Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. Life can be extremely difficult and life can be extremely easy, and that’s the truth, even at the extremes. That’s true. It’s not fun to talk at the extremes. It’s hard to understand and comprehend when is life difficult, when it’s not the way you want it to be? Did I get it? When is life?
Not difficult when it’s the way you want it to be. That is like the beginning and end of all spiritual teachings. Spirituality is not about belief, it’s about realization. All of you have through your life had experiences that taught you what I just said, that life is easy when it’s the way you want it to be, and life is a bear.
It’s not the way you want it to be. You’d have to go to school to learn that. Did you? You didn’t need spiritual teachers, you didn’t need parents, you didn’t need anything. It’s something that you and there learned. Okay? And because you learned that, and because you know that to be the truth, you suffer. Mm.
And that’s the truth, and that’s the only reason you suffer. I know you throw all kinds of things at me why people suffer. That’s why they suffer. They suffer because things are not the way they want to be, and they are, don’t suffer as much when things are the way they want to be. Well, what’s wrong with that?
It means you are going to suffer your whole life because things are not gonna be the way you wanna be. Sometimes lots of times. Pretty much almost all the time because you have layers of your being. You know that. So one layer is just a surface. Oh, that’s nice music. I like that. The next layer is, why did he leave me 10 years ago?
Maybe I should have done the next layer is, oh my God, I’m so scared. So one layer or another is gonna suffer, right? Just because you get it right now, the way you want it, you know what your mind thinks. How do I keep it this way? What if it changes? I love him so much. What if he leaves me? He says he loves me.
But a lot of people told me they love me throughout my right or wrong. Okay? So if the foundation of your life is the truth. Or at least a relative truth that we started off with, which is I suffer when things are not the way I wanted to be, and I’m okay with things are the way I wanted to be. You’re going to live the following life.
I now am relegated to manipulate, control conjure, okay, to get things to be the way I want, and that creates tension, anxiety, fear. Disappointment. It just does that. Why? ’cause things. Alright, I forgot to ask you, right? I asked you, is it true that you’re okay when things are you want them to be and not okay?
When they’re not without you doing anything? Is the outside world gonna be the way you want it to be all the time. Don’t try to win. Don’t try to conjure, don’t try to manipulate. Don’t try to do anything. Will it unfold in front of you the way you want it to be All the time. And you learned that too, didn’t you?
These are the things you learned. All I told you, I don’t wanna teach you anything. You guys are brilliant. You know everything already. Alright? So now you’re an intelligent people. We’ve now said the following equations, if things are the way I want them to be, I’m okay. If things are not the way I want them to be, I’m not okay and things will not be the way I want them to be.
Unless I do something about it, unless I manipulate to control them, lie, steal, use a gun, use love. I don’t care what it is. Give flowers, right? I have to do things to try to make the world in front of me. Be the way I want it to be, otherwise I’m not. Okay? That’s a terrible life. That’s a terrible life. In fact, the Bible talks about the fall from the garden, and what does it say when you fell from the garden?
You must now work by the sweat of your brow to be okay. That’s what it says because you fell from this garden and you separated yourself from God. Whatever you want to talk about it, you must. Now the words are exactly work by the sweat of your brow. Everybody know anything about that? Everybody worked with the sweat of brow to make things be the way they want all the time.
Okay, so now look, there’s this basic foundation. What comes outta that foundation? Is there a word that you know something about called worry? Do you ever worry? What do you worry about? That it won’t be the way I want it. It will be the way I don’t want. Everything comes out of that. All your mental problems, all your emotional problems, every single thing is developed out of the foundation.
We just said that unless things are the way I want them to be, I’m not okay and they won’t be the way I want ’em to be unless I make ’em be that way. And that’s not easy. Why isn’t that easy? I look deep. You listen to me. Why is that easy? ’cause there’s other people out there, yes or no? Are there other people out there?
Alright. Are they the same as you? Is anyone the same as you? Is anyone ever lived or ever will live the same as you? The answer’s no. Why? Psychology says. You man. They say, man, but you are the summary learn experiences. That’s a very deep truth. You are not. You’re the indwelling consciousness. The awareness of being that’s in there aware that you’re a mess.
Okay? You’re aware, but what you’re looking at. Is your, your psycho, your psyche. That was Freudian, right? Is your psyche. You’re looking at your psyche, right? What are you looking at the sum of your learned experiences? If you learn nothing else from me, we listen to me psychology’s, right? What you’re looking at is the summary of your learned experiences.
Something happens, it leaves an impression on you. You dated a blonde in fifth grade and it was a really nice relationship. You liked blondes. You dated a redhead in seventh grade. Very emotional, but I don’t get along with redheads. You have one experience and it programs you. Have I said the truth or not?
You dated a guy. No. You married a guy named Ben. I’m always picking on Ben. You married a guy named Ben. He turned out to be a real schnuck. He got divorced in three or four years and it was not a good relationship. You are now years later in Germany at some conference and you go to a a gathering, and in the gathering somebody yells out.
Ben. Ben, your heart goes, yes or no. Wow. The sum of your learned experiences is what’s going on in your heart and what’s going on in your mind. You got programmed by the experience that you had. It seems very reasonable, very rational, right? What else do you know other than what you’ve experienced? You read a book, you watched a movie, you met somebody, it rained on your birthday.
I literally had somebody tell me. Once I remember it was in a smaller circle. We small circle on many people and they told me I don’t do well around the holidays. Why no, I, I don’t like Christmas. I don’t like the holidays. What happened to you? Christmas is supposed to be a fun time, an exciting time. Well, they didn’t get the toy they wanted.
Your sister got the toy, or the bike wasn’t the right color. Or the parents had an argument that 15 years ago during Christmas, and now you are carrying inside of you the sum of your learned experiences. So get that straight. That’s a very important thing for you to admit. Your likes, your dislikes, your preference, your hopes, your dreams.
Hopes and dreams. No making. Those are spiritual. I guarantee you. I know what you hope. I don’t even know you. I know what you hope. You hope things will be the way you are. Am I right? That’s so spiritual. What do you dreams? I dream that someday things will be the way I want. Somebody, my ship will come in.
You see, it’s the sum of your learned experiences. That’s why every one of you have different hopes and different dreams and different beliefs and different concepts and views and opinions and preferences because you’ve all had different experiences. No one on their journey through the moment. You go moment through moment through life.
No one. Has had the same experiences, have they? How close? How close Has anyone had the same experiences as you? No one ever. So what is the probability that people will be the way you are? Zero. You can make them sleep on the couch for a week. Don’t you talk to me like that. You know what I like? I have a little mood thing.
I hang on my door. In other words, I know you ain’t gonna be the way I want you to be. So I’m gonna do some manipulation, baby. I make sure you be the way I want you to be. And that is where it comes from. It comes from this basic foundation that says, I’m only okay if things are the way I want. The way I want was programmed by my past experiences.
And don’t you think it’s not? You’re you, you set it for a date. If you go on on a date, you maybe use the web, alright, but you ended up with this date and you’re all excited about it. So you looked up the person, you read the stuff so on, right? And you make sure you trust properly, everything’s right, it’s all gonna be perfect.
And 10 minutes before he comes to pick you up, you receive a phone call from a somebody you knew 10 years ago and they said. You are going out with Frank, Frank Wilson. Do you know who he is? Do you know what he really did? He’s a serial killer, right? Did that change your opinion of that person? The sum of your learned experiences and somebody calls back, there’s before the guy comes in, right?
No, no, after. After you throw him away. Right. Okay. Can phone calls. Oh, that Frank Wilson. Oh no. He’s a wonderful person. I’m asking you how programmable are you? Exactly the same as a computer. Whatever data gets put in, gets processed, and this is how you are and this is what’s going on. So your psyche, your thought processes, your emotional processes are the sum of your learned experiences.
I know you don’t think that you know what you think you’re right. Every single one of you think you’re right. Why? I had a personal experience. I met Ben. I had this accident. I had this situation where I went on a flight and they pulled me off because they were overbooked. How dare. Right? I don’t fly anymore.
Some of your learned experiences, I, oh, you don’t come out here to hear. You wanna hear some nice Godly, oh, I’m so happy. Oh, you talking about joy, you love. Now let’s talk about something real. Let’s talk about why you’re not happy. ’cause that’s how you become happy, but getting rid of why you’re not happy.
You don’t become happy with getting what you want. Why there’s not a single one of you in your entire life that when you got what you wanted, you didn’t want something else. It didn’t take long at all, did it. Of course not. The problem is not outside. The problem is not that you’re not getting what you want.
The problem is inside that something’s wrong with you, that you need things to be a certain way. Okay, we’ll we’ll get there in a minute. Let’s keep going. So what you’ve got is that some of your learned experiences and because you have evidence, you have evidence that Bens are snooks. No, don’t go marry a Ben.
I did that. Once you laugh, you don’t understand. You do think like this. About little things, about big things, about everything. So basically, if you are the sum of your learned experiences and you think you’re right, everybody else is a sum of their learned experiences, and they’re different than yours, so it is not going to be the way you want it to be.
They’re not gonna be, has anyone ever disappointed you? What does that mean? In order for them to disappoint you, you had to appoint them. I appoint you the person who treats me the way I wanna be treated. You signed the marriage license, you said, for better or worse. In other words, I’m appointing you to be the way I think you should be.
Well, then you get disappointed. So basically, if you walk through life, I’m laying this groundwork why you are having so much trouble. I said, life can be easy or life can be a bear. Which is it? You know which it is. Okay? And the reason is because you are saying that this is the sum of my learned experiences.
The world is not. The sum of my learned experiences. Let’s get that down. I’d like to bring science into it. The outside world in front of you. The weather, the atoms, the molecules, the everything. The whole outside world. Is it the sum of your learned experiences? Is the moment in folding in front of you from the physical world, from science, is it the match, the sum of your learning experiences?
No. What does it match the sum of its learned experiences? That’s what science is. It sit and says There are reasons that things are unfolding and you ain’t the reason since every one of you have a different reason. It’s unfolding because of this law, the underlying law called cause and effect. The reason he is sitting there with that blanket the way it is with his head tilted the way it is.
Is because of what happened before, because of the go leaving and his wife said, Hey, you forgot your blanket. Which one? And that’s the one he got given every single thing that’s unfolding in front of you as a result of every single thing that ever happened, it has nothing to do with you. How much has to do with you?
Nothing. Almost nothing. But you think you are the center of the universe. You do as embarrassing as that is, watch. I can’t believe it’s raining. It’s my birthday. How can it be raining on my birthday? This is terrible. You talk like that, it doesn’t know it’s your birthday, and so you come down and you realize in here is the sum of my learned experiences out there is the sum of its learned experiences, including every person.
Are you willing to be humble enough to know that, to admit that, to live that way? I’m meeting you. Okay. Getting to know you, getting to know all about you. Not, here’s my favorite. I told you this one before, right? Standard stuff. You’re dating somebody, you got best friends and this, that, and the other thing, and your friend comes up to you and says, Hey, I hear you’re dating Charlie, or, or Jane, how’s it doing?
Right? Ready? It’s a work in process. What does that mean? I’m not dumb. Manipulating and controlling and making it be the way I want it to be. Well, how would it be if he didn’t make it be the way it would be the way he wants it to? I don’t wanna be the way he wants it to be. I didn’t marry you because you knew you.
I married. You should take care of me. So every single thing comes down to you are gonna suffer ’cause it’s not gonna be the way you want it to be. You started off by letting me get away with the statement, you’re okay if it’s the way you want it to be, you’re not okay if it’s not. Guess what guys? It’s not, it is not naturally.
It’ll do it that way. The natural forces of creation are that that person is some of their learning experiences. The outside world, you know, whether this, that, everything right? Is this. Some of its learning experiences in your little cage in here is that some of you don’t experience this, you’re in trouble.
Again, I repeat to you, if it has to be the way you in there want it to be out there, it is not going to be that way. Has anybody ever told you that? No. They don’t tell you that. They tell you how to behave a certain way and attract to yourself what you want. How to make it be the way you want, don’t they?
You have life coaches that teach you how to get it the way you want it to be. Don’t tolerate that. It’s not the way you want it to be. It was meant to be the way you want it to be. Really based on what I just told you, that every single person, some of their learning, oh, I know. They’re right. Every person it was meant to be the way they want it to be.
What’s the probability? None. It can’t possibly farmer wants it to rain. You want it to be sunny and your birthday, there’s no way in the world it could be the way everybody wants it to be. And so all of a sudden, all this stuff that everybody’s busy doing, which is trying to make it be the way want, no wonder there’s war.
No wonder there’s conflict. No wonder why are relationships so difficult. You ready? Take a breath. Relationships are difficult ’cause you are not trying to have a relationship with the other person. You’re trying a relationship with yourself. You want the other person to be the way you want them to be.
You expect the other person, I can’t believe you did that. I’d never thought you would do something like that. I would never do something like that. Here are some of your learned experiences. Of course you wouldn’t do it. They’re the, some of their learned experiences. I guess they did
Tami Simon: it,
Michael Singer: but they shouldn’t have.
Who said? Me? Me. I ain’t the person who decides. Basically, are you hearing me? This is why you’re suffering. This is why life is difficult, because you are taking the sum of your learned experiences, projecting it out onto everybody else and everything else. Like if you ask somebody, why did you do that? You don’t want to hear the answer, you would’ve to sit down for 7,000 hours to hear why they did that, everything that happened in their childhood.
Go talk to Freud. There are reasons that things are the way they are. And the big reason is they aren’t the way you want them to be and they’re not going to be, I always, it’s like, holy, it’s coast of Christmas. I’m gonna play Aunt Santa. Okay. It’s like, what do you mean? I can’t have it be the way I want it to be?
You can’t, but you can be ecstatic. Not having it the way you want it to be. That’s spirituality. Not my will, but thy will be done. You’ve heard that expression, right? What’s that basically saying? There is a creation, and I didn’t make it. I wasn’t even around for very long. It’s been here for, I don’t know, 13.8 billion years, and there’s hundreds of billions of places of stars, and I’m in this little spot, and I want it to be the way I want it to be.
Well, maybe we could say not my will, but thy will. But that’s how everybody’s saying. Everybody’s saying, not thy will, but my will and you’re gonna suffer. It’s okay. It’s sort of like a school that you’ve been sent to, to find out. It should be not my will, but I will. Why? Because that’s what it’s gonna be.
It’s gonna rain when it rains and people are gonna be the way they are. You’re gonna die when you’re die. And you’re born when you’re born. And your parents are your parents. You understand that it ain’t got squat to do with you, but you built this thing inside your little cage that says it’s all about me, and that’s all that matters.
So we’re talking about relationships. People have troubled relationships. Of course they do. ’cause I’m telling you. You are trying to have a relationship with yourself, you’re basically saying, I know how I want it to be. Alright. You know those websites you go to to pick a date? By the way, when I talk to you like this, just forget it.
When you walk out the door, just forget everything I said, just do it your way. Okay? But in here we’re talking. Alright? So you go to those websites, you fill it out, it asks you questions. Do you like tall people or short people? What religion do you prefer? What kind of food do you like eating? Are you vegan?
Don’t they ask questions? Right? Do you like redheads? What color eyes do you really prefer? Do you like somebody who’s strong or somebody who’s really giving someone? How old do you want someone to be? Right? You ask all these questions, right? Listen to me. You just described yourself. You didn’t describe another person.
You said what you want. You said what? You would match the sum of your learned experiences, or maybe you purposely filled out the way you didn’t wanna meet the person. You filled out what you think will make you be okay. That person has nothing to do with that. They didn’t have the experience. You, you see one experience.
Oh, they like dogs. Oh. But I like them. Gimme a break. They had entire life experiences. Big deal. They had a cocker spaniel when they were little. Right. It is not having it with anything. Have you found that out yet, that people don’t turn out to be the way you thought they were gonna be? Of course they don’t.
Because it’s the way you thought they were gonna be. I tell you, you might as well just marry yourself. That’s what you tried to do. I thought you’d be more like me, but what about if I go to work and I have a bad day? Then I suppose that you should be in a bad mood when you come home. How can you be in a good mood?
I had a bad day. You. That’s, you literally talk like that, right? You wanna have a nice relationship. It works like this. Hi, nice to meet you. I’m gonna get to know what you’re like and it’s gonna be fun. I already know me. It’s boring. I like to get to know somebody else just. Lay on me. Be yourself. Be open.
But you don’t do that, do you? Not a chance in the world because you’re only okay when it’s the way you want. And that includes your spouse and your, how about your children? Are they always the way you want? Everybody always, kids always behave the way you want them to behave and say what they want to say and do what they kind of do, right?
They’re the, some of their learning experiences too. So every single thing comes down to this. If you want to have a beautiful life, you have to stop doing that. Christ said it. He did. He said, you must die to be reborn. What does that mean? Die of the personal self, die of the psyche. Die of the ego. Die of this thing that got built in there and programmed in there.
And you say, I, me, mine is what I like. This is what I want and this, and because then you go out there and I’ll tell you, you’re gonna fight your entire life. It’s gonna be tough. So now let’s go to a nicer side. Is there another way to live? Yeah, there is. And by the way, this is spirituality. Everything else is how to try to get what you want.
That’s what everybody’s teaching you. Everyone’s trying to teach you that, how to try to get what you want. Okay? So you can be okay. Spirituality says the following. Are you in there? Yep, I’m in here. Have you noticed you’re a mess? Yep. I know. I’m a mess. Can it get worse? Yep. Can it get better? Once in a while.
And then you’re gonna see that you have these urges and tendencies that push you to try to get it the way you want. You just try all the time. You’re just trying. It’s a natural thing. What if you think it’s not gonna be the way you want? Now I’m gonna talk about your emotions. Where do they come from?
Fear, not physical, not, you know, a lion jump saying that’s a different kind of fear, but psychological fear is all about, I have a way that I decided it needs to be, and I’m afraid it’s not gonna be that way, aren’t I? I’m pregnant, let’s get real. I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a baby. Lots of people have had babies.
For a very long time, haven’t they? Okay, but I’m worried about my baby. Will the baby be whole? Will the baby be missing a finger? Will the baby be bright, smart? What a mess can you make of yourself. It’s not your baby. You make it. Make an eyeball. Make me one, make a liver, make a kidney, make a spleen. Did you make the baby?
You didn’t make the baby? Baby made itself. God made the baby universe made the baby. It was a miracle. But you say my baby, he’s not even born yet, right? It’s mine. That hope is perfect, whatever that means. So you can create hell for yourself, can’t you? By thinking like this, by saying, I am it, man, that’s what matters, as opposed to, wow, there’s a miracle happening inside of me.
Somehow a single cell knows how to put itself together into a baby. The DNA little molecules, the collection of molecules has the intelligence of knowing how to divide and split and make every single part of a body well. You’re just eating Twinkies and drinking Coke. It would still make it outta that stuff.
It knows how to do it. It’s quite the chemist. Are you listening to me? This concept of I, me and mine? It’s a problem. Well, ’cause it’s not the truth. You are not in charge of the weather. I don’t want it to rain today. I’m so sorry. It has nothing to do with you. And if you let yourself think like that, if you allow yourself to build an ego like that, that says I matter.
Uh oh, what did he say? I matter. You do not matter. What’s the matter with you? Get off the planet for a moment. There’s 8.3 billion people running around on that planet. But you matter, right? Okay, now go back further. You can’t even see the planet. You would never find it again. There’s 300 billion stars.
You are one tiny planet spinning around one of those 300 billion stars. And the number I’d like you to know, 1.3 million earth fit inside the sun, but you matter. You have to sit there and say, of course it don’t matter. I just here. I’m here. I don’t know how I got here. Well, I’m just here. I’m a conscious being inside that has a completely messed up psyche that made up how it wants things to be, as if it’s, God, okay, this is how it’s supposed to be.
No, it’s not how it’s supposed to be. How’s it supposed to be the way it is? You ever heard of the dao? It’s called The Way. That what it translates to the way, which way? The way it is. Ever hear the zen teaching? Go to a zen master, great zen master. The disciple comes bows down to the great zen master and the master says, flowers are red, grass is green, water’s blue.
What kind of teaching is that? The truth things are what they are. So you start understanding spirituality is about saying. I don’t get to decide the weather. It’s never worked my whole life, right? And so you sit there and say, why am I doing that? Why don’t I just enjoy the rain? Why don’t I light the rain on my birthday in India, right?
Not in the heavy rains, but gentle rains are considered a blessing. They’re God’s grace that the gentle rain would fall on your birthday. That’s considered a blessing. The world can’t be any way you want. But you can be any way you want and you can always be happy and you can always be filled with love.
Listen to me. And you can always feel shock, DeJoy, welling up inside of you, but not if you’re doing this stupid thing that we do, which is saying, I can only be happy if you do this. You do this and everyone does this and work does this. And I get paid. So say, and nobody parks on my parking spot and nobody scratches my car.
And whoa, I got quite a list. How many things can go wrong? Come. How many things can go wrong? Holy mackerel. Well, better start worrying. The problem is not the outside world. It is the result of all the things that cause it to be. We said that that’s how everything is, including people. They’re the result of the experiences they had.
Okay, go blame them. You might as well blame you. They had those experiences. Aren’t these Christ teachings? Let you who’s without sin, throw the first stone. Forgive them. Lord. They know not what they do. Acceptance is not something you do. It’s something should be natural. How do you not accept reality? I don’t accept what you did.
Well then you’re in trouble ’cause it happened. I teach you this all the time. There’s not anything that ever happened that you can make not have happened. So what’s the purpose of not liking it? What’s the person getting upset about it? What’s the purpose of getting weird because something happened. This is called acceptance and surrender.
The essence of spiritual teachings. And you all misunderstand ’cause they right me. Right? Acceptance doesn’t mean that everything that happened outside is the way you want it to be. Just accept it. No. Acceptance is an inner state that I know I am not, and I know this by the way. I hold these truths to be right.
You gotta sell this declaration. Here’s the declaration. I know that I’m not in charge. And boy, when I figured that out, life got a lot nicer. You know why I’m not in charge? ’cause I’m not. You like that? I’m getting older. Maybe you’ve noticed. Right. Either that’s okay or it’s not. I used to be a hippie with a whole lot of hair.
I’d have the relics still left, right. The remnants. Is that okay? Yes. I almost thought one day I’ll give a talk. I’m getting old. You better love getting old. It’s a wonderful thing. How dare you think? You wanna keep looking the same as you look when you were 22 and ’cause you’re not going to, so you better love every moment of what you look like as the natural process of aging takes place.
They say. First thing that goes is people’s names. I’ve kind of noticed that. Alright, I’m sorry. Noticed that. All right. What’s wrong with that? Because if I have to say I don’t remember your name, I get embarrassed. There’s natural processes that are happening. Can you accept that? That’s what acceptance means.
Doesn’t mean you want it to happen, doesn’t mean you don’t know anything about it. So of course you go to a doctor, you start a healthy, you deal with things properly, right? But not because you’re afraid that it won’t be the way you want it to be. Well, I guess it won’t be the way you want it to be. You could have some illness tomorrow.
You don’t know. The question is, is that okay with you? Oh, I’m talking tough to you. Is it okay with you why? It better be otherwise you’re not okay. You’re not, not okay. ’cause you had an illness, you’re not okay. ’cause you didn’t accept the illness. You didn’t honor it. You didn’t respect it, you didn’t play with it.
You didn’t do the best you can to work with it. You didn’t learn about it. You do what you can to keep the body healthy. That’s your responsibilities. Not even your body. There’s 35 trillion living cells making up what you call your body. It’s not your body, alright? You do nothing to maintain it or sustain it to anything.
You shut some food in the hole in your face. You used secrete the stomach acid. Did you do the liver, the bile? Did you do all these things? Huh? You split. Hey, the cells divide. You know that. You divide ’em and making sure they’re all stay well and you’re not doing anything. I’m sorry. I like talking to you like this.
Why? Because that’s why you suffer. ’cause you’re not listening. Is it true you’re not doing anything? Is it true that the best most you do is take food? Decide what’s gonna be, shove it in your mouth. All right. And something happens and it comes out the other end. In between. A lot goes on. Right. Go to medical school, figure out how that happens and how the corpus of the blood carry the protein and the energy to all the cells and they feed.
Right? I, I told you once I, I’m get into details, but I was studying something for a talk I was gonna give, and it was a business talk, by the way, a CEO of the company. I was give, talk to all the salespeople in top management, and I ran into a word. That I had never into before. It’s called apoptosis.
Apoptosis. I’m probably not pronouncing it properly. Maybe medical people can tell me, apoptosis, what is it? A cell, one of those cells of those 25, 30 5 trillion cells in your body if it determines on its own. It’s alive, the cell is alive. You understand that? Okay, it’s a living thing. If it determines that it can’t participate fully in the organism that it’s part of the liver, the kidney’s on it willingly drops out and leaves room for another cell to come in.
Say thank you lately. That’s why the apoptosis says, look it up. The fact that the cell will die purposely, willingly drop out so that the organism as a whole, your, the gift of your body can be healthier. You don’t even think about it. All you think about is yourself. All. You think about, what do I want?
What do I need? That’s because you’ve been programmed that way. Spirituality is to die, to be reborn. You are willing to stop being that’s. Ignorant person that thinks that the some of your learned experiences have meaning, they don’t have meaning. If you had looked to the left once, you wouldn’t have had the same experience.
You’d be a totally different person. What if somebody’s in a really bad mood, a friend of yours, and they sit there and say, I don’t like you at all anymore, but you didn’t hear ’em. You were thinking something else and they didn’t mean it. They just said it. All of a sudden, you’re not hurt. All of a sudden you’re not having a problem.
All a sudden you don’t resent the person forever. ’cause I heard what you said. That’s how tenuous this summary learned. Can anybody hear me? How silly it is to sit there and say there’s 800 billion zillion quill things going on at the same time you’re experiencing one. Somehow that one matters, doesn’t it?
More than every other one. It does not. Every single experience, everything, every event that’s taking place in the entire world, entire universe, is an event that’s taking place in the universe. Why? ’cause it happened to happen in front of you. Oh, make a big deal out of it. It’s more important than what happened to you.
Lemme tell you what happened to me is bigger than what happened to you. Stop it. That’s ego and that’s what it means to die, to be reborn, to die of personal self. Well then what’s left you, you, the consciousness. You all meditate and do all kinds of things and will twist yourself to try and experience consciousness.
You are consciousness. That’s what you are. That’s what’s in there is consciousness, but it’s busy. Looking at the stuff that you built throughout your life. You held onto, you, held onto everything that ever bothered you. Look at me. You held onto everything that ever bothered you. It was an event in the universe, not to you.
This one’s staying in here so it can suffer and bother me for the rest of my life. Paul Freud, that’s a suppression. Repression is stuff that you held onto instead of letting go of, and then you built this mess inside yourself. And you have all these hopes and dreams and preferences and concepts and views and beliefs and all kinds of stuff, and we started off by saying, if the world happens to match, you’re doing fine.
If it doesn’t and it doesn’t, you struggle. You’re suffering, you have tension, anxiety. What is anxiety? It might not be the way I want. It might be the way I don’t want. There are people that are so anxious they won’t go outside. You don’t understand how dangerous it’s out there. There’s, there’s, there’s, there’s people out there.
You don’t know what they’re, there are people that won’t drive. I think there’s so much fun. I like to do this to you. Do you understand how dangerous to drive on the road? There’s alcoholics, there’s crazy people. There’s people just fall with their wife and they’re fighting with the kids in the car, and they’re driving 67 miles an hour down the expressway.
You take your life in your hands every single time you get behind the wheel. But you don’t think like that. If you did, you wouldn’t drive. Do you understand what a mesh you can make of yourself? And so you wake up, you wake up, and you say, the problem is not what’s happening out there. It’s that I can’t handle it when it comes in, when it comes into me.
I have all these concepts and views and preferences and likes and dislikes and all that stuff. And when it hits those, it doesn’t match, and I suffer. Then I have to go out and fight with everybody to try and make it be the way I want. Spirituality is different as as follows, starting position. It is what it is.
There was a great master, very great master that his, his saying was always be as it may be, as it may, Robert Christ used to say, helter skeletal company. Just bring it on the world. Is running itself is the combination of all the forces at every moment that are causing things to be the way they are. Are you okay with that 1, 2, 3?
No, but it is that way. Can you work with yourself inside to start to say, I am open to reality. Reality wins if it happened. It happened. It’s not gonna not have happened. The question is, can I handle it when it comes in? Am I okay in here? I was this way a moment ago. You said this. Now what’s it like inside?
’cause to a spiritual being, it’s fine, but you don’t understand what he said. What did he say? Little vibrations pass through space. I told you if you don’t, like somebody said there’s a little dial in there. They’re really not. Don’t try a little dial in there. It’s called a language translation dial, and it speaks every single language that that planet Earth ever had.
So somebody says something you don’t like, turn the dial so you don’t understand what they said. It’s easy. That’s what they said. It was just words passing through space. But now when they hit you, why? ’cause you did something inside yourself to say, those little vibrations passing through space are gonna make me suffer.
Spirituality is when you sit there and say, I got some work to do. I got some serious work to do. It’s on me. I’m causing every problem. Well guess I can’t accept reality. Well, what I do about it, learn to accept reality. How, how can I do that? It’s not me. I’m not being true to myself. We’re not being true to the self.
May maybe being true to that thing that you built in there. You hear me? And so you start to catch on that. If I wanna have a beautiful life, they can’t be that way. I’m gonna get old. Some people don’t wanna die. I literally, that’s my favorite. I don’t wanna die. Okay. That is a good thing about you gonna suffer for sure because you’re gonna die.
How do you know? Well, I don’t know. I took a survey once of every single thing that ever lived. And what was the correlation? Coefficient, right? It was one that thing matched. Perfect, right? You are going to die, but you’re afraid of dying. Do you see how many problems you create with that psyche? And so you sit there and say, I need to do something about this.
And what I’m gonna do about it is learn to honor and respect reality. How it was, how it is, and how it will be. Does that mean I can’t affect it? Of course you can affect it, but the question, what’s your motive when you’re trying to affect it? If your motive is, I want it to be the way I want, or I’ll suffer, you’re gonna suffer.
If your motive is. I am here. Not for me. I’m nothing. I’m nothing. I’m here today, gone tomorrow. How long has your earth been here? 4.5 billion years. 4.5 billion years. How long are you gonna be here? 70, 80, 90. Like nothing. Nothing. How dare you make such a big deal outta yourself? It’s nothing. And so you say, okay, when Rams before Ramdas left, he said, becoming nobody.
Now you understand spirituality don’t make such a big deal outta some stupid little thing that made this all up and had these experiences, and so you sit there and say, okay, I’m not here to make it be the way I want. I’m here to help, not help it be the way I want. The word is service. There are gonna be moments unfolding in front of me.
It’s not whether I like them or not. Is there anything I can do to help? Made me cry. Not help me, not help it be the way I want. Can I raise the energy? Can I and smile or say a word or reach a hand in something? Is there something that’s selflessly not based on me and my problems and what I want and what I don’t want?
That’s not what selfless is. Selfless is I’m done with me. I’ve become nobody and I’m not proud of being nobody. That’s, that’s not nobody. You just, I’m in here. Here. Reality. I’m in here. You in there? How do you know I’m in here? Okay. How about we just be in there? That’s becoming established in the seat of self.
Now it brings some spiritual words into you. I’m in here and I’m experiencing things. Can I be okay with that? Let’s say somebody dies that you love a whole lot. Been married for many, many years, okay? To be okay does not mean you don’t feel lost. To be okay means I’m in here. An experience of reality took place out there.
It came in and it brought about a totally natural human reaction of loss, of sorrow, of sadness. Is that okay with you? That’s the point. Is it okay with you that it came in and you, the self, the Oman. The consciousness is experiencing what you’re experiencing, or are you resisting it? Are you fighting it?
Do you not like it? 10 years later, are you still, whoa, whoa, he died 10 years ago, or did you get on with your life? Did you process it and handle it? And yes, it was tremendous pain and it was beautiful. It was beautiful. Music’s beautiful. All kinds of types of music, including the funeral march. It can be beautiful in and of itself.
It’s yin and yang. There’s high and low, there’s dark and light, there’s everything. Are you okay with that? There’s everything. When you’re seated in the seat of self, you’ve pulled back, you dropped. Right Now you’re staring at this psyche. It’s a mess. Let it go. Not suppress it, just let it, I don’t need it.
I don’t need it. I don’t need it. Telling me what it wants and what it doesn’t want. I’d rather accept an honor and respect reality. It’s much more fun and you, I’ll tell you in a minute, there are ways to work with your psyche so it thins out so it’s easier to live with. So you are in. And you’re experiencing what you’re experiencing, but you’re not suppressing it.
You’re not expressing and telling everybody and carrying on like a maniac. Oh my God, you don’t know what happened. Alright. It’s just sort of like you’re experiencing it, it’s coming in, it’s passing through, it will pass through. People can be perfectly healthy after somebody dies, but you give it time.
You give it time to pass through and, and the Jewish tradition, I think it’s seven days, somebody told me they, they sit Shiva. Of course, Shiva, and that that’s the tradition is that yes, somebody died, you’re going to have these emotional problems and so you literally stay at home, put to the time friends come, whatever it is, to where you process that and then you can be healthy.
You can be whole. You weren’t meant to never get married again or never be happy again or. Right. That’s ’cause you’re suppressing these emotions. When the things come up and you don’t like them, you push them away and then you build this garbage inside yourself so you can accept life. You can honor and respect life.
And I said, ultimately what you’re doing is serving instead of taking, you’re just serving. You’re just there to serve. Have no other purpose to life. There’s nothing. I’m here as long as I’m here. I’ll be glad when I’m gone, be happy to be gone, be fine because I’m, I can’t die. You in there can’t die. You can be afraid of dying, but that’s just your stuff.
All right? But the consciousness does not die, period. And so you get to a point where you’re whole and complete within yourself and you’re not getting high because of what’s happening outside. You’re getting high because you are high inside you back there. The self are an ecstasy all the time. You’re such an ananda, eternal conscious joy.
That’s the nature of self. The problem is that we pushed all this garbage down that we couldn’t handle, and now it keeps coming back up and we keep having to live our lives to match the garbage that we stored in there. Can you relate to what I’m telling you? So spirituality’s, look how nice talk we had.
Spirituality is something that says it’s, it’s, it’s not spiritual bypassing. They like that word nowadays, right? It’s not anything like that. Spirituality is as follows. There’s the ground where you are right now. If you get what you want, you’re okay. If you don’t get what you want, you suffer. Okay? That’s reality.
Don’t ignore it. Doesn’t have to be that way. Who decided what you want? You did well then why don’t you decide you like it? Why don’t you sit there and say, I like the rain. It’s fun. I like getting wet. I take showers in the morning. It’s the same as a shower in the afternoon. Okay, that’s the technique.
Positive affirmation, you know about that. Do it. Car in front of you’s driving 15 miles an hour, slower than you want to, and you’re in a rush. Have fun. How can I have fun? By having fun, by saying, that’s my grandma. She’s the last few years of her life that she can drive independently. Why don’t I tailgate her and be at her?
No grandma, it’s okay. And you feel love instead of anxiety. You do that with everything. Everything. You start working on the inside instead of using your will to control and manipulate everything outside to be the way your messed up inside wants it to be. ’cause that doesn’t work. This does work. And more and more as you raise yourself inside, how by honoring and respecting reality, reality wins.
I’m sorry, reality wins. Why? Because you can’t undo it. So you either accept it or you don’t. And if you don’t accept it, you suppress it. You resist it, you do all kinds of stuff, and you become a nervous, anxious mess. If you learn to honor it and respect it and accept it, doesn’t mean you like it. Things can happen that you really, really don’t like.
Is that okay with you? Yeah. Better be. Why? Because I have a choice. Suffer. Or honor and respect. I’m telling you, once something has happened and it came into you, the fact that it came into you means it already happened. If you resist it, you’re in trouble. That’s a suppression, repression denial is so you just get down to understanding.
You have a choice. Either you build a life full of suffering. You build a life full of joy and service and honoring and respect and so on. If you do that, you’ll feel joy as. You will feel this Shakti pouring up inside of you all the time. Just wave a hand to pouring up inside of you because you unblocked her.
She’s blocked with all the stuff you blocked inside of you. What’d you block inside of you? Everything you couldn’t honor and respect from your past. You shoved down and made a garbage can in there. And so now, and it reminds you of it and it is close to it. You just get weird. And then what you do when you’re weird is you express yourself and then there’s more weirdness.
And now I got 8.3 billion weirdos running around instead of saying, wow, I was born on the nicest planet than anyone ever found Hubble’s out there. James loves out there. Rovers are out there. They ain’t found squad. They didn’t find a roach, they didn’t find nothing. And you’re on a planet with all these people and things and things to do and exciting and colors and just like going to camp for a few years.
You wanna do computers, you wanna do business, you wanna do this, whatever you wanna do, you’re just here on the planet. Have a good time. I can’t, why things aren’t the way I want. Things happened in the past that bothered me. That’s why I can’t have a good time. Well, how about we work with that? I want you to have a good time.
It’s a real blessing to be born. It’s a blessing to be born on planet Earth. You know, it’s the greatest blessing. The great masters taught this. Only when you’ve reached human birth. Are you capable of enlightenment? I. Whoa. What does that mean? It means liberation. It means you’re in there and you can let go of yourself and merge back into the whole universe.
That’s where the great ones went, and you’re capable of that. Wow. And I must stay you. You must be a very great theme that you’re capable of that state of consciousness. Christ said, my father and I are one. That’s what he’s talking about. Well, you are also. So what are you doing with your life other than suffering?
Other than struggling? There is no struggle. There is no suffering. It is something you’ve done inside yourself. Right? Very good. Thank you for listening. You’re a great being. You’re a great being. The fact that you’re conscious in there means you are the self and you’re capable of liberation.
Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to the Michael Singer podcast produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael’s body of work and all back episodes, please join us at michaelsingerpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds true. Waking up the world.
