Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. The longer you live, hopefully the wiser you get, you start realizing what happened today. It depends on how detailed you want to get. An ant moved, a leaf fell. Oh my God. That’s a lot of detail. You get in a lot of trouble. You get down to that level, keeping track of all that stuff. What about what happened today?
The earth revolved on this axis. I know you must think I’m crazy, but that’s what happened. Do you ever think about that? That’s all that happened today. This ball in the middle of nowhere revolved on its axis and returned to the point that you started measuring. What’s wrong with that? I’m begging you to get out of the mess that we make with ourselves and get clear.
And then people say, well, that’s not reality. Oh yes, that is reality. That’s what happened today. The earth revolved on its axis, and the second question becomes, do you have a problem with that? Which of you have a problem that the Earth revolved on its axis today? I don’t think any of you do. You just don’t think about it.
Maybe you should. Maybe you should expand your frame of reference. To include something bigger than what you like or dislike or what you want and don’t want, or what you’re afraid of or more, or what you don’t like. That happened before when the Earth revolved on its axis. Three years ago, man, no won. It’s a mess.
If what you do is say, I don’t like the color of my kitchen. I don’t like what somebody said to me three years ago. I don’t like that. I went into the elevator. You should have seen it. That was a couple of years ago and it got so packed. I didn’t like it at all, and somebody smelled, oh my God, it was terrible.
What in the world are you doing at that level besides being neurotic? You’re going to mean neurotic if you go down there. Why? Because there are 87 billion, trillion things going on at the same moment while this planet revolves on its axis, and you don’t even see many of them. I keep trying to, I know I never get a smile out of you with this.
I just can’t get it to you. You’re interested in what you experienced, right? I am interested in what you didn’t experience. What’s the proportion of what you experienced during those moments of this day versus all that happened that you didn’t experience? That’s not even funny, is it? You missed everything and you say, I don’t wanna miss anything.
You miss everything all the time. I know you don’t like to think like this, but tonight you’re going to. Alright. Why? It’s the truth. You wanna be healthy, you wanna not be neurotic, you wanna have problems, then stop creating problems for yourself. Stop saying. I’m on a planet. They don’t do that, but I’m on a planet spinning around and I can’t handle what happened in front of me.
Why? My argument is you handled everything else that wasn’t in front of you. You’re perfectly fine. What happened? All over China, all over Russia, all over every single place. Afghanistan, every single place, all over the place. There’s something going on every single moment. Is there not? Were you fine with those?
Were you fine with all the galaxies and all the stars, the black holes? Were you fine with all this? God, you’re getting pretty picky to get down to. I was fine with nine, 9.9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9% of what happened to the 9000000th power, but I wasn’t okay with the 0.01. That happened to happen in front of me, and I can give a very strong argument that what happened in front of you has very little to do with you.
It has to do with the weather. It has to do with other people’s past. I’ve never met him. What does his past have to do with me? Nothing. Okay. Now let’s take all you guys together and have you interact at this moment of unfolding in front of me. Your past. Your past, your past, your past, all the people at the office.
All the things. All the buildings. All the cars. Every single thing has nothing to do with me. What does it have to do with, if it doesn’t have to do with me? What does it have to do with, first, it has to do with science. The weather is the way it is because of meteorology, but you don’t do that. You say, I don’t want it to rain today.
Sorry, that’s not an innocent statement. If you say, I don’t want it to rain today, and the weather has nothing to do with you, you just laid the groundwork for neurosis. Hit the ground for not having a nice day, didn’t you? I don’t want it to be cold tonight. Who cares what you want? You gotta pay a case in the wants because it’s gonna be cold tonight.
And why you would get upset about it? I have no idea. And then you remember, oh, back and so and so years ago it got really, really cold. I didn’t like that. Why are you doing that? He’s not there anymore. It’s not happening anymore. Why would you do this with I’m scolding you? You have a mind, a brilliant mind every one of your minds compared to possum mines and rat mines and all kinds of minds.
Alright, armadillos. They’re really stupid. Alright, how about this? There’s not a single mind in the entire animal kingdom that is brilliant as yours. And I don’t care if you fail every test. You are more brilliant. Oh look, the maps learned to turn on a light switch. I think you don’t have trouble with that.
You have a brilliant mind. The question is, what are you doing with it? And I’m telling you tonight we have a discussion of what you’re doing with it. That’s insane. That’s crazy. You’re using your mind to make yourself miserable, but what do you mean I don’t want it to be cold tonight? Why are you doing that?
Why don’t you sit there and say, the planet revolves on its axis and sometimes the weather is this way or that way. If you wanna know why it’s that way. I told you, go study meteorology University. They’ll go into, it’d be very detailed for you. Lots of calculus, all kinds of stuff, right? And you figure out it is because the weather across the PDs were mountains in Spain was this way and the Canada Cold front came.
What do any of these things have to do with you? Nothing. Then why are you bothering yourself about them? And the answer is, there is no reason. It’s just a happy you got into and no one scolded you like this. Your parents scolded you ’cause you didn’t finish your dinner. They didn’t scold you for being neurotic.
In fact, they made you neurotic. Okay, so you step back, you just, I beg you step back. Are we on a planet spinning in the middle of nowheres? Is that okay with you? It better be. And are you aware that on that planet, the entire surface, there is something going on every moment on every place, point, pixel dot on that planet, and you’ve admitted to me, uh.
That none of anything to do with you. I mean, if the part has to do with you, I call it statistically insignificant, has nothing to do with you, but you make the whole nothing be everything about you. You don’t care what the weather’s doing up north or in Canada or over here or over there. You only care what’s it gonna be like in front of me.
That is the definition of ego. You have let your mind make the entire thing be about you, even though none of it has to do with you. Even the part you think has to do with you. I know I’ll touch a nerve here. I’m having trouble. I always wanna have a baby and I, I can’t get pregnant. Has something to do with you, has to do with biology, has to do with genetics, has to do with all kinds of things.
None of which have anything to do with you, but you are gonna sit in there and make a face of yourself. Because you can’t handle reality. I don’t usually talk about such sensitive subjects, but am I right or wrong? Ares you gonna do that? Instead of sitting there saying, I’m sitting on a planet, it’s middle of the middle of nowhere, there’s this genetics thing.
Wow. It’s really complex. I tell you, you live on a planet in which a single fertilized cell, a cell needs a microscope to look at it. Do you understand that? It’s a single fertilized cell sitting on a microscope. That cell knows how to make a baby by itself. No scientist, no Einstein, no anything. You don’t have to do anything.
Just put some food around it and it makes livers and kidneys and, and hearts and brains, right or wrong. How can you not be blown away by the reality in which you’re living instead of the reality that you create with your mind, which is not reality, it’s just called acceptance. Like when I teach surrender, and some people come back and they say, well, if something happens outside, I’m supposed to surrender to it.
What if I would tell you example, but if a drug dealer comes up to me and says, Hey man, you want some stuff? Am I supposed to say yes? So surrender to everything. That is not what surrender means. Surrender means what I’m talking to you about right now. It means you’re in there, the world’s unfolding in front of you.
Can you handle it? Now, what do you do about it? ’cause there’s nothing to do about it. Not at first. At first, you sit there and say, oh, if fertilized single cells can make babies, I think that’s more than what I’ll ever do. Look at what it makes. Do you ever think about it? No. I only think about will it be perfect?
What if one of the fingers is shorter than the other? What will I do? It is ridiculous what we do with our minds. That is why there’s tension neurosis. Fear, anxiety, all the stuff, and you just accept that stuff as well. Of course I’m anxious. No, no, no, no, no. You should not be anxious. Well, I don’t know what’s gonna happen.
Yes, you do. You do know what’s gonna happen. The planet’s gonna spin the access and other forces of nature and science and psychology are gonna unfold around you, and they’ll create the moment that unfolds in front of you. That’s what’s gonna happen. The question is not, do you like it? A wise person never asked the question, do I like this?
You don’t have a right to not like it. We’ll talk about it later that you can interact with it. But your starting position is, I didn’t make this place, did you? I didn’t create everything. Every single moment that’s, I go through this living untethered, there’s a whole chapter, gets down to the level that we’re talking about.
Every moment, look at me, every moment unfolding in front of you is a result of all the moments that happened before that caused that moment to happen. Every moment, every single moment that’s unfolding in front of you does not just stand on its own completely independent of whole universe, right? It has forces that happen before there and cause the moment to happen and somebody comes home, you know, your spouse comes home and they’re in a bad mood.
It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with what happened to them today. And you’re not gonna change what happened to them today ’cause it’s already happened. So if they come home and they’re in a bad mood, you start with, oh, they must have had a bad day. There were causes that happened when I wasn’t around that caused them to not do well.
Is that okay with you? The answer is it has nothing to do with me. Even your spouse, your children. They have nothing to do with you. Do you know how any influences your child has had by the time they get to 16 years old to have nothing to do with you? You weren’t there. They’re friends of this or that.
The thoughts. They can do their own thoughts, make them messed up, can’t they? You don’t know anything makes me wanna cry. No wonder you have so much trouble with your relationships with everything. You don’t start with reality. Reality is there’s a world unfolding and the moment unfolding in front of me as a result of everything that never happened before that came together, coalesced together to create that moment.
Is that true or not? Anybody wanna argue? That’s not true. Of course it’s true. It’s just not what you want it to be, and that’s where the dichotomy comes. Reality is real. What is reality in living on Tether? I define reality. It doesn’t take a volume. It took one sentence. Reality is that which already happened.
Has anyone ever undone what already happened? Never. No one ever. That’s reality, but it shouldn’t have. Where did that come from? Reality is reality. The weather is the weather. People’s moods are people’s moods. They’re the result of so many forces that have come together. What does psychology say Man is the sum of his learned experiences.
That’s basic psychology. Man is the sum women too, by the way, man is the sum of his learned experiences. Okay? Is that true? No. I am the consciousness that is aware that my thoughts and my emotions and my patterns and habits are the some learned experiences. Watching. Have you noticed that your behavior patterns are some learned experiences?
Have you noticed that you’ve been drinking a lot of coffee, you crave coffee, the sum learned experiences, your mind is programmed, take a breath. Your mind is programmed by the experiences you’ve had in the past. Just as if I type it in a computer or voice recognition. The events are coming in through your senses and they’re leaving impressions on your mind.
I don’t like him. Why? I met him once. It was terrible. He was dressed like an idiot. You met him once. Is that how many moments that man has had in their life? You don’t know anything about anybody, do you? Have you ever noted people that have all of a sudden behaved differently? You thought they were gonna, of course they do.
Of course they do. They are the sum of their learned experiences. They’re not the sum of your learned experiences. You weren’t even around, you’re 23 years old before you got married and you dated for a year. What happened to the other 22 years? And what’s gonna happen every day from then on that you’re not together.
So reality is events unfold. They pass. There are influence into the next moment, but there’s tons of influences and they come together and create the moment that’s in front of you. Is that okay with you? And that’s what acceptance means. It doesn’t mean you say yes or no. It has nothing to do with that is a simple question.
Is it okay with you that reality is what it is and you know your answer? Of course not. It’s supposed to be the way I want it to be. Can we discuss that? Do you really believe that all the forces of creation from being of time that all unfold together to create every moment that influence, every other moment, that when you stand, there’s supposed to be the way you want it to be.
They a chance in the world. Things are the way they are. That that’s what the zen teaching that says flowers are red. Water’s, blue grass is green. Then they send you home. You ready to go home with that? Do you understand what that says? Get with the program. It is what it is because of all the force that made it be that way.
It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s not right. It’s not wrong. It just. Is you’ve heard that? It just is. That sounds stupid to the rest of your mind. No, it’s not stupid at all. Things are the way they are in front of you because of all the forces that made ’em how I just said that, Pete, I wanna see you shake your head.
Things are the way they are in front of you. ’cause all the forces that cause them to be that way. Do you really believe there’s some other reason? It’s how it is from the beginning of time, from the Big Bang onwards, everything created everything else. And the moments in front of you, the results of all the previous moments, and they’re so big, there’s so many variables, is incomprehensible, and that’s just what’s in front of you.
What about everywhere makes me cry? That is what acceptance means. It doesn’t mean the drug dealer asked you to, you know you want drugs and you say yes or no. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with are you willing to accept that this is the reality unfolding in front of you? I didn’t say don’t do anything about it.
You can influence. You’re part of the inputs, but you’re not part of the inputs that already happened. I don’t like what you said. Take it back. I don’t know how to do that. No one’s ever done that. Apologize. Let’s be honest. Do you know how much weight that apology has? What it means is you can’t undo what the person did that you want them to apologize for.
I, I can’t believe you showed up with a bow tie on a date. I can’t stand when I wear bow ties. I can’t believe you did this. I’m sorry. I. Okay. What does that mean? It means nothing. They didn’t know anything about what you like or what you don’t like. They thought Bowties were neat. Okay? And they go there to take you out on your date and you’re freaking out.
Right? A bow tie. Gimme a break. Okay, and so on. So that’s the sum of your own experiences. He’s the sum of his learned experiences, and they just clashed, didn’t they? Acceptance means reality just happened. Somebody showed up at the door, rang the bell, you came down and there’s a bow tie. By the way, there was much more than a bow tie.
There were arms and legs and coats and socks. Shoes and cars, but you only saw a bow tie. Wake up. All of it was reality. Wasn’t. What was the weather like and was the little dog barking? All of it’s reality, but you can’t accept reality. Not even for that one moment, to just say all the causes in the universe came together, and that’s what’s in front of me.
That’s a holy thing. The moment in front of you is holy. It took the entire universe for 13.8 billion years to unfold exactly the same for that moment to be in front of you. If anything had been different. I told this story in Living Untethered, that basically what happened is a dinosaur was walking around down in the Okeechobee area way back in dinosaur land.
It poured rain, I mean just a total torrential downpour. The dinosaur was walking around and it’s big old footprint. Boom. Made this crevice in the mud. Over time, that crevice became Lake Okeechobee. That’s how it got there. You know that it may not be the exact story, but it got somehow, alright. It became this big old lake.
Alright, so that’s an event that happened. Started with a dinosaur, okay, in the rain. And now what happened is so many Indians, the Indian tribes settled there. Because there was water and there’s fish. Okay. That’s an event that happened way back. Alright. And also turned out that hundreds sometime later, right?
The settlers settled in that area. Okay. And they built little towns on the side of the lake ’cause nice to be with a lake, so on. And what happened was one night your great, great-great-great-great grandfather. Who drank a lot was in a saloon and fell out. This pouring rain out by the way fell out. The saloon staggering all over the place, fell down the stairs as it turns out at that exact moment when he fell down the stairs.
Your great, great, great. Great-grandmother who was from the tribe and ended up on the leg, he fell on top of her and it was love at first sight, okay? They just got to know each other, and it was a phenomenal, right? If that didn’t happen, if the dinosaur didn’t step in that spot, if the lake didn’t grow into that, if they didn’t settle there with the Indians, if it wasn’t raining that day, now stop.
Listen to me. If it wasn’t raining that day, that would not have happened and you wouldn’t be here. Is this boring or do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? Acceptance means that I accept. That that happened. I think that’s very big of you. That has nothing to do with you, does it? The ego’s ridiculous that you think it has to do with you.
Which part of that event had anything to do with you? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And then your genetics were passed on down and so that’s why we’d be here talking a long time. We talked about one relationship in one spot, on a planet earth. It’s happening everywhere. It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with reality.
It has to do with cause and effect, has to do with the events of creation unfolding, and then you are there. Acceptance means I accept that. The reality of the fact is that’s what happened. Are you okay with that? And the answer is no, you’re not. How can you not be? How can you not be okay with something that has nothing to do with you, but they shouldn’t have been drinking?
You don’t have the right to do that. You have the right once the event takes place to work with the next thing that you can help happen, but you better start with acceptance. If you sit there and say, people shouldn’t drink. Let’s see what you get. Because they do and they have for a very long time. They shouldn’t have.
That’s non-acceptance, that’s non surrender. It has nothing to do with your reaction to the current moment. You have to start. The easiest place to start, but I don’t know if I’m getting here or not. Maybe it bores you, I don’t know. But the important point is the past is not gonna change and you have no right to judge the past ’cause it had nothing to do with you.
You weren’t there anything. You sit there, say, how could that have happened? You wanna know? Sit down for a couple of years, we’ll have a discussion. I’ll talk about all the forces that happened beforehand. He go, oh, oh, I didn’t know. Oh, oh, oh. His father yelled at him. Oh, his mother beat him. Oh, I see. Oh, his girlfriend dumped on him.
Well, he’s like, you’d have to know every single thing that happened that caused the final event to happen, wouldn’t you? So how dare you say, how could you do that? That’s why the great ones don’t bother talking. Mayor Bob took silence. Never said a word. How can I answer why that happened? That turns out to be a dumb question, doesn’t it?
Mommy? Mommy. Why is this sky blue? You really wanna know? I sit out. We got a long discussion about a lot of stuff. Take a breath. Why am I talking like this? If you worked with reality, you would not have a problem. Mm-hmm. With the past at all. Understand it is the forces of creation, unfolding and interacting, and this is how it happened.
Now you have nothing to worry about, nothing to be anxious about. And what happens though, we don’t do that. That’s so beautiful. Now when I’m coming back to, okay, we just, that was a big talk, whole planet, all the events for hundreds, hundreds of years, right? But we don’t do that. We come down to me, I, me mine, just this tiny little thing with its tiny little experiences and we do the following.
We don’t sit there and say, I’m okay with what happened before, but I’ll try to make it better. You get to say that. We’ll talk about that. You say, I’m not okay with what happened before. I’m not okay. What happened before? That’s why you suppress things. Why would you suppress anything you’re comfortable with?
You don’t. Only suppress things that you wish didn’t happen. I don’t want it to have happened. What happens when you suppress things or now we’re getting it. We’re getting to the core of what I always teach. Do you suppress things? I don’t care whether you study psychology or do you ever have experiences and when they come in.
You’re not comfortable with ’em and you push them away. Do you ever find yourself pushing things away saying, no, I don’t wanna feel this. I don’t want that to have happened. That’s called suppression, repression suppression, denial, resistance. I don’t care. I always try to take it right here, right at that moment.
Are you in there? And are you aware that what you’re experiencing is not comfortable to you and you try to push it away? Yes or no? The whole thing is about it really happened or it wouldn’t be coming in. It actually came in otherwise. Don’t worry about it. I tell you. Don’t worry about 99.9999 other stuff that didn’t come in, but here’s this thing came in.
You’re experiencing it and you decide to use will to use a power you have inside of you to resist the experience. And when you push it away, do you know every single thing you ever pushed away is still in there? How do you know? Go to your high school reunion, 20th year high school reunion. You’ve been 20 years, you had totally different experiences all the time.
What do you wanna bet You like some people and don’t like others. You remember what somebody did and sometimes you, oh, I don’t wanna deal with her. Like, no, but I don’t wanna see her. It’s not even happening. You don’t know who she is. You’ve got 20 years more experiences. How dare you do that? Why? ’cause I stored that event, didn’t I?
I stored it in my mind and in my heart, and it comes back up. When it comes back up. What do you do? You push it back down. Okay, so now we’re merging two worlds. The world of reality with the world of you made a different world inside of you. You held onto things you didn’t like. And you started making impressions inside about those.
A dog almost put me when I was little. I hate dogs in that one dog. There’s lots of nice dogs. But you form these opinions ’cause you’re program, that’s what it means. The sum of your learn experiences, your program by your past experiences. If you had had the experience and said, okay, that was my experience, I can change.
So I don’t go near that dog again or something, but I don’t sit there and suppress it and hold it in there. I can learn from it, but I don’t have to suppress it. There’s a big difference. We learn from all sorts of things, but when we’re not comfortable with it, we take the entire event with all its emotions, with all its colors, and shapes and smells, everything, your thought patterns, and we take the whole package and we boom, we shove it all down.
I don’t wanna experience it. That is what’s meant by samskara. That is what the yogis, the ancient teachings a thousand years ago called a subs scar, a pattern of energy that came in from the outside world and you couldn’t handle it. You in there weren’t Okay. It wasn’t a reality you wanted to experience.
It comes in and you use your force, your will to push it down. It then starts to build this model inside. You build what’s called a self-concept and ego. That’s where ego comes from. If you didn’t store that stuff in there, you’d be here now. Be here now, means this is all there is. That’s all that happening right now is what’s happening right now.
Why? No answers too big. You wanna take that on? Well, what if I just honor and respect that this is the reality of unfolding in front of me and I experience it. I let it go. I can deal with it. That’s the part that I wanna make sure I understand. If it comes in and I’m not suppressing it, suppressing ’cause I didn’t like it or clinging into it ’cause I liked it.
I’m just relaxing and here it is. I’m clear. I can interact with the moment. Not react to the moment. That’s such a big difference. Action and reaction. Okay. If I’m clear, if I’m centered, it comes in and I see it, maybe it’s okay. It’s gonna be cold tonight. I don’t do anything about it anyways. I’ll wear a blanket.
Okay? And so I’d have to make a thing out of it. I have to say, I don’t like the cold. Why? It’s what is, you don’t have to not like it or like it, you just experience it. But there are some things that happen. You know, somebody told you, well, I wanna get the examples, but something happens in life with your children, with this, this spouse or something, right?
That isn’t just you. I don’t like it. I have to deal with it. I was driving down the road and somebody cut me off when they got a car accident. Is that okay with you? It better be. Well because it happened. Can you make it not happen? Will it ever not have happened? Never. So you better get with the program, otherwise you get in there and make yourself an erotic mess.
That wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything. Why’d they do that? Oh my God. I was in a rush and they told me, whoa, I already told you. You don’t wanna ask why they cut you off. They were upset and their wife did this, and they were, they were looking properly and they were lost in their mind. You really wanna know all that when you ask that question.
How could you drive like that? You don’t want an answer. What you want is, I didn’t want this to happen, but it did happen. Now you understand acceptance. Acceptance doesn’t mean you don’t call the police. Acceptance doesn’t mean you don’t get insurance. Accept you, don’t mean you get it fixed. Oh, that’s it for the car.
Bye-bye. Have a good day. No, no. Life is an interactive sport, but you’re interacting with reality. Not the fact that you can’t handle reality. That’s the whole key to this. If you can handle reality, listen to me. If you can handle reality, you’ll never have another problem for the rest of your life. Why events are not problems.
They’re events, they’re experiences. If you can handle them, then you deal with the experience as opposed to, I resist the experience, forget, resist what I’m trying to do about it. I can’t even figure out what to do about it ’cause I’m a mess. ’cause I can’t handle the reality of what took place. Why did you have to cut me off?
How could you do this? I was in a restaurant. How’s it gonna say, I can’t afford to stay with this car. I hate you. Why’d you do that? That’s terrible. What is that doing? Making a complete mess of you and them and everything else. In other words, you couldn’t handle the reality that took place. I’m glad we use that example.
Did it take place? Yes, but it shouldn’t have, what is that word? They shouldn’t even be any of language. It shouldn’t have happened. It did happen, and it had the forces of reality behind it that caused it to happen. So the starting place isn’t, it shouldn’t have happened. I wish something else could have happened.
A person who’s clear. Accepts reality now, do you understand what I mean by accepts reality? Okay, so now I have accepted this accident has taken place. I don’t, man, the insurance may care whose fault it is. It doesn’t matter. It happened down the road. Maybe it’ll make a difference, right? But the reality is it took place.
Can you handle reality that is spirituality. Can you handle that? You are sitting on a little planet spinning around the middle of nowheres, and things are happening everywhere is all over the place. Can you handle that reality? And by the way, there’s another reality. Can you handle the reality that you’re sitting on a little planet and around you?
Things are happening, is a happening place, and you’re not gonna be here very long, even in another 50, 60, 70, 80 years, any very long. How has the planet been here? 14.5 billion years, how long you gonna gonna be here?
You not even that long. And even though you don’t have to stay, you can’t handle it. I’m begging you. This is the problem. The problem is that you can’t handle reality. If people could handle reality, there would just be okay. The reality, how do I deal with it? So we live in a world that things are supposed to be the way we want them to be.
And guess what you say when they’re not, they’re wrong. That’s wrong. What you said that’s wrong, what you did. Wrong and right are based upon a value system. Whose value system are you using when you say you’re wrong? Yours. It’s yours. It’s your value system, somebody else. People are totally different, but not to you.
To you. Based on your past experiences, your mind and heart emotions have been programmed. To be a certain way and you bring that into the reality of the moment, that’s a problem. There’s no way. We’ve just got through explaining how the moment in front of the result of everything that ever happened, you weren’t even there for any event and you’re sitting there judging it.
That’s why the Bible says, judge, not you shall not be judged. The third then patriarch says, and the burdensome practice of judging, you don’t realize how damaging judging is. Why on what basis are you judging it? Yours. If you grew up in one environment and people are a certain way, then your comments, okay, you’re used to that.
Let’s say you grew up in an environment where nobody ever got divorced. Nope. There’s not a word in that culture for divorce. I don’t think you do well in that culture. ’cause in your culture, people get divorced and even if they’re Catholic. But they think they’re gonna go to hell. Like all of your patterns are learned.
Who told you if you get divorced, you’re going to hell? Well, I don’t wanna answer that question. Okay, but somebody did Something went on and somebody else told you they got married in Vegas. They were drunk. It lasted three days. It’s hilarious. How was my sixth wife? How long did it last? Three days. Who’s right?
I always ask you. You get married. I can’t believe I’m talking about sensitive subjects. I hope you can handle it. Alright. People always tell me, you always deal with low hanging fruit, the driver in front of you, the sun, the heat. How about deal with some real subjects topics? Okay, here’s a topic. You get married, you get married for three to four months.
You’re not getting along. It’s not working. It’s obvious it’s not working. You both know it’s not working okay, and you get divorced and your attitude is, I’ll do better next time. That was quite a learning experience. I see how I participated in messing it up. I see how he or she participated and maybe we learned.
We learn from it so you can do better as opposed to you’ve been married for 50 to 60 years. The first time you dated, he was 16 years old. You married that person, never had relations with anybody else the entire time, and you’ve had a 60 year marriage. Who’s better off? And don’t you dare answer me? You learned what it was like to have a long lasting, beautiful marriage that lasted 16 years, and you learn from it.
I’m sure you learned a lot. You learned what it was like to have a snap relationship that lasted three to four months and you became a wiser person because of it. You have no right to judge. Do you? ’cause the person who had the little short experience thinks they learned a lot. They say, what are you crazy with?
One person for 60 years? How’d you learn anything? And the other person looks at you and say, what kind of a marriage last four months? What’s the matter with you? Am I right or wrong? Answer me. And I know you have your own value system saying probably don’t even like talking about it, right? Maybe you got married for four months, you say, yeah, I get on it.
Right on man. Right? Or maybe you’re scared to death that you won’t stay married for a long time. Don’t talk about how could you talk about that? It’s wrong to get divorced. Nobody should get. See a difference. It all depends on your silly old mind, which knows nothing. I hope I’ve convinced you of that. You think you know something ’cause you know the experiences you had, but compared to how many other experiences there are to have, you don’t know Squat, we’re now talking about a master of wise being.
They don’t judge. What do Christ say that you who are without sin, throw the first stone? Forgive them Lord. They don’t know what they do. You on both sides of me, you have robbers people. You shall be with me in heaven. It’s like, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive. Forget, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive. So what happens is well talk about deep spirituality, acceptance and surrender.
But now you understand what acceptance, surrender mean. Begin by realizing that reality already happened or you wouldn’t be aware of it. It wouldn’t be bothering you. You wouldn’t be liking it or not liking it if it didn’t happen. If it happened, you have to begin. That’s deep acceptance. That’s what acceptance means.
It means I see that it happened. Maybe parts of me don’t like that it happened. I see that too. I can accept that. Also, I’m the, some of my learned experiences and my learned experiences got hit. Bam. Right? They hit me and I’m in here noticing that the event was the sum of all the experiences and my reaction to the event is some of my experiences, and I am here back behind the whole thing, noticing what I’m noticing.
That is reality. So your tendency toward anger, your tendency, jealousy, your tendency toward fear, is that wrong or right? It’s something that you had experiences in your life and they left impressions on you, on your human being, and now this is coming up. Is that okay with you? That’s the problem. The problem is it’s not okay with you.
Let’s say you’re in a relationship and you’ve had previous relationships where somebody cheated on you, but you’re in this relationship and you notice you have this tendency to be afraid. That something will go wrong. Is that wrong? No. How can it be wrong? It’s reality. It’s the same reality as you’re sitting in a plants middle, middle of nowhere.
It’s a reality that there’s a sum of your own experiences left. That impression inside of you, it hurt. And so now you have a tendency toward jealousy. Is that okay? The answer, of course it’s okay because it’s there, it’s real. Are you going with it? Are you lost in it? That you can’t stay clear enough to understand?
If you hadn’t had that experience in your previous relationship, you wouldn’t feel the jealousy. It’s still the sum learn experiences. It’s still the events unfold. Now we’re talking, I always talk this real now. So the answer isn’t to suppress the jealousy or to fight with this, or to do that, or to make the other person don’t.
Well, you know, that makes me jealous. Don’t do that anymore. Okay, let’s manipulate control suppress. We do do that, don’t we? Why? Because we can’t handle what we’re experiencing. We can’t handle the reality of the event of the past, present, whatever it is. Spirituality is about saying. I can handle this. Why you have no choice.
You can make a mess of yourself. You can make a mess of your relationships. You can mess, make a mess of everything. ’cause you can’t handle reality. What if I can handle reality? So I said to you, a part of reality is you feel some jealousy. Why go study psychology. They’ll tell you. You’ve had experiences that left those impressions on you.
Other people have different experiences. They don’t feel jealous. Other people, oh, they got hurt before they feel jealous. Right or wrong, it’s not better or worse. Your experiences leave impressions on you. So now you walk into this moment, how does a spiritual being a high spiritual being who’s worked on themselves, handle the moments unfolding in front of them with awareness?
I’m aware. There it is. It’s happening out there. I watch my mind by the way, I watch my mind because it tends toward jealousy to interpret the behavior that I’m seeing as some that should cause jealousy isn’t amazing. Why are we on the phone so long? Who are you talking to? I. My mother. What? What are you doing?
Alright, so you’re gonna see these tendencies come up, yes or no? What do you do with them? You notice them? Somebody wants to asked Er. Krishna a fully enlightened master. Does an enlightened realized being ever feel anger? I blew me away. I read that he said yes. He said as follows. It is like riding on water.
It’s an impulse that comes up and passes right through. You don’t touch it, doesn’t do anything. So what. A river flows into the ocean. So what? No one’s resisting. No one’s suppressing, no one’s judging. Whoa. Is that what it means to be liberated? Of course. That’s what it means to be liberated. You don’t have to worry about what’s gonna happen because you can handle it.
It’s gonna come in, you’ll experience. It. Doesn’t mean you don’t deal with it. I told you it doesn’t mean you don’t deal with it. You just don’t not deal with it. You don’t just sit there and say, I can’t handle this. Well, what does that mean when you say, I can’t, I’ve been bothering you with this lately.
Your boss just came up to you. I said, Sarah, I want you to do this task for me. Do this task. To which Sarah said, I can’t do that. I don’t know how to do that. To your boss said, okay, you’re fired. Or he says, okay, I’ll find someone who can. That’s what it means when you say, I can’t handle this. It’s exactly the same as telling God in the universe you gave this to the wrong person because I can’t handle this.
Uncle Bananas are this thing. I’ll freak out. I can’t handle it. Don’t ever say I can’t handle it. Doesn’t mean you don’t feel impulses that are not comfortable, right? But you let them pass and then you’re present. And maybe the right answer is I’ll be glad to do the best that I can. That’s all you can do, the best that you can, but that’s not saying, I can’t handle this.
You’re saying, I will do the best I can to handle it. I would do the best I can to deal with this situation. That’s very spiritual. Do you see? I’m not making it be perfect, right? And say, be where you are. But honor, reality. Please honor reality. You don’t honor reality. You honor yourself. Let me make a statement.
You honor yourself more than you honor reality. If there’s a measure. Of how much does reality count and how much does my views and my preferences, and my hopes and my dreams and my concepts. It’s probably 99.99 is me and 0.01% is reality ’cause I am out there. Not only do I not handle it inside, I can’t handle it outside.
I gotta manipulate everybody so they don’t do what they did ever again and make them get back to apology. Oh my God, that bothered you. I’m sorry I said it. Do you honestly believe that it will never bother you again? You’ll store what they said. You hear me? Okay? I accept your apology until you even start to do the same thing.
That seems like you’re gonna do it again. It will come right back up. It did not neutralize you did not let that go. The very fact that you had to say apologize means it’s still in there. So the apology goes on top of the samskara, makes it feel a little bit better temporarily. But man, that’s coming back up.
It doesn’t mean you don’t say, I’m sorry. Of course you say even, sorry, but I’m talking spiritually. Spiritually. It is not about getting them to admit they were wrong or say they were sorry. It means can I let go of the part of me that is now programmed to not be able to handle what this person did. Do you understand that in your relationships, you start with tremendous love?
Hopefully, okay. There’s just this tremendous openness, this tremendous love, right? Then one person does something inevitably, right? Says something does something and it doesn’t hit right. Okay. You. Either make it apologize, I wanna do it again. You make it clear. I don’t like when you did that right. You just reinforced that there’s a part of you that doesn’t love them the way they are.
I’m being tough with you. You are the sum of your learn experiences and that’s not okay with me. You’re supposed to be the way I want you to be, not. Be yourself. And so we take these things and they build up, don’t they? This happened. They had a financial problem, they had trouble with the kids, and next thing you know, they’re blah, blah, blah, blah.
There’s not as much love. Next thing you know, I’m staying together for the kids. No, no. You have to understand that every single thing that you suppress in there, that wasn’t the way that person wanted you to be, is going to reduce the natural love that you feel for that person, because everything you shove down there is a blockage that you stored in there.
You have to watch what you say, watch what you wear, watch what you do right or wrong, because now it’s not just free love. Now it’s control. And that’s, they’re manipulating you, you manipulate them. We do counseling together. We agree. I won’t do that anymore. Well, you’re not, do okay. We won’t do it anymore.
Shake hands. In other words, I won’t be free. I I won’t be open. I’m not, I’m not free to be myself around you. Even though we’re married, even though we say we love each other. It’s called conditional love. The conditions have to be right for my heart to open. Otherwise, I’m going to protect myself. I’m gonna remember what you did last time.
I’m gonna make sure I don’t do it again. And next thing you know it, I’ve never talked this straight to you before. I can’t. You handle it. You talk. I handle it. Can you handle me and talk to about reality? Reality is things are the way they are. Is that okay with you? The answer’s yes. Does that mean I feel good about it?
No. Does it mean I’m willing to not feel good about it instead of store the not good feeling inside so that it messes up my relationship with everything in the world? The answer is I am going to handle it, whatever it is. And that is such spiritual growth. ’cause now if something happens and you see yourself start to resist, that’s not innocent.
You don’t wanna store that stuff in there so that every time somebody does something that you’re close with and you start to see it bother you ask the question, do I want this to ruin the relationship? I don’t care how small it is. I’m out there in a party and there’s people and they’re talking and I say something that’s just really stupid and other people say, no, no, that’s not right.
And your significant other doesn’t stand up for you. They say, yeah, come. Come on, George. You say that you get home. Look, I don’t care what I said. You’re supposed to stand up for me. You’re part of me. You’re my wife, you’re my husband. Then how could you not have store? That’s it, man. You just stored one. You weren’t able to handle the situation that took place.
You’ve now stored a blockage inside of you and you don’t trust the person as much. Sometimes it comes up over and over again. You keep talking about it. You remember the time. Remember the time? You didn’t stand up for me when I, George. That was 14 years ago. Yeah, but it hurt. I don’t want that stuff in there.
That’s what spiritual growth is. Spiritual growth says events take place. I can handle them, then I deal with it. Not deal with it because I can’t handle them, not manipulate everybody else to try and make it better feeling for me. I can handle that. That hurt, I can handle that. You said that I can handle.
What it is now, what? Now what’s the best thing to do about it that will keep the relationship open, that will keep the love flowing and so on? Anybody like that? Wouldn’t that be nice? And what’s amazing is how people around you change ’cause you didn’t shove stuff in their face. How all of a sudden people start noticing, wow, I wish I could be like that.
Not blame, shame, guilt, all the psychological junk that you build inside of yourself, a high being does not have any of that inside. And whatever’s left from their childhood or they’re growing up, passes right through. It just passes through. They don’t hold onto it. They don’t suppress it. So this is where psychology and spirituality meet.
If you did not suppress stuff, it wouldn’t be in there. Doesn’t mean you don’t learn from it. Learn by all means learn. Okay? But don’t hold onto it. Don’t start it with this hate and fear and anxiety, and don’t do that. Say thank you. You know how a spiritual being lives life. Every event that takes place, they say thank you.
I’m telling you the truth. Thank you. Thank you for the experience. Thank you for the opportunity to grow. Thank you for the opportunity to see. I got stuff left in there that’s not comfortable. I wanna work with it. I want to deal with this. I don’t want to have to go out there and manipulate everything in this world to be a way that fits inside of me.
’cause there’s nothing great about the way I see things. It’s just the way I see things. Alright, everybody sees ’em different. Fine. This is how he sees them. I accept it. I honor it. He’s a learning experiences I can handle that I can handle. It passing through and you literally, you start to honor, respect every single experience you ever have.
If you look back on your life, you’re talking about a mature being. If they asked, what would you change? There’s your answer. I. It’s not a single thing. Would you ever look back and say, I wish it didn’t happen. I would change it. Why it made you who you are today? Just make sure who you are today. It’s worth being right.
Just make sure that if you let go enough, all you feel is love. All you feel is love ’cause you didn’t close your heart. You didn’t close your mind. So what’s gonna happen in there? All you feel is shockti. Now you get that out to that word. I didn’t use it yet. You just feel this tremendous flow of energy pouring up inside of you.
You’re a being of pure light. Well, why don’t I feel it? ’cause you’re blocking it with all the garbage you stored in there. ’cause you couldn’t handle reality. And so we, you get to a point where you start saying, bring it up. I’m Gabe. Bring it on. Bring it on. ’cause I want to be free. I wanna be free. And so anything that happens out there to take away my freedom, not a chance.
And what happens, I think we let go. You become a being of life and people change and the energy’s phenomenal, but the effect it has, but you don’t do anything. You’re not doing anything. You, you’re literally not doing anything. As opposed to, I’m doing, I’m the doer, I’m doing everything. Alright. We had a deep talk.
I hope you’re okay with it. I dare to talk about very sensitive stuff. All right. You’re a great being, but you’ve made a mess by not being able to handle reality. And I hope in the beginning I made it clear to you, you do not have a choice. Your choice is this, handle reality and learn and grow, or don’t handle reality and be a erotic, scared, neurotic mess.
Why? Because reality happened. Fair enough.
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.
