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. I think one of the great misunderstandings — and the mind will always misunderstand about surrender, about acceptance, about spirituality — is that if you surrender, if you tolerate what’s going on, you’ll end up getting what you want. Can I say that again? If you surrender, if you struggle inside to try to accept what’s going on, there’s this fairness, there’s this justice, this grace, that you’ll be rewarded by getting what you want outside.
There are periods in your growth where you will see that. You’ll someday find out that you don’t need those. You don’t even want those. Those are the times where you have trouble surrendering, you have trouble accepting, and you try to make it so that you’re okay. But that’s not growing, because what you’re basically saying is: I want things to be the way I want them to be. That’s the only way I can be okay. And that by trying to let go of the ego, by trying to surrender, I’ll get them that way.
What you’ll find out as you grow — as I just said — is that your real growth happens when what’s happening outside or inside is not tolerable to you, is not comfortable to you.
You reach a point where you can actually be conscious enough to say, why is this not comfortable to me? There are just events happening outside of me. I keep trying to teach you — and I know, and no question — they’re happening everywhere. Not the same events, but there are events happening on every single spot on the entire planet, every single moment, aren’t there?
You seem to be okay with those. They’re not bothering you. If you read the paper, then that’s an event you’re getting. But I don’t care — you don’t read the paper all the time, and there are 800 million things going on just on planet Earth that you’re not experiencing, and I’m telling you, you’re fine with those.
What do you mean you don’t complain? You demand that they change. You have concepts and views and opinions and preferences and hopes and dreams about those things. Somehow they’re okay. I don’t understand why, because the people that are on the spot you’re in think your spot’s okay. That is the major awakening.
When you realize — gee, you know — that’s the truth. I am capable of surrendering and accepting 99.99999% of what’s going on in the universe. In fact, I am perfectly capable of accepting, honoring, and respecting what goes on on Mars, Jupiter, et cetera. I could handle it. How about you guys? Can you handle it?
And then there are all these things going on on planet Earth — can you handle them? Yes. Except there. Why would you not be able to handle reality? Why would you not be able to? Why is there an exception? Because I’ve had past experiences personally. I’ve had those experiences. I didn’t have the other experiences, but I had those experiences.
Yeah, but remember everybody else has experiences too. And you’ve had every moment in life — you had experiences — but some of them were not pleasant. Some of them, when they came in, didn’t sit well inside. They caused disturbance inside of me. Keep remembering the other 99.9999% that are just as much going on — they didn’t do that. They keep trying to stretch you from personal to impersonal. Impersonal is the truth, isn’t it? It really is going on everywhere, isn’t it? And if I plucked you out and put you on Mars, you’d be having trouble with Mars. Whether you liked what was going on there — there’s a clue.
You’re only having trouble with the things that you are personally experiencing. They’re no different than the things you’re not experiencing. You’ll make me cry, because I know no one will listen. Here you are experiencing this. He’s wearing red. It bothers me. It reminds me of bullfighters, and I don’t like bullfighters. Okay, what do you do now? I just turned to the left, by the way. All you have to do is turn to the left, look up, look down, and all of a sudden it’s not bothering you, is it? Why is this 0.0001% — and that’s not even close to how small it is — bothering you, and the rest doesn’t bother you? That is when you have begun — just begun — to grow spiritually.
Because that’s the real question. And that’s a serious question: why? The answer is — and I’ll do it very quickly because we do it all the time, but it’s very important — because when there’s some experience that happened to you, which are just experiences happening to you… some people are born, people die, people get sick, people get well, people like you, people don’t like you. It all happens. Maybe you notice. Don’t worry — it’s happening everywhere else too. Everything’s happening. It’s a happening place, the whole universe — a very happening place.
But if what comes in at the moment you happen to be experiencing comes in and doesn’t feel good and is disturbing, you don’t like that. Maybe you know that. Well, the why it’s disturbing is very deep. Let’s start at the deepest level. If something hits your body — something that’s happening — and you have a nervous system, which you do, depending on how hard it hits your body, or how cold it is, or how hot it is — hear me — it stimulates the nervous system, and it doesn’t always feel good, does it?
Why? Because that’s the nature of the nervous system. It’s meant to be sending you messages. It’s not doing something wrong — it’s sending a message saying maybe this is too cold for your body. Not for you in there. And you don’t have temperature inside — the consciousness experiencing what’s being sent back from the outside world. You don’t get cold, you don’t get hot. You experience cold and hot. Who does? You, the consciousness.
So the body is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. It is sending messages back to kind of tell you, “Hey, I’m out here also. I know you’re lost in your thoughts up there, but I’m freezing, I’m boiling, or this hurts. Don’t stretch that much. You are lifting too much.” It is trying to tell you something. It’s your friend. Pain is your friend. That pain — the physical pain — is the body communicating to you: “I know you’re not in your body, you’re back here experiencing things. I better wake you up. I better stop you from thinking what you’re thinking. Hey, hello, I count too.” That is the purpose of your nervous system — to communicate to you, to make adjustments. There’s nothing wrong with that.
The trouble is that if it doesn’t feel good, you don’t like it. What does that mean? That’s a different — that’s a psychological state. Liking and not liking are psychological states. Experiencing is a reality state. I’m experiencing cold. Alright. What about it? It’s waking me up. I need to go inside. I need to put a coat on, wear a blanket. Okay, very good. I’m glad you did that. That’s wonderful. You’re a very wise person. You behaved in accordance with the harmony of what’s going on.
Now what happens? Now you’re afraid of the cold. Now you wanna move to Florida. Listen to me, I’ll build it slowly. It left an impression in your mind that is no longer the experience you’re having. That’s the problem. There’s nothing wrong with the nervous system telling you and you adjusting to it. So surrender doesn’t mean don’t put the coat on. Come on — surrender is deeper than that. It’s basically saying, be here now. If you’re cold and that’s really happening, adjust. Come down and help. There’s something about it right now — we’re talking about your body. Later we’ll talk about more, but help your physical body that’s having trouble.
But then don’t make it a thing. Don’t sit there and say, “Now I don’t like cold. I’m afraid. I heard the weather forecast is gonna be getting down to 40.” Now you’ve built something inside your head that’s not even going on yet. That’s the problem. And you do that about everything.
If it doesn’t feel good right now — we’ve talked about the body’s cold and hot — but what if somebody says something to you and it comes in and it’s got this caustic vibration to it that feels yucky? Ever happen? You don’t even know the person. Bad vibes. Can that happen? It is bad. It didn’t feel good. Okay, fine. Maybe you walk away. You need to deal with it, but you don’t need to not like that person, or people of that nationality, or people whose hair is a certain color, or a certain religion, because that person whose vibes weren’t good left a bad impression on you and you kept the impression beyond having to deal with the situation. You made a thing out of it.
You realize — I just listed why people are prejudiced. They’ve had experiences, including their parents teaching them. They have things that left impressions on their mind that are not happening. That’s the problem. Because you have all kinds of impressions, and what you stored in there, I guarantee you, is everything that ever bothers you. And if it bothers you enough, it becomes a traumatic experience. I can’t get my consciousness, my awareness, off of what happened — years later it’s still bothering me, things remind me of it. That’s not natural. It’s not even happening, and you’re doing that.
If you collect enough of those — and you have, throughout your life, anything that bothers you, you kept — so now there’s so much in there that you stored that almost anything outside stimulates something. It’s not hard to get upset, is it? It’s not hard to be disturbed, is it? All kinds of things. The tiniest little thing — I told you. You’re telling somebody, beautiful moment, it’s just this beautiful moment, you’re full of love and you’re melting, it’s so beautiful, and you can’t even help yourself, and out of your mouth comes: “God, I love you so much. I’ve never loved anybody so much my whole life. I can’t even handle it. I love you so much.” And the other person melts. “Yeah, I love you too.” And then you thought they said “I love you” with a different tone. No, that’s not gonna work, is it? Every tone, everything. Somebody standing too close, too far away, talking too loud, talking too soft. Hear me? Everything bothers you.
But not everything. Why? Because you’re not stupid. If it’s in there and it’s gonna bother you, you already know that. So you’re gonna go outside and manipulate the world so that what unfolds in front of you doesn’t bother you. Anybody ever do that? Anybody ever not do that?
I’m building it for you. So now, not only do I have the core — let’s make sure we’re talking about both sides. It happened. It was cold, it was hot. She didn’t say a nice thing. Somebody forgot my birthday. Something happened. Did it feel good? No. Can you let it go? That’s the other side. Does it have to be a thing that from now on every time you have a birthday, you’re afraid someone’s gonna forget it, and you make a big deal out of your birthday to make sure everybody remembers, so you don’t have to feel what it’s like if they don’t remember? Because you don’t wanna take that chance. Because that’s what it gets like in there. You start living your life to try to manipulate the world outside so that when it comes in, it doesn’t hit your stuff. Otherwise you’re in trouble. And so is everybody else.
Why can’t you let it be? You can’t surrender, really, because you have so much stuff inside that you haven’t surrendered to, and now you can’t surrender to the outside. It has to be the way you want it to be. And that is the cause of suffering.
Why is that the cause of suffering? I thought the cause of suffering is the thing that happened — the cold, or the person didn’t say something nice. No, that’s not the cause of suffering. That’s an event that you experienced. It came in, it passed through. You learn from it. You learn that some people in a bad mood — they had bad pizza last night and they said something mean. Can’t they? They could do that. Is that right with you? People do things because they’re messed up, not because you’re messed up, right? But you get messed up because they’re messed up. And then your whole life becomes attempting to manipulate everything so that it’s not the way it was when you didn’t like it. And that’s the life you’re living. And you wonder why you’re disturbed. You wonder why you’re scared. You wanna have anxiety? That’ll create anxiety, won’t it?
Maybe what happened to me when I was three, when I climbed that tree — and now I’m 33 and my children are climbing, and I won’t go with them. I won’t know, and I don’t want them to climb a tree either. Why? Because you stored that in there. People climb trees all the time, children, don’t they? So if they’re doing something stupid, like going on a limb that you could see is gonna crack — it came in, you deal with it. You don’t tell the kid you can never go anywhere by yourself. You don’t extrapolate it out to where you’re just a neurotic mess because you don’t want the things to happen that bother you.
Before I asked you: when you tell me it bothered you before, is it bothering you now? Yes. Because you’re making it bother you now. It’s not happening. Your whole childhood, all your formative years — they’re not happening anymore. They shouldn’t be bothering you. And if you wanna hold onto everything that ever bothered you and say it’s gonna bother you again, you’re in trouble. And you are. That’s the problem.
So it’s not that things happen. It’s not that there’s cold. It’s not that some people aren’t nice. It’s not that things happen that do feel disturbing when they come in. I call that the prime reaction. It’s prime — it’s the real thing. It just feels disturbing. The vibration was bad — cold, hot, whatever it is. There’s your primary event. But you make secondary and tertiary events out of it. You store it your whole life, and now everything bothers you, and nothing to do with it. That’s why life is tough.
Life is not tough because it can get cold. That’s just an experience, just an event. It can come in, it can go. Deal with it. Of course you deal with it. Supposed to be an ascetic, standing in the cold or something? I don’t know. You wanna do that? Do it. But more, what they’re trying to teach you is: I can handle discomfort. If you can handle discomfort, you don’t need to stand in the cold till you freeze. Why? Because you’re perfectly fine with cold when it’s happening. I don’t have to make it happen. If you can handle everything, it doesn’t mean you don’t deal with it. You deal with it in the moment, it needs to be dealt with, and then it’s gone. It passed through. It’s like the wind. It doesn’t have to stay in there.
It’s not worth it to build up every single thing that could ever go wrong because of a problem you had before, and try to make sure that every moment doesn’t happen like that again. No wonder it’s hard to live in there. That is the cause of suffering. That’s what the Buddha taught you. The Buddhist teachings are very, very simple. All of life is suffering. Well, why? I don’t stub my toe every day. No, but you cause yourself to suffer every day. Don’t you see — I just described why the Buddha is right. The first noble truth ever: all life is suffering. I make it that way. How? I’m suffering from the time I wake up in the morning to the time I go to bed at night, and then I can’t sleep anyway, so I suffer. It’s a mess, right?
But Buddhist teaching gives me chills up my spine when I quote the second noble truth, because they’re so deep. And the deeper you go, the more you honor and respect it. The cause of suffering is preference. They normally translate that as desire, but great saints of the past have used the word preference. What’s the difference between preference and desire? Nothing. Guess what — the preference comes first. The desire to have it happen is second. The preference is the core. So the cause of suffering is preference?
Well, maybe the cause of suffering is sickness. No. If you don’t mind getting sick, you go through a situation with an open mind, an open heart, and you learn. You meet the doctors, you just go through the experience. You learn about the technology, you learn about MRIs and CT machines. You’re open to the experience and you don’t suffer. You go through it.
But what if it’s so bad that you’re gonna die? You get fascinated — I understand I am about to find out what happens after death. The age-old question that everybody’s always asked, and there are all these philosophies about it, and teachings, and do’s and don’ts. Just throw it out because I am about to experience whether I’m still there after this body dies. And if so, what’s it like? You will know. So you don’t suffer, no matter what happens, if you don’t have a preference that it doesn’t happen. It’s steep. You don’t suffer.
So that’s very, very deep. And then the Buddhist third noble truth — to end suffering, end preference — which again is totally misunderstood. They take it as renounce, get rid of preferences, get rid of desire. Not a chance in the world. That’s not deep enough. You don’t try to get rid of preference. “I like this person. I will not do anything because of it. I’ll just give it to God.” Well, you won’t like God very much by the time you lose everything. It’s not a matter of renouncing the preference. It’s a matter of understanding why you have a preference.
Buddhists say work at the root — that’s deeper. How do I renounce my preference? “I really like pizza, but I’m not gonna eat it. I’m gonna give it to God.” Oh, I want it. “No, I’m not gonna eat it.” You’re suppressing. That’s a form of suppression. You have to go deeper. Why do I want this? Why do I need this? Why do I not want that? Why do I have a preference? And if you look in there, you’re gonna find out it’s because you’ve had past experiences that trained you, taught you to like this and not like that. You didn’t just make it up.
You did not make up your preferences. If you like going out on a lake and boating, maybe your father did. Maybe you saw a movie, something got in there, and from some age you grew up with that, and now you have a preference to be that way. And you may suffer because you can’t do it anymore if your boat breaks. You hear me? It’s a matter of looking inside, and you’ll always find the same thing. You’ll always find why you don’t like something and why you do like something. It’s because you have these scars, these past experiences that you held inside that now manifest as desires or fears.
What are your fears? Are you afraid of something you never heard about or don’t know anything about? No. What are you afraid of? Are you afraid of something that happened before that you really liked? No. You’re afraid that something that happened to you before that was not comfortable might happen again. And so you don’t want it to happen again. You have to be willing to let go of those impressions. It’s all about these impressions that got left in there, and now they’re so complex it’s ridiculous.
The example, right? You’re married to somebody named Ben. You really loved him very much. It was tremendous. There were years so beautiful, and it didn’t end up so nice, and you got divorced. It was an ugly divorce. And now your best friend comes up to you, like two years later, and says, “Hey, I met this wonderful guy. Unbelievable. He perfectly likes the stuff you like.” And you say, “Wow, I wanna meet him! I wanna meet him. What’s his name?” “Ben.” That was your ex’s name. “Oh no. I’ve had enough Ben for a lifetime. I ain’t doing it.” And you mean it. You mean it. That’s what’s hilarious. Those two Bens have nothing to do with each other. That’s called a psychological problem, and that’s because you allowed those impressions to stay in there.
I tell you, some of you have been divorced — maybe you haven’t — but if it still bothers you, if you’re still throwing darts at the picture, if you’re still tearing the pictures in half, if you’re still throwing out half the album, if the wedding album is getting burned on a regular basis page by page, I don’t think you got divorced. You hear me? You still are having a relationship with the guy or the gal — a strong one too. You think about him all the time.
So you wake up and you realize that the cause of suffering is that you have stored these impressions from the past instead of letting them go. As soon as they happen, let them go. Fine — yes, it wasn’t comfortable. Yes, I got scared. Yes, I felt jealous. Yes, it didn’t work out. Yes, I had a bad day. You just learn. That’s what surrender means. You surrender the part of you that would have resisted. It has nothing to do with the outside. You surrender the part of you that would have kept that thing in there so it made a mess of you for the rest of your life.
Have you done that? Do any of you have things in there? That is why you’re suffering. And that is why spirituality is so difficult — because you’re trying to keep that stuff in there and then pray to God to get it the way you need it to be so you feel okay, even though the stuff that’s in there is saying to God, “Help me keep inside of me that which keeps me from you.” Instead of: come and get it, every day, every moment. You want a piece of me? Here it is. And you learn. That’s what letting go means.
We’ll talk about the outside in a minute, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about in here. Are you resisting because of the garbage you have in there? Use it as an opportunity to let go of yourself. That is what Christ meant when he said die to be reborn. Because that is like death — going through that stuff that you didn’t want to happen to start with.
Did you know that when you were a 5-year-old and you’re now 55 years old, if something hits your stuff, it feels the same as it did when you were five? You know that. You walk in the kitchen and there’s a smell. It reminds you of what your mother cooked and you loved your mother. All of a sudden you start crying. You can walk in the kitchen and start smelling something and walk out of there so fast if you hated your mother.
And you wake up and realize there’s a root to these things. Are you willing to let go? That’s what letting go means. That’s what surrender means. You think it means surrender outside? No. It means surrender inside, so you’re not holding onto what was just trying to come up and go out. That stuff does not want to be in there. That’s why it keeps coming up. You think it keeps coming up because the devil’s down there causing you trouble? No. The Shakti’s down there and she wants to flow, but this stuff is in the way.
You listen to me — there’s beautiful energy in there that’s feeding you all the time. It’s blocked because you stored the stuff in there, and now you’re out there defending the blockage. Anybody ever get defensive? Does anybody ever get defensive? What are you defending? The part of me I’m trying to get rid of. The part that can’t handle what you said. The part that can’t handle what you did. I said — even though I didn’t say it, but they didn’t say it. Don’t worry about it. But they think I did. So what? Somebody else thinks — like, I don’t think crazy things. Anyway, yours are crazy — someone thinks other people’s are not. The truth of the matter is you have no idea what somebody else is thinking. You are projecting what you would be thinking onto them and then defending yourself.
So you basically get up and you realize life is an opportunity to grow every minute, every second. Good experiences, bad experiences. When they happen, they’re real. How do you know? Well, they got in there and you feel them hitting your stuff. Let go. Letting go means letting go of your resistance to your past stuff coming up. There is past stuff in there, and you push it right back down when it comes up, and you avoid situations that would touch it. “I’m not going to that party — Ben might be there.” But you’re in Europe. “Yeah, but you never know — he shows up everywhere.”
And you just finally get to the point where you wake up — and that’s the purpose of these talks — and you realize, wait, I’ve got this all backwards. I’m sitting here saying I wanna defend and protect the stuff that’s in here. I have to struggle, then. I have to figure out what to do. I have to worry that things won’t be the way I want. And you eventually wake up and you realize, no. I don’t want to protect the stuff that’s in here. I want to help let it go. If it needs to come up, I want it to come up. Doesn’t mean it’s easy. But at least you have the right attitude. Your attitude is: I don’t want this stuff in here. I don’t care how much it hurts. I don’t care how much it hurt when it happened. I don’t want this in here.
There. Now you’re on the spiritual path. You just get to the point — and that is the point — where you realize, wait a minute. I don’t wanna run around making everything be the way he wants or she wants, which is what you do. “I have the right to like this.” Yeah, you sure do. And you have the right to suffer also. Because if you don’t get what you want, you suffer. You get what you want, you’re afraid to lose it. If you get what you don’t want, you suffer. If you don’t get what you don’t want, you feel relieved and hope it doesn’t happen again. Is that not true?
If you get something you really, really want, you get jealous, you get possessive, you cling to it, you’re afraid of losing it. So that doesn’t sound like such a great win. Isn’t it true that if something happens that you don’t want, you suffer for sure? And isn’t it true that if something might happen that you don’t want — even though it hasn’t happened — you suffer? Pay attention. You understand that you live it every moment of your life.
But you don’t do anything about it. You think the answer is to get it the way you want it to be so it doesn’t hit the bad stuff. Get it the way you want it to be so it hits the good stuff. And get busy — making everything, every minute, every person, everything be the way you want it to be so that you don’t have to be bothered. No. The answer is: why am I bothered? You’re bothered because you stored bother inside of you. You’ve done it your entire life. Anytime anything bothered you, you stored it in there.
I bet you could list the worst experience that ever happened to you. You stored that in there. They’re over. I don’t understand — how can that happen? Something happened 55 years ago, and because you stored it in there, it doesn’t get old. It just stays in there, blocked inside of you. And not only do blockages cause you to suffer and cause you to struggle, they block the Shakti flow. That’s why most people don’t even know there’s a Shakti flow. There’s a natural flow of joy, of ecstasy, of love, of peace flowing inside of you that is being blocked by all this stuff so it can’t come up. It’s trying to push its way up. That’s why the stuff keeps coming up. You push it right back down.
So there’s a foundation for what we’re talking about when we started. Spiritual growth is not about getting what you want. Spiritual growth is not about thinking it’s all about having it be the way you want it so that you don’t suffer. It’s: why are you suffering? The event didn’t make you suffer. She’s standing right next to you. The same event is happening. She doesn’t suffer, because she didn’t have the past experiences you had. How many ways can I say it till you finally wake up? It’s about getting rid of that stuff that you have stored inside.
If every single thing that ever disturbed you, you keep inside — you are going to be disturbed. Why? Because you’ve collected disturbance. So the answer is not to go out there and struggle and try to make everybody be the way you want them to be. The answer is to let go of your stuff when it comes up.
Now the question becomes: can you do that? Can you let go of every single thing you stored in there? Of course you can. Of course you can. When it comes back up, do you push it down? Just don’t push it back down. Believe me. No, come on. But you can’t handle it. It’s disturbing. It was disturbing five years ago, 20 years ago, five minutes ago, and it’s disturbing now. Maybe I’m gonna say it: maybe you need to learn how to handle disturbance.
Maybe it’s just like when it’s cold out and your nerves are telling you it’s cold — can you handle it? Yes. Now what? Deal with it. First handle it, be okay with it. If you’re not okay with it, you’re just gonna be suffering about it. It’s cold. Okay. I need to get inside. I need to borrow a coat. I need to do something. But I’m doing it with love. I’m doing it with understanding. I’m doing it — you know what? — as an act of service to my body. I’m not even doing it for me. I’m not doing it because of past experiences. I’m just sitting there saying, I have a responsibility to deal with the body reasonably. And guess what — the body’s telling me it’s cold, it is hot, this person’s talking mean to me.
Now you get psychological resistance as opposed to physiological. It’s the same. You have a nervous system outside that’s communicated to you, and you have this psychological system inside that you built. You built your ego. Nobody’s in there but you. Are you willing to own it and realize — whoa — it can be really nice in there. So nice you can’t even imagine. Most of you have never experienced it.
And again — I think it’s funny — like I said, I’m a nice Jewish Yogi. Christ’s teachings are phenomenal. “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that leaves the mouth of God.” What it means by “man does not live by bread alone” — it means you don’t live by the outside. There’s inside energy that can feed you and does. “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that leaves the mouth of God.” That’s the Shakti, that’s the spirit, and it can flow freely inside no matter what’s happening outside.
And so the answer is very simple. What caused the problem? You not being able to handle life. What is the solution? You being able to handle life. And that’s where the essence of everything I teach is — how to learn to handle life, not how to learn to manipulate life so that you can handle it. That’s not growth.
Let’s face these here. “I’m having trouble with the relationship. I’m gonna give you a list of things I want you to do that will make it so I don’t have trouble with the relationship. And I’m gonna check every single day, three times a day, to have you write an essay on how you’re doing them.” What have I just done? I got stuck in myself and I’m manipulating everything outside of me so that I can handle what I can’t handle. There are people who do what I just told you.
And basically you get to the point where you see the answer is very simple — the problem is that you can’t handle it, that you didn’t handle it, you couldn’t handle it. The solution is that you can handle it and you do handle it. But I can’t handle it. It hurts. It’s scary even to think about it. So I don’t know why you’re telling me that. How can I do that?
I’m a very loving, compassionate person. I understand. Is there stuff in there that’s hard to handle? Is there stuff in here you don’t wanna handle? Is there stuff in there you haven’t been able to handle? Fine. The teacher shouldn’t just say handle it — that’s not the teaching. We need to learn to handle it. It’s a learning process.
There will be things that happen that are pretty minor. It’s cold, it’s hot. I always use the example of the driver in front of you. Everyone yells at me for using that example. It’s a perfect example. Do you ever get upset at the driver in front of you driving 50 miles an hour under the speed limit, not using their blinker, stepping on their brakes all the time? Has anybody ever talked to the driver in front of them, but it’s not doing any good? He’s causing so much disturbance for no good reason.
I told you before — if it gets like that… my favorite is: someone’s driving 20 miles an hour below the speed limit. 50 mile-per-hour speed limit, they’re driving 30 miles an hour. It happens, doesn’t it? And it happens to be a dotted line and there’s no one coming and you get to pass. And so you still — it’s an aggressive move to pull out and floor it and go past the person, use your blinker and go back in. Okay, fine. You dealt with that energy. One mile later, you stop at a stop sign. The driver pulls right behind you, and you look at that — I stick my tongue out. See, did you have fun? That’s how you learn to work with yourself. You dare to notice those tendencies, and you dare to sit there and say, “Maybe next time I’ll drive 30 and I’ll breathe a lot and relax, just for the fun of it, just to learn.” It’s not renunciation. It’s practice. That’s a very different thing. Renunciation is pushing down. This is accepting the situation and practicing being okay. That’s what I teach.
If you wanna learn piano, you practice. You don’t just know it right away, do you? You practice. You wanna learn a sport, you practice. What’s wrong with practicing the most important thing in your entire life — learning to let go, learning to handle reality? How about that? There’s the spiritual path. There’s my task to you. You want a teaching? Learn to handle reality.
The mind is very tricky. It says, “How do I know it’s reality?” Well, Christ again: “Let those with eyes to see, let them see. Let those with ears to hear, let them hear.” Did it happen in front of you? Not that somebody else said it — did it happen in front of you? Yeah. It’s probably reality. It happened. It came in. Can you deal with it? “No, I don’t wanna.” That’s a different story. Can you deal with it? Can you learn to deal with it?
I’m driving down the road and I drive past a tree that reminds me of when I was little and there were magnolia flowers, but they were rotting — and this one’s not rotting. And I feel, “God, why couldn’t my—” What are you doing? Can we please just drive past the tree on the side of the road? No. Why? Because, you know what I’m saying — you couldn’t handle driving past the tree. It’d be funny, isn’t it? You couldn’t handle driving past the tree. What do you do? Learn to handle it. What does that mean? Instead of resisting, or clinging and holding on — relax.
All my experience — I’ve been doing this for about 55 years, every day of my life — it’s all about relaxing. It’s all about, when it comes in, it’s gonna hit your stuff. And the tendency will be to push it away, to manipulate it, to not experience it. You’re wrong. You want to experience it, because the experience is it coming up and releasing. Otherwise it’ll be there at the next tree. “Phew, got over that one. I’m not driving this road again, because I’ll see that tree again and I don’t wanna feel that.” No. You just sit there and say, “I’m gonna practice being okay.”
And you start with the small stuff. Why? Because you can’t even handle the small stuff. You can’t handle the heat. You can’t handle the cold. You can’t handle that when you got home, somebody wasn’t there that you expected to be there. You can’t handle when somebody said, “I’ll call you at three,” and it’s 3:15. Practice handling it. How? Notice the disturbance. Notice that the energy that comes up is disturbing — that’s because you stored it that way. And you want it to come up so you have enough consciousness, enough awareness, to say, “I can handle this. I can handle this. It’s small enough. I can handle this.”
I’m a kid and I’m playing the piano, I’m practicing, and I hit a wrong note. I don’t quit and never play again. Come on — you can handle that. That’s why you practice. So that you hit wrong notes and learn. Life is exactly the same. That is why you took birth. You took birth to learn to handle it. Earth is a place where souls are sent to evolve. You’re not evolving if you’re busy trying to stay the same. No animal ever evolved by staying the same — that’s the antithesis of evolution. You took birth to evolve.
Earth is a place where souls are sent to evolve, but things happen that I don’t like. Earth is a place where souls are sent to evolve. It’s not a place where souls are sent to fight to make everything… Have you ever noticed that some people do the opposite of what we’re talking about, and they have power, wealth, position, whatever, and they use everything they have to control everybody else to make it be the way they want? Has anybody ever noticed that? How does it feel to be on the other end of that?
Are you listening to me? And I’m not picking any one particular person. If I was, I would use the name of Hitler as a good example of someone that couldn’t handle anything and then tried to make it be the way he needed it to be so that he could handle it. Six million Jews — and they weren’t just Jews, they were also Gypsies and Catholics, but it was mostly Jews, to say the least. What in the world’s wrong with a Jew? Nothing. It’s just people like everybody else. But he couldn’t handle the sight of a Jew, could he? So much so that — you know what he did — and caused everyone else to do. Holy mackerel. That’s some serious resistance. That’s some serious inability to handle reality.
Make sure you’re not that. Make sure in your own little scale, with your own little world that you interact with, that you’re not doing that. Not sitting there saying, “I can’t handle this. I have a coworker, I can’t handle this, I can’t handle that.” We do it all the time. Literally, somebody talks loud, they stand too close and too loud, or something. Or they wear perfume. Some people are allergic — that’s different. But I mean, “I don’t like it.”
I always remember a story — Ramana Maharshi, the great saint — he was having trouble with his meditations because there was a church bell near him that gongs on the hour. It’s not like a six or seven gong — gong, gong, gong. And it disturbed his meditations. So he went to a great master. He was already a great master, but he went to another great master and said it’s disturbing his meditations. And the saint told him, “Don’t try to not listen to it. Do the opposite. Listen to it. Love it, honor it. It has the right to gong and exist and vibrate. Let it become part of your meditation.” And remember, Krishna — he was a great being who could do it very quickly. He said, “It never has to disturb you ever again.” And it never bothered him ever again. That’s how you deal with these little stupid quirks that you have. You learn to love them.
Sit there and say, “I have the right to not like that.” Yeah. You have every right in the world to suffer.
So you start practicing. This is what it means to let go. It means when you feel the tendency to resist, to push away, you catch yourself. You don’t fight — it’s not wrong. If you’re playing a piano and you hit a wrong note, that’s why you’re practicing. It’s not wrong. If you feel the tendency to close, I’m telling you, relax. Just do the best you can. Just relax your heart, relax your shoulders, relax your buttocks in the face of the tendency to resist, to push it away, to close. Relax, and wait till you see how fast you grow. You do it anytime you notice, but you won’t always succeed. I’m giving you so much room. I make it so easy. You hear me?
Compared to other teachings — yes, there are times it will come up. You will try to relax and the next thing you know you’re face down in the mud, carrying on like a maniac, resisting and carrying on, trying to justify it. “Well, anyone would have trouble with this. Look what they said.” And so you realize, I’ll do the best I can. But if it happens anyway, then what do you do? What if I fall? What if it doesn’t let go and it pulls me down in the moment? And I practiced this for years — I did, hear me, my whole life. I don’t have to anymore like that. But the moment — you see it pulled you down and you start — you’ll come back up at some point. Do you understand that the disturbance wasn’t strong enough, and at some point it will start to release out? The moment you notice that it’s releasing up, let go.
Don’t judge yourself. Don’t be sorry that you fell. Don’t you dare judge. You’re here to practice. You know, the most you can say is—
Tami Simon: I’m gonna cry. I’ll do better next time.
Michael Singer: Nothing else. No guilt, no shame. That doesn’t help. Just do the best you can to stay up, work with the situation, be conscious. If it pulls you down and you come back up, let go.
Appreciate it. You’ll do better next time. Now I can do better — I learned. And honor and respect yourself for doing the best you can. And I’m telling you, wait till you see how fast you grow. And if you say to me, “But I can’t do it with the big things” — okay, fine. Don’t do it with the big things. But at least do it with little things. And when you do it with little things — if I practice that piano, I’m gonna get better. If you practice letting go, you’re gonna get better.
No matter how small the thing is — my wife or my husband, they just irritate me. They don’t button the top button of their shirt. Why? Okay, come on. Take something little that bothers you and try to relax through it. You’ll get better.
And how I used to teach it: that’s a level of discomfort. That little thing — the heat, the that, the button. You hear me? It’s a level of discomfort. If you can relax through that level of discomfort, you can relax through everything at that level of discomfort. It’s about handling the level of discomfort. And once you can handle that level of discomfort, just do the same thing — just relax. And the next thing you know, you are growing so fast.
Are you willing to let go of yourself? Christ called it dying to be reborn. Truly dying, truly being reborn. Are you willing to die to be reborn? Because it’ll kill you. Letting that stuff come up and realizing — the main thing to say: do you want that down there for the rest of your life? Obviously no. Then let it come up. Yes, right. You just reach the point where you learn how to do that, and I’m telling you, you’ll get better, then the next level, then the next level. And you wouldn’t even know you got better, because the stuff that used to bother you won’t bother you anymore. You would sit there and say, “Boy, am I growing?” You wouldn’t even know, because it didn’t touch you at all.
And eventually — we’ve got a few minutes left — it’s not a matter of accepting it, of relaxing through it, of being able to handle it. You get to the point where it releases so much love, so much Shakti, so much inspiration and joy for life, because you’re not blocking yourself. Now that you start to honor the process — not tolerate the process, you honor the process — because you realize it’s not only freeing you to feel this good energy. You’re feeling something much deeper inside. You start to experience what you start calling God, not because you believe in it or don’t believe in it, but because there’s this expansive energy opening up inside of you. And you start having experiences that are just transcendental, just beautiful. Not visions or anything like that — just talking about the inner experience of the flow of Shakti pouring up.
And eventually it gets to the point where you welcome everything. You would never dare push it back down under any circumstances. And the things get bigger and bigger. So you learn that this process of purification is the purpose of life. That’s where I started this thing. And I’m saying it — it is not that getting what you want is the purpose of your life. That can’t possibly be, because the reason you want something is you’ve got stuff inside. So getting it the way you want means you won’t grow.
Opening up and surrendering and saying, “Not my will, but thy will.” And I tell people — they write me and say, “But I’m letting go and I’m saying ‘not my will, but thy will,’ and still, it’s not the way I want.” And they really mean that. “God’s will must be that I get what I want — what else am I doing this for? God knows what I want, he’ll take care of me, he’ll take care of everything else. And plus, I know what’s right.”
You know what’s right for you. And they really believe that what God’s supposed to be doing is making it be the way they want, instead of understanding what we talked about. You dare to sit through this, and it’s none of your business what God does. It’s your business to let go.
You say, “Not my will, but thy will.” You better watch it, because you think that his will will be what you want. No — God is God. Hey, how’s he like off the earth? The sun’s what, 93 million miles away? And then the closest star is so far away you’ll never get there — unless they do warp speed or something like that. There’s no such thing, do you know that? How far away is your nearest star? 4.3 light years. Well, they said 4.3 — no big deal. Come on, pay attention. I love sharing this with you.
What’s a light year? Pay attention. If I caught a beam of light — 186,000 miles per second — if I caught a beam of light right here above the earth, a beam of light just a little bit above the earth, and let it go — boom — for one second, it circumnavigated the globe seven and a half times. Do that for 4.3 years, every second, and you’ll get to the next star. And there are 300 billion of them in your galaxy.
So basically, God’s big. Really big. And there are black holes and there are galaxy-eating stars — so many interesting things. And they don’t all seem so friendly, do they? God’s everything, right? Since I told you — what about the next galaxy? If there are 300 billion of those stars and it took that time to get to the next one, where’s your next galaxy? Andromeda. The next major galaxy system is Andromeda, 2.5 million light years away. Seven and a half times in one second, circling the globe — go that speed for 2.5 million years, every second, and you will get to the next galaxy. And there are 2 trillion galaxies. There you have it. We just talked about God, and everybody wants to listen.
Okay, so — I think we can surrender. I think it’s all happening. As I started to talk, it’s all happening. You seem to be very fine with it. I’m proud of you. Now just handle the 0.01% that’s in front of you, because it’s the same as everything else. Now you understand surrender. You understand letting go. And you understand what it means to be on the path — transcending your personal self, which is so full, it’s ridiculous. It is full of it, isn’t it? It’s full of you. It’s full of stuff you collected. Let it go. Just work with it little by little, and wait to see what happens to 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.
