Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters.
There’s lots of different types of spiritual discourses. Most of them just try to lift you up, but there’s something holding you down. That’s why we go to church on Sundays and synagogues and so on, to have some types of freedom from the everyday stuff that holds us down. Real spirituality. Spirituality that isn’t just a day or a moment or some sacred situation or time.
Is when you pay attention to, not what can bring you up, but what’s holding you down. ’cause if all you try to do is stretch your way up ’cause you’re tired, you’re lost down and you feel the energy, spiritual energy picking you up, if you haven’t noticed, it’s going back down. During your day, during your relationships, during your finances, during the everyday stuff that you deal with, and sometimes it’s not even everyday stuff.
It’s those unique, really intense situations that life puts you through. That is where spirituality is. It’s not just in the moments of being able to pick yourself up. That’s very inspiring. That’s wonderful. It’s why do you go back down If you want to go to God, if you want to really, really devote yourself to experience what the great ones have experienced, what Christ taught, what Buddha taught, what all the great teachings teach.
You have to pay attention to what’s holding you down, not just what contemporarily bring you up. So we’ve often talked about it being a stairway to heaven instead of a leap. People do drugs, people do intense meditations. People go to holy places. They have these intense experiences, but they don’t last. I don’t know whether you know that or not.
Kind of help you along the way. I’ve been doing it for 53 years, right? They don’t last. It doesn’t last until you work on what’s holding you down. It’s like you have this anchor. Yes. Sometimes the boat can get powerful enough to drag a anchor along, but while the anchor’s there, you’re not going up. You understand that?
So this concept, this understanding of a stairway to heaven, what does that mean? Alright. You start always from where you are. You don’t start from where you wanna be. It’s nice to think about. But you’re not there. You start from where you are. Well, how do you do that? Through consciousness, awareness, honesty.
You just see. I’m in here and it’s a mess in here. It’s not always nice in here. I can make it be nice sometimes, but it goes back down. Okay. And sometimes Can it get intense in there? Can it get so intense in there? You don’t wanna be in there. Answer me. Has it ever gone so intense in there? You don’t wanna be in there.
Wow. What’s that about? It’s not about a pick me up. A drink having, when you come home from work to take the edges off, there are no edges. So what does it mean to start from where you are? It’s a very powerful thing. It’s a question of intense honesty. Do you see lust? Do you see greed? Do you see self-consciousness?
Do you see embarrassment? Do you see fear of loss? How’s that one? Anybody see fear of loss? Anybody ever think they might do something wrong? It bothers them. Anybody ever not think they might do something wrong? Somebody from three years ago thought you messed up four years ago. How you doing? That’s what it means to start from where you’re at.
Can we have that discussion? Boy? Because you do not have to be there, and your whole life is not about figuring out how to be okay, even though I’m there. How much can I tell you that it’s not about coping? It’s about liberation, the freeing yourself from being caught in yourself, from being caught in that place inside yourself.
So one of the deepest thing we just talked about was fear. Until you really get honest with yourself, you don’t realize how much fear is in there. We live out here and there are lots of little critters, deer and possum, and even foxes, okay? And, and armadillos and raccoons, they all run. Do you hear me? You have no intention of harm.
They see you, they run the deer run. They get, they let you get a little close and check it out. Then they run. Have you noticed, answer me. Do you know that you wanna do that? Also, do you know that there is a part of you? I’m not saying just lower evolution ’cause it’s, it’s more psychological with us. A part of you that doesn’t have to deal with all of this that tries to be strong.
Do you try to be strong? Why do you try to be strong? ’cause you’re not, if you’re strong, you don’t have to try to be strong. No one will talk to you like that and say, be strong.
I’d rather run and hide. I’d rather not have to deal with this. Right. Go to work and put up with your boss. Be strong. I would love that. Okay. Can we have a nice talk? Be strong. If you are strong, you don’t have to be strong ’cause you are strong. The fact that you have to be strong means you’re not strong.
So what you end up doing is pushing away the weakness, pushing away the part that would run, pushing away the part that’s scared so you can put up a front that can succeed in life. ’cause you can’t succeed when you runaway. So basically that’s what we do, that’s what humans do and that’s what animals do when the animals don’t push it away.
They run, right? They instinctually get scared and run away. Unless they really get scared. Then they fight. But they fight ’cause they’re scared. I mean, a wild animal. That’s wild. It’s scared. That’s why it’s fighting. So you have to look at that part of your being, which is very difficult to look at. Why?
Because you’ve buried it so deep. ’cause society told you you can’t be like that. You’ll never go anywhere. You need to deal with that. You need to cope with that. If you’re feeling that, put on a smiley face. Be positive. Use affirmations. I would say to like, first of all, I’m not talking against any of these techniques.
When we’re finished, we’ll understand, right? Why are you doing affirmations? You do positive affirmations. Why? Otherwise, it would be negative. If a person’s full of positive energy, they’re not doing affirmations, they’re experiencing positive energy. But if you’re not, you need to find some way to be okay.
That is your starting place. That is what it means to be honest with yourself. It’s not easy, is you’re willing to, at least once in your life, look in there and say, whoa, what? That ain’t easy to live with. Alright? Are you sensitive, for example. You’re in love with somebody and you’re hugging in, you’re in intimate moments and you can’t help yourself.
You feel so filled with love like God, I love you so much. I love you so much. I can’t even handle it. You are waiting to hear what comes back. If nothing comes back, you close and if it comes back, ’cause Yeah. I love you too. Whoa. No, no, no. You are looking for affirmation. You’re looking for strength. You’re looking for, does somebody really love me?
Really? Okay. Anybody hear me? That’s what’s in there. That’s what you’re sitting on top of. They tell you to be strong and raw. I don’t, I said be honest. Once in your, do it by yourself in meditation, in a corner, I don’t care. But once in your life, you look and see what’s in there and it’s gonna freak you out.
Right? But unless you look and see what’s in there, you can’t raise it. You can’t do anything with it. You know what you’re basically doing, running away from yourself. You’re running away from fear. You’re trying to get someone who really loves you. How can you tell? Why didn’t he call? He said he call, does he really love me?
Then he calls, oh, he does what? What about the neurotic moment in the 10 minutes where he didn’t call? She didn’t call. Anybody have any of those constantly, but you not honest with yourself. You just feel, okay. You, you feel relieved. Oh God, he called. Thank God. Thank God. Look at that. Thank God. Now, why do I have this crap in here?
Why am I so scared? Why am I so self-conscious? Why do I get hurt so easy? ’cause you have built your house. What did Christ say? Don’t build your house on sand. You have built your house on sand now. Do you understand what you’re talking about? Christ was a fully enlightened being the highest they come. He was liberated, he was free, and he taught you these deep things and he said, don’t build your house on sand.
Have you built your house on sand? Is it pretty weak in there? Can it fall apart in one second? Can somebody say one word or not say one word and all of a sudden you’re crazy inside? Answer me. What’s that telling you? You built your house on sand. Okay, so can we talk about it? What is the sand? The sand is a steep underlying fear.
What generates insecurity? What generates jealous? What’s jealousy? I’m afraid that you’re not being loyal to me. I’m afraid that you’re gonna leave me. Yes or no? Has anybody ever felt jealous? Okay. It’s a totally natural thing if you build your house on top of, I’m not okay. I need you in order to feel okay, even though I’m not okay.
And of course I’m afraid that I’m gonna fall back in this black hole in here. I’ve been there before. I don’t wanna go back there. And so I struggle to run away from myself and I use you as a life raft in relationships and so on and, and finances. Okay, I’m okay. I got money in the bank, I’ll be okay. Right until the 1929, they’re throwing themselves off buildings.
What does that mean? I’m telling you, it’s not nice way down there. It is. Ultimately, we’ll get there, but the honesty is the willingness to look at that and say, yes, I’m running away from myself. I’m running away from that part of myself. I’ve suppressed it. I’ve pushed it down, and I’m using the external situation in my life to give me strength to pull outta that place.
That’s what my relationships are. But be in a very beautiful relationship and have somebody do something you didn’t expect them to do. How you doing? You built it all on top of these concepts of what will keep me stable, of what will keep me away from that, and then you build dreams in your head. That says, if things will be like this, I’ll be okay.
Your dreams are not what you don’t want to happen. Your dreams are based on my past experiences, I’ve seen that these things make me feel stronger, make me feel loved, make me feel, not I am. They make me feel you see a difference. And so I need these outside things. And so my dreams are that they’ll happen.
My ship will come in someday. I have hope. I have not given up. What does that mean? Giving up mean? Boom. You’re falling a hole. I ain’t going back in that hole. I’ve been there before. I won’t go there. I hope that someone will come. My white knight, our princess, that’ll get the perfect job. That inspires me.
That’ll be turned on. That’ll look forward to going to work. I once had somebody when I was run the company. I hired somebody who had a very, very high position, one of the big, big corporations, and he’d gotten burned out. I didn’t realize that when I hired him, but he’d gotten burned out and he wanted to come down and just, you know, work with a smaller company.
And we weren’t that small, but small enough. And he told me something once I loved him. He said to me, you know, Mickey, I was driving to work today, giving a long driveway up to the offices. He said. I realize this is the first time in 20 years that I look forward to going to work. Isn’t that beautiful? It ain’t gonna last Anything.
Anything that you need to hold you out of what’s going on in there is not going to last even if it lasts to your death. You’re afraid of losing. People who are dying are still clinging, but what are my finances? What are my kids? What’s gonna have one? My kids, I wanted to see them get married. There’s all these things that I thought would make me be okay.
Now I wanna die. Yeah. How honest are we talking now? And if I got that in there, you’re trying to find the outside world. Create an outside world that you don’t have to deal with what’s inside of you that is not spirituality. Now spirituality doesn’t mean going to the depression. Now we’re talking about deep, deep.
You want a technique. These are deep techniques that are techniques of actually growing, evolving, freeing, liberating yourself. That is not your natural state, that that stuff’s in there. No, it is not. It is not a matter of coping with that, that can turn into love. You can have it to where what’s driving you is not running away from that.
It’s, that’s pouring inside of you, feeding you day and night. Master one said, oh Lord, has that done to me? Wave upon wave of endless joy saturates me, day and night. Ecstasy, thro upon thro. That’s your natural state. How would you like to go from where I just talked about to that, that’s yoga, that’s spirituality.
That’s what’s going on. So that’s what we’re talking about. Stairway to heaven. It’s not a jump. No drug’s gonna take you there. No relationship gonna take you there. Relationships are wonderful. They’re wonderful growth to help you get there. They’re not taking you there. It’s not, I love you so much that now I’m okay.
Yeah. Until you do something or I think you might do something. You hear me? Good. I like seeing you shake your heads. I got the right crowd. Alright, so what does it mean to stare away to heaven? The first step and you’re afraid to take it, but don’t be, is the honesty. Is this discussion and you look in there?
Yeah. Yeah. Every I, and then things happen that hurt me, didn’t they? You stored every single one of those inside, you put them layer, you know, mommy did that and daddy did this and this happened, and the first boyfriend and the first girlfriend, and then there’s a school. And it got dumped and it got fired.
And what’d you do with those things? You pushed them on top of your fear. He, I don’t want to deal. I can’t deal with this. And so you push them down to try and get strength. How do you get strength? By pushing the garbage down on top of your fear. Right. All it does is pop back up. Then it comes back up.
Then you’re at work. You’re doing fine. Well, a sudden here, somebody got fired. Right? All of a sudden for three solid days or two weeks are having a downsizing. I don’t wanna get fired. Well, they doing And you find out you didn’t get fired. We just wasted your time. Mm-hmm. I, I just wanna make sure we’re talking ’cause this is how you live and is not how you were meant to live.
It is not what you were born for. Period, and it is not who you are. Okay? It’s this stairway concept. Once you see the honesty of what’s going on in there, right at the bottom, no, we’ll live down there. I’m not telling you to go down there and get into it and then wallow around. It does not do any good. You understand that?
So you look down, it’s like I just saw the vision of thought of there’s mud. I don’t wanna be in the mud. Get in there, wallow around and get you, are you kidding me? You have to look and see why I don’t wanna get in the mud. That’s how you grow. Why would I even wanna get into the stupid mud? Not I have to go wallow it in and get filthy.
It totally messed up. Right? All that does is make you get used to being wallowing in the mud. I know they teach you that. Okay, here I’ll make, get the record straight. Nothing is as bad as suppression. Mm-hmm. Suppression is what the mud is. Okay. And you keep pushing it away and running away from it. So what psychology often, and I have great respect for therapy and psychology and all of it, right?
Anything that you’re doing that is working with yourself, great. Right? Is they will teach you. You have to get into it. If you feel these deep emotions and sorrows, don’t run away from it. You have to get into it and feel real, what it feels like, right? Yo doesn’t teach that. Yoga teaches. Why is it going on?
Not, can I get into it and not run? Don’t run away. Yes. Suppression is running away from it. There’s a higher state than that. It’s called clarity witness consciousness. You sit there and you look, whoa, that’s going on in there? I didn’t realize that. What do I do? If you suppress your fear of it and all that kind of stuff, it’s just gonna get worse.
That’s not an answer, and that’s why they teach non suppression. That was Freud. They’re right. Suppression is the worst thing you can do with fear. It makes it worse. It just builds it up inside and builds more things to be afraid of. Right? But to go in there and wallow in it, which is okay, it’s a technique, right?
They teach that to wallow in it is basically saying, can you get into it so much that you get used to it? That you’re not afraid of it anymore. I’m just gonna get to sorrow. I got divorced and I’m just so sorrow. I’m just gonna get into it and I’ll cry and I have the right to cry and I just be there constantly and just, I don’t care if my life falls apart.
At least I’m honest. Okay, there’s a higher way. Let’s talk about it from there then. So what does one do first? These techniques I’m talking to you about? You don’t start them when you’re screwed up completely. He just got dumped on or died, or somebody died. Do you love, and that that’s, you don’t start playing tennis with the Williams sisters, do you?
You don’t start learning to play the piano with Kowski. You start with the scales. So I always teach you that your first step in working with that down there is not going down there and wallowing in it and all that. Or even, man, I, I hate to talk about this stuff ’cause you, you misunderstand, let’s say you find that down there, the first thing you wanna do is tell somebody about it.
What’s that doing? It’s trying to release the fear. It’s trying to release the energy that you’re having to deal with and that’s fine. It’s a stairway. What’s the real technique? You don’t start when things are completely screwed up. That’s your worst time to be doing that. You start with your everyday life.
That’s your stairway. This first step in your stairway to heaven is It’s, I was gonna say hot. It’s cold out. It is cold. It feels like 19 degrees or no, minus. It was 10. It was 10 this morning. Felt like, all right, it’s cold. I can’t handle this. Do I have the right clothes? What am I gonna do? Maybe I should go to a store.
No, it’s too late to go to the store. That’s where you start. You hear me? That’s the neurosis, the craziness that, because you can’t even go close to the fact that you have fear. I’m afraid of the cold. I’m afraid of the heat. I’m afraid that when I leave the house, I left the stove on. So I keep going back, but then when I leave, I stop.
Maybe I forgot to turn the other one off. That’s where you start. You start with the neurosis. Start with the unnecessary thoughts that create fear when there doesn’t need to be anything. You do not have to be afraid of the cold. Well, I guess if you’re naked in Alaska or the Antarctic, you better be afraid of the cold.
Alright? But come on, normal life to be afraid of the cold, to be afraid of the heat. That’s just neurosis. That’s just crazy. That’s just really, it ties back to the deep fear inside. You’re afraid of everything. So what if it gets 97 degrees? But, but I might perspire. They might see it. Oh, here we go. That’s where you start.
You hear me? You start with the expression of fear that doesn’t need to be there. Eventually it will tie right down to the deep stuff, but you ain’t gonna deal with that deep stuff right away, and it’s really strong. It’s way stronger than you think it is. You’ve touched it sometimes, but mean it’s dark down there.
It’s not naturally dark down there. You shoves it all down there. So you start with your everyday life. I beg you, I learned this, I had to learn it. Okay. And you start with your everyday life. Why are you bothering yourself about here I call in, in living on tether. I call it the low hanging fruit. What’s the little hanging fruit?
That which, if you weren’t bothering yourself about it, there’s nothing to do about it. What if I’m okay with the heat dinner to think about it. I have to be neurotic. I don’t have to run around like a chick with my head cut off. ’cause it’s hot out. Not even, it’s hot out next week. It might be hot. Oh no, come on.
That’s in there, isn’t it? That’s where you work a stairway to heaven. That first step. You can use affirmation, you can meditate. Yes, you can do things to help you with that first step you need to, that says, why am I making myself a mess? There’s enough things around here that I have to deal with that are real without my thoughts just creating hell for me when there’s no problem, and they do.
Okay, go have it. Of course, I don’t go to the barbers for 60 years, but have your hair done, men or women, doesn’t matter nowadays. And have them cut off about, I dunno, a 60th, an inch more than you expected, and look in the mirror and watch your mind for the next week. That’s what I’m talking about. You think it doesn’t matter.
I’m telling you. It’s not a leap, it’s a stairway. That’s your first step. If you don’t take the first step, you can’t take the second or third or fourth, we’ll go deeper. But I’m telling you, I can’t stress this enough. You are wasting your spiritual journey by letting your mind complain about things that don’t matter.
They don’t matter, do they? I know they don’t matter. ’cause if I don’t do anything about them, there’s nothing to do. What’s there to do about the eat? Enjoy it. Feel it. What’s there to do about the cold shiver? Put another layer on there. It’s solved. Oh. But I don’t want, it doesn’t look good. I look fat.
Is anybody listening? Yes. Okay. I’m telling you, that’s the first step. It’s not how I deal with the fact that my best friend died or my husband left me or my wife and the kids. No, that’s not the first step. I’m sorry you got thrown into that, but you got thrown into it. ’cause it’s there. It’s there and you’ve been running away from it and God will not let you run away from it.
I’m telling you right now, y’all don’t realize God and guru, they’re real and every one of you got it. Not a matter of going somewheres, okay? Earth is a place that soul are sent to evolve. Earth, you know, the little planet spin the middle. Nowhere is a place that souls, that’s you guys consciousness, are sent to evolve.
Now we’re talking about evolution. Those animals have to run away. They’re not evolved. They just fear runs a major part of their lives and evolved being has raised that energy that energy’s first come on, you guys are yogis. That energy’s first chakra. Survival fear, and that takes over, okay. You know, you guys, you kind of managed to deal with it by suppressing it or running away from it.
I mean, you don’t run away from it. You run from it inside, but you’ve learned that you can rise above that constant survival instinct. I, I always tell this story when I went to school, like high school and stuff like that earlier, probably they said the most powerful instinct in a human being is survival.
Ever learned that. That’s a lie. I have living proof, right? Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Okay, here’s two very intelligent dudes, and somebody said something that insulted somebody or insulted their wife or something, and they’re sitting there taking 10 steps away from each other, turning around, shooting each other in the face.
I thought survival’s the strongest instinct. Oh, I guess ego’s bigger. See, you’ve evolved. Congratulations. That is literally, that’s the first chakra, third chakra. The energy came up to where what you’re dealing with on a daily basis is generally not survival, but it is survival of your ego. Defend yourself.
Tami Simon: Ha ha ha.
Michael Singer: That’s not defending yourself against a lion jumping on you, that’s defending yourself. Or what somebody said about you or somebody thought about you. I heard Sally told Peter that Fred doesn’t like you. Why? What did I do? I don’t even know the guy. Survival. Okay. Alright. I’m taking the stairway fast.
So you have risen above. These lower instincts of the survival S doesn’t mean you don’t have ’em, but that’s not the fear we’re talking about. The fear you’re working through. You gotta work from the top down, alright? Once you see it. So the fear we’re talking about is the fear that doesn’t need to be there.
You’re creating it for yourself. Can you work with that? That’s your spiritual work. That’s your inner work. How do I deal with the fact that it’s hot and I don’t like it. I don’t here watch, but I don’t like the heat. Some people do. You don’t control the heat. If the sun does, the orbit of the Earth does truly the tilt of the earth, it’s none of your business.
Be okay to use affirmation. I rem I told you the story. I remember when I first did this back in 73, I was out here. I moved out to the woods, living alone. There was no air conditioning there, no air conditioning in my car at a VW van. And, and there was, it was hot. It was very hot. And he complained a lot when he wasn’t.
I made him meditate a lot, but he complained otherwise. And I remember stopping once. I’m just giving you an example. I stopped standing outside my car. He’s doing his thing complaining. Ah, no got so hot. And I asked him, Hey Mick, hey, hello. Why is it hot? Because the sun’s hot. I asked him, what is the sun?
And he said, I never changed. I never forgot it. I’m telling this story 53 years later, or 55. Right? He said, it’s a star. How often do you realize the sun is a star? Stars? Are those things at night that twinkle, that’s one that you’re close enough to, that you’re complaining about? Stars are pretty special things, aren’t they?
And you’re led close enough to a star, to one of those things way out that you see Orion and the Big Dipper and a little different. It’s one of those. He says, close enough to it. You’re close enough to it to feel its heat. And then I asked him, oh wow, that’s pretty neat. We don’t like stars. All of a sudden the topic changed and I said, well, how far away is that star?
93 million miles. 93 million miles away. And it’s that hot. Wow. That’s pretty far out, isn’t it? And then I asked him a neat question. I said, well, why is it so hot now? He said, it’s summer in the summer. Listen to me. Most of you don’t know this. I made him know this. In the summer, the earth is closer to the sun.
In the winter, it’s further away. Of course it’s hotter. Wrong. In the winter, the earth is closest to the sun. In the summer, it’s furthest away. Ha high. Like her eyes pop is the tilt. The axis that determines that it’s hotter during the winter and cooler during the summer. And that’s why you have the equator and it changes.
’cause the till changes depending on southern hemisphere. Isn’t it fun now? Hot made, you know, all this hot’s your teacher, and all of a sudden you look up. And now when I walk, anytime I walk outta the car, I dunno if to do it right, if it’s hot out. He stops and he does this. Just bring it in, baby. I told you, you do not get sunburned.
You get star burned. Does that not change everything? Right? I mean, who doesn’t like the star and then you do anything you want there? That’s affirmation. That’s positive thinking. What does that do? It means you’re not getting caught in some stupid stuff that you don’t need to be bothering yourself about.
There’s enough stuff we’ll deal with higher on the stairway that you’re gonna have to deal with. This one’s easy. Take the low hanging fruit. I’m begging. You wait till you see what happens. Your whole life changes. Why you were getting upset. ’cause of the traffic or because of how somebody’s driving in front of you or because of the heat?
Because of the weather. Because you have a little tiny zit underneath your chin and nobody can see, but you have one of those 700 time magnifying mirrors. Oh, it looks like a pit in there in the Grand Canyon. What are you doing? There’s a solution to that. Don’t look in that mirror. You’re like looking for trouble.
Anybody hearing me? That is the first step on the path. Doesn’t seem like it. What’s it got to do with God? Everything. ’cause it has to do with acceptance. It has to do with not creating problems when there aren’t any. It’s your anchor. So you start doing this win whenever you can about whatever you can.
And what’s gonna happen is now that you can do it with these simple little things, I would say the driver in front of you, I can’t get in, I don’t never enough time for, I wanna talk about, has anyone ever talked to the driver in front of them? Did you know they don’t hear you? Did you know you can complain all you want and all you’re doing is make yourself sick.
That’s low hanging fruit, isn’t it? If you weren’t bothering yourself about it, there’s nothing to do about it. If you can pass, pass, if it’s safe pass, nobody told you not to pass. Nobody told you be some discipline thing, right? But if you’re in a single lane road on one side and there’s traffic and he’s driving 15 miles an hour below the speed limit and you’re in a rush, then that result is why bother yourself about it and you’ll know what.
Your mind will come up with reasons. ’cause I might be late for work. I don’t have time. I have things I have to do. It’s just bringing fear or you’re making up reasons to have fear to be bothered. How about we don’t do that? That’s the first step. I don’t care how you figure it out. Find a way to catch yourself when it’s expressing this neurotic fear of not liking things.
That’s step one in the path. Then what happens? You’re gonna find out and you’ll be shocked how fast it happens that you’re happy than used to be. You stop making yourself unhappy, you stupid things. It literally makes you happier. I like that. Right? Why would it not? I now I feel the heat and I, I get high.
I usually get all upset. Same thing with the driver in front of me. Find a way to be fine with it. Have fun with it. Do mantra. I don’t care. Any technique you want. I don’t, I’d say I don’t teach techniques, but this is the technique that’s staircase. And you don’t pay attention. I do my mantra. Yeah, but do you do this?
Do you stop bothering yourself about things that are stupid to bother yourself about? And you’d be a much better, happier person and close to God, by the way, God did not create creation, so you complain about it. He created it so he can experience every single thing there is that he created and he ain’t complaining about nothing.
He’s like, wow, wow, wow. Okay. And you’re in there complaining about what God created there. So that’s what has to do with God, everything. Alright, let’s take the next step. What happens when you do that first one, and you can do it very quickly to understand that. Right. Work with yourself. It’s called inner work.
Work with it. Alright, now what happens? Now you’re gonna find out that something a little bigger happens. Like, I mean, really traumatic. Like your friend Sally, when you call out to her and when you’re walking by the plaza, something like, Hey Sally, how you doing? And she doesn’t acknowledge you. That’s bigger than the heat.
Now we’re getting serious. Why didn’t Sally say hello? What did I do? Watch her mind. What did I do wrong? I didn’t. No. Did somebody tell her what I said three years ago about her? Oh no. She promised she would never say. What if she did? Should I call her? Should I ask if she told her? Now you’re neurotic about something a little bigger, right?
Rejection, fear of loss, doing something wrong. Right Now we’re up to the ego. What’s your technique for that next step? How to be okay. I used to be intense. I meditated all the time and did yoga, walking, then walking. I mean, really it was a 24 7 thing with me, and little by little I learn what works. Okay, well what works for this?
Don’t try to do anything about that. Just notice that Sally walked by. Your mind is going crazy if she didn’t say hello. Okay, just notice. That’s all I ask. Don’t know anything about it. Don’t go running after her. Right. Just notice how neurotic you got about that. Trying to figure out why she didn’t say hello and what do I do next time I see her?
I don’t wanna see her. I, no, I can’t handle it. I can’t handle it. I don’t know what she did. I can’t handle it. Can’t handle it. Right. I, I wanna hear that she found it. Will you please watch your mind? Does it do that? Yes or no? Answer me. Does it do that? You better say yes. Okay. I mean, some of the people that are supposed to be the strongest, most powerful, richest people in our lives that we know anything about, do that about absolutely everything.
If anybody says one word against them, that’s hell. Fire takes place and we’re in court. That type of power is meaningless. The power to make it be the way you want it to be. Why can’t you handle reality? So the net result is, of course, you’re like that. Now, what do I do about that? What I would have you do is don’t get into it.
Don’t try to figure out why she didn’t say hello. She had earbuds on, she didn’t hear you. There could be a billion things. She’s lost in her thought. She’s busy being neurotic about what somebody else did. What are you gonna figure it out? So what you do is you’re the witness. Now you’re ready. You handle the heat, you handle the cold, you handle the driver by watching, noticing how stupid it is.
Now, will you watch that? Just watch. And then I want you over time to see how much time you wasted with stuff that turned out to be nothing. Because I’m telling you, the percentage is phenomenal. If you go back and look at your life of these silly little stupid things, mostly it’s relationship things. In that relationships, they, they touch you deep, don’t they?
Right. Really self-concept, the whole thing, and you just worry about it and you think about it and it set you off and you have trigger points, and then it doesn’t turn out to be anything. You didn’t get fired. The person wasn’t holding their arms across their third chakra because that’s body language.
They had a stomach ache. Why do you wanna look at this stuff? All it does is make you neurotic. You know why I wanna do it? I wanna figure out how to protect myself. If I can read the body language, I’m being bad. Now I’m talking against stuff. I’m not really against anything. But if I can read body language, I can figure how to protect myself.
Why else would you wanna, what do you, where? Do you care how I sit? What do you care if I, I got a little twitch, and when you’re talking to me, I twitch a little bit. What am I saying? What do I do? Oh my God, I’m making the guy twitch. You are like that. You understand that, and so you start noticing how often these things are just full of it.
There’s nothing happening. It’s your mind because of the fear you have inside. It always thinks the worst, doesn’t it? He doesn’t like me. I can tell he doesn’t like me. My God, he just walked by. He’s purposely avoiding me. He didn’t even see you. Why are you doing that? Because of that thing down there way down there that we looked at to start with.
It expresses itself all the way I’ve done that. It just ends up being every argument you ever had, anything, it’s just, it’s just fear. Do you have fear like I’m talking to you about now? It’s not the fear of the lion or starving, it’s the fear of ego. It’s the fear of the self-concept. I built this self-concept inside myself of how I want people to look at me.
You got one? How I behave, how I walk. I want people walk certain ways. They show power, they dress certain clothes, power clothes. Gimme a freak. Why would you do? I mean, yes, do it, but don’t listen to me. I told you, don’t listen to me. Just, but you’ll see over time, what in the world is this about? What do you wanna dress a certain way or something like that?
Why? ’cause you’re not okay. And you think that being a certain way and acting a certain way and talking a certain way and presenting yourself a certain way would mean you don’t get rejected. It means you don’t have to deal with fear. You’re strong enough. I took control over it. At a car I’m driving. I can’t afford it, but man, I drive a Ferrari.
You hear me? Status, symbols, homes. A neighbors building a home nicer than yours? No, I ain’t at the nicest house in the neighborhood. I. You hear me? How neurotic can it get? It’s the same fear that I told you to look at from the beginning that you admitted was in there. It is expressing itself. If you’re live in a fancy neighborhood, you drive away from your house, you see that there’s some weeds on your lawn.
There’s no weeds on the neighbor’s lawn. It bothers you all day. How come the gardener didn’t take care of that? What’s wrong with my landscape? People? I don’t have to live in a house that looks like that one weed. Okay, so it’s that same fear. Expressing itself through everything and you just keep running away from it by trying to get the weed cut or yelling at the gardener or changing the gardeners, like changing things outside.
So you don’t have to face what’s going on inside. No. So it’s your next step. You notice just with Sally, not sand alone on, on these giant things. You notice what’s going on in there. You don’t normally notice. You try to do something about it. I don’t notice. I’m neurotic about the fact that a weed is growing in the lawn and my neighbor has perfectly tailored golf course lawns.
Alright, I know you guys are not like that, but you know what I’m talking about. I purposely don’t take the ones that you are sensitive about, try to get a little off topic, but you know what I’m talking about. Instead of noticing there’s a piece of grass on my lawn and I’m neurotic, I’m scared that people won’t like me.
Okay? Instead of doing that, you. Use that energy that should be being used to work on yourself inside to change the outside so you don’t have to deal with it. In fact, maybe you ram on your brakes, run back in the garage and take a snipper and cut, cut off myself, and I don’t care if I’m late for work, I’m gonna live with, see what I’m saying?
You’re trying to. The non-problem you’re accepting that you’re reinforcing this is a problem. There’s a problem that grasses there that don’t have the nicest lawn and around and a problem that somebody didn’t call at the right time. You try to solve it instead of looking inside. That’s witness consciousness looking inside saying, whoa, if I’m like this, I’m in trouble.
’cause there’s always something to be bothered about, isn’t there Always all day there’s something to be bothered about. Is anybody listening? This is a stairway to heaven. So you take a look at it and at some point you say, I don’t wanna be like that. Now I’m not like that. You are right, but it’s not who I am.
I’m the one who notices that that’s going on in here because of these silly little situations. The ego, ego situations, right? Go to lunch and drop some ketchup on your dress or your pants. I wanna watch. No, I wanna watch. I made him watch. I make him watch. There’s no way, no way. I’m dealing with that. How can I live in here?
Because you can’t deal with the fence of some ketchups on his stupid pants. You go in there and put a napkin over it and then you do a thing. Your hand is there all the time and, and you don’t want to go to work. Should I go and wash it? No, I’m late. Thank you. It is a joke, isn’t it? You should be laughing.
You gotta laugh at it. It is crazy. You don’t wanna live like that, do you? It’s not like I’ll look, Hey Sal, look up I dress and just catch on my, that’s just neutralizing the energy. You told somebody about it before they notice you hear me, right?
How are I want you to be? You don’t even notice. It don’t matter. Go to work, you know, looking at it. And it’s nothing. It’s, I want it to be nothing. Well, I, it is nothing. You’re sitting on a planet spill in the middle of nowheres. I told you that sun was one star. There’s 300 billion in your galaxy and there’s 2 trillion galaxies, and there’s a spot of ketchup on your pants.
How do we expand our frame of reference? There’s lots of techniques. I use them. All right, and so you basically, now we’re at the next level, and now we’re at the ego level where my self-concept is being. It’s fear. The fear that my self-concept will not work. That’ll be rejected. I’m afraid to give a talk.
I couldn’t mess up. I remember in fifth grade I gave a talk and they laughed at me. You’re 35 years old. What are you doing? I, I just still have that in me. I just keep hiding from it. I dress a certain way, act a certain way. I have big people that help me and put ’em in front of me first. Make sure, make sure you check everything out first.
See what the audience is like, what they, you know, what are you doing? And being neurotic. I can’t live my life. It’s all fear. Do you see how much fear it is? Now? I’m talking about it. There’s a lot of fear in there, isn’t it? It’s all coming from that deep thing underneath that you’re running away from.
Alright, so now we’re ready for the next step, which is, I notice that this ego is a problem. What do you mean? The fact that I built a concept of myself. Means it’s not myself. It’s a concept of myself and it’s pretty heavy to carry around ’cause everyone I meet, I have to present myself that they’ll accept the part of myself I presented to them.
And sometimes you wanna talk about trouble with life. Sometimes when you’re around your parents, you present a very different person than when you’re around your boyfriend or girlfriend or your best friends, right or wrong. Wow. Now figure it out. Now what do you do when your best friend shows up at your parents’ house?
When you throw your vacation? Ah, excuse me. What have you done? You built a neurotic mess inside. That’s your next step. I’m, I’m taking big steps. We gotta run outta time. I wanna get you there. What’s that step? That step is not figuring out? How to present the right thing to every person so they accept you.
It’s a step of saying, do I wanna build a false concept of myself? Who says it’s false? You keep changing a thing. Have you ever said to somebody, right, no. Don’t leave. Don’t leave. I’m so sorry. I don’t. No, no. I can change. I can change. I know you don’t like me being like that. I don’t have to be like that. I promise Uhoh.
In other words, you made somebody up, it didn’t work. I can make up another one. Just tell me how you want me to be. Come on, come on. These are sensitive moments. But it’s the truth, isn’t it? If you can make up another one, then it wasn’t who you were and it keeps changing anyways, doesn’t it? That’s not to say self, self-concept.
When you’re 10, 20, 30, 50, you’re just not being real. Because of fear. You built all of this outta fear that ego is built outta fear. You understand that? Talk about don’t build your house on sand. Don’t build your house on top of a self-concept that just sell to everybody and prove all the time. And so you wake up a little mess the next step.
Do I have to live like this? No. Is it painful? That first step, like it was painful when the sun was too hot and I was bothering about it. It’s a little bit painful now. It’s a little more painful. What do you mean? What if somebody expects me to be a certain way and it’s not who I am? It doesn’t feel right.
It is not my morals. It is not my pole star. It’s not where I wanna go, but it is a peer group pressure, right? To walk away. Be true to yourself. You’re not done with self yet, but really we’re not done with self yet. Okay? We haven’t gotten there yet, but you see the stairway, these are layers of liberation and you’re gonna have to walk ’em.
So now I’m sitting there. What happens if I decide deep inside for no reason other than I need to be true to the deepest part of myself? Okay, to that which I’ve seen, maybe I’ll see more later. The deepest part of myself, no. And I walk away. It hurts. You will have trouble. You’ll feel rejected. You’ll be afraid.
You’re strong enough to walk away, but your mom would say, oh, maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Right? You know, work with that. How What I have found is the word is relax first, notice, then try to find the deepest part of your being. It’s not the end yet. Find the deepest part you’ve seen so far and be true to that.
Make me cry. Be true to that. You hear me? It’s not easy, is it? I don’t care. If you wanna go up, you need to take that next step. And the next step is if the whole world rejects me, but I’m closer to God, I went the right way. I. You hear me? Peer pressure is a ridiculous look at what. Alright, I don’t care whether you’re a Democrat or Republican.
What you like or don’t like is the place a mess. Answer me. It’s just a mess. Peer pressure makes you buy into which mess you wanna be. You have to stand alone, not suppress, be open and sit there and say, I’ve seen a deeper truth. I wanna live it. I don’t care. That song, the Impossible Dream, scorn and Cover with Scars, right?
I live the truth. That’s the next step. And you’ll have to go through hell Inner Hell, okay? But it will shock you that people actually respect you for that. When I said and done, that’s real strength. Not strong enough to fit in with everybody. Not strong enough to wear the right clothes or drive the right car or snip the the weed.
It’s to stand true to yourself. You’ll see higher selves as you go up. It’s a stairway, but you can’t deal with that. I don’t care what somebody else says. You be true to yourself. You’ll see what you’ve seen so far, and you live with that. That’s your polestar and you walk toward that and it’s not easy because the world is not like that.
Man, you’re a great being. So you take that step, then what are we there? Now you are not even close, but you got there by noticing the mess, not by ignoring it, not by suppressing it. You hear me? Not by denying it. By seeing, okay, I handle the sun. I handled Sally who didn’t say, hello. I handled the weed in the grass.
Right? And now I’m handling the fact that. People may not like me. Did you know that? Is that okay with you that some people don’t like you? Listen to me because if you say, no, you’re dead. Why I. Do you like some people and not like some people the way you are now, why is that? Because you had experiences in your life that left impressions and scars inside of you and this type of person.
You don’t like that type of person you do like, and we’re all different. So if somebody doesn’t like you, it’s not because of you, it’s ’cause of them. It’s ’cause of what’s going on inside of them, how you are, how they perceive you anyways, how it hits what’s already inside of them. My sister died. My sister died last week, and here you are talking about how close you are with your sister.
I can’t stand you. Get away from me. Okay. That’s not you. It’s them. Do you understand that everybody’s judging. That’s what not liking you means I judged you. What are you judging based on the experiences you had in your life that left these some scars and these impressions inside of you? That’s where you sit in there with your garbage and your stuff and your value judgments and your opinions and preference and hopes and dreams.
That’s, that’s a package in there, isn’t it? You out there have nothing to do with that package. You in a totally different life, how can you expect to match everybody’s package? You don’t even want to. It’s not like, I don’t care about you. I said, no, you don’t care enough. The where you literally don’t care.
Okay? The deer ran away. Oh, you should’ve liked me. No, stop it. They run away. Alright? And it’s, the person doesn’t like you. You rubbed in the wrong way, or they got rubbed the wrong way. Is that okay with you? It better be okay with you, or you’ll run around trying to please everybody instead of living the truth within yourself.
So how does one do that? Right now we’re talking about the next step. This is serious steps. You sit there and you, you notice this is just ego. This is just impressions. Some scars left from my journey, right? And I’m projecting them onto everybody else, and I’m just, I’m driving myself crazy. Buddhist said, all life is suffering.
He wasn’t negative. Now you see what suffering looks like compared to Nirvana. So you look at that, how do you deal with that? Because that’s multifaceted. You know, it could be anything that’s causing that kind of junk with your ego. The answer is relax and close it down really quickly. I’m telling you, I’ve done this for a long time, right?
When you see that, what do I do? You wanna say something, you wanna fix something, you wanna apologize. You wanna tell them, I don’t like you either. You wanna do something that’s just protection. That’s just the fear expressing itself. Relax. How can I relax? It’s scary. If somebody didn’t like you and talking against you, you hear that somebody said something that wasn’t even true.
I’m telling you. Relax. How can I relax? Because the energy inside of you does not want to relax. It’s reactive. It wants defensive, reactive, fight back, whatever it is, fight or flight. It doesn’t relax. It won’t relax. That’s messing energy. You in there that notices it. You relax. That’s the next step. That’s what this consciousness, you did notice that it got weird in there.
Did you not? When you got rejected, when somebody talked against you, when somebody said, I don’t like you, you a good person I ever met in the entire world, both inside and out. I never wanna see you ever again. You notice that there’s this sense of fear. There’s this fear comes up and it gets sort defensive.
You in there that noticed. You relax, you can’t make anger, relax, you can’t make fear. Relax. You can’t make insecurity relax. That is their nature. They came up that way. They hit all your stuff and it end up disturbing your energy, but you in there that notices. You can relax. How can I relax? It’s scary.
Relax. Relax in the face of the fear. Yes, not get into it. See the difference we’ve talked about. Relax behind it. Just relax. I can Here. Here it is. Here’s your mantra. I can handle this. I can handle this. I can handle this. If that’s your mantra and you just keep relaxing and what you’re gonna find is the energy makes it through and it changes its nature as it makes it through.
We’re talking deep yoga now. Like all of a sudden it was fear and all of a sudden it feels like compassion and love, it changes. ’cause you’re not pushing it back down. You’re not creating more resistance to it. When you resist it, it gets worse. And if you stay open and relax through it, it will make it through.
And that’s strength. The strength to relax and be open in the face of all these negative energies. That’s a strong person, not the person that could go out there and try to make sure there’s no negative energies. As a very weak person. So you relax inside. You just learn to relax. It takes time. Meditation helps.
Mantra helps. All the techniques you all do, they help, okay? But it’s work in there. That’s your work. And just do it little by little. They’re not gonna have fast. Accept this one. Honor that one. Let one go. Oh wow. Far out. Now the next time you see the person, you are gonna want to feel like you handle it. I let go.
Doesn does not mean it’s gone. Alright. Right. You let go. Now the next time you see ’em, you wanna not see them. You wanna walk the other road? Oh my God, I don’t wanna talk to ’em. Right? You go and you walk up there. You just make him walk up there. I do it all the time. And you don’t say, why don’t you like me?
Which is what it wants to say. That’s your inner strength. You take that little guy in there, you got one. That little ego, you take him by the hand like you would a child and you say, we can deal with this. We cry. This is real growth. Do you understand that this is the spiritual path. You take ’em by the hand.
And you stay inside and you watch and you help him. The Gita says one should raise the self with self, not trample down the self. He’s talking about higher self. Should help lower self. Not push it away. That one line, how deep is that? One should raise the self as a capitalist. One should raise the self with self, not trampled down the self for self, which could be self friend, can become self foe.
Learn how to be clear inside and lift the rest of you up. Not protect it. Just keep letting go. Keep relaxing through it. You can do it. And then what happens? Then you start noticing some things happen. They don’t bother you anymore. ’cause you learn how to deal with that energy. Just keep relaxing, relaxing, relaxing through it.
Okay? And next thing you know, you become established and see yourself. What does that mean? You who is in there watching all this is now who you are. You’re not what you watch. You’re not who you were, you’re not. Anything ever happened to you. You’re the one that happened to, and you’re in that space and it doesn’t leave.
It doesn’t ever leave. You become established in that seat and I have to stop, right? I haven’t gotten anywheres yet. You are way higher than that. Come back, we’ll do part two.
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.
