Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. It’s common in spiritual teachings and with spiritual teachers. I. To recognize that the mind is the problem
that’s helpful. At least you know where the problem is, doesn’t solve the problem. So some people teach to quiet the mind meditation. Some many different forms of meditation are about quiet in the mind. People take prolonged periods of time, retreats and sabbaticals to try and quiet. The mind
trouble is when they come back to their job, to their family, to with finances issues. It doesn’t take all that long for the thing to start talking again. Does it? Let’s be honest. It’s nice to get the reprieve from a troubled mind, but somehow the interactions with life, with the world, people, places, things, money, everything, relationships just seem to stirred up a little bit.
Anybody with me? Anybody noticed? So I always say, people sometimes say to me, why don’t you teach meditation? Everybody teaches meditation. It’s wonderful. There’s so many techniques. Find something that works for you. I wanna teach what to do when you’re not meditating. That’s what I’ve learned overall. My years Doesn’t mean you don’t meditate.
It means that a lot of time you’re not meditating. So what are you doing? You’re not meditating, so let’s talk about it. The mind is noisy. That’s just the truth. The mind is noisy. Everybody’s mind talks about something different. We don’t realize that. I’ve talked through that. Psychology says, man is a sum of his learned experiences.
It’s not true. You’re the consciousness watching the psyche emotions and mental planes that are the some you learned experiences. That’s all you have in there in your mind, other than your intellectual mind, your per abstract mind, which can think about the universe, can think about God, can think about inventing things, can think all kinds of things.
That’s not the mind, that’s a problem. The mind is not a problem. The problem mind is the personal mind. What does that mean? What’s the difference? If you’re sitting there trying to solve a math equation, you’re sitting there trying to solve some engineering problem, you’re sitting there trying to write music, you use your mind.
It’s a very good tool. If you haven’t noticed, very useful for things, I, I, I don’t think you’d like not having one. Remember wizard of our, ah, somebody who was looking for the straw man. Somebody looking for something, one was looking for a heart and wasn’t looking for a mind. Alright, so the mind is fine for that.
The trouble is that’s not where it rests. That is not the natural state of the mind. The natural state of the mind is as follows. There are things I want. How do you know? The mind told me, the heart told me. There are things that make me feel good, things that make me feel bad. I want the things that make me feel good.
I don’t want the things that make me feel bad. Very logical. Okay, so first of all, where’d that come from? How do you know what you want? I know what I want. Yeah. Really? You want the same thing you want when you were 10 years old? When you’re 20 years old. 15, right? 10 yesterday. Right? Kinda changes, doesn’t it?
How do you know what you want? So we’ll put that aside for a second ’cause we’re gonna touch all of this. If you wanna understand mine, you need to talk about mine, not about, let’s make it quiet. Force it to be quiet. Good. I did it for six hours a day for years. Alright? And I said, well, I would like to find out why it’s doing what it’s doing.
Instead of trying to make it stop doing what it’s doing, because then underneath it still wants to do what it’s doing. You have to fight with it. You have to struggle with it. You have to use extreme disciplines and all kinds of things. I’m a scientist. I wanna know why does it do what it does by itself?
Why is it not otherwise? And what you’ll see is let’s get it out right away. You’ve had experiences in your life. Every one of you obviously have experiences every moment in your life. Okay. Some of those experiences are pleasant when they come in. Some are unpleasant, some are neutral. I guarantee you don’t talk about the neutral ones, the white lines on the road, the clouds that went by unless the cloud looked like your grandfather’s rocking chair and you love your grandfather.
And he died two years ago. And what was the next house? Different area of the cloud, isn’t it? You either like it or I don’t wanna see that cloud ever again. Okay, so basically things come in and they hit you in there. You’re in there and either they’re pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. Fine. We know that it happens.
Okay? So that’s the first thing the mind does actually, you do it to the mind. You don’t understand. You made your mind the way it is. Don’t you ever think your mother did it, your father did it. Your first boyfriend did it. You made your mind. I, I I Psychology says, don’t tell them that. Well, I’m sorry. How do I know you’re the only one in there?
Mommy in there, daddy in there, preacher in there, RA in there. First boyfriend, first girlfriend. Anybody else in there? That’s a single occupancy apartment. That’s the first thing to understand. You are conscious and you are in there and you have will, and one thing you do with your will is as follows. It’s very instinctual.
You don’t decide to do it. It’s instinctual. Just like a lion jumps at you, somebody takes a swing at you, you throw your hands out, okay? When the stuff comes in and it’s not comfortable you in there who lives in there, you don’t wanna experience it. I don’t want it to feel uncomfortable. The trouble is it does.
How do you know you wouldn’t be messing with it if you didn’t know it was uncomfortable? Goes slow motion. It happens. It comes in and you experience it. That’s the first thing consciousness does, is experience. And if the experience is not comfortable, you protect yourself from it. How? I’ll tell you what.
Make it so it didn’t happen. Just think about it. You can realize I can’t. I can’t make it. So it didn’t happen. It did happen. Otherwise it wouldn’t be in here. If it didn’t happen, it wouldn’t be bothering you in there, but it did happen and it came in and it bothered you. That’s the start. Okay? What do you do?
You in there? Who lives in there when it comes in and it doesn’t feel comfortable? You push it away. You say, I don’t want to experience this, but you did experience it. I teach you this all the time. You can’t make the outside event not have happened. How could you say that to me? I can’t believe you said it to me.
Well, obviously they said it. You wouldn’t be there being bothered by it. You can’t make them not have said it. They can apologize all they want. They still said it. It came in and it bothers you. That is a basic fact. So if the event takes place outside and it comes into you. And it feels uncomfortable. You don’t want to experience it.
You don’t think like that. Just don’t experience it. I don’t like what you said on what you did. I like what you didn’t say, or whatever it is, right? So what do you do? You can’t get rid of the outside event. It happened, or it wouldn’t be in there. What you do is take the inner energy, it comes in as energy.
The line doesn’t come in, the person doesn’t come in, the mother doesn’t come in the vibration. The energy comes in. To your inner state, and what you do is you push it away. That’s the beginning of understanding the mind as a foundation of mind. Okay. Well, the foundation of mind is it experiences things.
That’s what it’s there for. Comes in, picks up your senses, and then presents it to the self, presents it to consciousness. If you didn’t have sensors, it wouldn’t come in. It comes in through your sensors. Pass up a nervous system. Consolidates in the brain and then the vibrations, the actual energy. You do understand you wouldn’t be here.
The brain is a massive of neurons, very good, but those neurons picked up the impulses. That got passed in through the senses and they all, the central nervous system is all there. That’s not where you are. You’re outside of that. You’re the self, the consciousness. So that what happens into the mind, very, very subtle.
Rich’s energies passed into the mental plane and all of a sudden that which was outside is inside. I’ve given that to, I, I, it’s so hard for me to, ’cause I know you don’t know it. I, I teach you over and over again. I want you to go check your science books, your health books, right? You are not looking at me right now.
You are not looking at me. Science will tell you that light is bouncing off of my form. But what if it done bounce off? Then it goes right by as part of the air, but the shape of my atoms that make up my body, you’re not looking at them. Light is bouncing off of them and hitting your eyes exactly the shape that bounces off.
That’s what’s going on. So you are looking at me inside. The light stimulates the optical receptors. It passes up the optical nerves. It gets received by the brain, almost like packets of energy for a computer. Alright, so network, it passes it up there. Then what? Then the subtle vibration. Very subtle. The neuro subtle neuro energies vibrate, and on your mental plane, it renders a vision.
A rendering, just like when you watch tv, those are really pixels, little dots on the tv. If you get up close enough, you’ll see them, but you step back and then it makes the image. So an image is being made in your mind. The mind is not the brain. The mind is a much higher vibration of energy, but the images being made that’s passed along the entire nervous system all the way through the brain, then it vibrates and you the consciousness are looking at it in there period.
They are not senses. They’re sense ORs. The same thing with sound, the same thing with taste, the same with touch. It’s picking up the outside chemicals, vibrations, light patterns, and passing them up to you in there. And that’s where you’re seeing them. You’re not looking out through your eyes. The camera doesn’t look out what’s taking a picture of.
It’s taking a picture of leaves an image inside the camera. That’s what’s happening inside of you. So that’s the most basic function of mine, that it picks up the receptors. You in there, the consciousness gets to see what’s going on out there, even though you’re not looking out there. Okay? So that’s the BA basic function of the mind.
So now it’s picking up the vibrations. And what happens is some of the vibes are, you know, giving all good vibrations, 60 song, right? And either bad vibration or good vibration. Energy has its own entire spectrum. It comes in and you experience it. I already talked about once before. We’ll stop there. Now what happens?
You, the consciousness, the self, the ottman, you, the indwelling awareness of being, are aware of the vibration that got created in your mind. And what your tendency to do is if you don’t like it, you protect yourself from it. How? By pushing it away. Don’t talk about that. You know, I don’t like when you talk about that.
Ever drive down the street and see a poster or something to remind you of something you didn’t like, and all of a sudden you’re in bad mood. Can you feel it coming back up? You tell people, well, you know, I don’t like to talk about that and I don’t wanna talk about that. Why? Because it makes it come back up.
Why? Because you stored it in there. I stored the, the person. No, you stored the vibration. A samskara, you stored this packet of energy that came in. It rendered in your mind. It renders vision. It’s not just the vibration. You actually see the picture inside. Paints a picture inside. That’s where you’re looking at it.
But the vibration of what matters is if it doesn’t feel good and you don’t like it, then you push it away. And when you push it away, you stored it and it’s gonna stay there for your rest of your life, period. That’s what I found out. No matter how small it is, if a friend of yours, you call out to them at school or talking down the plaza, Hey Sally, and she doesn’t say hello.
Next time you see her, if it’s three days later, it comes back up. That feeling of rejection, that uncomfortable feeling that and, and maybe you ask, how come you didn’t say hello? Or maybe you’re afraid to ask ’cause you don’t wanna find out, or maybe you look stupid because she had earbuds on. That’s the personal mind doing its thing.
It came in, you couldn’t handle it, and so you pushed it away. And so that’s stored in there. That’s what all your subconscious is. That’s what all the denial and repression and all this stuff Frey talked about. That’s what happened. You didn’t push mommy down there? I. I hadn’t seen Mommy for 30 years, but she’s still down there because you stored it down there.
If it had a bad vibration, you didn’t wanna experience it, and you push it down there. That is what creates the personal mind, the intellectual mind is this gift that was given to you. You have the ability to think of things. You have the ability to create things. The mind is a beautiful thing. Einstein’s mind, everybody’s mind.
Your mind doesn’t have to be a genius. You don’t have have a genius mind. Your mind is capable logic. It’s capable of understanding, it’s capable, all kinds of things. And it’s also capable that when the energy comes in and you in there don’t want to experience it. You have this ability to resist it, to push it away.
You know what it feels like? You push it away and then it’s stored down there and it comes back up later, comes back in your dreams, it comes back. Somebody says something, doesn’t it? That is what I call the personal mind. I. That’s the mind that is dedicated to you, not to science, not to understanding, not to God.
You okay? You know how much, and we’re gonna, we’re getting there slowly. How much of your mind’s about you? I be kind and say 95%. It’s all about, I mean, mine. What do I have? What do I what? This is my child. I know about me. It’s not my child and my husband. My, I mean mine. It’s about you. It’s about you. You took it personal and then you built inside your mind, inside the very beautiful mind that’s capable of doing anything.
You built this whole system that said, I like this and I don’t like that. Doesn’t your mind say that you have opinions, hopes, dreams, concepts, views? What are those mind. And they’re about you. No hope is a wonderful thing. I’m very bad. You really? You should not come out here to see me. Why? Because I’m gonna tell you the hope.
Hope’s a wonderful thing. If the alternative is to have hope or be depressed. Please have hope. Don’t listen to me. What is hope? I hope things will be the way I want. How many of you hope things won’t be the way you want? That’s what your hope is. What are your dreams? I dream Sunday day my ship will come in.
I, me, mine, I, me, mine, I, me, mine. In other words, I’m not okay. In here, of course, you’re not okay in there. You just stored everything. Never bothers you inside of you. I mean, you’re possibly okay. If you store everything that disturbed you inside, you’re gonna be disturbed and you know, you are, you’re trying not to be.
No, I’m very positive. I like this one. I practice positive thinking. Why? Otherwise it’s pretty negative. Okay. And yeah, you’re right. I’m not telling you not to do these things. I’m explaining why the mind is the way it is so you can understand what to do about it, really. So now you’re in there. Your consciousness is in there and it’s being distracted constantly by what you like or what you don’t like.
And then what does the mind do? It uses its intellectual power ’cause it is very powerful. We said that it’s intellect to figure out how to get what you want. Where do you wanna go on vacation? Where do you care? Planet Earth? No, no, no, no. I once went to Hawaii. He was so wonderful. But then I went to Alaska and it was even, I froze on there.
Again, it’s just impressions that got left in your mind. Because you stored them there, and so when you decide what you want and what you don’t want, you’re not deciding what you want and what you don’t want. No, you don’t get to make that decision. You’re taking the sum total of the experience that you’ve had and trying to figure out which one I have again and don’t wanna have again.
So your preferences, your. Your preferences are patterned. They’re you’re programmed by what? Did somebody type it into you or use voice recognition? No, your sensors picked it up, pass it into you, and you picked one from column A and two from column C and one from here, and you stored them in there and you ended up with a preference system.
Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, whether you like politics or don’t like politics, whether you like men or women. So I’ve been programming to you at one point or another, right? There’s biological things, but they’re programming you too ’cause you’re not your body. And your body sends all kinds of message up to your mind, doesn’t it?
And so basically you’ve been patterned, your mind is patterned by the outside world. That’s that’s the simplest thing I say. And then what happens? Because the outside world has patterned your mind, it develops thoughts about that, about what I want and what I don’t want. So you built these preferences inside your head, and guess what?
Every single one of you have different ones. There’s not a single person that ever walked the face of the earth or ever will that had the same experience as you. Every moment you’re having a unique experience. You’re at a different angle. You’re hearing different things, different thoughts are going on.
You’re having an experience. Then you go to the next moment. They didn’t go with you. These are twins. It doesn’t matter. Every single person is having a unique path through life. No one thinks the same as you. No one ever will, and no one ever has. Can you have one experience that changes the entire way you think?
Meet somebody or get fired. All of a sudden, your whole thought pattern change, you’re being programmed by the experiences you’re having. Trouble is, you think it’s so logical. Well, of course if I get fired, I’m happy. You know, I’m gonna be radical. There’s no, of course, it’s what I’m saying. You’re being programmed by the experience.
If you didn’t have that experience, would, would you mind think differently? Yeah. What’s it telling you? You’re being programmed by the experiences you’re having. It’s not logical, it’s not illogical, it’s just truth. So when they come in. Impact and influence what’s already in there. Now, what’s already in there are your preferences from the past.
They can change in a minute, just fall in love with somebody, fall outta love with somebody. That’s what’s happening in your mind. We’re gonna talk about what to do about it. But someone laid a foundation. It’s not you. It’s not your personality. It’s not your ego. It’s just something that got built inside, mostly out of reaction that you like something or don’t like something, and then it influences your decision making and decides your path through life.
And so, but you’re so busy trying to say, I wanna be okay and I don’t wanna not be, okay, so then you go to this tiny little database you stored inside. That’s what you stored. Nothing. You’ve had no experiences compared to how many other experiences there are. I always ask you, I said, same thing. I feel bad, right?
How many experience have you missed at the same time you’re having an experience? How many other experiences were going on that you could have had Everywheres. Throughout the world, throughout the universe, compared to the experience you had, nothing. What you have is statistically insignificant and you’re building your entire life based on that as if it matters.
Okay? Now we understand why they say mind is the problem. That’s a problem, have another experience. You’re a different person. Whatever happens, it comes in. And then in there you try to be okay. I’m just trying to be okay. That’s the self. And I, I don’t wanna be lost. I don’t wanna be scared. I don’t wanna feel insecure.
I don’t want those things. I don’t wanna get hurt, like I get hurt before, do I? So you try to use your intellectual pattern of mind to put together a life that I can think of that when it unfolds, I’m gonna be better. And you not just do it about the future, you do it about the past. There are things in your past that you say shouldn’t have happened.
You wanna bet, you wanna bet they should happened. Every single event that ever happened, the entire universe came together and that event took place called cause and Effect. No, it should not have happened. It was wrong. It shouldn’t have happened. Okay, fine. Have fun because you won’t. So you judge the future.
You judge a fan. You try to put it all together into this thing called your ego, your personality, your self concept. It’s the concept of what you built inside your mind based on your past experiences. She played Dorothy in the fifth grade and everybody clapped. Now she has the Dorothy Complex that everybody should clap when she goes on stage or does anything, or even at a party.
Says something’s supposed to stop and listen like they did in fifth grade, or you did your fifth grade thing and they all booed you now, you’ll never step on stage ever again. It patterns you. I know The trouble is, seems so logical. It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of you letting in these random events.
Why did they boo? I don’t know. ’cause the last time they watched Wizard of Oz was a professional show came through and you ain’t, and they were expected to see the same thing. Right. So he played it up like that. I don’t know why they clap. ’cause they were all your family and they purposely filled the thing.
I don’t know why. But the point is it is meaningless. Do you understand? I’m make it now. I’ll get you. Nothing that ever happened to you is meaningful. Now take a breath. Nothing that ever happened to you is meaningful. It’s one outta 700 billion zillion moments in time and space that you happened to be standing there when that happened.
It could have been anything else. Take a breath. I’m being very challenging. I Say it again. Nothing that ever happened to you has any meaning at all, but it does to you. Why? Because it hurts you, because you liked, you didn’t like it. You stored it inside. I don’t like that color. I don’t like that color. I want a little bit shade or blue.
Now you’re basically thinking you matter. I’m gonna tell you. See, you don’t matter. Look at me. Oh boy. Having fun tonight, you don’t matter. There’s 8.3 billion of you guys at this moment running around the planet. And you are really important, aren’t you? And I always tell you, okay, so that’s just the planet.
Every morning even I stand in front of a picture out there, which is, look, everyone said what is there? It’s a little dot that is a picture of actual photographs of the planet Earth from 2 million miles out. Why do you do that? To remind myself, don’t matter, 1.3 billion earth fit inside the sun. The plant’s been here for 4.5 billion years.
How old are you? How long? Hang out here for 8,900 years and you think you matter? That’s the problem. That’s not a solution. I’m gonna tell you how to work with the mine. That ain’t how to work with the mine. Just go in there, tell the mine I matter. And I did really good in the fifth grade and I want that to happen again.
And my, my mother, like my sister more than me. I don’t want it to have been like that. No, I don’t talk to my sister. I don’t talk to my mother. Okay. That’s why my mind screwed up. You store that stuff in there and then try to figure out what to do about it. And that’s why families don’t talk to each other.
That’s why everybody gets divorced. That’s why everybody quits their jobs. That’s why they freak out. ’cause somebody else got the corner off and I deserved it. You’re saying I matter. How can you think like that? No wonder we’re screwed up. You gotta start your car nowadays. Cars work. In the old days, they didn’t always start you.
You gotta start the car and you gotta get to work. It doesn’t start. Ready. One person says, what did I do wrong? I went to church and I said, my prayers. I said to the Lord’s Prayer this morning. Why didn’t my car start? I’m not gonna answer to that. Alright? Oh, oh. Somebody wants to sabotage it. Conspiracy theory.
I wonder what somebody did to make my car didn’t start. What are you doing? That’s what you do with your mind. Do you see what a mess it is? It’s a mess. One because you think you matter. You’re much better off saying, oh, I woke up this morning. Mazel tough. I wonder what’s gonna happen today. I’m gonna have fun, whatever it is, because I’m just here for a little while and I can’t control the thing.
It’s way bigger than me. It’s been here for a long time and there’s a lot of forces causing to happen and I’m fine there. How you doing? That’s your starting position, and that’s the deepest spiritual teaching. He was last will be first. Blessed or the meek for the shall and hurt of the Earth. It’s like you’re in there and you built this ego, and the only way you’re okay is if the outside world matches what you built inside.
If it matches, I had a good day. If it doesn’t match, I had a terrible year. Nothing went right. What do you mean it didn’t go right? The earth didn’t spin around the sun. There weren’t 300 billion stars shining out the in the heavens on one galaxy with two nothing. They all screwed up, eh? Black holes. Black holes ate a galaxy.
Oh my God. You couldn’t care less. You couldn’t care less what’s happening anywhere on the sun in this. And unless it affects you, it’s all about me. Okay, now let’s talk about the mind. Did you build one of those in there? You got one in there. That’s what you did with this Microsoft. You say what? Where do you wanna go today?
You know what you said to hell? That’s where I wanna go. I wanna suffer. I wanna worry out of anxiety. What do you worry about? You made up something in your head based on your past experiences about what you want, what you don’t want. If it happens, you’re fine. If it doesn’t happen, you’re not, and you don’t even wait for it to happen.
You worry. You worry that it might not happen, and you worry that what you don’t want will happen. That’s the cause of anxiety, tension. All of that is mind is causing that, but you can’t blame mind. You did every single thing I talked about. You’re the one that couldn’t handle what happened as you stored it inside and now you build all these patterns and self concepts and stuff like that of how I am and how I want everyone else to be, don’t you?
When you get in a relationship, do you want the other person to be the way you want them to be? They’re not the way you want them to be. They have a whole history of patterns of every minute of every day programming them, and you think they’re the same as you. I met my soulmate fat chance, right? People ask me, is there such a thing as a soulmate?
Yes, and you’re it. The only thing that matches you is that which has the patterns of all the things you’ve had before. So go find yourself. Okay, so now we have built this mind. We got it. They’re just, I took my experiences, which were very personal. I stored them inside and I said, I want that to happen again, or I don’t want that to happen again.
And then I built all these concepts of views and opinions and preferences and hopes and dreams based on that, right? And then I decided what I’m gonna do with my life based on that. What I’m gonna try to do and what? And you wonder why you’re a mess. And somebody say, I’m not a mess. I got great dreams.
I’m gonna match them. How you doing right now? We’re not so cool right now. Alright, if I’m getting there, I’m gonna get there. Okay? Fine. Alright. Now, do you understand mind? I laid the groundwork for you to understand what is going on in there. It’s not your mind’s fault. That’s like, like a computer is, is putting all kinds of garbage up by itself and so on.
That’s ’cause you picked it. Those are sites you went to. It’s like that now, isn’t it? They know where you went. They start throwing ads up based on what you saw two days ago. Alright, your mind’s the same. You did it. You chose what’s important. You chose, it’s not important. You chose where you wanna go, where you don’t wanna go.
You chose everything. I don’t want this job. I don’t like it anymore. I wanted to have a woman boss. I had a woman boss. I really loved it. Okay, fine. And then you say things like, but I really feel this way. Am I supposed to ignore my feelings? You don’t mean to answer that. They’re full of it. They’re meaningless.
If you had different experiences. If your boss had been a man and it was really fair and he was equal rights and all this kinda stuff, it’s all based on your past experiences. Do you understand that? Does that make sense? Do you see how meaningless your past experiences are? You could have at the same time, had a different experience.
Anything anywheres all over. It’s so hard for me to teach you this. What is going on inside of your mind is full of it. It is completely meaningless, and as long as you are listening to it, you are gonna be a mess. You’ll be afraid it’s gonna happen. You’ll be hopeless. Something happening, you meet somebody, you’ll make decisions.
Oh my God, it’d be great. You realize it’s terrible. Just you have no polestar in your life. It’s all based on what your mind is telling you. And your mind is just a computer that’s full of the data that got put in, not very full, that got put in by the absolutely meaningless moments that just happened to happen while you were walking down your path.
But it seems like everything, doesn’t it? That’s ’cause it’s the only thing you got. There’s nobody in there arguing with you. If they do, they’re not your friend. Alright? Take a breath. And what does that mean? It means you’re not getting anywheres like that. It means there is no hope. There’s no peace.
There’s this anxiety and underneath, that’s what now I’m gonna talk about. What I wanna talk about, and you may not see it yet, underneath is fear. Underneath is fear that you do something wrong to upset somebody that’s someone reject you. There’s a deep, deep fear, and you’re running away from that fear.
You don’t wanna feel that fear. I wanna get the A paper. I wanna please everybody. I wanna make sure I dress right. I’m gonna do everything I can to not have to feel that fear. We’re talking real, yes or no? Can you relate to that? Do you understand that? That’s very, very deep. Don’t be afraid to be honest.
No, I’m doing great. You are not. But I made a lot of money last year. Yeah. Well, in the thirties, it was the 28th, 29. They flew us off the buildings in Wall Street. They lost it. They’re gone. That is not doing well. What you did was define what? Well, what success looks like in the sixties. Success was dropping out, having long hair, and just being free.
Okay. And it ain’t like that now. Okay. It’s like everything changes, everything’s different. Maybe you thought you were successful, well, you were being successful then with your peer group, but peer groups, other people who tend to think like you. Everybody. No, of course the other people are wrong, aren’t they?
So you wake up and you realize it’s way deeper than that. Well, what do I do? ’cause this is what happened. This is the patterns I have and, and that’s the only way I can be okay if they match. They don’t deny that. Let’s get that straight. True. Spirituality does not deny truth. It does not set up what they used to call premature transcendence, or, what’s the word nowadays that we forget it.
Spiritual bypassing where you make believe. I’m there. I have no problems. Do you believe me? No, I don’t believe you. Why don’t you believe me? You got a spiritual ego. You built another one, and, and you worry whether people accept you, accept you. I’m a very spiritual person. Well, I don’t see you as spiritual.
Why? I, I, yes. So I do. I meditate all the time. I’m gonna take four hours a day. And what are you talking about? Why don’t, why don’t you feel it? You don’t feel my energy. There’s something wrong with you. It’s all the same thing. It is just this concept you built in your head and you’re trying to make it match and you’re afraid that it won’t go to buy a dress or a shirt.
I love that. We put it on and we turn around the six sided mirror. Whatcha trying to look at? Either it’s right for winter or it’s swarm enough, or it’s gonna a silk and it’s right for summer. No, no. I’m trying to see how other people will look at me if I wear this. Isn’t that cute? I’m not picking on you.
I’m just waking you up. Don’t stop doing it. I don’t recommend stopping it. I recommend noticing it. Witness consciousness that you hear about, you. Don’t try to stop it. Try to stop. It is not understand where it’s coming from, and then you try to push it down. I don’t wanna be like that. I, I don’t care what I’m wearing.
When you know you do, then you go walk into some place and you had all the ripped jeans on. That was kind of cool. And everyone was wearing tuxedos and uhoh. Who missed the message? Yes or no? Do you get embarrassed? Do you feel ashamed? Ever feel guilt about what I said, something that I shouldn’t have said I did something I shouldn’t have done.
Oh boy. It can get messy in there, can’t it? Then what do you do? Try to offset it. Or sometimes you, you rationalization. I was right to say that she deserved that. Better than that it helped her. I’m just being her teacher. That was really helped her, that she had to go through that. She doesn’t know it now, but some mind, mind now, do you understand mind?
That’s just mind all based on this foundation that I taught you, which is you shove the stuff down there. Now you’re sense. Are you sensitive? You know you’re sensitive. Are you sensitive? If somebody says something you don’t like, are you sensitive? If somebody doesn’t say what you want them to say, are you sensitive?
If you think that someday they might not say what you want them to say. So what you’ve done is stored this thing inside, this brilliant thing called mind, and you stored this garbage in there. You programmed it with your past experiences. You had no choice. You did have the past experience. We’ll talk about it.
I first wanna get you to the point where you realize uhoh. Okay, I screwed up. Hear me? It’s not that somebody else screwed up. You couldn’t handle what came in. Somebody else yelled at you. Why? Because their mother yelled at them. Alright? The question is not, is it happening? It’s happening everywhere. Is it?
All kinds of things are happening. The question is you in there? Who is experiencing what’s happening? Can you handle it? Remember I told you if it hurts a lot, you resist it. If it was really good, you cling to it. Then you build these models inside and then you try to make the world be that way. What if you didn’t do that?
What if I didn’t make the world be that way? You mean have to be renouncing? No, I didn’t say that. That’s not deep enough. What if it didn’t store the patterns? So it was clean in there? So when things happen, they happen. You experience them and then you deal with them after having experienced them at peace, serenity, openness, compassion, understanding why things are the way they are now you understand why people are the way they are because of everything that ever happened to them.
Who said that? Freud, you understand that we’re not talking about anything other than science? Well, how could you say that to me? ’cause I had totally different experiences than you. I didn’t even think it would bother you. How could you? Nothing would bother me. My mother used to talk to her like that. You don’t wanna be like that.
I don’t want you to be like that. I know you don’t have to be like that how you like that. It is not about getting what you want. It could change in a minute, so you eventually catch on. And you say, it’s not about getting what I want. It’s not about avoiding what I don’t want. It’s not understanding why I want things and why I don’t want things.
The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. That’s the first line of the deepest thing written in Zen ever. The third, then patriarch. The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. The great way mean enlightenment, peace, serenity. Merger with God the great way, okay?
The Buddhist Nirvana is not difficult for those that have no preferences. Now, if I say that, you say to me, I have preferences, I have strong preferences, and when I get what I want, I feel much better. I can give my preferences, okay? Because you’re not understanding. The question is not how do I give up my preferences?
Not supposed to have them. Why do you have preferences? Why are your preferences what they are? ’cause you were patterned by these past TV shows or movies or book, or somebody suddenly said something, right? They left impressions on you. The great way is not difficult for those who don’t have those impressions.
It doesn’t mean they don’t interact with life. It doesn’t mean if somebody offers them food or one makes ’em sick. From past knowledge, women feel good for past knowledge. They say, which one do you want? I have no preference. You do. So that’s a meaningless thing. Accept the food that makes you feel better.
But if somebody offers you food and it’s the only food available and you’re starving to death, don’t be thinking about it, will you? See the difference. It’s just a natural thing. You come in harmony with life. You don’t sit there and say, I’m only okay if I’m getting what I want and I’m never okay if I’m not getting what I want or even think about not getting what I want.
That’s when you start to work with your mind. You start to work with yourself. So it’s not about not having preferences, it’s about understanding where your preferences come from and then seeing, okay, I had a stepfather. I didn’t get along with him. I didn’t like him very much. I don’t like steps and I don’t like fathers, and I don’t like people named Ben.
And I don’t like the fact that my mother got divorced. I don’t like the fact that she remarried. What did you just do? Like maggots? All this stuff’s now built inside your mind, these impressions that are screwing up your life. If I get what I wanted, I screw in my life. Yeah, I know, but you’re not gonna get what you want.
That’s not how it naturally unfolds. Things unfold the way they are. I, I used a teacher, and I don’t know who can hear it. Inside of you, are the preferences. Form based on your past experiences, outside of you are the realities that are unfolding based on physics, chemistry, psychology called cause and effect.
Things happen that create the outside world. That is not what’s happening right now. The major inside world, that’s your past. That’s all the garbage you stored in it from before. This outside doesn’t know about that. There’s no way it knows what you like or don’t like. It is just unfolding. Oh, I saw a shooting star yesterday.
It was so beautiful. I didn’t see one. I wonder, right? God doesn’t like me. Whatcha doing? It’s just nature unfolding before your eyes. But it hits your stuff, doesn’t it? Alright, so now you’re struggling. What is the truth? How do you deal with it? First, I had somebody come to me once. Very nice guy. It was very much in his spirituality for a while, alright?
And he said to me when I said the great one was not difficult for the no preferences. He was getting married. And basically she said, well, I have preferences. I said, fine. And I wrote him back. I thought about it. I said, okay. I’ll give you another way out. Since you wanted to be a Buddhist. You wanna be sincere in spirituality.
I have a sensation from the third and patriarch who wrote, who wrote the faith mind, right? He said I was allowed to change that first line. The great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything thing. You are welcome to look at it that way ’cause you prefer everything. You’re fine. If you have no preferences, you’re fine.
And actually it works better to look at it that way so that you’re having these experiences and something inside. Change it. I like it. I’m fine with it. I can handle it. I’m growing ’cause of it. But she said really cause a lot of trouble. I wanna be able to handle trouble. I don’t be sensitive like that for the rest of my life.
Thank you. Thank you for the growth. Fair. That’s another way to look at it, is you work with yourself by taking each situation that unfolds and instead of it leave these subs, scars inside of you, these marks and patterns that determine the mess of the rest of your life, right? You start honoring and respecting life.
It’s unfolding. It’s an amazing thing. I just never have enough time to talk to you, right? How can you sit there and judge a world outside that can take a single fertilized cell by itself? No doctors, no scientists, no philosophers, and make a baby outta that cell. Let’s make it the baby life. Every tree you drive by was a seed that took dirt.
Sunlight and water and knew how to break it down molecularly and turn it into the bark and all that stuff of a tree to where it grew into an oak tree. All by itself. You didn’t do anything. And you wanna sit there and say, this world is not okay. I better get busy ’cause I’m not gonna get what I want. Why don’t you want that?
You’re not paying attention. You’re so caught in your own thoughts. That’s, I mean, they talk about his mind. You’re so caught in your own mind about what you want, what you don’t want, and what he did with the past Muslim woman. The future might be what you wear, well, we’ll go out in there that you can’t see reality.
Spirituality is about saying, okay, guess what? I’m going get to where I wanna get. Alright? It takes time. That chunk has gone inside that personal mind. That ain’t reality. How do you know? ’cause you have to work hard to try and make it be the fall from the garden. What does it say when you fell from the garden?
Now you must work for the sweat of your brow to be okay. Just check it out in the Bible. You working with a sweat of your brow and you ain’t been busy all the whole life trying to work with the center of your brow, trying to be okay. Of course you are. And you will be to your deathbed. It ain’t gonna stop.
It ain’t gonna stop. Do you understand that? Has it stopped? You know anybody, you have pictures on a wall. Enlightened beings. That’s what it means to be enlightened. It stopped just for kicks. I get ahead myself. What happens if it stops? Can it stop? Of course it can stop. It has a cause. And it has a cause.
You can work with it so that cause is not there. I explained to you the cause of the mind being so busy is ’cause you stored this garbage in there, which is just preferences, things you want and things you don’t want. And it makes the mind think, how do I get what I want? How do I avoid what I don’t want?
How do I, okay, I mean, again, I throw in real quickly who taught this? Buddha. All of life is suffering. First, noble truth. Can you relate? Doesn’t mean you broke your arm every day. But you are suffering. Okay, the second noble truth, the cause of suffering is preference. It gets translated to desire. What is a desire?
A preference. There ain’t no desire without a preference, but he’s sitting here saying is if you have a preference, your mind is going to go crazy. That’s all there is to it. So all of spirituality is foundation on that. But what do they do about it? Okay, so what you find out is, one, the mind is the way it is because of things you didn’t know you were doing.
It’s not your fault no guilt. ’cause that’s how you used it. You drove your car into a crowd, the car didn’t do it. Your mind is not wrong. It’s not doing anything wrong. You are using it that way. It’s like a computer. You can go to the dark web, all kinds of things. You can go, or you can go study science, you can do anything or create and make art.
You are deciding it. It’s the same thing that’s going on in your mind. Okay. What do you do about it? It’s very simple. Once you get to the end, what’s the problem? The problem is I couldn’t handle the situation that took place in my life. It is not the situation. I couldn’t handle it. Now you would then come back to me extremes.
Somebody killed my parents, somebody treated me wrong. You know? Of course I can’t handle it. You’re welcome to say that. Alright. And the extremes are very difficult to talk about. I agree. But we don’t limit the extremes. Those extremes are very small percentage of your life. For most people, they understand that 99.99999% of the people that walked to face the earth did not live at an extreme, even if they’re poor, even their poverty, just they weren’t.
Having outside events that are very hard to talk about and are intolerable, right? What are they having? It’s raining when they don’t want it to. The driver in front of ’em is driving the wrong speed. They’re not using their blinkers. Somebody didn’t answer me when I called to them. I called somebody on the phone and needed to talk to somebody.
They didn’t answer I a stupid voicemail. You get bothered by everything. So the way out is to first catch on and say, I want out. I do not want to live inside this mess that is created within my mind. That has tremendous history. It’s very hard to deal with. The easiest way to deal with it is habit. Just do what it says to do.
Go to a party. I can’t wait to get to the party all I’m so excited because you be unbelievable. I’ve been looking forward to it for months, right? You go to the party, your mind says, wait a minute. I don’t wanna be here. I don’t wanna be here. I, I don’t like it. You actually leave, you Listen to that maniac.
Why don’t you wanna be here? You don’t even say that. You say no. Can we go? I wanna go. You wanna go? I’ll go by myself. Wow. I’ve just painted the picture where that thing came from. You wanna listen to it. You wanna listen to its preferences and hopes and dreams and constant views and, and all the junk that got built in there and let it run your life.
The answer is yeah, you do it all the time, everybody. That’s what’s going on in there. You get to a point, you walk around the world and you have compassion because you’re not doing that so much and you look at everybody and they have like this fishbowl over their head with
you better watch what you say. It’s very easy to step into book in there that’s going on inside of everybody. And it’s not the same as who gone inside of you. It should be. No, it should not be. It’s just some of their learned experiences driving them crazy. Now some of your experiences driving you crazy and eventually you come down, you say, God, I hope this talk helps you.
Ready?
Tami Simon: I went out.
Michael Singer: That’s spirituality. It’s not your religion. It’s not who you chose for Guru. It’s not what books you read. You said very simple. Excuse me sir. I went out. I don’t wanna live in this. It’s not a whole lot of fun. Does that mean you don’t interact with life? You have to interact with life.
Life is an interactive sport. You hear me? I tried to drop out, I tried to move out of the middle of the woods back in 71. There was nobody else out here, was totally quiet. It was a little house, a hut, whatever. And then I’m trying to meditate. Oh seriously. And the dog would bark. The dog wasn’t on my property.
The dog’s barking. Well, I don’t want the dog barking. There you go. I didn’t know where you’re going. The world’s coming with you. You understand that? Mm-hmm. It’s a matter of saying, I want out, God to hear me now. Out of that mess in there. Can you get out? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You can get out, but it takes time.
It takes effort, takes sincerity. The reason I gave this whole foundation is Buddhist sake. Work at the root. Don’t work at the fact that the mind is saying something you don’t want it to say. You’re trying to shut it up. That’s the leaf. The root is still there. We’ve discussed what the root of the whole thing is.
The stuff that you couldn’t handle from your past. Otherwise they’re white lines on the road. There are clouds passing by. There are events that happen. Good. I don’t deny them felt good when they happened. It felt bad. When they happen, who cares? They just pass right through. Right? Hello? There’s a snake. Oh, it’s scary.
Oh my God. Okay. He crawled away. Okay. I’m okay. I don’t freak out ’cause they hear a rattle. I don’t freak out ’cause I see a rope. I didn’t store it. That’s the key. Buddhists talk about empty mind. It means you didn’t store this stuff in there, and we’ll talk about what happens when you live like that.
Alright, so basically you start catching on to say, all right, I’m gonna work at the root. Problem and it is the root of the problem. And so you start letting go of the simple things in life that are bothering you for no reason. The rain should not bother you. The cold should not bother you. Put a jacket on or walk from your car to the house without complaining.
These things matter. You’re reinforcing the patterns that got built in there. Somebody else loves the cold. I walk with people some of days. Oh, so my God, it’s risky. I love it. Somebody like, alright, it’s just all your past experiences. Don’t let them leave impressions. Experience them. By all means, you’re gonna experience them.
Don’t not experience that. That’s another form of suppression and repression. Welcome it. That’s what I got. Welcome. Every single thing that passes through your senses, everything that comes in from the outside. It’s a baby being born. It’s an oak tree growing. It’s, it’s Publix having food ’cause the sun was shining.
Look where you live for God’s sakes. And you start appreciating and it exists, not it the way you want it to be. Just that it exists. It’s unbelievable. ISN it. Come on man. We planet move nowhere. If all this is going on, we’d rather go to bars, have nothing going on. That’s how you think. Stop comparing it against what you think you want to happen, what you don’t want to happen.
Compare it against nothing. Always say, whoa, it’s really true that the seed knows how to make a baby. Long as pituitary glance, oh my God, unbelievable, isn’t it? Pay attention. And that’s a better thing to do with your mind. Honor, reality. Accept reality, welcome reality. Now, some things are gonna happen that are not that easy to deal with.
Something happened to you when you were young and you get your left marks and now it starts to come up. You didn’t realize it was still down there or you didn’t, you push it down every time, right? Eventually, if you want out, you don’t do that. Don’t do what? It’s down there. Yeah, but don’t push it back down.
But it hurts. Oh, it was stored with pain. It’s coming back with pain. When you work out, it’s no pain, no gain, but the same thing when you work in. And so you start catching on. You can get out, but do it at the root as you let go at the root of these tiny little things. Um, practice the piano. The reason you’re practicing is so you get better and you do that with everything.
Relationships, business, everything. You’re working. Not to get anything personal. Just to do your best and learn from the results and grow and learn. Life becomes totally different and it will liberate you. Life will liberate you. Life is your guru, the greatest guru you’ll ever have. As you let go, you get higher.
Why? Because this stuff is distracting your consciousness and keeping you bound. You don’t need to be bound. You need to be free. ’cause you can’t be free when somebody’s distracting your consciousness. Do we understand? Did the foundation help? There’s a reason your mind does what it does. It’s not your mind’s fault.
There’s a reason the computer does what it does. Somebody programmed it. It did not do anything for their program and not tell that right now. Okay. And so your past experiences left impressions on you ’cause you let them, you weren’t able to handle them, and that programs your mind to be the way it is. It doesn’t have to be that way.
No, it does not. It can change every single day. Every day you wake up in the morning, you sit there and say, the event’s gonna happen today. I’m gonna do my best to welcome them, to honor them, to respect them, to worship them. This is reality. I want to experience reality. And if I have trouble, I love the trouble ’cause it means that I got something stored in there.
I can’t handle reality and I don’t want anything in there. I can’t handle reality. And you just, every day you won’t do it, you’ll fail. That’s beautiful. That’s like making a mistake when you’re playing piano. That’s why you’re doing it. And every morning you wake up, you are a higher being who woke up in the morning before every morning.
You’re a higher being than you were the morning before unless you let the day bother you enough so you carried your garbage to the next day. Alright, I’m outta time. I don’t wanna be outta time. Do you get it? Do you see it? Do you see your relationship with your mind? Your mind is a great thing, but what you’ve done with it, you do not wanna be following that thing.
It’s not about getting what you want. Not avoiding what you don’t want. Those are a trap that means basically, these are patterns I have now I’m gonna let them run my life. You have to sit there and say, no life is unfolding and I’m gonna handle it. I’ll be okay with it. I’m gonna raise it. Then you start with raising it okay with it, and eventually I know where I got.
Right. You know, it’s not even enough to appreciate it and say thank you. You look down inside to what you stored in there ready and you apologize. I’m so sorry that I took part of myself that I couldn’t handle and I shoved it down to the dark. ’cause I don’t wanna experience it anymore. I’m sorry. I apologize.
You’re welcome to come up now. I will help you. I want you to come up. I don’t care that it hurts. I don’t care what it is I want out. Alright, I’ll stop ’cause I have to that I wouldn’t, you know, I wouldn’t.
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.
