Tami Simon: Welcome to the Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at michaelsingerpodcast.com.
Michael Singer: Hmm. Jai guru dev, jai masters. There are two very distinct lives that you can live. One involves a lot of struggle, a lot of effort, and a lot of suffering, but also can have some joy. The other, there’s no suffering. There’s no struggle. There are no issues. And it’s always beautiful, which one you want.
The difference in those two lives is not what is going on outside of you. It’s what you’re doing about what’s going on inside of you. I’ve talked to you numerous times before and I like, I like the shocking teachings. You don’t care about the outside. None of you. You do not care about the outside right now, no matter what you think.
You think you don’t care about the outside, you care about the inside. I’m not talking spiritually, I’m not talking about meditation. I’m just telling you if the outside did, whatever it does, if you’re inside was happy, you’d be happy. It is not. About the outside, it’s about the effect that the outside has on the inside, and every one of you are different and at different times in your lives.
No, a minute ago that which could happen outside, could make you feel good inside. That would happen outside, can make you feel bad inside. Have you noticed that? You sitting in there doing wonderful, somebody walks up to you and tells you something that you never thought about before. All of a sudden you’re not doing good.
Somebody walks up to you and tells you something you never thought of before and you’re glad it happened. You feel wonderful. It’s the inside is the effect that the outside has on your interstate. All you care about is your interstate, and that’s not selfish. That’s not ridiculous. It’s just the truth.
Why? Because you live in here. You don’t live out there. You’re in here, aren’t you? You’re in here thinking your thoughts. You’re in here feeling your feelings. Something happens outside that makes your feelings inside feel good, you’re fine with that. Something outside happens makes your feeling feel bad.
You’re not okay with that, but that’s not the outside. We’re gonna discuss that. In fact, I would like to have a discussion. Why does the outside affect the inside? Not how to change it, not how to see. The first life I talked about is you don’t understand. That’s all about the inside. All you know is through your personal experience that the outside can affect the inside.
Have you noticed that? Has anyone noticed that yet? Alright. The outside can affect the inside. It’s all about the inside. And you’re the only one in there. No one else lives in there. Your mother, not in your father, not in there. Your husband, not in your wife’s, not in your kid. No one’s in there but you.
That’s your house. And it is any way you want it to be. It’s yours. Okay? And we don’t live like that. What we realize is through experience, that the outside can affect the inside. And it doesn’t always do it nicely. Sometimes it does. So what I need to do, my job in life, my entire purpose of life is getting the outside to be the way that makes the inside feel good.
Talk to me a way that turns me on. I like you, talk to the way that turns me off. I don’t like you. So that determines who my friends are that determines who my enemies are. That determines what I believe in turn my politics determines every single thing. Is dependent upon getting the outside to be the way you need it to be, so that when it comes in, the inside feels good, the heart feels open, the mind is calm, positive, inspired, and not that when it comes in you get depressed.
You get scared, you feel lonely. Do you understand that that is the foundation of the primary decision about your life? Are you going to go out there and struggle? And the answer is yes, to try to make every single person be the way you need them to be so that when you interact with them, you feel good about it and that they say what you want them to say.
They do what you want them to do and not that they ever dare to be a way that bothers you. And I’m gonna make sure it’s called control. Do you want control? That’s why you want control. You’re not stupid. You have empirical evidence. If it happens the way I like. I feel wonderful inside. If it doesn’t or it happens the way I don’t like, I feel terrible, but I don’t only feel terrible.
Therefore, the only choice I have is to manipulate you and every single person I ever meet for the rest of my life so that when I interact with you, I feel better, not worse. And that goes for everything. Perhaps the everything. Some people can’t handle a bug. Some people are fine with bugs. It’s up to you at some point.
You wake up, you realize, wait a minute, I’m in here. If I don’t like bugs, there’s a reason I don’t like bugs, not I’m gonna accept, I don’t like bugs. And they go around my entire life bug free. ’cause it’s very chemically oriented. If you’re bug free, I’ll tell you right now or I can’t breathe right And you then you’re scared.
I don’t know what to talk about. You’re either trying to manipulate the outside to match the inside, or you’re realizing, wait a minute. I’m in here. I can do anything I want in here. If you try to change the outside so it matches what you want inside, that is an endless chore. It’s never listen to me, it’s never over.
How do I know what you’re gonna say next time? Wait a minute. You said something nice to me, but now you’re talking to him. I don’t like the expression on your face. Are you two-faced? I don’t know. I, I can do anything I want in here to make a mess of myself. I do, don’t I? Do you ever try to figure out what somebody else meant by what they said?
Do you ever try to figure out what somebody else meant by what they said? You don’t stand a chance because you already have inside of you, this whole system you built, and you’re gonna project that onto what they said. You are gonna hear it. The accent, how they emphasize something, how they didn’t emphasize something, how they were sitting.
Oh, I like that one. Body language. Is it true or not? I wouldn’t touch it with a thousand million foot pole. I’m not gonna sit there and try to figure out why you’re sitting, what you’re sitting, and then decide what it means. Well, but I could read a book about it. So read another book or don’t read the book.
I don’t care. Just sit any way you wanna sit and I want to feel good in here, but no. No. Why? Because we have to control the outside. So we’re safe inside. So we feel good inside. So I don’t feel bad outside, but I’m telling you, how do you decide how the outside’s supposed to be based on your past experiences?
If you never had an experience, you never saw something flying through the sky, you don’t know anything about it, you’ve never been to Timbuktu, you care a lot, what’s going on there? But if somebody calls you from Timbuktu and says, Hey, I’m from Timbuktu, you go, wow, that’s neat, but I didn’t know there was a Timbuktu.
And all of a sudden, now you like Timbuktu. It’s your past experiences that are programming you to like and dislike to want, and not want to prefer, and not prefer you’re not making this up. Psychology says that what’s going on inside is the sum of your learned experiences. I like to. Qualify that what’s going on inside is that you are in here experiencing the so learn experiences.
That’s the big difference. And thank God that’s true. ’cause you are not the so learn experiences, you’re the consciousness that is aware that what goes on in your mind and you listen to me ’cause it’s true of goes on in your mind. And what goes on in your heart is the summary learned experiences. It’s just the truth.
You have nothing else. The things you never experienced are not affecting you. The things that you experienced a lot are really affecting you, the things you experienced once, and it really hurt you could bar you for life. It’s called a traumatic experience one. And you have some experience. You’re in eighth grade and you met somebody and you, oh my God, you fell in love with your first love and you have those love, and then they moved and nothing ever went wrong in the relationship.
You’ll spend the rest of your life looking for a person like that. Qualities like that person. You understand that what their hair was like. Okay. The impressions that your past experiences make on you if they’re strong enough or last long enough become patterned inside of your mind and heart. And when they were good, you wanted it to happen again when they were bad, you don’t want it to happen again.
And there are all your actions. Everybody’s busy making decisions. Decisions aren’t so easy to make, are they? Of course they are. Just do something. It doesn’t matter what, if you knew you were gonna be okay, no matter what happened And somebody said, we wanna do this, fine. That looks fine. Well, which one? I don’t care.
Pick one pull of a hat. That’s your decision making. But you don’t think that. You think that one decision is gonna affect your life? You make that decision, you’ll never be happy. You pick the wrong husband or wife or you move to the wrong place and it’s cold. And I never liked cold. So you think and you think, you think, you think, ’cause you think you’re gonna think it out all you’re doing when you’re thinking, I.
Checking out your past experiences, like trying toose. All you’re doing when you’re making decisions is trying on the close of your past experiences and seeing how they feel. Therefore, you say, oh, I actually, that’s what I wanna do. That’s perfect. Ah, I don’t know. It’s just another experience came up. Do you understand that decisions are only difficult?
Because you’re trying to figure out which one, when it happens will make you feel good, and which one when it happens will make you feel bad. And of course, what do you know? You’ve had tons and tons of experience your whole life. You go crazy. Do you change your mind about very often? Have you ever changed your mind?
Why? Because something else came up from, oh, I remember now. I remember. No, no, I don’t wanna do that. My goodness, I’ve told you a million times the experience you are having at any given moment. You are missing 700 zillion that are going on at the same time as that experience everywhere else. You could have been standing there, you’ve been looking this way, you had had a different experience.
You, you’re pattern in your life of that one experience. You hold them and let them pattern you, and you have this tiny line going through all of life. All the experiences that are going at the same time. You have this thin line. It’s so thin you can even see it. That is your experiences and you missed all the rest.
And if you had any of the rest there, any, if you look to the left when something bad was happening to the right and you didn’t see it, your life is different. Is that silly? Is that absurd? I happen to be looking this way. Now. I’m traumatized. If I was looking that way. I’m not, I’m not making fun of psychology.
Right? They, they understand that we’re screwed up. They’re trying to help us but’s, not a chance. You understand that? If you’re gonna be like that, that some experience ha, you happen to be standing somewhere. That’s how I look at it. Not that some experience happened, they’re happening everywhere. You just happen to be standing on the spot where that one was happening.
You could have not been, the coffee maker could have taken three seconds longer to make the coffee ’cause this element was burning out. Therefore, you weren’t at the exact spot where an accident took place and you call it an accident. There’s no such thing. Every single event is the sum of all the causes that happened before that make them collide in that moment.
Right or wrong, right? Like I said, somebody give, make a phone call and you didn’t pick it up. If you had picked it up, you would’ve been late. You didn’t pick it up. So you’re there, and that’s why you were there at that moment, and that’s why you heard what you heard. And I saw what you saw. But what we do with this is absurd.
So what we do is say that my experience. Whatever it is is the most important piece of data in the entire universe. I experienced that. I’m not making it up. Big deal. You didn’t experience 700 billion others that are going on at the same time. Anything. I don’t know how to even talk about it. So absurd.
You are experiences mean nothing. Look at me. Your experiences mean nothing. They are what we called statistically insignificant. Mm-hmm. One event outta the 700 billion that are going at the same time, and you happen to experience that one. It’s determining everything you think and what you feel and where you’re going, where you’re not.
Does that not seem absurd? Thank you. Thank you. If you hear that I did my job. Mm-hmm. Right. And I’m gonna repeat it. Your experiences mean nothing.
It could have been any other way at any moment. It just happened to be that way. And then you stored it, didn’t you? You didn’t store all of them. Told you once before, 99%, maybe even 99, 9% of every single thing you’ve ever experienced went right. The trees you drove by the white lines on the road, the clouds, the people you don’t know all the talk in a restaurant that you’re not listening to.
It comes in and it goes through. It’s still there, but it made it through. ’cause you didn’t grab it, you didn’t cling to it. You didn’t make a thing out of it. Okay? It’s like you go to a restaurant and somebody’s smoking. Well, we don’t, we don’t allow smoking. You’re really freaking you out. Right? Somebody else in the table next to you is not smoking, but it’s not freaking them out.
Okay, now you just had that experience and you made it. I’m, I’m I anti-smoking and nobody should get down. I’m gonna talk to the owner. I’m gonna sue these people. Okay. And you just wake up and you realize it’s not that you had an experience, it’s that there are experiences to be had. There’s billions and zillions, and that’s just on planet earth.
There is something going on everywhere in the universe, every single moment. You’re making a big deal out of that one moment that you happen to be experiencing a wise being, does not do that. Do you understand that now you’re talking about spiritual, a spiritual being? They all pass through. They all pass through.
There’s birth and death and sickness and health, and dark and light. That’s where Yin Yang comes from. There’s everything isn’t there? There’s everything. Are you willing to understand that you experienced one tiny drop of everything and made it your life? Alright, so what does it mean? It means you wake up and realize that you are doing this.
And that’s a nice thing. ’cause it means you can do something about it. Nobody else determines how you’re doing. You do. It’s an example. Your husband or wife comes home and had a really bad day. They come storming in, close the door, go into the bedroom, close the door, slam the door to try and breathe and get themselves together.
And you’re having to tolerate that well, some people can’t tolerate that. Don’t you treat me like that? I’m not to be treated like that. Or somebody sits there and says, boy. He or she had a bad day. Let’s make sure we’re nice when they come out, as opposed to how could you do that? How could you storm in like that?
You understand? I was looking forward you to come home. You broke my heart. That’s you. That’s not them. And so you wake up and you realize, I can live a life outside of making sure these things don’t happen, which the ones that I stored before that bothered me. The ones that I stored before that I liked, now I’m gonna go out there and try and make ’em happen again or not happen again.
Do you understand that? Please, I don’t wanna belabor it. Do you understand that’s all you’re doing? It’s trying to make people be the way you want them to be, but not only do you not want them to be that way, you say things like, if you do that again. I’ll never talk to you again. I’m gonna manipulate you so you be the way that when it comes in, I feel good about it.
Otherwise, you’re on the couch for a week. No, you never talked to anybody like that. I’m being tough to you today. Is it not true what we’re doing? We’re just sitting here saying, I’ve stored inside of me based on my past experiences. What makes me feel better when it comes in, makes me feel worse. Comes in.
So you’re gonna behave the way I need you to. You just get out there and fight. You get out there and struggle. You wake up in the morning, you worry. You do so. You worry that what you want to happen won’t happen. That something you said yesterday might make something not happen right, today Because, so, sorry, I said that.
Should I have said that? Should I call her? Should I ask her? I, I apologize. No, that reminder that I said it. How neurotic do you wanna be? The answer to all of this is very simple. You own the inside, it’s yours. You are the one who stored the thing. You stored something from your past? ’cause you said, I can’t handle this.
I can’t handle the way you’re dressed. I can’t handle how you wear your hair. I can’t handle something. I can’t handle stuff. Who said so me? I said it. I can’t handle it. Nobody else involved. I can’t handle it. On what basis did you say I can’t handle it. Your past experiences. If you get this, it will change your life.
You are in charge in there, but what happened is you weren’t ready yet. You weren’t involved yet enough. You weren’t ready to be in charge. You kind of blew it and now you inherited your entire childhood’s worth of not handling everything. Your midlife high school, that really close trouble. High school, right?
Just the whole moment you went through, you couldn’t handle them either. They were so good. You wanted ’em to happen again. They didn’t happen again. So you’re struggling to make ’em happen again. They’re so bad that you don’t wanna happen again. So you’re resisting and fighting and trying to think about how to make ’em not happen again.
But that’s your whole life. No, no. I will not tolerate. That’s your life. You’re a very great being in there. You just got lost, didn’t you? And now you’re patterning your entire life based on the garbage you stored inside. What should be in there? Nada. It’s called the empty bell. Heard it or Zen, right? What do you mean?
If I’m empty, I’m stupid. No, you are not stupid. You’re in harmony. Life instead of trying to make life be in harmony with you and right now you understand you’re trying to make life be in harmony with you. There are things you want to happen, things you don’t want to happen, things you from the pan. Come on man.
It’s all that’s ego. It’s all about you. Is it all about you or are there 8.3 billion of you guys running around right now and every one of ’em thinks it’s all about them. It can’t possibly be all about you. I keep begging you. Will you step off the planet for a minute at least, and look at that thing spinning.
It’s a black, dark, empty space. Is that about you? It’s been here for 4.5 billion years. How long you been here? How long you gonna be here? Oh, but it’s all about you. That plan is all about you. And what’s happening on that planet at that spot is all about you. And it’s not about you, is it? You’re a guest, a visitor, and you got lost.
You got all caught up in the events that were unfolding. And why? Because you couldn’t handle them. I’m telling you, you cannot handle positive experiences. You wanna have positive experiences? No, I don’t think you really want to go to a restaurant and have the most wonderful meal you’ve ever had. You better not go back because it ain’t gonna happen again.
There’d be a different chef. There’d be a different music. There’d be a different, you walked in there, had a different attitude when you walked in. It ain’t never happening again. Nothing ever happens again. Oh boy. You don’t like that, do you? Nothing ever. It’s a motion picture, not a still shot. It just keeps moving through.
And so you sit there and you, you fell in love with somebody. They’re not gonna be the same tomorrow. They’re not gonna treat you the same. They’re not gonna say the same thing. They’re not gonna wear the same perfume, not gonna wear the same clothes. They’re not gonna have the same attitude ’cause they had experiences between this day and that day.
But that’s not okay with you. I want that person who I fell in love with yesterday to be here today. It ain’t gonna happen. It can’t happen. It doesn’t happen ever. Understand that there’s never anything that repeats itself. And so you’re in there having stored this inside yourself and then demanding that the outside be the way you want it to be.
And that’s a positive experience. And you don’t have that many of those. If you watch in there, you’re gonna see you’ve had a thousand times more negative experiences than positive experiences. You didn’t really have, they were just experiences, but you made them bother a native. And you see how sensitive are you sensitive.
You’re sensitive about how people look at you, right? How they talk about you. I’m telling you. And don’t get embarrassed if somebody tells you. Sally told me that two years ago. Peter said that Saul thought badly about you. You wanna know why? Okay? Or you wake up in the morning, you had a dream. Dreams are interesting.
I don’t wanna get into ’em. They’re interesting. Their mind makes ’em up. Okay? And always had a dream and somebody was in the dream that you know, and now you’re sensitive about seeing that person ’cause of what they did in the dream. Alright? You wanna give meaning to it? Dreams have great meaning. They’re just the minds releasing the stuff you stored in there.
They’re all made out of the fire. They are. They are intuitive dreams and and visionary dreams. All right. You’re making me talk about stuff that you don’t wanna hear me about. What do I think about premonition dreams? I don’t wanna wait for something to happen. I don’t wanna be afraid, oh, I had a premonition that sometime in the future I’m gonna die in a car accident.
Okay, I’ll never ride in cars again. I’ll be very careful of who’s driving. Well, why do I wanna do that for my life? That’s ridiculous. I lemme live my life, put down a car, I die in a car accident. At least it happened once. Didn’t have it for 15 years While I’m waiting for it to happen, life unfolds, you know, in a tiny little plant in the middle of nowheres.
And thank God there’s stuff going on. There’s elephants and dolphins and nice people and mean people. There’s just everything isn’t there, and there’s cockroaches and there’s hummingbirds, and there’s butterflies, and there’s rattlesnakes. Is that okay with you? It better be or you won’t be. Okay Now, so it boils down to, and so you come to the point, you realize, wait a minute, what have I done in here?
If I have a bad experience? It’s an experience. It comes and it goes. They don’t stay, but they do. Inside of you. The entire science of psychology is based on the fact that you’re screwed up. It’s based on the fact that you couldn’t handle your childhood, that you couldn’t handle the divorce, that you couldn’t handle the accident you had, that you couldn’t handle what so and so said to you, it hurt you so bad.
She was your best friend. How could you? Alright, that was five years ago. Well, what’s the solution? Handle it. Handle it. Just sit there. Yes. Not denial. Yes. That person said that to me in high school. So what? You didn’t have to keep it. You just sit there and say, wow, that hurt, and have fun, and move on. And you see the person again five years later, there’s nothing in there.
That person’s not the same person. You are not the same person. So you finally wake up and say, okay, what’s the problem? What’s the core root Buddhist say? Say work at the root. What is the root problem that made this mess your inability to handle reality? What’s reality? That which happened now that which might happen now, which I wish it did happen.
What did Christ say? Let those of IC see. Let them see. Let those of your ears to hear. Let them hear. Did it happen in front of you? Did that person say that? Yes. Is that okay with you that they said that? Yeah. Maybe I could learn for it to be okay then learn. ’cause you’re better off. You’re better off letting it go.
Maybe somebody had a bad day. I talked the other the other day. I talked about this. First impressions. I’m really knocking down everything you’ll ever talk. First. Impressions are really important. That’s absurd. You never met me before. I ate some bad pizza the night before. My stomach’s killing me and my girlfriend left me five minutes ago.
I don’t think you get a very good first impression of me, but has nothing to do with me, does it? How could I have anything to do with me? It has to do with the sum of all the experience that happened that put me in that moment, at that time that you happen to be there. It is meaningless. You know why you don’t hear me?
You wanna hear it because you want to figure out what’s going on so you can manipulate it and know, okay, no, no. I met that person before. I don’t like that. I don’t see him again. You wanna control. It’s all about control, otherwise. You behaved the way you behaved. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be different. Maybe you won’t.
I don’t care why I could handle it. I could handle whatever you do. I could handle whatever it says. I could handle everything, right? It comes in, it passes through. I told you, you handle 99% or everything comes in, and each of you don’t handle different ones that other people can handle. You go out into the field.
Beautiful. Sun, grass, clouds very nice out there. There’s a snake. Okay? You see the snake? You know what kind it is. You see a snake, I’m telling you. All you see is that snake. You don’t see the grass come on. You don’t see the trees. You don’t see the clouds and hear the other people talking. You just focus on the stake.
Okay? Then you store that you didn’t store everything else. You are determining that some events in the universe should take your attention and put all your attention there and leave impressions on your mind and your heart. Okay? It’s a great being. Does not do that. That’s exactly what a great bean does not do.
It all is just creation. It’s all just reality. It’s just coming in and going through. Now I qualify and it’s important. It doesn’t mean you don’t do anything about it. A great being acts, they just don’t act out of not being able to handle that. They don’t act to try to make it so it be a way they can handle.
They handled it, but now that you’ve handled it, is there something you’re supposed to be doing about it? It’s called Right action. All the Buddhist teachings are so clear. That’s right action. Right action is never, I can’t handle it. What should I do about it? What you’re trying to do, when you say What I can do about it, is make it a way that I can handle it, because if I can’t handle it, it’s bothering me.
Apologize. Apologize, apologize for what you said. Why? ’cause I can’t handle what you said. What if I can’t handle what you said? Eh? Sorry. You had a bad day called compassion. See, it all changes when you can handle things. If you can’t handle things, you store them and they become a foundation of your psyche.
Now clear enough. And how long does it last? Can you have stuff in there that was put in there 15 years ago, 20 years ago? Not can you? You do right? So I’m trying to wake you up. The answer is to learn to handle things. There’s no such thing as, you can’t handle it. There’s no such thing. I got sick. I got sick, I had cancer, I had operations.
I did chemo. Did you handle it? I’ve met people that talk like that with a smile on their free face. I love them. Right? It was quite an experience. I grew so much through that experience. Just if even face death, like that was so exciting and so challenging. Somebody else who, who ruined my life, I’ll never be okay again.
Because, because not only did they get, they got rid of the cancer, that doesn’t help. ’cause I’m afraid I’m gonna get it again. It left a scar on me as opposed to it was an experience I had and I grew through it. That’s what it means to say I can handle it. So that’s the foundation. Can you handle it? And the answer is always yes, but it’s not.
It does not. You don’t feel, yes, there are lots of things you can’t handle. That’s because you had experience in the past and there have impressions on you and you store them as negative or positive. So your work. Is to let go of those impressions. Your work. I explain the work as follows. Do you notice what a mess you make of your life and everybody else’s ’cause you can’t handle things?
Yes or no? Answer me. Alright. You’re manipulating people, controlling, people scared, worry. You stored this stuff in there and now it’s making a complete mess of your life. Life is not making a mess of your life. Life’s just going about its business. It’s been doing it for, well, 13.8 billion since the Big Bang.
Right? And it just goes about its business. It bes what it is because of all the causes that cause it to be that way. What is science? Trying to find the causes. That’s science, that’s medicine, that’s engineering everything. Find the causes. Then try to work with them to create something great. Nothing better.
Well, the cause is very straightforward. You couldn’t handle it. So how, what do you do? What’s the answer to all this? We had a nice discussion. I hope we did. The most important part, I everyone should remember, right, is your experiences mean nothing in the realm of reality. They’re just something you experienced.
Everything else was going on at the same time you experienced that you’d have something different going on inside your head. Do you understand that? Alright, so don’t be so married to what’s going on in there. ’cause it’s just the sum of your learned experiences and they’re meaningless. Alright, so what’s the answer?
The answer is to learn to handle things. How can I do that? Something happened terribly in your life. You have a traumatic experience. They wanna ask me, how do I handle that? I don’t wanna talk about that. I know that’s difficult to handle. I know you stored it in there. It’s, you know, months and years of therapy, all kinds of things.
Or, or run around like a chicken head cut off. Trying to find some way to be okay even though that happened and freaking out over anything. Reminds you of it. I’m not a psychologist, I’m a spiritual person. Who knows? You’re not gonna deal with that right now. You’re not ready that that’s post-graduate school, but you can start with kindergarten.
And if you can’t do kindergarten, you can’t even do first grade. So let’s not worry about post-grad. Let’s worry about being able to handle what we could handle, but we don’t bother. That’s the start of your spiritual path. That’s nice to know. Whew. Okay. What does that mean? It means it’s hot out. Okay.
That’s what it is. It’s reality. It’s hot out. Oh, I can’t handle it. Oh, I still hot. I have to go from the car to the house. Air condition, the car, air condition, the house in between. Oh my God. It terrible. I’ll tell you know how hot it was was 97 degrees out, right? What are you doing You can’t handle. That was hot out.
And truth is, no, you can’t. Why? You just didn’t bother. You’re letting that stuff bother you. It’s not bothersome, it’s just an event that you’re experiencing. Could you learn to handle that? It’s hot. Now. Could you learn to catch yourself with that complaining person in there and sit there and say, it’s hot, it’s fine.
I can handle it. Then you go a little step further and all my growth is this. Alright, I am serious. What’s the next further? It’s hot out. Why, why is it hot? I told you this story when I was back in 72, when I was living out here alone, had a VW van hippie boy, no air conditioning in the house, no air conditioning in the van, and it, it was summer in Florida.
It was hot out and he’d complain, and I just finally, and it never happened again. Once I did this, I asked him, Hey, Mick. Mick, why is it hot? The sun, the sun’s hot, right? What is the sun? A star. You don’t like stars. Everybody likes stars. How you not like a star? That’s a star you start with, right?
Understanding it’s a star. Well, it’s not like those other ones that after twinkling, it’s closer, really, and you’re so close to a star that you feel it’s heat. Whoa. Wow. That’s pretty special, isn’t it? You’re so close to a star, literally, that you feel it’s heat. How hot must that be? It’s 93 million miles away.
Did you hear that number? How far is Miami? 3 50, 90 3 million miles away. And it’s so hot that you feel it here. All of a sudden it becomes a. Wow. Hear me. Every time now when I step outta my car, it just happens naturally and well all these years. If the sun is shining like that, he just goes like this. Wow, that is amazing.
That how hot that thing must be. And that thing is one of 300 billion stars in your galaxy. Wow, that’s amazing. All of a sudden now it makes your mind expand instead of complaining about it. You sitting there participating, letting it expand your frame of reference to realize what’s really going on. It reminds you of God, but the net result is it expands your consciousness that your frame of reference now includes a star.
It’s your friend. It’s not something to complain about. You get to, you have a, by the way, you have a personal relationship with a star, do you not? Pretty neat. Okay. I told you, you do not get sunburn. You get star burned. Wow. It changes everything. Doesn’t it do that about everything? Do that about the driver in front of you that’s driving 15 miles above the speed limit and you’re in a rush.
What good does it do to talk to them? They don’t hear you. So I’m just coming down to kindergarten. This is like no challenge. There’s no cost here. It’s not difficult to do this. If you don’t do that, you won’t do the next level. If you can’t handle the sun, if you can’t handle the heat, if you can’t handle now, somebody else is driving nice blinker, buddy.
It’s like if you are doing that, you’re leaving these impressions, you think they’re leaving impressions. Go get behind a driver who’s driving 15 miles an hour below the speed limit. Two lane highway can’t pass and you’re late. You’re gonna talk about it for a week. I can’t believe they let them on the road.
They’re allowed to drive like that on the road. And by the way, I’m never taking that road again. And I’m now, I, I’m visiting Germany or France. Five years from now, I’m driving around my own business and I see a car that looks exactly like that car that did that to me, did it to me. Oh, you like that, that did that to me.
Your heart skips a beat. Look what you’ve done. You’ve taken a meaningless experience and made it some scar, made it a pattern inside that’s gonna govern your life, what you like, what you don’t like, who you like. No. Instead, do the same thing you do with the sun. Do with the car in front of you. Sit there and just stop.
Stop. Robert used to say, stop, look and listen. Pay attention. What’s going on in there? You’re about to make some big schpiel. My favorite. ’cause Mickey’s been known to do this, right? My favorite is I’m driving right, and I pass him. Okay. And then I come to the stop sign, they pull right behind me, or he’s crashing, right?
And they drives, blah, blah, and they turn off three blocks later. What did you do to yourself during that time? Make anxiety, tension, negativity, impressions. Don’t do it. Start with the small stuff. Just make it a game that I can handle life and start handling these simple situations that are not a problem to handle.
You didn’t bother. You hear me? You just didn’t bother. Bother. And what’s gonna happen? You’re gonna find out. It’s amazing what you find out that if you can handle that. You can handle if somebody said something that bothered you a little bit. Not big, it’s just you learn to handle things. Just like you learn to play tennis, you learn to play the piano.
You weren’t good at it to start with. Well, you are not good at letting go. You’re not good at handling things, are you? You suppress them, repress them, clinging to them, complain about them. You’re not very good right now at handling things, right? And then what happens? You keep building these negative stuff in there.
So you start with the simple stuff. You just find a way to let go. I gave a couple examples. You’re in there. Play, have fun, right is of cars driving slow in front of you. I did this too and it helped. He still doesn’t like it, but anyways, alright, but I, I work. It’s a time to work with it. I’m telling you that time when you’re working with yourself is more important than your meditation time.
Your meditation time is an attempt to rise above the part of you that’s full of it. We don’t wanna do so good, do we? This is dealing with the party that’s full of it and why that part’s there. If you’re not willing to work with the driver in front of you, driving slower than you want to go, alright? You better meditate to try to get rid of the anxiety and tension that you built inside yourself.
I love meditation. I don’t talk against it. I, I explain it this way ’cause my, my guru, you’re gonna all the meditation right? Is I’m not here to teach you meditation. I meditate, but I’m not here to teach you meditation. I’m here to teach you what to do while you’re not meditating, which is pretty much all the rest of the time, I’m telling you.
So what do you do? Driver’s driving in front of you slowly, you stop. Just catch and watch what’s going on in there. Watch your’re, creating that resistance, that tension, right? And asked, do I need to be doing this? Of course not. I’m doing it to myself. And you just sit there and make something up. Like I would sit there and say, well, that’s my grandmother and she’s last, last year.
She’ll get to drive before they take her license away, and I think she should take it away now ’cause she’s driving 50 miles away and I sit there and say, go, I’ll tailgate your grandma. I’ll be atcha. Right. I’ll road rage you. No. I can handle it. How? Take your time off and I feel like I’m giving something instead of complaining.
You can do that. You can turn the energy around any way you want. Positive thinking, surrender. I don’t care what you wanna call it. I literally, ’cause I’m very much into being off, off this planet. Do this. Rovers on bars. You’ve seen them, right? No people gone there yet, but there’s rovers driving around, right?
You’re in a rover on earth. When you get in your car, you’re driving around. It’s exactly like that rover on Mars. You just have to do it on earth. Wow, this is fun. And it doesn’t matter how long it takes. I’m scooting around the earth in this little vehicle, you can have fun instead of letting yourself make a tension and anxiety.
Yes or no. Could you do that? Will you bother doing that? ’cause you’re gonna find out it changes your life. Literally change your entire life. Of course it does. You didn’t. You didn’t go to the office and complain about the driver. You didn’t have to carry all this garbage that those impressions left on you.
Make them positive, make them beautiful, let them go. Ultimately, it’s not even making ’em positive, you’re not even complaining about them. It’s just reality is unfolding in front of you. And you’re perfectly fine with it. You don’t have to do anything about it, but it’s okay. In the meantime, do something about it.
And the nice part is not just that you don’t feel the tension and anxiety, it’s that you get better at it. I told you, when you play the piano, you play an instrument. Don’t you have to learn? Can you learn to let go? Can you learn to be okay? Can you learn to not resist things that don’t need to be resisted?
And you’re gonna find out at some point. Nothing needs to be resisted, nothing. Reality does not need to be resisted. It needs to be worked with. It’s a totally different thing. It’s not that you don’t do anything. You’re sitting there, you’re driving on the road, and there’s a car accident and there’s blood.
It’s not nice. Okay. And your mind don’t touch it. You get sued. Right. Okay. Okay. Let go. Can you let go and get some clarity instead of all the garbage put in your head, why you can’t help people and or I’m not capable anyways. I’m not an rn, and okay, it’s, look what’s gonna go on in there. Let it go. Let it go.
Be clear. Bring presence and consciousness and awareness to the moment. Now, is there something I can do to help instead of listening to all this garbage outta my head, which is not gonna help anybody, including me. Instead, you let go. You let go. What? You learn how to let go. You learn to respect and honor reality.
Now, let go. Now what? Look and see if there’s something you can do to help. See there’s something you can do not to protect yourself and not to get for yourself. Can you let go first? That’s what it’s all about. Let go first, then look to see if there’s something you can do about how small it is to raise the moment that has been brought to your attention.
That moment’s yours, you didn’t experience all the a hundred billion others that were going on. I love teaching that. I don’t, I don’t always have time to teach the level I like to teach. Right? Okay. There’s stuff going on all over the universe. That moment is your mo. Like we’re having a moment. Yes, you’re having a moment, and that is your moment.
Why it’s not happening to anybody else. Somebody else is somewhere else looking at a different angle. That moment is happening to you, so you respect it, you honor it. You go as far as saying, God created heavens and earth. Created, everything it is is still creating. It’s all coming up from the quantum field and this is what’s in front of me.
Wow. How can I serve it? How can I do something to to honor it, to respect it, to raise it, but first I have to be able to handle it. Otherwise, I’m not doing that. I ain’t doing it for God. I’m not doing it for anybody else. I’m doing it for me. I can’t handle it. If you get this stuff, that’s true.
Spirituality. That’s how you grow. People say, I don’t know how to be spiritual. Yes, you do. It ain’t got nothing to do with mantras and all that kind of stuff. It’s got through you in there. Do you do this stuff that I’m talking to you about all the time? About everything? How about we turn the energy around?
It’s called transmuting the energy. It’s very yogic. You’re taking the negative energy and you’re bringing it up and all of a sudden you start to feel love. You start to feel lightness. You start to feel openness. Next thing you know, you’re feeling good about way more things you just feel bad about. And eventually what happens is.
That very act of not resisting, of not fighting, of handling, it allows the energy to come up instead of be pushed back down. Either clinging or resisting keeps the energy inside of you and it rots in there. Otherwise, when you’re open, it passes through. The more it passes through, the better it feels.
Energy coming up and passing through is very exhilarating, very beautiful. It just struck me more like that until eventually you’ve done it enough. I’ve been there for 55 years. Done enough to where that’s who you are. You are letting go machine. Well, I have a choice. Suffer. I started to talk this way, didn’t I suffer or be an ecstasy no matter what’s happening.
But notice I didn’t say you don’t deal with it. No. Bring some good energy to an accident. Help those people feel love, care about them. That’s very beautiful. So you learn to let go. What happens is over time you get good at it, just like you got good at the piano, you got good at tennis. I mean, you’re a master, but you got better at it.
You get better at everything you practice at. You practice letting go until you become a letting go machine or try. It becomes that way. ’cause you see, if I let go. It’s exhilarating. It’s open. I can help. If I don’t let go, it’s stored inside of me. You messing with me up for the rest of my life. I think I’ll let go, and you’re just doing your best to let go.
Then all of a sudden, the big stuff that I said you can’t deal with right now, all of a sudden you can, all of a sudden, your wife or husband says to you, I haven’t mentioned it to you, but we need to have a talk tonight. Okay. How you doing with that? Well, maybe you suffer all day worrying, thinking, what am we gonna talk about?
What I do, I, you drive yourself crazy, or you sit there and say, oh, thank God she wants to talk. I’m very interested in what she has to say. I, I love her or I love him. I’m not anxious about. I’m gonna learn more about somebody who I love and, and maybe how I can help and that. And there’s nothing to think about.
Nothing. You come home, there you are. And when they’re talking to you, you know what we do when they talk to us like that, every word they say, that’s not true. I didn’t do that. You know, I didn’t do that. I, you know, I apologize years ago. Defense, defense, defense, you’re just pushing it back in her face ’cause you can’t handle that.
She has a problem. As opposed to if someone I love has a problem, I wanna hear about it. I wanna know what I can do to help. And so you start, as you grow, as you let go, the good energy’s coming up inside and it feeds you and gives you the strength to not push back to be able to handle it until eventually you reach the point where so much energy is opening and flowing inside of you that it never stops.
It never stops. Now your energy goes down. The tendency to protect, to push, to cling, it’s all about looking down and controlling. It stops doing that and just comes up and your heart is being fed and your mind is clear, and it just keeps coming up as the upward flow of the shock. The shati changes direction and literally does that.
And as it does that, it clears all the ch Don’t worry about the chakras. I don’t care. I don’t want you to know about ’em. As this energy comes up, you’ll feel it cleansing the chakras. You’ll feel it hit the part of the heart that you didn’t know was there like that. And it’ll push it outta the way. It is a cleansing.
It is the only way the Christians say with Christ and the way the truth in life. And no man coming to the Father, but by me. That’s a true statement. ’cause he is that spirit. It’s flowing inside and there’s no way you’re being liberated and getting free except through that you work all you on ing your chakras and looking at different things, right?
You’re gonna be very busy and get very neuro, you let go of the blockages in there and work with that energy turning up. That energy will take you home. Every, every great master taught that. It comes up and it keeps cleansing your centers all by itself. She’s your best friend. She’s your guru, but are you willing to let her.
Or if it hurts, you push back. No, and eventually it just keeps going up. And then the great ones, the great states are it goes up so high that you can’t look down at yourself anymore. It’s not like, oh, he’s selfless. No, he’s just trying to look selfless. He’s trying to be giving, it’s all right. No, no, there’s nothing left in there of the personal self that’s strong enough to distract you.
’cause this energy flow is so beautiful. The lower self doesn’t get distracted from somebody wants ask Ram Krishna, I can’t even say his name without melting. It’s one of the great beings that ever walked the face of the earth. Very great being. Does an enlightened master ever feel anger? He said, yes, but it’s like riding on water.
It doesn’t matter if you’re riding on water, it’s not there for a building of a second. Leaves no impression, no lasting impression. So yeah, something happens. The personal self boom comes up. It, it literally causes more joy ’cause it’s Shakti. Okay? Anger is Shakti, is it not? Fear is Shakti blocked. Anger is blocked.
Energy. It shoots out. Fear is energy. You pushed down when you let go, all the energy is releasing, right? You actually get high off of it. This lady over here, ma Yo Shakti, some of us were honored enough to know her. She gave us the drug statue back in the seventies. Very great saint. Very great saint. She’s left the body since some time ago, but we got to know her.
Never talked personally. Once she leaned over to me, ’cause we were very close over the years, and she said, Mickey, I said, yes. Mother says, don’t you just love when they yell at you? There’s so much energy they give off. She couldn’t. She’s talking about, or disciples, I just love when they yell. Like, bye, get off on it.
Oh, I could talk to you forever about Great Saints, right? So that’s what happens when you get high enough, the shock to you is not blocked and it raises up and it takes you up, and eventually it takes you past your personal self. And what does that mean? I, you can’t look, it’s not that it’s not there, but you can’t look down at it.
The energy’s flowing up too high. It’s too beautiful, and you wouldn’t trade it off for anything going on down there anyways, and the next thing you know, you. Ultimately let go of looking down enough to emerge. And that’s what the merger is. It’s like basically you’re die to be reborn. You don’t be nice, you don’t be good.
It’s way past that. There’s no you anymore. There’s no individuals even witness consciousness. There’s not a high state. ’cause you’re still looking at it. You are witnessing that down there. It’s a launchpad. That’s what it’s like NASA’s launchpad. The rocket is ready to take off, but it hadn’t taken off yet.
’cause you’re still looking down. I’m glad that you’re objective Christian ready, called it objective observation, but you’re still there observing. Eventually the energy becomes so strong that you can’t even sit there. It’s just starts sweeping you away and ultimately it takes you away from yourself. And next thing you know, mayor Baba said the drop.
A drop of water fell into the ocean, find it, go on and find it, find that drop never emerged. So the self merges that individual self that used to look down, that whole sense of consciousness, that drop of consciousness falls into the ocean of consciousness. And that’s, that’s what you wanna do with your life.
I can assure you of that. Alright. Alright. Well thank you for listening. I love you.
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.
