Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. Spirituality. True spirituality is so simple that we don’t get it. Here it is. You’re on a planet spinning around the middle of nowhere, dark, black, empty space. For as far as you can see, we’ve discussed how little this planet is. How little the people are on the planet, how meaningless, what goes on on the planet is.
It’s not any more meaningful than more what goes on on Earth and Saturn and galaxy’s far, far away. There’s so much out there, but somehow we can’t handle it. We can’t handle having dropped down onto a planet in the middle of nowhere, staying here for a few years and then leaving. We have trouble about the leaving part, which is just absurd.
You’re going to leave. Do you understand that? Spirituality is simple. You were born here. Why? You just don’t know. You fell out of this place, and that’s the weirdest thing I ever heard of, right? Mm-hmm. And you pay attention to that.
You pay attention to the fact, how did your body get here? Well, there was this cell microscopic. You need a microscope to look at it. That’s what it was, A cell by itself. It knew how to make itself into livers and kidneys and bloods all by itself. You didn’t do one single bit of that. What you did was not screwed up.
He didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink, probably. Know what I’m saying? Like you didn’t do any of this. How can that happen that a cell just all of a sudden turns into a baby with fingers and livers and kidneys? It is my baby. It is not your baby. He didn’t make it. He didn’t do anything. That’s just amazing. Well, I lived with it being built in there for nine months and that was really tough.
You gave a house to this thing that made itself. Do you understand? Can I talk to you that way? Does it get rid of your motherhood? No, it’s just the truth. So you live in a place that the single cell got fertilized and then it just went about its business and made a baby finally came out. Is that not what happened?
How often do you think of it? That way you don’t. You say it’s mine. I made the baby, that’s my child. No, it’s not. Did you make your car? Is that really your car? Did you make the engine and the brakes and this? Do you understand anything? Fuel rejection and all kinds of things. Do you understand all this stuff?
No, but it’s mine. You have to question how did it become, I mean, it’s obviously not yours, it’s out there, but we’re gonna little by little say what is this identification with things that have nothing to do with you? ’cause that is the issue. Is identifying with things that are part of life, that are part of everything I like.
We have deer out there, amazing amount of deer. I don’t know whether it’s just the season or what, right? But it happens. All the seasons like there’s no place I can go. At night. There’s deer, and the day there’s deer, they’re really beautiful. Alright. They’re just beautiful. What did I have to do with that?
Happy for them. It’s kind of fun to think they live in the woods by themselves and make babies and eat and get out and just live their whole lives and you don’t have to do anything. You have to feed them. They’re cat food. How do these things happen by themselves? That is the essence of spirituality is being willing to look and honestly say, I didn’t put the deer there.
I’m glad they’re there. I really like it them. I appreciate it. They’re beautiful. This afternoon when I was going home, there’s a side road out in the field that I take the deer. Took off and it ran right next to me. I could clock him how fast he was going. Then he finally broke off, right? It’s like, wow.
These are beautiful experiences. They’re not yours. You didn’t do anything to make them happen. You can appreciate them. You can worship them. You can say thank you. They’re not yours. They have nothing to do with you. So that is a beginning and end of spirituality. It is. So what do I do? What do I do? Okay, we said you’re born okay.
It means the body dropped out. Are you your body? It’s not complicated. Obviously you are not your body. Your thoughts are different from your body. They’re free. They can think. You can think anything you want, can’t you? Let’s do that for a minute. Is it true that you can think anything you want? If you want to?
Can you think of a boat? Think about the green, Mary, can you think about a galaxy far, far away? Can you think anything you want? Can you think about a bug? Are you capable of thinking anything you want? Yes. Okay. Well then if you have a mind that can think anything it wants, I’m gonna ask you a question.
Have you found that if your mind thinks nice, positive things, that you feel better, and if it thinks negative, hurtful, painful, suffering, things that you feel worse, has anyone noticed. I said, big clue. It’s your mind. It can think anything you want. You create any thought you want. You have a relationship.
It really went well, and then it didn’t. Wasn’t that fun? Did it hurt? Yeah. Wasn’t that fun? Isn’t it fun to experience things? Come on. How far will you go with me? You can think anything you want. Have you noticed that your thoughts affect your feelings and your feelings affect your thoughts here? The quiz program?
Have you noticed that if you have certain feelings going in your heart, that your mind tends to think like that? Oh my God, how could you do that to me? I didn’t do anything. What should I do about yes or no? Have you noticed that? If your mind starts thinking about things that happened 20 years ago, you start getting all upset in your heart the same as you did 20 years ago.
Have you noticed, okay, I told you spirituality is not difficult, so you’ve already figured out that your body comes from the cell and it. And not just to sell by the way it needs food, where to get the food. Your mother swallowed it. It’s just amazing. And it turned oats and beet and Twinkies. It turned it into the baby.
It literally knew how to take what you swallowed, break it down chemically into different things that make liver cells in these cells. And this just does it by itself and it breaks the chemicals up and it binds them back together and ends up with a liver or a kidney, or a heart or a lung. That’s pretty miraculous that that happens and doesn’t just happen to humans.
Out here we have farmland and there’s this farmland and there’s this dirt. Nothing there, just dirt and some tractor drives by and you know, seeing happening. Then all of a sudden these little plants start to come up. How. I planted them. You didn’t do squat? They come up. Out of what? Out of a seed. You mean?
I can take an acorn and an oak tree is inside of an acorn and I don’t have to do anything. It just happens by itself. Out in the middle of the woods. These are miracles. How can an oak tree, a giant oak tree, come out of an acorn? Well, where’d they get the building materials? There was dirt. It took the dirt.
It sucked it in. It took sunshine, it took water, and it made all the chemicals that it needs and built this whole oak tree. Spirituality is simple if you just pay attention to what’s going on. Alright, so you’re born, your body gets built, and then you have this mind. Why isn’t none of your business? You just were given one.
You were given a mind like being given a computer for Christmas. There it is. It’s doing this and you can think anything you want, like I said. Now let’s talk about how do you live on this planet now that you’ve dropped here and you only live what, 80, 90 years? It’s been here. You all know these numbers.
How long has the earth been here? 4.5 billion years. How long are you gonna be here? 80, 90. A little different than those numbers. So you just drop down on this planet. You got a body was given to you as a gift. Oh, I got a body. You have a mind. You can do anything you want with it while you’re here. You have a heart.
It can feel, and most important, you are aware. That you have a body, you are aware that you have thoughts, you are aware that you have emotions. Somebody say, oh my God, my mind’s driving me crazy. How do you know? I told you I would not make a good therapist and I will not do one-on-one with anybody. Why you couldn’t handle it?
Somebody can. Oh my God, this happened and this thing. And it was, oh my God was so terrible. How do you know it happened? I know it happened. You’re not there anymore. I know. And how do you know it hurts? How do you know you feel sad? Who’s in there knowing these things? The answer is you are. So now we’ve just built the entire understanding of what it means to be a human.
You have a body that dropped down into a planet Earth for a few years. You have a mind that’s capable of thinking anything you wanted, anytime you wanted to. To dare think. It’s not, it makes thoughts as a thought making machine. And you have an emotion making machine, and then there’s this awareness of being, which is the most important part of being the part that’s aware.
Why is it the most important part of being in science? I like to be a scientist. I’m not, but I like to be a scientist. The way you do experiments properly is you set up a model and you start removing variables. You can’t go there and handle 50 billion variables at once. You have to go in and say, what if I take this out?
What happens? What if I put it back? Let’s make sure it’s right. The same thing happens repeatable. Okay, fine. Now I know what effect that has. Okay, well what if I do this? What if I do that right? You start isolating these things. Well, okay, can you have a thought? What if you change that thought? Oh, it’s interesting.
Alright, so you’ve got all stuff going on in there. The most important part of your being. Is your consciousness, why if you take it away? Your awareness of being. There’s not a world out there anymore. There’s no thoughts. There’s no emotions. Are they there? I don’t know. Because you’re conscious. And if you’re not conscious, you don’t know they’re there.
You wanna have an argument. Well, they’re still there. I don’t know. How would you know such a thing? All I know is if you take consciousness outta the equation, you are not aware of thoughts, you’re not aware of emotions, you’re not aware of your body, you’re not aware of the world. So the most important part of your being is awareness of being.
And so you catch on to what’s going on around here, and then you start to pay attention. Oh, I told you one way to pay attention is, let’s say you don’t take care of your body, you gets sick, you have a responsibility, you’re in there, you’re responsibility to take care of your body, take care of it, meaning makes sure it dresses pretty, and then everybody goes when you walk by.
No. That’s not taking care of your body, that’s taking care of your ego. So you get them a basic understanding that you’re responsible for taking care of the body within reason. Fine. What about your mind? You’re willing to take respons of your body, but no one takes responsible for their mind. This is what you, I mean, you as a generic, you, I’m not picking on you what you do with your mind.
You make up what you have experienced in the past that made you feel good. You told me you love me. I like that. What did you say? Say it again. I didn’t hear you. You go to Hawaii, oh my God, I wanna go back. It’s so beautiful. You have experiences and what you do is you either hold them in your mind ’cause you wanna have ’em again, or you keep them out of your mind ’cause you don’t wanna have ’em again.
When you have a bad experience, what do you do with it? You push it away. You protect yourself from it. Can I say that? Do you understand that? Do you not protect yourself from your thoughts? You like your thoughts all the time? No. So you fight with ’em, you push ’em away someday, and this is where you’re on your spiritual journey.
Some of you will do what’s called wake up. What does that mean? You’ll notice. Wait a minute, I’m having trouble with my thoughts. That’s a weird sentence. They’re my faults. There’s nobody else in there. Mommy. Not in there. Sounds like she is, but she’s not. They are my faults. How can I have trouble with my thoughts?
And then instead of understanding. True growth means and sit there and say, well, I don’t need to have trouble with my thoughts. They give whatever I want. You start realizing that’s not easy. It’s not easy to get them to be whatever you want. And so what you do is take on the ownership of the outside world, that it behave and unfold in front of you a way that makes your thoughts nice.
Now, that was a long sentence. Let’s get that right. Do you not do that? You decide how you want the world to unfold in front of you, so that when it comes in, your thoughts are nice. So I says, oh, I like what you said to me. I don’t like what you said to me. And if I don’t like what you said to me, I make sure you don’t say it again.
If I like what you said to me, I wanna behave in a way to make you say it again. So now I’m not working with my thoughts. That’s a deep discussion. I’m not working with my thoughts in computer science, a thing called indirection, and so you’re indirectly working with your thoughts by working with the outside world.
If you behave the way I want you to, then my thoughts will be nice If you behave the way I want you to, my feelings will be nice, but if you don’t, my thoughts will be terrible. My feelings will hurt. I’m not stupid, so I need to manipulate you, not me, not my thoughts. That’s amazing. Indirection. I’ve now taken ownership instead of taking ownership.
Okay. I want nice thoughts. You said something to me. You came home, you were in a bad mood. You said something not so nice, and my thoughts started saying, don’t talk to me like that. I don’t wanna have to. And you looked at it. I said, no, no. He or she’s in a bad mood. It’s okay. Let him be in a bad mood and you let it go.
I don’t have to have those thoughts, do I? Do I have to have those thoughts? Do I have to wait until he or she comes outta the room and they feel better and say, don’t you talk to me like that ever again. Do I have to do that? No. So you start learning to take responsibility for your thoughts. Instead of saying, I have no responsibility for my thoughts, you have responsibility for behaving in a way that make my thoughts nice.
And if you don’t, I’m leaving you. Or you can’t get what you want, so and so forth. That is how human beings live. They’re out there deciding what it is that will make their thoughts be nice and their heart be nice, and they go out there in terms manipulate everybody else in the world to be that way. You see it, you see it, you see with these powerful people, and they have the right to manipulate everybody and control everything to make it be the way they want.
Well. Are they happy? Of course not. You’re struggling, you’re afraid of what things are gonna happen. You, you’re constantly afraid. If you have to make the moments in front of you, unfold the way you want. I don’t wanna live in there with you ’cause you’re gonna be anxious and anxiety and that’s not gonna be nice.
No matter how rich you are, no matter how powerful you are, you’re gonna see the most rich and the most powerful. Have to manipulate everybody else. Otherwise they won’t be the way they want it to be. You cannot talk to me like that. I have to control you. Well control you creates anxiety, creates tension as opposed to I’m in here, I’ve dropped down to the planet Earth.
I’ll be here for a few years and things are gonna happen and I would like to learn to handle them. Why? Because that’s called reality. There’s this thing out there called reality. Things happen. Are you in control? Of course, you’re not in control. You’re on this tiny little planet in the middle of nowheres.
I always tell you that number. I know you don’t wanna hear it. 1.3 million earths fit inside the sun. There’s millions and trillions of other planets with stars and moons and Oh my God. And you’re like, go caught up in what happened yesterday to me? She said that. Do you wanna live like that? ’cause that is not a spiritual path that is just basically suffering.
You suffer. You have to control, you have to control everything. And so now you have woken up at a reasonable level of saying, okay, God, earth life gave me a body. It’s not mine. I don’t like my nose. Well, you look at your nose compared to the planets and all the galaxies and what are you doing? You don’t have to do that, and now you get down to why you care.
Because I’m in here and there are things that happen outside that made me feel comfortable inside. The thing that happen outside made me feel uncomfortable inside. So if someone doesn’t like my nose and I hear them say it behind my back, uh oh. Uh. I don’t feel comfortable. I don’t like that. So now I have to either get a nose job or hang out with other nosy people, or you think I’m kidding.
That’s what I have to do. Alright. I have to somehow make it be okay so that when it comes in it feels good, or I just step back off the planet. Into the depth of my being and say, are you kidding me? I’m gonna be here for a handful of years. It doesn’t make a differe what my nose looks like, but what if they don’t like me?
’cause of my nose? Then they don’t like me because of my nose. Oh. Oh, okay. Now you get down to spiritual work. Are you capable of saying, I’m a liberated being? I’ve dropped down to this planet. My body is what it is. Genetics. It’s just, it’s just, we all seem, we don’t understand why the nose is big or small, but it doesn’t matter.
We don’t accept that, do we? The science has studied it all, but it doesn’t matter. What we want is for people to accept us so that we feel good inside. You will get to a point in your spirituality where you say. That’s ridiculous. I’m gonna tell you something. They’re not accepting you. They’re accepting their judgment of you.
They’re accepting themselves. If they were born into a family or having a big nose or something like that is a real wonderful thing, then they feel wonderful and they feel proud. But if they learn that they don’t like it and so on, then you come in, you realize, wait a minute, it’s me. I’m projecting me onto other people.
It has nothing to do with the other person. It has to do with me and what I feel when they interact with the other person. That’s not the other person’s fault. That’s nothing to do with the other person’s nose. It has to do with you develop these concepts and views and opinions and hopes and dreams and preferences and all this garbage and inside your mind that says the world needs to unfold in a way that when it hits my mind, I feel good.
Instead of sitting here saying, if. Somebody’s out there not liking something, that’s their problem, not mine. It has nothing to do with me. Your eyeglasses look like the ones my sister used and she died five years ago, and I freaks me out every time I look at you. What’s that got to do with you? Nothing.
I’m just projecting my garbage that I stored inside myself. I you. And now you’re supposed to behave in a way that makes me feel good. I don’t even know who you are. I don’t even know why you’re judging me. Maybe somebody, he likes the glasses. She doesn’t now, whatcha gonna do? You don’t need to do anything.
You need to do what’s called wake up. Wake up. Look at reality. I’m sitting in a plant spilling the middle of nowheres, and if people don’t like me, fine, then that’s their problem. Yeah, but what if I don’t get a job that I want? I would rather not get some job I made up and be happy and be free and be liberated and enjoy my life than to sit here and let other people decide that they like or don’t like what my nose looks like.
Okay. And I can only go so far to Phil. You are with me. You think it’s important that people like you, there are 8.3 billion people on a planet Earth. You are one of 8.3 billion. Who cares? Have you noticed they can like you today and not like you tomorrow? Who’s noticed that go about your business trying to make it happen?
You will be neurotic. It’s the first noble truth of Buddha. All of life is suffering. Doesn’t mean you break your arm all the time. It means you cause yourself to suffer. Because you can’t accept reality. There are people out there, they don’t like you ’cause of your religion. There are people out there don’t like you ’cause of your nose there.
People don’t like you because you made a drawing that reminded them of something. And now I don’t even wanna talk to you ever again. You didn’t talk politically correctly, or you did talk politically ally and whatever. How can you win? He can just be neurotic as opposed to, okay, now where Tomos like to live here, I was born, I’m gonna die, and there’s this time in between.
I’m gonna have experiences. The question is not, do I like them? Do I not like them? Can I handle them? Can I handle some relationships? Work out? Have you noticed some relationships don’t work out? Some people turn out to be very different than you thought they were gonna be right or wrong. Isn’t that funny?
No. ’cause I can’t handle it. Okay? That’s the problem. The problem is not what life is doing. Promise is you can’t handle what it’s doing. I say you get the bottom line is spirituality, which is I can handle it. Why? Because it’s the only sane thing to do. I can handle the, you don’t like my, I can handle it to my nose.
Doesn’t look the way some people think it should. I could handle the people don’t like my religion can handle it. Some people like my hair here. I went to a hairdresser. Oh my god, you cut off a quarter inch more than I wanted you. It’ll grow back in no time. What are you doing? And I know what you’re doing, making yourself miserable.
Why? Why? Why would you do such a thing? And then you get down to what I’ve taught you over and over again. You’re not doing it on purpose. What happens is events happen outside. They come in, some of ’em feel good, some of ’em don’t. You can’t handle the ones that don’t feel good, so you do this thing called suppression.
What you do is you take the ones that don’t feel good, that came in, and you push them away, and you do it every day of your life all the time, but the driver in front of you about the temperature, about the fact that you were ripping your clothes, you dropped some ketchup on your pants, you’re afraid to go back to work.
All the time. You’re sitting there saying, I can’t handle this. I can’t handle if you left me. I can’t handle if you stay. I can’t handle. If you don’t like me, I can’t handle it. This morning we had an argument. I’m afraid to go home. Maybe you won’t like me anymore. We’ve been married 40 years. I. And so you catch on and you say, well, you got some work to do.
I’ll manipulate and control everything, so it happens the way I want. No, that is not your work. That is not your work. You can’t possibly succeed in manipulating every moment’s that gonna unfold in front of you from now on to be the way your mind decided you want to be. As it gets to the point where I say all the time, it is not supposed to be the way you want.
It’s supposed to be the way it is, and you just finally decide, this is spirituality. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t wanna suffer. I’ve only got 80, 90. That’s not much time here. That’s literally 80 or 90 circuits around a star. How can you waste one minute of the time you’re given to be here? Not having a good old time, but you can’t have a good time if you can’t handle what’s happening.
And so you catch on Spiritualities about being able to handle what’s happening. And by the way, how far is that from Darwin? What did Darwin say? Adaptability a. The species becomes adaptable. They can live in the forest, they can live in the ocean, they can live in the heat. The more adaptable you are, that is survival of the fitness.
How adaptable are you? Your body is phenomenally adaptable. You can live in the rainforest. You can live in the desert. You can live on top of a mountain. It’s amazingly adaptable. You can eat fish. You can eat eggs. You can eat vegetables. Can you be a vegetarian? Can you be a meat eater? Well, that’s amazing.
Cows need multiple stomachs to able to eat grass. You don’t need multiple stomachs to you eat. You’re very adaptable outside. How adaptable are you inside? You are the most sensitive. If somebody breathes the wrong way, if somebody burps in the elevator, you get embarrassed for them here. What if somebody tells you they love you?
Well, that’s really nice, but what if they say it like this? You’re talking to them. Oh, I love you so much. You have no idea. I just melt in your arms, say, I love you so much, and they say, yeah, I love you too. Is that okay? But she said, I love you. Not like that. You don’t tell me you love me, every little thing.
Do you like living like that? Then free yourself. That is a call to spirituality. It’s about saying, wow, wow. How can I be the highest fish on the planet? I can’t handle anything. I can’t handle anything. I can’t handle. What I think Sally said to George about me. Can I, maybe I should check it out. See, ask Sally or ask George or ask Fred.
’cause he talks to Sally. What are you doing? And so you catch on. You do not have to live like that. The entire purpose of a coming out here and having talks like this are to say, wake up. You don’t want to live like that. You don’t want to be able to attract yourself what you want. Why? Because you’ll want something different tomorrow.
It will not be exactly the way you want. Can you attract yourself? Sure. But you better be careful ’cause you attract all your thoughts. I don’t think you wanna do those and you start waking up saying, that’s not what it’s about. It’s not about getting what you want. It’s about honoring and respecting reality.
You honor that it’s raining. You honor the weather. You honor that it’s hot. You think it’s neat that it’s hot and there’s a star out there that’s hot enough that you’re complaining about it. Did you know when someone is hot, you’re so close to a star, did you feel it’s heat? Whoa. That’s pretty neat, isn’t it?
And that is what isn’t it? But you won’t think like that. You allow your mind to get fixated on the stuff you liked or didn’t like in the past. Instead of experiencing it, liking it, letting it go, not liking, letting it go. Just living your life. Living the life that unfolds and you can handle it. What life would I like you to have told you?
You wake up in the morning, I’m back. I’m back, and I told you I play with science with you. I’m not a scientist, but I play with it all right. Do you know that when you wake up in the morning and your bed is there and your dresser’s there, and your body’s there and so on. That’s a miracle ’cause none of them are there.
You go back down with your microscope and then your, your cyclotrons and gliders and you realize there’s nothing there. There’s just this quantum field vibrating. It’s just agitated quantum field, whatever that is. And that turns into corks and leptons and boons and neutrons and it just builds its way up and it’s still there in the morning.
You wanna talk about Merkels Einstein? Einstein was amazingly deep, not just brilliant. So he said some really smart stuff. For example, the world is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. What is the probability of those little wavelets down there? End up making the same thing when they come up here?
Nothing but you don’t think like that. How about you do think like that? How about you wake up in the morning and think it’s still here and it’s funny and then I’m gonna sit here and have fun with it? Why not? Like you put your cereal in Snap, crackle and pop look is making noises. It. That’s what les be.
Everything Christ taught now, a nice Jewish boy. Everything Christ taught is the truth. What did that means, Les? Be little children. You think snap, crackling pop is fun and you think the shower makes noises and you feel, feel on you every morning. Wow. And you start having fun with everything. Well, what if things happen the way I don’t want, I get to grow.
I get to see what it’s like to deal with the dark side with that other side of energy that’s not comfortable. Some energy’s not comfortable. There’s so many dives you love. You’re not happy and excited. You feel pain, you feel lost. What’s wrong with that? That’s a natural thing to feel. If you leave it alone, you’ll feel it.
You will adapt and carve your heart deeper ’cause you feel so deep and then it will pass through and you’ll be more capable of love of experiencing life, of not being afraid of death. ’cause you went through it. If somebody dies and you go through it and you say, okay, I can make it through it, and it made me a better person.
Every single thing in life makes you a better person. Every single thing and how terrible you say it is. If you make it through it open and say, wow, I grew tremendously, then you use your life properly. Earth is a place that souls are sent to evolve. Earth is a place that souls are sent to evolve. How are you doing?
The answer is, I’m not picking on you. Most people, they don’t wanna evolve. They wanna decide how they want it to be and glue it and ensure it. And you vow to me, you’ll never change. You’ll never do anything. You promised me, you promised me you wouldn’t do that anymore. Just come on. I can’t handle it. I can’t handle change.
I can’t handle anything. I can’t. I told you once before, that’s why I keep bringing the example up, right? ’cause we’re all guilty. Have you ever talked to the driver in front of you? Do they hear you? But you still do it, don’t you? And it makes you upset. I can’t believe it. Look up. Use your blinker, buddy.
Come on. Speed Limit was 55. You’re going 40. If you can pass, pass, nobody says you can’t pass, but if you’re in the two lane situation, you can’t. Okay, fine. Enjoy driving slower. Find a way to just say, fine. I told you. Just say, oh, that’s my grandma and she’s on her last year of being able to drive by herself.
I’m not gonna tailgate her and keep at her. I say, grandma, I’ll go for it, baby. I’m, I’m here to help you. You can do that. You can do that with everything. There’s terrible thing. Are there terrible things that happen on this planet from a human point of view? Are there terrible things that happen on this planet?
Yes. Have they always happened from beginning of time? Did they happen when Christ was here? Did have, when Buddha was here? Okay. Terrible things happen. The question is not do terrible things happen. Question is, can you handle it? And part of handling it is not worrying that it might happen. That doesn’t make it for a nice life.
You have the right to make it any way you want in there. You know a meteor could fall in this temple tomorrow. Will you get to worrying? You better figure out what to do about it. You better shelter or something? No. No. I can handle the fact that that might happen. It’s only ’cause you think you can’t handle it.
They have to protect yourself from it. Can you be in a relationship that isn’t necessarily very stable and, and it’s difficult? Yes. Can you handle that? But I don’t know what to do. That’s right. You don’t know what to do right now. There’s nothing to do. You know it’s working good enough and you’re not sure which way it’s gonna go.
Is that okay? No. I need to decide how it’s gonna go and I have to make my decision. I have to make it happen. And then you make a mess, don’t you? Have you ever made a mess? Have you ever made a mess?
Oh, please laugh. What we’re talking about is spirituality, but you haven’t mentioned meditation. You haven’t mentioned Christ. You haven’t mentioned boo. You haven’t mentioned gurus. That’s right. You’ll find your way. But you have to start by saying the way the DAO is, I am here, I am conscious, and there is a world unfolding in front of me.
That’s how it is and I am going to handle it. Now what does that mean to handle it? There’s no answer. Listen to me. The very zen, the situation itself is unfolding. Be sure you’re seeing it clearly. What does that mean? Don’t be reacting based on your past stuff. And that’s very difficult ’cause you do have past stuff, didn’t get along with your father, and you’re dating somebody and they remind you of your father.
You’re not gonna date them. That has nothing to do with your father does it? But we have these impressions that got left in our mind that are determining how we interact with the world. You have to learn not to do that. How? By getting rid of that stuff you stored, you just sit there and say, I’m sorry that my daddy treated me this way, but I’m not gonna let it affect my life since 30 years ago.
Stop it. If it’s not happening now, it’s not happening. Do you know There’s not a single thing you have stored and it has to be in there. There’s no glue in there. Nothing solid in there. The only thing is, is you and your will pushing things away. That’s why they stay in there. I’ve given a whole lecture on this many times.
I just cut it short. All right, so you start doing what’s called working on yourself instead of working on everybody else to make them be the way you can handle and you start letting go and practicing being able to handle things, that’s the most important thing to do in life. You sure you can practice tennis?
You’re practicing piano, you can practice things. How about practicing, handling things? That’s the meaning of your life. You used to get better at handling reality. Then you don’t have this crazy stuff going on inside and you’re able to enjoy your life and so you keep practicing the driver in front of you.
The weather, the this, the that, the relationship. Some people can you handle a relationship that used to be really good, but now I’m not sure which way it’s gonna go. It could get weird, but it’s not time to make a decision, then don’t. Well, how will I know what to decide? You just admitted you don’t know what to decide.
Are you comfortable sitting there allowing it to unfold and seeing what it says to you as it’s unfolding? That’s what lasu meant by the dao. There’s this natural unfolding of energy. Are you willing to listen? Are you willing to look? Not neurotically? Think I have to decide before I have to decide and just be reactive.
How many times you change your mind, especially about relationships. I don’t mean this anymore, it’s not working for me. Oh, he brought me flowers. Maybe it can work. Oh my God, the flowers have roaches in them. That’s a sign. That’s a sign from God that Uhuh, I’m getting tired. And so are you. And you just basically say, no, no, I want clarity.
That’s called clarity. What does clarity mean? I didn’t bring the garbage from my past, which is meaningless. Of course you learn from your past, but you don’t store it. So it becomes what we call some scar, a blockage inside of you that determines how you think from now on. If you found out that two plus two is four, I want you to know that.
That’s wonderful. So now if a question comes up, what is two plus two? You say four. Okay. But if you’re sitting there saying, like, I’ve heard in the past and I’m afraid to have a relationship again. I don’t wanna date anybody, but I feel lonely. What are you? Doing. You were unable to handle the relationship in the past.
You stored the garbage, so of course you don’t know what to do. You’re bifurcated because you got everything going on in there, so you’ll eventually catch on. That clarity means I am not storing stuff from my past in there. Which doesn’t mean you don’t learn, it means I’m not storing it. Your computer has long-term memory.
Stuff comes in, it leaves it, it doesn’t come back and haunt you. Doesn’t all of a sudden. Pop up unless you ask it to. And so you sit there and say, fine, I have a memory, a long-term memory, but I’m not storing these blockages that I was unable to handle, and making a collection of them inside my mind so that now my mind is made out of those blockages.
It’s made out of what you like and what you don’t like. Where do you likes and dislikes come from? I guarantee you every single one of ’em come from your past experiences. Those experiences that you had, that you liked or didn’t like. You made the mistake of storing them and saying, I either hope they happen again or hope they don’t happen again, and you stored them inside.
So those we call some scars, patterns that have all these emotional likes and dislikes built in there. And you made a house for yourself in there called your ego yourself concept. This is what I believe. What I don’t believe is what I want to happen. I don’t want to happen. These are my concepts, my views, my opinions.
They’re all your past. It’s not a single opinion you have that was not left by the sum of your past experiences. They’re just as psychology. What does psychology say man is the sum of his learned experiences. It’s not true. You’re the consciousness watching the cellular experiences, but that psyche is the cellular learn experiences.
Is it not? If you have one new experience, can it change your whole opinion about everything? It’s just something happened and you couldn’t handle it, so you let it affect your entire life. You’re supposed to have experiences and let go. Have the experience, learn from it by all means, but don’t let it define you.
What does psychology call your ego? Your self-concept, what is a concept? Something you made up. And you do make it up, don’t you? I told you I embarrassed. I’ve been using this a lot lately. I shouldn’t. You’re in a relationship and you really, really need the person. ’cause you’re really getting hurt and the person says, look, I’ve had enough, I’m leaving you.
To which you say, no, no, no, no. Tell me what, whatever you don’t like, I can change. I swear I can change. I can be different. Just tell me, what does that mean? I made myself up. I can make another one. Just tell me how you want me to be and I’ll be that way. How will you ever know who you are? We just make up another one.
You do it, don’t you? Just, every single word I’m talking to you about is spirituality is enough. It’s called Do you want to be like that? Do you want to be bound by the ridiculousness of how humans live? I don’t. No way in the world I’m living like that now. Do I have to keep growing? Yeah. Why? Because it’s not easy to let go of the stuff that you bought the store in there.
It’s not easy to feel comfortable with. Things that aren’t uncomfortable is it? But you’re capable. You just have to practice. And the more you practice, the more there’s joy in there. Instead of suffering or pain, you feel this stuff called Shakti, this, this, this energy that starts coming up inside of you.
Now it’s there, but you’re pushing it away. ’cause you stored it as garbage. Otherwise it literally waves over you day and night just pouring up. Christians call it the rush of holy waters. Every single tradition, they don’t call it shockti, right? But it is basically this energy that is natural to your being.
It that’s who you’re made of, that energy. It made your body, it makes your breath go in and out. It makes your heart beat, it makes your cells live and die is where you go when you leave. It’s who you are. So in any event, the net result is what do we learn from this? You can be much happier. You can be much better.
You are a very great being ’cause you are the consciousness that’s watching, the stuff that’s going on in there. It’s a mess in there if you do everything you can to hold it together. How are you doing? I used to walk around way back in the 70th and I, I experimented. Talking to people in the worst street.
How are you doing? Oh, goodbye. How are you doing? It’s been worse. Nobody’s okay? I make, I make a point now. Anybody ever asks me, how are you doing? Ecstatic. I’m blissful all the time. Why not? You’re gonna be here. You must have a good time. The good time isn’t conditional upon things being the way you want.
It’s just saying, I’m gonna have a good time if things happen. If the car breaks, I’ll have fun getting it fixed. If I can’t afford to have it fixed, I’ve got a bike. I don’t care. I just wanna have a good time. What you would rather do, have a really nice car. Be happy all the time. Have a really nice house, nice with your neighbors, or be filled with joy all the time, no matter what’s happening.
That is spirituality. And so you come down to understanding what’s going on. The world is unfolding, you’re experiencing it. Is that okay with you? That’s your starting position. Is it okay with you that reality exists? It just is what? It’s that zen right? Flowers are red. Water is blue, grass is green.
That’s a zen master would teach you and then send you home because there’s nothing else to learn. Things are what they are. Start, you have to leave them that way. You’re welcome to paint things, different colors and do whatever you want, but you better start with reality. You better start with this is what is the Wright Brothers?
Did they not like gravity? They learn to get above gravity. I guarantee you. They have to understand gravity, the laws of gravity and aerodynamics. So you have to understand things. Then you can rise above them. You can have air conditioning. It’s not like, oh, I just be hot all the time. No, you’re welcome to develop air conditioning, but that’s because you’re enjoying the experience of thinking of creating and doing things, not because I’m suffering and I can’t handle it.
So you just decide. I’m in here. I have a body. Have a mind, have a heart. I am going to work on raising them, opening them. If you have an open heart, you feel love. If you have a closed heart, you don’t which one you want. Can you keep your heart open? Not easy either. Can you learn to? Can you get better at it?
You better than somebody says something, you’re not sure what they meant, and you catch yourself. What’s the difference? Give ’em a break. And next thing you know, your heart stayed open. That’s wonderful. You should keep your heart open when all, all the time. Why? Because it’s much more enjoyable than what’s closed.
That’s why. But how do you keep your heart open? Ready? Don’t close it. You know how to close your heart, don’t you? You do it all the time. It’s called protecting yourself with those boundaries up. How about we don’t do that? Have we sit there and say, I don’t want boundaries. I wanna feel love. I don’t care what you did.
I wanna feel love. I wanna be able to handle life and interact with life with love. But it takes practice. You have to handle different things. Same thing with your mind. You to eventually catch on your whole life is a practicing your evolution. Practicing letting go, practicing being open. Every single thing we talked about tonight is the same thing, isn’t it?
Are you willing to work on yourself or are you willing to work on everybody else to get them the way you think they need to be? For you to be? Okay? You just finally, finally do the work. Alright. I hope we’ve communicated some. Alright. I tried. You can’t tell me I didn’t try. There’s every aspect you look at the fact that you’re floating.
I don’t know. I got this thing about, there’s a picture there hanging on the wall that I look at every morning and every evening for God knows, you know. 40, 50 years it’s been hanging there. Okay, why do I do that? It’s just a tiny, it’s like a black negative, but it has a tiny dot, not that big on it. In the middle of that black negative, it is a photograph of the planet Earth from 2 million miles out.
It’s literally a photograph. It’s, it’s just this tiny little ball. Spining, middle of nowhere is how can you have a problem? You could have a problem ’cause you decided to. Otherwise you don’t have a problem. It’s much more fun. Sometimes people ask me, right, how are you doing? At the counter checking out, right?
I said, I’m doing wonderful. I, I found out that the alternative is not much fun. You like not doing well? Do you like suffering? Then work with yourself to raise yourself. Alright.
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 [email protected]. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds true. Waking up the World.
