E151: Living Untethered—The New Year as a Doorway to Freedom

Michael Singer:  Jai guru dev, jai masters. Well, we’re approaching another artificial point where we say we’ve circled the sun. I wonder who decided where that point is. In any event, always the end of the year you take inventory. I took a trip, a lap around a star, a very big star. No, one of 300 billion. One of 300 billion in your galaxy and there’s trillions of galaxies.

How’d you do this year? What did you do this year? What’s your polestar? What do you want with your life? What’s life about? You? Step back. That’s the whole key. Otherwise, you get lost. You get lost in your desires and your fears and your concepts and views and preferences and hopes and dreams. Why is it getting lost?

’cause they’re all about you. What you want, what you like, what you don’t like. How do you get it the way you want? How to keep it from being the way you don’t want this constant struggle of life. If you’re doing good at it, you’re still struggling. People have midlife crises. People are afraid to die.

People are funny. So. How does one step back really, which you should do quite regularly, doesn’t mean you don’t live life. It’s in front of you. You interact with it. You don’t renounce and go off somewheres. You just understand that I’m on of tiny little planets, bare middle of nowhere. Why? Because it’s true.

And if you never think that, you’re missing the whole meaning of this thing because the planet I told you, 1.3 million earth fit inside the sun. You are how big on that little planet and you think you’re important. That’s a starting position for having a meaningful life. Put it in perspective, why Life doesn’t just include what’s in front of you.

It includes everything that’s not in front of you, includes everything that’s everywhere. It’s a whole universe, and yes, you’re a little spot on one’s tiny little planet. Why would not think like that? If you don’t think like that, then you think you’re important. There’s 8.3 billion of you here, and they’re all going through what they’re going through.

Why are you important and you’re not gonna be here very long. What, 70, 80, 90 years plan’s been here for 1.4 billion years. So putting into perspective, you can’t know the meaning of your life if you don’t understand life. Life is everything. Life is everything that’s going on Everywhere’s at all times, ever was ever will be.

It’s just a universe of eternity and infinity and every single place you go on in Einstein’s time, space, continuum, there’s something going on. Why is what’s going on in front of you more important than what’s going on? Absolutely everywhere’s. Well, spiritual awakening doesn’t just mean meditating deep or doing some practices.

It means realizing that’s the truth. It’s the truth. I’m in here, but so is everybody else, and so is everybody that was born and so is everybody that died. It’s just like it’s really, really big, but we make it so small. We make it so minuscule finite, right? Why? Because as we go through different experiences in our lives.

Our consciousness, our awareness of being, which is inside receives the messages we experience, the experiences we’re having, and some of them are more pleasant than others, and some of them are much less pleasant than others. Human beings have developed the habit very deeply ingrained addiction of wanting the things that made them feel good to happen again.

And not wanting make things that made them feel bad to happen again. And then they struggle. You struggle to make sure that what you don’t like doesn’t happen again and or even anything that’s close to it. ’cause we extrapolate, alright. And we try to go out of our way to try and make things be the way so that when they come in, they make us do feel good.

And this life is programming you. It’s just like being programmed. You don’t need a keyboard or voice recognition. Your senses do it. It comes into the five senses and you experience it and some of the stuff you store. You have traumatic experiences. You have difficult experiences. You have beautiful experiences, but you don’t worry about the white lines in a row.

You don’t worry about the trees you’re driving by. You don’t worry about the clouds in the sky. They’re all part of life also, but you only hold onto that, which made a big impression on you. And generally that’s what was really positive. When it came in, you felt very positive, or it came in, you felt very negative.

And unfortunately, if you don’t believe me, check it out for a day. Almost everything. That comes in is negative. The weather, what a person said, what a person’s wearing, a person’s treating you, what you think a person might treat you in the future. They didn’t get the corner office. It’s like there a lot of stuff going on in there.

A lot of things can not be the way you want them to be. And sometimes there are things the way you want them to be. But clue in. I’ve asked you this before, have you ever had an experience in your life? That when it came in and you experienced it, you said it touched you to the depth of your being. It was the most beautiful experience you ever had.

You felt like you were in the presence of God. An intimate relationship can do it. The sunset can do it. Music can sometimes do it, touch you to the depth of your being. What does that mean? It came in and went all the way through and touched the self. Touch your consciousness, touch where you live, your awareness.

The end user that which is in there. It doesn’t usually do that. It has a very rare experience. You can probably count those on one hand that have actually touched you that deeply that you didn’t even wanna come back, ever gone so deep inside that you don’t wanna come back. Okay. That’s beautiful. I’m glad.

Alright. The trouble is, let’s watch that. The minute you have an experience like that, you wanna have it again, but it’s not gonna happen again. ’cause the same experience can’t happen again. ’cause every moment’s new, every moment’s changing. So you are looking to see, he’s not treating me the way he did. He is not gonna feel the same.

When he said, I love you, it really didn’t feel the same and I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s because you held onto. That beautiful experience and you’re in trouble. That’s called the positives from scar versus the negatives from scar. People often ask me, what’s wrong with positives from scarves?

Nothing. I want you to have tons of them. I pray for you. I want you to have this person ever live, but you won’t be. Why? Because the highest exp, even the meditation, go have a deep meditation. It’ll screw you up for the rest of your life. No, I’m not kidding, because you wanna have it again, if it’s just some spontaneous thing that took place, you keep looking for it.

And that’s not just a meditation. That goes for relationships, that goes for work, that goes for money, goes for everything. If you have a deep experience, of course you wanna have it again, but the situations can’t happen again. Especially by the way. You are not so open that you’re willing to have these deep experiences.

If you all of a sudden feel tremendous love, you say, watch it. Watch it. I’ve got hurt before you slow it down. That means it didn’t come all the way in your ego and your programming and your mind and your heart held it back, so it’s rare that it blows you away. We’re talking about the meaning of life. I want every single thing you do to touch the depth of your being that’s called be here.

Now, it doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. It means every single thing you do goes all the way back there with no interference to where you’re living in ecstasy all the time, and so every single thing you do is not out of need or want or struggle to make it happen or not happen. It’s just added the complete inspiration of expressing the depth of your being.

Onto this plane. Every person you meet, everything you do, every work you do, we’ll get that over with. That’s what it means to be whole. That’s what it means to be integrated. It means to be a great being. That’s what enlightened masters are. It comes in, somebody wants Ask Rama Krishna, one of the great enlightened masters.

Doesn’t enlighten master ever feel anger? The answer was yes, he said, but it’s like riding on water. How long does it last? The moment your finger goes through it, nobody can read it. It just passes through. Fine. Somebody said something that made you feel anger. Fine, here it comes. Here it goes. That’s the high state, not I will never feel anger anger’s a natural feeling.

Love. Different human feelings are natural human feelings, but you don’t, it’s stuck. You don’t hold onto them. You welcome them. They come in, they pass through. In a sense they’re beautiful, but you’ll find out at some point by, we had a very beautiful. Very, very high Yogi, uh, ma Yo Shakti, the one who gave us the durga statue back in the seventies.

Very quiet, very, very sincere. Yo Guine, very sincere. One of the highest people we’ve met. She used to visit us at least once, twice a year. She passed some time ago. She didn’t talk about her personal self at all. She’s how this Azis are, but she once leaned over to me and she said. Mickey. I say, yes, mother.

He says, don’t you just love when they yell at you? There’s so much energy. When her disciples or everybody yelled at her, she felt all this shock, the all this energy, and she got high. She got blown away. That’s what Robert Chris is talking about. It’s energy. It’s just all energy. If you block it, then it’s disturb energy and it will bother you.

For you saying that, what’s a traumatic experience, an experience that came in that you didn’t wanna experience? There’s no way that’s coming in any further. And you either suppress it or repress it or deny it, whatever, and you get totally stuck in that stuff. Alright? And then you sit there and say, well, anybody would, you’re not understanding.

Things happen, don’t they? Hope they don’t happen again. You can do things if really there’s a possibility that somebody robbed you and they gonna rob you again, defend yourself, or somebody punches you, defend yourself. But if you were five years old and your parents got divorced, you didn’t like your stepfather, and you’re 53 now, gimme a break.

You may think that’s normal. That’s not normal. That means it’s normal for a human, but it’s not normal behavior. Why store inside of you something that will never happen again? And what you’ve chosen to do, not voluntarily it’s reaction. What you’ve chosen to do is take the worst experiences in your life, throughout your life and store them inside of you.

That’s what Freud meant by suppression. Is it not? I don’t wanna feel this. Well, but you did feel it. I don’t wanna, that’s my favorite sentence in the whole world. I do not want to have had this experience. Okay, well you’re in trouble ’cause you had the experience. What you really mean is, I don’t wanna feel what it feels like to have had that experience.

And so you suppress it, you hold it inside of you. But if you hold everything that ever bothered you inside of you, I’m telling you, you’re gonna be bothered. Now you have to try to not be bothered. You have to try to make things be the way you want so you don’t have to deal with that garbage just stored inside.

We’re talking about the meaning of life here. I’m asking you to take a step back and see what’s going on in there. ’cause you made a mess in there. Did you or not? No, my mother did it. Your mother did not do it. Your mother’s outside. You’re the only one inside. Nobody else lives inside but you. So if it’s a mess in there, I’m sorry to tell you.

You did it. You didn’t have to do it. There are people whose parents got divorced and they had a wonderful time. They didn’t like their stepfather, so they drew pictures of a devil and had fun with their business, but they didn’t keep it inside so that every time you mention his name or anything happens, this stuff comes up inside and you have to watch it and not you know who your friends are, the people that don’t touch your stuff.

Your enemies are the people that touch your stuff. I don’t wanna hang out with him. I don’t feel good. That’s because you don’t feel good inside. Mother Theresa used to go and work with the lepers. Could have been much fun. She loved it. She ran to do it. It was not a sense of selfless service. She never thought like that.

Everything is beautiful. Everything’s beautiful. It’s not all the way you want it to be. It’s not all comfortable. It’s just life. It’s life. It’s life. And it’s gonna be life. You’re not gonna stop it. No one has ever stopped it. People who tried Hitler, Gunas Khan, they destroyed the world by trying to stop life from being what’s natural, what it is.

So you have to watch inside yourself and say, what is the motivation for the day I live today? What is the motivation for the day? I’m gonna live tomorrow? Or when I wake up in the morning? Why am I here? You are not here to get what you want. Because you don’t even know what you want. If I made you list, list five things and God’s gonna come down and bless you with those things, okay?

Oh, I want a wife, I want money. I want to travel. I want to do things. I want bucket list. Go on, make a list. You made that 10 years ago. Come back and look at it. 10 years later is not going to be the same. Why? ’cause you had new experiences and all this stuff. About what your preferences are, what you like, what you don’t like, are all programmed based on your past experiences.

Can you like somebody and love them to pieces and have them do one thing and everyone look at ’em again? Answer me. Can you close down? What did it take? Somebody walked up to you, said you, you like him. Are you kidding me? Do you know what he did to that? My friend, oh my God, you better talk to her. He destroyed you.

You don’t wanna see him? Yes or no? How fickle, how quick is it wrong? No. Psychology says, you are the sum of your learned experiences. You’re not. You’re the consciousness, the indwelling awareness that is aware that your mind and your heart are the sum of your learned experiences. Your psyche is the sum of your learned experiences.

You’re not, let me ask you a question. When you have trouble inside of your aware, are you aware you have trouble? Do you ever say, I’m having a bad mind day? Do you ever say, oh my God, I’m so upset I can’t handle it. How do you know? How do you know you’re upset? How do you know if somebody breaks your heart?

You go into a therapist, oh my God, my heart is broken. It hurts so much, but the therapist should say, if you had a guru for your therapist, you say, very good. Very good. Okay. How do you know? How do I know what? How do you know your horrors? That’s a serious question. That’s a way deeper question than why your heart hurts.

How do you know there’s a subject object thing there? There’s you saying, my as possessive, my heart hurts. Who? Who’s the my. It’s something you’re looking at, something you’re aware of, you’re inside the aware being that sees what’s going on in there. The trouble is you get lost in it, so you don’t ask who sees.

That’s interesting. Who sees anger? Who sees love? Who sees fear? Who sees anxiety? Who sees stress? Oh my God, I’m so stressed out. How do you know? Eventually if I ask that question, you go look at me and say, because I’m in here stupid. Who’s in there? Who’s noticing these things? That’s the indwelling being.

That’s what you mean by the self, the consciousness. The awareness of being. It’s the awareness of being. Were you in there yesterday? Were you in there five years ago? How do you know? ’cause I was in here experiencing things. It’s not about your memory, it’s about you experiencing So. If what you do is when you have experiences instead of honoring and respecting the experience, why?

’cause it happened. I’m sorry. Reality wins. Why? ’cause nobody has ever undone what already happened. You try to compensate for it. You try to make them say, I’m sorry, nobody had to say, I’m sorry if they didn’t hear what you said. So you’re in there trying to protect yourself. From what already happened.

You’re rationalizing, you’re judging, you’re running away, running too, whatever the heck it is. But that’s very busy. It’s very busy in there. And people say, but I have goals. Someday you’ll be so awake that the moment in front of you is your goal. The moment in front of you is, so, it’d be sort of like, let’s say you really love somebody tremendously.

You hadn’t seen ’em for a long time, and all of a sudden there they are. Surprises you. They came back from Europe and there they are standing in front of you and your heart just burst open. What if somebody asked right now, what do you wanna do? Where do you wanna go? You want some ice cream? Leave me alone, right?

I am experiencing the most beautiful moment of my life. There’s nothing I need that is what I needed and everything I was doing by trying to find the right person by traveling. My money by this was to try to have that happen. So here it is happening, and why are you asking me what I need? Nothing. I need to be left alone so I can experience this.

You can feel that every moment of your life about every single thing you’re doing. You’re the highest being. The human being is a very high thing, not the junk they watch that’s not very high, but they’re programmed with, but who’s in there? The great masters have taught you who’s in there is very great, is a great being, but who’s in there?

The consciousness in there, instead of feeling the ecstasy and bliss that’s free to flow inside of you is busy studying and watching your mind with all of his desires and fears and anxieties and stresses and worries. Ever worry. What do you worry about? I worry that what I don’t want to happen might happen and I worry what I want to happen might not happen.

Did I get it? Okay, that’s infinite. It will never stop and it keeps changing. So those things can’t be the meaning of life. The meaning of life is not getting what you want. Why? Because it keeps changing. And plus what? You won’t get it anyways. You’ll always find something wrong with it. We’re gonna get married and let’s have our wedding outside.

I’ve always dreamt an outside wedding, but it rains there right away. Now you’re scared. Can the mind screw you up? And so now I have to go out and make sure it doesn’t rain. Good luck. I can pray. I’ll do mantras. I can do something right? And next thing you know, you’re stressed out, you’re struggling, you’re not enjoying your life.

You may have moments and you may have hope. I like that word, hope. What do you hope other things unfold the way I want. But I hope things won’t be the way you want. Hope is taking your programming and saying, if I can get it the way I want, I will be happy and I hope it will be the way I want so I can be happy.

What are your dreams? That’s very spiritual, right? My dreams. Your dreams are, I hope that someday what I want will happen. You have to wake up way deeper. You’re in there. There’s a reason you don’t be okay in there. I’m not saying you’re freaking out in there. A lot of people are, a lot of the time you know it.

Sometimes underneath it ain’t so comfortable. It’s like sitting on top of a volcano. But you can hold it together. You can make it work. You can get people to be the way you want them to be, and manipulate and control, do all this stuff. Sure, sure. But then you’re suffering, you’re struggling. It’s anxiety.

There is a state inside that is not like that, and it’s your natural state. So what happens is you’ve been programmed with all these experiences. You held onto them and stored them inside of you and made a U out of them. Here I am. This is what I like. This is what I don’t like. This is what I eat. This is what I don’t eat.

This is who I like and who I don’t like. This is what you wear and I like it. And when you wear and I don’t like it, this is how I like you to talk to me. What you’re saying is I’m conditionally okay. If everything outside comes in the way I want it to, I’m doing pretty good, but I worry that it won’t stay.

I worry that it’s ’cause of what I wore. That you fell in love with me, but I can’t keep worrying the same thing. Do you worry about things? That’s why, because things have to be the way you want in order for you to feel any joy, to feel any inspiration. There are people who say, people talk about passion. I wanna have passion for my job.

Okay, well that’s, that’s really wonderful. I want you to have passion about everything. I want you that every single moment you go to work, you can’t wait to get there. And every moment what you’re doing, you can’t wait to do it. And every time you come home, you can’t wait to get home. And every time I go to sleep, you giggle.

I told you, how’s it great being? Wake up, I’m back. And the reason you don’t wake up like that, ’cause you wake up thinking, what did I do wrong yesterday? What if this happens? I got so much to do. What if I don’t do it? What if I fail? Right or wrong, you don’t realize how stressful it is when you have to have things outside be the way you want them inside.

That’s very stressful. Why? Because the outside doesn’t know anything about what you want. People come up, you don’t know anything about ’em. Things happen, rains, this, that billions of things happen that you have no control over. There they are. They’re called reality. You’re not in charge of reality. What is creation?

God, cause and effect. Call it whatever you want. Events happen because of all the events that cause ’em to happen. What’s the outside about? It is the expression of everything that ever was from the beginning of time, passing through the laws of cause and effect and ending up in front of you. If you’re driving a car and you get in a car accident, it’s tough that you’re calling an accident.

’cause what happened is the person who put the car together had a fight with their wife the night before, and they didn’t torque down the brake pad exactly at the level that they were supposed to. That was two years ago. You’re driving and finally the two years paid off and the brake pad breaks and you get in an accident, how do you call it an accident?

It took every single event for all that time to take place for that to happen. And the fact that somebody else was at the light the same time that your breaks didn’t work good enough, that’s ’cause their coffee was late. Is not the outside the sum of its learned experiences. Isn’t that what science is about?

Trying to find out the causes of things. Things have causes and they result in the effect. But what do we do? Our inside is the most important thing I’ll ever teach you. Your inside is the sum of your learned experiences. If you’ve had experiences in your life, they programmed your psyche, what you like, what you don’t like, what you want them, what you don’t want.

You got a whole world going on in there, don’t you? It is the sum of your learned experiences if you ever have a relationship. Have you ever found out that a person’s not exactly the way you thought they were? Of course they’re not the way you thought they were. You’ve dated it for two years. They had the whole rest of their life of experiences, and you think they’re the same as you.

You say things like, how could you say that to me? I would never say that to you. Of course not. You didn’t have the experiences I did. Any human being is so different from you. It’s hard to even think about how we even live on the same planet, why everybody had different experiences, and tomorrow they’ll have another one, 7,000 of them.

Can you go to work and be all happy and lovey and have a bad day at work and come home and be a schnuck? The sum of your learned experiences. So the outside world is a sum of its learned experiences. Your inside world is a sum of your learned experiences and never the twain you’ll meet every once in a while.

They do. Do you see? They have nothing to do with each other. And you’re sitting here saying, the outside should be the way I want it to be. Do you understand how unscientific and ridiculous that is, right? In order for it to be the way you want it to be? It can’t be the way it is because you have to change all of history.

You have to change every single thing that ever happened, that the moment would be the way you want it to be when it falls in front of you. And by the way, no one else wants to be that way, right? 8.9, 8.3 billion people, they want it to rain. They don’t want it to rain. They want this person to do that.

Everybody’s different. And that’s a real waking up. And so what you start to question is if the meaning of my life is getting what I want, I’m in trouble because I have to fight. I have to struggle. To do what? To conditionally be okay. Why I say conditionally? Because the conditions have to be exactly right.

I have to get the the corner office. I have to get the raise when nobody else does. I have to get this. I have to have the boss tell me. They were really proud of me. All right? And not tell me I’m so disappointed in you. You like when people say you’re disappointed in you, you like when people say, I’m so proud of you.

Well you’re in trouble. ’cause that person who said it has nothing to do with you, has to do with them. If they don’t like you. If they don’t like you. It is not you. They don’t like, it’s what they stored inside of themselves that you, they don’t like what they feel in your presence. I like what I feel in your presence.

Why you look like my sister? I’m not your sister buddy. No, they’re my favorite. Oh my God. Since I was young, I dreamt of someone like you run. Just run as fast as you can, right? That little five-year-old kid made up a little collage right out of this thing and say, oh, that’s my ideal soulmate. You do have a soulmate.

I wanna get this Strat. I wanna make it sound, I’m not romantic, right? You are your own soulmate. Nobody else can be your soulmate. They did not have the same experiences as you, as they tell you, I love you, love my heart, and I’ll always love you. Okay? Let’s see. Do you understand that? You can’t get a state like that, but that’s a very deep state.

Otherwise, I like you ’cause you’re the way I want you to be. Isn’t that not true? What if they’re not the way you like ’em to be? You still like ’em? No. Go to a dating site and I wanna see what they do. A computer, that’s what they are. Computers ask you a question. What kind of food do you like? Do you like tall men?

Are you like women? Do you like to travel? Where do you like to go? You are not answering about somebody else. You’re answering about you. And then the other ones come in and lie about they, oh, I’ll be like that so they can get date. But is it not true that what that survey is doing and that’s what somebody else, it’s talk about you and you’re gonna sit there and look to find someone that’s the same as you.

No one is the same as you. How could it possibly be? They’re the sum of their learned experiences. You’re the sum of your learned experiences. They’re not the same, are they? Not even close. Period. Wake up. So what you’re gonna do is you, you’ll, you’ll be conditionally, okay? As long as you behave the way I expected you to.

Like I said, you never sit there and say, how could you do that? Could you say that to me? I never thought you could say that to me. Well, my uncle and parents, when we had dinner together, we always talk like this. I didn’t know you didn’t like that. You don’t know anything about the person. How can you, well, I’ll tell you what.

I understand it, Vicki. So what I wanna do is I wanna make sure I know this person. So I’m gonna sit down and have them be honest with me and tell me what happened to them. Okay? You have a lifetime. ’cause that’s what happened to them. Otherwise, you’re just gonna take some big event and feel weird about telling something about the event.

What about every other thing that programms you? Every single thing you like and dislike is ’cause you’re programmed. And it can change in a moment. I wanna go to Hawaii on a vacation. Volcano are going off. Okay, I don’t wanna go to Hawaii. Okay. You’re pretty funny. You think you know what you want, you don’t have any to do what you want.

You want the world outside, not just the world. Every moment to unfold in front of you. The way it matches what you’re programmed inside, you want somehow that the moments unfolding in front of you, which have nothing to do with you generally. There’s all the moments of the universe coming together. You want those moments when they come in to match.

What you is built inside of you to match your self concept. What is a self-concept? Something you built in your mind and heart out of the experiences you had. So here’s who I think I am. What is a concept? Is it something real? No. A concept. Something not real. So beautiful. Psychology has it, but they won’t go there.

Right. Some will. Right? It’s like you have a self-concept. I’m so sorry. That you took every experience you had in your life, at least the big ones, and you built a U in there. It’s not you. You’re the one who had the experience you not the experience you had. I’m yelling at you, right? Who are you? I’m the one who played Dorothy in the fifth grade.

You are not. You are the one that experienced playing Dorothy in the fifth grade. What are you doing holding on for 30 years that you won the beauty contest when you were six? Right? It becomes part of your self-concept. It’s not who you are. You’re the person who had these experiences, but then you held onto them in your mind and you program to you.

This is who I am. Like it or leave it. And if you don’t like it, but I like you, I’ll change. Here’s another my favorite. I’m gonna embarrass you, right? No, don’t. No, no. Don’t leave. I’m so sorry. I can change. I can change. Tell me how you want me to be. I’ll be any way you want me to be. Just don’t leave. Wow.

What are you saying? I’m full of it. I made myself up. I’ll make up a new one if you want. Right. It’s funny that you’re laughing. Am I telling the truth or not? Yeah. This is what it means to be ready to enter a new year. Are you ready to wake up and be real? Just realize, what am I doing now? You still gonna do what you’re doing?

He’s not gonna wake up. All of a sudden it’s all gonna go away. Nobody does. You are gonna do what’s called evolve. You’re gonna grow, you are gonna grow into a deeper state on a regular basis inside of you. So let’s say I’m dating somebody or I’m a relationship and I realize, yep, Nikki’s right? I wish I hadn’t heard that talk.

I really want him or her to be just the way I expect them to be. Alright. But you’re aware now you’re awake. You realize they’re not going to be exactly the way you want them to be, and if they tell you they will be that way, that’s a fake relationship. It will come up at some point. It was suppressed a part of your being.

You said, I don’t have to be like that, but why were you like that? Why was that programmed inside of you? And what are you having to swallow and push away and suppress down there that will eventually pop up one way or another as opposed to. I’m more awake. I see that I’m trying to have somebody be the way I want them to be because of the way I got programmed.

I don’t want to be like that, but I am like that. That’s what I’m watching. I’m watching the schnuck trying to manipulate you into being what I want because I matter as opposed to this thing I’m watching. This eye is just an ego. It’s just a, it’s, everyone’s got one. They’re all different too, aren’t they?

Everybody’s ego’s different because this is some of ’em learn experiences and so all of a sudden you’re more awake as I’ve got witness consciousness. You’re back there noticing that you notice that you’re a manipulative idiot and that I’m only okay if things are the way I want them to be and if people do what I want them to do, and if everything’s the way I want ’em to be.

Okay. That’s it. I see that. I don’t wanna be like that. It doesn’t mean you’re not like that. Doesn’t mean you don’t see it. Don’t deny. There’s no denial going on here. No suppression. Suppression is a terrible thing. Why? It’s like a virus. It sits down there and spreads out and screws everything up. Do you understand that?

I mean, Freud psychology is right. Suppression is the worst thing you can do. Take a party, your being and shove it down there. So what’s my alternative? They’re fuel alternatives. Let’s start with the high one. You are awake, you woke up, you see that that is going on in there and that that’s not nice for other people.

That’s, it’s nice for me, but it’s really not ’cause I have to struggle and then I wonder, does somebody really love me or is it ’cause I behaved a certain way? Like the insecurity it builds. Ever feel insecurities? Anybody ever felt insecurity? Of course you do. ’cause it’s fake what you’re looking at. It can break at any time.

Somebody can like what you did last time and then all of a sudden not like you anymore. Can’t they both? Because you’re fake and they’re fake. So at some point you decide to be real. That’s called spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is not about church or this or any of that kind of stuff, not even about meditation or mantra or anything.

Those are techniques to try and help you grow. What spiritual growth is about is I’m in here and what I’m looking at. I could do without most of the time, I don’t really need to feel jealous. I don’t really need to feel insecure. I don’t really need to feel challenged and afraid, and I don’t want to have to make the world be a certain way for me to feel okay.

I wanna feel okay when all the time. Then I can come and help others. I can serve, I can give, otherwise I’m taking. Can you relate to that? If I want things to be a certain way, I’m taking, I’m saying I matter more than everything else. He got the coroner office, I should have got the coroner office and I’m gonna complain about it for the next three years.

I wouldn’t even like the person who got the Coron. I liked him before he was my best friend. Not anymore. So you get to the point where you wake up and you say, okay, I would rather bring love into the world. Real love, not love for somebody Love. Love for somebody is very, very beautiful. Love comes from inside.

When you say, I love somebody, what you’re saying is, as long as you’re the way I want you to be and do what I want you to do and behave the way, want you to behave and want what I want, I will feel love If any of those things don’t match. I’m not gonna feel love. Love is what you feel when there’s nothing else going on in there.

It’s unconditional. It just pours inside of you. You couldn’t stop it if you tried. And there’s nothing that anyone could do that will stop that love from pouring through you. That’s unconditional love, not condit. Unconditional love. Unconditional wellbeing. And I see the word unconditional. Very powerful.

And how do you get there? Can you get there? Every single person can get there. Every person is already there. It’s like the sun is always shining out there. There’s no day or night. It’s because something’s blocking it that you don’t experience it. Get past the blockage, release the blockage, and you’ll see for 4.5 billion years, there’s this fireball out there.

Alright? And it doesn’t change. It’s the same day and night inside of you. The self, the being who sees. The witness. Call it whatever you want, Christian, Rudy called it the objective observer. You’re not judging, but you’re noticing. I see what’s going on in there. I see the thoughts. I see the emotions. I see the will.

I see what’s going on. I’m not judging you, not just judging somebody else by judging myself. If you’re judging yourself, you’re gonna manipulate yourself. You’ll suppressed, you will deny you feel guilt, shame. Those are all ’cause you judge yourself well, what if I don’t judge myself? Then you notice why it is the way it is and why it was the way it was, and you deal with that.

Here’s where I’m with guilt. Have you done things in your life that you’re guilty about? They don’t like to think about, would you do them again if the same thing happened again right now with a state of mind you’re in, would you do the same thing again? Yes or no? Heck no. Then you grew. You grew to feel guilt is absurd.

Feel guilt. If your answer was yes, I would do the same thing again. I like hurting people. Leave me alone. I’m glad I heard ’em. Okay, but if you grew enough, then that’s like saying in fifth grade math, you failed a test. Now you have a doctorate in advance of mathematics. Should you feel guilty? Did it attest you failed in fifth grade?

No. We’re having real talk about how to enter the new year. You have the right to grow. You have the right to change. You have an obligation to grow and change. That is what your life is about. The saying, I once read back in the seventies, I’ll never forget it. Earth is a place where souls are sent to evolve.

We’re not perfect. Can you grow? Can you be better tomorrow than you were today? Can you learn from the experiences you went through? Not I am the sum of my learned experiences. I am the one who learned from my learned experiences. See the difference? I’m not gonna be the sum of ’em. I hold myself back. Oh, was stored.

Everything I stored in there, and that’s still bothering me. That’s the summary learned experiences. I am the one who learned. From my past experiences, learn to what? Learn to not store them. And if I don’t store them, all of a sudden I have all this garbage in here that makes me get angry and scared, and all of a sudden, every day, every day when I wake up in the morning, I’m a greater person than the one who woke up yesterday every day.

How I didn’t store the stuff that happened to me during the day that something bothered me. I looked at it and said, it’s hot. Don’t wanna be bothered ’cause it’s hot. The driver in front of me is 15 miles below the speed limit and I’m in a rush. Do I want to be bothered by that? I do not have to be bothered by that.

That’s just the rest of my garbage getting all stirred up. I can sit there and say, alright, fine. I. Good time to breathe, meditate. What I always do is that’s my grandmother. The last year she gets to drive. I think I’ll tailgate her and beep, no, no. I will honor the right for that driver. Respect, honor. And then I’ll pass if I can.

Well, nobody said you don’t work with it, but you do not hold this stuff inside. You don’t go to the office or talk about this driver. I can’t believe how. I’ll never go down that road again. Whatcha doing? You had it. Well, you know what you’re doing. You had an experience you couldn’t handle. How can you not handle reality?

That’s where you start to wake up. I can handle this. If it happened, you better be able to handle it. Why? ’cause it happened. I don’t care that you didn’t want it to happen. That’s meaningless, isn’t it? That’s just mental mumba jumbo. Alright? You start by sitting saying, I can handle this. Then you stop storing the garbage inside of you.

How do you handle it? What if it’s bothering you? Can it bother you? Can things people say bother you? Can things people do bother you? Can a thought bother you? Come on now. Hardly you bother. Is it? Well, I can’t make everything not bother me. It can happen at any time. I give examples, you know, you live in there, so how can I not be bothered if it bothered me there?

Now you’ve asked a deep question. Living in Tether goes deep into this kind of stuff, right? How can I not be bothered when you just said, I have to be honest about the fact that it bothered me. The question is, what do you do about the fact that it bothered you? First, you notice you don’t get lost, right?

You don’t get reactive. I’m in here. I was in here before this thing happened. I’m in here while it’s happening. What do I wanna do? While I’m in here feeling bothered. And what you’re gonna find is when you slow it down enough, over years, you’ll find that your tendency is to protect yourself from it.

Energy came in and it’s disturbing you inside you the self. You go, no, and you push it away. That is suppression. Identity. Freudian suppression. It’s called resistance. What you do is push it away. If you push it away, it stays in there. The more you push it away, the more it will be there tomorrow. So what do I do?

You learn to relax. Relax in the face of being bothered. Yes, that’s spiritual growth. What do you mean it won’t relax? I tried to make it relax. It still bothered. I didn’t tell it to relax. I told you to relax. See a difference. You are the one who’s experiencing the disturbance. I didn’t one that make that disturbance not be disturbed.

Can you relax in the face of it? Can somebody be saying something to you that you don’t wanna hear, but you know you should. Your boss criticizing what you screwed up. And can you literally, instead of fighting and suppressing and denying and waiting to say something back, can you relax? And the answer for most people is, I never even thought about it, ever.

I didn’t know I was allowed to. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as that. That is spiritual growth. When you find that I’m in here, the meditation helps and mantra helps different practices, help in the morning reminding yourself, I am not gonna be bothered by things, or I’m not gonna be bothered by things that would bother me, really, I’m not gonna be bothered by being bothered.

That’s what I wanna say. Those are deep teachings I’m in here. I experience it and my first reaction would be to push it away. I’m gonna relax. Who? You in there? Not it, not the energy that’s coming in disturbing you. We’re right where the rubber hits the road. You are in there experiencing the disturbance.

Are you not? Otherwise, you wouldn’t know what’s in there. You who’s experiencing it are not the disturbance. It’s just something you’re experiencing. It. Can you relax? You have hands in there that can push things away. Have you noticed and grab things? Sit on ’em. What are you telling me? I’m telling you. You learn to do this, you learn to practice, letting go.

You practice inside, not outside. Acceptance is inside. You learn to practice. I can handle this. I’m driving by a car accident and there’s blood on the road and I can’t handle blood. Like then you can’t help anybody. Can you relax through it? So that you are more present and able to deal with the situation from a higher place than what your disturbance would’ve reactively dealt with, that’s spiritual growth.

Who is it that was gonna resist your inner dwelling being your consciousness? Tried to push it away so you didn’t have to, it didn’t, you didn’t wanna touch it in depth of your being. Alright, who is it that’s in there? If you conscious enough, you pay attention or learn and practice who’s conscious enough that when it comes in disturbed, you can see hacha disturbance relax and you don’t push it away.

I let it touch me the depth of my being. Yeah, you let it touch it, the deaf of your being and let it come in and pass through. Now, deal with it. Now you’re not dealing with reactively. You’re not coming out here to make everybody change so that you don’t feel disturbed. That’s not about helping anybody else.

Do you understand that? Say you’re sorry. I can’t believe you said that. Say you’re sorry right now. Whatcha you trying to do? I couldn’t handle what you said. Which is my problem, by the way. I know what was in here. I couldn’t handle what you said, and now I’m gonna try and make you conditionally say something that makes me feel better about the fact that I couldn’t handle it right.

I ask you a question if he or she apologizes to the bottom of her being, I’ll say for three days, I’m so sorry. I’ll write you notes. I’m so sorry. All right. Okay. I accept your apology. You did not. That person three years later does anything close to what bothered you is coming right back up. Yes or no, but you told me that you forgave me.

Yeah. Or I, but you’re not gonna do this thing again. To me. You didn’t let it go. If you don’t let it go, it stays in there. Well, how I let it go? If you let it go? You’re not disturbed. The disturbance came in and it passed through ’cause you let it. Now what? Now I’m clear. I’m present. I can now look at you and instead of thinking, what can I make you do to make me feel better, you look and say, what can I do to make you feel better?

There’s some reason you said that nasty thing to me, but I’m telling you your reaction is gonna be how do I make it so that I feel better? In spite of what you said when you let go, that’s not what’s there. What’s there is love was there is compassion was there is a beautiful being. And then when it looks outside, it is.

Only a question is how can I help? How would it like to be like that? That’s spiritual growth. Yes. You meditate. Yes you do. Mantra, yes, you do different things, whatever you’re into, right? But understand why. The question is, are you willing to let go in there? The more you’re willing to let go, the more you become, what’s that word?

Oh yeah. An untethered soul. You let go. It’s so different. The teachings are so much deeper than what people are willing. People are sitting there saying, if I do spiritual practices, I can attract to myself what I want. Gimme a break. Just another way to, you can do it really by all means. There is a law of attraction and if you work on it and meditate on it, you can attract yourself what you want.

Let’s see what happens after that. ’cause you’re still there wanting that. Nobody ever got what they wanted and never wanted anything else, ever. You understand that? Why? ’cause you’re not okay. That’s why you want things. ’cause you’re not okay. You’re conditionally. Okay? And so you go there and get what you want and do that and, and now what?

You’re stuck holding the bag. So the alternative is to say, I am going to grow inside. I am in here. I live in here. This is my house. This is your house. Is anybody else living there with you? Mommy, daddy, life, husband, children? No. You’re in there. You’re the only one in there, and you made a mess in there.

How by storing what you don’t like inside, so that now it’s getting hit all the time, and by clinging it to what you did like, so you’re always getting disappointed and afraid that you won’t get it again. That’s how deep the teachings are. So what’s the alternative? Learn to relax. When things come in, allow them to let go.

Then deal with them. Don’t not deal with it. You deal with things, but not out of reaction. Not outta protection, not jealousy. Fearing not out of the mind’s mess. I showed you where MS came from. The so learned experiences. Well, it’s a mess. Okay? And then you’re trying to make it match your experiences.

That’s a terrible life. Even though it seems people, I’m successful, you are not successful. Look at these billionaires. They look like how much fun they fight with each other. I would never traded for anything Gianna People who were number one of Forbes most wealthy person in the world list last year. If they’re number two this year, it bothers them for the rest of the year.

Do you understand that? No one’s okay by getting things. You’re okay by being okay inside. Now, how do you do that? Because right now you can’t relax and let go about a lot of stuff, and the problem is you listen to me, you rationalize that that’s how it should be. I, no, I should have been able to handle what you said to me.

Of course, I can’t handle what you did. Nobody could. So I’m basically saying I should be screwed up. It’s justifiable. Anybody would be alright. And so you say, okay, honestly, I’m not able. To relax when stuff comes in I don’t like and I’m not able to relax. When stuff comes in that I do like, oh my God, I want that car.

I’ve always wanted a car like this. I just drove by. What can I do? Get weird. ’cause something came in that you liked get weird ’cause something came that you don’t like. Gimme a break. Alright, so. You start doing what the deep teachings teach you when you pick up a tennis track. You never played tennis before.

How good are you? It goes in the net every single time. You never play the piano. Sit down, try to play Beethoven. Here the, here’s the notes. Here they are. Ah, alright. Doesn’t mean you can’t play the piano. It doesn’t mean you can’t play tennis, but you need to practice. You need to practice. Practice with Beethoven.

No practice with the scales. Practice with John McEnroe. You’re probably too young for that. No, no. Practice with the wallflower. Practice with a coach. Practice your backhand. Will you get better if you practice? Answer me at anything you do. Will you get better if you practice? Not perfect. No. No, no, no. Will you get better every time you practice?

Same thing with letting go. You’re in there. Yes. You can’t handle that. Somebody dumped you or this happened or somebody died. I understand that. Okay. Someday you will be able to, and we’ll talk about that, but you can handle that. It’s hot now. In living in te, I talk about low hanging fruit. What is that?

Things that bother you? If they didn’t bother you, they’d be fine. It’s 97 degrees out. What good does it do for you to be complaining as you walk from your air conditioning car into your air conditioning house? None. The cost benefit analysis is zero. All costs no benefit. That’s low hanging fruit. Where do you see how many things there are that you bother yourself about that if you stop bothering yourself about ’em?

They’re fine. There’s nothing to do about it. Nothing to do about the heat, nothing to do about the cards in front of you, nothing to do about what somebody said. You just start catching on and then you’ve learned to let go of the stupid stuff. People right? Me from all over the world. I’m so much happier than I was before I was in a relationship.

We were gonna split ’em. Now, of course you’re happier. You’re not making yourself unhappy. You’re not in there disturbing yourself about stuff that’s meaningless. Alright? Then something bigger happens. Maybe some of your relationship with comes back in, bad mood comes home, slams the door, and you wanted to have a nice evening, right?

What do you do? All of a sudden you realize, Hey, I’m still here. They used to bother the heck outta me. I just waited for him to come back out because I’m gonna give him a peace of my mind. I like that. A peace of your mind. Okay? And instead, you look at it and you say, he had a bad day. He’s allowed to have a bad day.

Can I handle that? He had a bad day. Not, can I handle what I felt? Can I handle in here? Sure. I felt funny, like rejected a little bit, right? Can I handle that so that when he or she comes out, there’s love? Big deal. Then a bad day. I’m sorry I had a bad day. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. How’d you like to be like that?

If you practice letting go. You become like, that doesn’t mean you don’t deal with things, I told you that, but you only deal with the things that need to be dealt with. You deal with them out of love, clarity, intelligence, not reactive, fighting, pushing. You don’t deal with it ’cause you can’t handle it. You know who’s the worst person to deal with Something?

Someone who had admits they can’t handle it. Here’s a math problem. Oh, I can’t do that. Okay. I guess you’re the wrong person to give it to. If you say, I can’t handle it. You can’t. You admitted it. Well, if you sit there and say, it bothers me a little bit, but I can handle that. Okay. I give it a job. This is what you do as you’re circling a star in the middle of nowheres.

This is what it means to say Earth is a place where souls are s sent to evolve. You are now evolving. Every day you get clearer ’cause you had another opportunity to deal with the stuff that happened to you if you fall down. It happens all the time. Things happen and you’re not there. You’re not there. It pulls you down into them, right or wrong.

Okay? Very good. Stay conscious as long as you can. Come back as soon as you can. No guilt, no shame. No, I wish it didn’t happen. The coach hits you a ball, you hit it in the net. Okay, have to be guilty or feel terrible about it. I’ll do better next time. Right? So you fall, but you stay as long as you can. Come back as soon as you can, and eventually that gap, I’m gonna cry.

That gap becomes very, very small until there is no gap anymore. And nothing can throw you nothing. And you know that. And knowing that makes you so strong. So capable, such a beautiful person. You can handle whatever’s happening and do what you best to raise Your entire interaction for the rest of your life is, how can I help?

It’s called service doesn’t have to be some big thing. It could be smile, it could be anything. All you’re doing, you don’t even try to do it. It just happens naturally ’cause there’s nothing else left. All you’re doing is raising every energy that passes before you. At work. I play at school, driving to soccer with the kids.

Anything, no matter what it’s, there’s this up person bringing beautiful energy into the world, right? So this was your New Year’s talk. You’ll get some more, don’t worry. But do you hear me? What are you doing with your life? ’cause you’re going to die. I used to say the following, but I realize people don’t get it and be careful.

Now, I used to say the meaning of your life is to go back up. Less than you came down with and they started thinking about money that no, no, no less garbage in there, less stuff that’s bothering you. You don’t wanna be in your deathbed. I didn’t experience everything. I wanna experience, how can I even talk about the things I never told?

What are you kidding? I ain’t gonna die like that. You wanna die willingly open, but the most beautiful thing, you’re a very great being, but you have this cloud. Of your personal self, keeping that beautiful energy from flowing through and it only makes it through if you get what you want. You hear me? You don’t wanna be like that.

You only a blessing on this earth. Right. Okay. Thank you for listening.

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.