Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. What I would love that everyone would do is every single morning wake up and question, why am I here? And don’t accept shallow answers. What do I want? What’s my purpose? Get a perspective bigger than the tiny, meaningless stuff that goes on inside your head. Why did he say that? What do I do if this doesn’t happen?
What do I do if that doesn’t happen? Why did that have to happen 10 years ago? I did. Holy mackerel. What a waste of mind. What a waste of time. It’s just so little. You belittle yourself so much by thinking of things that are so meaningless, meaningful is big questions. That expand your consciousness, expand your frame of preference, and that when you answer them, you have a goal, a purpose in your life.
Your purpose is not, why did Sally say that to me? Should I say something or, but that’s what goes on, isn’t it? Let’s get that straight. That’s what goes on. If you do that, you have belittled yourself at a level. Unbelievable. But I’m picking on you. Let’s start with something that’s really, really meaningless.
What happened in the past? I touch on that a lot of times. Can we talk about that? There is no purpose at all to talk about what happened to you in the past. It’s over. It took place. I’m talking about personal thing. I wanna talk about intellectual contemplating and learning, stuff like that. I’m talking about why did my mother say that?
Why did I have to get old? What is the purpose of those thoughts? There are no answers. There are no answers. It’s just the past happened and then it stopped happening, but it didn’t stop happening inside of you did it. Why? Why didn’t it stop happening inside of you? There’s no reason you can’t gimme an explanation.
What difference does it make? What your mother did 23 years ago? She’s dead. It still bothers you though. Still keeps coming up. You still want an answer Why she said that? Why would she have said that? You just get to the point where you take the things that have no meaning, none. They don’t help with anything.
All they do is cause disturbance and you decide I need to do something about that. You have to worry about getting to God and becoming enlightened and that that’s later. Don’t worry about that. Okay? Just start with. What am I doing? Why am I doing that? Why am I thinking like that? Why am I wasting my time thinking about things that happened in the past that will never not happen and they just happened and they’re over?
Can things be over? Would you like things to be over? How would you like that? All the things that bother him in the past that aren’t happening anymore, wouldn’t bother you anymore. Be kind of nice, wouldn’t it? That make for a nice life. Then that becomes the. Purpose of your life to start with, you have to go step by step.
It’s a stairway to heaven, not a jump. So you start with, okay, I woke up. What am I gonna do today? What do I want to happen today? And don’t tell me you want a new car. Tell me. I wanna stop bothering myself about meaningless things. There. I said it. I wanna know, are you all with me? Do you bother yourself about meaningless things?
They just come up by themselves, don’t they? And they can really bug you, can’t they? Can they affect your moods? Can they affect who you like and don’t like? Well, then it’s meaningful to sit there and say, okay, if it’s a meaningful thing and that’s purpose for dealing with it, fine. But you’re gonna find out that the vast majority of your past is over.
It happened, but happened. Happened. But they said, they said what they did, they did. And in most cases you dealt with it. Not, not very well, but it’s already been dealt with. Oh my God, those people sued me and I got on so much thing and I was so scared. And now all these things happened. And when? 23 years ago, is it over?
Not inside of me. They shouldn’t have done that. Alright. I’m begging you, this is the spiritual journey. Like I was talking to a very high being. Once TE said, it’s not about what gets you to God, it’s what keeps you from going to God. I. And that’s the truth I’ve explained to you before. Your natural state is really high.
You’re a very high being. You’re a liberated being. Your consciousness is not limited to this little thing here, this little bug with two arms and two legs, and this mind and emotion is all messed up from the past. You’re not limited to that. Your consciousness can figure the entire universe. You can think of galaxies, you can think of the quantum field that everything comes from.
You can think of anything you want, can’t you? But you’re thinking about this thing that keeps you tied to a tiny little thing that’s always problematic. You’re always bothered. You’re tense and uptight and anxious and worried and and so on. So spirituality starts not with how do I get to God? It’s How do I stop what’s going on inside of me that’s keeping you from going to God.
Otherwise, you have an anchor and what you’re doing is not hoisting the anchor. You’re saying, okay, where can we go with the anchor? I go with the anchor. I get rid of the anchor. How much better will you be when you sail Without the anchor? You’re gonna do better no matter what, but if you sell with the anchor, you got to solve a problem.
That is the beginning of your spiritual journey. So I was sitting there saying, why am I not okay? And if you look, you’re gonna find out. ’cause I’m making myself not be okay. I do it all the time. I don’t like the weather. Well, you’re not gonna change the weather. You are causing yourself to be unhappy and then trying to figure out how to be happy.
You’re causing yourself problems, anxiety worries. When they’re just something you’re doing to yourself. So the beginning of the true spiritual journey is that first step that says, I can’t go on with this stuff going on in here. My past is haunting me like a ghost. It’s gone. It’s over. Alright, so what do I do about it?
I spend some time, yeah, sometimes I don’t have time at the end to talk about I, I always find I don’t need to talk about the techniques. ’cause if you even understand why you’d want to use them, you’re halfway there. Otherwise you just wished it would go away at doing anything. So what would I do if I woke up and said, man.
I made a mess in here. I couldn’t handle what my 5-year-old sister said. I couldn’t handle it. We moved, you know, back 23 years ago and I had to leave my friends. I never forgave my parents for that. Okay. And so you look at it and you say, that’s a non-starter. If I’m dragging that with me throughout my life, I’m in trouble, aren’t I?
That’s quite some baggage to carry around. So the question becomes one, do I have to have this going on inside of me? No. How do you know? I know. Believe me, you know, there have been times that things happen and then they’re not there anymore. You used to play with Barbie. Barbie went away. They don’t think about her.
You don’t get all upset that she’s in a closet somewhere, but she used to be the center of your life. Things can go away. You don’t have to suppress them. You have to deny them. You have to work with them. You. Until you’re ready to let them go. It’s about letting go of the old things that have no meaning.
They shouldn’t be bothering you, and I mean that They don’t need to be bothering you. Lemme say it that way. And you can learn how to not have them bother you there. That’s the first step of the spiritual path, that they’re not a single thing inside of you from the past that is bothering you, that has to be in there bothering you, that you are capable of working with yourself.
To get it to where that is not in there bothering me. Okay, so let’s, let’s go deep with the technique. Do things come up? They come up by themselves and they bother you. Right or wrong, there are things that come up that bother you when they come up. You’re in there, you notice them. What do you naturally do with them?
What do you naturally do with things that come up that bother you from your past? You push them away. I guarantee you your natural reaction is the same as if someone took a swing at you. Your arms go up to protect yourself. This vibration came up. It was not pleasant. I don’t like it at all. I can’t even handle it.
I can’t handle thinking about what’s happened 10 years ago. It makes, oh my God, no. Okay. You said no, but what do you do? You take the energy that came up. It is energy. You understand that? It’s vibration, energy vibes, bad vibes. Okay? It comes up and I’m telling you what you do. You instinctually push it away.
Do you see this process inside of you? You do it all the time. Anytime something bothers you, you don’t wanna be bothered, so you push it away. That is the absolute worst thing that you can do for your spiritual or personal growth. Why? That is suppression. That is exactly, it’s a mild level, but we talk about suppression, repression as a psychological problem.
Okay. But we don’t define it psychological problem. It is. It’s a major problem that you take this energy that came up, don’t understand where it came from. You don’t care. Just get away from me. Get outta my face. Don’t talk to me like that. Alright? Why’d you talk about my father? You know, I can’t handle talking about my father.
And so you push it away. I’m telling you where it goes. It goes into the subconscious, it goes into suppression land. What does the energy? Energy is real. That which comes up in you is a vibration of energy. Has power, doesn’t It has the power to get you all upset, has the power for your mind to it. It’s expending energy.
Your mind can go crazy, your heart can go crazy. You can go crazy outside. You do all kinds of stuff with energy, can’t you? But it starts inside with energy that comes. It’s not about where it comes from when energy comes up. The problem is you need to be centered, conscious, aware enough. Mindful is the word they use nowadays.
Mindful enough to notice I’m in here and that doesn’t feel good. Even that they just gave yourself the right to say, I am here. It’s there. I’m the subject, the consciousness, the experiencer, and it is an experience, not a pleasant one, but I don’t care. It’s an experience. You are the one who’s experiencing it.
It is an experience because you’re separate from it. You can learn to deal with it. It’s not you. You’re the one who feels the icky feeling. You’re the one who feels the disturbing vibration. And what you do with it is use this stuff called willpower. Which is part, it comes from you. It comes from way back here.
That’s an opposing energy will is energy. You can apply your will cause energy. You’re now opposing the energy that was coming up. Let’s look at it as physics. They call it metaphysics, but let’s sort of physics. Alright, energy comes up from where We’ll discuss that later. But it does come up. You have will, will, can be an opposing force that is pushing away the energy that came up.
Just like any other physics, it creates tension. I talked to you once before. I used to build, alright. They had I beams. They measure the I beams in terms of tension. How much resistance can it handle? That’s all part of building. Well, you have resistance when you use your will. That power of will is a power.
It pushes down, um, what was coming up that causes tension and resistance. That’s why your tense, that’s why your third chale closes. That’s why everybody’s uptight. They’re in there struggling. They’re struggling with life. They’re struggling themselves about life. There’s some people can handle very well what you can’t handle, and you can handle things that other people can’t handle.
Why? Because of whatever caused it to come up. You didn’t have that problem. And your will is not pushing it away. You’re saying, oh, she probably didn’t knew what she said. You didn’t let it go. And so I said, oh, shit. Thought to me like that. I should accept that. But what I do if I let people talk to me like that.
Totally different. So when you resist it with your will, you push it down. And when you push it down, I’m telling you, it stays in there and it will stay in there forever. It’ll stay in there until you let it go. Why? Where’s it gonna go? You suppress. That’s a afraid meant by suppression. You pushed it out of, he calls it out of your consciousness.
No, your consciousness experienced it. But what it did with it is push it down so that you don’t have to feel it. I don’t wanna experience this. So what do you do with it? It happened. It’s real. You push it away. That is the entire problem of humanity. That is the cause of suffering. That is a cause of tension that is causing a lot of sickness.
That is the cause of relationship problems. That is the cause of pretty much everything. You understand that the fact that things happen inside of you that you can’t handle, so you struggle with them by pushing them away and they get stored inside of you. I said a minute ago, we were talking, why is this stuff come up?
Because you put it down there. How come I feel so angry? Because you stored every single thing that you didn’t like inside of you, and you built all this tension and built up stuff and boom, it comes flying up, but I’m not gonna let it out. Fine. Don’t let it out. It’s still going on in there. It gets yourself some ulcers.
Do you understand what’s going on? It is the resistance that you cause, ’cause you can’t handle the energy that came up inside of you starting position. Why did it come up? ’cause you stored it in there. Why did I store it in there? ’cause I couldn’t handle it. Why couldn’t I handle it? Now? That’s a very deep philosophical question.
Well come back to that. How come he can handle it? And he can’t, lemme tell you a secret, it’s not even, how come he can handle it yesterday? He could handle it today. He can’t even get near it. Why? Somebody said something to him between yesterday and today and it’s set up this process. That’s all it takes, isn’t it?
And all of a sudden you can’t. Sorry. We talk real. She comes home late at night. Okay. Yeah. She was working whatever. Except for the fact that your friend told you yesterday that I, I think your woman’s cheating on you. Okay. Just a little. I think. I’m not sure, but I think now it happens when she comes out late.
Where were you? What were you doing? Why are you late? In other words, because one more pattern got set in your mind. Now you’re resisting that which you were able to handle without it. So don’t think it’s some fixed thing. It’s like you’re being programmed. I teach you that all the time. You are being programmed by your past experiences.
I’m gonna repeat that. Just like a computer is programmed, your mind and your heart, your psyche is programmed by your past experiences. There’s an example. The person said one thing to you. I think that maybe, maybe they didn’t even say that. Maybe they sat there and said, you know, George’s wife was cheating on him.
Okay. Where were you tonight? You’re programmed by whatever got put in there. You then process it and you decide, I like it. I don’t like it, I want it. I can handle, I can’t handle it. And the things that you, I can’t handle, you push away and they come back up all the time. I. There are things that you try to not talk about to someone you’re close with, and the minute you sit down to talk, they come right out.
I know she probably wasn’t cheating on me. I know she wasn’t, but, but I don’t wanna say anything. I sit down, hello, where were you last night? This stuff gets put in there. You can’t handle it, so you push it down, it comes back up, doesn’t it? Comes up in your dreams, comes up in your thoughts, comes up in your feelings.
It’s just. It’s energy. It’s energy that no one ever talked to you about. Never told you it was energy. They say you have a problem with your emotions. No, no. Emotions are energy. Do you have a problem handling the energy that’s coming up? up Okay, how would you like to learn to not have a problem with it so that when things happen, you’re able to deal with them and they don’t have to stay inside of you and to build all this stuff that you’ve carried your whole life.
It’s a weight isn’t it? Carrying on your back. It’s like every single thing ever bothered you Put it in a knapsack and carry it around. It is a weight, isn’t it? And you’re worried that something might happen that touches it, and what am I gonna do and what would I do if this is happening? And, and so you get to the point where you catch on and you say, okay, now I understand.
I am not dealing with energies Well. I’m not dealing with the energy of life coming in. If it hits my stuff that I stored from before. I’m not handling what happens when my stuff comes up from before I get weird and I say things that I shouldn’t have said and the whole thing just starts flying around.
I have people have relationship problems, so people have more problems. They fill out everything ’cause they can’t handle themselves. They can’t handle what was programmed in there about their past. So you get to the point where you wake up in the morning and Rah would love you to do, and you remember this talk.
They sit there and say, what do I wanna do today? I would like to be able to handle the life that unfolds around me. It does not mean you don’t deal with it. Nobody ever said anything about dealing with things. You’re not dealing with it when you’re reacting. By the way, lemme put it this way, and I know you can get this if it’s bothering you.
And you react accordingly. You’re not dealing with the outer situation, you’re dealing with your problem. You’re gonna do everything you can to make it so it doesn’t bother you. You’re not actually coming out here saying, how can I help this situation? You’re saying, how can I help me? How can I help? The fact that I can’t handle what my child did?
I can’t handle what my husband said I can’t handle, but the finances, I can’t handle these things that are happening. Well, to me, the word I can’t handle it means you’re the last person in the world that should be dealing with it. He’s admit it. You can’t handle it. Do you understand that? So your first step in your spiritual path is to wake up in the morning and say, I am gonna learn to handle things.
I’m gonna learn not to suppress things. What is the purpose of suppression? It stays in your, keeps bothering me. It didn’t go away. It. I dealt with it. That’s how you dealt with it. Push it away. I’m like, God, I’ll never think about it again. Sure. Ever, ever recurring dreams? Where do you think that stuff comes from?
It comes from what you stored down there and it keeps coming back up. And then it comes up during the day also, and a mask itself in different things. So spirituality in the beginning is not about I’m gonna find God somewhere. It’s about I can’t handle what’s going on inside of me and I can’t. Grow or change or go to a higher level state of consciousness if I can’t even handle where I am.
And so you sit there and say, the meaning of my life for day can change, right? I, oh, I would like to challenge you with this. There’s going to be experiences that unfold in front of me today. Right or wrong? How many, oh, I don’t know. Every second. Every second of every minute of every day, there’s gonna be stuff happening.
Can I handle it? That is the beginning of your spiritual journey, not well, why should I? It was wrong. I can’t believe what they did to me. Of course, I can’t handle it. I shouldn’t be able to handle it. Nobody could handle this. Okay. Stay screwed up. What has to be said as a beginning is I’m sitting on, I do this with you all the time.
I’m sitting on a little planet spinning around the middle of nowhere. Yes or no. It’s a nice little planet. He’s got trees and birds and dolphins. He’s got lots of things. They got nice people and mean people. It’s got lots of stuff. It’s got ants, it’s got elephants, it’s got a lot of things. Other planets don’t have those things.
We send probes out everywhere. They ain’t seen squat them found an a media, yet they’re making a big deal out that they found some of the pro or something, you know, that chemicals that might have made life and a probe around here do I every single minute of every single place I look or do or here, this is life.
It’s a happening place. Okay. That’s where I happen to wake up on this little tiny planet. Things are going to happen today, and by the way, they’re not gonna happen to me. They’re just gonna happen and I happen to be there where they happen. It is not personal that it’s raining. It’s not personal that somebody beat at you.
It’s not personal that your husband was in a bad mood and didn’t say, I love you when he walked away. It’s not personal, it’s just that’s what happened in front of me. Is it not true that events are happening everywhere all the time and every single place that there is is an event going on? Said the only difference with the event that it was in front of you.
You don’t wanna see it. Turn to left. Look up. Look down. They’re not happening to you. They’re happening. Why would it happen like that? Why would that person beeping me? I was driving the speed limit. Why are they tailgating me? If you want the answer to that, you asked it. You better study their life history.
You better stay with they ate last night. You better study every single thing that caused that event to take place. See you didn’t really mean why you couldn’t care less. What you really meant is, I don’t like it and I can’t handle it. Alright? A wise being reaches a sad, I’m talking to you about my sister and says, my consciousness is aware of what’s unfolding, right?
I’m gonna start with in front of me. My consciousness might have these five senses and they pick up what’s happening in front of me and they pass it back to me. So I’m conscious of it. Congratulations. You got to experience a moment on the planet Earth and then guess what will happen next? You’ll experience the next moment.
Then the next moment, won’t you? They happen by themselves. You know it’s a panel. Please just whoa let it go. The question is not, will there be moments unfolding? The question is, can I handle them? Can I handle the fact that I dropped out of this planet and everywhere I am, these little moments are unfolding.
But don’t forget, they’re happening everywhere else too. The 700 billion zillion things happening everywhere you’re experiencing one, you can’t handle the one you’re experiencing. No. You know what I call those moments? Reality. They are, what is actually happening. You actually said what you said, it’s not a question of what happened.
It’s a happening place. It’s a question of can you handle it? And that’s why real spirituality starts with, I better be able to handle it. ’cause the alternative to handling it is to suppress it. It’s to push it away, it’s to store it. And that’s what you’ve done your whole life is store. Every single thing that ever bothered you, haven’t you?
And they’re still in there. Okay? So you get to the point where you sit there and say, I don’t wanna do that anymore. It’s not easy. Now you’re talking about deep techniques, right? But if you could not do that anymore. Okay. Like I told you, Rao Krishna, I like the enlightened being said, fully realized great soul.
Somebody once asked him, Ram Krishna does an enlightened being ever feel anger? That’s a nice question. You know what he said? He said, yes, but it’s like riding on water. When you ride on water, what happens? Nothing. It goes away. He says the energy made it through. That’s what he meant by that. That doesn’t mean that something didn’t happen.
He feels some anger. It went right through. So what? What do make, if you write on water and you write swear words. Nothing does it. That’s how you learn to deal with life. It comes in. You experience it and it passes. It’s called be here now. Now you’re here with the next moment and then the next moment. Now, I started to tell you, it doesn’t mean you don’t interact with things.
It means you don’t react because you can’t handle it. If you can’t handle it, it’s gonna change. Your whole behavior is not, I gotta flat tire on the road. I can’t handle that. I don’t wanna change it. What do I do? I’m afraid to flag everybody down. People take advantage of people. I don’t know what to do.
Okay? You can’t handle it. You got a flat tire. So else gets a flat tire, huh? I got a flat tire. I better get some help or change it or call somebody. But I’m, I’m okay. I’m, I’m dealing with it. The other person’s not dealing with it. They’re reacting to it and getting disturbed by it. And so the whole thing that’s happening is not solving the problem.
I have a flat tire. So that’s the difference. So when you’re wise, you learn to handle things. And in the end you can find out. You learn to handle everything. I know this seems incomprehensible, but if you practice and you work at it, that’s what it means to evolve. Yeah, that’s what it means. That earth is a place of souls are sent to evolve.
You have experiences so they can teach you challenge, you help you get better at handling things. And so that’s when you wake up in the morning, you sit there and say, your beginning thing is what I wanna do today. Handle it. Can I? Of course not. Can I learn to, of course I can learn to. I learned calculus.
I learned through computers. I learned you learned everything, didn’t you? You learned all kinds of things. I learned to play. I didn’t, but I learned to play tennis. Why can’t you learn to handle things? It’s just like a sport. It’s just exact like anything else. It requires you to practice doing it little by little, starting with the scales.
They wanna play the piano. You start with the little things and then you get better. If you practice your scales, you get better with the piano. Doesn’t mean you’re a concert pianist or anything, but you’re gonna get better every single time you practice. Then why can’t you practice handling things? Why can’t you practice saying the meaning of this day is to handle it?
That’s the meaning of this day, and I will work with it. I’ll just keep working with things until I can handle them. Okay, and what’s gonna happen? You’re gonna find out. People write me from all over the world all the time, you know this works. Mm-hmm. How can it not work? That’s like saying if I practice a piano, I got better at it.
And then all of a sudden you find out that the fact that it’s raining and you kind of feel a little uh, and you say, I can’t handle the rain. And all of a sudden there’s no problem. You’re not getting upset ’cause it’s raining. You’re driving down the road, somebody beeps at you, they’re in a big rush, they’re beeping at you.
You feel this energy, you look at it, say. I can handle it. I can handle that. He’s beeping at me. I can pull over to let him pass, or if I can’t pass, I can just accept the fact that he’s beeping at me. The point is, I can handle it. I don’t have to get upset by it. What is the purpose of getting upset by things that you have no control over?
They’re just things that happen on the planet Earth. You get this broader view of things. Somebody comes up to you and says something not nice. Doesn’t mean you don’t respond. That doesn’t mean you don’t deal with things. It means you don’t deal with them because you couldn’t handle them. Somebody came up, said something, not nice.
First thing I do, you let go. Okay. Somebody says something not nice. Is that okay? Says all kinds of people running around. Some people say nice things. Some people say mean things. Some people are really being mean, but they’re sounding nice. All kinds of things go on. I better figure it out. Why handle it?
So handily, it means the ability that when the energy comes up, it’s a reactive energy. Nobody said it all feels good, but when the energy comes up and you feel the tendency to resist has nothing to do with the, what event happened has nothing to do with the energy that came up inside. It has to do with you resisting the energy that came up inside.
I talk about letting go and people think, I mean, oh, you’re supposed to just accept all life. No, no. Inside. It’s something you do inside. It’s something you realize. If the energy comes up and I can’t be okay with it, it’s gonna stay inside of me. I just chose to store yet another problem inside of me that when I hear about it two years from now, it’ll bother me again.
I guarantee you, if you get bothered by a car that’s tailgating or beeping at you and you put up with a and, and three weeks later in Germany. A car that looks like that starts to pull up behind you, your heart will start to beat faster. Do you understand that your programs and what you do with that, you accept that?
That’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous that you stored the problem inside of you instead of letting it go. It’s meaningless. There’s nothing to do about it, and so you just get to the point where you catch on. That’s what I wanted to focus on. You catch on. The world’s going to unfold. Everywhere is, but your senses only pick up what you pick up.
It’s very limited. That’s okay. At least you got to see that. If there’s a movie that’s 360 all over the place and you’re in there, you can’t see it all at once, but you can look over and see different things. That’s what life is. There’s things going on everywhere. You’ll never know what you miss, but that’s okay.
At least you’re getting into experience. Experience. You got to see some of the movie. And so basically you say to yourself, I can handle life. I can handle it. I can handle it. That’s the foundation of your spiritual growth. I can handle what is going on in front of me. Well, can I handle what’s not going on in front of me?
I don’t wanna miss anything. I don’t wanna miss anything. You are missing everything. How many things are you missing at every moment? Every single thing is not in front of you. That’s a lot of things all over the place. So get with it, man. You’re gonna miss a lot of things. At least experience the ones you’re experiencing and then learn to work with them to handle them.
And what does that mean? Okay? Let’s say it comes in. I feel the tendency to resist. And I’m telling you, you’re gonna learn. You don’t want to resist. But what if it’s terrible? You do not want to resist. Why? Because if you resist, it’s gonna leave marks inside of you, and it’s gonna stay there. The more you resist, the more that it gets packaged down there, and if something happens, it makes you think what you used to think.
It makes you feel what you were feeling. It makes everything. You might as well relive this experience that happened 20 years ago. I always say to you, you wanna know what I’m talking about? Go back to your 20 year high school reunion, see how you do. You’re going to interact with the people the same as you did 20 years ago.
She stole my girlfriend. I haven’t talked to her. Nobody’s the same, but you are. ’cause you stored that stuff in there. She doesn’t even remember. She stole your boyfriend. It was a meaningless thing, but not to you. Are you kidding me? Not meaningless. Admit what you did. Apologize. This is 20 years ago. Do you hear me?
You stored it in there. I wonder how many times you stored some stuff and brought it back up to somebody years and years later and they didn’t even remember what you’re talking about. Hmm. And you get embarrassed that you’ll even brought it back up. They were not the same. Some people could handle one thing and not another.
Okay? So you get to the point where you sit there and say, I would like to learn to handle reality. What is reality? What’s unfolding in front of me? And again, handling doesn’t mean that once I can handle it, okay, I can handle it. Okay? I can handle it, okay? I use some tough examples in some of my books. All of a sudden you get a call from the principal.
You’re a 16-year-old kid, they found drugs in the locker. Come in we and talk to you. Well, that’s not easy to handle, especially when you’re very straight and you think your husband’s gonna get upset. All kinds of stuff can go on there, can’t it? Not to mention you get embarrassed if you gotta go meet the principal, right?
You better handle it. You better be able to handle it. Why? Because the alternative is to not deal with the situation in the highest manner that it needs to be dealt with. The problem is not you and your inability to handle it. The problem is your child has a problem and you better deal with it. I can thrown outta school or this happened, or he is got a drug problem.
I don’t know, but that’s the problem. The problem is not that you can’t handle it, alright? And so the first thing you do after that phone call is take a breath. It’s called being conscious, being aware or centered. You take a breath and say, I can handle this. Do I wanna handle it? No, of course I don’t want handle it.
Do I want it to have happened? Of course. I don’t want it to have happened. I’m stunned. I’m shocked. But I can handle it. The fact that I didn’t expect it, the fact that I’m shocked by it, the fact, oh my God, et cetera, et cetera, or what’s gonna happen with my husband? He is very straight. I just sit there and say, this is what happened, and I can handle it.
Take a breath. Relax, and then look to see what you can do to help the situation not to help yourself. You, and they’re trying to make it easier for you, right? That doesn’t help the kid. That doesn’t help the relationship and help anything. So you learn to put yourself aside. That’s what selflessness means, okay?
It’s that deep thing you do inside. When you say what matters is the interaction with the situation, not the fact that I can’t handle it. And you start to say, I can handle it. What can you handle? Eventually? Everything. Anything. Anything. But it takes practice. I can’t do it now. You know you can’t do it now.
All kinds of stuff gets you all upset and stuff like that. But you set a path that says the purpose of my day is to practice handling. What happens during this day? Will I do good at it? Of course not. That’s like sitting there, say, when I sit down and play a piano, I’m gonna play Beethoven. You will not.
And you’re lucky and you’re smart. You play the scales and so you wake up that I can, little by little. Work with Visa Cole working with yourself. And it is the essence of spirituality is the essence of personal growth. It’s the essence of everything. And when you can do that and you work with yourself, I’m telling you it will get better every single day.
You’ll handle things, small things, the rain, the wind, and mess your hair up. You just start to say, okay, I’m on a planet. I think that a very high way to do this, but that’s just me. ’cause I’ve done it since I was 22 years old. Alright, and I’m old now. Is. You’re on a planet spinner, all of nowheres, will you please wake up?
What the heck’s the difference? What happens? It’s just a tiny planet, 1.3 million Earth fit inside the sun. Most of you don’t know that 1.3 million earth fit inside the sun. And what are you worried about? What’s so important that you can’t handle it, and you’re only gonna be here for what, 80, 90 years?
You can handle that. The reason you can’t handle it is because you shoved all the garbage down inside of you from your earliest years. Nobody taught you about letting go. Dave, get your room. Okay? In other words, suppress don’t behave like that. How dare you say that to your mother. It was push it away, push it away, push it away.
And there’s all this stuff in there, in there. And so what you decide is, I don’t want that stuff in there, but I woke up now, I don’t want that stuff in there. And so each day situations will happen. They hit your stuff, it hits your stuff. It makes it come up, doesn’t it? And you protect yourself from it.
Well, every once in a while. Don’t, don’t what? Don’t protect yourself from it. Why? Why wouldn’t I protect myself from it? ’cause protecting yourself is equivalent to suppression. How do you protect yourself by pushing it away. So if the car beeps at you, or a friend doesn’t say hello, and you call to them just some reasonable small things.
Can you just at least try to say, I can handle this? Well, why didn’t Sally say hello? I called to her. My God. We’re like, best friends. This is ridiculous. Let it go. But I will find out why. She didn’t say hello. Who cares? You’re sitting little platinum of nowhere. I told you 8.3 billion people didn’t say hello and you worried about one.
This is how you expand your consciousness to be able to handle reality. I’m not asking you to do more than you can do. I’m asking you to do what you can do. Don’t bother yourself about things that are meaningless. How about we sit there and say, I don’t think I’ll bother myself about this. We’re we’re gonna go bigger.
We’re going on vacation. We bought our tickets. Does the government shut down? Maybe the fight won’t happen. Maybe they’ll close the thing. Can you handle it? No, I wanna do it. Come on, go on, make a mess. What good did it do? None then don’t do it. That’s all I’m asking. You know, in business we have this thing called cost benefit analysis.
Ever heard of it? A cost benefit analysis. Well, I’ll tell you a secret. Okay? I ran a company for a while. Okay? Here’s what you do. Doing cost benefit analysis and everything that has a 100% cost and there’s 0% benefit, do it. See what happens. ’cause that’s what you’re doing inside. There’s no benefit to resisting it.
It’s happening. It’s real. There’s nothing you can do about it. The only thing that can happen is you can bother yourself and ruin the rest of your vacation. You know? At least you could stay home and be properties or something. Okay? I don’t know what to tell you. Like people say to me, well, what should I do if something happens?
And you say. Say handle it and then deal with it. How should I deal with it? I will never answer that question. It’s none of my business. It’s your business. You’re the person who’s interacted with this moment. I do have a general suggestion. Do the best that you can to raise the moment to make it a little bit better now for you.
For everybody else, just bring some good energy into the moment. Has better than complaining. I never gave you a lecture about complaining, did I? Once you find out what I think about complaining. What a waste. Do you feel good when you complain by the way you do? ’cause you’re releasing the energy you stored inside.
You’re talking about it instead of keeping it inside. And I used to have the following example, go to a friend. Okay, you wanna go visit a friend and they start saying, oh, oh my God, I have this major problem I need to talk to you about. It’s really bothering me tremendously and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right? And I say, oh, thank you so much. I feel so much better to what you say. I don’t. They just took the energy that was messed up inside of them. They couldn’t handle it even enough to keep it inside themselves. And they sat there and. Blah. Complained about everything my husband did that thing. I hate my job here.
See what’s going on. Nobody can handle it. Go, oh, thank you so much. It’s coming right back. Do you understand that you didn’t get rid of anything? You just released the energy it generated in the moment. You didn’t deal with the problem, which is that you stored that garbage in there. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?
And so a wise person sits and says. I can handle it. I can handle my job, I can handle my spouse, I can handle the kids, I can handle the finances. I can handle life. It’s called life. It’s the unfolding of life. You don’t get to know everything’s gonna happen. It unfolds and I can handle it. Alright, now that I can handle it in here, what can I do about it?
Well, now that I don’t have to dump on everybody else, now that I don’t have to fight to suppress this stuff so I can handle it. ’cause I can handle it, I have the right to look at the actual situation, not my reaction to the situation, the actual situation, and say, is there anything that I can do to help this situation?
Now I’m giving, instead of taking, I’m raising the energy in front of me. Instead of putting more garbage on top of it, this is the essence of spirituality. You understand? These are Christ’s teachings. Turn the other cheek. That doesn’t mean outside. Let somebody punch you. It means inside. Handle it. Handle it.
Well, what do I do if you say what I don’t like? Turn the on changes. Let it go. Let it go. Do what Robert Christians said. Let it be like riding on water. I’m not a Bible reader. Write it once when I was 23 years old. Right. But I really like Christ’s teachings. I’m a nice Jewish yogi, and I really like Christ’s teachings.
He sat there and said, when you go to bed, before you go to bed, work out your issues with your neighbor. Don’t bring them into the next day. Whoa. And I was like, oh. If you get called into court, don’t worry about what you’re gonna say. The words will come to you. Every single thing is teaching the same thing.
Don’t take it all personal. Don’t get all involved in yourself, and you’re gonna find out that things will work out. Things work out, especially if you can handle ’em. Otherwise, what happens? You take the yicky energy that’s coming inside of you and you dump it into the world. You’re putting garbage out into the world and wondering why it’s such a mess.
So you be different. You’d be different. This spiritual person is different. They sit there and say, I can handle it. What? Whatever the it is okay. But right now I can’t. That’s right. ’cause I’m learning Earth is a place is said to evolve and I haven’t done so well so far. I got a ways to go. Of course you do.
Well, how will I evolve? By being challenged by things that unfold in front of you. Things will unfold and they will let you see where you’re not done. Have you ever noticed that things can unfold and let you see that you got a problem? Alright, I’ll close off this way. You get to the point where you say thank you.
You don’t complain. There’s no complaining. There’s no complaining ever again, naturally. Why? Because what’s happening in front of me if it’s bothering me is for me, doesn’t mean it’s my karma. I deserve it. It has nothing to do with that. But the fact that it’s bothering me and having trouble handling, it means it’s my teacher.
Why? Because I wanna be able to handle life. I said, that was my purpose. I want to be able to handle life, and this is helping me learn to do so. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful path. Every day you have an opportunity to let go of what’s stopping you from going up and to go up. You’ll reach a point in your, I call it your spiritual practices.
This is your spiritual practice. Of course, you can meditate. You do a mantra. You do whatever you want. Okay? You better do this. You do all the other techniques and come into the world and not be able to handle it. I’m sorry you wasted the part of your life. Meditation. I say people think I’m talking about meditation.
I’m meditate. I’m not talking. It’s meditation. Meditation can be used to suppress. I’m having problems. I can’t deal with her. Oh, no. Shamiah. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh, I feel better. I feel better. Well, don’t open your eyes and don’t come back. ’cause it’s gonna be right there waiting for you. Why you didn’t work it through.
How do you work it through By learning to handle it. How to learn to handle it by handling it. But how do I learn to handle it By handling it. But what if it’s more than what I can handle? Then you fall down. It’s like riding a bike. You feel balance. You learn nothing wrong with falling down. As long as you’re trying as hard as you can to handle it, you get up and try again.
Get up and do better. Believe me, it’ll do better. Every time I was playing a piano, I made a mistake on the scales. So what? Good, good. That’s good. That’s why you did the scales. So you learn where you can’t do them. Life is exactly the same. It is there to help you learn how to let go of the garbage that you stored in there that is keeping you anchored and not growing to the level that you’re capable of doing.
That’s a totally different way to look at your problems, isn’t it? There are no problems. There are growth situations, there are opportunities for growth, but what if it’s really, really bad and it is really bad? Okay, well then you do your best to handle it, and if you can, you’ll fall. Then get back up as soon as possible and just back up on the horse.
And just keep working with it. And eventually you’ll get to the point where you realize, yo Shakti, the, the saint that gave us the durga statues. But the first time she came and visited us, she said, problems are the nectar of life. I didn’t understand that. I was back in the mid seventies. Right. Problems are the nectar of life.
Guess what? Problems on a nectar of life. How do you know? ’cause what she has a problem with, you don’t. You’re done. You worked it through. She can’t handle it. Right? So this gives you an opportunity to deal with it, to work with it. If you go to school and you take a math test and you get three wrong, and you thought you knew it perfectly, you studied, you knew everything about this calculus stuff or.
Trade, Glens Allen, go to calculus. You sit there and, and you think you got it right, you turn them in and you got three wrong, and the teacher calls you up and says, you know, we got these wrong. Should you feel good or bad? Honestly, you look at me. Should you feel good or bad about the fact that you’re about to be taught about what you have wrong.
If you got ’em all right, you’re wasting your time. The fact that you tried and you tried as could, and now you can learn for the rest of your life where your thinking was not. Lined up. You should thank that teacher. You should thank that test. You should frame it. I gotta be. But our world doesn’t look at it that way, does it?
We’re not allowed to learn. We’re allowed to suppress. We’re allowed to push away. You’re supposed to be perfect if you’re not hide it. No. You sit there and say, I’m here to change. I’m here to grow. That’s what my day is about, and that is what’s gonna happen. And do the best that I can every day. I have no shame, no blame nothing.
Just bring it on. Okay? And if I don’t do well with it. I’ll learn and I’ll do better next time. If you sit there and learn to play tennis, you’re gonna hit that ball into the net. Well, every single time you hit it into the net, you learn something about the wrist, about the motion, about the backhand. Right or wrong.
Okay? It’s like wake up. You’re like people wasting their life by saying, I should be perfect. No, you should be working and perfecting what’s messed up inside of you and just be happy to have the opportunity to do it, and you’re gonna find over time. I said first. Instead of fighting it and complaining about it, that’s what we do.
We complain about every single thing that bothers us in life. This just reinforces the programming that happened inside of you. You just running that thing over and over again. Try not to do that, but if you don’t do it, it’s gonna hot in there. ’cause you can’t handle the energy that you stored inside. Be happy about that.
Be happy. It’s called the fire of yoga. That life is purifying you. Life is bringing your stuff up. So if somebody hits your stuff, the first thing you say is, I can handle this. And then later in your life, as you grow more, you say thank you. ’cause I found that the things that bothered me the most I had to work through liberated me.
I had to worry about them ever again. They didn’t bother me anymore. I freed myself by working with myself. And then, you know, I always say thank you. You start looking down at what you store down there, this is very advanced. You’re clear. You can see, oh my God, look at all that junk is stored down there.
And you realize that was like a person you pushed down there. I. It’s like you locked this part of you in a closet, didn’t you? Isn’t that what suppression does? And you look at that and you just feel compassion and you say, oh my God, I didn’t know better. I thought I was protecting myself. No, you were shoving yourself in the closet and you apologize.
That’s when you’re really starting to grow. You look down at that and you say to that part of you, to that poor little thing that you couldn’t handle until you shoved it away. You say, I’m so sorry. I am so sorry I did that to you. I won’t do it anymore. Come on out. You can come out now. If you need to misbehave some I can handle, it’s fine.
I understand you got this stuff down there and eventually you offer it up. Everything. It used to be you pushed down. Now your whole inner being is offering up. You just say you don’t have to stay down there. I’ll bring the light down there. You anything you need to go through, just go through it. I’ll be there with you, and you unify you.
It’s called integrity or you integrate your being. The whole of your being. There’s no down there that now. You’re going to God, that what happens, I always tell you what happens is the energy that you use to push down, that used to come and bother you, it starts flowing up. Instead of down the downward movement stops and all the inner energy inside of you, it actually, you actually feel it comes up inside of you that you, Shakti has the Hal Holy Waters, the Christians call it, except it’s not a momentary thing.
It’s a constant thing. Every moment of your life, once you learn to let that energy go, it’s coming out all the different chakras it pours out of you. People feel it. All kinds of things go on. So the energy comes up and it’s free to flow and then, then you go even higher. It’s called the ascent, but you have to start with the descent.
Do you understand why we talked about this? Are you willing to work on yourself? Don’t judge yourself. Don’t think I should do this better. Just do the best that you can with every moments unfolding in front of you and you will get there. It will happen. It will change very quickly.
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.
