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: Jai guru dev, jai masters. Until you’re totally liberated, you live in a world of duality. There’s day, there’s night, there’s high, there’s low, there’s male, there’s female, there’s happy, there’s sad — but they aren’t different things. They’re just directions that you’re looking at.
You can look up, you can look down. They’re different in what you see, but it’s not as different as you think. For example, people want to come in tune with God. Some people are very serious about it — all kinds of practices and so on. Some people are passively interested in getting into a higher state.
That’s another way to look at it, which you’ll find is very practical and very useful. Is it about coming in tune with God? Or is it about coming out of tune with yourself? If you need to reach up and it’s a struggle, something’s holding you down. So is that about reaching up harder, or is it about letting go of what’s holding you down?
That’s the epitome of understanding yin and yang. They’re not opposites. It’s just consciousness focusing on different things at different times. So when you’re having trouble in your life — your scars, your patterns, your personal self — it’s pulling you down. A lot of times you don’t try to go back up; you just succumb to it.
You get depressed, get upset, you get all kinds of stuff. That’s because the energy goes both ways. Consciousness is experiencing the energy in different states. So in that state, your consciousness has been pulled down into what we call your lower self. Is it wrong? No. It’s just a state of being.
There are all kinds of states inside of you, and your consciousness can get pulled down. But there are other times where naturally, without you doing anything, your consciousness rises up. You just feel this energy, this love, this inspiration.
It’s so beautiful. It’s pulling you up. It’s the same consciousness dancing in the yin and yang, dancing in the positive and negative, dancing in the light and dark. They’re not wrong. They’re just different places on the same spectrum.
So which is better? I have found in my life, as much as I’ve pushed with all the spiritual practices and all that, that the highest and most beneficial path is not about coming in tune with God — because you have to make up what that is. But if I say I want to come out of tune with myself, I can’t do both. You’re in tune with something. The more you’re in tune with yourself, the less you’re in tune with God. The more you’re in tune with God, the less you’re in tune with yourself. Meher Baba said, “Man minus mind equals God.”
In other words, the ultimate is losing any sense of personal self. Christ said, “You must die to be reborn.” They’re saying the same thing. It’s not just about reaching up as hard as you can — whoever tries to do that goes to a retreat and then falls back down when they go to work in the morning.
It’s about understanding what’s holding you down and coming out of tune with that. And there’s this natural ascent. It’s very natural. You don’t even notice it. You’re just happier. You’re better off. You don’t get bothered by anything because you’ve let go of the anchor that’s holding you down. So there are those who teach, including me, that coming out of tune with yourself — your personal self, your ego — is the same as, and higher than, trying to reach up for this thing called God.
That’s just a concept. It’s that experience you had once — that’s the worst, because you want to have it again. You keep reaching up instead of dealing with why you don’t have it all the time. You’re trying to have it even though there’s a force pulling you down, and you know that. You know there are forces — anger, fear, insecurity, selfishness — that are pulling you down.
So we’re going to talk tonight about what it means to come into tune with God by coming out of tune with yourself. What I like about it is every one of you knows your ego. You live with it all the time. You do think about yourself — 99.9% of the time — what do I want, what do I not want?
What do I like, what don’t I like, what am I afraid is going to happen? There’s that little “I” that keeps showing up — that amazing one letter — and it’s always prevalent in your thoughts and emotions. It mostly falls under: what do I want, and what do I not want? If that were the end of it, it wouldn’t be so bad, but no one stays there.
It’s not just “what do I want and what do I not want?” It becomes: how do I get what I want, and how do I avoid what I don’t want? What’s the purpose of wanting it or not wanting it if you’re not going to kill yourself trying to get what you want and avoid what you don’t want? And this is when it gets really difficult for people, because they talk about success and failure. Aren’t they supposed to be motivated?
Let’s just get it over with right away: motivated to do what? To get what you want? Or motivated to let go of yourself so you can evolve and grow? See the difference? Most people say it’s about getting what I want so I can feel better, so I can get my finances right, get my relationships right.
Okay, well, if that’s what you’re in tune with, that’s where you’re going. And don’t let anyone kid you about that. If you’re about the “I,” and you’re saying, “I know what I want and I know what makes me happy” — I do know what makes you happy: getting what you want. Every one of you could want something different, even at different times.
Tomorrow you want something different. You’re happy when you get what you want, you’re not happy if you don’t get what you want, and you’re really unhappy if you get what you don’t want. Can anybody relate to that? So you have a choice: do I spend my life struggling to feed my personal self, to feed my ego — my concepts, my views, my hopes, my dreams, my beliefs, my preferences, my fears?
Is that what I’m devoting my life to? And if you’re not careful, the answer is yes. That is such a powerful force that you end up devoting your life to it — getting the way everybody tells you to. I did it my way.
And there’s nothing wrong with it. You’ll grow. But when you grow, you’re going to find out that the personal self is not your friend. Where did it come from — these wants and not-wants, likes and dislikes, fears and all that? There’s only one place they can come from.
They were programmed into you by your past experiences. That’s not a trite statement — it’s obviously true. If you experienced something in the past, it left an impression on you, and that impression becomes your likes and dislikes. Now you go out for the rest of your life and struggle to make what you want happen.
What your ego, what your personal self wants — how it’s programmed — you try to feed it, and getting what it wants makes you feel better. No question. You feel better. But even if you just think you might not get what you want, you feel really bad. Even if you just think you might get what you don’t want — you don’t even need it to happen. You can make a mess of it all by yourself.
This is what everybody does their entire life. They devote themselves to satisfying and matching the positive impressions left inside from the past, and they don’t want anything to do with the negative ones. They try to manipulate and control everything in their environment to make it match what they want and not match what they don’t want. Is that a truth you’re comfortable with?
If you’re not careful, that is what you devote your life to. Don’t make it sound holy. It’s about you. It is about what I want and what I don’t want. I don’t care if what you want is for the world to be at peace — it’s still what you want. It’s still about you. Maybe you want your world to be at peace unless something goes wrong, and then you want it to be a war. The point is, it’s about you.
It’s about you deciding what you want, when you want it, how you want it, how long you want it, and how it’s supposed to be. Do you have an idea of how it’s supposed to be? I guarantee you that idea is what you want and not what you don’t want.
And so you start questioning: what is this force inside of me that I’m devoting my life to? Even if you devote your life supposedly to God, it’s your concept of God. I want to go to heaven, I don’t want to go to hell. Have you been to heaven or hell? I know you have inside, but literally — do you know it’s there? Have you experienced it? Not talking about your emotions and your mind — do you actually know there’s a heaven and hell? You do not. You know what they told you. They told you that, didn’t they? And then someone else said no, there’s nothing, there’s no life after death, don’t even worry about it. Someone told you that too.
The point is, it’s something you believe. I’m not saying it’s not true — you’ll find out soon enough. But you don’t know these things. There are impressions that have been left on you, and now you’re devoting your life based on those impressions.
“I don’t want to go to hell, so I’m going to try to do this.” Well, what are you going to do? The Quran says this, the Bible says this, the Torah says this. I better make a decision — now you’re neurotic. What’s the answer? You get quiet for a minute and you look: am I devoting my life to myself?
I don’t care how positive it sounds — “I want to be successful, I want to have children, I want to have a wonderful relationship.” You’re all different, aren’t you? Which one’s right? There’s no such thing. It’s just an ego that’s had impressions made on it. And spirituality is never about that. People misunderstand that. It’s not about renunciation. It’s not about not doing what you want. It’s about looking and asking: why do you want things? Why do you want to have children? Why don’t you want to have children? Why do you want to get married? Why do you want to be wealthy? You go deeper and work at the root. You question: why is this going on inside of me? That’s called witness consciousness — when you can step back.
And realize your mind is programmed and your heart is programmed with past experiences, and you ask yourself: what if I didn’t have that experience? Would I feel the same way? You know the answer is no. What if high school had been different, what if the first marriage had been different? It’d be a totally different thing going on in there. You’re just caught in these patterns that got programmed into you.
When you work with yourself, the first thing is to step back — not stop it. It’s very hard to stop that stuff. I don’t even want you to struggle. I’ve learned so much over 55 years: don’t struggle with your mind. Notice it objectively. Watch the mind’s thoughts. Watch the heart’s feelings. But you can’t do that when they drive you to action. If your mind says “I don’t like this,” you’re out there trying to stop it. You don’t notice where it came from, what its roots are.
And the same thing, especially with the heart. “Oh my God, I really like this person, I have to be with them.” What I’m saying is not to analyze, but to notice that it could change in a moment. And you start noticing — that’s what witness consciousness is.
The ability — and I don’t want to make it sound like a struggle — to not be your mind. You are not your mind. You are watching your mind. The trouble is, it’s so powerful that your consciousness gets pulled into it and you lose your objectivity, little by little.
You will find out you’re capable of noticing the mind’s behavior. You’re capable of noticing the heart’s behavior. And you’re capable of noticing that they’re not always where you should be listening. People say, “Follow your heart.” Are you kidding me? If you followed your heart, you’d be married and divorced to the same person six times.
When they say “follow your heart,” they mean transcend the personal emotions in your heart — feel the deeper sense of your heart and follow that. That’s not what we do. We’re reactive. The moment the heart’s doing something, we’re trying to make it not hurt. We’re trying to make it feel good.
We just immediately react to it. We yell at everybody or we grab at them. And the same with the mind. The mind just sits there and tells you what you’re supposed to be doing to get things the way you want them. Eventually, in this first step, you start noticing how tenuous this thing is, how easy it is for your feelings to change. And instead of telling somebody, “Don’t behave that way, I don’t like it,” you look inside and say, “What’s wrong with me? I can’t handle if someone didn’t say hello with the right tone?”
You start noticing: it’s crazy in here. It’s very sensitive, isn’t it? Both mind and heart. And why am I following all that? If it can change in a moment, why do I react to everything that’s going on? The personal mind and heart are extremely reactive because they’re programmed with different programs. You liked someone named Ben in high school, and now you’re married to one and you don’t have anything to do with anyone named Ben ever again.
Okay, so you wake up and you realize: I can notice what my mind is doing. I’m not telling you to stop it. Don’t try to stop the mind. There are much higher ways to deal with the mind than trying to suppress it. So I started to say: it’s not about renunciation. It’s not about knowing what you want but not doing it. That’s just suppressing a part of your being, and you’re not going to God with that anchor down there.
And so you wake up and you realize: I’m in here. I notice I have quite a mind — very opinionated, like a little baby if it doesn’t get what it wants. It throws tantrums. It’s been that way your entire life.
I’m begging you: just notice. Don’t do anything. You’re capable of noticing. You’ll feel the tendency to be pulled in — it’s a very powerful pull. The pull down is powerful because it reminds you of all the things that ever hurt you. You could call out to your friend, “Hey Sally, how are you doing?” and she doesn’t call back. So you start thinking, “What did I do wrong?” And then: “That reminds me of a friend in high school who didn’t say hello, and look what happened with that.” It starts extrapolating negativity all over the place.
You don’t have to do it — it does it by itself, because you have all these things stored down there. They start playing billiards, hitting each other. Please notice. And if you grab them and try to stop them, you’re suppressing them. They get really noisy down there, cause all kinds of problems, and come up in many different ways. That’s all Freudian. Yoga is not about that.
So we started by saying: are you reaching for God, coming into tune with God? Or are you coming out of tune with yourself? Maybe you’re getting a gist of what I’m talking about. That stuff is going on in there, but you don’t have to be in tune with it. It’s just something that’s distracting you, and you can learn to relax and not be distracted by it. That’s the highest way to work with your mind. You are not your mind. It has the power to distract you, but you do not have to get distracted. There’s your spiritual path. That’s not renunciation, that’s not suppression.
It’s not giving in, it’s not yielding, it’s not trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do. You know what’s going on in there. You know when there’s garbage going on in there. What do you do? Don’t push it away — honor its right to exist, and let it go. Here’s jealousy: “Oh, I could lose what I love.” Okay — come on, let me hear about it. Don’t get into it. This is the highest path. Don’t get into it. Don’t let it pull you in, but don’t come into tune with it either.
It’s just a feeling. It’s just a thought pattern, and they’re all based on your past experiences. There are people — hard to believe — who have never had a relationship that hurt them, and they literally don’t know what jealousy looks like. Their close friend could be dancing with somebody else and saying, “Hey, I’m going to sleep over at a friend’s tonight,” and they don’t even think about it. They never had that kind of pain before. That goes for anger, that goes for everything.
So you’re in here. That’s your first step. You’re in here. You’re not manipulating, you’re not controlling, you’re not wanting — you’re noticing. That’s what objective observation is. You are just aware, aware that you’re aware of what’s going on in there.
It will tend to pull you in. Why? Because it has all this power — you stored the pain from before, you stored the problems from before, all these things that are scary. And even the good things you want to happen again, and you get all worked up when they’re not happening. This stuff you stored from before has tremendous power.
Again, back to: are you coming out of tune with yourself? Or trying to come in tune with God while you’re really still in tune with yourself? Can you feel that stretch of trying to go up when natural forces are pulling you down? “I don’t ever want to be angry.” Well, it’s angry. “I don’t want to think any bad thoughts.” My experience is you don’t fight with that stuff. You notice it. And if you notice it, you can let the energy pass. You’ll start to notice where it comes from.
If you’re walking toward fire and there’s smoke you can’t handle, you’ll never get to the fire. If you can handle the smoke and keep going, you’ll end up face to face with the fire. It’s the exact same thing inside. You’re in there. This stuff is coming up. If you can’t handle it, you try to stop it, push it down, or make the world change so you don’t have to experience it.
Otherwise, you’ve reached what I’ll call the beginning point of spirituality, where you realize: if I devote myself to that garbage in there, I’ll be wrestling with it the rest of my life. Does what you want even change? Is it the same as it was 10 years ago, five years ago, yesterday? Do you see how crazy it is to follow that stuff? It’s not going to take you anywhere. It just goes in circles, jumping around. All it does is ask: how can I be okay right now? And the next thing you know, you’re trying to manipulate everything to make it not be the way you don’t want, and be the way you do want.
Eventually, it doesn’t take a genius to realize: I’m never going to be okay in there. It is never going to be okay. Look at the richest people in the world — to me, they’re suffering more than anybody else. Hollywood has the biggest divorce rate. Then where’s the answer?
Somebody’s been married a long time and a friend says, “That’s really beautiful, but I had a number of different relationships, and there were times I didn’t have a relationship at all. I traveled everywhere.” And you start saying, “God, maybe I should have done that.” That’s what it’s like to live in there. There’s no peace. There’s no solution. There’s just trying to stay away from all the noise so you don’t have to suffer.
At some point you notice, and I want you to start your path there. I’m in here. Check. I have a mind that talks a lot and has really strong preferences. When it gets what it wants, it’s happy. When it doesn’t get what it wants, it’s miserable. When it gets what it doesn’t want — oh boy, look out. And my heart? The heart is exactly the same.
The root of the mind is in the heart. Your desires, preferences, needs, good feelings, and bad feelings come from your heart, but they match your mind. The mind will always talk about what’s going on in the heart, and the heart will always talk about what’s going on in the mind.
Let’s say you’re having a nice day and you drive by a poster that reminds you of Ben. All of a sudden your heart hurts, and then your mind says, “I’m not driving this way anymore, I don’t want to see that sign ever again.” You do things like that. Does it solve a single thing? What you learn to do is: I’m in here, and I notice that the mind is crazy. It just goes all over the place. Don’t do anything. I beg you. Just sit there and notice. “Whoa, look what it’s doing now. Whoa, glad I didn’t go with that one.” That’s what it starts to look like. It’s all over the place. And then your heart does the same thing.
Like I said, do not listen when they tell you to just follow your heart. It does what I was talking about. It is not the deep heart, the spiritual heart — but getting past the personal heart is quite a challenge. Normally it’s just this personal heart spewing emotions, spewing fears and desires, based on your past experiences.
Just notice that’s where they come from. You don’t have to analyze them. You don’t have to be Freud. Just notice: yeah, high school was tough. That’s good enough. Or: my parents got divorced and I ended up with a stepfather or stepmother. You left stuff in there, and that’s where it comes from.
When you notice that it’s just stuff from experiences you had, it liberates you. Your soul came down and was born on this earth, and because your parents got divorced, you have all this junk inside of you. And so you wake up and you start noticing: that’s why the mind is the way it is. That’s where the heart’s state comes from. That’s where my personal thoughts come from. That’s where my personal feelings come from. And you ask: is that okay with me? Is it okay that they’re bothering me? Is it okay that those past impressions just spew themselves and jump around in there?
Have you noticed you can be okay in there? You can be okay noticing anything else in the world — clouds go by, people go by, white lines go by. You can be okay, unless you make yourself not okay. The key is: is that okay with you or not? If it’s not okay with you, you’re going to be neurotic. If it’s okay with you, you’re going to get disappointed at some point, because it will never stay. No one behaves the way you think they should. No one is the way you think they are.
And you start catching on: why can’t I have what I want? Here’s the answer: you’re not meant to have what you want. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about ceasing to get lost in yourself. The more it’s about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want, the more you are in tune with yourself.
Everyone is in tune with their own self — it’s all I, me, mine. “This is what I care about.” They feel better when they get what they want, worse when they don’t, and really bad when they get what they don’t want. So they’re struggling to make the outside world match what’s inside.
That’s what it means to devote your life to yourself, to come in tune with yourself. The full state is: what matters is me. It’s all about me — what I want, what I don’t want, what I like, what I don’t like, what somebody did that I don’t like. Every single thing is about this tiny little piece of existence — five foot ten, a couple feet wide — and you notice every single thing: if a mosquito bites you, if a feeling comes up, if a thought gets created.
You’re completely addicted to yourself. So addicted, we don’t even know it. It’s like a heroin addict: “I’m fine when I get my fix, but you don’t want to be around me when I don’t.” You are addicted to your personal self, but you think it’s normal. It is not.
A great being doesn’t ever think about themselves. Great scientists sometimes get so lost in the work — not doing it to win a Nobel Prize. They couldn’t care less. They just feel so inspired to express something higher, something bigger than themselves. Scientists can be like that — or they can be all about cheating and faking stuff to win a Nobel Prize or get a raise, publish or perish. But a true scientist, a true artist, is not like that.
They’re not thinking about themselves. A true artist creating music or painting or sculpture is not thinking about what they’re going to get from it. They’re lost in the process of expressing the beauty inside of themselves — not the personal self. A true artist couldn’t care less whether anybody likes their art or not. They’re trying to create and express the beauty inside of them.
The higher energy — and that energy is close to God — can come down from really high places. When you’re out of the way, it flows through. That’s a truly great being. You’ve mastered this whole thing — meaning: there’s no personal stuff going on. I’ve met very high beings, and we’ll talk about them maybe a little later. They’re just melted. Their mind isn’t doing anything. The heart is just flowing with love. That’s who you are when you’re not in tune with yourself.
I need to describe what it’s like to be in there — to be that small, to only think about yourself, to worry about everything that’s going to happen and did happen. So that’s what it means to be in tune with yourself. Things happen in your life that you are not comfortable with. You aren’t able to handle it — the really good thing, or the really bad thing — you get caught in there. And the next thing you know, you’re struggling to make things be the way you want.
I hope you get to the point where you realize: I don’t want that. That’s not the life I’m looking for — to struggle and fight and make everybody and everything be the way I think they need to be, based on the impressions left on me from the past. What’s the alternative? Are you trying to come in tune with yourself, or are you trying to let go of yourself? That is what Christ meant by “die to be reborn.” Are you willing to let go of the personal self?
I don’t think you would be here if you weren’t willing to work at it. And if you work at it, it can’t not work. Every minute of your life, life gives you an opportunity to not get what you want, and an opportunity to get what you don’t want. Have you noticed that every one of those things is help for your growth? Every one is a chance to ask: do I really want to devote myself to clinging, grabbing, bullying, struggling? Or am I willing to say, “Fine — not my will, but thy will be done”?
That’s the most powerful thing Christ said. What he meant was very simple: I don’t need it to be my way. I don’t even want it to be my way. I’m not suppressing anything. I’m not pushing it away. I am perfectly comfortable letting go of myself and allowing the harmony of life to unfold before me.
This is another thing people misunderstand about surrender. I’m not surrendering to whatever the outside world says. I’m surrendering the resistance inside of me that can’t handle what’s going on. Why can’t it handle it? Because I don’t like it. It’s inside that you surrender. And as you let that go, you come in tune with God.
What do I need you to do? Come into tune with God — that and nothing else. That’s what Christ meant by “die to be reborn.” If you let go of yourself, the ascent happens totally autonomously — it happens by itself. But you have trouble. When it starts to pull you up, you have trouble letting go. Let’s say you fall deeply in love — you have trouble. You’re afraid: I can’t let go that much. Have you ever felt that pull upward, and then a fear, a resistance?
I’ve been around very high beings — I can feel it. I see them. They just naturally fall back into that place. Let me tell you about something that comes to mind. When I was running the company, they had these retreats where the executives would go for three or four days with all kinds of team-building games. One of the challenges was: can you fall straight backwards without looking, without holding back, completely surrender, and trust that they will catch you? And there was also this inflatable runway thing — you’d run as fast as you could and throw yourself out onto it. Nobody could do it. These great executives — no chance. And they later told us they walked around marveling at how Sabine and I just threw ourselves out there without hesitation.
But watch what everyone else did — they’d run and run and then hold themselves back. That’s what it’s like to come in tune with God: to completely let go of every part of your personal self. The fall back has no handles, no sides, nobody there catching you — you just fall completely back. That’s what it means to come in tune with God. It means letting go of yourself, coming out of tune with yourself.
Do you admit that’s a fairly hard thing to do — to completely let go with no holds barred, nobody grabbing, nobody holding back, nobody even looking? That’s a very rare state. Sometimes in intimate moments, or when something beautiful like a sunset happens, you can feel the tendency to melt. It’s not easy. And I’ll tell you a secret: if you ever get there and let go more than you used to, when you come back you’ll be so sensitive, so protective, you’ll feel it all pulled back together. But please listen — it’s harder to let go the second time, because that ego, all the grabbing, all the need — it’s not going to let you go.
We’re talking about the difference between being in tune with yourself versus being in tune with God. But you don’t get in tune with God while you’re holding onto yourself. Every one of you is capable of the state we’re talking about. How do you know? Because you hold yourself back — you feel yourself doing it. Spirituality is about seeing that tendency to pull it back toward ego, toward the personal self. It tries to hold itself together into a safe spot: “I know how to get what I want. I’ll buy this, do that, act this way.” You just build a fake self, trying to hold it together so the outside will be the way you want it to be and you’ll feel safe. It’s all about feeling safe. It’s all about not suffering, not hurting, not having disappointment. You’re not going anywhere like that.
So what do you do? You come out of tune with yourself. How? Not all at once — it’ll get scary if you try to do too much. I’ve found that if you let go a little at a time, it works beautifully. The driver in front of you isn’t driving the way you want — can I handle that? Yes. Good. You just handled a situation you couldn’t handle before. You used to yell at the driver. Do they hear you? Does it do any good? So here’s a freebie: if the cost-benefit analysis is 100% cost and zero benefit, you can let go. That works really well.
During your daily life, you practice letting go. You practice “I can handle this,” and you just relax through it. Just in this moment, I can relax. I dare you — with that driver in front of you, just relax your shoulders, relax your belly. Use it as a spiritual practice. It’s as important as meditation.
The weather is your guru. I’m not kidding. Does anybody have trouble with the weather — the heat, the cold, the wind, the snow, the hurricanes? Did you change it? Not one iota. So there’s no cost in letting go. It’s hot, you’re sweating. It’s going to be hot until you get out of that car and into the air conditioning. Is that okay with you? If you say no, you’re stuck — because it is that way.
I give you this path that’s so simple. People come to me from all over the world saying, “Oh my God, I’ve grown so much.” Of course you did — you stopped devoting yourself to yourself, at least at the easy levels. And what you’ll find is that the next level is easier. If you can handle the driver in front of you, you can handle your husband when he comes home in a bad mood. I already handled that level of disturbance. I handle that level of discomfort, and I realize it’s pointless to be uncomfortable about something that doesn’t make any difference.
That’s what letting go of yourself means. That’s what surrender means — not “a drug dealer comes to you and says, ‘you said surrender, so here you go.'” No. It means you’re in here, and you see the tendency to close, to retract, to restrict, to be negative, to complain. There’s no reason to complain about the weather, or the driver in front of you, or the fact that someone didn’t say hello. You start letting go of the resistance. That’s what it means to come out of tune with yourself.
Every moment — every single moment — that you come out of tune with yourself, you’re more in tune with God. When you can let go completely and just fall backwards in complete surrender, that’s where the masters went. That’s what Meher Baba talked about when he said his consciousness was a drop of water that fell into the ocean. Find that drop. That’s merger. “My Father and I are one.”
So you’re getting there, as you let go of the drop, as you let go of your unwillingness. So little by little, you keep letting go. Can you throw yourself out completely, without any holding back in any way, shape, or form? Or fall backwards in that trust fall? Those seem like stupid games — they’re not. They’re profound. You learn a little bit about accepting that somebody else might be different from you, but more than that, this whole question of just letting go.
Just throw yourself out there. You should be able to do that — not because you want something enough, but because there’s nothing stopping you from being free, from being open, from enjoying the wholeness of your life. But if you’re in a car scared to death of getting in an accident, you’re not going anywhere. And it seems rational at the time, but you find out that 99.999% of the time it didn’t do any good except make you neurotic.
So you practice letting go. What does letting go mean? Coming out of tune with yourself. It doesn’t mean you’re lost. People misunderstand that. You should know yourself — but not that self, not the personal self.
And people ask: what will happen if I let go of myself? If I’m not in control, who is? Somebody’s got to be — you just figure it won’t work unless somebody’s running the show. But you understand that 99.9999999% of your life is happening by itself. You have 35 trillion cells inside your body. They divide, they multiply, they drop out when they’re weak, they let other cells come in. Heart cells know how to pump, muscles know how to stretch and relax. Who’s doing all that? Who’s running those cells?
You’re not running the thing. You’re not running anything. But you say: if I’m not running it, who will? Maybe a planet stays in orbit by itself. Maybe all the stars and galaxies circle around each other in perfect harmony. Maybe the black holes eat what they’re supposed to. All I know is it’s been going on for 13.8 billion years, and it seems to be doing pretty well. Who’s running it? You want to use the word God? Fine. I love the word God. My God is the answer to the question: if I’m not running it, who is?
So you ask: who’s going to run it? You’re not running the universe. Do you fall through the floor when you step on it? Why not? The floor stays together because the atoms are bound together. And your feet don’t fall through because they’re bound together tightly enough that the atoms can’t pass through each other. You are not doing anything. You’re the recipient of everything.
So the concept of letting go of what you want or don’t want — when’s the last time you thought “I want the planet to stay in orbit” or “I don’t want the sun to crash into this planet”? Why don’t you worry about something meaningful? Instead you worry: will I get what I want, does he like me, what if I get old? I, I, me, mine.
Do you see? Eventually, you understand what spirituality is about. It’s about letting go of yourself, about coming out of tune with yourself. And I don’t even want to say “so that you can come in tune with God” — because if you come out of tune with yourself, you’re already in tune with God. Here, do the math. I have a scale from minus a thousand to plus a thousand. If I move anywhere positive, I’m less negative. If I move more negative, I’m less positive. It’s the same thing: if you let go of yourself, you’re with God. If you’re clinging to yourself, you’re with yourself. It’s simple math.
But people misunderstand it. They say, “You mean I can’t do anything to better myself?” What you’ll find is that life is here for your growth, for your betterment — but your betterment is about your liberation, your freedom. Everything in life is for your purpose. There’s nothing that ever happened to you that wasn’t for your purpose.
You say, “You don’t understand — when I was in school, somebody hit me out of nowhere.” What did you do with that? Is it still in there? Do you hate the person? Has it passed through yet? Do you understand that people can be like that? Maybe their parents beat them. It’s all about your growth. Every single thing. Life is about the evolution of your being, lifting you up and helping you let go of yourself. Christ said, “You must die to be reborn.” You have to let go of yourself. So your willingness to let go of yourself is your willingness to go toward God. They work together. If you let go of yourself completely, the drop falls in the ocean. It just drops off, and you merge. That’s who you are.
If you’re clinging to yourself — whoever has read Genesis about the fall from the garden: I don’t want to sound like a biblical scholar. As I remember it, when Adam and Eve fell from the garden, they were told they must now work by the sweat of their brow to be okay. Are we struggling? Are we trying to be okay?
When you’re merged and one with the whole universe, there is no duality. There’s just oneness. You feel creation. Everything is happening inside of creation — dark and light, high and low, good and everything — and you’re one with all of it. That’s what it means to be in the garden. That’s where Adam and Eve were.
Until somebody got lost. I love that story. When Adam was in the garden and God was walking around, God calls out, “Adam, Adam — come on, we’re all one here. Where are you?” Nobody answers. And suddenly Adam says, “Here I am.” He stands up and God says, “What’s that around your waist?” What’s that around your waist? A fig leaf. “Well, I put fig leaves on fig trees. What’s it doing around your waist?” And Adam says: “I was naked.”
That answer is so deep. Every animal’s naked, every tree’s naked, all of nature’s naked. What do you mean you were naked? The ego is born. The “I” is born. “I was naked. I’m separate from everything else.” That is the birth of the “I,” and that is the fall from the garden.
So coming into tune with God means, under all conditions, the willingness to come out of tune with yourself, to let go. Not all at once — little by little is fine. Just take every opportunity you get to let go of yourself. You’ll see it’s a constant opportunity. The driver in front of you, the weather, what somebody said, what somebody didn’t say. The willingness to say: my life is not about devoting myself to that. It’s about letting go of myself, dying to be reborn. Melting.
And this is what the trust game is about. Are you worried every moment that someone is going to screw up and you’re going to get blamed? Are you willing to say: what I care about is letting go of that part of myself, and I’m willing to do that even if it helps somebody else?
It is constantly letting go of yourself. Constantly having it not be about you. And you think everything will fall apart. But your body didn’t fall apart — the atoms held. The world didn’t fall apart, the earth didn’t collapse. Will you please take the time to contemplate how many things take care of themselves — all the physics, all the chemistry, all of the past, all of everything that ever was?
I think you’re okay. I know you’re okay. But are you willing to take that risk?
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.
