E157: Understanding Mind—The Vibrations of Thought and Emotion

Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. Lately, we’ve been discussing a lot about mine and because it’s such a fascinating and deep topic, we only get so far. So I’m going to pick up kinda like a part two. Even if you didn’t hear part one, it’ll work just fine where you end up if you understand mind, but you can’t understand mind with mind.

You can only understand mind when you step back and watch it. Just watch it. It’s talking. It’s visualizing the heart’s emoting. How do you know? ’cause you’re in there. That’s the foundation of spirituality. You in there and it’s the foundation of understanding mine. We’ll talk now. Call it mine, but don’t get yourself.

The heart is no different. They’re both the same foundational pieces. The heart, when vibrations happen in the heart, you call them emotions. When vibrations happen in the mind, you call them thoughts. They used to call them thought forms. Why they’re vibrations that take shape. In order to understand it, I always, I can’t help it.

I end up with quantum physics. Why? Because all there is, the scientists have found out the Russian science, American scientists, Chinese scientists, everyone understands the thing called the basic model. In other words, what’s down there, it’s not what it appears to be. It is made of molecules and made of atoms and made of nitrogen protons, and made of subatomic particles.

What’s down there? They have now found out are not particles. Uh. It’s not like there’s some tiny little particles putting themselves together to make atoms. There are just wavelets vibrational wavelets. That’s what all quantum physics is about that down there underneath in this thing called the quantum field, which is omnipresent throughout the universe.

Every single star, every single, everything. Comes from there. They’re just wavelets. But the wavelets have properties. They call ’em color and charge, and don’t worry about it. You don’t want to get into that level at all. Believe me. It’s quantum mechanics and all kinds of stuff. Don’t worry about that. What they have found is that they’re just wavelets.

That light is a wave, not a particle, but, but what a photon is, those are particles. Yes. But they come from those waves. Those waves unfold and they put the vibrations together and they end up looking like a particle, but there is no particle. There’s only waves. So the mind and the emotions are the same.

The whole basics. Of the creation of the universe is based on wavelets. You heard Einstein said, matter is energy. Energy is matter, and the difference is a temporary state. Ice is water. Water is ice. Steam is ice. Steam is water. Just a temporary state. The same atoms, the same hydrogen, and oxygen are exactly the same.

They’re just vibrating slower in ice, vibrating faster in water, and vibrating even faster. In steam vapor. Okay. What’s the same down there? All the way? In the foundational level, there are these vibrations. Where do they come from? We’re not gonna discuss that today. They don’t know where they come from.

They just know they’re there. And if you ask the quantum physicist, I, I like to read about this stuff. I don’t read books. There’s read article on the on the web. Alright, latest stuff. If you were to ask a quantum physicist, where did the quantum feel come from and why is it vibrating? They would say, I have no idea.

I just know that it is because I can create neutrons and protons outta those vibrations. They vibrate and then they put themselves together. They hit each other, put themselves together, and all of a sudden we see a neutron or a proton. So those things are made of a vibration, and then those vibrations make the.

The basic elementary particles and then it goes all the way up. You know what? Atoms and molecules, and that’s what you’re looking at. There’s nothing there, but vibrations. Alright there. I cut it short. It’s the truth. How do you know it’s the truth? One a. Science has proven it, and two, the great yogis taught it thousands and thousands, thousands of years ago.

The great rishis, it’s all just a vibration manifesting his form. We didn’t understand how that could happen. That doesn’t make any sense. There’s form. No, there’s not. There’s vibrations, attracting each other, colliding, putting themselves together. And because of that, it appears like there are these particles and then they behave accordingly.

And all the forces, they haven’t proven gravity. You have to be fair. But electromagnetism, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, all the forces that exist that you see in creation come from that field. Everything comes from that field, and it’s omni president of the universe. Okay. That’s the foundation of physics.

Physics means physical world. It doesn’t explain the mental world. It doesn’t explain your thoughts, where they come from and what they are. But when you get back there and watch, you see you have thoughts. Well, those thoughts in their foundation, our vibrations, they’re just vibrations. He gives off good vibrations.

He gives bad vibrations. We all know such a thing. You feel it? Okay? And your heart is the same. So mind and heart are just vibrations at different level. So I don’t even bother if we discuss ’em, I don’t have to talk about mind and heart, where they come from. They’re just, they’re not the quantum field of vibration that’s physical.

They’re just a higher vibration rate that manifest as your emotions and a higher vibration rate that manifests your thoughts. And they’re very tied together, aren’t they? Very rarely will you have thoughts that are positive and a feeling that’s negative. They generate each other. A vibration comes into your heart.

You start thinking about it. About what? The vibration, it creates thoughts. That vibration creates thoughts in your mind. Okay? You’re just so lost in it that normal people don’t step back and realize, oh, I’m in here noticing a thought. You’re getting caught in the thought. All of a sudden it starts thinking about your grandmother who died a year ago, whatever it is, can a thought pop up like that?

Then you get in there and think about it. You create more. It’s like, let’s say there’s this lake that’s crystal clear, it’s totally mirror still, and something drops in it and now has vibrations. And what you do is jump into the vibration to get involved in the vibration and you make so many more vibrations I’m gonna talk about.

So the next thing you know, your grandma took over your life. It’s just a thought. Do you understand that? It’s just a thought. They’re all just thoughts. They’re just vibrations that manifest and we’ll talk about what they come from and why they’re doing what they’re doing. But I just took the time to lay the foundation to tell you what you are, the self, the ottman, the consciousness that’s in there.

Noticing the thought is not the thought. You’re the one who notices the thought. Do you have thoughts? How do you know? I would love that somebody would ask you that question. How do you know you have thoughts? Eventually you’ll yell, ’cause I’m in here and I hear them. I notice them, they’re talking. How do you know they’re talking?

You have a bad mind day. How do you know your thoughts bothering you? Can your thoughts bother you? Who’s the you that they’re bothering? Subject object. You are the awareness of being in there that is aware that there are these thoughts. There can be nice thoughts, there can be not nice thoughts. There can be meaningless thoughts, it can be meaningful thoughts.

It doesn’t matter. They’re just thoughts. They’re just vibrations in the field of mind manifesting as that particular thought form. And then they interact with each other just like down there. They interact with each other to make up the particles. They interact with each other up here to make up all, oh my God, I don’t wanna talk about it.

Pretty complicated stuff in it. But all it is is vibration. Race manifesting in the field of thought. Alright? And the emotions are another field, but they’re very closely tied and they have the same explanations as to where they come from and so on. But, so we’ll talk about mind, but I’m really talking about mind and heart, mind and emotions.

Alright, so now you know you have thoughts. That’s very important. I would like you to know, who knows? You have thoughts. Baba had a saying that he say all the time. Meditate on the self. Don’t meditate on your finger. Don’t meditate on a candle. Don’t meditate on the thoughts. Don’t meditate on the thought of God.

You welcome to. Right? But he said meditate on the self. Meditate on who’s in there listening, who’s in there noticing that you’re in there. It’s not easy ’cause your thoughts pull you away into it. Have you noticed when you meditate, now all of a sudden you sit down? Your intention is to not have thoughts.

Good luck. Because what happens is the consciousness gets pulled down into the thought and it loses itself There. It stops paying attention that it’s supposed to be meditating on the seat of consciousness. Um, I call that the subject. The subject is who’s noticing the thought. Next thing you know, the thought distracts you so much that you’re just in the ocean of thoughts.

Okay. He said, meditate on the self honor and worship your own being you in there for. God dwells in you as you there the secret’s out. That’s who’s back there man was created an image of God. I always tell you, it doesn’t mean that God has two arms and two legs. That’s God has created an image of man. Man created an image of God.

Well, God is consciousness. God is the field, the underlying field of absolute consciousness everywhere throughout the entire universe, both manifesting the quantum field and manifesting the field of thoughts and the field of emotion. It’s just, it’s just all there is, and you’re experiencing it, but you get lost in the experience, don’t you?

Somebody says something to you, it takes you three hours before it stops vibrating inside your thoughts. Something happened to you 10 years ago, still comes up. Then your consciousness is distracted by the thoughts and the next thing you know, you come bye bye. You just get lost in the thoughts and the emotions.

You can have an emotion. Somebody say something to you, you’re married, you’re getting along great, right? But somebody said something and all of a sudden it bothered you. Now you, you’re bothered. You’re bothered. The relationship’s falling apart because this emotion is coming up that you can’t get rid of.

I, I can’t forgive you. I can’t believe you said that. No, you should not have said that. What the heck is that? You’re back here noticing that somebody said something outside, it came in and created a vibration in the field of mind, and you went, bye bye. Didn’t you? Sh this is very important. So you’re getting distracted by these vibrations in the mind and in the heart, and it’s very hard to not, okay, so there’s your basic foundation of mind.

Not your mind. Everyone’s mind, but your vibrations are different than everybody else’s. Why? Why are your vibrations the way it is? If I say the name Sally to her, it don’t mean squat. Sally, who by saying was Sally to her and her sister’s name was Sally, and she died three weeks ago, and it was a terrible death.

She gets weird, right or wrong, that tells you everything. It tells you why the mind is manifesting. The thoughts that it’s manifesting. It’s manifesting the thoughts. You know that you’re in there. You have trouble with ’em. Why is it not like you? God’s against me. He’s making these terrible thoughts and I can’t get out.

No, your thoughts are there and they’re unique. Your thoughts are your thoughts. His is his. And by the way, your thoughts yesterday are not the same as they were today. Or tomorrow? What is it that makes the difference? Let’s see. Could it be the experiences that you had? Could it be true when psychology says man is the sum of his learned experiences, that that’s not true.

Statement, you are the consciousness that is aware that you know your psyche, your mind and your heart are the sum of your learned experiences. So if you have this wonderful experience yesterday, you feel good about things today, if all of a sudden the same person says something that really bothered you, that really didn’t bother you, it was Sally, right?

He, they don’t know you had a problem with Sally. You understand that I just met you and I happen to mention Sally, and now you go weird on me because of the past experience you had. All of your thoughts and all of your emotions are programmed by the experiences that you had are having and. I can’t be programmed by what she will had.

I can’t program something and do it later in the future. Alright? But I can project the experience I had yesterday into the future. Don’t you do that? Somebody mentioned Sally and really got me upset and now I don’t wanna see them again. ’cause they might mention Sally again. Oh, has it happened yet? But you project your problem.

Into the future. That’s all that’s happening in mind. It’s nothing sacred, nothing special, and yours is not special. It’s just that some of your learned experiences, hers are some of her learned experiences. Your husband’s is a sum of his learn experiences. Your wife is a sum of her own experiences. You are not around when those experiences happen for like 90% of their life, and you will not be around when they go to the office.

They’ll not be around when they go on vacation. They’ll not be around when the boss calls ’em and yells at them. You are not having those experiences. Therefore you guys are totally different. So don’t think that you found your soulmate ’cause they’re the same as you. There’s nobody the same as you never was and never will be.

I’m not trying to be unromantic. We can learn to be romantic. Relationships are very wonderful. They’re very good for your growth. But not if you think that the way I think is how she thinks. ’cause it isn’t. It can’t possibly be ’cause she did not have the same experience as you. They call me your formative years, don’t they?

Were you around for your husband’s formative years? But I thought the formative years. What does that mean? That the experiences that happen early have a very strong impression on the vibrations of your mind. That’s the formative years. Well, you weren’t even together. And then all of a sudden they behave in a way that you would never think that how?

How could you do that to me? I never thought you would do that. I would never have done that to you. Of course not. You didn’t have the same formative ears. Now that’s intense. Anybody willing to understand this? Is it the truth or not? Has anybody ever behaved differently than you thought they were going to?

And then you say, how could you do that? What you’re basically saying is, I wouldn’t do that based on my past experiences. So how could you do that? They won’t answer you like this. But the answer is ’cause I didn’t have your past experiences. I had my past experiences. Yeah. But I married you. Yeah. But I understand you married who you thought I was.

You married who you thought I would be, and all those thoughts were projections of your past tiny little things. Do you want a dog? I want a dog. Oh boy. We’re married now we’re gonna lively. Have a dog. And all of a sudden he or she says, no, no, I don’t wanna have a dog. No, I never said I wanted to have a dog.

He said, what’s wrong with dogs? I had a beautiful dog when I was young. Now me a dog bit me when I was young. You just, I start arguing. Go on, have fun. Because you won’t now do you understand? Now I understand why relations are so hard. I once taught you. ’cause you’re not trying to have a relationship with the other person.

You’re trying have a relationship with yourself. I like dogs. Therefore you should like dogs. I like vegan. Therefore you should be vegan. I like traveling. Therefore you should like traveling. Why would I be with you? Otherwise, I want you to be me. When they’re not, you get really upset. You’re weird. Alright, so now you understand mine.

You understand where mine came from. It came from the sum of your learned experiences. That’s why you like what you like. No, I decided what I like. You did not. You saw a movie, you read a book, somebody told you something. All these foundational impressions throughout your life got made and they didn’t necessarily match by the way.

You could have had somebody named Sally, though that was a good friend of yours in high school and this, that, and the other thing, right? But then you married Sally and, and you know, she turned out to be, ah, right. Now what do you do? Which Sally do you like or not like? Eh, nobody said it all matches if it becomes rather complicated living there, yes or no, but all those impressions are in there, aren’t they?

Okay, so they’re now vibrating in mind. Especially the strong ones. Something you really liked, you keep. What do you mean? I keep, you don’t want it to go away. It’s just a video vibration in your mind. But I like it. I want it to stay. Don’t go anywhere. Let’s have lunch together tomorrow too. You try to. Stay with that vibration that you liked.

It’s called clinging Buddhists. Call that clinging. Now we’re talking about deep with mind. You’re holding on to a vibration that got created in your mind that was pleasant to you and you definitely, hold on. Listen to me. I. You definitely hold onto the ones that are not pleasant. I guarantee you everything that was ever not pleasant to you has left an impression on your mind.

I don’t like when it rains. I’m afraid it’s gonna rain tomorrow. Why? Well, in fifth grade I had my party set up and it was outside and they said it wasn’t gonna rain and I hate weatherman from now on. ’cause they said it was only a 2% chance of rain. Flooded and ruined my birthday part. So now it left this impression on you, didn’t it?

So now I don’t like the rain, and now I don’t like weather people. I turn them off whenever they show up. They don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s where you got your ideas, your preferences, your hopes, your dreams, your concepts, your views. What are your hopes? I hope someday will be the way I want, but your hopes someday it won’t be.

What are your dreams? I dream someday my ship will come in once and for all. Things will be the way I think they should be. It’s all about these impressions that got left. Somebody else, you tell ’em your dream. I wanna travel the world. I don’t want children now. They should hold. Buy me now. No, I saw what happened with my brothers and sisters.

I wanna be free. I’m a free being. I wanna travel the world. Alright? And somebody else says, what are you crazy? Family is what it’s all about. Travel to mean nothing. What do you gain from that? What happens when you get. All depends on how you grew up. It all depends on what impression that got made on you.

It all depends on what you read yesterday. You are not your thoughts. You are not your preferences, you’re not your hopes, you’re not your dreams. All those are just things going on in this field of mind that got held onto. So you hold onto it and now it continues to vibrate. You know, I was using the example of snake.

You saw a rattlesnake once in the woods. Now you don’t wanna walk in the woods. And if you see a rope, you get scared. Now if you go into a house, there’s a baby rattle. You get weird. Freud calls it suppression there as a form of suppression, repression. Denial. In other words, it came in, I’m in here. I didn’t like it.

I don’t want it to happen again. I don’t wanna deal with it. So what do I do? I push it away. I push that entire energy away, and so it stays in this place. He called the subconscious. It’s just mind. What? What? I wants to find it. What is the subconscious mind, the part of mind you don’t wanna look at? The part of mine you don’t wanna look at.

I mean, you draw a line there, your line’s different than hers. Your line tomorrow will be different based on the experience you had. And so she will fly in planes anymore. Why? She wants the newsreel where a plane crashed and 300 people died. I ain’t getting in a plane again. Yeah. How many more people die in a car accident every day and anything goes on with that plane?

Doesn’t matter. Nobody says it’s rational. It left an impression and you suppressed it. That means you pushed it away. It stayed in there. It’s coming back up. It’s gonna govern your life. That’s what Freud taught you. It’s all science. Psychology is a science. Human science, physics is a science, physical science.

It’s just all vibration rates. The trouble is the consciousness gets distracted so strongly by these impressions that got left, those vibrations in the mind that we hold on to now, how do you live in there? Okay, now we’re starting to get where I wanted to talk about is it easier to live in there? Is it easy to live in there every day?

Just, wow, I can’t wait to see what’s gonna happen. This is so exciting. You never get anxious. You never feel any tension. You never feel any worry, huh? Come on. Let’s talk. Honestly, it’s not easy to live in there. Why? Because all these impressions that they don’t match. Plus you have a bunch of bad ones.

You’ve had plenty of experience in your life that were disturbing and they’re still in there. You know, you don’t want them to happen again. You know, you think about them, you know, you avoid, no sir. I know we’re getting married, but I’m gonna move in Arizona. Why my job’s in Arizona? Too bad. Get rid of your job.

Why? Because Arizona has the most rattlesnakes. And you think, I’m kidding. That’s your thoughts and you’re distracted by them. ’cause they carry all that power, all that energy. So how does one learn to live in there? Since every moment they’re making these impressions, you’re being programmed. Not by the keyboard, not by voice recognition.

You’re being programmed by the experiences that are coming in from the outside and you in there hold onto impressions and now you have all those impressions in there and they don’t agree. Your mother told you you better go to church, you’re going to hell and you didn’t like it Wasn’t any fun. Other peer group didn’t do it, and so on.

And so now what do I do? Something’s inside my mind that says, you’re gonna hell, you’re gonna hell, you’re gonna church, you’re gonna hell, you’re gonna hell. Alright? And something else is sitting there saying, I wanna be free. I don’t, I wanna live my own life and I wanna believe in what? I believe. I wanna be a Buddhist.

But how do those things live together? And they have guilt? You have shame. Anybody listen to me? Do you see how it happens? You live inside of that, the guilt and shame of the heart, but they’re created because the thoughts in the mind don’t match and so on. Or you meet somebody. Okay, then it’s hard to go forward because I gotta make sure you come with me.

You, you have that background, right, and you’re not gonna church whatever it is, right? And you wanted to get into Buddhism and your parents are dumping all over you. You got all this guilt and this stuff, and now you meet somebody and that somebody was a Catholic priest, but then they left the church to become a Zen Buddhist.

I think I’m rather attracted to that person. Yes or no?

Tami Simon: Why? Because it matches

Michael Singer: my stuff. It’s kinda shallow, right? But it’s what it is. The fact that he’s also a serial killer. Alright,

I didn’t notice that. Now what do you end up doing? I said, now I’m talking about, I’m gonna talk about how to get out. That’s what I wanna get. All right. I wanna get there. What do I do? I am in here. But I’m lost in here. It’s very powerful. It’s very strong that guilt is strong, right? It comes up if I go visit my parents or I don’t visit my parents, or if I do, I, I go to church with them, or I don’t go to church.

I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s not about doing and not doing. It’s about stepping back and watching and saying, you know how, you know, you sit back and watch you go, that’s been going on in there. No wonder I’ve been suffering. You don’t do anything about it. I told you one single thing to do about it, but the fact that you step back and notice that you’re noticing, that’s called witness consciousness.

That’s a major step. And in fact, you ain’t getting out to do that. But what happens if I didn’t do that? You’re gonna try to create a life outside that fits the garbage you have inside. Do you understand that? Okay. You wake up every morning and feel uncomfortable and think, what do I need to do today?

What do I need to manipulate control? Who do I need to meet? What needs to happen? So that when the outside comes in, now, it hits the good stuff that I have in there and makes me feel comfortable. Or if there’s bad stuff, it gets resolved. It’s not bothering me anymore. All of a sudden your parents decide.

Yeah, that then stuff’s pretty good. I think we’ll go to the Temple of the Universe and learn about it. Whoa. Now all of a sudden there’s no guilt. Do you hear me? That’s all that’s happening. And so you’re out there trying to manipulate people, places, things, situations, finances, everything, so that when it comes in, it fits better into different aspects of your being.

What Freud taught is really beautiful. Now. Freud gave no indication of having stepped back, which is really beautiful. Alright. I researched that when I was in college, tried to read everything you wrote. I’m sure I didn’t read everything he wrote, but I wanted to see when I woke up, literally I was like 22 years old, 20 years old in graduate school, and I woke up and I thought, I’m back here watching.

Surely Freud watched, my God, he explained the mind so well. It ego, super, ego, all that kind of stuff. And guilt. I read everything I could. There was no indication. That he stepped back. He did self-analysis of his own mind, but not from the self, not from a point of view that I’m watching the mind do its thing.

He just tried to explain what the mind was doing. Right? When you step back, what happens is eventually, and let’s go there, you look at it and you ask yourself, is that mine? Just awareness? Is this stuff meaningful? I’m sitting here talking about grandma who died 15 years ago and crying. Why? Because you didn’t handle what happened, and you stored it inside with all this difficult energy and it keeps coming back up.

And now I can’t deal with my life. I can’t do anything because I held it inside. And you start noticing, I would ask you, now I’m gonna start to talk about stuff I’ve never talked about before. I would love. You keep store and you can use the, there is a higher mind. It’s still mind, but it’s mind watching.

The lower mind. Let’s get that over with. It’s the analytical mind. Analytical mind is objective. I would like you to objectively use that mind. You’re not out yet. The self can go away past that. Alright, but I’m, I’m noticing that I’m having these lower thoughts. Alright. I got divorced 10 years ago and I see something, but the restaurant we used to eat at or something like that, and all of a sudden all these thoughts and emotions come, will you laugh?

Is it true or not? All this garbage comes flying up. Why? Because you started in there. It’s gonna get stimulated and pop back up and make ripples in your mind and in your heart the day that you can step back enough. To laugh when that happens. You go, what the heck you think about that for? I thought I got divorced.

Why do I have to still live with this guy inside my head? And all of a sudden it starts to look really different. When you step back, you don’t get sucked into those thoughts, but you’re aware of the thoughts. That’s witness consciousness. That’s not liberation. Liberation’s way past that. We’ll talk about that.

Hopefully we’ll get there at the end. But that is awakening. That is an awakening. It’s a stairway to heaven, not a leap. So one of the steps is you step back, analytically, objectively, call it whatever you want, and the mind looks at your mind and your heart as if it was looking at somebody else’s. Why?

Because it’s right in front of you. You don’t see somebody else’s. That’s witness consciousness. So you step back and you notice what’s going on in there. The first thing you’re gonna do is vomit. I guarantee you. You take a look at what’s going on in there. Holy mackerel. That’s crazy. It isn’t even what somebody said.

I walked by somebody. They look like somebody I went to high school with, but they didn’t look exactly like it, and all of a sudden it’s in there talking about this person I went to high school with 23 years ago. And you start noticing, whoa, that happened very often. You start noticing it’s always happening.

Something outside, stimulating some of the inside, and then the stuff that was bothering you before or here you had a bad day. You had a bad day, you got fired. Okay, so that’s going on in her. How could they do this to me? I blah, blah. Okay, now all of a sudden you go home and your wife or husband made dinner.

All of a sudden you don’t like it. Why’d you make that? You know, I don’t like that. All of a sudden there’s an argument going on. Why? Because your mind is already screwed up. It’s already negative. It’s already vibrating with a bad vibration. And now anything that comes in gets tinged by that vibration.

I’ll give you a better one. I’m always willing to talk about this, what people think of you. Alright, let’s just, we’ve got some time. I finally made it. Do you care what people think of you? Ha ha ha.

Tami Simon: That is very funny. What a

Michael Singer: funny question. Okay. You don’t know what people think of you. You know how you think people think of you, the way you would think of you in your worst time looking at yourself.

A bank robber runs at his classic, right? He robbed a bank. You walk out, everybody’s looking at you, right? They all know what you did. Nobody knows what you fit. Okay? You’re paranoid. What does it mean? It means, I’m telling you, you do not know what people think of you, but the problem is, alright, okay? I’ve always wanted to talk about this.

There’s no way you know what people think of you. There’s no way, because all you have in there is you. Let’s say, okay, sometimes just swear. Okay. So let’s say you’re talking to somebody and you say a dirty word and you think, oh, I shouldn’t have said that, right? The other person is, oh man, I love it. He’s not caught in spirituality.

Look at that. He actually swears, oh my God, he is my favorite person. Are you sure you picked it up? Right? Not a chance in the world. Do you understand that? ’cause the only data you have is a data in your mind. You don’t have the data in their mind. That’s where I get I, I’ve learned a lot over these 50 odd years, right?

And I sit there and say, people talk about body language, so here’s my body language. Oh, he’s protecting his third chakra. He’s not telling the truth. I have a stomach ache. But you were trained to read it this way, that way. My opinion is you don’t know what people think of you. The story I tell them when I do tell this story, I think I tell in the short experiment, China story is neat ’cause it is honest and real and you get to be living it from here inside myself, right?

So I was teaching at Santa Fe College once. Back in when I was young, uh, back in I 72, 7 3, 7 4 7 5, that kind of thing. And I had, the whole story is in the book, if you wanna read the experiment, how I ended up there since I was meditating six hours a day. How to end up teaching there. Well, it, it happened and they just gave me a course and there was no parameters.

I get to use my own books. I get to use anything I ever wanted. Alright? It was a social science class. I’d never taught a social science class in my life. I was in business school, but I was given that class because the president of the university who I had tutored through his doctorate, called me and said, I don’t care.

Teach anything you want. I respect you so much. I’ve come to know you. I want my students interacting with you. Isn’t that beautiful? Alright, so I went in there and I would just talk like this and sit up in a cross legged position on top of the desk with no shoes on, and, and there’d be like 15, 20 people signed up for the course and there’d be 30, 40 people in the classroom.

They’d come from the university, they’d come from everywhere, right? ’cause you’re teaching this stuff. Alright? And there were night classes. And in night classes, some of business people that were coming back to get their degree would come into that. Well, then they’re into a hippieville. Alright, well the kids are sitting on a floor and Dorn jeans and, and I’m sitting on a desk.

Well, so there was one person that was. In my day class, who was as straight as an arrow. She must have been in her probably early thirties, maybe late twenties, early thirties. And she literally wore suits, a woman’s suit to class every day. Everyone sitting on the floor and jeans and t-shirts. And she was so straight, she would just sit up straight.

And I’m telling you, she hated my class and I didn’t have to guess because she complained about it to the president. Right. And I told, I told them. When you do your final paper, just write me what you think of the class, what you learn. I don’t care what it is you’re grazing me based on that one paper. I’m challenging you.

We shared, we talked, and so she. The president told her, talk honestly to Mickey. Alright, and just meet him outside. So she met me in the hall at the end of the semester. She said, I’m afraid you’re gonna fail me. I said, I’m not gonna fail you. She might. I hated the course. Then write what you hated about the course and you’ll get an A.

Alright. I just want an honest. How you did and what’s going on, it’s fine. Just don’t worry about it. Right? But she was very worried, alright? And she just was very closed, totally not interested. And she turned on a paper that was totally negative and she got her a alright, tell the truth makes me cry. Talk about it now.

This shows how wrong you can be two or three semesters later. I’m teaching a night class. With all the young ones, they be everybody, university and so on. Walks on the floor, everything. Right? And I’m teaching and talking and all of a sudden somebody walks in in jeans and a t-shirt and I didn’t know who she was, but it just looked familiar, right?

Well, she sat on the floor. I finished my teachings. And she came up to me, she said, do you remember me? I said, not exactly. She says, I’m the one who hated your class and used to sit in the seat, this and that. Right. And I always denied understanding anything you were talking about. It made no sense to me.

Well, I don’t wanna talk about 300 billion stars. Why do I wanna do this? Why do I, no, nothing. Nothing got in. Nothing got in. I didn’t understand the words you were talking about. In the meantime, my husband left me and I was lost. I, I, I didn’t know what to do. I, the me didn’t know anything, right? And I was walking through a bookstore once in town and a copy of Autograph of a Yogi was sitting on the floor and almost fell over it.

And I remembered that you talked about that book in the class, and so I picked it up. I was like, my life raft. I, I didn’t know what to do and I read it and it completely changed my life. Now I understood everything you were talking about and I realized I really did understand the whole time, but I was not gonna let it in.

And now my life is wonderful. I do yoga. Whoa. You don’t know what influence you’re having on people. You don’t know anything. That’s what I’ve learned. You don’t know anything. So that’s the solution. The solution. You’re not gonna like this. Be careful how I say it. It’s to not care. No, you not care. Doesn’t mean cold, not care.

I don’t care what you think, not care means deep inside of me. I understand you all are very different than me. I ain’t figuring it out. I don’t even wanna figure it out. I will honor your differences. You have the right to your differences, don’t you? You are programmed different than me, therefore it’s gonna come out different.

And instead of sitting there caring, I want, I’m gonna make sure I sell myself. You’re trying to sell yourself to people. Make sure they accept you, make sure they like you. Make sure they don’t not like you, and it’s very uncomfortable feeling rejected. Like I said, you can make yourself feel rejected when they love you to death.

Watch this. You’re in a relationship, but you’re insecure. What does that mean? I, I don’t feel comfortable with it myself, and so I’m trying to feel comfortable by you. I want it to come in. That makes me feel comfortable. And so you’re sitting there and you, you say, you know, I love you so much. You say it to the other person, I love you.

I just, I just love you so much. And another person says. Yeah. Yeah. I, I love you too. And then that’s not enough. Then you say, how do you know? How do you know? Because I just feel, I feel in my heart, I feel really committed. Yeah. But my previous boyfriend or girlfriend said that also, and then they dumped me.

How do I know you won’t dump me? Just keep saying it and I’ll tell you. You don’t know. I’m sorry. Goodbye. Are you hearing me? It’s just your mind. Now. Do you understand mind? Do I understand why you have trouble living your life? You understand? You have trouble with relationships, you have trouble with jobs, you have trouble with everything.

Take a breath. Is there a solution? Yes, of course there’s a solution. What is the solution you need to work on? You? What do you mean my thoughts? Here we go. We got it ready? We said my thoughts and my emotions are programmed by the past experience I had that I held onto. How’s that? In our program by the ones you didn’t hold onto.

You drive by white lines all the time. You drive by trees all the time. You drive, people you don’t know all the time doesn’t leave anything. But the ones that affected you, the ones that hurt or fell really good, you held onto you, held them in your mind. Therefore, the structure of your mind at this foundation is this stuff you held onto that you couldn’t deal with as you walked through your life.

Fair statement. Do you know that to be the truth? Of course, you know that to be the truth. That’s what people always say about spiritual teachings. You don’t learn anything. Just realize you always knew it. You never looked at it properly. So the things that happen to you in your life. Mostly negative. I’m telling you, the ratio is a thousand to one of the things that were so positive.

You don’t wanna let ’em go, versus every day it rains. Every day, the car’s driving wrong. Every day the person beeps at you Every day the person doesn’t talk to you. There’s always stuff. It doesn’t feel good and don’t think you don’t store it. If you say hi, hi Sally different. Sally. Hi Sally. And she walks by and she’s your friend.

For two days, you’re trying to figure out how could she didn’t talk, what did I do wrong? And next time you see Sally, there ain’t no way. You’re not bringing that back up or you’re being very spiritual. I won’t talk about it. I just won’t talk about it. Well, you’re obviously thinking about it. It’s in there bothering you, so you catch on the foundation of your mind and heart.

Are these things you stored in there? ’cause you couldn’t handle them, you couldn’t handle the positive things. Why? Because you want that to happen again. Exactly like they happened before. Go to a restaurant and have a wonderful meal and tell all your friends, that was the best meal I ever had. It was this kind of food.

And let’s go there. Well come together. I wanna bring everybody there. Don’t do that because you’ll end up saying, well, last time there were people smoking last time the music was totally different Last time the special was vegan. Another affirming meat. I’m so sorry. It’s not gonna be the same, is it? And you start catching on that.

You’re just, you just got these impressions inside. It makes me laugh. You have these impressions you picked up as you walk through your life. They’re meaningless. If you had looked to the left, you have a different impression. If you had gone to the restaurant two days earlier, you would’ve hated it. It’s just you just happened to be taking a path through life.

Listen to me, I’ll wake you up. Your past impressions are completely meaningless. It’s the stupidest thing in the world for you to hold on to an experience that happened to you before. Why it will never happen again. No one else ever had that experience. Even if you’re in the same concert together, but you have different thoughts, you’re in a different place and when you leave, you go somewhere else.

They didn’t. No one walks through the path through life that you walk through. Right or wrong. How many other things could have happened? This is what I say now. I wanna see your face. When I say that to you at the moment, you’re having an experience. How many other experiences are you not having that you could have been having?

You didn’t come to the temple tonight. You in there, you didn’t get a drink, had this, you had a fight with so and so, your neighbor was making noise. How many things are happening everywhere that you’re not experience? I’ll do it that way. I know what you are experiencing. How many things are happening all over the place that you’re not experiencing five or 10 or 700 billion zillion every moment, but you think the one you’re having is more important than the 700 billion that you’re not having.

It is not. It’s just Einstein time, space, continuum. There’s something happening at every single point in time in space. This happens to be the one that you are in front of. If somebody’s yelling at you, you take it personal. No, what are you crazy. You just happen to be standing in a place on the planet earth where somebody’s yelling.

If they hadn’t eaten the dinner last night, that got them upset. They wouldn’t be yelling if anything happened. If somebody called ’em on the phone just before they saw you and they said they wanted the lottery. Yeah, they wouldn’t be yelling. And by the way, if somebody called ’em the phone and dumped on them and so on, they wouldn’t be yelling.

They’d looking for sympathy from you. Every single event causes every other event. It has nothing to do with you. You just happened to be standing there. Your consciousness is standing there experiencing what is happening and that tiny dot on the tiny dot of the planet Earth, of which there’s 300 billion stars and truly the galaxies, and you just happen to be standing there experiencing that one, but it’s the only one you care about.

That makes sense to you. Yeah. So what I’m experiencing, but you could be experiencing anything. It’s random and you wake up and you start watching what your mind’s doing, and you talk to your mind that way from the intellectual mind saying, hello, you don’t know whether she likes you or not. No, I want to like me.

See you sit there, say as too bad. It has nothing to do with anything. You don’t know what’s gonna happen, let it be. There’s your song, let it be singing words of wisdom. I don’t know. They may like you today, not like you tomorrow, but it has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them. The very thing that turns somebody else on, turns somebody else off.

Have fun trying to please everybody, and you get to the point where you sit there and say, I just wanna be regal. Part of being real is understanding that my mind’s for shrunken enough. It’s what we call full of it. It’s just full of it. It’s full of itself. That’s all it thinks about what I want, what I don’t want.

How can I get what I want? I’m afraid what might happen to me. I’m afraid what I might have to my child. I’m so, oh my God, I’m afraid. I’m afraid to have children ’cause I’ll be afraid of what happens to them, especially to this world. How would I bring a child? Whatcha doing? You’re taking past experiences, gluing them together and saying, this is reality.

It is not reality. It’s just the meaningless link of experiences that you had, that you happen to have. My sister had a child and, and it, it, it died before being born. It was so painful. I don’t ever wanna have children. You let one experience in the, how many people had children? I don’t know. There’s 8.3 billion of you now.

You’re taking one experience and saying that’s dictating you. Oh, look at me. Are you daring to look at me? I dare you to, because you think that’s logical. That’s your sister had a miscarriage, so now you don’t have children. Oh my God. I told you 8.3 billion people didn’t have a miscarriage. Or there wouldn’t be the people here, not to mention how many been here before.

And you’re letting that one experience influence your entire thinking about life and what you’re doing, where you’re going. Is it weird? Can, can make you feel weird? Is that not weird? No. You won’t say yes will you? Right. No, but that what happened to me. So what? It just means you have any standing there.

What if she didn’t have a miscarriage? What if she didn’t wanna have the baby? It was a shotgun readying and she got all excited. Oh my God, thank God I don’t have to go through all that. Now be are wonderful. Yes or no. The pieces that just get put together and then they influence you at an absurd level.

Now you take a breath. I want for once in your life that you understand what’s going on. ’cause that’s what’s going on. So what you do, Freud said you take the id, the super ego, you know what society said, you should do the id, what your body’s saying you should do and all your past experiences. It’s so confusing in there.

And you build what’s called a self concept. I bill me. I only the guy was in here. Yeah, but you’re getting distracted. All that garbage. So what you do is you attempt to stitch together, one from column A, two from column B, three from column C, different experiences. And you say, this is who I am. I know to play Dorothy in the fifth grade and everybody clapped.

I’m the one who tried to recital with a piano when I wasn’t ready, I hadn’t practiced, and everybody booed and walked out on me. Whoa. That’s who you are. No, that’s not who you are. Those are the experiences you had. You’re the one that had the experience. That’s who you are. You’ve always been in there, but you got lost in the impressions that these experiences made on you.

And so you built a self-concept, and your self-concept is, I’m a great actress. Why are they not hiring me? This is ridiculous. Don’t they know how good I am? Or your self-concept is? I don’t ever want play in stage ever again. I don’t wanna play instruments, I don’t wanna do anything. I’m not good at it.

I’ll never be good. Whoa. Which is true. None of them, they’re just passing experiences that should have gone right through. Somebody else tried to do that recital, they didn’t do good. They try harder. They go back and they practice them, and I’m gonna learn from that. Somebody else will never play again.

That’s your ego. That’s what you did. You took those experiences, stitched ’em together and said, this is me. This is how I think, and this is what I want and what I don’t want. No. You’re the one noticing all that. Can anybody understand that? What does it mean to grow spiritually? It means step back and notice the commotion that’s going on in there, both heart and mind, and instead of committing yourself.

To try to get the world to fit, which it will never do, to get it all to fit in the mess insides inside of you. You sit there and say, why is this happening inside of me? And your intellectual mindset is because I have these impressions, they’re called some scars. I have these impressions from the past, including two minutes ago that I stored inside and didn’t let go of, and they are generating the energy patterns that are coming to my mind.

It’s sort of like if water’s running down a river, a stream, right? There’s no obstacles, there’s no rocks or anything. It’s clean, there’s no eddies, there’s no currents, there’s nothing underneath. It just flows right through. Put a rock in. It’s a stream stick, a rock in the stream. It creates spray eddies currents.

That’s what you did with the stuff you held in there because you couldn’t handle it when it happened. You held it in there and now as the energy of your life, Shati comes up, it hits that, and it creates all these vibrations in your mind. And you have thousands and thousands of these things, and it’s pretty complicated in there, isn’t it?

So the only way that you feel okay is to get it to be the way you want. And you’ll never do it. You never have done it for short periods of time. You can get something, but then it doesn’t do it. And so you have to do what’s called work on yourself. What does that mean? Work on the mind. No, I don’t teach work on the mind.

Work on the stuff that’s causing the mind to be the way it is. Work on the heart. No. Work and what’s causing the heart to have these emotions and all this stuff is coming up. You stored stuff down there. And it’s creating a mess in your mind and your heart. Buddhists say, work at the root. That’s the root.

The root is not the ripples on the mind. He can jump in the water and stop the ripples. I don’t ever, I mean, it took me a long time. I don’t judge my mind. He’s welcome to create whatever thoughts he wants, but I will look down and see what is causing that to happen and then say, can I let go of that? Do I have to, hold on.

I got divorced 15 years ago. Right? Does he really still have to be down there? Why can’t I let go? I couldn’t handle when it happened. Now I’m more mature. I’ve grown. Why can’t I just sit there and say, Hey, George, come on up. It time for you to come on up. I’m sorry I shoved you down there. Yes, we had a very bad time, but it’s just a moment in my life, this experience of my life.

I don’t want running my life. I’m sit there saying I’ll never get married again. I don’t have children. I don’t wanna go out with any George. I wanna let go there. And I got my teachings, don’t you? I wanna let go of what I’ve stored down there, how you are the one who stored it, and I guarantee when it comes back up, you push it back down.

You are in there. You don’t like when it comes back up, do you? You know, we don’t discuss that around your father. He doesn’t do good with that. What’s wrong with daddy there? You got some stuff down there. You just don’t worry about anybody else. You look down there, alright then real quickly, but how can I let go of this stuff?

It’s so painful when it comes up and it’s caused all these problems. That’s right. You will not be able to let go of that immediately. So what do you do? You learn to let go. You learn just like you learn a piano. You learn tennis, you learn a sport. You start with the simplest thing in the world and you sit there and say, can I handle that?

It’s raining when I don’t want it to. Thing doesn’t matter that you’re sitting there complaining about the rain. You’re not changing enough rain, you’re just feeding the patterns. Something happened that you don’t like the rain. Somebody loves the rain. Have a farmer, it rain. Oh boy. Okay, so you start with small stuff.

I always give you an example. The rain, the weather, the driver in front of you is not driving the way you like. You have trouble with that. Don’t you ever talk to the driver in front of you? Of course you do. They don’t hear you, and so you start watching what’s going on in there. You say, I need to practice letting go.

I need to practice. When the driver in front of me doesn’t use a blinker. When it goes too slow, I don’t have to do something about it. They’ll turn next light, they’ll turn. I want to learn how to let go instead of storing this garbage in there. So you do it with the small things. You have fun. It’s a game.

It’s a video game. So notion you’re not fighting with your mind. Saying, your mind has to be quiet. You trying to shut your mind up or your heart. You’re sitting there saying, right now I’m dealing with the rain. I’m dealing with a driver in front of me. I’m dealing with some of somebody said three days ago, not three days ago, two years ago.

I wasn’t sure what they meant, but it hurt me. I don’t wanna see them again. Okay. Maybe we can deal with that. ’cause you have no idea what they meant. I guarantee you, if you go up to that person two years later and say, look, I wanna get this over with. What did I say that bothered you? You know, they say, who are you?

What’s your name? You think it’s all about you. It’s not about you, it’s about them. You need to start practicing not listening to that crap and letting it run your life. You challenge it, you let it go. You don’t have to. You don’t have to do any weird just, here it is. You look at it and say, by definition, I don’t know what they meant at that time.

I didn’t know what they meant. It could have been you totally misinterpreted. I don’t know what to tell you. I hope you listen to me. It can be beautiful in there how Get rid of the stuff that’s in there causing it all to get disturbed by the time it comes into your mind and the mind will get quiet by itself.

It becomes still, it becomes easier to live with because it’s not hitting all the garbages stored in there and the heart. Also, you have to be willing to let go, and so if somebody says something, you’re not sure what they said, let it go. Or use positive thinking, it’s better to neutralize it. Ultimately, you just let it, you don’t even bother anything.

There’s no doing. You’re not doing. That’s where that comes from. You’re just releasing. Just let it be white line’s in the road. She said something, maybe she doesn’t like me. Okay. I don’t know. I don’t care. That’s what thing I don’t care means is I’m high either way. If my mind, if it says she don’t like me or she likes me, it doesn’t matter.

It matters what’s going on inside of me. And I like the secret when it matters what’s going on inside of you. Everybody likes you. They all wanna be near you. Why? ’cause the energy you’re emanating is beautiful. You’re not trying to have something happen. You’ve become real. And as you get rid of your stuff.

That’s the ascent. It just naturally goes up. Alright, so I gotta cut it off. Do you get it? So now you see the problem. Is it bigger than you thought it was, isn’t it? The solution is not to get things the way you want. The solution is to learn to handle things as they happen. Doesn’t mean you don’t deal with them.

If Sally says something and it’s mean, okay, you and okay, so she had a bad day. Is that okay? That allowed to have a bad day. Or she had a bad night. Is that okay with you? Sure. What’s it got to do with me? Eventually they’ll say, nothing has nothing to do with me. It just happens to be all the circumstances that took place, and now she’s standing there.

Okay? She says, so to me that’s called compassion, and I have reached a really high state. You’re not judging at all. You’re not resisting, you’re not clinging, you’re do anything. You’re just experiencing. Well, what if I experience it and she says something really mean and said she’s going to cause some trouble, or something like that.

First, I experience it. Is that okay that she got into that space? Yes. She’s okay now. Now that it’s okay, I’m about reacting. I’m not fighting about arguing to make change. I saying that. I say, yes, it’s okay. Yes. Sometimes it’s hot, sometimes it’s cold. Alright, now you look. Now it’s your objective. Is there something I should be doing about this?

She says, not only did you bother me, I’m gonna tell your husband these stories. I think I’ll sue you. I go, okay, all right. I’m like, there it is. Okay. Very interesting. It’s like a bird singing. I told you you wanna be okay with no matter what they said, there’s a little switch back here, by the way. There’s not.

And you switch it and it talks Swahili and you don’t talk Swahili. So all of a sudden it’s talking in language you’ve never heard or know anything about it. Now what? It’s fine. It’s like some bird singing. You hear me? You are the one that’s making a big deal outta the thing and so you say, I can handle it.

Okay, fine. But that doesn’t mean I’m supposed to deal with it. Alright? She threatened to sue and do this and cause all kinds of trouble. First you handle it and then you look and see is there, so I’m supposed to be doing about this. And it ain’t gonna be fighting with her ’cause she’s already into her space, right?

And all of a sudden you become centered, you become clear, you’re able to deal with things better. A lot of the times what happens is you let the first wave go through that has all that negative energy and all that power, but you can, you digest it. And by the way, it’s so hard to stop this lady here. Ti, the coron over there who gave us the DGA statue back in the seventies, very, very high lady.

I mean, really a saint. She’s passed some years ago. Whoa. She’s high. And she once leaned over, she said, never talk personal, but she leaned over to me. We were very close. She said, Nikki. I say, yes, mother. She says, don’t you just love when they yell at you? There’s so much energy. She transmuted the energy into ecstasy.

She didn’t care, but because the energy came in, she used it to go up. Wow, now you’re getting somewhere, eh? So you handle it. You’re clean. Then you look to say, maybe right now anything you say is gonna make it worse. So you sit there and say, okay, I, I understand. Thank you. And you come back later when she’s a little cooled off and all of a sudden it’s a different conversation.

So you do deal with things, but not from protection, not from reaction, not from fear. From clarity. Alright, so your growth is letting go. And not putting any more in let go of the stuff as it comes up and don’t put any more in, and you’re gonna start to say, whoa, this is working right? Me from all over the world.

I’m so much happier. Yeah. You’re so much happier until something B comes up. You say, I was doing good and now all of a sudden I was scared. That’s right. That was down there. It’s coming back up. Don’t worry about it. Can you handle it? Are you willing to handle it? Oh, I love talking about this stuff. Have you noticed why?

Because I care about you. You don’t need to suffer. You’re born and there’s this beautiful planet. There’s all these things to do, including mean people, and Nice. It’s a video game, right? And you learn how to play and you can have a beautiful life and you can help others and you can do all kinds of stuff.

Alright? Then you get to find out what happens after you die for God sake. Don’t worry about it. What does that do? What about death? I’ll find out. That’s a nice attitude. I can’t wait to find out, but I won’t rush it.

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.