E164: The Fall from the Garden—Distraction, Identification, and the Birth of Ego

Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. The more you grow, growth means personally, spiritually, everything. It’s all the same. The more you realize that consciousness is everything. How we don’t realize that. I have no idea. ’cause if you’re not conscious of something, then it doesn’t exist. Not for you. If you’re conscious of something.

It exists. Well, consciousness is, is the awareness of being, you know, you’re in there, you know that, you know you’re in there, you know you have thoughts, you know you have emotions, you know you have a body. And you know that your senses pick up a world out there. What does that, your hand doesn’t know It’s there.

You know your hand is there. Your thoughts don’t know. You see them, but you see them. That’s consciousness. Consciousness and awareness are the same thing. Why do we have to talk about that? ’cause you are it all the time you’ve been it. Ever since you’re born on your deathbed, you’ll know you’re dying. So consciousness is what experiences.

It’s not the experience itself. The experience is something you’re experiencing. So yoga and true spirituality is all about who is the experiencer, not what is the experience. That’s the entire shift from spiritual to lost. That’s a fall from the garden. They put forth the garden. Everything’s wonderful.

Everything’s fine. There’s not any problem. There’s nothing. You’re just merged with the divine. But you’re aware that you’re aware. That you’re aware. Aware of what? Aware of what you’re aware of. It’s subject object. You are always the subject. And something else is the object. What’s the difference? What it is?

Alright, there’s something out there. There’s something in here, and you’re aware of it. Why don’t we know that that becomes the magic? That is literally what’s meant by the fall from the garden. The fall from the garden is you’re seated in consciousness. That’s where you are. That’s who you are. That’s what you are.

You have the conscious being that is aware that it is this being, but then there are objects of consciousness, so you’re aware of those. There’s rocks, there’s people, there’s things, there’s animals. There’s all kinds of things. I don’t wanna listen to ’em all. There’s lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of different things.

But there’s one consciousness. If you see an otter, you see a deer, you see a roach, you see a person, you see a male, you see a female, you see you. Who’s seen them all. That’s what it means that we all are one. You are one. There’s just one of you. There’s myriad things that you’re aware of. There’s just one who’s aware.

Do you understand that? Were you here yesterday? How do you know? Were you in there yesterday? Okay. Okay. It’s not there anymore, but you’re still there. That’s just it. You’re that. That’s what you are. So that’s the Gordon. What do you mean? I don’t like to say this to you ’cause you’re only hearing it.

There’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing right, right and wrong are things you do about what you experienced. The experience is neither right nor wrong, nor good, nor bad, nor high, nor low, nor male, nor female. Those are things you experience. You experience a female’s body, you experience a male’s body, you experience a male’s emotions, you experience a female’s emotion, whatever.

Those are things you experience. Nobody’s denying that there are different experiences. Are they not? Red is a different experience than blue. How do you know? Because I’m experiencing them and they experience differently. The Buddhists say everything has its nature. Blue has its nature. Red has its nature.

Loud has its nature. Soft has its nature. Male has its nature. Female has its nature. How do you know? ’cause you experience them, you experience the nature of things. So what’s this fall from the garden? I’m, I’m gonna leave you, I’m gonna stay in the garden a little bit. Everything you experience is something you experience.

There’s a snake. You experience a snake, but what if it’s scary? Then you experience scary. You’re experiencing what you’re experiencing. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing right with that. There are myriad and myriad and myriad and myriad things to experience. So what? There’s only one of you experiencing them.

And when you were little, you experienced, didn’t you? Was it the same you in there who looked in the mirror when you were five years old, 10 years old? Who looks in there now, but you don’t see the same thing, do you? But you’re still in there. Have you been in the whole time? Answer me. See, you know these things, you don’t learn them.

You remember, you, you realize, but nobody talks about it at that level. Okay? So you’re in there. So I’m staying in the garden. What does that mean? It means every, it is just, why are there things? ’cause God created them. Why isn’t none of your business? Okay, so what Mayor Baba said on a whim. And that’s not whimsical.

That’s very, very deep. If you’re a, a great musician and all of a sudden you start playing freeform, how did you decide to hit that note? There’s no answer. Is there? It’s just on a whim. All right? As you’re dancing, you’re a beautiful classical dancer. Why’d you move your hand that way? There’s no answer. So on a whim is not whimsical.

On a whim is free. It’s open. There’s no reason. There’s no logic, there’s no mind. There’s no past, there’s no present. There’s just flow. There’s being, and it expressed itself that way. Can’t be wrong. The scream, the painting, very famous painting, and then there’s these beautiful Monets and renoirs. There’s nothing wrong or right with any of them.

They’re just expressions of God, of the divine force. Everything that exists was created by one. Force. Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. That’s what you say about God, right? Not two arms and two legs and a beard. Okay. It’s just basically, we’ve been through that. It’s hard enough to talk about it. Well, I guess science has proven that it’s unbelievable.

They’ve gotten down to. Among it, I, you know, I’d like to discuss it. I’m not gonna discuss it right just a minute. They have looked through all of this form, all these myriad and myriad and myriad of things. I, I can’t name them. There’s so many all over the place. And they found out, well, not really. They’re all just molecules floating around, which really are just atoms, aren’t they?

All of it. It’s Adams look at a pure, somebody told me that two days ago was, was the IC table day, right? I don’t know, but in any event, I have a IC table in my study. I pno to it. Why? There’s a few boxes. Well, I don’t know. Natural in 98 or something, but that’s not very many, but there’s just a whole busload of each one of ’em.

But that’s all the differentiation there is. So really consciousness is only experiencing those things when it looks outside, but then you find out that’s not true either. Why? ’cause they went further down. I told you I wouldn’t talk about it. So they went further down. They found that every single atom, every one of those little boxes on that period table is made of three things.

Electrons, neutrons and protons. You know that, don’t you? Whoa. So now there’s not a whole lot of differentiation, is there? I said there were boatloads and bullheads that know there aren’t. They’re electron neutron and protons and just different numbers of ’em put themselves together and they make the different elements, right?

Uh oh. There aren’t electron nron and protons. They went past that. They have broken apart protons in neutrons. Electrons are elementary. They don’t break apart, but neutrons and protons, they have broken them apart and that’s what quantum physics is about. They broke them down into their subatomic nature and so protons break apart into two up quarks and a down cork was a cork, and they don’t, I didn’t know verse, but there was these little things that broke apart when they collided them for a billionth of a second.

These little things. Popped out, they could see the differentiation. And that’s what Phyics studies, it’s studies down there at that level. And what did they find? We’ll skip everything complicated. What did they find? There are not electrons, protons, there are not corks, poons and sleeves, different things.

There’s just a field that vibrates you. Listen to me, this is not theory. This is what they’re finding in science. All science, Chinese, American, Russian, they all find the same thing. There’s just, when you go far enough down, there’s just a field. They call it the quantum field. So there’s a field, and these, these wavelets get agitated in that field, like, like little, if you drop a a leaf into a still lake.

Happens. You get vibrations, right? That’s all the universe is made of is those vibrations. That’s us down there, things vibrating. Then hitting each other and combining together and forming nutrient protons all the way up. That’s the entire universe. All the stars, all the galaxies are made of that field as an omnipresent field.

Okay? So God. The field created everything. It’s all made of the same thing, not hard. You can be all the atheists you want to be, but if you understand science, you’re not really an atheist. You understand that there’s an underlying force. Right, and it’s not even an underlying, like quantum physics says there are no particles, there are just wavelets and they behave like particles when they interact together.

That’s how we see them up here. Just like when you see out here, you don’t see atoms, your eyes average ’em out and you see people, we see bodies, but really as atoms. Well then really underneath it all audition these wavelets. So it’s fine to look at God that way. I’d like that you look at God that way.

Some people say to me, no, you have to have a personal God, Christian, honor Jesus, or you have to have a personal God. Yes, a human mind can’t relate to anything but a personal God. Well, mine can perfectly fine and it blows my mind. You get a personal God. Okay, which is fine, by the way. Right? But it’s like then you can relate to something.

Your mind can’t relate to what I just talked to you about, that there’s nothing but these little waveless and that’s the entire universe, that black holes, every single thing is made of that. Alright, what’s that made of? I’ll do it quick. One word consciousness. Just like you have dreams. Do you have dreams?

You see things in your dreams. What are they made of? Uh, not alternatives or protons, right? They’re just the mind. They’re made of mind. They’re made of awareness. They’re made of consciousness. You, you wake up in the morning, they’re gone. Einstein talked about that. Einstein said Reality is an illusion.

Albeit a very persistent one. So when you wake up in the morning, your dresser’s still there. The bed’s still there. It is not there unless those wavelets are creating ’em. Every single millisecond microsecond. It’s not like God created. There’s a big lie. God created the heavens and earth. No, no, God is creating the heaven and earth.

There is an underlying force, and this thing’s emanating up. Okay? What the yogis have found. ’cause they went in deep enough meditation. How? How can people, thousands of years ago, talk about the fact that it’s all vibrations. They said it was om, om was the primary vibration that happened in the beginning of creation, and then everything was made of om.

And so how would they know? How would they know they didn’t have these colliders and, and all that kind of stuff, right? Because it’s made of consciousness and they’re made of consciousness. They went in and meditated deep enough inside to where they return to their seat of consciousness. When they returned to the seat of Pure Consciousness, they merged with the universe.

That’s what enlightenment is. That’s why there are pictures on the wall. That’s what great masters experienced in autobiography. Yogi Yoga now has this chapter called My Experience in Cosmic Consciousness. What does it mean? He went out? He merged, he felt, you feel your foot and your hand is your body. He felt every single star, every galaxy expanding out at the edges of eternity at the speed of light.

That’s what he felt. He felt the oneness of merger. That’s what Buddha went, that’s what Christ meant by my father and I are one. So that’s what consciousness is. Oh my God, yes. Oh my God.

What’s the fall from the garden? So what does that mean? That means consciousness, God, the universe of the infinite, the eternal. Expressed itself and what came out was all of this all over everywhere. Trillions of galaxies, each one with hundreds of billions of stars, and your little star is one of them.

Your son is one of those stars. For big stuff, it should blow your mind. It’s a good thing to do. Alright. Alright. So what is a fall from the garden? So now we’re existing in that state. It’s all consciousness and it’s experiencing itself. Like you experience your dream experiencing itself. There’s nothing wrong or good.

I hope you’re not so weird that have a bad dream. You wake up and it bothers you all day. It’s a dream. You have a good dream. Fine. It’s a dream. What’s the difference? And so you wake up and you let it go. Good. I had a nice experience. That’s what this is. It’s just God expressing God’s self, and there it is.

So what happened? Believe it or not, there’s two key words to the fall. Distraction and identification. That is it. What do you mean? Can you get distracted? Can your consciousness get distracted? What does that mean? It’s focused on one of the many things and all of a sudden it’s focused on another and it didn’t decide.

You say, oh, I think I look at that one that’s not distracted is I’m looking at this one. Next thing I know, I’m looking at that one. It pulled my consciousness. Let’s talk about it. It pulled my consciousness toward the other object. I did not decide to do it. If you’re deciding to do it, you’re not distracted.

That’s a, that’s an act of will, but you do get distracted. Yes or no. I got the right crew. So at any given time you hear a sound, you distracted, a thought comes up, gets distracted. A feeling comes up, it gets distracted. Things, things, creation things. Pull your consciousness toward them. That is called getting distracted.

Okay? And that is the, they talk about the original sin, the fall from the garden. Ready? You were one. You’re the divine consciousness, experiencing his own creation. What a beautiful thing. You’re the greatest artist, the greatest musician, playing and listening to the artwork. What a beautiful thing. Just lost in the merger of, of, of, they say that when the experience and the experienced become one, you know, the deep teachings, when the experiencer and the experience are no longer separate, you could get so lost in music that that happens.

You can get so lost in a hug in an intimate moment that that happens. The consciousness ceases to be subject object. It just becomes one. It’s a beautiful experience, isn’t it? So what happens here? I am everything experiencing myself, but also experiencing the part of creation, that consciousness experiencing.

I’m not gonna give you the reason, but something happens. What? For some reason, that’s up to God. I don’t talk about it. An object of consciousness draws consciousness down to it enough to now the separation, that object, that rattlesnake in front of you is not the same as the grass that’s around it. It pulls your consciousness down into it.

You get distracted by it. Fair enough. Now what happens then? Because it pulled divine consciousness. That’s chi shati, the force of the universe creation. Because it pulled that down to focus on that object, it pulled the power of the divine down onto that object. It leaves an impression. That object is no longer the same as every other object.

You’ll not think about the grass again, but you will think about the rattlesnake, so it makes a lasting impression. If everything made a lasting impression, you’d be bananas. There’s clouds, there’s people, there’s noses, there’s this, there’s that. There’s all going on, and all of it goes right through every single one of you’re 99.9% enlightened how much is happening and it just goes through.

There’s all these people in the room and there’s all these colors and all these sounds. There’s all these things, and you’re still listening. Yes, they are. And they go through. They pass through, you’re free. You’re liberated. Okay, but some things don’t make it through, do they? Why? Only one reason. Listen to me.

Only one reason. It doesn’t make it through, because it distracted the power of consciousness enough to It focused on that more than it focused on everything else. And the minute it did that, it left an impression. Can you let that impression go? Of course you can. Something happened. You saw something. You thought it was a snake, but it was a rope, right?

It bothered you for a day or two, and then it’s a rope. It’s gone. You let it go. Doesn’t have to leave a lasting impression. Are you understanding what distraction does? It pulls the power of consciousness down to that object of distraction, which makes it different than everything else. Okay, that that’s the birth of duality.

It’s all one, but it’s not one then, because it’s conscious experience that one thing more than everything else, and you don’t do that right.

They say for every boy and girl, there’s just one love and oh, okay, I see. So one person’s more special than somebody else. Not it’s all God, it’s all one. But boy, we don’t look like that, do we? We get rather distracted by some and we have impressions. So now I won’t go into paint the whole world for you ’cause you can figure it out so you get distracted.

Some distractions, leave deeper impressions. Can they be there tomorrow? Can they be there next year? Can they be there 10 years from now? Is that now psychology studies? Is that what suppression is? Repression denial? In other words, something left. What are you suppressing? If it’s all one, there’s nothing to suppress.

You’re suppressing the one thing that left an impression that was so strong that you, God, the consciousness doesn’t want to experience it again. That’s Freud’s suppression. I’m pushing it away. I’m using the power of consciousness. Will the impression got made there? Why? Because I focused on it. It’s all one.

It’s still all one. You follow me? Right? Because I focused on it. Because I focused on it. I’m experiencing it more than everything else. Maybe that experience is really nicer than other things. Although it’s all really nice because you’re not judging. It’s all just is. But that had that maybe it’s really not nice.

Ooh, I said everything is everything correct. So maybe it has this impression that that’s that’s what it is. Okay, good. Let it go. Everything can be let go. Everything’s temporary. Everything is temporary. You love somebody. It’s wonderful. Next moment, they’re not there. O okay. Maybe they’ll come back and maybe they won’t.

Maybe you don’t even think about coming back. It’s just like you have the experience. He here’s some music. It’s beautiful. It blows you away. Is that okay? No, I wanna hear it again. Ha.

But the player, he died, I’ll never be able to hear him again. Oh my God. It’s so sad. It’s neither sad nor not sad or right nor wrong or good, nor bad. It just is. So you heard this beautiful music. Your consciousness experienced it and it passes through. Believe me. There’ll be other experiences. No. I’m kidding you, Buddhist, were clinging.

You, clinging to that. It distracted your consciousness. The experience captured your consciousness, and you don’t wanna let it go. That’s clinging. Or you do wanna let it go. You push it away. Get outta my face. I never wanna think about this ever again. I never wanna see you again. Whoa, anybody getting it?

That’s the fall from the garden. Now, multiply it out of every mower in your life. How often you’ve done that and do that until you’re just totally lost. Totally lost. You don’t even know you’re the consciousness experiencing things. I’ll go further into it, but boy, if you get this, you get, oh, you’ve got so much.

So it leaves an impression, but the impression will go away if you don’t hold onto it. There’s only one power in there consciousness, awareness of being, it’s called chich. Shockti conscious energy. That is what the quantum feel underneath is. They don’t know that it’s all right. It’s conscious energy. Shit, Shakti, conscious energy.

They’re one force, consciousness and energy. Einstein said, energies matter matters energy, and the distinction is a temporary state. Ice is water. Water is ice. Distinction is temporary state. It’s all one. But now we’ve tied consciousness in so chit shockti. It’s God, it’s the creator. It’s the whole universe.

That’s what everything is when it focuses. When and why would it focus? It doesn’t do it purposely. It just gets distracted. When it gets distracted, the consciousness gets pulled down to that and because the power of consciousness to Chuck de will that power, that’s the power of will. ’cause. That power is now focused on that.

It stays the example I’ve used, but I don’t know if people get it. Because I, I probably don’t explain it very well. If I go out there in the field right now, there’s light. Don’t worry about where it comes from. There’s light all over the place, and it’s all the same. It shines on different things, but it’s all the same light.

I’m gonna take a magnifying glass and I’m gonna hold it out. Now I’m gonna not look through it. I’m gonna try to explain it properly. Now. I’m not looking through the magnifying glass. I’m just holding it out in front of me. What will I see on the ground below that magnifying glass? A dot of light that is so concentrated that it sets leaves on fire.

Oh, I see. So consciousness, which is one, can focus so much. That it becomes a dot. It focuses on a dot and all that power, that power gets burned in there. The more you focus your consciousness on an object, the longer that object will stay and the deeper impression will make, and some point I just do it quickly with one thing is something happened and you focused on it and it wasn’t comfortable, and now it’s still there.

I don’t want it to be there. It’s not there. But you’re keeping it there. That that’s all. It’s so funny. I’m keeping it there, but I don’t wanna keep it there. But then don’t, I don’t know how to, because it caught my conscious so much, I’m so distracted by it that I can’t let it go. I don’t know that ’cause I’m caught in the distraction.

And what happens then? Then I don’t want it to be there. Who doesn’t want it to be there? You who’s distracted This separated yourself. I ain’t gonna talk about it, right? It’s getting complicated. The separated consciousness that separated focus of consciousness is now what you’re focused on. So what do you do?

You push it away. Why would I push it away? ’cause I don’t want to be there, but then let it go. I don’t know how to do that. I only know how to make so much multiplicity. It’s unbelievable. So now I’m one consciousness, an object caught my attention. I got focused on it. I’m now looking at it and I’m uncomfortable with it.

So now I come down and I push it away and I create suppression and now stay there my entire life. Can somebody stay there your entire life? Do you have to go to therapy? Is it not true that when you go to therapy, they’re trying to teach you not to fixate on something that happened 20 years ago? What does it mean to fixate, to fix your consciousness on it?

That’s what’s going on in there. How many things have you done that about. Every day you do more and you don’t always gets complicated. So now you store the snake in there. I don’t wanna see the rattlesnake. I don’t ever hear about it ever again. I’m pushing away from my consciousness and all of a sudden they go into somebody’s house and there’s a baby with a rattle.

I freak it all multiplies out, and now I’m running around and all like rattle like babies. You laugh all you want. I’m not getting married again. That’s the worst experience I ever had, and I don’t even wanna see a man ever again or a woman down there. That’s it. I’ve had it. Okay, you left it down there and now it multiplies out to everything.

Has anything to do with it Extrapolates? Is it easy living in there with all that? Is it easy living in there with all that? No. So now I have all this junk down there and that dies a lot of junk. Now what do you do? There’s a fall from the garden now. Yeah, you see the fall now? What happens now? Because I’m not Okay.

Why are you not okay? I just told you if you store every single thing that ever bothered you inside of you, you’re gonna be bothered. I’m gonna say that again. ’cause I hope you’re shocked by that. ’cause you do do it, don’t you? If you store every single thing that ever bothered you inside. Because I don’t want to have experienced it, so I’m gonna deny it and push it away.

What’s down there bothered. And that’s why you’re bothered. That’s why you’re bothered. Life does not bother you. Life is just life. It’s going on everywhere. I guarantee right now. Are 800 billion zillion moments going on on this planet that don’t bother you. But if I say the wrong word, it’ll bother hell.

You. You got it? Mm-hmm. You stored bothered, and guess what? You are bothered by something she never even thought about being bothered by. Doesn’t bother one single iota. Paul did. What? What Paul? I didn’t know him. Really? Okay. It has to be impressions that you stored and then you build this personal self.

That’s your personal self. It’s not real. It’s just this collection, all this garbage that you stored inside of you. And now what do you do with your life? What does the Bible say? I’m not a Bible reader. I told you, I, I admit it. I read the Bible once in 1971 or 72, but it comes back. What does Genesis say when you fall from the garden?

Now you must work by the sweat of your brow to be okay. Check it out. Do you know anything about that? Working with a sweated route to try and be okay every single second of your life. So you fell down and now what you need to do is the outside world when it comes in. Hit your stuff then. She said this, I don’t wanna see her.

Have you ever avoided someone? ’cause you don’t like the interaction you had with them last time. Have you ever avoided someone like walked across the street or got back in your car or turned your head aside because the last experience you had with that person was not exactly nice? Yes or no? There you go.

So now what I need to do, because I have all this garbage in here and the world comes in and hits it, of course it does. You start it in there. Now I must manipulate and control, or at least attempt to the world outside of me so that when it comes in, it doesn’t bother me and maybe even makes me feel good.

Anybody know about doing that? That’s what you’re doing all the time. You have preferences, you know what they are. I prefer that the world be a way that when it comes in, I feel better. I prefer the world be way that when it comes in, I don’t feel worse. Those are your preferences and you worship the things.

I get to have things the way I want. Or do you even have a one? Why do you even think you’re separate from everything else? Now you see what loss means. That’s what it means to be human being. You don’t want to be one. You wanna be an enlightened being. Awakened. Being a liberated being. What does liberation mean?

The consciousness is free of that. You are right now. Right now, every one of you seated in the oneness of divine consciousness, but identified with the part of your consciousness that got pulled down. There’s no going to God. You’re there right now, but you’re looking at this tiny little thing that makes up your thoughts, your emotions, your body, your family, like how small is your world?

It’s minuscule. Okay? Like how many other things are going on? What? 8.3 billion people on the planet right now? They all got one of those. You are not special. You just screwed up differently.

You had different experiences. Those experiences left impressions on you. They distracted your consciousness. So now you’re walking around. People say, but they say, I’m God. Well you are, but not exactly what you’re looking at. Who’s looking? Is God? What you’re looking at certainly is not. Alright. So I said there were two words.

You got distraction. You got it? See how big that is? Second word, I say identification. That one makes me sad to even talk about it. Why? You are the divine consciousness. You, me, you are the universe. You’re the creator of all things. You’re here in the beginning before all this created. You’ll here in the end, there is no birth, there’s no death.

Yeah, there’s just divine consciousness, the creator of all things, right? When you get distracted, when that gets distracted and starts to focus, okay, fine, it got distracted, let go. But what happens is it starts to get distracted and hold onto the pieces, like I said, and at some point. It’s not the witness experiencing what’s holding onto.

It begins to identify, it identifies what it’s looking at, that your ego, you now say your eye no longer means God. When Christ said, my father and I and I are one, that’s the divine’s I When you say I, I don’t like that. I don’t like what you said. I’m afraid. I, I’m, I’m having a hard time today. I, I’m, who is that?

I, that’s not God talking. That’s because the divine consciousness, which knows itself as itself, has projected its sense of identification onto what it’s looking at, and then built a house in there called your ego. These are the experience I had that I held onto and they’re all match and I keep having different ones.

And so it’s really hard to know who I am. Of course it is. ’cause you’re identifying with the experiences you had. If I ask you, who are you? You tell me your name. That’s not who you are. Basically, it’s a label, right? You say, oh, okay. I do this in the unto soul, right? Say, okay, okay. I’m the person who played Dorothy in the fifth grade.

No, that’s an experience you had. That’s not who you are. You are the one that had that experience. If you didn’t play north in the fifth grade, you don’t exist. Okay? Okay. I understand. Okay. I am. Saul’s wife, okay? And before you met Saul, you didn’t exist. You are not these things, you are not your experiences, you’re the experiencer, but you have identified, literally, you’ve taken the sense of self.

Falsely identified it with this collection that you stored inside. And how I know you did that, how strong that is here. I’m a good musician. How do you know? Everyone tells me I’m a good musician. I love playing a i’s a great musician. Everybody knows me there. That’s my self concept. All of a sudden, someone comes up to you while you’re playing.

You’re favorite song, man. If you’re playing the thing, right? And person goes, oh my God, stop. That’s disgusting how you feel. It didn’t match your self concept, did it? You understand that you built this thing in there and you’ve defined that as who you are. It’s not who you are. All right, I’m not gonna do it again.

’cause it’s very complicated how it gets right? Every, you’re a very complicated human being. You sure you are the sum of your learned experiences and you’ve had totally different experiences than everybody else, and you did different things with ’em, and you built this, ah, this thing in your mind. Didn’t you?

Your ego is in your mind. Freud defined ego as part of the structure of the mind. Okay, let’s just do it. I love Freud. He didn’t get out. I read a lot of his stuff back in college. I didn’t even see one iota of witness consciousness of anything like that, but he was very brilliant. He studied other people’s minds.

He said Muslim weren’t institutionalized, not so healthy minds, and he came up with his theory. There was an id. What is that? You have basic animal bodily drives and needs and this kind of stuff. Alright. The ID is your body’s representative in the mind. Your body’s not your mind. It’s something you look as something you deal with, but in your mind, there are these impressions coming from your body and you have these thoughts, don’t you?

Okay. You have all kinds of thoughts. Don’t get caught up in the sex thoughts I be focused on, right? But you have all kinds of thoughts. I’m hungry, I’m tired, and this and that. I’m afraid to get hurt. It’s just basic animal instinct stuff. And then you have this other part of your mind called a super ego.

What is that? Has anybody laid a trip on your head and told you how you’re supposed to behave and not behave and you were wrong? I can’t believe you did that. I’m so ashamed of you. No, parents don’t do that, do they? Excuse me. Has anybody built a concept inside your mind of how you’re supposed to be?

That’s your super ego. That’s just another part of the thought patterns in the mind. So now we got a battle going on. We got the primal. Expressing itself in the mind and we have this, you, you skirt is too short. How could you do that? Look, you’re long hair. You’re supposed to be a man, right? You just get all junk is laid on top of your head.

That talks in there too, doesn’t it? Alright. Okay. And what Freud said is it’s hard to live in there, all that stuff going on. So I need to develop some sort of part of my mind that’s. Tries to be at peace or in harmony with all that different stuff. And so what you do is you take pieces from everything.

You put it all together and you develop what’s called a self-concept. Oh, I see. This is who I am. I’m the person who does the bad stuff or the primal stuff. Periodically, but not much. Alright? And I control myself. Don’t worry. Alright, and I’m the one that couldn’t care what they told me to do. I don’t go to church anymore.

I hated going to that church. Alright, so I’ve developed a concept of myself that tries to be okay in there. Is it okay in there? Answer me. It is not okay in there every single day of your life, it’s attacked. You’re challenged. Go drop a little catch up on your pants when you come back from work. You cover it?

Oh no, it’s not ketchup. I bled a little bit. I, I don’t know what I was like, come on. It ain’t needs living in there, is it? ’cause this thing you made up in there that you’re saying me is not me, like the favorite one I like and I don’t, I don’t like talking this way, but you should listen. Have you ever been in a relationship and you’re very needy and somebody says, I’m leaving.

No, I don’t like the way you are anymore and I don’t feel comfortable with you. And what comes outta your mouth is through tears. No, no, no. I can change. I can change. Just tell me how you want me to be. Tell me what part you don’t like. I can change. I swear I can. You just admitted your entire evil lie. I.

Have you ever tried to change to please somebody else? It means you weren’t real. You were just trying to make somebody up, something up so that when you present it, it can be accepted because you can’t handle living in there. So now I just give you a few tiny examples. Holy mouth, get me outta here. We gotta get outta this place.

It is the last thing we ever do that’s yoga. Mm. That’s spiritual awakening. It’s not what close you air or what food you eat or how you talk. Have you caught on yet? That’s hell in there. Has it ever gotten so bad in there that she can’t handle it? Yes or no? Has it been such overwhelming discomfort? Of what?

Of being you. Yeah, that’s right. Because you built all that stuff in there and you built a self-concept. And you’re afraid of being anybody. Afraid of being rejected. Of course you are. ’cause it’s fake, you know? It is. You know it is. You wake up in the morning, worry about what you said yesterday. Has anybody ever had a discussion with somebody, even a friend, and walked away and the mind said, oh my God, I shouldn’t have said that.

I wonder, did that bother?

How can you tolerate living in there? And guess what, you can’t, right? So now I’ve painted the picture of the fall from the garden. Do you not work for this, Fred, your bra, to try to be okay? You manipulate everything I. Okay. It’s all consciousness, right? We would, they’ll go back if there’s nothing even out here.

You did all this the same consciousness created creation and is experiencing it. Isn’t that beautiful? Well, maybe it could be not in me. It ain’t those little quantum label that’s better behave today. Ah. I got up on the wrong side of the bed. Alright? It is not supposed to be like that in there. That’s what all the great ones have taught you.

You miss the message of Christ. I’m a nice Jewish yogi. I don’t care. I love Christ. If you look at his life. He didn’t have a really nice one and he handled it quite well. Didn’t he forgive them? Lord, they know not what they do as they’re nailing their cross. Are you kidding me? Right thieves on both sides of him.

Don’t worry about it because you believe you’ll be with me in heaven. No negativity. You understand that just complete in every teaching, if you get down to the Sermon of Mount, we please catch on. He taught you are not your ego. In other words, he even said, you must die to be reborn, die of this stupid thing you built in there, which is not who you are.

It’s all about consciousness. And we got pretty messed up, didn’t we? And notice it’s all about distraction. An identification if you’re distracted, but it doesn’t, you don’t own it. You don’t relate to it. Yes, that happened to me 30 years ago. What I, I don’t know if something happened, I can bring it back if I want, but it doesn’t do anything.

Here’s the differently, what I call some scarra. The samskara is something that happened to you. You experienced it. You did not want to have it right, or you did, you clung to it and it made an impression and you built your ego out of it. That’s a samskara caught energy. Alright? Memory is a computer memory.

How many gig you got? How many terabytes? Infinite, by the way, right? And so basically it comes in, you wanna bring it back, you bring it back, but it doesn’t come back by itself and haunts you. Your computer better not do that. Take it to the repair, right? No, it’s not doing that. It’s a stored memory and you can bring it back.

That’s beautiful. It’s wonderful. Your mind can do that. Alright? But if some scar is an impression that got left inside because you held it there and stayed there long enough, or was strong enough to where it is not going away, and now it causes big trouble, right? Every experience you ever had in your past.

Should be a memory, not a samskara. It’s something that happened to you in your journey through life. Mo tough. Congratulations. Wonderful, but it hurt. Fine. What’s wrong with that? We go through different things, but we don’t define ourselves as that’s what we are. I had a marriage, I had a love, was in love.

We got married and then it didn’t work out so good. We fought a lot. How long ago? About 15 years ago. What do you feel about it? I learned, I grew, it was a wonderful experience. It was a wonderful experience, and I got married again and I was much more mature and I knew what I was doing and I had a better thing, and, and it happened four or five times.

And I just kept learning. Right. The Woodstock song. But life is for learning. Okay. That’s, I told you back in the seventies, I heard somebody say, once I read it, earth is a place where souls are sent to evolve. I understand the meaning of your life, not getting what you want, avoiding what you don’t want, and okay, are you kidding me?

Where’s that all go? When you die? It’s meaningless. It’s nothing. Earth is a place that soul tend to evolve. What does it mean to evolve? Get outta that mess. Learn, go through your life. Yes, have a bad experience and learn from it. Have a great experience and learn from it. Have a great experience and want it again.

It won’t happen again. Learn from it. Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, grow. What what’s telling you is let go. Let go. Let go of the bad experience. Let go of the good experience. Well, why would I let go of the good experience? You can have another one. Go ahead and cling to an experience you had. And wanna have it again.

You will never have it again. It can’t possibly have it again ’cause you were different before you had it. Go watch the sun, turn the corner. I love this one. Turn the corner. You’ve had it. Turn the corner all of a sudden. Whoa. Magenta colors. The sun is so gorgeous. Sunsets so gorgeous. That beautiful, right?

Go back the next day. No way. I have the same impression. Life is an experience. Experience it, love it, worship it, say thank you. That’s what I’ve gotten Every single experience you have, say, thank you, but ever hurts. Thank you, but hurts tomorrow also. Thank you. Now I have an opportunity to learn to let go of things that hurt me.

And guess what happens if you let them go? They’re easier to deal with next time you stop clinging. You stop defining that the only way you’re gonna be okay is if everything that ever happened to you before happens the way I want it to. I don’t even talk. It’s so complicated to talk about it. That’s where you are though.

You understand that? I’ll be happy if he treats me like this and does this and doesn’t ever talk like my uncle Paul did. ’cause I didn’t like my uncle Paul. I don’t like when you say that. I told you not to talk like that. Whoa. Who are you, Hitler? Pretty much. I’m okay. If you be the way I want and that you includes all you guys, you talk to me the way I wanna be talked to you, act the way I want you to act.

You wear what I want you to wear, you don’t wear what I want you to wear. Just get your act together guys. I’m glad you’re laughing ’cause it ain’t that much fun. Is it? It is scary living in there. Of course it is. You store it scary, you store everything, so you get to the point where you realize what’s this about?

It’s about returning home, returning to the seat of self. That’s what it’s about. You ain’t gonna do that tomorrow. You wake up and realize I did all this. I’m the one that couldn’t handle getting distracted by something and letting it go. It was all about letting go. I couldn’t let it go. I liked it too much, so I got stuck in it.

I didn’t like it so much that I suppressed it. In both cases, it got stuck inside of me, and then I built a me out of it ’cause I couldn’t handle. This might happen again. I’m the person that I knew, somebody very mature, very successful person, and he’s better now, but he couldn’t bring his kids to the zoo and go to the reptile exhibit.

He was that afraid of snakes. I. Couldn’t they? He’d stay outside. I won’t go in there. Do you wanna be like that about things like, we’d laugh at him. A reptile. Well, you’re that way about George. ’cause your last husband’s name was George. I’ve had enough George for my entire life. I,

one impression happened once. Do you know Sally? I met so and so. Sally, right? Yeah. I know her. I don’t. I don’t like her. I don’t like her. No. You laugh what you want. I don’t like her. Why? I met her. Right. And she wasn’t very nice. I didn’t like what she said. Okay. This person has an entire life experiences going on inside themselves.

You met them once. And they had a, you know, bad pizza of her dinner night before, or a boyfriend broke up with him an hour ago. Right. And you, you know her right? She’s not nice. This first impression stuff. I’m sorry, I’m just so different. First impressions. That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of. That person had an entire life just like you did.

I, I’ll take one moment of your life, and that’s who you are. Yes. Is that right? No. How, how can you do that to somebody? Stop it. So the Bible says, judge, not that you shall not be judged, you just gets to the point. You say, what am I doing? I’m taking my expressions, my garbage, and projecting them onto somebody else about how they’re supposed to be based on my rules.

They have their own rules. They had their own life. So now we’re talking about liberation. Now we’re talking about how to get out. We’re talking about how he got down, how do you get out? Right? You start understanding yourself enough to see what’s going on in there. That’s what witness consciousness is, right?

Is now all of a sudden, yes, I see all this stuff making, you’re talking about, I dunno what to do about it. And, and I’ll tell you my teachings. I don’t teach at that level. Right? Don’t do anything about it. That’s like saying a leaf fell into the lake and made ripples. I’ll get it out. It’ll be a lot more ripples than try to get it out if you can watch.

That’s true. Witness concept, objective observation, not doership. If you see a part of your being, that’s pretty weird. There’s reason there. Guess what? You’re the reason ’cause you stored it. No, that event happened. Yes. It’s called an event. There were lots of others going on into the entire world at that time.

You just, you couldn’t handle that one. And so you made a mess to yourself. Own it. And that’s what witness conscious does. You notice, whoa, oh my God, that is going on in there. What do I do about it? Relax. The entire thing is relax. Not clinging. That’s an action, not resist. That’s an action. Can you relax in the face of what you see in there?

Not easy either, right? The more you can, the more you give it room to let go. It was that you couldn’t relax and you tensed around it to cling or to resist that it stayed in there, and when it comes back up, you push it back down, don’t you? Okay. Relax. You won’t be able to do it at first. It’s okay. I gotta teach you.

I was run outta time. God. I gotcha. Listen, I told you I don’t do seminars, no retreats or seminars. Why not? I would keep you here every minute for the rest of your life. Alright? Like, okay, fine, things happen. Handle them. Appreciate them. Grow from them. Learn from them. I have never played the piano right? I go to play the piano.

I wanted to play Beethoven. It doesn’t sound very good. Of course it doesn’t sound good. You need to learn how to play the piano. You need to learn how to play tennis. You learn things, can’t you? Why can’t you learn how to let go? Of course you can’t do it. Of course you’re not used to it, but why can’t you learn?

And that’s my teaching, right? If you read Living Untethered or that kind of stuff, it, it is like every minute of your life there’s something bothering you. Learn to relax, driving in front of you, driving 15 miles an hour below the speed limit. How you doing? When? A good question. Ready? Have you ever talked to the driver in front of you?

Do they hear you? So you start looking at that and saying, I can’t even handle. Anything. It’s raining out. I don’t want it to be raining. Too bad it’s raining. What?

Practice handling things not a. Practice manipulating them. So they’re the way you want them to be. You don’t want things to be the way you want them to be. You understand that? That’s just your some scars saying everything has to be a certain way. Get in a close relationship and tell me the way you want that person to be and tell me how well that works out.

Hear me? I thought you love me. Why don’t you be the way I want you to be? Because I had a totally different life than you for the 30 years before we met. What am I gonna erase? Somebody? Okay. Erase. No, of course you’re different than me. Of course you are. And I love it. Hear me? I, it’s different. It’s different.

And it’s not supposed to be the way I want, is it? Is it supposed to be the way you want it to be? Every one of you think you’re right. You’re not right. Your judgment of right is based on the experiences you had and based on those things you stored. So all of a sudden you wake up, you start watching, you say, I can do better than this.

And you start practicing letting go of the easiest stuff at first. And then you get better at it and better at it. And all of a sudden, one day husband or wife comes home from work, they had a really hard day and they come storming into the house. You were waiting to have a really nice evening. They come storming into the house, slam the door to the bedroom.

Right? How you doing? You should be doing very well. ’cause it has nothing to do with you does it? But you take a personal doctor, don’t you treat me like that. Now I have a real nice evening. It has nothing to do with you. You weren’t even there, but you don’t think like that do you? But don’t treat me like that.

No. What you feel is compassion. I. Boy must have had a tough day. Let’s make sure we’re nice when they come out. They me cry, right? Those that are teachings, aren’t they? And so you start working with yourself to let go of yourself. And the more you do the fear you become. The fear you become, the more you feel happiness.

’cause you’re not taking it away from yourself. Driving in front of you is driving slower than you want to go. Watch your thoughts. I do it. I could be my grandmother and the last year she’s allowed to drive. Why don’t we tailgate her and beep? And you start to feel compassion. You start to feel love where you would’ve felt resentment, intention.

You have complete control in there. You’re the only one in there. There’s no one else in there, just you. It’s a single occupancy apartment. Get to work free yourself, and then what happens? I’ll do it quickly. You start feeling more, more openness and more love. You start liking more people. You start understanding more.

That’s child’s play. That’s still human stuff. And at some point you let go enough toward the energy that you use to store all that garbage down there. Starts to release. It’s called Shakti Flow. You don’t have to do anything. It naturally stops being used to hold. How much, how much energy are you using to hold that stuff down there?

Well, when it tries to come back up, you’ll see. Well, it’s all down there. You start letting go. Trying to let go. Let go of the small things during the day. Don’t let go of this and let go of that. And all of a sudden you start feeling joy. Not, I’m okay. Ask people, how you doing? I’m okay. That’s not, that’s not quite good enough.

Alright? You start feeling this tremendous wave of joy coming up inside of you, flowing up all the time. You see a bird take off, you just feel this love, right? You see anything, everything. And then it starts to get so beautiful that it distracts you. Huh? You get distracted by the love, you get distracted by this flow of shockti, this upward flow spirit that’s coming on inside of you.

And now you get to choose. Do I go back down to deal with this stupid thing? Somebody said, fine. They said it. I don’t care. Thank you. No mistake, right? And you mean it. And you just start appreciating everything. ’cause I ain’t coming back down. This is too nice in here. Right then, then that ain’t nothing. I told you I would close it out at some point.

Right. It starts getting so strong that it challenges your separateness. Okay, I’m, I’m, I’m me experiencing this beautiful Shakti. No, you’re not. You are the Shakti, you are the divine oneness to chuck of the same thing. But I still have this sense of separateness. You understand that I’m talking really high Now.

There were great ones when, right? And what happens though, it starts to, it’s like a vacuum cleaner. It starts pulling you up. It starts, this was pulling you down. Now this is pulling you up. And the great ones let go. They let go. And when they let go, they merged. And that’s what the word yoga means, merger, oneness.

That’s who you are. That’s what’s going on inside of you. If you’re suffering, you caused it. I’m not blaming you ’cause you know we all go through our stuff. Alright? But understand, you’re a great being. You’re a very great being. You’re not some little wimpy human. That’s only okay if everything’s exactly the way you want it to be.

Fighting with everything’s struggling. No. Free yourself. Free yourself.

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.