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: Hmm, Jai guru dev, jai masters.
Perhaps the silliest notion that has ever come up in a human mind is something very, very simple. It’s called I am the doer. You think you’re the doer. Do you understand that? You’re just trying to figure out what you should be doing, and who you should be doing it with, and who you shouldn’t be doing it with.
But there’s no question, I’m the doer. That’s what I do. I do. And we’ve discussed it before. We’ll spend a little time. Are you really the doer? You make your lungs breathe in and out? Say, very concentrate now. That’s a busy job, right?
You’re busy doing that all the time, right? Well, no, I’m, I’m busy doing what I wanna be doing. I don’t wanna be doing that. That’s boring. Well, you better be doing that or you ain’t gonna be around very long. You make your heart beat.
You better keep doing that. You won’t be around very long. How long can that thing stop before you, you ain’t doing squat, but you’re the doer. You’re the doer. You’re in charge. Okay, well, there’s something like 35, 32 trillion living cells inside your body. Not inside your body, that are your body, and they’re dividing and multiplying and feeding and flowing and muscling, and I know they’re doing a lot of things.
What if they weren’t doing that? Are you the doer? I don’t think so. They are the doer. They are the doer. If they’re not doing their thing, you have no right to sit there and say, “I’m the one who’s doing it,” when you’re not. When if they weren’t doing it, you wouldn’t even be here. Well, that’s just dealing with this simple little thing called your body.
It’s because it is doing what it’s doing that you can even be here thinking that you’re the doer. Fair enough? Okay. Well, how did they get to be doing what they’re doing? Whoa, that’s a big story. They have a lot of evolution. They have a lot of God. They have a lot of you name it. I don’t care. I don’t…
That’s the silliest thing in the whole world. Here’s the argument. It’s evolution or it’s God. Guess what? It’s not you. Literally, both of them say you, you didn’t do it. You didn’t crawl out of the chemical mix, start crawling down there and being a dinosaur, and, and then go, “Whoop. Ha. Here I am. I’m the doer.
I did it all.” How much did you do? How long did it take? On this planet, they’re saying 4.5 billion years it took, and how much of the 4.5 billion are you guys here? Forget you personally, just even you humans. Nothing. You didn’t do it, and how long will you be here compared to the f- 4.5 billion years? 80, 90?
Then what do you do? I don’t know. Go bye-bye. I don’t know. Cease to exist. Which one? I always tell you guys, I don’t know why you have trouble with death. I know you do. I know you do, and you don’t like when I talk about it, right? It is not that you do not know what is gonna happen at the time of death.
There are only two choices. You will be there, or you will not be there. Either you who’s in there, who’s the doer, it’s hilarious, right? You was in there busy doing your whole life, right? You in there are either gonna be there when the body dies, or you are not gonna be there when the body dies. Now you spend time with me.
Understand. Let’s say you’re not there. Is that a problem? You’re not sitting there saying, “Oh my God, I don’t like this.” You’re not there. Light bulb’s turned off. Considering how much you guys complain about everything, I don’t know why you have a problem with that. Do you hear me? And let’s say you are there.
Well, what’s that like? Don’t you dare listen to anybody else. Don’t you dare. You’re gonna find out. You have a firsthand experience of what it’ll be like the moment the body dies. What an adventure. You know what it is? A once in a lifetime experience So what’s wrong with either of those? Nothing. Nothing.
You see, you should be comfortable as can be. You’re here, you drop down on a planet. How’d you get here, by the way? I forgot. You’re the doer. You’re gonna take a spaceship? How did you get here on this planet? You don’t even know. Talking about your consciousness, the doer. Did you born yourself? Did you make your body out of a single cell and make this thing, and then have it grow over time?
How much of that did you do? Do you see what I’m saying? How can you say, “I am the doer. I just have to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing, what I’m supposed to be doing here.” Well, how about being here? That’s what be here now means. How about, “Hey, I’m here. How did I get here? I don’t know. I’m here. How long will I stay?”
Well, in the body for a certain number of years. How many? It’s none of your business. It will be what it is. Well, what would determine how I die or when I die? Well, go study medicine, go study your genetics, go study this, go study that, go study cars hitting each other. There are so many different things that could happen, none of which you have control over.
You’re not the doer Now, you don’t have no control, but I want you to see how small it is. I want you to understand how much has to be going on by itself without your involvement for you to be here being the doer. Does the planet have to stay in orbit? What if it didn’t? But you’re doing that, right? There are so many things that you’re not paying attention to that if they were not happening, you’re not even here, but you say you’re the doer.
How small is your realm of doership? That’s something I like to talk about again. I hope you don’t mind this talk, you know, because normally they want to go to a seminar, how can I win? What can I do to be great? How do I get things to be the way I want? How do I attract to myself what I want? I’m the doer.
I’ll get all this done. What will you get done? All right? How much are you actually getting done? When it’s said and done, you’ll see, you’re, you’re the most… Let me… I have to give you this, although you won’t listen anymore. You are the most important thing in the entire universe, period. Not to you who’s doing, and we’re going to talk about that.
You already see that. You’re not doing anything. Unless everything else is doing what it’s doing, you ain’t even here. Okay? And so you get to the point where you understand what is your realm of doership, because you think you’re important. The president thinks he’s important. I’m not picking on this president.
Just any president thinks they’re important. The lawyers think they’re important. The mother thinks she’s important. She, she gave birth to a baby. You’re very important. You gave birth to a baby. What exactly did you do to make that baby? I want to hear, I’m not taking away from motherhood. I love motherhood.
All right? We all got one, right? What did you do to make that baby? It was once a single fertilized cell. A single fertilized cell, microscopic. How did a baby show up in your womb? You have no idea. And you didn’t do it, did you? You didn’t do it. Did you do it? I want to hear that. Did you do it? No, you didn’t do it.
Well, I ate. So you ate. But is that what you did? You ate? What broke it down? What turned those cells and broke, broke the molecules apart and turned them into lung cells and, and then blood cells and white cells and who, who did that? Same thing that I told you the entire way we were talking so far. It happened by itself.
Certainly in relationship to you being the doer, you did not make that baby. What made the baby? Life. Let’s just call it life. You want to call it God? Call it God. You want to call it life? Call it life. Call it evolution. I don’t care. But it ain’t you. You didn’t do it. Is it okay that we talk about this?
Because it’s kind of important that you’re running around saying, “I’m the doer. I’m important. I’m important because I do what?” I don’t know. I’m important. I’m important because every single thing around me, everything everywhere is doing it by itself so that I can say I’m the doer. Planets and orbits, stars and galaxies, everything, all has to be working and being the way it is for you to even be here saying, “I’m important.
I do.” Now, how important is this realm of doership that you think you have? And this is so hard. I see people just can’t get this. All right? You have five senses. Did you make them? Make me an eyeball. You didn’t even… It’s pretty amazing. They’re still struggling to make a robot- Mm-hmm… that could be as good as you, that can heal itself.
Can you cut it? Can it get cut and disappears, takes care of a cell, heals a cell? Are you doing it? “Oh, look, I healed.” You did not heal that. It healed itself, the same way the cell turned into a baby, the same way everything else happens. It just is what is, and you’re sitting there saying, “I.” You use the word I for everything.
Well, what is the scope? I wanted to talk about that, the scope of your… You, you have a scope of doership. You have a scope, okay? How much are you involved in Timbuktu, what’s happening in a household in Timbuktu three years ago? None. Oh, you didn’t do that. How involved are you if you live in Kansas what went on in New York yesterday in some house and somebody yelling at somebody?
Were you the doer? So now we see how many things you think you are the doer. I want to ask how many things are you not the doer. How many things are happening? I gave these, these abstract biological and physiological discussions. I want to talk about humanness, human-social interaction. How much involvement have you had every moment of your life in what else was going on where you weren’t?
Zero. Well, I see, but you’re the doer. In other words, your scope and frame is one moment at a time of how many other things are going on at that moment that you’re not doing Is there a number? Can you even imagine? See, you wouldn’t even think like that. You say, “Well, why would I think like that?” Because it’s the truth.
It’s happening everywheres, and you experience one moment of that everywheres, of the hundreds of billions of zillions of things that are going on everywheres that you have nothing to do with, and even me have nothing to do with. I’m not the doer of that. I’m only the doer what comes in through my senses.
How small is that? How small is each moment that came in through your senses as you pass through life? Nothing. You’re missing everything, and you finally catch on. Wow, my realm of doership, my kingdom, pretty small. It only involves what I was involved with at that moment and is not involved in the whole rest of every single thing that was going on.
Is what’s happening to you… Oh, now I gotta get bad. I can’t help it. Is what’s happening to you more important than what’s happening anywhere else, truly, scientifically? No. Thank you. There’s no difference. What do you mean there’s no difference? There’s something happening everywheres. There’s something happening absolutely everywhere, not just on our planet, all over.
There’s something happening everywheres, and you have no involvement in it, and you don’t claim that you’re the doer. Then how in the world can you sit here and take the tiny moment you’re having, string them together, because they’re very small, and say, “I am the doer”? I am the doer of what? I yelled at her and she yelled back.
I did that. Okay. How many other people didn’t yell? How many other things were happening? How much other things were going on that you admit you’re not the doer of? It’s kind of embarrassing, isn’t it? But you say, “I’m the doer.” Of what? Of this little fiefdom, you know, takes up one second as it passes through time.
Here, the way you look at it is this: there’s light, laser beams shining everywheres throughout the universe on every single moment. It’s just there it is. Okay? You’re passing through time, your consciousness, you, who you call you, I, the doer I, the I. It’s passing through time, one tiny laser beam passing through time and space, right?
And all the rest you think have no meaning. They have nothing to do with you. They’re just, why would I care? You know you know that. You know you mean that. You only care what’s happening to you, and what’s happening to you doesn’t happen without every other thing happening all at the same… It all is one system.
So you finally get down to the point, and I’ll move on because I, I would rather just keep talking like this because I keep talking to him that way for fifty years, right? What do you think you’re doing? Oh, I started a company. Oh, I had a daughter. Oh, I got married. What is else is going on that you’re not doing?
How dare you sit there say that you matter more than anything else. How about if I say that to you? How dare you have the audacity to say that you matter more and what happens to… What happened to you is really important, isn’t it? You don’t even know what happened to him. Who cares? When you’re talking about what happened to you and they want to tell you what happened to them, you kind of listen a little bit.
But, but when you’re talking about what happened to you, that’s way more important, isn’t it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Or is it all the same? It’s just all the same. Everybody’s having experiences. There’s no difference between this person and that person. They just had experiences. And the experiences you had, you didn’t make.
You didn’t make the car accident. You didn’t make the woman or m- or man that you married. You didn’t make them. You didn’t know anything about them. You didn’t have their past. Nothing. It is absurd to think the way you think, isn’t it? There is no truth in it that I am important and nothing else is important.
What I like matters, what I don’t like matters, and what I want to happen, right? Unbelievable. That’s ignorance. Ignorance. You’re ignoring the whole rest of the truth of everything. But what would happen if you didn’t? Guess what? You’d have no anxiety, no tension, no pressure. You’d be free. You’d be free, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
That truth will set you free. I’m here moving through this moment in space, but so is everybody else. Every single thing exists equally. Everything exists equally. It’s all the same. It’s all part of one whole called the universe, and you’re on a tiny planet. How about your planet? I… I’m sorry, I have to talk about that.
Planet’s very important, isn’t it? One point three million Earths fit inside the sun. How important can anything that is going on on that planet be if one point three million of the planets fit inside one star and there’s three hundred billion stars in your galaxy and there’s two trillion galaxies? Wow, are you important.
You really succeeded. You didn’t do anything. Fair enough. Okay, what I, what I’m challenging, I’m not challenging the greatness that you’re gonna find out you are. I’m challenging the stupidity of limiting your consciousness to one single spot on a tiny little planet in the middle of nowheres for a few years and saying, “I can’t handle this.”
You can’t handle what? Now do we understand liberation? That’s the start of it. Okay, so now let’s talk about is it this way? To have us spoken the truth, that all these other things are doing, they’re taking care of themselves. They’re- life’s a happening place. It’s doing its thing. And if it didn’t do its thing, you wouldn’t be alive or you wouldn’t be here, and the things that you did, you didn’t do them.
Oh, God, it was so amazing. Somebody came up to me, and they said that they wanna start a business with me. Okay, what if they didn’t? What do you mean? What did it take for that person to show up at that moment in your life? They had to have their whole past background, the events that happened to them led them to be like that.
It doesn’t just, boom, go like that. And you did all those, right? You made the person, you made how they thought, you made the situation in their li- you didn’t do any of that, any of it. You said, “Well, look what happened. Look what I did.” You didn’t do anything compared to all the things that had to happen for it to take place.
And so you wake up, you realize you’re not the doer. You’re the experiencer of life. That you are. You do experience the part of life that passes in front of you. Very good. And we’re gonna in the end say there’s stuff you interact with that. Nobody’s saying you don’t interact with it, but you don’t interact from the point of ignoring that every other thing…
It’s hilarious. Just ignore that every other thing exists, and all that matters is me and what I’m doing and what decision I make. I’m sitting at a boardroom table. I sit at a boardroom table, okay? You got all the board members and there’s stuff going on, making these big decisions, right? What if the table didn’t stay together?
What if the atoms didn’t bond together? What if the quantum field didn’t vibrate in a certain way to make the whole thing be what it is? What if the atoms didn’t bond the way they do? You take everything else for granted, which is the cause of everything that you’re experiencing, and you say, “What matters is me.”
Okay, can we just see how it got that way? Because that’s… Is it the truth or not? Of course that’s not the truth. Of course, you’re not the center of the universe. You’re the center of your universe. I told you all these other things had to be happening for you to even exist or for anything else to happen in your entire life.
So what happened? This thing called mind, which is a very great thing, and don’t ever think I talk against mind, because I don’t. Mind is a very great thing, and this thing called emotions, they’re very great things. Like a car is a really great thing, but not if you use it to hit people. It depends on how you’re using these things.
You have a mind. It has the ability to think. You have senses, the ability to experience what comes in from the outside world. Otherwise, you wouldn’t even know it’s there. You have a heart, has the ability to feel. Did you make the mind? See, some of you say, “Yeah, I went to college.” No, did you make the mind that even knew there’s a thing called college?
Did you make a mind that’s able to learn? Not what did it learn. That’s capable of learning, of thinking. Did you create this thing called thinking? Don’t care how you think. You do think. Where’d that come from? Same place the embryo came from. It didn’t come from you. You did not make your mind. You made what got in it and what you held onto it.
You know, you did that, but you did not make this thing called mind, and you did not make this thing called heart. Can your heart feel? How do you know? Can it feel love? Did you make this process, this feeling, this experience called love? Obviously not. Other people know what you’re talking about. There’s a thing called lo- Is there a thing called love?
Can you fall in love? Then there has to be a thing called love. Can you fall out of love? Can you feel hatred? Anger? Resentment? Can you feel things? Did you make those things? We can talk about how, why you experience them, but you didn’t make them. They exist in the universe. You don’t think like that. You don’t honor and say, “Wow, w- how did that get here?”
No, you only think, “I wanna feel this. I should do this. I shouldn’t have done that.” And so you down to the basic structure, everything has to be going on that has nothing to do with you in order for you to be this thing that thinks I’m the doer. I, I hope I haven’t overburdened it. If I, if I multiplied everything I said, raised to the 10,000th power, I wouldn’t come close to saying how little the stuff that you do is and how insignificant, totally insignificant.
And yet we run around with all our problems and all. How did that happen? That is called the fall from the garden. Your natural state is one of awareness of being The universe exists. You did not make it. Hundreds of trillions of stars, and moons, and things going on. You know now, because I forced you to think about it for a moment, you didn’t do it.
But you are conscious. You’re aware. You’re an aware being that is aware that things are coming in through your senses. You’re aware that thoughts are forming in your mind. You’re aware that emotions are forming in your heart. That’s who you are. You’re the awareness of being. Other things are what you’re aware of.
And like I told you for this entire talk so far, they have nothing to do with you. They’re just happening. All right? Oh my God, I’m late. The plane didn’t take off when I wanted it to. Did you make the plane? Did you make the pilot? Did you make the fuel that ran out? Did you… What in the world are you doing?
I’m making a big deal out of this tiny, tiny, minuscule, irrelevant thing, and that’s even just irrelevant to you or to somebody else. How about irrelevant to the rest of the universe? And you don’t like this talk, because you like to think you’re important. No, you are… That is not important. That can’t possibly be important.
I just put it in scope. Right? There’s your frame of reference. That’s ridiculous. It’s completely unimportant. How’s that? Everything that ever happened to you is completely unimportant. If you’d looked to the left, you wouldn’t have had that experience. If you’d closed your eyes for a moment, you missed it.
That’s how important it is. Right? So I’m gonna say it again. Nothing that ever happened to you makes any difference. It’s just something you experienced in the midst of this whole flow of events that are happening everywhere, that happened to be what was going on in front of you at that moment. All right?
And the truth of the matter is, you think, “Well, that makes me feel so small.” No, it makes you be big. Because what’s happening is, you’re limiting your consciousness, which has no limits. That’s how you get into spirituality, right? Understanding truth. You are a conscious being. Well, so is she, so is she, so is she.
The consciousness is the same. Like every drop of water in the ocean is the ocean. Consciousness is that which is capable of being aware. And if you’re not aware, we’re not having a discussion, there’s nothing to talk about. It’s because you’re aware that you can say, “I’m the, the creator of the universe.
I’m God,” because you’re aware. That’s what happened. And this is the fall from the garden. You’ll get to a point where you, you experience it because you do it. You, you fall from the garden every day of your life. Where did you fall from? You fell from the consciousness that created everything. God, call it whatever you want.
The universal consciousness that’s aware of everything. It is everything. It made everything. It’s just what is, it is. What you all mean by God is a wishing machine. Please take care of me. Please give me what I want. Don’t let this happen to me. That’s how you relate to God. Which is fine, it’s wonderful.
And prayers are wonderful. Okay? You will reach a point where you understand who’s talking to who, because there’s nothing there but God. That’s all there is, is the whole universe is God’s- In the beginning, God created the heavens and Earth, right? So what happened is that consciousness, that awareness, which Mother let out of the bag right now, what is the nature of that consciousness?
What does it feel? What… I don’t understand. If you’re totally free, and all there is is awareness of being, not aware of something, that’s the fall. I’m aware of what you said. I’m aware of what I feel. I’m aware of this rain. Okay, who’s aware? Who’s aware? And you get to the point you understand, I’m in here, and I’m aware of what is passing before my consciousness, but I am the consciousness itself.
And what happens is that consciousness is capable of being aware of everything, every- now, Christ taught you that. Not a hair on your head moves, not a sparrow from tree falls that God doesn’t know. Of course, God is everything. God is the underlying force that creates every atom, that creates every thought, that creates every single thing.
There’s nothing but God. There, there’s God. Who wants… Who dares to talk about God that way, right? Well, the deep spiritual teachings all do. The Quran, the, the mystical aspects of Christianity, the Sufis, the, the Kabbalah of the Jewish tradition, they talk about God. In fact, I love it, the rabbi, the ancient rebbes, like gurus, rebbes, they wouldn’t write the word God.
They would write G underscore D because who are you to even think of such anything that… All right? Okay, fine. So that is your nature. What do you mean your nature? You are conscious. See, I took everything else away, didn’t I? I’m giving you who you are. You are the conscious being that experienced all this stuff I talked about, okay?
And what’s the nature of that consciousness? Sat-Chit-Ananda, eternal conscious ecstasy. Sat-Chit-Ananda, eternal conscious ecstasy. Oh, that sounds like fun. What, what happened to me? How’d I get left out of that breadline? All right? That’s who’s in there. That’s what’s aware of your thoughts. You care about your thoughts.
Now, be aware of who notices the thoughts. Eventually, you’ll go so deep spiritually, you’ll realize seeing one, seeing them all. They’re just thoughts. Oh, Sally died. Maybe I’m gonna die. It just comes and goes, and I don’t think I need to stare at that. Like, these… How many thoughts have you had that are meaningless?
How many thoughts are you having right now that are meaningless? It’s constantly, right? It’s just there are thoughts. Yes, there are thoughts. Nobody’s denying reality. What matters is who notices that there are thoughts? Because that thing is always there. Doesn’t matter if it’s a nice thought, a bad thought, X-rated, G-rated, PG, it doesn’t matter.
It’s a thought, and you are aware of it. So I’ve taken everything else away from you in this talk, and I’m gonna give everything back. You are the most important thing in the universe. You, who’s conscious, you, who’s in there noticing the thoughts. I don’t care what thought. If you notice a thought, you notice it.
You’re in there. You notice your emotions. They can be up and down and nice and pure and impure. Someone’s noticing. It is the same essence of your being noticing every thought you ever had. Did you have thoughts yesterday? How do you know? Because you were in here experiencing it. Did you have thoughts when you were five years old?
Wow, you’re in there. You’ve been in it the whole time. Are you capable of just being? You’ve heard, see, now we’re getting Buddhist. Are you capable of just being? Now you understand what that means. Just being the consciousness that’s aware of what it’s conscious of The consciousness that’s aware of what it’s conscious of.
It’s conscious of thoughts, it’s conscious of emotions. Whose thoughts? Okay, your thoughts, how I gave them to you. You get to have your thoughts. All right. So basically, you’re having thoughts, you’re having thoughts. They’re not the same thoughts, but you’re all aware of the thoughts. You’re conscious.
You’re a conscious being. That is the most important part of your being. How do I prove it? Turn off the consciousness. Now what? You know, you’re not there anymore, all right? Turn off the bad thought. Oh, good, I don’t have a bad thought anymore. Have a nice thought. Oh, have a nice thought. Turn off the awareness that is aware that you had a thought, and you’re not there.
It is the core of your being. It is your soul, as I me my soul, the essence of your being, the consciousness. All right? And then what happens? Consciousness is everywhere. Consciousness, what’s meant by God, it’s the creator of the universe. Now, what happens is it starts to experience what it made. I really, I’m, I can’t help myself.
You want to talk about it? It starts to experience creation. That’s why in the beginning, God created heaven and Earth, then he made this, then he made this. Whoa, okay. Out of the consciousness, out of this oneness, in the beginning was the light. It’s all so true. In the beginning, there was just pure awareness of being pure consciousness.
Then it went smaller and smaller and smaller and is aware of its dances. On the seventh day, it said it looked, it rested, and what it saw, what it made, it was good, right? Sixth day, seventh day, I don’t remember which day it was, but he said it was good, all right? Don’t think of a person, they’re making this stuff.
You want to think about, think of the quantum field underneath, omnipresent, everywhere, emanating vibrations that create all of this. The omnipresent field that vibrates That’s the beginning of the Word. In the beginning was the Word, it vibrated throughout creation, and out of it came atoms and electron, neutron, and proton.
The whole thing that science teaches you. Okay? So there. So what’s wrong with that? Nothing. It’s just reality, and you are that. That’s what you are. You are that consciousness. So what happened? You stared at a particular moment in the realm of creation, of which there are 700 jillion, zillion, quillion going on at the same time.
Your consciousness got distracted by a particular moment. That’s it. The whole key is the fall from the garden is about distraction. It’s about saying that if, if I’m looking at a field and there’s a snake moving, not only is there a snake there, but there are trees, grass, all kinds of things. But my consciousness, my awareness focuses, becomes distracted by one tiny little thing.
Instead of being aware that all of it’s happening, and I’m aware of it all, and it’s all just creation being creation, I get distracted by what you said, by what he did, by what the snake moved, right? All of a sudden my focus of consciousness is no longer universal. It’s no longer expansive. It becomes concentrated down onto one object.
That is the fall from the garden. The fact that you are now not in the divine consciousness, the oneness of all awareness of all things. You’re now focused on a snake. You’re focused on what somebody said. You’re focused on a zit on your face. You’re focused on something a little bit smaller than the whole universe, and that’s what you fell into.
You fell into focusing on particular things that were unfolding in front of you over the course of your life, and that’s why those things seem so important to you. You didn’t let them come and go. You didn’t sit there and say, you didn’t really say anything. You’re sitting there experiencing a moment.
It’s raining. Here, it’s raining out. What does that mean? It means it’s raining out. I get to experience rain. No, I don’t want it to be raining now. I want it to be raining an hour from now where I don’t have to get out of the car and get everything wet and be on my birthday. All of a sudden you owned it.
You, you took it, you, you, you took it personal—that you took it personal. And because you took it personal, you focused on it. And because you focused on it, you did this amazing thing which should tie back together, remember what we’re talking about, right? You owned it as personal. You owned it as, “I remember it was my fifth birthday, and I, I had it outside.
I took it real… I had it outside and it poured. I would never talk to God ever again. How would he do such a thing?” Whoa. Well, where did that come from? It’s raining. The farmer’s happy it’s raining. But you somehow, your consciousness, the same consciousness that’s aware of everything, can be, can be open. And that’s what it means to be open.
It means to ex- be expansive, right? As opposed to contractive by staring on what’s happening in front of you. I, I’m glad I had the early talk where I showed you what’s happening in front of you is irrelevant. There’s 800 billion zillion things going on all over the place, right? But you focused on that event.
Do you focus on all events? No. You drive by the white lines all the time. You know, they’re yellow, they’re dashed. Oh, who knows? Who cares? Cars drive by. They go right through, don’t they? They come into your consciousness, you experience them, and then they, they’re gone. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they leave these deep impressions on you, on your mind.
How does it… I don’t understand. How does an impression… They won’t talk to you about this. I will. How does an impression be in your mind? The mind is just open air. Is it… Your mind can be completely open. Your heart can be completely open. You just experience the flow of life pouring through you. So what happened?
How is it something gets s- can things get stuck in your mind? Are there any things from your past stuck in your mind? Are they happening right now when you’re five? No? No. How do they get stuck in your mind? That’s explaining a totally different world than we talked about. The world’s unfolding, like I told you in the beginning, all over the place, and you now, your consciousness, has the right to have an experience.
It does have an experience, and now the experience takes place. It’s supposed to come in and pass through. Why? Because then the next experience happens. You know what happens in the next experience? Okay? They come in, you experience them, you say thank you. What if I don’t… There’s no I yet. I didn’t make an I yet.
You know, you’re gonna say, “What if I don’t like it?” There’s just the experiencer, the being that is experiencing wanting to cry. That’s the essence of spirituality. Do you understand that? It comes in. What does? Life does. Reality comes in. How’s that? Reality comes in. When? Always. Where? Well, if you’re looking, it’s what you’re in front of.
That’s your reality. There’s reality. It comes in. How does it get stuck in your mind? What’s the whole thing about suppression and repression? What’s Freud all about? I don’t understand. W- what would you suppress? There’s nothing there. It happened, it’s gone. It happened, it’s gone. It’s happened, it’s gone.
You’re growing, you’re experiencing. The beauty of, you know, experiences are very important and good things. They help you expand. You grow. You’re having these rich things called experiences. That’s why you took birth, by the way. You took birth so you can have experiences. You didn’t take birth to go sit on a mountain somewhere.
You took birth to have experiences, so you can become more experienced. That’s what happens. Well, which experiences make me more experienced? All of them. Every single experience you ever had is the same as any other experience you ever had. They’re an experience. They’re something you learn from. They’re something that came in and made you a greater being.
If you have more experiences, aren’t you a greater being? Then every single experience is your teacher. Every single experience is expanding you. Every single experience. So far, I haven’t added the I in yet, have I? I haven’t screwed this up too bad yet. I have not introduced this thing in there that says, “I don’t like it.
I don’t wanna have the experience.” I like a better one. Here’s a better one: “I don’t want to have had this experience.” Obviously, you had the experience, so you wouldn’t not want to have had it, and you’re never, ever gonna not have had it. So I don’t want to have had the experience, that’s just an absurd thing to say.
You obviously had it, and it’s never gonna go away. You can’t erase something you already had, can you? Hey, you wish you could. You like to think, “If I think about it in some way and twist it and rationalize it, I can make it go away.” No, you cannot make it go away. You had it. It was real. It happened.
Question is, could you handle it? Can you let it come in and be an experience you had? You learn from the experience. You grow from the experience. You become a greater being from the experience. You’re not judging it. Isn’t it amazing that what I’m talking sounds so weird? Does the Bible say, “Judge not, you shall not be judged”?
The surgeon patriarch, the burdensome practice of judging. Who’s judging reality? You must have done something and made up something else in there- And you did. What do you mean? I asked you, how do impressions get left in your mind? You hold them there. The consciousness is looking down, the experiences are coming in.
You’re, you’re just in a beautiful state. You’re experiencing what’s happening. You’re growing, right? But then something happens that is so, I guess the word is uncomfortable, challenging, that you don’t let it go. You hold it in there. That’s what suppression is and repression is, right? You grab it, you hold onto it, and you say this really wonderful thing, “This experience was so bad, I wanna keep it.”
Is that not Freudian psychology? This experience was so bad, I don’t want to have had it, so I’m gonna keep it. And that’s what you did. And so they left it. It’s called an impression on your mind. In yoga, we call it samskara, an impression. What do you mean? It came in. I’m sorry it came in. I’m sorry, it’s just what happened.
There it is. The reality happened. It rained on your birthday. It came in, and it didn’t make it through. Why? Because you didn’t let it make it through, and don’t you dare think there’s anything else. Anybody else in there? Who’s in there but you? You’re in there. So if it got stuck in there, it’s because you held it in there.
And you do, don’t you? Do you push things away? Do you boop like that? That’s… You’re holding them. Now, they can’t pass through. They can’t pass through. You hold it. When you hold it, you’re gonna have to hold it for the rest of your life. Right or wrong? Do things come up from your childhood? Is that not all therapy and everything’s all about, that you got this stuff stuck in there?
“I need help to get it out.” Well, stop holding it in, then it will come up. “No, but it doesn’t feel good if I ho- if I don’t push it back down.” Well, then it’s gonna stay in there. So I need help. Anybody listening? Natural state is it comes in, it passes through, you learn what you need to learn, and you keep on trucking.
Life is a happening place, and you get to have experiences after experiences. See, they’re important. I made them sound like they’re meaningless. Well, they, they are meaningless from the point of view you deal with them, but they’re meaning you’re fine. You’re learning. You’re growing. You’re having experiences.
But then when you don’t like an experien- when, when you resist an experience, when the consciousness pushes it away, then it starts building these patterns inside. And I don’t have to go into psychology. That’s the, that’s what ego is. That’s where the I comes from. You made it up in your head. By what? By holding on to, “I like this.
I don’t like this. I like that. I didn’t like what happened. I wish it could have happened.” You just build this I in there who’s thinking all the time. Does it have to be in there? No. The enlightened master’s not in there like that. It’s not happening. It’s passing through. They’re experiencing, and then they don’t have to stay down here to deal with what they don’t like or to deal with…
You have to deal with what you do like, you have to deal with what you don’t like. You have to try and make the don’t like not to happen again, which I can’t do it now. What a joke. We just said from the beginning, we said the whole universe is running itself, but you’re gonna decide what you don’t want to happen again.
Gee, I wonder why there’s tension I wonder why there’s anxiety. I wonder why there’s suffering. If you build this model inside your head, which is not natural, I’m sorry, it is natural that the mind can take things in, think, and create and do all kinds of beautiful things with things. You make art, you can make creativity, you can make computers, you make AI.
There’s all kinds of stuff the mind can do, and the heart can create and so on. Yes, you do these things. Nobody’s saying you renounce and push away and, and leave the world behind. You dance with the world, but you don’t say, “I don’t want this to happen,” especially when it already happened. You know what you say?
“I can handle this. I can handle this.” That’s a nice thing to say. It came in, oh, I can handle that, and then it makes it through. Otherwise, you build these bricks. Every single thing you ever stored in your mind is like a brick, and you built this concept of yourself. Ahnold likes this, Ahnold doesn’t like that.
I hope this will happen. I hope that does not happen. I need to be like… You build an ego, and I don’t know what to say. He got one? And all of a sudden, that mind doesn’t stop talking. It just talks all the time. There’s no peace. There’s no freedom. There’s no openness. There’s just what I want and what I don’t want.
How can I get it? And why can’t I have it? And why did she get it when I could have it? And the I shows up, you know, ninety-nine percent of I, me, mine. Just watch your mind, and you’re gonna find out that’s the fall from the garden, is you built this model inside your head, and now you’re only looking out at the world to see if it can be the way you want it to be.
And that is why you think you’re the doer, because what you mean by the doer is how can I make things be the way I want them to be? A great being does not think like that. They start their entire day by saying, “Thank you. I’m back. I’m back.” And then they get up, and they sit there and say, “Let’s boogie.” And something comes in, and it’s something that flows with what, what fit well with, with how your mind was thinking.
You say, “Thank you.” You don’t say, “I did it.” I didn’t do it. Even when you, oh, spiritually say, “Oh, all of a sudden this thing happened. I w- I, God must have done it because it was just exactly what I wanted.” What if it wasn’t what you wanted? Did God do that? Do you see? Who’s willing to pay attention to truth?
You don’t say that. You say, “It’s a curse. It’s a curse.” It’s not, but it didn’t want it to happen. It happened what you want to happen. It’s a blessing. Anybody paying attention? That it’s so hard to talk to the ego ’cause it doesn’t wanna hear it. It doesn’t wanna step back from itself. And so you just get into a world where you wake up in the morning and you say, “Hi, I’m back.
What’s gonna happen today? I don’t know. Do you know?” Of course you don’t know. Does every day happen what you thought was gonna happen? No. But every day you struggle to try and make it happen. You cling, you cling to what you made in a model based on your past, what you built in your head that you want to happen, and you try to fight with everything to make it happen.
And now you raise a really interesting question, which I, I don’t have time to go… I wish I could have more time with you, right? Is you, you raise the question, what would happen if I wasn’t struggling to make it be what I wanted? And repeat that question. What would happen if I wasn’t constantly struggling with every moment of the day to try and make it be what I want it to be?
When you got… Your whole I was made up by stuff you couldn’t handle from the past, right? Man’s the sum of the learned experiences. What if I wasn’t fighting it? Would it all fall apart? Would the whole world fall apart if I wasn’t making it stay together? I think we had the discussion earlier that you ain’t doing squat.
The planet would stay in orbit. Birds would still fly. Cells would still multiply and divide. Would life go on without your ego? But not the way I want it to. Yes, I, I agree. And that is the eternal struggle. And what you will find out, if you dare to even give it a moment, life knows what it’s doing If it can take a single fertilized cell and by itself turn it into a baby, and you don’t impress me, you say, “No, no, it didn’t do it by itself.
DNA did it.” What is DNA? A collection of molecules. What are they? A bunch of atoms. They made the baby, did they? You see, you accept that and your mind said, “Well, no, DNA made it.” It’s the same thing. Okay? It’s a miracle. How’s that? A miracle made a baby out of a single cell. A, a miracle takes a ba- a baby acorn.
I got found a little tiny acorn the other day. A ve- tiny acorn. It can make an oak tree. How can that happen? Oh, well, it knows how to take the dirt and break the minerals down and put them together and bind them toge- you’re not explaining anything. You’re just saying, “Yes, it did all that.” And you’re gonna find out that life knows what it’s doing.
It just doesn’t do what you want it to do. And that’s what you found out, by the way, throughout your life, is if I don’t do anything, it won’t be what I want it to be. That’s what you found out, right? If I don’t do anything, it’s not gonna be the way I want. You figured that one out quick, didn’t you? Well, isn’t it pretty amazing the way it is?
Trees and birds and planets and stars and… But no, it has to be the way I want. And I told you, well, you can, if you study more closely and read my books, where did that I come from? You stored past experience that you couldn’t handle, and you held onto them, and you made up concepts and views and opinions and preferences and hopes and dreams.
Those are all mind. Those are things you built within your mind. Sh- show me hope in life. Sh- show me how life makes hope. It doesn’t do anything. It just does its thing. It’s here now. It’s just reality. It’s a sacred thing. We make up this in our mind, and then we compare reality against what we made up, and it doesn’t work out so good.
The third Zen patriarch, “The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” Now, your ego can’t hear that. What is the great way? Enlightenment. Total openness. Sat-Chit-Ananda. Living in s- total ecstasy. You have to die. It’s who you are. That’s what’s back there. But we’ve developed these preferences in our mind, these concepts and views and opinions and hopes and dreams, all in the mind.
And now we look out into the world, and it’s not okay the way it is, even though it’s pretty perfect. Is the universe perfect? Are the stars where they need to be when they need to be, and one shifts, they all shift around it? Come on. Does your body heal itself? And the lungs go in and out? Is the f- thing perfect?
But, but sometimes people die. Yep, it’s part of the perfection. In fact, you got it wrong. They always die.
Are you seeing what it means to be open to reality? What would it be to look at life and say thank you? Like you’re taught even in religious thing too, gratitude. That’s why. Why would I have gratitude? See, from the point of view of your ego, this thing you built in your mind, there is no gratitude unless you get what you want.
I’m grateful that I got what I wanted today. The rest of it, forget it. How about you’re grateful because you’re conscious and you’re experiencing the life that’s passing before you? Everything changes. Doesn’t seem like we had a deep spiritual discussion. This is what spirituality is. What did Christ say?
You must die to be reborn. You must let go of this personal that you say, “I am the doer and nothing’s gonna happen unless I do it,” and then you’re, you’re free, you’re liberated, you’re born back into spirit. You’re, you’re just totally open. All the great traditions taught you this, but we don’t know how to listen, do we?
Not at this level, right? I’m probably bad to have this talk, right? The question is, once in your life will you wake up and realize that the truth is, without life doing everything it’s doing, you ain’t here. Nothing’s happening, right? But you built an ego in there that says, “I need to do this. I need to run this.
I need to control this. If I don’t control this, it’s not going to happen,” right? So the bottom line is, everything is happening by itself. I know it took a lot of words for me to try and convince you of that. Can we at least accept that, that pretty much everything has happened by itself, and the part that you play in it is, is so small, and you’re gonna die soon anyways?
All right? And, and you li- live a life that they, they teach you. Here’s what they teach you. He who dies with the most toys wins. No, he who dies with the most toys does not take his toys with him. The Pharaohs tried that in those pyramids, right? What are you talking about? He or she who dies with ecstasy in their heart and total feeling of oneness with the whole universe, they, they win.
They win. I win. Okay? So hoping you get something out of it. It was a lot. We talked a lot, okay? And it’s tough talk ’cause it’s not talking about what you wanna hear, okay? But I said, maybe it makes you feel small in the beginning talk. That come on, you’re nothing, right? But you are the consciousness that’s in there experiencing it, and you are of God, and that is the truth.
You… That consciousness is of God. It is of the universal consciousness. It’s all the same thing, and the only difference a master does, is they let go of staring at themselves and the consciousness by itself. They don’t have to do it. If you’re staring at yourself, you’re seeing yourself. If you stop staring at yourself, you’ll realize the whole universe behind you, totally expansive.
It’s called merging with God. It’s Christ. My Father and I are one. All the deep teachings are what is going on inside of you, who you are. So you’re a very great being there. I didn’t wanna make you feel small. You’re making yourself s- feel small by limiting yourself to this little thing that’s not doing anything.
See the difference? Yes? Okay. Yes. Phew. I’m tired. What would you like us to do now? I, I would love to know that once in your life… You’re not gonna get rid of the ego immediately. You’re not. I want you to… What do I do in the meantime? Watch. All I ask, do not try to get that thing out of there. You can’t rip it up by the roots.
You can’t kill it. You can’t renounce it and go move off somewhere. You can’t leave every- No, no, no. That doesn’t get rid of stuff. All right? I dare you, just notice what I’ve talked about. Notice the truth. Notice that all this stuff’s going on without you doing it, and if it wasn’t going on, you ain’t doing squat, right?
Notice that you’re in there noticing your thoughts. It’s called witness consciousness. That’s your step back. Are you in there? Do you have bad thought days? Not just bad hair days. Bad thought days. How do you know? My thoughts are bothering me. How do you know? How do you know? Because I’m in there. Thank you.
I know you can’t help yourselves. All right? I’m in here. Just be aware that you’re in there, and you will wake up naturally. It’s not all about struggling and fighting, doing all this stuff. Just be aware, and you say, “God, I’m in here. I’m in here.” Who’s in there? Who’s in there? That’s the deepest spiritual question, right?
And what happens is because you’re not hanging out with what you’re looking at, you will more and more be seated naturally. Now, I don’t struggle anymore. You’ll naturally be seated in the one who’s seeing. Why? Because you are the one who’s seeing. And as you let go, it goes up, and all these chakras open, and all the stuff you study and all the things you want spiritually, they all happen.
It just all naturally happens because that’s what’s back there. But you’re busy looking down here. Okay, I know I have to stop. Well, thank you for listening. I really, I appreciate that you’re willing to listen to truth, 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
