Michael Singer Podcast
“Your Highest Intention: Self-Realization”
Michael Singer
TAMI SIMON: Welcome to the Michael Singer Podcast. Michael Singer is the author of two widely influential New York Times bestsellers, The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment, both considered modern classics on the spiritual journey. Michael Singer lives and teaches at the Temple of the Universe, the yoga and meditation center he founded in 1975, near Gainesville, Florida. Produced in partnership with Shanti Publications, the Michael Singer Podcast brings you select recordings from Michael Singer’s teachings at the Temple of the Universe. This episode is on Your Highest Intention: Self-Realization.
Sounds True would also like you to know about an extraordinary eight-part video course we’ve created with Michael Singer. It’s called Living from a Place of Surrender: The Untethered Soul in Action, an online course many people report to be utterly life-changing. You can find out more at michaelsingerpodcast.com. That’s michaelsingerpodcast.com, and you can save 15% off any Michael Singer program available through Sounds True when you use the code Singer15 at checkout. Again, that’s Singer, one, five. And now, Your Highest Intention: Self-Realization, with Michael Singer.
MICHAEL SINGER: Jai Guru Dev. Jai masters. It’s almost as though every word in our language has many different levels. And some of them are very, very spiritual, the levels, not the words, the levels. It’s like love. Somebody once said, “Love can be the greatest trap, or the greatest liberator.” When love is an attempt to satisfy need, lacking, it is a trap. When love is something you find within yourself, that makes you whole and complete and is not contingent or dependent upon anything or anyone, then it is a liberator. So here you have the same word. One has a human concept and the other spiritual one. Everything’s that way.
So, we’re going to take a word, the word intent. If you take a young lady out, her father might say, “Young man, what are your intentions?” So that’s one use of the word intent. But we’re going to use the Buddhist meaning of the word intent, which is very, very deep. Perhaps it’s the deepest thing we can talk about. People worry about what clothes they wear, people worry about food, the Buddhist people worry about renouncing and not renouncing, and family life versus monastic life, and all these different things confuse people when on the spiritual path. All that matters, when it’s said and done, is intent.
You live inside, you have will, you will use your will all the time. You use your will all the time, everything is an act of will. Your body would just sit here, you move it, you move the arms, you move the mouth, you move the vocal cords, you move your feet as an act of will. You have intention when you do these things. Will and intention go hand in hand. The intention is behind the will. The will is the force that carries out the intention. People don’t know they have will. They know there are different forces in this world. Wind, magnetism, gravity. They understand these forces. They can use petroleum gas and stuff to run engines and then it creates activity, it creates action. Will is the force that you have inside, that you use all the time.
The trouble is it’s so easy to use, that you don’t know you’re doing it. It doesn’t take anything for you to use your will. When you’re speaking, like I’m speaking now, there is so much going on, it’s unbelievable– physiologically and mentally. Thoughts are forming, your vocal cords are moving, everything is happening. It doesn’t happen by itself. It happens because you will it to. If I decide suddenly to stop talking, it stops. I decide to continue, it continues. All right, it does whatever I will it to do. All right? That is true. Your arm sits. A force at rest will stay at rest unless a force causes it to change. Well, my arm is at rest. What caused it to come up? Will. I don’t understand how we missed this. It didn’t do it by itself. The arm did not decide, the nerves did not decide, the muscles did not decide to, all of a sudden, do what they need to do in order to lift in the air, did they? I decided. And I used an act of will, the force of will, to cause that to take place. How do you assert your will? Do you have to type it into a keyboard, or use a mouse and click on icons to tell it what you want it to do? No. All you have to do is intend it, and it takes place, OK? That’s pretty deep. That’s how deep intention is. Intention is behind will. All right? Period.
So, when you intend something, it takes place inside. Your will is strong enough to do anything within yourself. I’m not saying your will can move mountains. For you within yourself. And that’s what I want to talk about. For you within yourself– that means your body, your mind, and your emotions, that which is emanating from your heart, that which is emanating thoughts from your mind and all activities of your body, they’re within the domain of your will. You’re in complete, utter control of those functions, even the metabolic ones. I can’t do it. You can’t do it. But great yogis can do it. There are great yogis. Doesn’t mean they’re great, meaning enlightened, but they have these powers. Be careful. Don’t go following everybody because they can do this. They, literally, they bury themselves or they have somebody bury them, and they stay buried for days with no air, no food, no anything. And scientists have hooked up probes, different monitors, and they let that happen. And the yogis got buried, and the monitors showed the metabolic processes went way below anything that basal metabolism says. They had to redefine the term basal metabolism because yogis could do this. They went that far below what they said would keep you alive.
So, you have this ability. Master Yogananda, when he first came to America to wake people up, he’d stand on a stage like Carnegie Hall. He used to teach at Carnegie Hall in the late ’20s. He’d stand on the stage with a with a turban on his head. He was a yogi, right? And he’d stand there and he’d call two doctors up. “Any doctors in the audience?” “Yes.” “Come on up here. Take my pulse.” One would take the pulse. “You take the pulse.” They’d get the pulse, both are the same in both wrists. He says, “Now, both you together take the pulse.” Totally different. He could change his pulse rate at will from one arm to the other. At the same time. The doctors measured at the same time. It’s just, you have amazing abilities. We don’t own them, we don’t build them and you don’t need to. But just understand that in here, you are in control. Gandhi had phenomenal control of his body. He changed the world by doing what he did. He let them beat him, crack his head, and this and that, put him in jail and didn’t eat and fasted, because he had the ability to transcend the physiological stuff.
So, you in there, you have tremendous will. Some people say to me, “Oh my God! I don’t have strong will.” That’s not true. You haven’t exercised it. You haven’t built your abilities to utilize your will. Everyone, everyone, has total will over everything going on inside them, over your thoughts, over your emotions and overall physiological things within yourself.
That is the nature of the indwelling soul. It is omnipotent in relationship to itself. Do you understand that? I’m not telling you to develop these powers. They’re called siddhis. Yogis develop siddhis. There’s no reason to do that. But I am telling you that if you are living within yourself, and your mind is driving you crazy, and your emotions are causing your trouble, and your body is not healthy because of the food you eat or because of this, that, and the other thing, you are not subject to that. It is absurd to allow that to take place, to sit there and say, “I’m smoking. And I know I shouldn’t be smoking. I’m getting sick. I’m starting to get pre-cancer type stuff. But I can’t stop.” That’s absurd. I’m sorry. OK, I’m sorry to tell you. That’s absurd. That’s like saying there’s nothing wrong with you. My arm is here. Every once in a while, it picks itself up. There’s nothing I can do about it. And that’s not true. It’s just simply not true. So, what do you mean you can stop smoking? I don’t understand the tension right here. OK? “I feel the urge to smoke.” Of course, you do. You’re a smoker, you have a habit. It’s called a habit. So, you have both a physiological and a psychological habit that when you get uncomfortable, your mind starts bothering you to get a cigarette, doesn’t it? Or a drink? I don’t care what it is. It’s bothering you. It keeps talking about it. And it keeps saying, “It’s OK. You can get it. Just one doesn’t hurt you.” And it does that, yes or no?
That’s what it means to have patterns, neurological pathways as you carve in your neurons. You have pathways that are going to start generating thoughts like this. And you have physiological urges, because they stick all that nicotine in there, and it’s addictive physiologically. And so, there’s this discomfort, and therefore the discomfort, physiologically and psychologically, urges you to do something about it. And therefore, you go and you do these things. Do you have to? Of course not. Of course, you don’t have to. That’s ridiculous. If you went there and tried to grab the cigarette, and all of a sudden somebody said to you, “Not only does that one have the Surgeon General’s poison skull and crossbones on it, right, but that one’s laced with arsenic.” You’ll put it down. You’re going to put that thing down. You’re going to say, “I want another one.” You had the ability to put that down. There is no way you are telling me, and I won’t believe you if you say it, because I know it’s not true, that you do not have the ability to not take that cigarette out that says “arsenic-laced,” put it in your mouth and light it and say, “I knew I shouldn’t, but I just couldn’t help myself.” You can help yourself. You can help yourself if you intend to. If your intention is, “I don’t want to smoke that,” you are not going to smoke that. If your intention is, “I wish I didn’t want to smoke it, because I know it’s not good for me. But I really want to smoke it.” you will smoke it.
I told you I would tell this story when I was doing prison work. We were talking like this to the men. And we were talking about it. And I told them that you could do whatever you wanted. And they disagreed. They said, “We’re not the strongest-willed people out here. We’ve kind of shown that.” And so, being men that were locked up in maximum security prison, they were in there for life. And so, I played a game with them. But it’s very important. I tell the story all the time, because it really shows it. There were maybe 20, 20 men, younger, older, whatever it was, sitting there. And I said, “What if whatever you thought was the most beautiful woman in the world walked in this room and began disrobing, walked across the front of the room, and then put her clothes back on, and walked out?” They sat there. And I said, “Could you not look?” I’m telling you, every one of them did this, hands lifted, “No, Michael.” I went through everyone. “No, I know you want me to say yes, because you’re talking about will. But I’ve been in here for life. It may be the last chance I ever get to see such beauty,” and blah, blah, blah. “You know we’re men, right? Certain things men got to do.” And they just were there, and they said no. I said, “Are you sure? Are you sure you couldn’t not look?” They said, “I would peek.”
I said, “OK. Right here in front of me, $1 million cash, a pardon from the governor, the keys to your Ferrari out in front, and the keys to your house in Maui, and your private plane.” I said, “You there, could you not look?” Oh my God! You should have seen that room. “I ain’t looking. There’s nothing.” Right or wrong? All of a sudden, the intention changed. “But you told me you didn’t have the ability to not look.” “I was wrong. For that, I ain’t looking.” That’s a very deep teaching. What does that tell you? How, all of a sudden, you change what you were able to do? No, you didn’t change what you were able to do. You changed your intention. You were always able to do it, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to do it.
All right, go on. I’ll take the same example. “There’s barbells over there, weightlifting, 6000 pounds, pick it up.” “I can’t. I know I can’t.” “A million dollars, pardon, this, pick it up.” “I can’t.” That means you can’t. I don’t care what I offer you, it has nothing to do with your intention. You ain’t picking up 6000 pounds over your head. I hope none of you can do that. I don’t know what number I should have picked. But this thing about not looking, this thing about not smoking, this thing about not drinking, this thing about not losing your temper, this thing about anything you want to say that you’re doing, and I’m going show you why the difference is, if you’re doing it, you can not do it. There’s not a single thing that you’re doing that you can not not do. That makes sense to you? Why? Because you’re the one who’s doing it. That’s as simple as that. You’re the one who’s finding the cigarettes, taking it out, putting in your mouth, lighting and inhaling. You’re doing that. Just don’t do one of those, you’ll stop smoking.
So, the answer is the only thing that’s missing here is not will. The will is capable. Anger is a stronger one. That’s so much with anger, or jealousy or something like that, that all of a sudden, this is coming up inside of you. And you say, “Well, I have a problem with anger. I don’t want to give in to it.” Then don’t. It’s tough. Let me finish, because I first understand that your will is stronger than anything else that goes on inside of you. Period. Anything, basic drives, survival instinct. Oh! How about that? See, you don’t believe that. You were taught survival instinct was the strongest in the world, didn’t you? And there’s not a nice story I’m about to tell you. You were taught that, weren’t you? The survival drive, the instinct to survive. That one is so easy to prove your will is stronger than that. It’s called suicide.
The moment your intention was to take your life, you did, right or wrong? Obviously, not you, you wouldn’t be here. But people do that. What is that telling you? That they didn’t have a survival drive? Yes, they did. But their will was stronger than that. They did this ridiculously amazingly difficult thing to do, and superseded, transcended their survival drive, because they intended to. But their will was strong enough, wasn’t it? If your will was not strong enough, nobody would ever commit suicide, because they don’t have the ability to do so. Do you understand that? Just like you couldn’t pick up that 6000 pounds, no matter how hard you wanted to. This is not a nice discussion. But I want you to understand, your will is the most powerful force inside of you. Period. So, that one was a very strong one, because it was suicide.
Now let’s talk about anger. So, people have anger. There are people that have trouble with anger, no question. I have compassion for that. I understand that. So, anger comes up, and they feel it, and then they lose it. They lose it. You know what losing it means? Seriously, you’re literally it. There’s an it. Where’s the antecedent to the pronoun? What exactly did you lose? You lost your center of will, whereby your intention was deciding what’s taking place. You allowed a force to overcome you, didn’t you? And you lost your center, you lost your ability to stay centered, to stay clear, to be in charge of yourself. He lost it completely. Isn’t that beautiful?
And you know why? You don’t understand. And I know you won’t like me for saying it. It’s because you intended to. Now you’re going to sit there and say, “Let’s take something a little easier first, drinking.” So, you’re trying to stop drinking, you do your AA stuff, you do everything like that. And you’ve got your chips for six months, a year, whatever the heck it is, because your intention was, “I’m not going to drink.” That’s the only reason you did it. I don’t care what they did for you, you better have that intention. That intention stayed strong enough so that when one of your drinking buddies said, “Hey, come on! We’re going to socialize with a few of our friends.” “Where are you going to go?” “We’re just going to go Harry’s Bar. You don’t have to drink.” And you said no. Why? Because that was your intention. Your intention was not to drink.
I’m telling you that when you’re going to fall off that wagon, there is a moment in which your intention wavered. Otherwise, you would’ve just kept saying no. There’s a moment in which you said, “Social drinks. They’re not going to hurt anything. I feel lonely.” You changed your intention. That makes me cry to say because people don’t want to hear this. You had to have changed your intention, because if you were strong enough for the first year, you’re strong enough for the second year. If you have the ability to make good choices and say no when you’re confronted with something that is tempting or driving your habits, if you could do it even once, then you have the ability to do it. But your intention changed. It wasn’t as strong. Like I said, people don’t like this talk. Why? Because it puts the burden exactly where it belongs, on you.
So basically, if you fall off the wagon, I took drinking, anger is harder for people. But if you fall off the wagon, I’m telling you it’s because at some point, your intention wavered. It didn’t to be at that moment it was too late. But at some point, your intention wavered, because if your intention didn’t waver and you were not drinking for a year, you would not be drinking ever again. Period. That’s what changed, was your intention. Do you know that? Do you watch that? Do you see that? Do you see that all it takes is one thought, just one thought, one moment of, “Well, it’s not going to hurt to socially…” There it is. There it is. You didn’t listen to that thought before. Not that it wasn’t there, but you didn’t listen to it before. Your wife says she’s going to leave you, your kids don’t want to talk to you anymore, this is your last shot. “OK. No, I’m not going to drink. Never again. And I mean it, I mean it.” You do mean it. That’s your intention at the time.
You let something slip in, thoughts that changed your intention, it slightly changed. “Well, she’s not going to find out. It’s going to hurt anything.” And that slips in, and your intention… Do you know what I mean? Don’t blush. The intention changes, doesn’t it? Right or wrong? Have you ever let go of your intention? Good. We’re having a nice talk, aren’t we? You did that purposely. You made that decision. You did that. And you allowed your intention to change because you wanted a rush, you want an experience, you wanted something. To me, it is the equivalent to you’re driving a car, 70 miles an hour on the highway, you got your hands on the wheel, you’re paying attention, 70 is fast, it’s crowded, L.A. Expressway. And all of a sudden, your mind sat there and said, “Just let go the wheel and jump in the backseat. What a rush! I bet no one’s ever done that before. Maybe they’ll put you on Ripley’s, how long you can go in the backseat without touching the wheel.”
I don’t know what your stupid mind’s going to say. It says stupid things, right? The question is, is your intention strong enough to just not listen to that stupid thought? It’s not a problem that you had the thought. I’ve talked to you, I’m giving you a different talk today. I’ve talked to you plenty of times where your stupid thoughts come from. They’re not divinely inspired. They’re your garbage puking up inside of you. They’re all your suppressed junk. You had a big fight with your husband, “Oh! I’ll show him. I’ll show him how much he needs me. I’m going to let go of this wheel.” So, people do weird things. Some lady drove her car, remember that? Off the road and drowned her kids. Oh my God! What are you doing? What are you doing? The mind is capable of doing that, isn’t it? The question is not what the mind is capable of doing. I feel more sorry for the mind. The mind is just regurgitating the garbage you put in it. If you’re going to store every single thing that ever bothered you inside your mind, how can you blame your mind for being sick? If you take every single piece of food that ever made you sick, it was rancid, it was bad, and you took it home and you mix it all together, and every day you ate some of it, how can you blame your body for being sick?
What you have done with your poor mind, I have great respect for the mind. I don’t have any respect for what we do with it. You have taken every single thing that ever hurt you in your entire life, all the way back to childhood, and you stored it inside your mind. What mommy did, what daddy did, what sister did. You didn’t get the bike you wanted, your first boyfriend dumped you, this happened. Still in there, isn’t it? You did that. You did that, literally, through will. It’s not going to stay in there by itself. It doesn’t. Events happen and they pass through you and then they’re gone. It is an act of will, suppression. So, Freud talked about repression and suppression. What are those? Acts of will. They’re not things that just happen by themselves. You don’t want to experience that you didn’t get to say goodbye to your mother before she died, and now you’re all bothered by this. You push it on down, right or wrong.
You ever push a thought away? Have you ever pushed a thought or an emotion away inside so you don’t have to feel it? That is an act of will. And your intention… I was leading to intention. Your intention when you do that is, “I want to feel better. I don’t feel good. I don’t want experience that. I’m scared.” Whatever. It’s just an intention of, “I don’t want to deal with that.” Isn’t it? “I don’t want to deal with that. I don’t want to experience that.” And so, you resist it. I want to show you the relationship between intention and will and then the result. Your intention in those deep ones where you repress and suppress is, “No, not comfortable. I don’t want to experience this. I don’t want to experience this. I don’t want to experience this.” That’s your intention. “I don’t want to experience this.”
And so, you use your will to not experience it. I mean, it really happened, but inside you push it away, so that you don’t have to feel the full brunt of what’s happening. I teach you that all the time. That’s what’s happening. The world comes in, you start to experience it, because you’re the experiencer. If it is not pleasant to you, you don’t want to experience it. The fact that it actually happened, that’s irrelevant to you. I would rather have it not happen, but I have no control over that. But I don’t have to feel it inside. I don’t need the full brunt of this thing. So, I do something to keep it at a distance from passing through my consciousness. Your intention is to make yourself feel better. Your intention is not to have to experience this uncomfortable feeling. And so, you either suppress it or you rationalize it, or you do something with it. And that is an act of will. So, there you have intention, will, and result.
The result is ruining your mind. You have ruined your mind. Nobody else did it. It’s not the event that ruined your mind. It’s not your ex-husband that ruined your mind. You divorced your ex-husband. OK. I don’t need all the details. But you divorced your ex-husband. What’s he still doing in there? He’s not out here anymore. He’s not in the house. He lives in another state. Why is he still in there, and you’re still having arguments with him, and somebody mentions his name, you freak out. What the heck is that? That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? You have polluted your mind with something that you agreed to, and at some point in your life you said, “I don’t have to put up with this.” Then why do you keep it inside your mind so that it keeps bothering you? You’ve done that with everything that ever bothered you. And by doing that, you broke your mind. You broke your mind. And don’t tell me, “I didn’t do it.” Of course, you did it.
When your ex-husband starts to come back up, what do you do? You push him back down. That’s an act of will. You are using your will in there to control the thoughts and control the emotions. If somebody says to you, “Do you have control over your thoughts?” Don’t say no. “The ones I want to, I do.” I don’t want to push that thing around. What if I really like something? “I really like what he said to me. It’s just gone, never goes over, plays over again in your mind? He loves me. He said he loves me. I love you. He loves me. I love you.” It doesn’t go away by itself. You’re making that happen. “How exactly did he say?” How do you bring something out of your memory? You have will. You’re so used to it. It’s so intuitive that you’re not paying attention. Those are acts of will. Ever try to remember somebody’s name? What do you mean, try to remember? What does that mean? What are you doing in there?
You’re using your will to try to make the mind come up with the name. Everything you’re doing in there mentally, emotionally, and physiologically inside is an act of will. The question is not the will, the question is the intention. So, the mind, I said why would the mind pop up and tell you to do these weird things and say things? Because you broke your mind. The mind is not broken. You broke your mind. You stored all this garbage, all this pain, all this disturbance, all these things that you wanted that you didn’t get, all this stuff that happened to you over the course of your life, you stored inside your mind, didn’t you? And you did it.
Don’t you dare say it’s natural. It is not natural. What’s natural is that the events are taking place. They’re coming in, you’re experiencing them and then they’re gone. Why? So, that you can experience the next event. When you’re watching TV, you don’t want the last show to be playing on top of this one. So, imagine if every single show you ever didn’t like, see, that’s what you did. It’s bad enough that every show is still there. You pick the ones you don’t like, you pick the scenes that bothered you the most, and then you superimpose them on top of every scene you try to watch. You try to watch the news and Freddie on Elm Street is chopping people up. It’s like, oh my God! What kind of thing is that to do? You wouldn’t enjoy TV very much. You wouldn’t enjoy life very much if you do that. And you did do that.
TAMI SIMON: You’re listening to the Michael Singer Podcast produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. Sounds True has also produced with Michael Singer an extraordinary eight-part video course, Living from a Place of Surrender: The Untethered Soul in Action. you can find out more at michaelsingerpodcast.com, and save 15% when you use the code Singer 15 at checkout. Now back to Michael Singer on Your Highest Intention: Self-Realization.
MICHAEL SINGER: All right. So, you used your will to hold on to this stuff. Why? Because… it’s kind of so funny it’s hard to talk about. I’m not going intention. What was my intention to do this stupid thing of storing everything that ever bothered me, keep it inside my mind? Your intention was to not experience it, wasn’t it? Please listen to me. Do you know what that feels like? “I don’t want it to be that… Ewww. It’s disturbing, I don’t like it.” And so therefore, because you don’t want to experience it, you used your act of will to push it away. When you push it away, where do you think it went? If you push that stuff down there, it doesn’t dissipate, it doesn’t go away. It’s like they used to talk about the environment. You’ve got these steel mills and all these pipes, smokestacks coming up and all this black smoke is coming out, where does it go? “Oh! It just dissipates. It goes away.”
Yeah, right. No. It doesn’t dissipate. Do you understand that? It gets stored. Same thing in there. You push that thing away, it doesn’t go away. It stays inside. And you will continue using your active will throughout your entire life. What do you mean? It comes back up. Something reminds you of it, something stimulates it. Do you understand that? You start feeling that feeling again. Correct? What do you do? You push it back down. You don’t want to experience it, even 20 years later, do you? It’s too painful. You don’t experience it. So, you push it away. And so basically, this spreads across to everything.
So, we were talking about anger. You have trouble with anger. Anger is very strong, right? Yes. All these things can be very strong. The question is your intention. I guarantee you there is nobody, nobody, that is not capable of working with their anger. Nobody. Because you are the strongest force inside. “Oh! How come anger overcomes me or overcomes somebody?” It doesn’t do it all at once. It is not like you’re standing there in the middle of the field, and all of a sudden, “Rawr!” You don’t think anything, nothing happens, and this roaring beast overcomes your being. All right. I mean, there can be, if there’s mental illness. I’m not talking about that. I’m not saying there can’t be something physiologically wrong. By the way, the type of mental illness I just separated out is that there’s a physiological problem with the brain.
So basically now, here’s how I see anger. He’s talking to me. He starts touching sensitive subjects inside of me, purposely or not purposely. It doesn’t matter to me. It sounds purposeful, I’ll tell you right now, the moment that thing starts. And I start feeling uncomfortable, right or wrong. And I start feeling this heat building up from down here, third chakra stuff, and go on. And I can actually feel myself start to get heated. I might even say, “Stop it. I’m telling you, I am not going to be responsible if you keep going, for what’s going to happen.” Oh, wow! That’s beautiful. In other words, “I’m still here. I’m conscious. I have my will. And I’m seeing this force begin to rise up inside of me.” It builds, doesn’t it? Anger builds. Very good. If your intention is to not lose your temper, ever, ever… “Well, what if the person’s wrong?” That’s a very different intention. “What if they’re trying to make me lose my temper?” If your intention is to not lose your temper, I would highly advise starting very early in the game I just talked about, that the moment they start talking about a subject that you know is difficult to you, that’s where you start. That your intention, if you’re smart, that intention and the will-driven intention is so strong, that the moment that starts, you take control, you step forward. It has to be that your only intention, your only intention, is to stay centered, to stay clear, and to be with your hands on the wheel. And that’s how you’re going to drive. That’s your intention.
So then, if that’s your intention, it doesn’t matter if the car cuts you off. You still don’t go jump in the backseat, let go of the wheel. It doesn’t matter that the road is rough. It doesn’t matter that the car has a steering problem, it needs alignment, pulls to the right a little bit, so you pull back. Your intention is at all times to keep your hands on the wheel and drive the darn car so you don’t go hit a tree or another car. That’s your intention when you drive, isn’t it? You don’t ever waver off of that. You wouldn’t be here talking to me.
That has to be your intention inside. That’s a yogi. That’s a yogini. That’s a centered being. As you are here, you’re clear. I am driving through my life. There are all sorts of forces, drives, instincts, habits, all kinds of stuff, crazy thoughts. I don’t know if I finished this discussion good enough for you. The reason you have crazy thoughts, everybody, is because you stored that stupid stuff inside of you and it bruised down there. And you get all this negative pain and all this stuff that you build up over the course of your life. It needs to release. It will release in your dreams, you’ll have nightmares, you’ll have all kinds of stuff. And it will release during the day as well. I call it daymares. They come popping up inside of you. And they say stupid things, don’t they? The question is not whether a disturbed mind is going to say disturbed things. A disturbed mind is going to say disturbed things. And a disturbed mind is going to stir up disturbed emotions. And you’ll be very uncomfortable in there. How can it get like that?
It’s happening because you stored the garbage inside of you over the course of your entire life, you still have stored inside of you everything that ever bothered you. Now, how in the world you expect to be OK inside if that’s what you stored inside? You go into your house and take all your leftovers and garbage, and just don’t throw it out, just dump it in your house. Your house will smell, and it will not be comfortable being in there. Inside your house, inside store every single thing that ever bothered you. Don’t you deny that you’ve done that, because you have done that. The reason is because you didn’t want to experience it. Because you didn’t want to experience it, you pushed it away. When you pushed it away, it got stored inside of you. Therefore, inside has all the garbage that you collected through your entire life, the same as if your house had it. Therefore, it’s not comfortable in there, it gets weird, it’s sensitive, all the stuff that you know is going on. And it’s difficult to live in there. Of course, it is.
So basically, in order to change all this, and be happy, and be love, et cetera, it starts with intention, starts with intention. It doesn’t start with the garbage. You have all your garbage inside your house. It doesn’t start with, “What do I do about it?” No. Until you decide you don’t want it in there, you’re just going to play around with it. You’ll move it from one room to the other. “Oh! I remember when I ate this. It was good. I don’t want to throw that out yet.” You hear me? You’re just moving it around, because your intention is to keep the thing. That’s why you kept it. If your intention is not to experience the bad feelings, you’re wasting your time looking for them. How do I know where the stuff is stored inside of me? Don’t. You’re just going feel sorry for yourself. You’ll move it over here, you’ll do this. You’ll do something with it, but you won’t get rid of it. You have to change your intention. Your intention has to be, “I don’t want this stuff inside of me.” What stuff? This stuff. “What are some of it?” No.
I don’t need the garbage of what I eat in the past stored inside my apartment or my house, do I? I don’t need the garbage from my past stored inside my mind. Period. That’s called a change of intention. Don’t just change what you’re doing about it. You change the intention behind why it’s there. There is no reason to be storing that stuff inside of you except that you’re not willing to handle it. You’re not willing to experience it. It comes back up, you push it back down. You have to decide, “I don’t want to do that.” That’s all you have to decide. So, once you decide, going back to anger, or smoking, or drinking, or anything, once you decide, this is my intention, I am telling you, you win. It is only if your intention wavers. That’s all. And I’m encouraging you to start early. I’m not sitting there saying it’d be a great being to put yourself in a situation of temptation, where all these forces are and yet you don’t do anything. So, you’re sitting there trying to not drink, and then go into the bar and you’re with your drinking friends, and they give you a drink. You just want to smell it. Man, you better be pretty strong. You better be Superman or something, right? To be able to sit there and be that close and not do anything, I would highly advise not taking the drink and putting it in the glass, and not going into the bar, and not hanging out with those people anymore. There, that’s your intention. That’s a person with a strong intention.
Likewise, when you start to feel anger, I would highly advise that the moment you start to see the tendencies that you’ve watched throughout your life, because you have a problem with this, the moment, not when it’s about to go, the moment you decide, “If my true intention is to not lose it, why am I playing with this?” And by the way, that’s the right word, isn’t it? You do play with stuff in there, don’t you? “I won’t light the cigarette.” I see it all the time. “I won’t light it. I just put it in my mouth.” Yes or no? Is that an exaggeration? You see people do that. I would highly advise not playing with these energies. They’re very strong. And since you have these tendencies, they’re very strong, and you haven’t developed the level of will or intention, to where you better be careful.
And so, you just start saying, where… Master used to say, “During your times of greatest clarity, set your intention. You’re going to have times of non-clarity. You’re going to have times that aren’t as good as the rest of those times.” Maybe this hurricane, you had stopped smoking, you had stopped drinking. Now you don’t have electricity for a week. Some other thing, your roof got blown off your house. I wonder how many people fell off the wagon or started smoking again, or started drinking again, because they’re going through a more difficult situation than what they were used to going through. Happens all the time. And then I guarantee you, those people who took that drink just to make it through the thing, that smoked the cigarette, they’re not stopping when the hurricane is over.
Please listen to what it means to live in there. Your intention has to be on a rock. It has to be, “This is my intention. I don’t have any other intention. So, the roof flies off, everyone’s there, says, “Do you want a drink?” “No.” But it’s a tough…” “No”. It has to be your intention. It’s my intention, my intention on the other side of this thing is going to be nothing’s going to waver it. “If I say I’m going to do this, I’m doing it.” So, you set your intention, and you start working with a strong intention. And what you will find is every single time you exercise your will to support your intention, and that’s what you’re using your will for, your will gets stronger. And this relationship between your intention and your will will become unbelievable, beyond your comprehension, become what’s called a being of power. You’ve heard that term? All right. You become a being of power. Whatever it is that you intend, takes place. You don’t have to try anymore. It’s just that easy. Just like you don’t have to try staying on the road, do you? It’s just very easy. And no, you’re not jumping in the backseat. That doesn’t even cross your mind. That’s what your whole life will be like from that point forward. You have established a center of will, and behind it, an intention of steel. And basically, you’re driving through your life with this.
Now, given that strength, I’m kind of interested in what your intention was. “I want to be the richest man in the world. I want to have power over everybody.” Well, we’ve had those people that had that intention, haven’t we? And they caused a lot of trouble. So now it comes down to, what is the highest intention? What is the highest intention? The highest intention is to be in here, realize you have tremendous power over everything that goes on inside of you, and say, “I want to reach the highest state that I’m capable of reaching.” And self-realization is the highest experience you will ever have, is the highest state, is the epitome of life for you to find out who you are in there. You in there, who’s using your intention and using your will, where do you come from? Who are you? What’s that? That’s a very high thing in there.
And all this stuff you’re playing with down here, all these drives, and urges, and yuck, that’s called lower self. You are way higher than that. That’s why you’re supreme above it. That’s why your will is stronger than all your lower drives, and tendencies, and memories. And the minute… If you decide, and I teach you this. “Well, what am I supposed to do about this stuff I stored in here?” Let it go. What does letting go mean? It means there’s going to be something that happens, it hits your stuff, and your stuff starts coming up. And there’s this amazing tendency to push it back down. Don’t. Just like, don’t have a cigarette. Just like, don’t drink the drink. Let it go. “What do you mean?” Let it come up. “Aaah! But my intention is not to experience it.” No. Your intention is to be liberated. I’m talking straight to you. Your intention is to find out what’s it like to be high in there? Find out what it’s like to be beautiful in there, because you are. Find out what it’s like to be so filled with love that you can’t even see straight. Hear me? A wave of joy welling up inside of you, every moment of your life. That’s who you are.
So, your intention is self-realization. Your intention is liberation. Liberation, that’s the word. Freeing yourself from all this garbage. If that’s your intention, you can’t do it while you’re hanging on to the anchor of all this stuff that bothered you from before. So, if something should happen, I’m not telling you to go down there and bring up all this garbage. You don’t have to bring anything up, it comes up by itself. I’m just asking you not to push it back down when it comes up. And someday, you’re going to find out that miraculously it comes up in exactly the right order of what you can handle now. And what you can’t handle won’t come up to you get to a point that you’re ready to handle it.
It’s like a tennis coach doesn’t do any good if he’s slamming McEnroe serves at you and can’t even hit anything. You’re not going to learn a single thing. Piano teacher isn’t the kind of a teacher who shoves Beethoven at you, says, “Play.” “But I’ve never touched a piano.” “Play it!” No, they start with scales. They start with practice balls. Life will do the same. I know you don’t believe it. You say, “I wasn’t ready for this.” Yes, you are. If it happened, you’re ready for it. But I’m saying, you got to be willing to deal with the fact that somebody cut you off in the car. You got to be able to deal with somebody’s driving too slow in front of you. You got to be willing to do it, when it’s raining and you don’t want it to be rainy. “I wanted to go out today.”
If you’ll do it with the little, you missed the little things. You missed the practice you went to where they were lobbing the balls. It even looked too easy, so you didn’t bother. You didn’t play the scales. “Yeah I practiced.” So, these little ones that are happening, that are hitting your stuff a little bit, I’m telling you, they’re the training balls. They are what are teaching you to be able to let go. “It’s raining, I have to deliver this thing. But it’s raining. I don’t want to get wet.” There you go. There’s your intention. Is your intention to deliver the thing you need to deliver? Or is your intention to not get wet? Is your intention to stay calm and centered while you’re driving your car? Or is your intention to yell and scream and carry on because the person in front of you is driving 10 miles an hour below the speed limit?
What’s your intention? I’m begging you to understand how powerful this intention is. I want your intention to be at all times, every single second, exactly the same. There’s only one intention, liberation. I’m freeing myself. That’s what it boils down to. If I’m driving, and some person in front of me is driving too slow, and I’m going to be late for work, I’ll deal with that when I get to work because it’s not going to change anyways. Right now, my intention is to stay centered, clear, and calm, and handle what’s taking place in front of me. That’s my intention.
If my intention is to deliver what I need to deliver and it’s raining, my intention is not to not get wet. My intention is, how do I deliver this? God! You’re becoming a being of power. Do you see why? You set your direction and you’re going to make it happen. It’s going to take place. That’s all. So, these little easy ones that you miss all the time, somebody didn’t say hello, you called on the phone, somebody didn’t answer. “Who are they talking to? What’s going on? What did I do? What I did do? Did they hang up on me? I don’t know.” So basically, this goes on. Instead you let it go. I’m telling you, I beg you, every moment of your life, you’re being given an opportunity to practice letting go. You’re just not taking it. You’re not taking the opportunity. If you do it with the small things, then something bigger is going to happen. And you’re not going to want to deal with it, or if you wanted to deal with, you’d already be done with it.
I’m telling you, it is supposed to be uncomfortable in the beginning. It will become more comfortable as you practice letting go. The comfortable should be letting go, not “I wish there was nothing to let go of.” There is a lot to let go of. You stored a lifetime, you stored lots of stuff in there. You need to be willing… You don’t need to let go every little piece. Oh! Didn’t I tell you? Need to know. I’m telling you secrets. It is not true that you have to get each one of these garbage things that you stored inside and let go of each one individually. It happens in layers. Here’s a layer of stuff. “Rain, I don’t want to get wet. Somebody’s driving too slow in front of me. Somebody didn’t say hello.” It’s all about the same vibration. You got to it? It’s that layer. When you learn to let go of the person driving too slow in front of you, then all of a sudden you don’t have so much trouble with the rain. Now, you don’t have trouble with the heat. You don’t have trouble with the rain. “OK. It’s hot. Fine.”
Saying letting go handles all of them. And pretty soon, they go as a group. Because you developed your intention and your will to handle that level of discomfort, it’s not uncomfortable anymore, because you’re comfortable with it. That’s nice to know, isn’t it? It all goes at once. All the karmic seeds, all the patterns. Likewise, now you get another level. You had trouble in a relationship, in an argument, you had this, you had that. Now you got to go to work. Can you handle it? Can you let go? Can you be OK? Can you be OK? That’s harder, it’s it? Can you be OK realizing I’m OK? “But what if he leaves me? I’m OK.” Whoa. Now you get that layer, and it’s not just, “What if I fired? What if my house burns down?” There are a lot of what ifs we can do that make us really uncomfortable. Just start letting go with some of the ones that are actually happening. And guess what you’ll realize? “Hey, I’m OK with this. I can make it through this.” Because you can make it through those, you can make it through that entire layer, therefore you don’t worry about it anymore. It goes all at once, once you work that layer through.
Are you willing to deal with the one that’s in front of you? Because that one in front of you is a representative of the whole layer. That should inspire you. The one in front of you is the representative of the whole layer. If you can do that, you can do it all, and you don’t have to worry anymore. You don’t have to be so uptight, you don’t have to be, so on. So just more and more you get comfortable with being uncomfortable. You’re comfortable that when the thing comes up, it means it’s time to let go.
I remember in my early growth, back in the ’70s, when I was learning all this, and learning this, watching this happen, and something happened that was strong, it was stronger than I wanted to deal with, or stronger than I thought I could deal with. And I remember thinking to myself, “This event, it took all the stars to be aligned the way exactly they are right now, everything, for this type of event to take place. If I don’t use it to let go, who knows when it’d all line up back again to get another opportunity.” I became more scared of missing the opportunity of letting this go, than I was of it itself. I got serious with that. And so, I didn’t play around. I was like, “I’m not going to miss this opportunity because it would have to come around again. Who knows how long that will take?” And that’s a whole layer. So, you become serious. This is not a game, is it? This is your life. This is everything, isn’t it? This is going to determine the quality of your entire life.
And so, your intention becomes spiritual growth. My intention is not to get married, my intention is not to have children, my intention is not to have enough wealth to travel around and see the world. My intention is not… No. My intention is liberation. My intention is to explore the depth of my being to see what it would be like to be whole and complete inside, to be filled with Shakti and love and spirit, and be able to share it. Let’s set some high intentions in here. Come on! “I want to get married and have a car.” Come on, man! Everybody’s married and has a car. Half the people who’ve been married get divorced. You wasted your intention. It doesn’t mean you don’t get married. This is a natural thing that unfolds. You fall in love. But that can’t be your intention. If your intention was to get married, what happens after you get married? If your intention was to get rich, what happens after you get rich? Take a look. They’re miserable. They lost the meaning of their life. That’s what a midlife crisis is. These were my intentions. I either didn’t get them, or I got them and they didn’t do squat for me. Now what? You lose. You need to set your bar properly. My intention is self-realization. My intention is liberation. Leave enlightenment out, because people don’t understand that. But self-realization, it’s a master quality. It’s to know the nature of my being, who lives in here. You don’t even know yourself. How dare you decide who you’re supposed to marry? You don’t even know who you are. “It’ll help me know who I am.” No, it won’t. It’ll help you know who he is, and you won’t like it.
Anyway, listening? Take your intention, set it high, and put your intentions where they belong. And then use that intention, just like the person who stopped drinking, just like the person who stopped smoking, just like the person who learned to overcome anger. Let go of this stuff. If it comes up, eventually, you know how you’ll get? You’ll throw it a party. “Where you been? For 40 years, I haven’t seen you. Fine, when I was five I couldn’t handle the fact that my mother got divorced or somebody got divorced, right? I’m 55. I’ve been divorced three times. Easy as pie. Come on up! Come on up. It’s a party. Welcome. Welcome.” I told you if it really hurts really bad, there’s a song by Simon and Garfunkel gave it to you [The Sound of Silence]. “Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to be with you again.” Just let go. I’m begging you.
And what will happen if you let go, the things that are drawing your intention, if you stop drinking enough, eventually it will stop urging. Habits go away. Do you understand that? They still tell you not to drink, because obviously you have a tendency for life, all right? But habits like smoking, I remember my age when we were growing up, people smoked. I remember when I stopped smoking back in the ’60s after a short period of time. It wasn’t that long. I can’t imagine why I ever smoked. It was disgusting. All my clothes smelled, all this stuff. So basically, habits go away. You’re welcome to let them go. You are in complete control of yourself. Stop being a baby. Use it. Use it. And don’t ever come to this point say, “Well, it’s a special occasion.” For now, every time you get there, “Well, it’s just once. It was a special occasion. I had a tough day.” Just remember, I agree. Take your hands off the wheel when you’re driving down the L.A. Expressway, jump in the backseat for a minute, because you had a tough day. “But isn’t there a time for doing that?” No, there’s not. I gave you a good example, because that’s what’s equivalent to what you’re doing. You let go of that rope, you’re going right back.
Ask AA. If somebody stopped drinking, hard as it could be, six months they got, a year, one drink offsets everything you did. Your probability of taking that second drink has increased by 7000-fold once you take one. Why? Because you lost your intention. It’s not that the habit got so strong, all of a sudden, with one drink. It does, of course, stimulate it. But you lost your intention. Your intention was not to drink. Well, you did. “So, what the hell, do it again.” Did anybody hear me? This is serious talk. So how powerful is intention? Everything. It’s more powerful than will. How do you like that? Why? Because it determines how you’re going to use your will. Your will is the power that was given to the soul. So, intention is the direction the soul is looking, and the will is the power that guides it that way. So, you best be paying attention to your intention. And I told you the highest. I’m going to use my life to free myself. Jivanmukta, the liberated soul, to where you can live in there, and there’s nothing pulling on you. There is something pulling on you. It’s pulling up. Just always pulling up. You can sit in the face of the greatest temptation in the world, energy just keeps going up. In the Atma Gita that we say in the morning, there’s a line. “The man that has tasted the bliss of the self may move amongst objects of sense without fear, his mind never clings to the woes of misery, his heart is with God, and his soul is set free.” There it is. 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 has also produced with Michael Singer an extraordinary eight-part video course called Living from a Place of Surrender: The Untethered Soul in Action. You can find out more at michaelsingerpodcast.com and save 15% when you use the code Singer15, that’s Singer, numeral one, numeral five at checkout. The music you heard is the song Giving It All by Be Still the Earth. Thank you so much for listening. Sounds True, waking up the world.
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