Tami Simon: Welcome to Season Three 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.
In this bonus session, Michael Singer shines a light on the new year ahead by exploring how Every Day Gets Lighter When You Let Go of Yourself. 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% off any Michael Singer program available through Sounds True when you use the code Singer15 at checkout. That’s Singer, numeral one, numeral five. And now, Every Day Gets Lighter When You Let Go of Yourself, with Michael Singer.
Michael Singer: Jai Guru Dev. Jai masters. As you come into a new year, I mean New Years are very auspicious, very meaningful. All that really happened is you did an orbit around the sun. If only our minds would remind us of that. They have the power of abstract thought. We don’t use it. We stay very focused on little things. Your mind is capable of knowing that you are floating through outer space.
I asked this question the other day to a group. If you all fell out of a spaceship and were just in a suit floating through empty space and looking around and just seeing the vastness of all it is, you’d know you’re in outer space. For the people that are still in the spacecraft, say the International Space Station, we say they’re in outer space. When you came back, where’d you spend your year? In outer space. Just because you are inside the Space Station does not mean you are not in outer space.
If you see the new Star Wars movie, they have these giant spaceships, way bigger than a whole country, all right? They’re enormous. I forget what they call them. Well, if you’re in one of those floating around, you’re still in outer space. You don’t have to wear a helmet, you don’t have to do anything. They’re all acclimatized and very nice and there are spacecrafts that can have gardens. Certainly sci-fi has shown a lot of that. You can have a lot going on, but you’re still in outer space.
The point of this discussion is you are in outer space. You’re in outer space right now. Just because you’re on this Earth, does not mean you’re not on a spaceship floating through outer space. It’s just a really big one, and it’s floating through outer space. So just if you’re in the International Space Station or on the planet Earth, you’re in outer space, period. That’s what’s happening.
If you could train your mind to be kind to you instead of the silly things it thinks about, and realize you’re floating through empty space, it’s so big. Your closest star is 93 million miles away, 93 million miles is a very long time, all right? And its closest star—in the same galaxy—its closest star is I think 4.2 light years away, something like that. Look how big. That’s your nearest star. That’s how big this thing is.
I realize people don’t understand. You say light years, what does it mean? So I use comparisons. If I caught a beam of light and I held it in my little fingers and I held it up above the planet Earth, big planet, you know that, and I let it go and caught it. After one second, it would have circumnavigated the globe six times. The speed of light, it’s extremely fast. Now go do that for 4.2 years and you might get to the next star.
You’re just floating in emptiness, nothing. You’re just this tiny little ball. And during a year, you orbited the sun. That’s what you did. I mean, you’re getting caught up in the small stuff? You just did a lap around the sun. Big deal. I don’t understand how anybody can have a problem. It’s just pretty simple stuff.
You sit on a planet, you go for the ride, you’re not going to stay. No one has ever stayed. You know that. You’re guaranteed a ticket off. You stay here for a few years, you orbit the sun and you leave. You don’t know how you got here. You didn’t take a spaceship to get here. It’s pretty neat, and you don’t know where you’re going afterwards. You’ll find out, so don’t worry about it.
But the main point is there’s nothing going on except that you’re sitting on a planet spinning around a star. I hope you’re having a good time, but the truth of the matter is you’re not. And that is what spirituality is about, is why am I not having a good time? Right?
It’s just the planet. How long has the planet been circling around the sun? Four and a half billion years. How long are you here for? It’s embarrassing, 70, 80 little chucks around the sun. What are you having a problem with? And what you’re going to find out, is you’re having a problem with your mind. Your mind has decided what you want to be happening and what you don’t want to be happening, and that’s what you’re having a problem with. Why would you have a problem sitting on a planet that you didn’t make, that has nothing to do with you, and you’re just spinning through empty space a few times? Because your mind decided that it’s in charge.
It’s really funny. Your mind thinks it’s God. “While I’m here in this position, this was supposed to be going on down to the tiniest detail.” Everyone’s supposed to wear, what they’re supposed to talk, how they’re supposed to act, how I’m supposed to drive, what I’m supposed to drive, every single thing. Whether I’m supposed to get a blemish on my face, whether I’m supposed to have a big nose, every single thing. You didn’t make your body; how dare you judge it? But you do, don’t you? All right? Just every single thing, because your mind did this, you are suffering.
That is Buddha’s First Noble Truth, “All of life is suffering.” Why? I always say to people, you know, it’s not like Buddha was negative or anything. Like what a negative attitude. All of life is suffering. It is, everybody’s suffering. Old people are suffering. Young people are suffering. Sick people are suffering. Healthy people are suffering. Rich people are suffering. Poor people are suffering. Men are suffering. Women are suffering. Everybody is suffering.
Not like, “I got a broken arm” all the time or “My husband left me.” No, but you’re suffering, you’re suffering. You’re scared. You’re self-conscious. You’re anxious. You’re guilty. You’re insecure. All right? There’s always something going on in there that is not so much fun, and you have to try and make it be OK, and that is called suffering. If you had to do something about it, you’re suffering. You’re trying to be OK.
And the Buddha’s Second Noble Truth was what we just said. He said, “The cause of suffering is that you have a way you want it to be.” What if I said it like that, which is what I just said a minute ago, right? The cause of suffering is that you decided how you want it to be, and now you suffer when it’s not that way, don’t you? You decided, “I don’t want it to be a certain way.” Then you suffer, when it is that way. I want it to be a certain way. It doesn’t be that way. You suffer.
It is exactly the way you want it to be and you suffer because you’re afraid it will stop. So Buddha’s truth is that the cause of suffering, he used the word desire, but people don’t understand that word. In the West, we think desire means lust, greed. Of course you suffer if you’re lustful and greedy. You missed the whole thing he said. He said, “You suffer, all of you. Everyone suffers because they have a way they want it to be.” That’s what a desire is. What is a desire? Having a way you want it to be, isn’t it? Isn’t that what the word means?
I desire that you not sit so close to him, so I’m suffering. All right? “I desire that you’re just a few inches shorter, because I’m not so tall, but I really, really love you, but you’re just a little tall for me. Oh my God, if only you were shorter, you’d be perfect.” Because you have made up in your mind how you want the moment in front of you, and by the way, the moment that hasn’t happened yet and the one that already happened, how you want it to be. Because you did that with your mind, you are suffering.
Here’s how I define suffering. If you have to be doing anything about it to try and be OK, it means you’re suffering. Your suffering is driving you to get married. Your suffering is driving you to have children. You’re suffering is driving you to make money. Your suffering is driving you to make a name for yourself. Your suffering is driving you to look better. You have these needs that are coming up inside.
What is the need about? I have a way I want it to be. That creates a need because I have a way I want it to be. And now I have to go out and try to make it happen that way. I have to get what it is that I think will make me be OK. Can you relate to that one? And I have to make sure I don’t get what I think will make me not be OK.
That is suffering. I know it’s hard because we all do it, so we don’t call that suffering. We call the extreme of that. In other words, if I don’t get what I want really badly and I get suicidal, I’m suffering. Or if I get what I don’t want really badly and I’m all messed up, I’m suffering. No. The very fact that you have to be out there struggling to try and make the moment in front of you be the way you need it to be, to be OK, means what? You’re suffering.
Suffering is a state of not being OK. It is a state of disturbance. And now I need to do things in order to try and make it so I’m not disturbed. And the Buddha was right. All the people are suffering. And he is right about why. That’s what’s so deep about his teachings. It was very simple. The cause of suffering is having a way you want it to be. If you have a way you want it to be, well, maybe it’ll be that way. Fat chance.
Like why would it be the way you want it to be? You meet somebody, they remind you of someone you dreamt about when you were young, and they act a little bit like that. Well, then it must be that person. No, it’s not that person. It’s not. You just made it up in your head and now you’re projecting onto that person how they’re supposed to be, because you need them to be that way.
They will disappoint you. But the problem is you, not them. You have made up a person, and now you’re trying to find them. You will never find them. You have made up a life and now you’re trying to create it or find it. You will never create it. You will never find it, and you will never be OK.
I’m serious. It doesn’t exist out there. The world has been here for 4.5 billion years. It is the result of all the forces of creation that caused it to be the way it is. Every moment that’s unfolding in front of you is part of the expression of reality. It never asked you what you want. It couldn’t care less what you want. I don’t care what they tell you.
It is doing its physics thing. Things are the way they are because of covalent bonds. They’re put together the way they are and they move the way they are based on quantum bosons, that those are the forces that cause things to be the way they are. That’s why things are the way they are. Not because you made up how you want them to be.
It makes me laugh so hard. You honestly believe that you get to make up what the moment in front of you should be like, and that it really should be that way? And you get upset when it’s not that way, and therefore you suffer. That’s what causes suffering.
“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” That’s the first line of one of the deepest Zen writings that was ever put down. That doesn’t mean that you suppress your preferences, that doesn’t mean you deny your desires. It’s not deep enough. It is that you wake up and you realize, “I’m sitting on this planet spinning around a star. I’m going to have a good time. I have a limited amount of time that I’m going to be here. It’s kind of an exciting place.”
Would you rather live on Mars? Don’t kid yourself. Ain’t nothing you want on Mars. So basically, you have this exciting journey with colors and shapes and noises and sounds and animals and birds and flowers. Give me a break. How could somebody make a nicer place? Do you think Walt Disney did Walt Disney World? How’d God do with this? How’d creation do with this? It’s a pretty amazing planet, isn’t it?
And you won the lottery, you get to live on this one, and you’re suffering. There’s something wrong with that. OK? And so what spirituality says, it’s very simple. It says, “Why are you not having a good time?” Not, what do I need to happen so that I have a good time?
No. No. No. No. No. No. That’s you being God. That’s putting you at the center of the universe. What needs to happen for me to be OK? What needs to not happen so I don’t get worse? No longer do you say that. You sit there and say, “Why am I not having a good time? Why am I not enjoying the journey of what’s going on?”
And if you study that carefully and watch it, you’re going to see it is because you have limited your happiness to events being exactly the way you define them to be. All right? In order for me to feel good and my heart to open and my mind to be comfortable, every single thing has to be the way I decided it needs to be. If you tell me you love me so much, then you sneeze. Oh, forget it, man. There’s not a way in the world. You don’t sneeze when you say something like that, OK?
It’s just so amazing. Wake up. What you have done is made up in your mind based on your past experiences, what it is that you think is going to make you be OK and what it is you think is going to make you worse. Why did you do that? You don’t ask why. You just ask what it is. You don’t ask “Why’d you do that?” Because you’re not OK. If you just had a wonderful meal and you’re full, you don’t sit around thinking what you can eat. If you just met somebody and you’re in this wonderful relationship, you don’t think about who to date. If you are fulfilled, you don’t sit there thinking, “What do I need in order to be OK?”
So that’s the level that Buddha was talking about and I’m talking about with suffering, which is you’re never OK. For a split second, maybe. Something, only if it’s exactly the way you want it to be, or if it catches you by surprise, like the sunset when you turn the corner and weren’t looking for anything, and it’s so beautiful. It takes you out of yourself. Then you can feel something deeper.
But as a normal state, a human being walks around suffering, and so what spirituality says is, “Wake up. It’s the start of a new year. You’re going to get another lap around the star. What are you going to do with it?”
And then I’m going to draw a line. What almost every single person’s going to do with this year, the same as he did every year of their life, is try to decide what will make them happy, what will make them sad, how to make it happen, how to make it not happen. And they think that’s what it means to live a good life. You can fight as hard as you can to manipulate the world unfolding in front of you to match what it is you made up and then if it matches some, you feel pretty good. If it doesn’t match, you feel terrible. If it’s worse, if it’s not what you don’t want, you get scared to death, et cetera, et cetera, right?
I’m telling you, the probability that the world in front of you is going to unfold exactly the way you decide you want it to be is zero, and you know that. You know that. That’s why you plot and plan all the time. That’s why you’re so busy manipulating and dressing certain ways and buying just every single thing in the world, is all manipulating. You’re trying to manipulate the moment in front of you so that it simulates what it is that you want, so that when it comes in, it will feel good and not feel bad.
Well, the moments keep coming and going. What chance do you have to manipulate it? I mean, maybe you could spend $100,000 on your wedding. Nobody has succeeded, by the way, and get it exactly the way you want. There’s always something wrong, but that’s just one moment.
What are you going to do with the rest of the moments that unfold? Nobody’s capable of manipulating everybody and everything that comes into their environment to be exactly the way they want. So you have relegated yourself to having very, very, very little high experiences. What do you do about it? Instead of spending this next year doing the same thing you’ve done every year…
How do you know something doesn’t work? Because you’ve done it every year of your life and you’re still doing it. If I did something every single moment of every day of my life and I woke up and one day looked at, “Well, that’s been going on for a while and I’m still doing it,” it must not have worked.
So I am telling you that getting what you want is so overrated, it’s ridiculous. And avoiding what you don’t want is so overrated, it’s ridiculous, period. It’s a waste of your life. Why? One, you’re not going to get what you want. You know for a fact, it’s true. You’re living proof, all right? You are not going to get everything the way you want it, are you? And it’s not going to stay that way. It’s just every once in a while, it looks like it’s going to be that way and you get excited, but it doesn’t last very long.
Maslow defined those as peak experiences. Go study him, how often he thinks you get peak experiences. Everything has to be exactly right. All your needs have to go away. Your mind has to be totally satisfied with everything. Your heart has to be completely open. Good luck.
So devoting your life to getting what you made up, and trying to make it be that way, is a waste of your life. It causes suffering, it causes anxiety, it causes all kinds of tension. And everyone, why do you think we have so many problems? How can you not have problems if you’re fighting with everything and everyone to try and make it be the way you want? And how can you not be anxious and neurotic if you understand, “Well, it doesn’t keep being the way I want. I have to keep struggling with it.”
Getting what you want, avoiding what you don’t want is an endless journey, isn’t it? It’s like there’s a part of your being that’s not OK. It’s trying to make up—based on its past experiences, good and bad— what it thinks will make it happy and what it thinks will make it sad, and then it goes out there trying to make it happen. The problem is you’re dealing with a part of your being that’s not OK. The best thing it can do is take something and feel a little bit better.
I’m telling you, the part of your being that’s not OK, can’t be OK. Let’s say you have a problem with jealousy and you try to solve it by hiring detectives and having everybody study and go after who it is you’re concerned about. Is that going to make the jealousy go away? It is not going to make it go away. It is actually going to make it stronger. You have devoted yourself to the part of your being which is a rather low part, which is jealous, which has a disturbance. I’m not denying there’s jealousy, that you can feel that. That’s a human emotion. But if you devote your life to it, no matter how hard you try… In fact the harder you try, the more it bothers you. The more energy you put into something, the more you’re feeding that part of your being.
The exact same thing is true with the part of you that needs things, the part that is not OK, the part that is sad, the part that is not inspired, the part that, et cetera, et cetera, the part that doesn’t feel loved. It’s just like jealousy, it’s a part that’s not OK, and you are devoting your life to it by asking it all the, “Will this make you happy? If I wore this, will you feel good about this? Dave, I got a new car. I bet I feel more confident and so on, right? What if I took another class and I could speak better, then I’d feel…”
What are you are doing? You’re devoting your life to the part of you that’s not OK. It’s exactly the same as devoting your life to jealousy. All it does is make you become addicted to that part of your being, become fixated on that and you struggle to try to be OK.
All right. What’s the alternative? The alternative is very deep, but there is an alternative. You notice that you are in there, and that you notice that there’s jealousy. You notice there’s insecurity. You notice that it’s not OK. You don’t need a master’s degree, all right? You notice it’s not OK in there.
From the time you wake up in the morning to the time you go to bed at night, if you manage to fall asleep, there’s somebody complaining. There’s somebody who’s scared. There’s somebody who’s just not got it together, so they got problems. They may be relatively better one day than the other because it looks like they’re going to get what they wanted, but in the overall pattern, it’s not OK. And you realize that you are not that part. You are the one who’s noticing that.
If your heart hurts because you feel lonely, I’m not interested in helping you find someone or something that will make you not feel lonely. I’m interested in finding out why you can’t handle that there’s a part of your being that periodically feels loneliness, and other times doesn’t.
That’s how you get in trouble with your relationships, because you’re hanging out with a part of you that needs somebody, but there’s another part of you, the minute you get that, that wants some space. They’re just parts of your psyche. They’re just parts of your being.
The only part that is safe and consistent is you who’s noticing. You notice that the heart hurts. You notice you feel some jealousy. You notice you feel insecure. You notice you’re feeling love right now. You notice that it went away when they told you something you didn’t want to hear. You just noticed that you’re noticing. Is anybody in there? Do you notice these things?
If you come to me and you say, “My heart hurts,” I’m not going to help you fix it. I’m going to ask you, “How do you know?” How do you know your heart hurts? It’s a very frustrating question, isn’t it?
“I don’t care. I just don’t want it to hurt.”
“No, no, you got to care. How do you know your heart hurts?”
And eventually they’ll look at me angry, steam coming out of your ears, and you’re going to say, “Because I’m in here and I feel it, stupid.”
“You just said the most spiritual thing you will ever say in your entire life.”
“What? How could you say that? My heart hurts. Has nothing to do with it.”
“The fact that you have sat in a space that you notice, ‘I am conscious, I am centered, I am in here and one of the things I notice is that my heart hurts.’ Is that the only thing you notice?”
“No. I notice that you’re talking to me. I notice that I have a hand. I notice all kinds of things, don’t I? I notice that my mind is thinking how to get my heart to stop hurting.”
How’s that one? In other words, I notice these things. Why? Because I’m conscious, because I exist, because I’m in here. That’s what it’s all about.
There is an alternative way of life and what it says is as follows, if you are in there—and you are—then you are not the hurting heart. It’s just something you’re experiencing. You are not the disturbed mind. It is something you’re experiencing. You are not the one who’s watching the mind try to figure out what everybody else needs to do for me to be OK, or thinking about what should have happened in the past 20 years ago, so that I would be OK now if that had happened. And you just realize, you’re wasting your life, you’re wasting your time, and instead you do something meaningful with your life, which is find out who you are.
Who are you in there that’s watching? Who are you in there that sees me? Who are you in there that notices the heart hurts? Who are you in there that notices all of this? That is what spirituality is about. It’s not about anything else, it’s about that. It’s about self-realization. That’s what that word means. Realize who you are. Now not some mystical thing? My soul or something like that? No, no, no. Don’t give it a name. You, hi. You in there? All right. Who are you? Who are you?
And you start exploring the nature of your being, instead of exploring how to make the psyche be OK. So you’re not serving the disturbed parts of your being. This becomes not your path, your life.
So instead of spending the year circling the sun, trying to manipulate and control the moments that are unfolding in front of you and worrying about the ones that weren’t, then that might be, whatever it is, you spend your life freeing yourself from yourself. You spend your life realizing me, who’s watching this disturbance, is not disturbed. It’s watching a disturbance. Relax. Let go. Just let go. Let go. You’re seeing it, that’s fine, but you’re not it. You’re the one who sees it. Just relax as you go through these things.
I’m going to spend my life, my year, circling the sun, letting go of these parts of my being that are like anchors that are holding me down. “I had an experience when I was young. My parents got divorced. I was six years old,” let’s say. “I had so much trouble with it. It was so traumatic to me,” et cetera. I understand that. It’s rough for a six-year-old, right? But now you’re 66 years old. Your parents have been dead for 40 years and you’re still disturbed by it. There’s something wrong with that. That’s not healthy.
And what you’re going to find out is that you’re disturbed by that. Therefore, when somebody tells you their friend is getting married, you feel sorry for them because a lot of marriages, you know, 50% of all marriage end in divorces. And divorce is really hard on the kids. Believe me, I know. It happened to me.
What are you doing? You’re letting this problem that you stored inside of yourself 40 years ago determine what it is that you like, and what you don’t like. I’m telling you, if you watch it carefully, every single like and dislike come from there. You are not deciding what you like. You don’t sit there and look at something and say, “I wonder if I like that.” And if you do, like you’re trying on a dress or something or a suit and going in a little eight-sided mirror, “I wonder if I like that.” You’re trying to see how it hits you, right?
If you turn a certain way and it reminds you of the suit that your uncle had on the day your grandfather died, “Ehhh, I just don’t like it. I don’t like the way it looks in the back.” You don’t even realize what’s happening. There is no like or dislike. Why would you like or dislike some things?
It’s just a bunch of atoms floating around in outer space. It’s because you’ve had past experiences. And some of them were nice and some of them were not nice. And you stored them inside of you. And now when the new things come in, they stimulate those experiences. They’re called samskaras in yoga. Those impressions get hit and they manifest and you feel them as positive or negative proclivities. It pulls you toward or away from something, doesn’t it? That’s what like and dislike are.
Do not put them on a pedestal. They are nothing. They’re worse than nothing. They’re the bane of your existence, because they tie you to your past. They have no meaning. Have you noticed how hard it is to decide what you like or dislike? Have you noticed there’s nothing consistent inside of you?
Maybe they took your blankie away when—it was blue— when you were young, and it was a terrible experience. Now, you can’t handle blue. “You know I don’t like blue. I told you I don’t like blue.” Or maybe you love blue because that was the color of the car that you first rode in that somebody took you out on a date and it was such a nice person. I don’t know.
But all those impressions are in there, aren’t they? And now, the world comes in and it brings them up. And if it brings them up positive, you like it. If it brings up a negative, you don’t like it. That’s the shallowest thing in the whole world. Let’s say you enjoy going to a certain place on Friday nights, and you’ve been going there for years, and all of a sudden someone comes up and tells you something negative about the place or about somebody who goes there. Now you’re not comfortable going there anymore.
OMG. Give me a break. One stupid thing goes inside your head and all of a sudden you get this discomfort going on and maybe it will be there for years. If you really want to see whether I’m telling the truth, go to a high school reunion. Go to a high school reunion, and see how you feel about these people you haven’t seen for 30 years. The same stuff’s coming up.
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 basically, like and dislike are just the impressions that were stored from your past coming up. If you spend your life chasing them, you are wasting your life. And you will never satisfy them because they’re not even real. So what spirituality means, what a meaningful life is, I am going to take a lap around the sun. And during that lap, I assure you that when I come back to the starting position, there’s going to be less of me.
So a wise person who caught on, it’s not that they’re not trying to be happy. It’s not that you go sit in the woods somewhere by yourself, right, and give up on life. No. You use life for something meaningful. I’m going to take a lap around the sun, and guess what’s going to happen? A lot of things are going to happen. That’s what’s going to happen during that year.
There are going to be all kinds of moments that unfold in front of me. How about you? Every single moment, there’s something different unfolding in front of me. It just keeps changing. And what I’ve noticed is if I sit in here, it hits my stuff. All right? It just hits my stuff. It’s just amazing. It’s like arrows. It just comes by, and stuff starts coming up inside of me.” I like it. I don’t like it. I’m scared of it. Oh my god. That happened again. I don’t want to…” Just all this stuff goes on. Is that just me or has it happening to you too?
- I am going to use every single moment to let go of that stuff. Whoa. You mean it can go? Of course, it can go. Let’s get something straight. There is no super glue in there. Really, I’m serious. If something is inside of you from the past, it’s because you’re holding it there. You are using your will to hold it.
How do I know? When it comes back up, you push it back down. Because it was stored with pain, it comes up with pain. So when this stuff starts coming up, you push it back down, don’t you? You have hands in there, yes or no? Can you push things around in there? Emotions, thoughts, all kinds of things. If thoughts starts to come about your ex-husband…
So you are in control, you are doing it. It’s your house. Masters used to say regain your kingdom. This is your house. Nobody else lives in there. Your husband don’t live in there. Your wife don’t live in there. Your kids don’t live in there. You are who lives in there. Nobody else will ever live in there. I don’t care how close you try to get. It’s your house. What are you doing letting all that garbage be in there?
I’m going to ask you a very simple question. If every single time you have an experience that bothers you, you store it inside, how are you going to be doing in there? That’s the silliest idea anybody ever had, to collect bad experiences. Collect coins, stamps, something, all right? Don’t collect bad experiences. It’s not going to work out well.
But that’s what we’ve done, because nobody will talk to us like this. They say the answer is if you’re not comfortable, get something, or avoid something, or get rid of something, do something. Do something about it. No, I’m not going to do something about it. I’m going to get rid of the reason it’s there. What you have to do is sit there and say, and I’m saying it to you, “This stuff is not supposed to be in here.” What stuff? All of it. I’m serious. It’s not supposed to be in there.
The past is over. What are you doing carrying it inside of you? That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t mean you don’t remember it. It merely means you didn’t suppress it. There’s a big difference. You drive down roads all the time. There are white lines. You could remember. You could say, “Yeah, that’s dotted, that’s solid,” but it didn’t leave an impression inside of you of like and dislike and you don’t freak out the next time you see a line, because it wasn’t the same as something else. It’s just an experience that you had. You experience things. You don’t have problems with them.
So when they come in, you let them go. That’s called be here now. That’s what that’s about, is experiences are meant to be experienced. They’re not meant to be renounced. It has nothing to do with renunciation. The experiences unfolding in front of you are sacred. Why? Because you’re missing every other experience in the universe.
All you’re having is the experience that’s happening in front of you. There are billions of other experiences going on everywheres else. You don’t get to have those, do you? So at least honor and respect the one you’re having so the moment unfolds in front of you, you experience it. I agree, sometimes it’s pleasant, sometimes it’s not, but then it’s over. It shouldn’t be in you anymore.
And if it’s not in you anymore, all of a sudden, you’re going to be free. You’re going to find out that you don’t need things to be a certain way for you to be OK. The only reason you need them to be a certain way now, is because you closed yourself by storing all this garbage inside of you.
Now, if something happens that matches well with your garbage, you all of a sudden you feel joy, don’t you? You feel excited. If it goes the way you want, you open up. If it doesn’t go the way you want, you close down. It is this opening and closing that you are experiencing as the quality of your life. What spirituality in yoga says is, “Why don’t you try to look and see why it’s opening and closing, instead of what I need to do to make it open and close?” And you look, and I’m telling you what you’ll see, you’ll see it is the stuff I stored inside of me that is making it open and close.
The reason life is conditional and I have conditional love and conditional happiness and conditional wellbeing is those are the conditions. What turns him on, turns you off. What turns you on yesterday turns you off today, because you have these conditions that get stored inside of you. Get rid of them. That’s what I’m inviting you to do.
Seriously, I promise you, you can get rid of them, all of them. There’s not a single one that needs to be inside. Your past does not belong inside of you. As you let go of these things, you’re going to find out that you’re way happier than you were before. Why? “Because it’s the law of attraction and manifestation that if I let go of this garbage inside of me, I will attract to me everything I want?”
No. No, I hope not. I hope you don’t. What I want is that you let go of the basis of like and dislike. You let go of this garbage you stored inside. And because you don’t have blockages inside anymore, you feel the spontaneous joy and love all the time, unconditionally. You don’t need things to be the way you want to be OK.
You’re just OK, just like you can be healthy. Your body can be healthy. When your body’s healthy, you don’t need anything. It’s when your body’s sick that you need to go to the doctor, you need certain foods, you need certain medicines. It’s the same thing with your spiritual energy body. It can be fine. It can be filled with love, filled with joy all the time, all the time. Masters calls that ever-new joy. You just feel waves of uplifting spirit, joy, love pouring through your being all the time because that happens to be your natural state.
And what you did is shove all this garbage on top of it so now you’re blocked and the only way you feel openness is when something happens that matches your garbage. That’s why you feel joy when you meet somebody who’s just the way you like them, because it causes you to open up. If they weren’t just the way you liked them, it wouldn’t happen. If they behave tomorrow differently than they behaved today, and you didn’t like that one different aspect you didn’t expect to have, you don’t like them so much anymore.
“It was so disappointing. I trusted you.”
“Trusted me to what?”
“To be the way I expected.”
“But that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“I had a way that would open me and you said you loved me, and I assumed,” that’s a big assumption, “that therefore you would always be the way I need you to be and you would never, ever not be the way I needed you to be.”
“I don’t even know how you need me to be. How would I know? I only know me, unfortunately, I don’t know your samskaras. I wasn’t around when you were six. I don’t know. I didn’t know that I said the word marriage or divorce and it freaked you out, or I don’t know. You’re really sensitive, and you have lots of stuff in there.”
So it is not going to happen that you’re going to find somebody. You are your own soulmate. Find the wholeness within your own being by getting rid of your blockages. And I’m telling you, I’m guaranteeing you, if you will let go of this garbage you stored inside, you will start to feel spontaneous joy, spontaneous love, this constant state of being fed from inside.
“Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that leaveth the mouth of the Father.” You will know exactly what that means, and there’ll be no question in your mind. Why? Because you’re being fed by this fountain of joy.
So in order to do that, you change. It’s like a true paradigm shift. Now, as you go around the sun, you spend every minute of every second trying to manipulate and control the environment around you to match your garbage. Instead, when you truly turn to a spiritual path, you spend your entire orbit around the sun letting go of your garbage and that’s it. And never the twain shall meet. There are two totally different ways to live your life.
One works, the other doesn’t. It doesn’t work to keep trying to get what you want. You know that. You live that. It does work—every single thing you let go of, you’re a wholer person. You feel better. If you say something to me that wasn’t so nice, you weren’t feeling good, you just said something not so nice and I hold onto it, I don’t get to like you. I don’t like when I drive down the street where you live. I sure as heck don’t like the street corner where you said it to me on, or the car I was driving in. I got all these impressions that cause problems to me. If it happens and I just let it go… “You mean I can do that?” Yeah, you’re a great being in there. You can do whatever you want.
You can do whatever you want in there. I’ll teach you how. I can go for an hour to inspire you to do it and I only need one minute to tell you how to do it. Whereas you want to run around and say, “I need a technique, I need a patch. I need…” No, no, no, no.
You need to want to do it. You can let go of the things that happened to you. You do not have to store them inside of you. There is no purpose for storing them inside of you. I want you that if somehow, she was in a bad mood, or at least I thought she said something not nice, half the time you’re wrong anyways, but she said something or didn’t say something, and it disturbed you a little bit, that when she walks away, it’s gone. That’s what I want for you.
I will not try to get you what you want. I’m not going to try to help you get what you want. I don’t even want you get what you want. I want you to get rid of the reason you want things so that I know you’ll be OK forever. If you have children, you have children. I have a daughter. I have a wonderful daughter. I don’t want her to get what she wants. I want her to get rid of the reason she would want something so that I know she’s OK no matter what. No matter what happens all the time, I know that she’s happy and she’s fine and she can handle anything. Which do you want for your kid? That it’s conditional and it only going to happen in a little tiny little laser beam of light or that they learn to be always OK?
So that’s what we’re talking about. So basically, you wake up, be strong inside and you say, “This is my kingdom. Yes, it is true. I have stored all this garbage.” Guilty, guilty, guilty. Done it since I was little. I stored every single thing that ever bothered me. It’s still in there. In fifth grade, I put a rose in for a flower contest and the day before I brought it in, the beetle ate one of the little edges of the thing, right? I hate beetles. I hate roses. I hate contests. And I hate people who have perfect flowers. OK? [LAUGHTER]
Don’t laugh. I’m telling you, that’s what happens. And guess who I have agreeing with me? All of psychology. Your formative years, all right, you got stuff stored in there. I am telling you that it does not have to stay in there. It stays in there because you keep it in there.
The day you decide you want to stop smoking and you really mean it, stop putting cigarettes in your mouth and it’s shocking. You will find that you stop smoking and you will find that the urge to smoking will go away. It is exactly the same with this. The day that you want to stop being screwed up, let go of the part of you that is making you screwed up. And don’t you dare tell me, “I can’t.”
Like the challenge I give to people is OK, she came by, she said something not so nice. It started to bother me. It’s bothering me. She walked away, and I’m standing there. Let go. I can’t. Let go. I can’t, I can’t. She had no right to say that. That’s called not letting go. It’s called getting involved.
What I’m doing is I am justifying keeping it. I went out to dinner, it made me sick. I am going to take it home and I’m going to taste it every single day, so I never forget what it was like to eat something that made me that sick. I’m going to show that chef. For every day of my life, I’m going to show him how sick he made me.
That’s what you did with the fact that she said something, I’m going to keep it in here. “I have the right. You don’t understand what she said.” What are you doing? “I have the right to screw myself up for the rest of my life.”
Fine. I don’t know why you want that, right? I don’t want that, right? So you tell me, “But I don’t know how to let it go. I can’t let it go. I can’t let it go.”
“I’ll be terrible right now. Here’s a million dollars, a million dollars. Let it go.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“All right. Wait, if you’re really caught, for how long?”
“Ten seconds.”
“OK, it’s gone.”
And if you can let it go for 10 seconds, you can let it go for 10 minutes. Either you do or you do not have the ability to let go. People say to me, what do you mean by let go? Now you understand what I mean by let go. I mean you are in there noticing this bothered you, aren’t you? You’re noticing your mind complaining about it. You’re noticing your heart hurting you about it.
OK? Just relax. Relax. You don’t change it. Just relax and say, “Yep, for a million dollars, or better yet, for happiness, for eternal happiness, all right, I will relax. I will relax and give it the space it needs to pass.” And I guarantee, it will pass.
If you’re hooked on heroin and you go through withdrawal, it’ll pass. If you don’t go through withdrawal, it won’t. But if you do go through withdrawal, it will pass. Well, this ain’t nowheres near being hooked on heroin. She just said something not nice, big deal. Let it go. Do you understand what I meant now by letting go?
A wise person does that with everything. A wise person says, “If I want to be happy, then I have to be willing to be happy.” You understand that, right? We’re back to the path of unconditional happiness. “If I want to feel love, then I have to not close my heart. I have be willing to keep my heart open.” Because there ain’t no love when your heart’s closed, if you haven’t noticed. So if something happens and it starts to close my heart, I’m going to relax and let it go. I’m going to learn to let it pass. Let it go.
And you’re going to find over time… I know that you don’t know how to do it now. No one’s ever done it. We weren’t taught to do it. We went to graduate school and all the way through kindergarten, graduate school, nobody ever taught us any of this, did they? They taught us the opposite, to how to manipulate and control.
So basically you calm down and you say “This year,” the end of the year, then we start our year, you say, “I’m going to let go of this stuff in here. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m in here. It’s my house. I’m letting it go.” And then every time it comes up, every time something happens and it hits your stuff, you let it go. Just relax, keep relaxing.
And at first, you don’t know how to do it. I tell you, you don’t know how to play the piano at first. You don’t know how to do calculus when you went to your calculus class. You did this thing called learning. Why can’t you learn this? It’s the most important thing you will ever learn, is how to let go of the garbage that you’re building up inside yourself. Because you can’t be OK with this garbage in there, all right?
So you relax with the new stuff and little by little, the old stuff will come up by itself. It’s a LIFO stack, last in, first out. If you keep shoving more on top of it, that’s the problem of the day, you won’t feel this stuff from underneath. Every once in a while, it’ll come up. But in general, you’ll be busy with the fact that she didn’t say something nice to you, or somebody beeped at you, or it rained when you didn’t want it to.
You put all these little things there and just on top of the bigger things, they won’t come back up. I’m warning you, if you let go of the little things, the bigger things are going to come up, all by themselves. You’re going to start having dreams that you’d never dreamt about before. You’ll look at somebody, then all of a sudden, you’ll start crying. Reminds you of your mother, and that time. I’ve forgotten about that.
I love it. I want more of it. You have to love that. “I don’t want this inside of me.” So if I have to go through the growth of what it’s like to let it go, I am willing to do that. I am ready, willing and able. In fact, it is the meaning of my life. It used to be the meaning of my life was to make the world match my junk. Now, the meaning of my life is to let go of my junk. And I’m telling you, it works. It can’t not work, right? How can it not work? You just keep letting go. Relax and release. Relax and release.
Then people say to me, “But what about the outside world? Don’t I have to do anything there? Isn’t there a real world out there?” And the answer is yes. Yes, there’s a real world out there and you’re supposed to be interacting with it. “Whew. I didn’t think he was going to say that. All right.” Well what does that mean? Right now, you are interacting with the moments that unfold in front of you on a basis of taking from them, trying to be OK, trying to get from them what you want, and make them not be the way you don’t want.
You’re using the moments that are unfolding in front of you to try and make yourself be OK. When you live this life, you are first letting go of these problems you have inside. And then you’re going to find out, all of a sudden, that you can face the moments that are unfolding outside as a thing in and of themselves, not in relationship to your personal self, not in relationship. Do I like it? Do I not like it? What do I do to make it so I do like it? What do I do to make it so that… It’s not about me, it’s about itself.
There’s a moment unfolding in front of me and it’s asking me to interact with it, not me trying to make it give me what I want. You stop being a taker and you become a giver. And next thing you’re going to know is all of a sudden, you realize life is so simple. It unfolds in front of you and you dance with it.
Not “I make up how I want it to be and beat it over the head if it’s not that way.” You keep grabbing and taking and manipulating. No, no, you honor that the moment has the right to exist. I don’t care how much you don’t like it. It has the right to exist. How do you know? It’s there. Reality wins if it is manifest, especially your past. It had the right to happen, didn’t it? It happened. And so you relax your way through it, and then you serve the moments that are unfolding in front of you.
I had somebody the other day ask me, “I still don’t get it. What does it mean to let go?” And we’re going to close on this. So I gave her an example. She said it helped a lot. OK?
You’re standing in an elevator. There’s six people in the elevator. It’s not a terribly big elevator. There’s somebody at the front of the elevator, inside the elevator, and he’s holding the door button every time somebody else comes up.
And you are very uncomfortable. You’re the kind of person that’s kind of claustrophobic, and you’re not real comfortable having all these people packed in the elevator. There, perfect situation. There’s really nothing wrong. Like, the elevator’s rated for enough people. Don’t worry about it. It’s basically just a personal preference that you have. It’s just some stuff, whoever knows how it got there, where you’re just not comfortable in a crowd.
Believe me, it’s past impressions. So you’re there. Here it goes. You have the following choices. One, manifest your discomfort. “Stop it. What’s the matter with you? There’s too many people in there. Stop pushing that button. Stop pushing that button.” In other words, “I can’t handle it, so you don’t do it. If it’s making me uncomfortable, it’s wrong. That person’s wrong to be doing this.”
“How do you know?” “I can feel it.” I bet you can. So that’s one way you can deal with it, is manifest it externally and attempt to manipulate the environment outside of you, that is you are not accepting, you are not surrendering, you are controlling. Fair enough.
When you do so, that’s taking on karma. In other words, if you are taking this garbage that’s inside of you, that’s uncomfortable, and you are manifesting outside of you, you are laying a trip on other people’s heads, and it will leave impressions out there.
You’ll go for a job someday. It just happens that way. You’ll go for a job someday and the person that was pushing the open button is your boss who you’re interviewing with, and you go, “Oh, geez. Could’ve kept my mouth shut.” All right. Just things happen, don’t they? All right?
Now here’s the second way you can deal with it, a little higher, but it’s still not letting go. That is, “I know I’m not supposed to express it. Shut up. Bite your tongue. Don’t say anything.” In other words, suppress it.
If I can’t express it, I’m going to have to suppress it. At least you’re not taking on the external karma. You bit your tongue, you didn’t do that stuff. But I think we’re all mature enough to understand, that’s not going to be healthy down there. You’re going to blow a gasket at some point. You go out there and do something, right, because it’ll come back up, because you stored all this garbage inside of you.
So that’s the second level. Not terribly spiritual, but more so than dumping your stuff. You’re polluting your environment with your garbage. All right? It’s just like a factory dumping all the leftover chemicals into the river. You’re taking the junk that’s left over inside of you and dumping it out to the world. People do that, don’t they? All right? So you at least don’t do that. So you’ve come back a level. All right?
Next level. Next level. You become conscious enough, strong enough to where you start doing what people call accepting. OK? You listen to the difference now.” It’s OK. This is just my stuff. It’s my stuff. I can handle it. It’s not a problem. And they’re welcome to come into the elevator. It’s nice to let other people come in the elevator. Why should it have to be my way?”
In other words, you start accepting the reality of the situation. And of course, you’re taught that acceptance is a very high thing. It is high compared to suppressing and expressing your garbage. You’re rationalizing it. You’re finding a way to live with it and so on.
But the part of you that made you so disturbed, that caused the whole problem, did not go away because you accepted the situation. You avoided suppressing, you avoided creating more disturbance inside, and you avoided creating disturbance outside. OK? You did good. I’m not taking it away from you. But that’s not what surrender is.
Surrender is, “I am conscious enough to notice that some garbage is coming up inside of me about the number of people that are in the elevator, or how close they stand to me. I don’t want to make it past this moment and think I’m OK. I don’t want this inside of me. I want to use this moment to go to God. I want to use this moment to grow spiritually. I want to use this moment not to accept that some people think there are enough people in the elevator. Remember, that’s new-age newbie stuff. I want to use this moment, do real stuff. I want to let go. I want to let go of a part of me that is causing this disturbance.”
That’s letting go. I don’t usually teach it that deep. Do you see the difference? Each of the tiers? It is only when you do the last one, that the real spiritual growth takes place. Now, you’ll make a nice world doing the middle one. Believe me. No, I wish everybody could accept. You’re at least not causing trouble outside or inside. You rationalized it. You made it fit. You feel good. “Oh, I feel good about it,” blah, blah. All right?
But I’m telling you, this stuff’s going to come up again, if not in the elevator, somewheres else. You left that part of you allowed to exist. You just learned to live with it. You learned to be more comfortable with it. I am telling you, the highest growth, and the one that really leads to deep spirituality, is “I am the witness. I am noticing he’s standing on the planet Earth inside of an elevator freaking out about the door opening.”
I don’t think so. It’s not a matter of accepting that some people look at it differently. It’s a matter of, “No, no, no, no. I ain’t keeping this stuff inside of me. I’m not giving myself the right,” and that’s the difference. Somebody asked me the other day, I had to write a little answer to somebody about the difference between acceptance and surrender.
And he said, aren’t they the same? Well, not exactly. In acceptance, I gave myself the right to not like it, but I accepted that other people look at it different ways. I kept the right that I didn’t like it this way, but I accepted that this was reality, that this is how other people wanted it. It sounds very nice, doesn’t it?
Notice, I kept the right to see it my way, right? No, no, no, no. You must die to be reborn. You got to be willing to let go of yourself at the deepest root level. And so you just take one look and you say, “This is causing disturbance inside of me. It’s out. It’s gone. Now, how do I get it gone? It’s really there.” It’s there, but you are not it. You’re the one who’s noticing it.
That’s why you meditate. That’s why you do mantra, to maintain a center of stability that is so strong that anything that goes on inside of you can’t pull you into it. It’s a disturbance you’re seeing. And if you’ll relax, you in there, not make it relax, you relax, just relax. “Oh my God.” “Relax.” “But…” “Yes.” Right? I’ll tell you, you will not want to do it. It’s real growth.
You relax. And it starts pulling, relax. It can’t touch you. It’s just something that’s stuck inside that’s trying to purify, that’s trying to release. If you will grow at that level, I am assuring you, your days will start to get lighter and lighter because you’re letting go at a very deep level, and you just do that with everything. Every chance you get, let go of the part of you that wants to resist. That’s deeper than not resisting.
And if you will do this, underneath that stuff you’re letting go of is the shakti, is real spirit. And if you give it enough room, it starts flowing, and it flows up, and you start feeling it course through your whole being and every second of your life. From the moment you wake up in the morning, there’s ecstasy that’s going on. Oh, that’s where I want you.
I’m just telling it to you, because that’s what’s going on inside of you right now. But you’ve closed the blinds with this garbage. And nobody will be honest enough to tell you, you got to let go of yourself, except Christ. See, I like Christ a lot. I’m a Jewish yogi that loves Christ. Why?
He said it. “You must die to be reborn.” You have to let go of yourself. What did the Buddhist say? “All life is suffering. The cause of suffering is you. You built this preference system inside of you. To end suffering, let it go.” To end suffering and desire, right? Just let go of the part of you that is separating the world into like and dislike, and everything will change. And I’m telling you, every one of you are capable of it. It’s not some Buddhist law somewheres, all right? It’s better that you’re doing it in your life, in your marriage, in with your children, in business.
Why? I guess it’s hitting your stuff. If you’re going off to live with the caves somewhere and leave everything, what’s going to hit your stuff? It’s perfectly reasonable that you go about your everyday life. It’s the life you attracted around yourself, so it’s going to be the one that hits your stuff. And when it does, let it go.
So if you’re a soccer mom, instead of complaining, “I got to go pick up the kids and…” Just sit there, and let go. Let go of that, you let go of that. “Well, but…” No. No but. Let go, let go.
Anybody hearing me? I know it’s scary. Your mouth dry a little bit, right? Let go. You do not want to keep the part of you that’s not OK. You want to be the part that is OK. Therefore, you have to let go of the part that’s not OK. Not placate it, not trying to manipulate a world that makes it be OK. It doesn’t know how to be OK. It’s never been OK your whole life. Let it go. Let it go. That’s the deep spiritual growth.
So we’re coming to the end of the year. You take a circle around the sun. Remember that, you’re just floating around on a spaceship in outer space causing trouble for yourself. OK? Come on, wake up. Let go. It’s very good to work with these things. Jai Guru Dev.
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% off any Michael Singer program available through Sounds True when you use the code Singer15 at checkout. That’s Singer, numeral one, numeral five 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.
