to solve your inner problem that you are creating within yourself—we’ll talk about that in a moment, how you do that. You’re creating this problem inside, even though nothing’s happening outside. The best you can do is to spend your effort and your time to manipulate and control situations around you so they make you feel better for a moment and then you have to keep doing it over and over again. There is work you need to do, but it is inside yourself.
Anyways, we’ve looked at it from many different angles. That’s what I always talk about. But let’s come back to your inside and something’s going on outside. You’ll see that you’re being disturbed. You’ll see that there’s disturbance inside of you, period. Anxiety, disturbance, whatever the heck it is. The question becomes: what are you going to do about that? If what you try to do about it is to change the outside—find a new girlfriend, change this, get a new apartment, buy some new clothes, whatever the heck it is—the best you can do is succeed for a moment, temporarily put an external situation on top of the neurosis you’re creating inside. It will never last. You know it hasn’t lasted.
How do you know it won’t last? Because you’ve been doing it your whole life and you’re still not OK. Every moment of your life is what you’ve been trying to do. Get the outside situation that made you OK. Meet the right person, do the right thing, get the right car, get the right grades, go to the right college—to every single thing that you’ve tried to do every moment. And yet everyone you know is doing that and they’ve done it their entire life and no one’s OK.
What does that tell you? It doesn’t work. It can’t work. If you’re going to create the neurosis inside yourself, it’s not true that you can create a situation outside you that undoes that. It can only temporarily feel better and then the same junk goes on again.
All right, so now we’re standing in Publix, I’m in here, the world is unfolding out there, and I see there’s this veil of disturbance. You come down to, “What do I do about that?” We already told you what’s not going to work, so what’s my alternative? The alternative, believe it or not, is to relax.
What does that mean? What does it mean? Relax. It means that you are doing something inside yourself that is causing this disturbance. Publix is not causing the disturbance. The cars driving on the road are not causing disturbance. Being out on the date is not causing the disturbance. But you’re sure causing yourself a lot of disturbance about those things.
So instead, relax. That’s best I’m going to say. Then I’ll work down to detail with you. Instead of doing whatever you’re doing that is creating all that disturbance in there, I’m asking you to relax. That’s the alternative to letting yourself create all this disturbance—is you just take a position of, “I’m in here, the world is out there doing its thing and I’m creating all this disturbance about it. I’m remembering the past and freaking out. I’m thinking about the future and freaking out. I’m feeling stupid standing here, relaxing.” Whatever it is I’m doing that inside myself.
Tami Simon: Faced with life’s challenges and uncertainties, many of us feel quite stressed and overwhelmed, but does it have to be this way? With his newest book, Living Untethered, Michael Singer has written a follow-up to the spiritual classic The Untethered Soul, taking us within to our still and liberated center. To learn more about this book and Michael Singer’s other offerings, please visit living-untethered.com.
Michael Singer: So the net result is you come in here, you look and see that you are in here, and the disturbance is being created, and what you do is relax. What does that mean? It means there will be an impulse to try to do something about this disturbance. Instead, you relax. I don’t know how to explain it any closer. It’s just like relaxing into the asana. There’s this tension that’s been created. Instead of giving into that tension and getting up or doing whatever it’s trying to urge you to do, you just—even it could be as simple as standing a certain way. You’ll notice you feel embarrassed, so you cross your arms a certain way or you sit a certain way or you do something or you talk to somebody.
I hate to talk to you about this stuff because people don’t like to deal with that. You’re going to get very mad at me if you start doing this because you’re going to come and say, “Ever since I started doing this, I’m much worse than I used to be.” No, you’re not. You just never paid attention to how uncomfortable you are inside yourself. And if you are that uncomfortable inside yourself, and that’s why you’re talking to people and that’s why you’re buying what you’re buying and that’s why you’re doing what you’re doing, you’re projecting your discomfort into your life. Instead, you’re relaxed. That’s an alternative. I relax.
So let’s say I’m with a group of friends. They’re talking and they’re bringing up different conversations. My mind is thinking what I should say, but I’m afraid to say it or I thought I said it or my way was right. Who the heck knows? It’s just doing its “me thing” because it’s uncomfortable and it wants to figure out what it should do in order to get more comfortable. What you are going to find is that the highest technique is to relax. I’m going to keep coming back to that. Relax.
If the reason you’re about to say something is to try to impress somebody—to try and make yourself look acceptable to who the heck knows, whatever it is—relax instead. Relax within yourself. And what you’re going to see is that everything gets better. At first it’s scary because you’ll realize that all these actions and things you were doing, and all the noise the mind was making, was like an attempt to protect yourself. It’s almost as if something inside you thinks you’re under attack all the time—that you can’t even be in the presence of a friend and feel comfortable. Not to mention lovers or anybody or anything. And you just realize how scared you are. That’s what you’re going to see. We get to the bottom of this: you’re scared in there. I mean really scared.
You’re going to start to realize everything you’re doing—how you dress, how you talk, everything is because I’m scared and I’m trying to portray a persona. I’m trying to do something, behave a certain way, that I can feel safer because I’m keeping at a distance. Can anybody relate to that? Do you understand that? Right? ‘
And I told you the way to test that is imagine if you dress different than the way you dress. Change your hair, do this, and then go out there a way that you don’t feel comfortable with, and you’re going to see that you’re doing everything you’re doing to try to create a comfort zone. Why do you need a comfort zone? Because I’m scared. People who are not scared don’t need comfort zones. They’re just not scared. There’s children—they just run around. But we can’t do that. So we end up with these behavior patterns that we develop or personalities [that] are an attempt to hide ourselves from this fear inside, and now we have to sell ourselves all the time.
We have to do everything to try and keep that persona—that facade—up. If I had my way, I—like you, I don’t want you to live like that. I don’t want you to spend your entire life worrying about whether people accept you or not, or whether you said the right thing, or whether you wore the right thing. I mean, my God, it must be intense to live in there like that. And so you get to the point where you say, “If I want to be OK, I need to stop creating this neurosis inside myself and buying into it is not a way to stop it.”
If a kid’s throwing a tantrum and you get him what he wants and you try to figure out what I need to do, that kid’s going to keep throwing tantrums. If you spend your life trying to appease the part of you inside that is creating all these problems, it doesn’t get better, it gets worse.
So at some point you realize, “I am creating this problem within myself. Life is not creating this problem. Life is just going about its business. Life is just unfolding like it’s done for 13.8 billion years and I just happened to be standing here at this particular point in time and I’m seeing what life is doing at this particular moment.” I keep saying that to you because at some point you’ll become conscious enough that that will blow your mind—that all you’re seeing in front of you is a result of 13.8 billion years of evolution going on everywhere across the universe and you’re getting to see this point in time and space. That is what’s happening, isn’t it? That’s what’s there. If I took you out, it’d still be there, wouldn’t it?
I put you in, take you out, put you in. I wish I could do that. Pull out, drop you into Paris, you’ll see what’s going on. It can’t have anything to do with you. You weren’t there a minute ago, but it’s still going to be going on and you’ll look and you’ll see, “Holy mackerel, I am creating turmoil inside myself no matter where I am. If I want to grow spiritually, that’s what I need to work with.”
So why am I creating all this disturbance? Eventually—and that’s where I got to see it— the answer’s very simple: because I’m scared. That’s why I’m doing it. So you look inside and you say, “Why am I so scared?” That’s the bottom line. But I’m telling you, the only way you can do this is to relax. Otherwise you’re going to react to this fear, react to this anxiety, and you panic. You panic in there. I can’t handle this. I can’t handle this. I don’t want to experience this. The next thing you know, you’re saying things, doing things, acting things, doing whatever you can to try and not feel this disturbance that you created inside yourself for absolutely no reason. Nobody’s telling you to do this. You don’t have to do this.
Like I told you—the past. Why are you doing this with your past? It’s over. It’s done. It already happened. Why are you carrying that around inside and bothering yourself about it? Nobody’s making you do that. There’s nobody walking up to you constantly holding your past in your face. How many people run up to you and say, “You did this when you were five?” Nobody knows, but you didn’t tell them because you know you did it. On a general rule, 99.99999 percent of the time, there is no one in life that is running up to you shoving your past in your face, but you are. You are constantly doing this inside yourself. Why? It’s going to make you sick, but yet you do it.
So your work is always to go deep enough within yourself to say, why am I doing this? I don’t need to do this. It doesn’t mean it’s going to stop right away. It’s a habit you’ve developed, but at least reach the point where the deepest part of your being knows, Hey, the world is unfolding and I should be able to handle it. What’s the big deal? I’m just experiencing what’s happening on the Planet Earth. The past is over. The future hasn’t happened. Just get that place inside. It’s called witness consciousness. I’m in here experiencing what’s happening. Anything else is something I’m doing to myself. So if the past is bothering me, understand the past is not bothering you. You are doing it. The past doesn’t even exist. It’s just something you’re doing inside yourself.
If you keep doing that, you will not be OK. What you need to do is stop doing it, and that’s spiritual growth. So what I’m saying is the alternative to doing what you’re doing is to relax. And that may not make sense to you, but eventually it will. You’re literally—you are in there doing something that is making your past keep coming up and making yourself keep disturbing yourself. You are in there doing something that is making it so when you’re perfectly safe standing in the aisles of Publix, you’re scared or you’re nervous. You’re doing that. The alternative to doing that is to relax. And so a yogi or yogini realizes this and they start developing a habit with themselves. Wherever they find themselves for a moment, they take inventory and they see, “Look at the disturbance I’m creating.” Relax. You won’t want to relax. You’ll want to do something to feel safer.
It seems as though if I relax, I’ve exposed myself. There’s nothing happening. Therefore there’s nothing wrong with opening up and letting go of this neurosis you’re creating inside. More and more, you start practicing relaxing.
So I’m standing in the presence with friends and somebody’s talking and my mind is thinking what I’m going to say back instead of listening to what they’re saying. You start watching that and you notice, “Why am I doing that?” And you’ll see it’s fear. You’re trying to get ready. You’re trying to make sure you don’t say something stupid, whatever the heck it is.
In the midst of that, you relax, you relax, you just relax. What does that mean? Relax your shoulders, relax your chest, relax your tummy, relax your butt because they get tight. Just do a wave of [relaxation] while I’m standing there. While you’re standing there, no one will notice you just relax.
Well, what will happen? Because you chose to relax, you didn’t allow yourself to get involved in this process of creating neurosis. Relaxation is the opposite of neurosis. That’s why in yoga you relax. That’s what it’s all about, right? They go into different stages and postures of relaxation.
If you relax inside, wherever you are, now you’re not going to do it every moment, but eventually you will. We’ll get there in a second. But your practice now is at various points, regular points, throughout the day, you catch yourself. You become present and you look to see what’s going on inside of you. And I’m telling you, what you’re going to see is that you’re creating tension. You’re going to see that you’re creating anxiety. You’re going to see that you’re creating a storm in there when nothing’s happening outside.
And one way to tell is if it is about the past, that’s not happening outside. The past is not happening outside. It already did. It’s over. So if you’re disturbed about anything that has to do with the past, then it’s what I’m talking about, isn’t it? You are creating disturbance for yourself where there doesn’t need to be. Same thing with the future. The future hasn’t happened yet. If you are creating worries and anxieties about the future that’s not in front of you, those are things you are doing. The alternative to doing that is to relax. If I’m relaxing, if I’m using my will to relax, then I didn’t put my whole heart and soul into using my will to create a hard time for myself.
I am telling you, if you think life is hard, you will eventually reach the point that 95 percent of all the hard times that you are experiencing, you are creating for yourself. At the most, the unfolding of life in front of you might create 5 percent of your disturbances. You are every moment of your life creating disturbance for yourself. You need to stop doing that.
So one way of doing that is this practice of relaxation. So you’ll find yourself in different situations. Most of them are neutral. There’s nothing going on. Relax. Just give yourself this right to relax. I’m telling you, it will change your life. Even those moments I used to—every time I got into a car, before I’d start it, I would just relax. Every time I got out, I’d relax. Remember, this is back in the ‘70s. Every time I would find myself in a situation where I have to open a door, I have to go through a door. You’d go through a lot of doors during the day. Every time I would remember, “I’m on the Planet Earth, about to go through a door,” and just relax. It changed my life.
Those moments of relaxation will change your entire life. Why? You’ll become more conscious. One, you’re being conscious by being there. And two, what you’re doing when you’re conscious is not participating in destroying your life by creating neurosis for yourself. How many times have you worried about something that never happened? Well, a lot. There’s a lot of things. Like I said, the past is over. So if you’re having disturbance with the past, that’s wasted. The future hasn’t happened. So if you’re having disturbance about the future, that’s wasted. The situations in front of you that are unfolding. If you are creating disturbance about them because you’re embarrassed, you’re this, you’re self-conscious, you’re doing that. So by the time you’re done, what I noticed is 95 percent of my problems are me. The root of my problems are me. It’s something I’m doing inside myself that’s creating this tremendous turmoil, contention, and disturbance.
Therefore, for me to try to solve that with anything other than stop doing it—there, that’s your spiritual path. Stop doing unto yourself what you’re doing unto yourself. You need to learn to develop a healthy relationship with yourself. And you do that first by catching yourself in the present moment and seeing what you are doing to yourself. Because if it is not happening out there and you’re just experiencing the outside, and that is not the 99 percent of the time, the outside is not a disturbance. It is you that is creating a disturbance. No matter what’s happening, it’s a disturbance. If you are driving down the street, it’s not hard to drive. You guys are pretty good at it. There’s no disturbance, but you look and see what’s going on inside of you and you’re going to see tension, anxiety, all kinds of stuff. You are doing that.
So the alternative is while you’re driving, catch yourself. What do I do if I see myself thinking about the past? Relax. What do I do if I’m seeing myself worrying about the future 20 years from now? Relax. What do I do if I find myself—I’m scared and I’m looking around to make sure I’m OK with everything? Relax. Just keep relaxing, instead of what you are doing. You relax, you let go of your shoulders. You let go here. Then I told you, you will see that there is fear inside. That’s what you’re going to see. There’s fear inside. Lean away from the fear. Just don’t touch it. Don’t try to solve it. Just relax and release. That’s what it’s called. Relax and release is: let go.
And what will happen is over time—it takes time. Over time you’ll find that you’re calmer. You’ll find that you’re more centered. You’ll find that you’re clearer and you’ll find that you’re not as scared. The other day somebody was telling me they were playing outside with crickets or grasshoppers to see if they could hold it and not get scared when it jumped. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. But you need to spread that everywhere. You need to expand your comfort zone.
Let’s say you walk across the field. People say, “Well, there are snakes in the field.” I’ve lived out here for 40 years. By God’s grace, no one’s ever gotten bothered by a snake. So are there snakes out there? Yeah, there’s rattlesnakes, coral snakes. But no one has ever gotten bothered by a rattlesnake or a coral snake.
Therefore, if you’re worrying about it and you’re thinking about it and everywhere you go, that’s what’s going on and you don’t enjoy walking on the fields or coming out here because there’s coral snakes. I told you now, there’s rattlesnakes and coral snakes, right? Then you’re causing yourself trouble. So instead, you relax and you do that with all of life. You just keep letting go and relaxing, and you’re going to find there’s space. And then you’ll get to an edge where you get scared—where, “OK, I’m relaxing,” and now I dare it to say something and now my mind bothers me about what I said. Does anybody’s mind do that when you talk and then it gives you a hard time because what you said was stupid and you shouldn’t have said that? Come on, I want to know. Can you see how you will never be OK unless you deal with this? This isn’t like an optional course. It’s not an elective. It’s everything. It is basically a mandatory course that you need to learn how to stop bothering yourself. The way to do that is to relax.
Now, if meditation helps you do, that mantra helps you, any methodologies—anything can do. Read good books. I don’t care. Just make sure that what you’re doing, you are consciously aware that what I’m working with is myself and I need to stop creating trouble for myself. How about if I say it that way? Why are you creating so much trouble for yourself? You need to stop creating so much trouble for yourself. And what I have found is that if you catch yourself constantly and don’t think about it, don’t try to solve it, just relax. Just relax. Instead just relax.
That you didn’t put your energy into participating in creating this neurosis for yourself. And over time it becomes less and it becomes less, and then what happens is something very, very special. You start to realize that all that energy that you created with all that fear, and what to do about it, and just neurosis—all that’s a lot of juice. That’s a lot of Shakti. It’s a lot of energy because you are no longer participating in it doing that.
Somehow the energy finds its way to a deeper place inside of you—does it by itself—and you start to feel joy for no reason. I was telling someone on the way—we were talking—people think in order to feel happy, you have to know sad. You have to feel these opposites. Otherwise, it’s kind of like this neutral place. It’s not a neutral place. It’s not like there’s these energies that are causing disturbance. Then you’re offsetting them by trying to make things happen, and so you kind of get a balance. No, it has nothing to do with that. By relaxing and not participating in this game that your psyche’s doing, you are freeing the energies of creating the disturbance and trying to solve it.
Well, what are you going to do with all that juice? All that energy that used to create the psyche and create all that disturbance and noise, plus what you do about all the disturbance and noise—imagine how much energy that is—gets released and freed and it goes up a central channel. And you don’t have to know that it does it by itself because it’s not all involved in the psyche. It finds its way up through a higher channel and you literally start feeling waves of ecstasy, not joy. They shouldn’t even use the same word. Joy is I have all this tension and somebody says something nice to me, so you get a little rush or you have some experience where you release tension. You do this or you get drunk. Who knows what you do? Whatever it is where you got all this disturbance going on inside, and now for a moment you release, it feels good, right? We’re not talking about that. We’re not talking about relative; we’re talking about because you rechannel this energy, it just starts rushing up inside of you.
The highest rushes you’ve ever felt—like a pinnacle of peak experiences you’ve ever gotten, going on constantly. You have to learn to live with it. You have to learn how to carry yourself. They’re great masters. They used to have to walk behind them and catch them. Ramakrishna was that way. Because at any moment, the rushes would come up so strong, he’d put his arm up and tears started pouring down his eyes and he’d fall over backwards. Rough problem to have. When you have that problem, come visit me. You can fill out a complaint department. It’s too much ecstasy, but that is a natural state for everybody, and that’s what relaxation will get you—is you relax.
And the mistake people make—and I’m going to close off on this. The mistake people make is they think that what I’m saying is there’s all this tension and insecurity and all this stuff that I’ve created in here. I need to make it relax. No, no. That’s the mistake people make. You’re not going to make it relax. You relax. You, who’s supposed to be experiencing what’s in front of you, relax, relax, and the rest will go away over time and you’ll end up face to face with two things.
To the great masters of the yogi, life consists of the following: I am in here experiencing what’s in front of me, but I have to look through the veil of the waves of ecstasy that keep coming up because everything that’s happening outside is so amazing that it blows your mind. The fact that there’s a boy, that there’s a girl, that somebody’s old, that somebody’s young, that there’s a car, that I’m moving in a car—it all becomes so powerful because you’re not in the way. It doesn’t have to be powerful enough to blow you out of your own way. So, “blew my mind,” that’s because you’re in your mind. When you let go of all that, you’re on this verge. And I’m telling you, a bird takes off, for the next hour there’s this joy just pouring through you because you heard a bird chirp.
That’s where I want you, and you’ll learn to live with it. You’ll learn to carry your liquor, you’ll learn to handle your ecstasy, and go to work and go to school, but it’s a lot more fun. I want you to live your life from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you go to bed at night. I want that already your state is so high that you couldn’t care less what happens, it’s just fun that something happened. And now what happens is the world that’s unfolding in front of you becomes fun, not scary. You don’t need anything from it. You’re feeling great joy. You feel whole and complete. And so what ends up happening is instead of interacting in the world to try to get something—which is what everybody’s doing—you’re interacting in the world because you want to express the joy and beauty that’s going on inside of you.
You become a giver. It becomes totally natural that whatever’s in front of you … Imagine looking and interacting in this world for days and weeks and months at a time without ever thinking that you need anything from it. There’s nothing trying to take anything or get anything. You’re not scared that something will happen or not happen. There’s just this sense of joy welling up inside of you. And so all of a sudden you realize, “Oh, I can give something. I can help somebody. I can support something.” And all of a sudden this flow that’s inside of you starts flowing outside and you become a giver.
So that’s a way of living. That’s another life. That’s the spiritual life. How do we get there? By relaxing. Relaxing, what does that mean? By not participating in creating the disturbance that you’re creating inside of yourself and instead just relaxing. You just keep relaxing, constantly relaxing, and you’re going to find that it works out way better.
All right. So there’s a technique and it should be every moment of every second of your life and eventually it will be. Eventually you’re just in there relaxing, just relaxing, and you’ll realize that the world is unfolding and you are there with it and there are no problems. There’s just the circumstance in front of you. You’re interacting with it and it brings you joy and challenge, and life is a beautiful thing.
Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to The Michael Singer Podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. Sounds True is the co-publisher of Michael Singer’s newest book, Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament. We’ve also joined with him to produce an extraordinary eight part video course. It’s called Living From a Place of Surrender: The Untethered Soul in Action.
You can find out more at michaelsingerpodcast.com. And you can save 15 percent off any Michael Singer program available through Sounds True when you use the code Singer15 at checkout. That’s singer numeral 1, numeral 5, at checkout. The music you heard on this podcast is the song, “Giving It All” by Be Still the Earth. Thank you so much for listening. Sounds True: Waking up the world.
