Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. Spiritual growth is more like an art than it is a practice. You will practice. Practices are willful, hard is spontaneous. How do you make to close the gap between just broadly doing practices and. Becoming an artist. I don’t often do it, but I ended up on the web listening to yoga, giving a little speech about karma.
It interested me because he’s my guru, but I don’t try to follow exactly the teachings that he said. I, I just walked my path. I’ve always done that. And what was amazing was he gave this talk about karma and every time he used the word karma. It could be substituted for the word samskara. I never saw that before.
Alright. And I never saw him use the word samskara. I’m sure he did, but not in this discussion. So what did he say? He said, karma isn’t the way you think it is. MCC karma is, is when you do an action inside, it leaves an impression and that impression. Ends up causing you to act certain ways. It guides what you’re doing and that goes across lifetimes.
So impressions that you left in your past life, current life, they’re still there. They’re not held in the physical body. They’re held deeper into the energy body. And so as you go through your lifetimes, of course, Hinduism, they teach that as you go through your lifetimes, these sun scars are still there and therefore they cause your actions, which in turn cause reactions yell at somebody, cause a reaction in order to yell at somebody.
You have to have something going on inside of you that would make you yell at them. You see what you’re saying? So karma’s not like good karma, bad karma. Oh my God, you did this. You’re getting bad karma cooties, or something, right? It is just a simple law that if you act a certain way and it leaves an impression, a deep impression upon you, that impression is going to affect your energy flow.
And the effect of the energy flow will affect your thoughts and the effect and your heart and the effects of your energy flow will therefore affect your actions and the actions coming out will come back in accordance to what you put out. It’s really very simple. It’s not some mystical, weird thing, and you know that.
You know that if you do something and you say something, let’s say you have a friend, you know, and you’re in a bad mood. Why are you in a bad mood? Well get there in a second. I wanna trace it back. But you’re in a bad mood and so you say something not so nice to your friend, right? Aside from the fact that the friend had to handle that, which could have left an impression on them, no, which did leave an impression on them so that the next time they see you, they’re not as open as they were before.
All of a sudden that simple little act. Of doing that left an impression caused something to come back. So it’s not some mystical, weird thing. Alright? But more so you’ll walk away later thinking, oh my God, why did I do that? I, I didn’t mean to say that. I’m so sorry. I wish I, you now have left inside of you an impression that is causing you to think a certain way, act a certain way.
Do you understand that? And maybe even years I told you, you wanna check out these impressions, go to your 20th high school reunion. I don’t recommend it. Okay. Why? You are gonna see people that you haven’t seen for 20 years, and you will interact with them as though it was 20 years ago if they stole your girlfriend or they said something to hurt you, or they got the part in the play that you had wanted.
That is what is coming up inside of you now you call that logical. It is not logical. It’s absurd. That person, not the same person. The events will never happen again. Why is that inside of you? So I say it’s a samskara and me would say it, it’s a karmic seed. You allowed and made an impression, a karmic seed that is going to sprout when you go see that person 20 years later.
Do you see the same? It’s the same thing. Alright, so that’s kind of neat. I kind of found that interesting. Alright, what’s really going on and what does it mean that spirituality can become an art instead of a practice? First of all, why is it a practice and nobody says it doesn’t need to be. All the great ones taught the practices.
Why is it need to be? Because you have this garbage inside of you that is going to determine your behavior. You gonna determine how you feel about people. You gonna determine how you feel about all people. You determine how you feel about yourself. If you got rejected in fifth grade, you carry that inside of you.
You’re afraid of getting rejected, yes or no? So they call that psychology. We call it chronology or some ology, right? They’re just impressions. That are obviously there. We don’t have to make it complicated. You make it very simple when you act and you do something right. If it’s strong, not everything leaves an impression.
The white lines in the road and you see them, they don’t leave these impressions, and I always tell the story unless. Listen carefully. Mm-hmm. Unless you are the person who paints the white lines, you know how sometimes they dribble? You’ve seen them, right? Well, they got fired. You got fired because you had too many dribble lines.
All right? I guarantee you now, 10 years later, when you drive by a white line that dribbled you, your stuff comes up. He didn’t get fired. Why did I get fired? Well, wait a minute. Nobody else had that when they drove by the line. You see what I’m saying? You left this inside of you because it was a either strong, positive or a strong negative impression.
Those impressions are what master said are your karmic seeds they carry across and it’s obvious. Of course they do. Who said So Freud, the first thing Freud asks, when you lay down on the sit down on the couch and your mother, how’s your relationship with your mother? Boy, I haven’t seen my, it doesn’t matter.
Left impressions. What happened to you? Did anything bad happen to you during your life? Do you remember it? Are you, does it come back up? Those are some scars. So all the psychology. That they make it so weird. Okay. All of psychology is the study of some scars and the effect that they have when Freud. I love Freud.
One thing I saw about Freud is I read a lot of Freud back in in college, is he doesn’t show any indication of stepping back. Watching his, watching the mind. He analyzed people. Most of it was he dealt with institutionalized people. That’s what he was studying. People had major, major problems and did major acts, who people did all kinds of stuff, right?
Why would somebody do such a thing? He tried to study that and he noticed that mommy did this and daddy did this, and uncle did this, and grandfather did this, and it left all these impressions. And basically when these things happen, wait, how did it leave? The impressions, why is everything not just a moment that’s unfolding in front of you and then you handle it?
It comes by and it passes through, in which case you don’t need any therapy. You are a very whole being, but it isn’t like that, is it? Some things leave impressions. Is it because they left the impression or because you caused them to leave impressions? Take a breath. There’s no event. No event that takes place in this world that has to leave an impression like that causing your psychological problems and so on.
Well. Just like the guy with the, the, the lines in the road, he could have sat there and said, yeah, I deserved it. And then every time I saw a line on the road, nothing happened. It was just a, a thought in the road and didn’t do anything, didn’t make him depressed. And I lose my job. That’s called I can handle what happened in front of me.
Can you handle every single thing that ever happened in front of you? Why was it the event? Or is this something you did inside yourself that caused the event to leave an impression? That’s a serious question because I guarantee you it’s something you did inside yourself. That caused the event to leave an impression.
Now you can come to me and say, right, oh, what if somebody tries to murder you or you get mistreated really badly? How can that not leave an impression? Well, go talk to the gurus. That’s the beauty of knowing about beings that walk this earth. I, I quote the Gita talks about it in the Guido. Krishna says to Arjuna, Christian is the Godhead, and Arjun is his spiritual son.
Christians says to Aruna Arjuna, there are some very high beings that are walk this earth, fully enlightened, fully realized being great, great masters and Arjuna very rationally asked him, wow, I believe you ’cause you’re the Godhead. What are they like? How will I know if I met one? Sits. He walks, he talks, he like any other man, and Christians says, oh, Arjun, you won’t know him that way.
He sits, he walks. He talks like any other man if you would know him. No, him thus enjoys his number. Overjoyed and sorrows and over sorrowed, lets goodness come with a will and let darkness come when it must. He walks as a stranger, a sojourner, amidst the different qualities of nature, just as all the rivers and streams of the earth pour into the ocean, yet the ocean doesn’t overstep its bounds, so the world of sense pours into the yogi and leaves him as it found him at peace.
Serene content equanimity is yoke. Well, that’s what I just told you, that there are beings. No matter what comes in, it passes through. It doesn’t leave some scars. It doesn’t leave karmic seats. Are we communicating? I know it’s hard to believe. Somebody wants to ask Ramer Krishna the great masters that walk this earth.
Very, very great. Being fully enlightened. Doesn’t enlighten being ever feel anger. Whoa, anger seems like a Sam score, right? And you know what he said? Yes, but it’s like riding on water. When you ride on water, how much of an impression does it leave? It comes in, it passes right through. So it’s not that there’s not human feelings, it’s not that there’s not human emotions, not that there’s not rattlesnakes, not that there’s not butterflies, there’s everything.
That’s the nature of things, including humanness. But it passes right through. What the heck’s the difference? If somebody says something to you and you’re there and you just feel some anger, which is shati. They’re energy. They’re energy patterns, right? That energy pattern comes up, passes right through.
There’s no karma. You didn’t leave an impression. You don’t feel badly about the person. You don’t really not like them. It was just like wind blew through. You’re allowed to have wind, not have rain. Truth is someday you reached a point to find out that your inner state is like weather. Isn’t it? Mm-hmm.
There’s wind and there’s storms, and there’s sunny days and there’s bombing, and there’s this, and there’s that. Is that okay with you? No, that’s the problem. It’s not like spirituality is, there’s no wind higher than 10 miles an hour. There’s no humidity above 50%. There’s no, no, no, no. Things are what they are.
Okay. The question is, can you handle them? That’s the difference. So the fact that you in there and you know you can’t, can’t handle certain things, means you do what I told you. You do it, you cause the impression, the event, I know you can’t handle this. Your ex-husband or ex-wife did not cause the impression, the fact that you couldn’t handle them causing impression.
What do you mean they acted? It came in, did they act? Yeah. Did it come in? Yeah, you bet on that. Did you let it pass through? No. What did you do? You did a keyword, you resisted. You used your will. You didn’t use your will to let it go. You didn’t use your will to welcome it and let it pass through. You used your will to resist it there.
It’s the deepest thing I can ever teach you. Yes or no? Do you do not? Do you have hands in there to push things away? Is there energy that comes in that you don’t like it? No. Bad energy, bad dog. Come on. I want you to feel the reality of what we’re talking about. You do it all the time. You even do it about the weather.
Oh my God, it’s raining. I don’t like the rain. Okay, very good. The next time something gets dark sky, oh, I don’t like it. Okay. Instead of welcoming, allowing reality, that’s a funny word. Reality and living. Untethered. I define reality. That must be a thick book. No, no, no. It was. It was less than a paragraph.
In fact, it was one sentence. Right? Reality is that what already happened? It cannot be real. It happened right or wrong, but I don’t like it. I don’t care. It happened and it, is it ever gonna not happen? Something that happened will never, ever not have happened. Who’s willing to bring intelligence and wisdom into their life?
Has anything that ever happened to anybody ever not happened? No. It becomes a question of how you’re handling reality, not what is reality. You know what reality is? It came into your senses because they’re senses. That’s what they’re there for. They’re sensors. They pick up vibrations, don’t they? They pick up sight, sound, touch.
How do you know they do? I think that’s what Christ meant when he said, let those of eyes to see. Let them see. Let those of ears to hear. Let them hear. Probably that’s what he meant, but I like that. Okay. In other words, it came into your eyes. It’s true. Is it good? I didn’t say that bad. I didn’t say that. I said it came in.
It is reality. The question becomes what do you do about it? If you resist, let’s do this properly. The new year, understand this, this is energy that came in. The event does not come in. The person stays out there yelling at you. The rattlesnakes out there, the butterflies out there, they don’t come in, do they?
What comes in is vibrations. What comes in is is light. Light hits the eyes and sound waves hit the ears. Not what made. It doesn’t come in. So it’s energy that comes in. It’s energy that comes in it’s vibration. Race of energy. Light is a vibration of energy. Sounds of vibration. Of energy. Touches the vibration.
Yeah. The nerve goes. Adam’s hitting each other. Creative vibration stimulate the nerves. And then that gets passed back. So it’s coming in is a vibration, is vibrations from the outside world. So it comes in, that’s not a problem. Why? Because it happened. The world is a happening place. All kinds of things happen.
So it comes in and you experience it. Who does the self, the consciousness, the indwelling being The end user. The being who’s in there that notices. Oh, something came in. There was some words, there was sounds, there was sight, there was touch. It came in. What do you in there? Who received it? The awareness, the consciousness, the witness call, whatever you want.
The conscious being. Who lives in do you live in? Oh wait, I forgot to ask you. Are you in there? Are you in there? Is anybody not in there? Not a chance in the world. You know you’re in. How do you know you’re in there? Shut up. I’m not gonna bother answering you. Were you in there yesterday? Are you sure? You in there when you were five years old and looked in the mirror?
Did you see somebody? I don’t care what you saw, somebody saw it. You have been in there the entire time. Okay, so you’re in there. You receive what comes in, you have a choice. You don’t really have a choice ’cause it’s very based on your past patterns and stuff, right? It comes in. You experienced it. No question it happened.
No question. It came in, no question. You experienced it. So far we don’t have a problem. Were you able to experience it without resisting it? Were you able to let it come in and let it pass through? It’s an experience I had. It is an experience you had. Don’t worry, there’ll be another one in the millisecond.
Right? Wrong. There’ll be something else that comes in in the millisecond. Did you let that one go? So you’re ready to experience the next. I didn’t tell you don’t experience it. You did experience it well. Well, well, good. Is it because everything you experience teaches you something? If you don’t know how to play tennis, every single time you swing that racket, you get better.
How to play the piano. Every time you play scales or anything you’re playing, you are practicing, experiencing learning experience is your teacher. That’s how you really learn through experience. So basically it comes in and it merges into you, just like the quote I gave you from the Gita. The waters pour in and they feed you.
Your experiences feed you. You’re not here to go lock yourself somewhere and not have experiences. And then say, oh, I’m fine. Look, I’m not bothered by anything. You’re here to have experiences and you will have experiences. That’s what why you took Birth Earth is a place that souls are sent to evolve.
I’ll repeat that. Earth is a place in the middle of nowhere, little, not in the middle of nowhere we’re souls are sent to evolve. What does it mean to evolve, have experiences and learn to handle them. Have an experience. Do you understand that? If you could handle every single experience you ever had, you would be in God, you’d be in ecstasy.
We’ll talk about that in a minute. That is the highest state that exist, that every single event that’s taking place in front of you comes in. You. You rock it, you learn from it, you embrace it, and you grow. Why’d you grow? If you don’t have any experiences, you don’t grow because you had the experiences you learned from them.
Did you have to try to learn from them? No. The experience itself is your teacher. That’s when it becomes art instead of practice. I’m gonna be here. Now I’m paying attention. Oh look, he moved. I see. I saw. No, that’s called a practice. When you’re here now, you’re not doing anything. You’re just here now.
What’s keeping you from being here now? Me? This idiot in here that’s busy doing something, so if it can come in and pass through, that’s a very high state and we’ll, we’ll talk about that when we get to the end. Why it’s such a high state, but it comes and passes through. Is that what it’s like for you to live in there?
No. Do you ever resist? Ha ha, ha. You resist everything. You resist the fact that your lipstick’s not the right color. You resist the fact that someone looked a little bit like your mother and you didn’t like your mother so much, or you loved your mother. So I wonder who this person is. What are you doing?
You’re in there being somebody. Other than experiencing reality. And on what basis do you decide to judge every one of you? Judge you, judge right and wrong and good and bad and like and dislike on what basis you are basing it on your some scars. There’s not a single thing that you decided not to like, that there was some experience that happened in your past that left that impression inside of you.
That I don’t, I don’t like that. I don’t like women who wear this skirt ’cause short or too long, this or that. And I don’t like people who talk like that. I don’t like people that aren’t Christian or Hindu or Jewish. I have all these likes and dislikes. Don’t you? Where did you get them? You didn’t make ’em up.
Their impressions, they left on you. Your parents taught you. If you’re Jewish, you might need to marry a Jewish person. You need to keep the heritage going. If you’re Hindu, you need to marry who your parents pick for you, not who you want to marry. Come on, gimme a break. Your parents know better who you should marry than you do.
Alright? And these things are ingrained in you. And if you do them, then you feel good while you did what you’re supposed to do. If you don’t do them, then it generates guilt. This is karma. That’s what we’re talking about. It’s that low level. These impressions got left on you and they cause you to behave certain ways.
Those are some scars. You got some. You have so many that you don’t know you have any. You think you’re being, I just wanna be myself. Ha ha. That’s so funny. We’re self alright. The one that you feel after you just met somebody and fell in love. I’m just being myself. The one that you met somebody and somebody hurt you back in high school, you don’t wanna see ’em ever again.
You be that self. All there is and there are some scars and lots of them, and what’s happening is the outside world comes in and it hits those suckers. Well, which one does it hit? The one where I’m being a nice person or the one where I just don’t like this at all. The one where I’m not comfortable. I don’t even wanna be here.
The one, I can’t wait to never leave. I just love it here. Which one? Alright. Are many of you in there? There are many personalities in there as you have some scars there. I remember there are people came to me during Christmas season years and years ago, right? And some would say I, I don’t like the Christmas season.
I don’t like the holiday season, so I do not like a holiday season. It’s a holiday. At a minimum you get a day off, right? What’s there nothing to like about holiday season? You know, I didn’t get the present I wanted. My sister got the bike I wanted. All right. I don’t know. We got in a fight, some impression got left in there so that now many, many years later, it’s how the feelings feel.
And you know what you say. I’m just being honest with myself. I don’t like the holiday season. And you believe that stuff. That’s what’s wrong. You’re not taught. You’re not taught that this is nothing. It’s nothing. It’s just stupid stuff that didn’t make it through you when you were five years old.
Psychology calls them your formative years. You know what you’re forming A good set of some scars. Those are your formative years. They determine what you like and what you don’t like and who you like. And if mama was really nice to you, you like mummies and if mama was not nice to you, you could do without them.
Do you understand that? Okay. Anybody willing to talk? There are people that didn’t go to their mother’s funeral. There are people who cried for three years ’cause their mother died some scars. I think that might have a little to do with how your mother treated you and what the relationship was like. What do you think?
There’s some scars. They’re just patterns that’s left in you. They’re not left in you because of what happened. They’re left in you because of how you dealt with what happened? I resisted it. I didn’t like it. I resisted it. Freud called that suppression. What does that mean? Everybody said you suppressed so much stuff.
What? Who suppressed what? Where? Where’s the suitcase It comes in. Who suppresses f Fred? Don’t talk about that. Who is doing the suppression? His energy’s coming in. We don’t like it. We suppress it. Who did? Who suppressed it. It took a will. It took willpower to push that energy away inside of yourself, and it takes continuous willpower to keep it down there.
How do you know? ’cause it keeps coming back up, doesn’t it? That’s the karma again. You won’t live in a place, even states, forget a city where you had a bad experience. No, I’m not going there. I’m not gonna visit there. I don’t like it there. All my exes live in Texas and I don’t go there. Does anybody understand why I’m stressing this?
You don’t get to be free. That’s a freedom. I used to give a talk like that. Freedom is not the freedom to do what you want. It’s not freedom for yourself. It’s freedom from yourself. Otherwise, you’re out there trying to struggle and make everything be the way your sun scars need them to be so that when the stuff comes in, alright, let’s go there.
Do you or do you not try to make the outside world unfold so that when it comes in, it feels good and doesn’t feel bad? How much effort do you spend doing that? That’s your karma. Is karma running? You? You working? I call myself scars. Fine. I said yogis called ’em some scars. Patterns that got stuck inside of you because you didn’t let them go.
So what does it mean? It means if you are in there and you are allowing this to happen, you don’t have a nice life. You think you do? ’cause if you are powerful enough, rich enough, manipulative enough, beautiful enough, handsome enough, whatever it is to try to manipulate the world so it bes the way you want it to be, you win.
You never lose people like you, they never say anything bad about you. You don’t even like it if someone tells you, you know, I saw George the other day and he, she was talking to Mary and Mary said that she didn’t like you. I don’t even know, Mary. I don’t care. I don’t like it Now. I don’t like Mary. Yes or no?
You see it. It’s so amazingly subtle. It’s so ridiculous. The fact that you think the only way it can be okay is to make everything be the way your some scars needed to be so that when the world comes in, it hits the nice stuff. Oh, I remember you. Oh, yeah. We went to camp together. Well, we were such good friends.
We went to camp together. Get away from me. I hated camp. I hated everybody in it. Why? I fell off a horse and they laughed at me. And you carry it for your entire life. No. I, I don’t, I don’t do horseback riding. No, no, no, no. I don’t like the water. I don’t swim. Why? Guess I swallowed something in camp or something.
Who’s willing to admit? It’s that ridiculous. And you live with that, and you think that the answer is to absolutely control the experiences you’re having outside so that when they come in, they’re easy to handle. So they feel good, and when they come in they don’t feel bad and they’re not hard to handle.
That is just the world coming in, hitting your stuff. If you devote your life to manipulating that world in front of you. So it’ll always be the way you need it to be inside. ’cause the garbage you collect, in essence, what you’re saying is you have to be the way that doesn’t match. The worst thing I ever had.
I got stuff in here. You know, we don’t talk about that around your father. He can’t handle it. Well, what’s wrong with daddy? He got some impressions. You want out, everybody want out. We wanna live like that. You can’t enjoy a moment of your life. You have to worry about anxiety and tension that something will go wrong.
Anybody feels something could go wrong. You know, it could go wrong. Something could hit your stuff that what you call wrong for you. She can’t wait for it to happen. You just wake up. You wake up and you realize, oh my God, that’s what’s going on. I’m not living my life. I’m trying to make the world be a certain way because the garbage that I stored inside of me, why is it garbage?
’cause it’s already over. It happened 20 years ago. It happened 30, 50 years ago. Why is it inside of you? How do you tolerate that? Carrying this stuff in there, and then knowing that you have to get everybody to be the way you want them to be, and every situation to be the way you want it to be in order for you to be okay, and it never, ever hits your stuff.
That must be a lot of tension. Oh, really? A lot of anxiety. Oh, really? What do we talk about in psychology? Anxiety and tension, isn’t it? The whole world now is filled, starting with age six, used to be 23, right? There’s a filled with anxiety and tension. Listen to me. Mm-hmm. The real answer is, whoa, slow down.
’cause you’re not gonna fix it. You’re not gonna fix it by passing laws. You can’t do this, you can’t do that. That’s wrong. That’s just leaving another impression. My mommy mistreated me. It wasn’t good and I went to school and therefore I had some anger. But yet I got suspended, determined the whole flow of my life as opposed to will anybody work with the samskara?
Will anybody realize? If that child misbehaved, there was a reason. And what matters is the reason, not the punishment. There’s junk down there and it’s blocking everything. It’s blocking the shunty, it’s blocking the energy flow. That’s what your some scars do. Which ones? All of them. There’s no such thing as a good samskara.
They’re all blockages. But if I have one that makes me feel good, basically, it means that you have a samskara down there that, oh, I remembered that on Christmas they had this beautiful angel on top of the tree, and every time I see it now, I, I just get so excited. I can’t wait for Christmas. That’s a positive ra.
It left a positive impression. What happens if the angel isn’t there this year? No, it’s not a tree without an angel. Why are you crying? You’re 32 years old. What’s wrong with you? No. No. There has to be an angel in the tree. Am I listening? I. So psychology is studying your, some scars but not at a deep enough level so that that is where you do practices.
Alright? If you’ve got this stuff in there, if you feel anger, practice doing this, practice doing there, practice doing that, that’s wonderful. Right? The art of spirituality with Buddhist mean, work at the root is you are an awakened being. What? What does that mean? We’re all awake. You are aware that you’re aware that you have this stuff in there.
I don’t get it. You’re aware of it. Obviously you’re suppressing it, therefore you’re aware of it. Alright, so you know it’s there. You know it’s bothering you, but what you’re devoting your life to is finding a life where it doesn’t bother you. Find a life that matches your stuff. Yoga, the deep teachings, the art of yoga is, I am in here.
I am aware that in the past I’ve stored this stuff in here. Was there a reason for it at the time? It sure seemed like there was that person that just for blame and stuff, right? You can’t blame anybody the way I’m teaching you for what happened outside. If it had made it through you, you would feel compassion for them.
You would not have blocked anything. It would’ve come in, they said something mean to you. It came in, it passed through. You are still there. You’re conscious. It didn’t pull you down into it and make you be weird. And then what happens is it comes in and now because you’re okay, you can look outside and actually try to help the situation instead of help you handle the situation.
I see a difference. That’s the differe between practice. I’m trying to be disciplined. I’m doing this. I do it like make sure I don’t this. I say a nice positive thing. Oh, that’s all wonderful. Those are your practices. Why do you need to have practices? Because they’re a mess. If I don’t have practices, you don’t wanna be around me.
If I’m not in there holding it together, you don’t wanna be near it. So I do these practices, which is wonderful. Of course you do the practices, but I’m trying to talk deeper than that. The real practice is as follows. If there is a somes scar in there, I know it. I’m letting it go. Not I’m forgiving you for what you did 20 years ago.
That means I still have the samskara inside, but I accept what you did. I can live with it. I’ll be tolerant, et cetera. That’s not compassion. You still have that stuff in there. You’ve just learned to deal with it better. You learn to not get weird when somebody hits your stuff, which is most you can’t do that.
That’s very good. I’m proud of you. That’s not deep enough. Deep enough is that’s witness consciousness. I’m in here and I see what’s going on in there. I don’t make believe it’s not going on in there. This is not spiritual bypassing, and that’s the big words. They’re like, no, it’s not. I make believe it’s not in there and put on a face that says, see, I’m very spiritual.
See, you said something mean to me. And I didn’t express my anger. I felt it, but I didn’t. I didn’t let it out. Right. That’s just suppression. That’s just more suppression. The true path is as follows, I am a conscious being. I am aware what’s going on in here. Unfortunately, I am and I’m working on myself.
I’m not working on you to be the way I want you to be so I can handle it. I’m never working on you. I’m working on the fact that I am messed up in here. This is hitting my stuff, and I tell you, don’t talk to me like that way a great being first says okay. Okay. Thank God. It’s like practicing tennis. You talking to me like that?
Is somebody hit a shot? I, I’m a good backhand. Okay. I’ll get good at backhand first before I react. I’m going to use it to let go of myself. That is the highest path. That’s the art of yoga. It’s basically, it comes in, I see it. Hit it. I don’t blame you. I don’t feel ashamed that it hit what hit side of me.
There’s no blame. There’s no shame. There’s just the willingness to do what? Ready, relax, relax in the face of the fact that this energy that was stored from before got stimulated and is coming up and is difficult to be comfortable with. But I’ve learned to be comfortable with uncomfortable. That’s an art.
You hear me? It’s not that I make it. Don’t you ever do anything that makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m leaving you. No, you be you. You tell somebody you love them. Watch it. Do you love them or do you love the way they act and how you feel about how they act? Do you love? In essence, I love me and if you behave in a way that matches me, I like having you around.
If you behave in a way that doesn’t match me, I would rather find somebody else to be with, which is why relationships are so difficult. ’cause they’re not about somebody else. They’re about you. They’re about somebody else matching you. Do you understand that? Do you understand that? Am I right that if somebody’s behaving in a way that hits your stuff, I don’t need this, what I need this for, okay.
As opposed to a great being. Am I asking you to be this way? We’re just talking. All right. A great being welcomes life. All of life. It’s called reality. It comes in. It’s gonna hit your stuff. Why? Because you got stuff in there. Okay. Who put that stuff there? You did. No, mommy did. No Mommy’s dead. Having years and years ago you did the act of resistance, therefore it got stuck in you.
Are you gonna spend the rest of your life letting that determine the flow of your life, where you live, and who you are with, and who you marry, how many children you have, and what your job is and whether you’re passionate about is it’s going to, it’s gonna determine every single flow of your energy. Why the shock that is trying to come up and flow in and go to God?
Shakti’s going to Shiva. Alright. It can’t make it through you because you got all this stuff in there, so it hits the stuff. And it gets stimulated. Do you know that even if nothing’s happening, your stuff tries to come back up? That’s what those dreams are. You can have a thought that makes your stuff come back up.
So the practice is not, don’t have the thought and don’t see something, and make sure you only be with people that make you feel good. Then you’re just gonna stay stuck in yourself. Okay? Liberation spirituality, true Yoga is okay. There’s stuff in here. That’s step one, but it should be I people say that to me.
Alright, I’m suffering. I’m suffering tremendously. Well, I don’t want you to suffer. No. I have the right to suffer because of what somebody did. I have the right to suffer when I got divorced from him. He was such a schnuck. I looked him in the eye, said. Lemme tell you right now, I am going to suffer for the rest of my life because of the way you treated me.
You are gonna pay no, you are gonna pay. Aren’t we funny people? Okay, so basically you reach the point where you say, okay, there’s stuff in here. And it’s mine. I was the one that couldn’t handle my past. I was the one that couldn’t handle the situations that unfolded in front of that situations reality.
No, it wasn’t reality. Yes it was, or it wouldn’t be in there. It happened, but it shouldn’t have happened. You like that one? You wanna, I don’t have time to have a discussion at this level with you guys, but what does it mean it shouldn’t have happened? Anybody ever heard of the law cause and effect? That’s something that happens causing the next thing to happen, which part of the chain of cause and effect shouldn’t have happened.
You ate something bad, made a stomach ache, put you in a bad mood, so when you came home to your loved one, you weren’t so loving. All right. You shouldn’t have been that way. Okay? That means I shouldn’t have got a stomach ache and I shouldn’t have eaten that food. And whoever made the food shouldn’t have made it so spicy.
And they made it spicy because they were trying to get even with their girlfriend and they or man, and they shouldn’t have got even with, at what point do you sit there and say shouldn’t happen? Everything that ever happened was a result of everything that happened before it. Including Hitler. There’s a reason he was the way he was.
I didn’t say good reason, but a reason cause and effect. It’s called science. You guys wanna be scientists. All of science studies cause and effect. Otherwise there’s nothing to study. There’s no right or wrong. There’s just a law. There’s just the universe is created. One event happens because the next event happen, but there are a lot of events that happen at once, so it gets very complicated.
And that’s why we have ai, excuse me, they could solve a lot of things. And then quantum computers, they say a quantum computer in, in five minutes can solve a problem that could take a thousand or more. It was more like 10,000 years, a hundred thousand years. Well, that could solve some stuff. Are there a lot of variables going on?
It’s just a constant mesh of cause and effect. So it’s not right to say it shouldn’t have happened. You don’t get to do that. You get to say, it happened. Could I handle it first? You handle it. Does that mean I don’t do anything about it? Of course, it doesn’t mean you don’t do anything about it. Life is an interactive sport, but you don’t do something about it out of reaction.
You don’t do something about it ’cause it hits your stuff. And now I’m gonna try and make it be better for me. ’cause I don’t like to hit my stuff. I don’t like what you said. It’s more I’m sitting in here as a conscious being. I’m sitting in here, I’m conscious how much effort is to be conscious. Nothing.
You’re conscious, you’re always conscious. You wish you weren’t. You’re conscious. Something comes in and hits the samskara. It’s some stuff. Your immediate action. Is good. What? Good. Why? I don’t want that in here. I don’t want that running my life. I don’t want that make, so I can’t love certain people and others that every total conditional love you have to be exactly the way I wanna and believe what I, you understand that?
No, the earth is a place of social center to evolve. What means to evolve Is that just not in there? What does Darwin say about evolution? Survival of the fittest. Adaptability. Well, how adaptable are you to the things that are happening outside of you? None. Nothing. They have to be exactly what I want, otherwise I’m not.
Okay. So you’re growing and something hits your stuff. You stay conscious. Yes. It doesn’t feel good. You would not have kept it in there if it felt good. The very fact that it’s in there means you didn’t wanna feel it, so you pushed it away. When you push it away, it stays inside. At what point will you wake up and say, I don’t want it in here.
I can look at all you guys and say, I know you have impressions. You are the way you are. I honor it. I respect it. I understand. Doesn’t mean I can’t do something about it, but I’m not gonna sit there and say, you have to be the way my some scars are by my past in order for me to like you or get along with you or to deal with you.
Otherwise, boo, watch it. Where do you see my rage and revenge? Okay, so stuff comes in. Things happen. Check. Why? ’cause it cause an effect. Not because of right or wrong. ’cause it cause an effect. They happen, they come in, you experience them, check what do you do? That experience, ’cause it’s gonna hit your stuff.
You have opinions, preferences, hopes, dreams, concepts, views. It’s all your stuff. It’s all this stuff you stored in there. Every single thing you like. It’s just something that happened before and you learn to like it. You don’t make up what you like. It just kinda happens, doesn’t it? It happens ’cause of what’s stored in there.
So if something comes in, it hits the stuff, generally it doesn’t feel good. You get way more negative stuff in there. Positive comes in, hits the stuff. And your conscious being you first. Relax, that’s the first thing you do. Relax, I can handle this. Want a mantra? That’s your mantra. Relax and say. I want to go through the disturbance that this created in me.
Otherwise I have to carry it for the rest of my life. And they build on each other because sister got the blue bike and I wanted the blue bike. I don’t like the color blue. I. All of a sudden you buy me this beautiful bedspread and it’s blue and I tell you, I told you I don’t like blue. What’s wrong with you?
Alright, now that person’s hurt. And all of a sudden your relationship, it just keeps growing. It keeps going. It just expands out. And so you sit in there and you say, this is the art, the art, the spirituality. I’m here. I experienced what I experienced. I don’t wanna keep it no matter what it is. Not about right or wrong.
If it caused disturbance in there that I can’t let go, I’m gonna practice letting go. That’s why I teach what I teach. Call it acceptance calling. Let it go. Call it surrender. Call it whatever you want. It’s not outside that you accept everything outside. It’s not outside. You surrender everything everybody does.
No, it’s inside. I accept that this is reality. How do you know it happened? I accept that. I feel resistance. Why? Because I do. The question is, what do you do about it? ’cause your tendency will be to protect yourself from it, to push it back down. I don’t want it in there. That’s the art. I don’t want it in there.
I wanna be free. I be liberated. MTA be liberated. Soul. Right? How By not pushing it back down so it comes up, you relax through it. What happens, you relax through it. A piece chips off. Sometimes all of it goes right through. Sometimes it’s just a piece. It takes time. You got a lot of stuff in there. If you could actually not resist, it would all pass through, but that’s a lot.
That’s asking a lot, isn’t it? You got some stuff in there, don’t you? And you have stuff in there that they don’t like and they wish never happened. Get over it. It happened. You don’t get to be like that. There’s no growth in that. It shouldn’t have happened. It did. It hurt me. Yes. It’s not a question of whether it happened.
It’s not a question of whether it hurt you. Question, what did you do with that pain? Was it like riding on water? Yes. I felt some pain. I felt rejection there. Okay. Are you okay? Of course I’m okay. I just came in, passed through. I let it pass through. It’s just a moment in life. No, I did not do that. I stored what bothered me the most.
I told you, go have dinner at a restaurant and have the food be, there’s nothing wrong with it. Made me really sick, right? And when the waiter comes by, say, I want a doggy bag of what? Of the food. Okay? Get your doggy bag, take it home. And there’s a room in your, in your house called the sick room. And you take those little doggy bags and you put them inside that room.
And every single day you go in and take a little teaspoon full to remind yourself how sick it made you. That’s what you’re doing inside yourself. You’re basically saying the, I’m gonna keep that one that won hurt. Well, why would you keep it? You know how you keep it to make sure it doesn’t happen again?
Good luck. That means every single thing that ever bothered you, now you have to go out there and manipulate the world to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And that becomes your whole life. Isn’t that your whole life? Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Whoa. I’m teaching you something here. You understand that?
So the art of living, the art of true spirituality is you’re not gonna let go instantaneously. It’s not gonna happen like that. It’s growth alright? But you sit there and you’re, my master should talk about a pole star. I’ve made the pole star of my life. I want liberation. I want freedom. I want the Shakti when it comes up, not to hit all the garbage and express itself as anger or fear or jealousy or luster, whatever the things that happens because it hit your stuff.
I want it to be free and it will just flow up by itself. You can’t stay out of meditation. You’ll sit down and watch tv. You won’t watch very much ’cause every single thing would shock you just pouring inside of you. I’ve had the honor of meeting some really great beings. Not many. Shakti wouldn’t stay inside of them.
Mm-hmm. You understand that You walk into a room, you’re baked and it doesn’t always feel good. You say, oh, and if you’re on a being was high. No you don’t. You better watch it. Why? Because just as Crystal tries to vibrate at the highest rate, your aura will try to vibrate at that rate, which means it’s gonna hit all your stuff.
’cause it can’t vibrate at that rate. And that’s why people go through some tremendous growth hanging out with high beings. Why many really high beings throw rocks at you if you try to hang out with them ’cause they know you can’t handle it. Get away from me. Alright? Am I teaching anything? Your pole star is?
I am ready, willing, and able to do the work of not keeping this stuff inside of me. And people, they raise their hand and say, well, how do I know it Hit my stuff. Are you kidding me? You’re in there. You know it Hit your stuff. Do you hear me? Do you really want to carry that stuff? Answer me every one of you.
Do you wanna carry that stuff inside of the rest of your life? It affects how much you can love. It affects whether you enjoy your food. Take a bite. Oh, it’s so good. Oh, I know. It’s a little like I, I taste a little ginger in there and I think I might be allergic to ginger when I was young. There it is.
There’s the end of your food. Am we listening? You don’t want that stuff in there as the purpose of this talk, the art of spirituality. Sitting back here and letting go of what? Letting go of yourself. Dying to be reborn. And what happens is, as you let go, the Shakti builds. Why? Because it’s in there and it doesn’t hit the stuff.
If the cloud is not cloud each day, all of a sudden the sun’s there. Where was it? Why was the sun? It’s always there. There was just a cloud in front of it. The Shakti is always there coming up, not even wanting to come up. It’s always coming up, but it’s hitting your stuff from underneath. It doesn’t just hit the stuff from outside, it comes up outta nowheres.
You don’t even know where the stuff’s coming from, nor do you need to just let go. Hmm. Of what? Everything. Now what Then interact from a place of clarity, a place of compassion, A place of I am interacting to help the situation, not to help me handle the situation. Do you understand the difference? So it’s not that you don’t act, you just do the best you can to raise the energy, not because you can’t handle it, but because you can handle it.
Alright. You know I could go on forever. Is anybody listening? Yes. Alright. Alright. Very good. So we talked about the art of yoga. The art of spirituality, as opposed to just the practice of holding it together and trying to be okay. It’s not about trying to be okay, it’s about being okay. Well how, how did I be okay?
By letting go of is making you not okay. Is there a difference? It’s deep.
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.
