Tami Simon: Welcome to the Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at michaelsingerpodcast.com.
Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. There are some very clear benchmarks, turning points on your spiritual growth. There are many before and plenty after, but let’s just talk about the main points that will determine your growth.
First, called waking up. I wake up every morning — you wish. You wake up to your mind’s chatter. You wake up to the issues of your emotions. You wake up to thinking, “What’s going to happen? What’s not going to happen? What do I want to happen? How do I make it happen? What might happen? How do I stop it from happening?” If you’re a human, that’s what you wake up to. So that’s asleep. You seem to be awake, but you’re being driven by your problems, being driven by the samskaras, the patterns that you’ve stored inside your mind and your heart, and then you try to figure it out. Very busy all day and night.
So the first awakening, the first major point — I don’t know why it happens. People seem to get it from some of the books people write. Certainly a lot of people get it from The Untethered Soul, where all of a sudden you notice that you’re noticing. That’s all I can say. There are no magic words. It’s just — you are always noticing, or you wouldn’t have noticed. But you notice that you’re noticing. That’s your first awakening. You’re in there, and you notice that the very mind that’s always been in there is still in there doing its thing, but for some reason you’re behind it. You’re not controlling it, not to start with, but you notice — hey, how do you know you notice? “Hey, that mind is crazy.” Not, “What do I do?” One, you’re in it — lost in it, involved in it, drawn into it, distracted by it. And the other is it can be a big or small awakening to where all of a sudden you realize — you don’t think it. Thinking is what the mind does. You notice that you notice. That’s all I can say. You’re aware that you’re aware. That’s your first awakening.
They call it witness consciousness. For some reason they call it mindfulness. I guess you’re just noticing you’re full of mind, so we can call it mindfulness. But it’s an awakening, and you’re back there. Then you don’t stay there because then something gets talked about in the mind that’s a little stronger than what you can be reasonably detached from, that you can reasonably watch from back there. The next thing you know, you’re trying to solve it, trying to fix it, trying to do something to make it better. Your heart’s bothering you, your mind’s bothering you. But once you’re awake, you’re going to, at different points in your life, wake back up. I hope that when you awake, you never go fully back to sleep. It’s possible to have an awakening that’s so strong that you just look at that mind and whatever it’s saying, you’re going to have trouble with it. You struggle, but you manage to stay back there. And if you don’t, it’s fine — you get pulled in. And if you noticed you get pulled in, you get angry, you get jealous, you’re insecure, you worry about this or that, whatever it is, and then something else happens, and all of a sudden that wasn’t the problem of the day anymore, and you start noticing what’s going on in there.
That’s what it’s all about — noticing what’s going on in there. I don’t want to talk about it, but people sometimes ask me, “What books did you read to write all the books?” I’m telling you — you watch. You’re in there. And you could analyze the mind better than Freud ever could, because you’re back there watching yours, and you can see why it’s doing what it’s doing. It just becomes obvious to you. And the more you see, the more you see why it’s that way. It’s almost like when you’re walking toward a fire and the smoke is bothering you — if you keep walking, you will start to notice where the smoke’s coming from, the root.
When you’re having these mind issues, especially the little ones — why are you being bothered by the driver in front of you? Why are you being bothered by the weather? What use is that? You start noticing that what’s going on in there has a hundred percent cost and zero benefit. What is the purpose of complaining about the weather? It doesn’t change it one single iota. It never will. And you don’t just complain about it when you’re in it — you complain about it after you were in it. “Oh my God, it was so hot. I thought I was going to melt.” Did you melt? No. Or the driver in front of you going fifteen miles under the speed limit. You have places to go, and you’re doing that while you’re driving. Of what benefit is that, other than creating negative energy inside of yourself that does no good? One hundred percent cost and zero benefit.
You start noticing that. You don’t have to do anything. Witness consciousness is not about sitting back here and watching. You are watching. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know what’s happening. But now you’re not talking to the driver in front of you — you’re noticing, “There it goes again.” You start noticing that you’re doing this crazy thing that makes you tense, gives you anxiety, and maybe even gets you upset. Maybe upset enough to tailgate. Maybe upset enough to beep. Maybe upset enough to pass when you shouldn’t have. What are you doing? You couldn’t handle what your mind was doing. You couldn’t handle what your heart was doing.
So you start noticing — and I don’t want it to be immediate, because then it doesn’t stay — you will start waking up and noticing that you are wasting your life by doing this stupid stuff of listening to your mind. There are times you listen to your mind. Watch: two plus two is four. Hey, thank you, mind. You can use your mind for what it was meant for. For analytics, for creativity, for music — write music, figure out air conditioning. That’s beautiful, what the mind can do, isn’t it? The finger can’t do it. The hand can’t do it. But you have a mind. And what are you using that brilliant mind for? To figure out if you should tell somebody you’re sorry, or will that make them remember what you said, because you want them to remember what you said? Maybe they don’t even think about it. You’ve been thinking about it for four years. Should you go back? That’s what you use your mind for? To be neurotic?
The mind is a tremendous problem-solving machine. Einstein — all those things were on a blackboard, and he comes down to E equals mc squared, figures out that the whole thing is energy. Wow, that’s beautiful. What a solving machine. It can solve a musical thing. It can solve all kinds of things. It was not meant to solve the problems that you’re creating for yourself. You created the problem. It’s hot out — that’s not a problem. It’s an experience. But you said it was a problem, and now you have to think, “Should I move? I don’t want to live in Florida, but the taxes are good, but then my husband works here. I could leave him. No, I don’t want to leave him.” You’re not trying to solve the problem with the mind, you’re trying to solve the problem of the mind. “Well, I could go on a vacation. I wonder where I can go where I’ll feel relaxed, because I’m not relaxed. I have so much tension and anxiety.” Go on, try to solve the problem — the one you caused. Guess what? You never will. Anything on that vacation that isn’t exactly the way your mind wants it to be is going to cause complaint, because you haven’t learned that you’re back there.
You do not have to listen to the personal mind. You certainly can use the intellectual mind, the abstract mind. That’s what it’s meant for. It’s a gift. Somebody once wrote me and said, “Why did God put that voice inside my head to drive me crazy? What kind of God is that?” He did not do that. You did that. He gave you an intellectual mind that can solve things, that can create and invent and do all kinds of things, and what you did with it is use it to invent problems and then try to solve them.
Is it a problem that someone you love is dancing with somebody else at a party? If you say it is — how close are they dancing? Do they dance only during the fast dances or do they dance during the slow ones? Are you having a problem? As opposed to you seeing somebody dancing with your significant other, and you’re watching it, and you’re melting. “God, he’s having fun. Look at this — so beautiful that everybody gets along.” And you come back and say, “Did you have a good time?” Who said you can’t do that? But then the mind’s going to say, “No, don’t encourage this, because you know where it can go. I’ve been there and done that. I’ve been an enabler.” And yes, because your mind will think, “I’ve gotten hurt before, and I need to protect myself, protect the family, protect the situation, and this dancing thing — they’re not even dancing yet. He wanted to go ask somebody. ‘Hey, I know her from work. Can I dance?'” And you freak out.
You are in there noticing that’s going on, and you’re noticing that you’re getting upset. Are you getting upset because he’s dancing or she’s dancing? No, you’re getting upset because you can’t handle what your mind can think about — what might happen if you get jealous enough, if somebody leaves you. You created the problem. The vast majority of the time — I’ll tell you a secret — you want to watch a problem happen? You’re happily married or dating. You’re there and you’re getting along, but you had problems in a previous relationship, you got hurt. And so now all of a sudden, this person you’re having a relationship with is dancing or talking to… forget dancing. “Who are you talking to? I was like, you were on the phone for a long time. Who were you talking to? Was it your new secretary?” Where did you come up with that possibility? Maybe it was his father or mother or anybody. No. So what you do is take the fears that your mind created inside yourself — but wait, it didn’t create them. “I had that experience. When I was in high school I got really hurt. Somebody cheated on me, and it really bothered me a lot and so on. Had to deal with it. Not well at all. It bothered me for a very long time. It still bothers me to think about it. In fact, when I filled out the dating form online, one of the questions was, ‘Do you think it’s okay to dance closely with somebody else?'”
Are you hearing me? So you created a problem, and I’m telling you, if you follow that problem, you’re going to start checking up on what somebody’s doing and start asking, “Where you been?” Start saying, “Well, how come you looked at somebody that way?” And maybe — I don’t want it to — that will ruin your relationship. Not because you thought it might, but because you made it do that. Because it’s very hard to live with a jealous person, especially if nothing’s going on. But there’s never nothing going on to you, because you have something going on inside of you, and you’re projecting that, and you’re looking for that.
We’re having a real talk tonight, aren’t we? Am I telling the truth? So the very thing you’re trying to stop from happening happens because you’re trying to stop it from happening, and it’s not even happening. Just take that example and extrapolate it to everything. You’re working hard at work, you think you did a really good job, somebody else gets the corner office, somebody else gets the raise. How are you doing? You know how you could be doing? “Hey, congratulations. I would have loved to get that office, but I’m really glad you got it. You deserved it.” How does that feel? Good. How does it feel to say, “I’ll never talk to you again. That was my office. I can’t believe the boss gave that to you. That can bother me for the rest of my life. In fact, I might quit.” How does that feel?
All right, now you understand the personal mind. It does those things, does it not? And then because you feel passed over, you actually think, “Maybe I should leave. Maybe this isn’t the right job for me.” Now you’re just screwing up your entire life because your mind decided to do that. It decided to do that, but you think it’s reasonable. Whereas it might well be that if you had a nice attitude and helped other people and were happy for your fellow employees, you might get the job next time. I’ll tell you right now — you’re somebody that acts like glue and holds the company together.
Instead, the mind will do what I just said. When you wake up, one of the benefits is you will start slowly — maybe quickly, I don’t care how long it takes — you will start noticing that you’re doing that. And more than that, you will start noticing that you don’t have to do that. You actually caught it before it sucked you in. You noticed it, and you sat there and said, “I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to be that. I don’t have to be what I’m looking at. I can be who’s looking.” That’s witness consciousness. I don’t have to be what I’m looking at. That noise the mind is saying, the heart’s problems — they’re there. How do you know? I see them. I see them. I don’t have to be them.
And you’ll start to notice that your life will change right there, right then, the moment you start seeing that. Yes, it’s there. It’s not denial or spiritual bypassing. You’re not bypassing anything. You’re looking right in the face. You’re saying, “I ain’t bypassing it. I don’t have to go there.” I’m not making believe it’s not there — I see it real well. But I’ve seen that before, and it doesn’t seem to lead to really good places. So that’s your first awakening, and it is really awakening to witness consciousness. But you don’t do it willfully. It’s not like saying, “Okay, I’m not awake. How do I make myself be awake?” No, you have to literally pop out. You pop out. That’s the best I can tell you. You pop out. Why? Because at that time, for whatever reason, you’re not being pulled in. The pull into the stuff is not strong enough for you to lose your center. Ever use that word? You’re centered. What does that mean? Centered means your consciousness is seated back behind, not being pulled into the garbage you’re looking at.
Well, now people ask me, “But don’t I have to do things? Don’t I have to act? Aren’t there certain things that happen? I can’t just sit there and watch or be passive. What if something has to be dealt with?” From a centered point of view, you are way better off seeing whether it has to be dealt with or not. And if the only reason… here is my watchword. If the only reason you’re dealing with it is because you can’t handle it — let me repeat that; I want to go slowly because people miss this — surrender doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. Acceptance doesn’t mean you don’t do anything.
Surrender means I can let go of being pulled into the part of me that is habitually driven toward all this human garbage — all the samskaras, all the emotions, all the patterns, all the stuff. Well, how do I know if it’s that or if it’s God talking to me? How you know? Because if you’re about to act because you can’t handle what happened — and you want to act to make it so you can handle it — thank God. God’s pretty good. He handled a lot of things, like the whole universe. Don’t worry about it. But you can’t. And so if you’re looking there, and it’s drawing you into acting in the name of making you feel better, that’s the personal mind. If you’re centered enough to where you see the pull — it does pull, it’s uncomfortable, you feel the pull — but you stay centered enough to say, “I don’t want to go with that. That’s not who I am. That’s who I used to be,” or, “That’s the better patterns that were left in me from mommy and daddy and first boyfriend,” et cetera.
That’s just patterns there. I want to be able to be still for a moment. I want to be able to not be pulled into that. That means you handled it. You handled the emotions. Does that mean they’re not there? You have to handle them if they’re not there — there’s all kinds of stuff you handle very well. Mars, Jupiter, everything happening everywhere in the universe that you know nothing about, you handle it really well. It’s the things you do experience, and if you look at them, you realize, “I can’t handle that.” But it’s not because it’s wrong or hurting somebody else — it’s bothering me.
And I’m telling you, it will get to a point where if the only reason you’re dealing with it is that it’s bothering you, you’ve got some work to do. Because the energy you put out when you’re trying to fix it because it bothers you bothers everybody else. Your jealousy, your anger, your fear, your insecurity — it’s bothering me. Now I’m going to try to manipulate you so it doesn’t bother me. Am I going deeper than I normally do? I’m going to bother you to behave in a way that doesn’t bother me as much. That’s called manipulation, and we all do it, don’t we?
When you pop out and you spend enough time centered, you’ll notice you’re not suppressing, you’re not denying. You start noticing this doesn’t work. It doesn’t work if it’s about me. I’m this tiny little part of the universe. It’s just a small little thing. Life is not about me. It’s just as much about everybody else as about you. Is it not true that every single person is a person having experiences? You are too. You aren’t special. Yours aren’t special. They’re just things that happened to you that didn’t happen to somebody else. About 8.3 billion of them alive right now are all having experiences just like you are.
Can I say that? Do you know it’s not about you? How can it be about you? There’s everybody else. And so you start noticing that if I can’t handle what’s going on, that’s my problem, not everybody else’s. And so if I go out there and try to manipulate everybody to be the way I want them to be, you’re not going to have very good relationships, especially your closest relationships — your married relationship, your love relationships. They will not stay love. Why? Because you’re manipulating the other person, and you don’t even love the other person. You love you. In fact, not even you — you love your stuff, and you want the other person to know all about your stuff. Makes you tell them. “Well, make sure you understand what I like and what I don’t like.” Why? So that you can behave the way I want you to. That’s why you can’t have relationships, because you think the other person’s supposed to be the way you want them to be.
They’re not going to be the way you want them to be. Why? They didn’t have the experiences you did. They didn’t have your formative years, I assure you. So what are you going to do about that? That’s a lot of dichotomy there, a lot of distance, a lot of issues. And not just formative years — what about all the rest of their life before you met them? You didn’t have those experiences. Of course relationships are a problem, because you don’t want to have a relationship with somebody else. You want a relationship with yourself. Not even your true self. You want a relationship with your samskaras. You want them to behave in a way that makes you feel good and never in a way that makes you feel bad.
And so this is what waking up… I’m just talking around the waking up. You wake up, and you look at that at some level or another. It takes time to really become mature in that seat. But you take a look at it and say, “That’s not going to work. That person’s not me.” That’s not love. That’s business. That’s a bargain. What is love? My heart is so open I want to help you be who you are, not who I want you to be. And I’m not doing it out of suppressing myself. I’ve let go of myself because I love you so much that my love for you transcends my own self, so I don’t have to suppress anything. I want to serve you. I want to love you. Imagine if two people in a relationship are doing that. That’s a spiritual relationship. You hear me? I’m so okay that I want to provide an environment in which you can grow to your max, and if something bothers me, I can deal with it.
I just wanted to get a feeling for what it can be like, because it can be like that. Do you understand that? All right. So that happens because you woke up. Otherwise, you’re just busy being you, dumping on everybody else. But once you’re back there, you will start getting that icky feeling when it’s the ego. Ego feels icky. It does. It feels icky. “I don’t like that. I want it to be this way.” And you start looking at that and think, “Whoa.” You can even laugh at it. I encourage that very much. Don’t suppress it. You just notice. You just notice. Don’t do anything about it. You’re going to get to that point. You’re not trying to stop it. You’re not trying to suppress it. You’re not trying to change it. She is the result of all your formative years and everything else. You’re not going to go down there and touch a magic button and have her be different. But you don’t have to be her. You can be back here noticing how she is.
And then little by little you realize, “I don’t have to be distracted by that.” Some of it’s strong enough to distract me, and I teach you what to do then. What do I do if I get distracted and I get pulled down? Stay up as long as you can. I feel it pulling me down — relax, breathe, do whatever you can. Boom, pulled down. And come back as soon as you can. And when you come back, it’s very important: if you’re doing this — this is spiritual awakening 101; we’ll get to 201 in a minute — your spiritual awakening is you’re doing the best that you can to stay centered. That’s all you can do. How do I know I can’t do better than the best I can? If it’s the best that you can, it’s the best that you can. And the best that you can is always enough. It’s not enough for your concepts and views, but enough for your growth. It’s the best that you can, and you will get better next time. Why? Because you practiced. So you stay up as long as you can, you come back as soon as you can.
And when you come back, no guilt, no shame, no rationalization, no spiritual ego. “I can’t believe I fell down.” No. You did your best. Come back. But come back — you know what you say when you come back? “Thank you. I learned a lot. I learned a lot from that fall.” It’s like riding a bike. When you ride a bike and they take off the training wheels — daddy takes off the training wheels — you’re going to fall a few times. “Well, that’s terrible.” No, it’s not. You’ll get a sense of balance. You realize, “Oh, I went too far that way.” And pretty soon you can ride the bike. It’s exactly the same with staying centered. Do the best that you can to stay clear, to stay centered. If you feel the power pulling you into it, don’t ever sit there and say, “Oh, well, what the heck?” You fall lots of times, but not because you said, “What the heck?” You do care. Hear me? And you back there — you care a lot. Because you’re back there, and the more you’re back there, the more peaceful you are, the more calm you are, the more centered you are, the more beautiful you are, the more you’re spreading love to everybody else.
It’s a very nice place to be. You do want to be there. It’s not, “Oh well, doesn’t matter.” But then when you come back, you don’t purposely give in. You do the best you can, which will not always work. The best you can, I guarantee you, will not always keep you up there. When you come back from being down, I’m begging you — no guilt, no shame, no rationalization, no explanation. Just: thank you. I’m learning. I’m a growing, evolving being, and I just grew through that experience.
When you look back after falling and then coming back, it will always seem like you could’ve done better. Hindsight has the advantage of what you went through. You have no right to judge the you before with the you now, because you grew. That’s like — I’m going to play tennis. I’ve never played tennis in my life. The ball goes into the net half the time. Finally, I’m hitting the ball. It’s going over the net. You know what my reaction is? “Oh, I hate the fact I used to hit it in the net. I should’ve known how to do that.” No. You say, “Thank you for the practice.” You say, “Thank you for the evolution.” You say, “Thank you for the opportunity to have hindsight.” Of course hindsight is 20/20. You learn by the experience, so when you look back, I hope you grew.
There’s no guilt. There’s no shame. There’s no justification. There’s no rationalization. That’s just more mind stuff. You just notice — I was there. Now I’m not. Now I’m back, and I’m wiser than I was because I went through the experience. Just make sure you learn something. You don’t have to think about how you rode the bike. “Oh, I went too far to the right.” You know you did. It’s a natural thing. It’s the same thing when you come back. You’ve learned. You don’t have to think about it. You will have gone through the experience, and that’s what you’re here for.
Earth is a place where souls are sent to evolve. That little ball in the middle of nowhere is a place that souls are sent to evolve. Every moment of your life is a growth experience. Every moment of your life. There are no bad experiences or good experiences. There are just experiences that teach you, and the stronger they are, the more you learn. So you go through it. You come back. No guilt, no shame, no rationalization. “Oh, it was okay because if I hadn’t eaten a bad pizza the night before, I probably wouldn’t have fallen.” No. And oh, it’d be defensive. You come back, and someone looks at you and says, “Well, that was not really nice. You lost it completely.” You know what the answer to that is? “Yes, you’re right. I did. I’ll do better next time.” Not, “Well, you were part of that also. You didn’t help me.” That’s called defending who you were. That means you didn’t grow.
Am I giving you a sense of what it’s like to be back here? It’s nice back there — for you and everybody else — and it keeps growing, because you keep going through experiences and doing better with them, until eventually you’re seated there. You go down a couple of times on something, but you’re seated there. And somehow life is very interesting because you haven’t noticed — when you think you’ve got it, something bigger happens. And you sit there and say, “I don’t understand what God’s doing. I was doing so well. I was feeling so much love. I was so centered, and this stupid thing had to happen.” That’s God loving you.
I told you — Master Yogananda had a poem called “The Hound of Heaven” that he had his disciples read. I don’t go through the whole poem, but it’s very beautiful. It’s long, but it’s about a soul — a man — that is trying to get okay with his life, and things kept getting screwed up. Things kept falling apart, kept having problems. And he looked at life as a hound that was chasing him, and he was trying to get away from it, trying to see how he could find a way to avoid all this garbage because it kept bothering him. At the end of the poem, after all these different corridors he ran down to get away from this hound — as far as I know it’s the last paragraph — he says, finally, “He’s cornered me. There’s no place to run anymore. I’ve run down the corridors of life the entire time. Now there’s no place to run. Oh my goodness, I’m so scared.” And then he says, “Wait a minute. Could it be that the darkness I was running from was the shadow of your hand reaching down to pick me up?” That’s what it is. He was running away from God, but that darkness is for your growth, period. That’s the essence of all of it.
So now you’re really centered. When you catch on to some of this stuff — that the whole purpose… it’s almost like stage two. Stage one, you wake up and you start noticing you can work with it and this and that and the other thing. And then you start noticing it’s not supposed to be the way I want it to be. Life is sandpaper. It’s getting rid of me. It’s getting rid of my ego. If I’m having trouble with it, it’s because I’m clinging to myself. I’m clinging to my ego. Things are not the way I want them to be. And you start catching on — they’re not meant to be the way you want them to be. That’s like another stage to me. Now you’ve woken up, but you think everything will be fine and you’re okay and you can handle it. Everything should be hunky-dory, right? Then you start realizing, no, it’s supposed to be something that makes you grow, that liberates you from yourself.
The story I tell that sometimes… You are a chunk of marble cut out of a marble quarry — rough edges, nothing. You can’t see anything but dark rock around the marble. It’s just dark. That’s a human being. And all of a sudden, something happens. Somebody criticizes you, somebody lies to you, somebody steals from you. Something happens, right? And it hurts. You feel like something’s hitting you. God, life is hitting you. This is causing all this trouble. And you start going through this and jumping and covering yourself. “Stop it. Leave me alone. Be the way I want. Stop it.” And then after a couple of those chips, you look over there at the right side of your marble chunk, and there’s a shoulder — as David starts coming out. You just start realizing, oh, that was God chiseling my garbage off. And that’s the entire purpose of life: to let life pull out of me the beauty that’s in there. A statue was always in there. You understand that? But it had to be brought out. And it hurt, didn’t it? Every one of those chips hurt, until you get to the next stage where you notice it’s not pain — it’s purification. You didn’t have a bad experience. You had a growth experience.
It all depends on how you see it. And eventually you get to the point where — not that you want it to happen — but you’re just as open to not getting what you want as to getting what you want. In fact, you tend to lean more toward: if I get what I want, I stay stuck. I cling to it. I want it more. Why do you want it more? So I don’t have to change. I liked it the way I am. Nothing wrong with that. I’m going very deep with you guys. I hope you’re listening. It’s not like you renounce that which comes to you in harmony with yourself. No, you say thank you. It’s not about renunciation. But you don’t cling.
These are the mature steps in your path. You realize — thank you, something happened. It fit right along and made me really open, made me feel love. Say you feel pride. Pride’s one of those big sins. Something happens, you did really well, and people are complimenting you — made you feel good about it, right? No, renounce it? No, no, no. Say thank you, but don’t look for it to happen again. Don’t look for the next time you see that person who was complimenting you so much, and feel let down because it’s not happening again. Same thing goes with relationships. It’s very nice. Somebody loves you. Isn’t that beautiful? They say beautiful things to you. That’s beautiful. You say thank you, but don’t stay there in your mind, clinging, grabbing, because then it becomes negative. That which was positive becomes negative. It’s not a matter of just the negative stuff being able to let go — you have to be able to handle the positive stuff. And as funny as it sounds, most of you cannot handle the positive stuff, because if it happens, you make it negative.
I told you last time — you get disappointed. What does that mean? In order to be disappointed, you have to have appointed something to be a certain way. I appointed this restaurant to be exactly the way I expected it to be. Now I’m disappointed. You do it all the time. So now we see what it’s like to be human. If something happens that we don’t like, we try to manipulate and control it so it doesn’t happen again, and all the struggle goes on in there. Something happens that we do like, we try to cling to it, keep it, hold on to it, make it happen again, make it keep happening. Have fun, because you won’t. Of course you’re tense. Of course there’s anxiety. Why is there anxiety? Anxiety that it might happen the way you don’t want it to be, and anxiety that it won’t keep happening the way you want it to. And next thing you know, you’re in there scared, closed.
All right. So we woke up enough. In essence, do you see what I’m talking about? You’re in there. You’re the witness. You see it going on in there, don’t you? That’s your awakening. Are you willing to put credence to your center, to who’s looking versus what you’re looking at? The more you do that, the further back you get. Why? Because it’s easier to let go if you’re not caught in the stuff. And you can go through these really big experiences — things that people have trouble with and bother them for the rest of their lives — and you can go through it and just say, “I made it. It’s okay. It happened. I dealt with it. It’s over. It should be over.” It shouldn’t still be in there, but you won’t do that.
The more you let go — and the other thing I talked to you the other day — you have Shakti inside of you. How much? Incomprehensible. You’re so high, I can’t even talk about it. You hear me? You’re filled with love. You’re filled with God. You’re filled with spirit. You have all this Shakti pouring inside of you, feeding you all the time. “Oh, maybe you feel it. I don’t.” Why don’t you feel it? Because you put all this garbage on top of it, and you’re using the very energy that’s supposed to be coming up inside of you to fight and keep pushing down the stuff that you couldn’t handle. My favorite line — you kept every experience you ever had inside so you could never forget it. “I need to remember this. It was so terrible.” You just kept all that stuff in there, and so now the Shakti can’t flow.
As you let go in this stage I’m talking about — the stage of witness consciousness, the stage of awakening — as you let go, you don’t have to hold the stuff in there. First of all, you don’t put more in, ever. You just go through the day the best you can. Why store the fact that it was hard? Why are you going to complain it was hard? Why are you complaining about the driver in front of you? Why are you complaining about what somebody said? This is so silly. You get to the point where you say, “Can I handle this?” The answer is pretty much always yes. I’ll tell you a secret — if you ask yourself, “Can I handle this?” the answer is always yes. And if the answer is no, you’re already not there. You, by definition, have been pulled down into it. Otherwise, the answer’s yes. If I’m clear enough to ask, “Can I handle this?” you can. Just do.
Why would I handle somebody talking to me like that? Why would I handle the other person getting the job that I wanted? Why would I handle going to four different interviews and not getting a job, and that’s what I did today? What was the meaning of it? I teach you all the time the ways I’ve learned to handle it. How can you handle it? I’m sitting on a planet in the middle of nowhere. Tiny little planet — 1.3 billion earths fit inside the sun. I will repeat that number for you. That’s a very big number. 1.3 billion earths fit inside the sun, and you can’t handle what somebody said to you, sitting on a planet for a few years. That’s how you work with yourself. And all of a sudden you realize, “Of course I can handle it. I just didn’t bother.”
But if something big happens, or you’re emotionally strong and mentally caustic, the next thing you know, you fell. You’re down. But if you can be clear enough to say, “Can I handle this?” — why would you not? If you can’t handle it, you’re going to keep it, won’t you? The things that you couldn’t handle are still in there, aren’t they? You suppress them, they come back up. So you get to the point: I ain’t putting any more down there. You want to put more down there? It’s kind of hard enough to get what’s down there up, isn’t it? Why would you ever put more down there?
So you do the best you can to let go, to say, “I can handle this. I can handle this.” While you’re saying “I can handle this” and then it stops saying that, it means you didn’t handle it. You don’t get to make a decision — it makes it for you, and then you learn. I’m telling you, you can always do better after you go through the experience. And then don’t judge. Just keep growing, I beg you. Keep growing every day — no, every minute of your life. As things are coming in, you’re letting go.
That’s what ends up happening. The witness ends up noticing that it would’ve resisted, it would’ve manipulated and controlled, but it doesn’t do that anymore. Well, what’s the alternative? Now you’re ready for the next step. Now you’re the witness. You see it, you learn from it, and so on. You start noticing: if I don’t resist inside what happened outside… It starts outside, comes in, then I’m back here resisting. The outside already left. Somebody yelled at you and they went away. But inside, it left the energy, didn’t it? Can you relax in the face of that inner energy coming up inside of you? Right now you say no. The answer is yes, but you have to practice. And that’s the essence of everything I’ve ever taught you.
You don’t know how to play the piano starting with Beethoven. You start with the scales. You don’t play tennis against a pro. You start with a ball thrower. You start learning how to relax through the energy that you would have resisted, by not resisting. And people write me and say, “I don’t understand. I felt this anger. I felt this insecurity. I tried to not resist it, but it wouldn’t change.” Insecurity is not going to change. Anger’s not going to change. They are a particular energy vibration that’s going on inside of you. It’s not about them letting go. It’s about you letting go of them.
You’re in there and you’re tense and you push. It’s about pushing it away. You do do that. Do you understand that? You push it away to protect yourself. That means it’s going to stay in there. Anything you push away stays in there because you didn’t let it go. Letting go is an inside thing you do deep in your being when you say, “I can handle this. I don’t want to, but I can. Okay. Okay, I’ll feel yucky for a while to let it go through. It’s yucky energy. It’ll feel yucky. I can handle it. I’d rather have it go away now than have it stay there for the rest of my life.” How about you? I don’t want to not be able to talk to a friend because they said or did something I didn’t like. I want to be able to see them next time and say, “Fine,” and have it go through.
Don’t even apologize. Don’t even bother. Where they say love is never having to say you’re sorry — why? Because it didn’t get stuck, because I was so open and I loved you, it passed right through. That’s how you are. And little by little, you start learning to let go of your resistance. Not let go of the outside, not let go of the inside. Let go of your resistance to the energy that is trying to pass through you. It will all pass through you. A great being doesn’t have that at all. They let go so long ago that all that happens — every single energy that comes in — merges with the universe. There’s no blockage. There’s nothing in there pushing it away. It’s all one. That’s what Christ was. “Forgive them. They know not what they do.” That’s pretty high stuff. How about you start saying that to the person who’s yelling at you? “Forgive them, Lord. They know not what they’re doing.” It’s okay. They’re all caught in their stuff, aren’t they? Well, you are, and they are.
Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. You start taking that attitude and letting go, just the best you can. So that’s the next phase, where you’re no longer saying, “I can’t handle this.” Your mantra is, “I can handle this. I can, and I will” — but not by pushing it away. I hope you feel that difference. I’m not pushing the energy away. I’m relaxing through it. Why? It hurts. It doesn’t feel good. I know, but you don’t want to keep “I don’t feel good” inside of you. I don’t understand. Why would you want to keep it? “Well, I want to remember how bad it felt.” Okay, good. Have a good time, because you won’t.
So you take the attitude: if I don’t want it in here, I have to let it go. I can’t make it not have happened, or it wouldn’t be in here. There’s outside, then there’s inside, then there’s you. And it comes in. You can’t say, “I don’t want it to have happened.” It did happen. So what are you going to do with it? You have two choices: resist or accept. It’s binary. There’s nothing in between. You don’t even have to do it for God. Do it for you — for you who’s in there. I don’t want that garbage in here, having to work it through for the rest of my life, popping back up all the time. Do you? Okay, then let it go, because that’s the only way it’s going. Either you push it away and keep it, or you relax through it and let it pass through. That doesn’t happen right away. It may take a few times, but you practice. That’s my whole teaching. You practice relaxing in the face of the disturbance. You’re not denying that it’s a disturbance. It’s not spiritual bypassing.
No, it’s not spiritual bypassing. That’s ignoring that it’s there. You’re fully accepting that it’s there. Does psychology sometimes teach to get into it, feel it? They’re right that that’s different from totally suppressing and resisting. It’s very good. That’s not the same thing as saying, “I am capable, and I have learned to let what doesn’t feel good go right through.” I don’t have to get back into it to bathe in it and wash myself with it, because I’m willing to let it pass through, and it will pass through. It will pass through your heart. It will pass through your mind. It will pass through. You start doing that with little stuff to start with, and now you’re ready for the next phase — where your mantra becomes “I can handle this” about pretty much everything, and pretty soon you can.
Why? Because you did. If you’re going to let it pass through, you handle it. Now the part they miss. Okay, I handled it. Now what? There may be something left for you to deal with, but it’s not inside of you. You let go of what’s inside of you. But when you look outside with the clarity of having handled it, there may be something you’re supposed to be doing. There may be something you’ve got to work with — the boss, the kids, the husband, the wife, whatever it is, the car. There are things that need to be dealt with. But not if the only reason you have to deal with it is because you’re not okay with it.
If you can solve the problem inside, what are you crazy? As opposed to having to deal with it outside? So you only deal with the outside when it needs to be dealt with. How do you know? Because it’s not about me anymore. I handled the part that was about me. I handled that you insulted me, you said these things to me. Probably they didn’t even insult you — you just took it personally because your father used to talk to you like that. So if the only problem is you took it personally, let it go through. You dealt with it inside. There’s nothing to do outside. You have no idea how many things you’re angsting about and causing trouble about and bothering other people about fall into that category. The only reason you’re doing all this stuff about them outside is you can’t handle it inside.
So now we went to the next level, which is: I’m awake now. I’m not just a witness. I step back enough to say, “I am going to devote my life to what? To letting go. I will devote my life to the deep understanding that life is my friend — that life is my teacher,” it’s a better word, “my guru. It’s putting me through what I need to go through to get rid of myself.” Whoa. You want to get rid of yourself? Yeah. Yeah, I would like to spend at least one hour when he wasn’t there. How about you? Where I could just sit there and look at life and say, “Wow, I’m on this little tiny planet and all these things are going on. I’m going to be here for a few years and I can handle it.” Yeah, I can. It’s wow. Just be completely open, filled with love, filled with joy, filled with inspiration. Just every single thing that’s happening — I’ll take it.
Well, that’s how you get it. By letting go. And you just finally get to the point where you realize, “I’m fine. I’m fine. Life is fine. I handle it. I’m one with it. I understand it. Now, can I help?” Not help me. You feel it. It’s not about helping you. It’s about helping the situation. It’s about looking to see if there’s something you can do to raise the energy of the situation — not because you can’t handle it, but because you can handle it.
All right. I could go on forever. It’s a deep talk. You hear me? You get the deep teachings right there, at that point where you have the right to let go. But you have to notice for enough times the difference in when you do let go and when you don’t let go. So if somebody’s driving in front of you too slow and your tendency is road rage — tailgating, beeping — let’s see what happens. You’ll get all upset. Maybe they stop the car and they get upset. And whoa, okay. And it’s the one time you notice, “Well, I can handle it.” Next thing you know, nothing happens. You didn’t dump your stuff out into the world. You start catching on that that’s always available to you. All right. Jai guru dev.
Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to the Michael Singer Podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael’s body of work and all back episodes, please join us at michaelsingerpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True: waking up the world.
