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. Most people — almost all of us — are so filled with dogma, beliefs, hopes, dreams, concepts, views, preferences, likes, and dislikes that that’s all we see. And that’s the truth. We’re in here, we’re conscious, and what we’re conscious of is what almost all human beings are and always have been conscious of.
What’s going on in our mind — what it’s talking about. I like this, I don’t like that, I prefer this, I’m afraid of that. It just talks, and it expresses the heart. What impressions have been made on your heart over the course of your life? That talk inside your head — and I’m not talking about intellectual talk, I’m talking about personal talk: what I like, what I don’t like, what I want, what my goals are, what’s right — all kinds of stuff goes on in there. It’s all because of impressions that got left deep in your heart.
Over the course of your life, something hurts you. It leaves a mark on the heart. It talks about that. It comes back at various times. You dream about it. It’s trying to release from the heart, but you kept it down there — you suppressed it, you hold onto it — so it’s going to keep trying to release. That’s what I call the noisy mind, the personal mind, the neurotic mind. It’s just the energy that was stored in the heart from either the good or the not-so-good experiences.
And I told you — it’s on the order of one in a thousand or more: how many things actually hit you so deep in your heart that they become the meaning of your life, versus the things that just bother you and you store inside. You don’t want to be bothered. So now you have this noisy, ongoing talk going on inside your mind, and the mind feeds back to the heart — they’re tied together.
If your heart has some insecurity, or something happened when you were young during your formative years — because they are very impressionable — that’s the word they use. What does “impressionable” mean? It means the event left an impression. It doesn’t come and go like the white lines in the road, or the trees you drive by, or the clouds — those come and go. But this event didn’t come and go. Why? Because you held onto it. It wasn’t pleasant, you didn’t like it, and you didn’t want to feel it. That’s the whole key.
I teach this all the time: “I don’t want to feel it” — then you’re in trouble. Because the very fact that you don’t want to feel it means you’re not willing to feel it. But the trouble is, it happened, or it wouldn’t be in there. So what do you do with it? You push it away so it doesn’t come all the way in, close to your consciousness, close to where you live. You pick and choose — push this away, cling to that — and you make this little model inside your head and heart based on what you like and don’t like. Then you guide your whole life that way.
It didn’t even take two pages of a book to explain everything that’s going on. Psychology says man is the sum of his learned experiences. Not true. You are the consciousness who is aware that you learned these experiences — and they keep going on because you held onto them. If you hold onto it, obviously it stays, because you said “I don’t want to let it go” — either because you liked it, which is rare, or because you really didn’t like it.
So that’s all of psychology: what you held onto. And then you built a house in there — a world in your mind where, if this happened and that didn’t happen and no one said that, you’d be okay. You build this world saying: I’ll be okay if I can get what I want and not have to get what I don’t want. And then you run around your whole life trying to do that — trying to get what you want and avoid what you don’t want.
There’s a much deeper life, but people don’t really want to hear about it. They’d rather come to a lecture that teaches them how to get what they want — how to attract what I want, how to behave in a way that gets me what I want financially, in relationships, in terms of how my body looks, everything. It’s just: how do I get it the way I want it?
So let’s drill down into that first. There’s nothing wrong with it — it just doesn’t lead anywhere better. You’ve been struggling your whole life to get what you want and avoid what you don’t want. That’s true, isn’t it? Your whole life. And it’s changed all the time, hasn’t it? But it’s still based on what you think will make you be okay.
And here’s a deep question worth diving into: how do you know what you think will make you be okay? Where did you get the notion that if you get married, or have three or four children, or have a house of a certain size and a certain income — where did you get the idea that that’s what would make you be okay? You didn’t come up with it yourself. You had experiences that made you feel good about certain things and bad about other things, and then you started collecting those. Man is the sum of his learned experiences. So you started collecting the ones you liked and the ones you didn’t like.
And I’ve told you: it’s probably ten thousand to one — the tiny things in the world that bother you versus the things that blow you away. It takes a lot to blow you away, but it doesn’t take a lot to bother you, does it? The driver in front of you, the temperature, the wind messing your hair up, somebody saying something you didn’t like — or what you think somebody might have said, what you’re afraid somebody might say. Look at all the things that can bother you. How many things can genuinely blow you away? Maybe two. And yet you devote your life to this.
That’s what it means to go deeper, to the root — not just what do you want, but why do you want it? You don’t like that question, especially when it comes to relationships. “I want a relationship with someone who treats me the way I want to be treated.” That’s nice. But they don’t even know you — they’ll find out eventually. How is anyone supposed to know what you want? You have to train them, make it clear. Because their mind is the sum of their own past experiences. This isn’t natural. Every single person who has walked through life has had totally different experiences than you. Then all of a sudden, at twenty-five or thirty-five, you bump into each other. “It’s my soulmate.”
I’m not trying to be unromantic. But that person has nothing to do with you, in terms of the mind and heart. The programming that’s gone on every moment of that person’s life has nothing to do with the programming that went on in yours. You won’t look at that. You honestly think, “I met somebody who’s just like me.” They can’t be. They had totally different experiences. That alone should be a wake-up call if you don’t understand why you have so much trouble in relationships — because you honestly believe they’re you. “You said you love me. That means you know everything about me. That means you’ll behave exactly the way I want. You’ll never say anything I don’t want to hear.”
How could they know? They had a whole lifetime of experience every moment, and you weren’t there. You project your state of mind and emotions onto them, and then when they do something you didn’t expect: “How could you say that to me? I would never have said that to you. I never thought you would do that.” You weren’t there. You don’t know their programming. If they go to work and come back, whatever happened to them at work has left impressions on how they think, on their moods, on what they want — and you weren’t there. But you think they’re you. How’s that working out?
Your life becomes so much easier when you wake up and realize: “Oh, I am projecting what I want onto them, and I assume they want what I want.” We’ve been in love for at least a couple of months and I have a dream of having three children — and then all of a sudden you find out he or she doesn’t want children at all, wants to travel, wants to be a free spirit. “I didn’t know that. How was I supposed to know?”
So what does it mean to wake up? You wake up and realize there’s a truth you don’t want to hear: everybody is different from you. Not way deep inside — consciousness is one. Don’t ever let anybody take that away from you. That which is watching your mind and your heart, the sum of your learned experiences, is transcendent to both. But you can’t get there right now. Why? Because it’s very distracting. Your consciousness is distracted by what’s going on in your mind and your heart — they’re very noisy, and very distracting. Emotions are distracting, thoughts are distracting, and you get pulled down into it.
Who’s “you”? The consciousness. The awareness of being — you, in there, yourself. Consciousness gets pulled down into the chatter of the mind and the emotions of the heart, and most people never leave. That’s where they live. They think it’s all about getting the heart what it wants and the mind what it wants. That’s the only way they’ll be okay — if out there matches in here. That’s what you want: the outside world, as it unfolds, should match what’s already inside of you. Does it? Is that just naturally how it works — where everyone gets exactly what they want and it just matches the way they want?
Not only does no one else know what you want, the outside world doesn’t know what you want. It unfolds according to the laws of physics, chemistry, psychology, and nature. The outside world was not meant to match what you made up based on the experiences you had in the past. It wasn’t there at the time. It was where it was. And so everything moves through Einstein’s time-space continuum, different everywhere. But you held onto certain things from the past and brought them into the present and said to the world: “Be my way. Be my way.” You’ll sleep on the couch for three months if it’s not. “I don’t even want you thinking what I don’t want you thinking.”
And so what do you do when you wake up? You start realizing there’s no win in that. The world is not going to match you. It wasn’t meant to. The world marches to cause and effect — to science, to reality. Every event that happens causes the next event. Not one event — thousands of events happen and coalesce together to create the current moment.
Let’s get deep. Is that a true statement? The causes that have happened before, all coalescing together everywhere, create the next moment. It’s not what you want — it’s the sum total of all the causes and effects that ever happened, manifesting in this one moment. That’s what’s happening. But you think it’s about you. That is the epitome of ego: I am the center of the universe, things should be the way I want. No wonder there are wars. No wonder there’s so much disharmony. Everybody thinks they’re the center, and they expect everything around them to match what they think. Otherwise it’s wrong. What do you say when it doesn’t match what you want? “It’s wrong. You shouldn’t have done that. That’s not fair.” It has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with all these causes from the beginning of time unfolding, hitting each other, manifesting into whatever that moment is.
Psychology says man is the sum of his learned experiences. Science says reality is the sum of all the causes that made it what it is. Reality is the result of all the causes that coalesce together to create every moment that exists. And then you are the witness, the experiencer, of whatever moment you happen to be standing in. I could pick you up and drop you somewhere else and you’d be having a totally different experience. “How is it supposed to be? The way I wanted it before you moved me?” Not a chance. If I drop you in a restaurant in France: “They’re going to speak English, right? I’m not sure I like this kind of food.” It’s all about you.
It’s not about you. That moment existed before you got there, exists long after you leave, and would exist if you weren’t there. Ego up, ego down — it doesn’t matter. Ego means: I am in here and it’s all about me and everything should be about me. How can it not be that way? That’s how it is, and that’s why the world is the way it is. That’s why there’s disharmony. That’s why there are wars, hate, everything. Why do you love some people and dislike others? I’ll bet you like the ones who agree with you, and really don’t like the ones who have totally different opinions and views. It’s still about you.
And then you’re taught how to get what you want. I don’t teach that. It is not about getting what you want. It’s about finding out why you’re such a mess in there — and where in the world did you get the concept that out of 8.3 billion people on planet Earth, what matters is you? Why don’t they matter equally? They each think they matter just as much as you think you matter. What does that mean? It means you’ll never know peace while you are fighting that battle — making up inside yourself, based on your past experiences, what should be happening, and then going out day and night trying to make it be that way. And there is no peace in that.
So the ground-level question is: what do you do about this, now that you see the reality of what’s going on? If you want to have a beautiful and meaningful life, it can’t be about that. It can’t be about getting what you want — the bigger house, the right relationship, a different marriage. Those are just transient things. They come and they go. You wanted kids and a house, and then the house is in chaos and you can’t get away from it. None of it ever works. It literally can’t work. Why? One: because what you want keeps changing — how can it always be the way you want when it keeps changing? And two: even if it is the way you want, it gets old. You get used to it. It doesn’t excite you anymore. Now you need stronger vacations and all kinds of stuff.
You’re always struggling, always running. You’re running away from yourself. You stored all this stuff in there and it’s not peaceful, because some of it you both want and don’t want, based on different experiences you had at different times in your life. It’s a mess in there. And you struggle to keep it together. “Oh, she’s really together.” Why? Because she looks like she got what she wanted at this particular point in time. Or “that person’s really not together — they seem to be struggling, depressed all the time.” It just comes and goes.
What’s the answer? There is an answer. The answer is you look and you understand what you’re looking at. I call the psyche the sum of your personal mind and your personal heart. They got programmed by your past experiences. They’re very strong — and why wouldn’t they be? You had a nice experience, you want to have it again. You had a bad experience, you don’t want to have it again. So you’ve stored this programming inside, and it has defined who you think you are — but that’s not who you are. You’re the one who’s in there noticing.
People say things that are more spiritual than they realize. They say, “My mind is driving me crazy today.” My — that’s a possessive pronoun. Whose mind is it? “My heart hurts.” Whose heart is it? Who’s noticing? Do you notice when your heart hurts? Do you notice when your mind is being negative and freaking you out, when you’re scared and insecure? You notice — but you don’t pay attention to the noticer. Who is noticing? That is your way out. You are in there noticing. You notice when you feel good, you notice when you feel bad. Who’s aware?
So basically, you wake up and realize: it’s not about getting what you want and it’s not about avoiding what you don’t want. That doesn’t mean that if something nice comes to you, you renounce it. And it doesn’t mean that if something toxic comes to you, you don’t take a breath and do what you can about it. But what you do first — before anything else — is notice who’s noticing. “I am in here, and what you said to me made my heart hurt. Let me look at that.” That’s enough to start, isn’t it?
I’ll say what my teacher always said: don’t struggle with your mind, don’t struggle with your heart. Just notice. I dare you to notice. Your mind is acting up — “my wife is driving me crazy” — who is noticing this? Your heart suddenly fills with love and you’re about to run after someone. Can I take a breath? That’s the key. Can I, in here — the one who notices the state of the mind and the state of the heart at a given point in time — can I create a little space? Not suppression, not fighting — just notice. That’s the deep teaching. You’re paying attention to who’s in there, instead of just paying attention to what you see when you’re in there. You are the experiencer. You are not the experience. A thought is something you experience. An emotion is something you experience. Who does the experiencing? That’s the step back. That is deep spirituality.
So you step back, and it creates a little space. Over time, you’ll notice that you notice, and the distance between getting caught and getting pulled in becomes greater. And you’ll start having something I want to talk about.
How do you get to the point where something happens outside and you can actually handle it? Did it happen? Be straight with yourself. Something happened outside. Step back. Did it happen? Yeah — I saw it. If it didn’t happen, it wouldn’t be in here. It happened. Okay, good. Can you make it not have happened? No one has ever made something un-happen. Can you deal with it now that it happened and cannot un-happen? Not “do you like it?” Not “does it bother you?” Can you handle that it happened — because it did, and you admit it cannot un-happen?
So you have a choice. Either you handle it, deal with it, and let it go — “yes, it happened, and whether I liked it or not doesn’t change that. Can I deal with it? Can I handle the fact that it happened?” Or you can’t handle it. And in the beginning, and for a long way down the road, the honest answer is: no, I can’t handle it. It disturbed me, it created a disturbance, and I don’t want to feel that disturbance. So now I’m going to get weird. I’m going to say something, do something — throw something, run away. I will do something. Why? Because I can’t handle it.
Now we’re really down to spiritual growth. The day you understand that no matter what happens in the realm of reality, you can handle it — that’s a day. Not that you don’t do anything about it, but you don’t do something about it because you can’t handle it. If you can’t handle what happened, in my opinion, you’re the worst person to deal with it. “I can’t handle what you said.” Then you should not be the one deciding what to do about it, because you just admitted you can’t handle it. So it’s not that you don’t deal with things — you just don’t deal with them as a way of making them go away, because they’re not going to go away. If it happened, it happened.
What if they apologize? You say you accept the apology, because it makes you feel better. But if they ever do anything even close to it again, you’ll bring it right back up: “You told me you wouldn’t do that anymore. Three years ago you promised.” It’s still in there. It still bothered you. The apology gets laid on top of what happened. It gets put on top of the fact that you couldn’t handle it. It didn’t pass through. It’s not done. The white lines in the road are done. The clouds in the sky are done. But that is not done.
There’s a state called letting go. And it’s not the same as “they finally said they’re sorry and I feel better.” It’s about realizing you have a choice. This event happened. Either you let it go — you let go of the fact that you didn’t like it, you let go of the fact that it hurt you, so it’s not in there anymore, it becomes like the white lines — or you don’t. Can it become like the white lines? Of course it can. It’s over. It happened three years ago. It’s only still in there because you’re holding it there. Nothing really leaves marks in there by itself. You are holding it there, saying “I can’t handle this.”
Which is why I always challenge you: is it intelligent to store inside your heart and mind everything that has bothered you most throughout your life? Because you’re going to be disturbed. Why? Because you stored disturbance in there. And it builds.
So there’s a state where you go deeper and say: it’s not about an apology. It’s about this reality — it happened, and can I handle that? And the answer is yes. How? By relaxing, releasing, and not letting it create resistance inside of me. Just honoring the fact that at that point in time and space, that took place — and I’m deep enough to be able to handle it.
I was driving my car. Somebody ran a red light. I didn’t hit them — thank God I’m a decent driver. I skidded all around, it was terrifying, ended up on the side of the road, and the guy took off without even stopping. Is it over? Yes, the external event is over. But is it over inside of you? No. Will it ever be over inside of you? No — because now every time you’re in a car and you hear screeching, you grab the handles, you become a backseat driver telling everyone what to do. “That happened to me.” If you hold it in there, it’s going to run your life. Because everything you experience going forward gets built on top of that.
As opposed to: it took place. Of course it was disturbing. Of course it didn’t feel good. But can I handle it? Of course I can handle it. Did I want it to happen? Of course not. But that doesn’t matter — it happened. You can’t just decide how it should have been. “That should not have happened.” Fine. But before you had a name for that, it happened. And to protect yourself, you suppress it so it’s not in your mind all the time — you repress it. And then there’s my favorite: denial. People can get so lost, they deny it happened. “I can’t handle it, so I won’t think about it. That did not take place.” And so you resist it.
What’s the alternative? Don’t resist it. Experience the experience. Let it come through — maybe take some time with it, let it come through, and offer it to the universe as an experience that took place. Then what? Then deal with it. Now that you’re clear, now that you can deal with it — call the police, write down the license number. But not out of anger, not out of fear. Out of what’s called clarity. Here is a clear being dealing with a situation that unfolded.
If you are capable of reaching that state, every one of you is capable of it. And then notice: I’m saying you handle it, then deal with it. You will find that at least 90% of the time, if you can handle it, there’s nothing to deal with.
I yelled out, “Hey Sally, how are you doing?” and she just kept walking. Didn’t even turn around. Can you handle it? Of course not. “Why would she do such a thing?” Have fun trying to figure that out. She had earbuds in. But now you’ve made a neurotic mess of yourself. The next time you see her, you avoid her. This is what we do inside. Instead, you sit there and look at it and say: “I don’t need to do that.” And I really want to talk about this — “I don’t care” can mean two very different things.
One “I don’t care” means: I really care and I’m pushing it away. “I don’t care what you said. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care how you live.” You know that one. I think you do care. I think you suppressed it and it’s building in there, and you’re just saying “I don’t care” because you don’t want to deal with it. That’s one “I don’t care.”
The other “I don’t care” — I’ve never talked to you about this one — is when you truly, genuinely don’t care. “I don’t care that the white lines are sometimes yellow.” They are, did you notice? Is that okay with you?
I’ll tell the story again. There was a guy who used to paint the lines on the road — you’ve seen them, they sit in the little truck and pull a handle. He got fired. Why? Dribbles. Every stretch of road he did had dribbles at the end. His boss told him numerous times: “I’m not living with the dribbles. You’ve got to do better.” He got fired. Now I guarantee you, when that person drives down the road three years later and sees a dash line with a dribble on it, he wants to stop. He kept it inside.
See the difference? You just drive right by that dribble. But he let that one experience determine the state of his being. Something that was disturbing, that he couldn’t let go of, keeps him disturbed forever.
So the “I don’t care” I’m talking about is: I’m driving down the road, I got fired years ago over the dribbles, I see one now, and nothing happens inside of me. “I don’t care. That happened. Somebody else dribbled. It’s none of my business. It was three years ago.” There’s an “I don’t care” that is simply, genuinely not caring. There’s a cloud. If you turn it sideways, it looks like your grandfather who passed away. “It’s a cloud. I don’t care if it looks like my grandfather.” And you actually don’t care.
I’ll be honest — I’m not perfect at this. I’m driving down the road, I pull into a single-lane stretch, the speed limit is 55 and the person in front of me is doing 35, I’m in a rush, I wait for them to speed up and they don’t, and I can’t pass. How are you doing? Because it’s a perfect case for “I don’t care.” It will take the time it takes, and the person will drive the way they want to drive. Talking to them from my car is not helping anything. We’re talking about reality here.
In my experience — because I told you I’m not perfect at this — I’m driving and trying to let go. I’m thinking, letting go. And two blocks later they put their blinker on and turn. I wasted two blocks of my life not being okay. And my favorite: as they’re driving that slow, an opening comes and I pass them — and a mile down the road there’s a stop sign and they pull right up behind me. Have fun with yourself.
Dare to look. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have passed — it just means: dare to look at what’s going on in there. If you’re disturbing yourself over the weather, over the driver, over what somebody said — or over what you’re not sure they said, or in case they ever say something you don’t want them to say — no wonder we’re disturbed.
Spirituality is about letting go of the impressions made in there that don’t need to be there. They’re not doing anything but creating neurosis, making it hard to sleep. Things that happened five years ago. People get divorced and for the next five or ten years of their life, if they hear the person’s name, they get upset. If they drive by the restaurant where they used to go together, they’ll never go back. They didn’t get divorced internally — the outside changed but the inside is still doing the same old job. And you have dreams about it again. And if anybody acts even a little bit like that person used to act, “I don’t need another one of you in my life.”
The alternative is: I got married. We had a nice marriage. It got all screwed up. It’s over. That’s what happened. I genuinely don’t care if I ever see that person again. I’m open. It’s not a problem. We had a dance. And you have actually let go.
That’s what it comes down to. Can you take the weather? I always talk about that. Can it get hot in Florida? Of course it gets hot — 98 degrees. Do you complain? Of course. What good does it do? I actually teach in one of my books: want a guru? The weather is your guru. See how high you can stay based on the weather, because you will complain. “I like it between 68 and 74, but only with relative humidity below 50, because my hair frizzes.” You’ve just set yourself up to not like the day — because the weather is going to be what it is, and it couldn’t care less what you’re saying.
So you sit there and realize the basic principle: I understand I’m not going to change it. Either I bother myself about it or I don’t. Binary. And I don’t want to bother myself about it. In fact, I’m not going to. I don’t care if it’s hot and I’m sweating — that’s what it is. If it’s cold, I’ll put more clothes on. But what if I put something on that makes me look heavy?
I don’t care. It’s fine. Now you’re getting down to what the real teachings are. Why do you care what other people think about you? Do you understand how deep that question is? Why do you care what other people think about you? They’re the sum of their learned experiences. So you put on something that makes you look heavy, and they fall in love with you because their grandmother was like that and they loved her so much. You see? It’s not about you — it’s about them. Caring what other people think about you is a non-starter. One, because they’re really thinking about you based on themselves. And two, because you have no idea what they’re actually thinking.
You put on that coat and you’re not thinking, “Oh, that person’s grandmother liked this look.” You’re thinking your own version of the story, projecting your own experience. You have no idea what they’re thinking. How do you know what someone is thinking about you? You don’t. You can’t possibly. They’ve had their entire life to formulate their opinions, their hopes, their dreams, their preferences, and their judgments. And you are sitting there carrying what you imagine they think about you. Oh, “I could tell they changed their gait when they looked at me.” You have to come to the point where you accept reality enough to say: it’s not about what they think. Reality is reality. I’ve learned to handle it.
I put the coat on. My mother used to complain that I looked heavy in that coat, and now I’m looking around for another coat. What a waste of time. Put the coat on. You know who doesn’t care? Einstein. Ever seen Einstein’s hair? He’s up there in his mind doing formulas. He couldn’t care less what it looks like. Be free. And what’s funny is that when I was growing up, if you had rips in your jeans, people felt sorry for you. Now it’s the coolest thing — the more rips the better, and every rip costs another twenty dollars.
So how do you know what anybody is feeling or thinking? You don’t. You project yourself out there, you kill yourself worrying, you feel rejected. I have seen situations in my life — fortunately early on — where I’d say something or give a talk, and I’d feel terrible about it, thinking I really made a mess of myself. And somebody walks up to me and says, “What you said changed my life. I’d never looked at it that way. Thank you.” And I’m in there tormenting myself. How do you know?
So you eventually reach the point where you say: how about if I come from honestly within myself? That’s what I’ve learned. Come honestly from within myself — not performing for somebody else, but projecting from within myself to do the best I can to create the most beauty, love, understanding, and compassion in the world I live in. That’s my motive. Do I do it well? I don’t know. You ask a bunch of people and you’ll get different answers. That which turns somebody on turns somebody else off. So you can’t do it that way.
I’m begging you — you would change everything if you listened to me. Come inside and say: I’m in here. The people out there don’t decide who I am. I don’t have to behave according to them. I have to behave from the deepest place I can find within myself. If they accept it, fine. If they reject it, fine. I’m okay.
Say I want to play music. I don’t play very well, let’s say, but I love singing, love playing, singing my heart out. I don’t care whether you like it or not. I’m not going to stop singing my heart out because somebody thinks I hit a note out of tune — because then I’m not okay. Do you understand that?
And here’s the thing — I’ve seen this throughout my life. You live like that, and they all love you. Your energy is so free, so open. They admire it. They literally admire the energy you’re emanating, and everybody wants to be around you no matter what you look like. I’ve met some very great saints, truly great people, who aren’t conventionally good-looking at all. But it has nothing to do with their looks. Everyone wants to be around them, everyone wants to be close to them. Because they’re emanating their freedom, their love.
And you start understanding: it’s not about getting people to like you. It’s about being true to yourself. Finding the deepest place inside yourself to come from — not your junk having to express itself, but where you can see clearly. And you realize: okay, I would like to bring love into the world. You wouldn’t be here if that weren’t true. I’d like to bring love into the world. But I have trouble. Why? Because there are some people I can’t love.
And I’ll tell you a secret: until you let go of the fact that you can’t love people, you won’t love them. You’ll project your concept of how someone has to be in order to be lovable, worthy of your love. You’ll reach the point where that question wouldn’t even enter your mind. Everyone is worthy of your love — the mosquito, the cockroach. If it’s running away, it doesn’t want to get caught. That doesn’t mean you don’t deal with it. I’m not trying to teach you how to be. I want you to understand that there’s a deep part of your being that is not built on the foundation of your learned experiences.
You’ve learned how to handle different things that you couldn’t handle before — you’ve worked with them, you can work with them. But do you have things inside of you from the past that bother you, that you feel shouldn’t have happened, and that you don’t deal with? Yes or no? Would you like them not to be in there? Are they doing any good for you? They happened in kindergarten, in your formative years. There’s some stuff you want to let go of. Why do you want that stuff in there? Does it have to be in there? Of course not.
Proof: when it comes back up — and it does come back up in different situations — you push it back down. What if you didn’t? What if you saw that it got stimulated, starting to come back up, and you took one look at it and said: I don’t want that running my life. I don’t want that determining who I am.
People fall in love and one wants children, the other doesn’t. Let’s dig down a little. Why don’t you want children? “I just don’t want to. I’ve never wanted to.” Why? “I don’t really talk about it.” But what if we did talk about it? “I didn’t have such a great childhood. And I don’t want to bring children into this world who have to have a childhood like I had. I don’t want to put my children through that.” And that’s where your preferences come from. Experiences. That stuff is what I want you to let go of — not because I’m telling you to have children, but because I don’t want that programming running your life.
So look at it. Catch yourself before you react. Pay attention to what’s going on in there and say: I don’t need this in there. The trouble is, it was stored with pain, so it comes back with pain. You have to be able to handle the release of that pain — not rationalize it, not avoid having children or whatever it is, just so you don’t have to feel it. Because if it stays in there, it’ll be something else that runs your whole life.
So you sit there and say: the purpose of this day — ready? — I’m going to go through this day without storing more. I’m not telling you to deal with the big stuff yet. Why? For the same reason: if you’ve never played the piano, do not sit down and try to play Tchaikovsky or Beethoven or Mozart. That doesn’t mean eventually you can’t learn to. So if you’ve got all that stuff stored in there, just say: as I go through this one day, I’m not putting more in. I’ve got enough in there already. I’m going to handle what I can. The driver, the weather, Sally not saying hello. I’m going to see where I can let go — and that’s what I’m going to do today.
You will not do this perfectly in any way, shape, or form. There will be things that hit your stuff and you’ll get dropped, pulled out. Then at night, sit down. Take inventory — quickly, no judgment. No judgment. That’s another problem — you think you’re supposed to be able to do it perfectly. Can you play the scales? Not perfectly. Can you play the C scale? You forget the sharps? Then practice. Will you get better? Answer me — will you get better if you practice? If you do a sport, do you get better at the sport when you practice? Then why is this not a sport? The sport of not putting more in there today. Of course I can’t do it perfectly, just like I can’t play piano or a sport perfectly to start. But if I practice letting go, if I practice saying “I’m going to go through the day and not put more in there” — what happens if you see yourself putting more in there? Relax. Let go. Just look at it. “I don’t need to complain about the weather or the driver or about Sally not saying hello. I can genuinely not care. I can let go.”
It’s hot — fine. It’s cold — fine. Sally didn’t say hello — fine. Have fun with it, make it a game. But “Sally didn’t say hello” — that’s a big one? It is not. There are 8.3 billion people on planet Earth who also didn’t say hello. Learn to open up and let go as much as you can.
And then in the evening: you did the best you could. And here’s something deep — do not ever judge the results of the best you can do. Do not ever judge the results. If you did the best you could, that’s it. It’s like saying “I can’t play the scales, so I’m never touching the piano again.” That’s ridiculous. You do the best you can. And if you’re not doing the best you can, that’s a different story — but just do the best you can to let go.
When you sit down at night, you’ll see the things you didn’t let go of. Accept that. Honor that. Those are your practice rounds. “Do better next time.” No judgment, no shame, no blame. This is how you grow spiritually. Look to see what you could have let go of today and didn’t, and then wake up tomorrow morning a little cleaner than you were the day before — because you used the day to let go.
If you do this, your whole life will change. You’ll be happier. Why? Because you didn’t make yourself unhappy. The more you let go, the more openness there is. And because you practice, you can let go of bigger and bigger things, until eventually — and this is where I want you to be, because I care for you — you wake up in the morning and say: bring it on. Bring what on? Whatever it is — come and get it. I don’t want it in here. All it’s doing is causing pain and sorrow and suffering and anxiety.
And you start becoming what’s called a letting-go machine. It’s all about letting go. You’ll get higher and higher. You’ll notice nothing brings you down. And eventually you get really high and you’ll notice something: underneath all that suppressed stuff, there’s Shakti. There’s ecstasy, there’s joy. It’s just welling up inside of you, but it gets blocked by your stuff. So at some point you let go of enough stuff and you start feeling that flow going upward.
And then you’re not trading off that beautiful feeling of peace and love because of the way the guy in front of you is driving. You’re not giving up that beauty and love and peace you feel inside because your spouse came home in a bad mood and slammed the door. He or she needs some space — they can have it. You couldn’t care less. Because you genuinely don’t care. And when they come out, there’s love, understanding, and compassion — rather than “how could you treat me like that?”
I hope this helps you work with yourself. This is what it means to work with yourself — not get what you want, not renounce things. Things will come, things will go. If it comes, say thank you. If it goes, say thank you. Because they’re both for your growth.
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.
