E182: Stop Closing Your Heart—The Real Path to Love and Freedom

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.

The mind is not difficult to get active. It’s difficult to have it not be active. It can easily think of all sorts of things, some of which you willfully have it think, some of which it just decides to do by itself. Maybe you’ve noticed. The heart is very different. If I tell you, “Think with your mind. Think about a boat, think about a car, think about a person,” anything, you can just bam, bam, bam.

I want to talk about what if I tell you to open your heart? But I don’t mean some song, romantic or spiritual. I mean open your heart. Right now, open your heart. You don’t have any idea what to do. It’s not like a door. “Okay, here’s open. It’s open if you love.” Right? Let’s talk honestly. You don’t know how to open your heart.

You know how other circumstances outside, generally outside circumstances, can open your heart. You can meet somebody, you can see something, you can think of something that inspires you, you feel your heart open. Can you feel your heart open? Okay. I’m going to tell you a secret. That’s not meaningful. What’s meaningful, have you ever felt your heart close?

Answer me. Can you make your heart close? One thought, one glance, one word. Yes or no? So you know very well how to close your heart. Congratulations. But I’m telling you, you do not know how to open your heart. Okay? But it does open. But it requires an external, including mental — that’s external to the heart — it requires some external stimulus to cause the heart to open.

So it knows how to open, but you don’t know how to open it. What does it feel like when it’s open? Anybody like it? Like, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? It’s about the heart being open. What happens when the heart opens? There’s love, there’s energy, there’s inspiration, there’s purpose. That’s a pretty powerful instrument there, and isn’t it amazing that you know how to close it but not open it?

Come on. Let’s be real. Isn’t that funny? Why would that be? Why is it so easy to close it and you don’t even know how to open it? It needs something outside of you to cause it to open. Somebody… Let’s just talk about, okay, what does it take to close it? Nothing. Anything. Somebody says one word with the wrong emphasis, it closes. Somebody doesn’t say something like you wanted it said. The slightest thing can close it. But what does it take to open it?

And yet you stand before me, sit before me, and you admit that it’s beautiful when it’s open, and it ain’t so beautiful when it’s closed. So why don’t you just learn to open it? I don’t understand, but you don’t either. But you’re out there trying to find somebody that’ll open your heart for you. You’re out there trying to find someone that will say what you want them to say and eat what you want them to eat and wear what… Like, “Tonight, why don’t you get dressed up? Wear a tie.” “Not a bow tie. I don’t like bow ties.” A phone can ring, and your heart closes. “Who’s calling? Why so late? Who could… What’s wrong?” Isn’t that amazing? We close it all the time, and yet we don’t know how to open it.

Take a breath. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Why is it like that, and what you can do about it, because you can do something about it.

You’re just looking for love in all the wrong places. Seriously. All right. So why does the heart close? Because when it’s open, you’re vulnerable. Yes or no? Okay. When it’s open, anything can happen, and it’s sensitive, and it hurts, and it closes. It closes to protect itself. Same way you throw your hands up if somebody takes a punch at you, something coming at you. It’s instinctual. That heart closes at the slightest thing to protect itself. You’re protecting yourself. That’s why you close your heart, okay? Pretty easy to protect yourself. It’s not so easy to not protect yourself, is it? We protect ourselves, and that is what the closing of the heart is — an act of protection, period.

Why do you have to protect yourself? Okay, now we get down to interesting things. All right. Because the heart can get hurt. Yes or no? Has anybody ever had their heart get hurt? Okay. Isn’t it fun? Can it last a long time? Can it break? Can someone break your heart? Wow, that really hurts. Can it break and last a long time?

Answer me. You seem to know a lot about the heart. I’m impressed. You know about that, don’t you? You don’t like it, do you? Therefore, you’re protected. You have learned over time that the heart is an extremely sensitive thing. It’s very personal, isn’t it? The heart is very close to you, way closer than the mind. The mind can change its mind all the time, do anything. But seriously, if somebody’s not liking you, you change how you are. Your mind says, “Oh, be about this, wear this. Say… Don’t say that. Don’t say it anymore. He doesn’t like it.” The mind can give you all kinds of advice.

The heart just opens or closes. And when it opens, it feels wonderful. And when it closes, it feels terrible. And you have learned to close your heart because it has gotten hurt, and you protect yourself. Any time you ever protect yourself at all, you do it through closing. You do it through protecting. You do it by putting up a barrier, just like a door. Close the door so nothing can get in. Our normal state now is that closed door. We lock ourselves up. We put bars on the windows and security things all over the place. Somebody knocks on the door. Who is it? Open the little peephole because we’re afraid of getting hurt.

Why? Because we’ve gotten hurt. So now we’ve got the groundwork for what’s going on. That’s why if you find yourself in a situation, which is rare — I’m sorry, it’s rare in terms of the course of your life — where someone or something in front of you, or a thought inside of you, causes your heart to open, it is a rare event because you’re busy protecting yourself.

What has to happen for me to open? I like these dating sites, and I’ve never been on one, but I make fun of them. Not that you shouldn’t go to them. Anything you can do to get your heart open is wonderful. Not necessarily true, but okay. What does it mean to go on one of those sites? I’ve never been on one, but I’m a computer programmer. You know that, right? Somebody programmed that thing. Well, it doesn’t know you, so it asks questions. Do you want someone who likes to stay up late at night or goes to bed early? Fair enough, right? Do you like someone that’s a vegetarian or a carnivore?

I’m kidding. But they ask questions like that, don’t they? What was your relationship with your mother, with your father? Did you get along? Do you still get along? Do you like pets? What kind of pets? Snakes or little kittens? What are they asking you?

What opens you and what closes you. And you look in there and say, well, yeah, I would like that. If you like something, it opens you. I wouldn’t like that. Do you like people that are very fixed on their religion or someone that’s more open? Some people pick one, pick the other one. Kid yourself. And so you’re mapping what you like, what will open you, and what will close you.

You’re describing you. You’re not describing another person. That’s what you call your soulmate, the one who answers the questions. That’s what happened. AI took all the map that you put down there, and it mapped them against everybody on the site and tried to see who answered the questions the same. That’s my soulmate. It’s not your soulmate. You’re your own soulmate. You answered the questions. And I’m going to clue you in. That’s who you want to have a relationship with — yourself. Isn’t that what you said by answering those questions? Do you want the person who agrees with your answers or disagrees with your answers?

You want to date yourself. It’s easy. Just stand in a mirror or something. Talk to yourself. Make yourself the meal you want. You can really have a good time with yourself. But you can’t with somebody else because they inevitably will not behave the way you marked. And you know what you say? “You disappointed me. Please stop.” What in the world does that mean? I have a way that I want things to be. You were supposed to be that way. I am now disappointed that you weren’t the way I want you to be, and that’s called a relationship. And a good one is if you don’t disappoint me too much. And if you do disappoint me too much, I’m out.

Isn’t it funny? Isn’t it fun to talk about the heart? So what we’re basically saying is the heart will open if you get what you want. Little embarrassing, isn’t it? The heart will open when you’re getting what you want, and the heart will not open if you’re not getting what you want, and the heart will close if you’re truly not getting what you want. Do you understand that?

And there you go. And now you’ll spend your entire life trying to open your heart by finding situations, jobs, finances, people, pets, neighbors, everything, that are the way you want them to be. And if they are the way you want them to be, your heart will tend to open. And if they are for one moment…

Watch. “God, my neighbor’s wonderful. I love our new neighbor so much.” And then all of a sudden: “I didn’t think you would ever do that. I can’t believe you did that.” You say things like that, don’t you? Of course you didn’t think they would do that. You don’t know them. You only know your past experiences. And so all of a sudden you think somebody’s behaving the way you want them to be. And then they do something that doesn’t match what you want them to be. Of course they do. They’re not you.

Why did you decide what you like? Let’s start there. Did you decide what you like? I’m telling you, you didn’t. You were programmed by your past experiences. If you met somebody that was Italian and he or she was really classy and neat and so on, the next Italian you meet, you like them. If you met an Italian and he was more like Mussolini, you don’t go to Italy. You stay away from that stuff. You don’t even need pizza or spaghetti.

I want to know, am I exaggerating? No. You’re programmed. Your likes and dislikes are based upon your past experiences. What else would they be based upon? If you never experienced anything, you don’t know anything about it. And so basically that’s how you ended up the way you think you are — through your past experiences.

You know who agrees with that statement? All of psychology. Traditional psychology says the following: man is the sum of his learned experiences. You hear that? Maybe you can answer on the question of right or wrong. Do you know what they’ve just told you? You’re programmed by your past experiences. You’re not anything in there. You’re just spewing out the sum of your learned experiences. Is that really who you are? Or are you aware that you tend to act based on some of your past experiences? Who’s aware? Is there awareness in there? Can that awareness be clear enough that it sees the tendency inside to act based on the sum of your learned experiences, and you choose not to?

Do you have will? So it’s not true that you are the sum of your learned experiences. Your tendencies, your psychological tendencies are the sum of your learned experiences. How your heart behaves, how your mind thinks — they’re the sum of your learned experiences. But you’re in there noticing that, aren’t you?

You’re the self. You’re not the sum of your learned experiences. Your tendencies are. But you’re in there noticing that. You’re God descended. That’s who’s in there. The consciousness that was there from the beginning of time and is everywhere all at the same time. But it’s staring at your mind and your heart, your body, and your senses. But not just mine — yours and yours and yours. God’s very big. And that consciousness gets drawn down to focus on your personal self, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t know how to get off. Most people don’t even want to get off. “I don’t want to not stare at myself. I want to get what I want.” Well, that’s because you don’t understand what would happen if you stopped staring at yourself. There’s tremendous joy in there that’s unbelievable.

You are the highest being that walked the face of the earth. Do you understand that? What’s in there — not what’s in there, but you in there that are aware that you’re screwed up — are you screwed up? How do you know? I’m in here. I got to live with the idiot, right? And then there’s this soul they call your roommate. You got one? A lot of fun to live with? Okay. Who’s in there? You are in there. Consciousness is in there.

But I’m going to go back to talking about what you’re looking at, which is your psyche. You’re looking at the sum of your learned experiences. That’s why you like what you like, or have the tendency to like what you like. And that’s why you close when you close. That’s why you open when you open. You’re not closing and opening. The situation is hitting your stuff. “Oh my God, you look just like my brother. That’s how he wore his hair, and he died so many years ago and I loved him so much. Can we go out?” That ain’t your brother. No matter how he wears his hair or has a Boston accent. “Oh, I just love it.” Why? Because you had experiences.

So you are aware that you’re in there, and you’re aware, but you’re not centered enough, clear enough to stay aware that you are the one in there experiencing the sum of your learned experiences. But you are. But they are so strong. The tendencies to react to the sum of your learned experiences are very, very strong.

You were married. You got married because you were in love. Now you’re divorced. You got divorced because you’re not in love anymore. And maybe it’s even worse than that. And all of a sudden, three years later, you see someone who looks like your ex. I’m telling you, your heart closes. Or you’re in love. You’re young. You’re in junior high school or high school and they move. Their parents move them. But you always love them. And three years later, you see someone who looks just like them. Your heart bursts open. The sum of your learned experiences.

So now you don’t stand a chance. You don’t know how to open your heart. The sum of your learned experiences has to be positive, which it never is. And it has to open your heart. Something has to get hit in there that reminds you of some beautiful experience you had, and the heart will burst open, and sometimes totally improperly. You’re married. We shouldn’t talk about these things. You’re married. You have children. You take tennis lessons or golf lessons, and he’s really cute, or she’s unbelievable, and all of a sudden, by the second lesson, you shouldn’t be going back. Am I right or wrong? Can it happen? Does it happen? Does your heart always be very proper and open at the right time?

You see what I’m telling you? It’s based on your past experiences. Why? Because you had someone you dated when you were younger, and you felt that experience. And now this person is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s tough to live in there, isn’t it? Because you really like when the heart opens, and you really don’t like when it closes, and that governs your life. You’re running after what will open you, and you’re running away from what you know will close you.

“I had a job. I really loved the job. Why? I had a woman boss. I’ve always wanted to have a woman boss, and she’s so neat. She’s so sharp. She’s better than any man could ever be.” And so basically there you are, and you run to your job. You love your job. You’re so inspired. She gets fired. You now have a male boss. Excited to go to work? How are you feeling? Some of your learned experiences.

I’m explaining to you why your heart opens and closes. It’s not rational. It’s not reasonable. You got all excited because you had a woman boss. Somebody else got all excited because the man that came in was cute. Am I describing what it’s like to live in there? It’s all just based on these past experiences that left these impressions. We call them samskaras in yoga.

All right, let’s do that. Have you had experiences in your life? Am I talking to the wrong crowd? Have you had experiences? I told you once, and I’ll say it again — you check it out. Ninety-nine percent of every experience you ever had, you experienced it and it passed right through. White lines on the road, clouds in the sky, drivers in cars, people walking by, plants, animals — all kinds of stuff comes in through your eyes and ears and nose and just comes in. It passes through. You’re a very great being. You’re able to handle life, except for that one percent. In fact, it’s really 99.9 percent goes through, and that .1 percent — what happened? It came in just like everything else. But I, me, in there, me, the self, the Atman, call it whatever you want, focused on it so much that it held onto it, either because it was so uncomfortable… Things can be uncomfortable. You still experience them. They just come in and they go by. But this one, no. It caught my attention. That’s consciousness. It caught my attention so much that I focused on it. Do you focus on some things more than others? It’s natural. Things hit you different ways, and therefore you concentrate on them. If you concentrate on it too much, it stays. It will be there five minutes later. The white line’s not. You’re not talking about the white line five minutes later, but you are talking about what that person said yesterday or now. Why? Because it was strong enough, either positive or negative, to draw your attention down to it. And when you focus your consciousness, you’re a powerful being.

People like to teach you that you can attract to yourself whatever you want. You have great power. You do have great power, and you use it in ways that destroy your life. You don’t even know what’s going on. If that great power focuses on something that somebody said, it could screw you up for the rest of your life. You could be madly in love with somebody, and they say something that you thought they would never, ever say or even think, and you will never talk to them again. And literally, every time you see them, it comes back up. Why? Everything else passed through. The white line passed through. But somebody else said something and it didn’t pass through because you focused on it.

And when your consciousness gets drawn down to a given object, be it an outside thing or an inside thing, and puts enough energy — Shakti is energy, consciousness. Chit Shakti is called conscious energy. And when you focus that energy, and you generally don’t do it purposely, it generally just happens. It comes down, you focus on it. I’m telling you, it’s going to stay. It’s going to be there a minute later. It may be there five minutes later. It may be there five years later. Is there anything that happened in your past that when it comes up now, it’s troublesome? But it happened 30 years ago. The people are dead. Doesn’t matter, does it?

Why? People say, “She left a good impression.” What’s an impression? Well, when you press something, take foam, make an impression on it. You have taken the power of your consciousness and made an impression on your mental body and on your emotional body. And the next thing you know, that impression doesn’t go away. It’s memory foam. It is. You leave a deep enough impression, it doesn’t come back up. All right? And you live with that for the rest of your life. Yes or no?

Now what? Now your heart can’t open. Why? Because it has these impressions. They get hit. They get brought back up constantly. And it becomes extremely sensitive because you’re protecting yourself. You know what I’m talking about. So you held onto this stuff, not purposely. You’re not conscious enough to notice. It just happened automatically. Somebody said something, it reminded you of what your father said, and you didn’t get along with your father very well at all. And so now that person said that thing. You will never forgive them for saying that. “You know I don’t like when you talk like that.” You’re protecting yourself because you stored all this stuff in here, and it doesn’t take much to bring it back up. But it takes a lot for a positive thing to come back up, doesn’t it?

You know how many times you’re sensitive and you close over little things all day? People complain with me because I use two examples all the time: the driver in front of you, and it’s hot out. “Oh, what a stupid example.” No, they’re not stupid examples. Why? Because you can’t handle the driver in front of you. Have you ever talked to the driver in front of you? Answer me. “Come on, buddy. You’re going thirty miles over the speed limit. Nice blinker, buddy.” It literally hurt you. It literally closed you. You could go back to work and talk to everybody about the driver in front of you. “I was in a rush. It says fifty-five miles an hour, they’re going thirty, and I can’t pass them.” Hear me. It left an impression on you. Why? Because you resisted it.

And here’s a fun part I like to tell you. Watch this. Tell me it makes sense. “I don’t like this, so I’m going to keep it.” That’s not so funny, you know? Is that not true? Did you not keep every single thing in there that you didn’t like? And the more you didn’t like it, the more you kept it. And the more every time it tried to come back up, you pushed it back down. “I can’t believe you said that. Give me a minute. No, give me a minute. Oh, I’m okay. I can handle it.” Okay, now let’s talk about it. What are you doing? You’re pushing it back down. And you feel good about it. “I handled it.” You sure did. You handled it. You know what handling it looks like? You said it. It hurt. Okay, what’s next? It passed through like everything else. How would you like to be like that?

What difference does it make? How can you be in a relationship and somebody behaves in a way you didn’t expect them to? Of course they did. They’re not you. They had different experiences than you. Why do you think that your experiences are more important than theirs? That’s why you have so much trouble with relationships.

You want a nice relationship? Watch. Here’s a nice relationship. “Hi, nice to meet you. I’d like to get to know you. I don’t expect you to act like me because you didn’t have the experiences I had. You had the experiences you had. I love you. I would like to see everything about you.” “But I never thought you’d be like that.” Isn’t that exciting? “I didn’t know there was that side of you. Let’s dance.” That’s called having a relationship with somebody else.

I hope you’re really listening. That’s why you have so much trouble with relationships — because you’re trying to have them be you, and they don’t do very good, do they? You have to forgive them. You have to be tolerant. What a disgusting word. “I’m tolerant of you being the way you are.”

Okay, so now you understand why the heart opens and closes. You have all this stuff in there that you kept. And you keep keeping it. And I’m telling you, it’s a thousand to one — really way more than a thousand to one — negative things to positive things that hurt you, things that bothered you.

How many times do you go back to work saying, “That driver in front of me, they kept the speed limit, and they used their blinker every single time”? How many times do you do that? Never. There, you see why it’s a thousand to one, or a million to one? Because if it’s not the way you want, it bothers you. If it is the way you want, or it’s just the way it is, and you don’t even bother having a want about the white lines on the road or the clouds in the sky, then it passes right through.

Now do you understand why part of enlightenment, part of a very high being, is be here now? Everything passes through. All of it passes through. Can you come back and deal with it if you need to? Yes, of course. But it doesn’t hit stuff in there. Why? There is no stuff in there. Buddhists call it the empty bell. You’ve heard that? Empty mind. It means you haven’t stored all this garbage in there that doesn’t belong in there.

The past is over. That driver, you’re not going to be behind them again. There is not a reason in the world that you’re keeping that inside of you for a billionth of a moment. But you do. And because you kept it, you talk about it, you think about it. If you see a car that looks like that car that was driving thirty miles an hour below the speed limit, you don’t go down that road. And you talk to people about it. Come on. Pay attention to what’s going on in there. You stored all this stuff in there because you couldn’t handle it. You couldn’t handle reality because you wanted it to be the way you want it to be.

There’s a very famous line from the Third Zen Patriarch, one of the deepest lines ever. In fact, it’s the beginning and end of all spirituality, all the teaching you ever need. It goes like this: “The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” Now do you understand? Doesn’t mean you suppress your preferences. He didn’t say the great way is not difficult for those who suppress what they want. He said the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. In other words, everything passed through. I’m not bringing into the current moment the non-reality of my whole past, of everything in my life that I’ve built, that I like and I don’t like and everything like that. And now when I’m looking at the world, all I’m doing is projecting my preferences of what I want and don’t want on top of you and everybody else every moment.

How about the weather? I said the driver in front of you plus the weather. Ever complain about the weather? “Oh, it’s so hot. Oh, it’s so cold. It’s Florida, it’s not supposed to be this cold.” I walk from my car to the house, and the house is air-conditioned, the car’s not. “Oh my God, what am I going to do?” You complain about it all the time. You do it with everything if it’s not the way you want.

What do you want? “I do really well seventy-two to seventy-five. Less than fifty percent humidity ’cause my hair frizzes.” Somebody else says, “I like it cooler, more sixty-four-ish.” Why? Past experiences. “I grew up up north.” What did you just do? Admit the sum of your learned experiences. That is why you don’t know how to open your heart. ‘Cause you close it. And you’ve closed it because all these past experiences have bothered you, and you’re afraid they’re going to happen again. You go out of your way to make sure they don’t happen again. You try to avoid all the circumstances that could bother you again, and you try to find the ones that can make you feel good. But I’m telling you, it’s way beyond a thousand to one things that will bother you.

Here, you fall in love and you’re getting serious and start thinking about living together, this kind of thing. And the guy says, “Well, I just got a job offer in Arizona, and it’s my career. I gotta take it.” To which you say, “Where?” “In Arizona.” “Oh, no. No, I can’t move to Arizona.” “Why?” “There’s rattlesnakes in Arizona, and I saw a movie once.” “I ain’t going to Arizona. Sorry. Goodbye.”

Am I telling the truth? Is it embarrassing? The sum of your learned experiences are running your life. They determine what opens your heart, what closes your heart. Have we got it down now? Third day talking about the opening and closing of the heart. Why can’t I say to you, “Open your heart,” and you just open your heart? Because you’ve got some serious stuff in there that had better not get hit when you open your heart, because you’re exposing yourself to that stuff getting hit. And it had better be that what’s happening outside is meeting the stuff you stored from the past that was positive. So it’s tending to open, but you’re still cautious. You ain’t so quick to let that thing open. You’ve gotten hurt before.

A spiritual being’s heart is always open. It’s not a matter of what will open my heart. A long time ago, I took the door off the heart. It doesn’t know how to close. Now we’re going to have a talk. I’m going to tell you how to open your heart. Are you ready? Write it down. Don’t close. You have no idea how serious that is. You know how to close your heart. Well, don’t do it. And I’m telling you, if you don’t close your heart, it’s like magic. It’s open. Its natural state is open. You don’t have to do anything to open your heart. Stop closing it.

And the reason I teach you that is you know how to close your heart. You’re an expert at it. You do it all the time. Well, just don’t do it. Now there, we can get some teachings. It’s not “How do I open my heart?” It’s “How do I not close my heart? How do I learn not to close my heart?” Do I have your attention now? Do you hear? This is serious, what I’m telling you. That is how you get your heart open. You stop closing it.

No, you think you go find something that will open your heart. No. Good luck, because it doesn’t last. It’s never matching what you want it to. There’s no way it can happen. I hope you understand that. Learn to not close your heart, and you’ll find it stays open. It’s like math. One equals one. If you don’t close the thing, it’s open. It’s binary. I’m a programmer, right? It’s binary. It’s either open or closed. When you close it, then it’s closed. You don’t close it, then it’s open. Do you hear me?

Can you learn to not close your heart? I’ll tell you, you don’t even try. You try to get away from things that close your heart. You don’t try to learn not to close your heart. Listen to me. The entire spiritual journey — this is so important. This will change everything. You’re not trying to not close your heart. You’re trying to avoid situations that close your heart, and you’re trying to find situations that will open your heart. That’s unbelievable. It’s conditional. You will have conditional well-being unless you find things that open your heart and they stay that way and they keep opening your heart. And that’s very difficult. Why? Because you go to work every day and have different experiences than he or she does. Therefore, you come back a different person. You’re in a different mood. A different thing happened. Every single day, your relationship’s in danger. They might not come back the way they left.

Right or wrong? Am I telling the truth? You learn to not close your heart. And I’m going to talk to you about that. You can learn. You can learn everything. You learn to play the piano. You learn to play a sport. It’s exactly the same. You just haven’t bothered learning and you’re capable of learning and it’s not even that hard. And it will solve everything.

So how does one do this? Take a breath. If you do this properly, it is not difficult. If you sit down at Beethoven’s pieces and you’ve never played the piano before, it is extremely difficult to play those pieces. How about impossible? But if you start with the scales, you can learn to play “Für Elise” or “Moonlight Sonata.” They’re not that hard. They sound hard, but they’re really not. They’re actually fairly easy pieces. But they’re very, very difficult if you don’t bother learning. It is the same with your heart. It’s exactly the same with not closing your heart. It’s something you learn to do little by little, just like playing the scales or practicing for a sport. You’re not good at the sport when you start, but if you don’t know how to do it, you can’t do it. But if you learn, then you can do it. There’s this thing called learning. It works for the heart too.

So how do you learn? You start with the smallest things. Don’t you dare try to take big things. You won’t be able to do it, just like the piano or the sport. So how do you start? You wake up in the morning and you say, “I am going to go through today without closing my heart.” It’s a video game. It’s fun. I want it to be a game. People in meditation struggle. “I have to do my sadhana.” I don’t like those words. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a video game. It’s fun. Okay? Can I get to level three? Can I play with my heart and have it learn not to close? So I get up in the morning. I’m going to go through this entire day without closing my heart.

So what happens? I get up in the morning and I’m out of toothpaste. Okay. Stop for a minute. Is it worth closing your heart over? You buy some more toothpaste. You can get by till you can go buy some. You don’t have to get upset about it, do you? But you do. Do you understand that? That’s what it means. You start with these simple little things that you don’t realize are closing your heart. You might literally go to breakfast with your family and talk about the fact that you’re out of toothpaste. What a stupid thing to carry from the bathroom to the breakfast table. It’s not a national tragedy, is it? How about making it fun that you’re out of toothpaste? It doesn’t happen that often. It’s like once every two months or something. Wow, what an exciting moment. Or if you still use tubes, try to roll it up really tight and get that last drop out. Will you please have fun with it?

Can you do that? You don’t. You make it negative. But it’s not negative. It’s just an experience. Anybody want to listen? I’m telling you, if you do that with the toothpaste, if you do that with this or that, the little things that go on, then like his mom, we’ve got to drive. We’re going to go to graduate school. You’re going to get in that car and you’re going to start it and you’re going to drive behind somebody. And they’re not going to drive the way you would. Why should they? They’re old. They’re young. They just got a ticket. Who knows? They have their reasons for driving the way they’re driving, and they ain’t your reasons, and therefore they don’t match.

Take these simple moments and use them like playing the scales. They’re not bad things. The scales are good things. But I make mistakes. That’s good. That means you need to learn where to put your fingers. You need to learn these things. You can learn. How about, “I can handle running out of toothpaste. I can handle the driver in front of me”? Doesn’t mean I don’t feel something.

Now, that’s the important part. When I say I can handle it, it doesn’t mean you don’t feel a moment of disappointment that you have to go buy some toothpaste, or that you have to be patient with the driver driving like that. It means I can handle the situation. And listen to me. Part of the situation are the emotions that are coming up inside of you because it’s not the way you want it to be. You thought that handling it meant it is the way you want it to be, right? Or that it’s not the way you want it to be and you don’t feel anything. No, no, no, no, no. It’s perfectly natural that you’ve got this stuff in there. If it doesn’t match, it doesn’t feel good. You can handle that. It’s not just handling the outside, it’s handling the inside.

“Well, how can I handle not feeling good?” Relax. “How can I relax? I don’t feel good.” Or the coach yelling, “Try harder. Try harder. No, don’t let go right now.” He’s teaching you. The world is teaching you to be able to handle yourself. And that’s so easy, is it? You need to learn. So that’s a very important point, and I’m glad we’re talking about this. It’s not that handling it means it’s not the way I want and somehow you get to a state where it doesn’t bother you. No, no, no. If it’s not the way you want, it’s going to bother you. Have you noticed?

The problem is you can’t handle it bothering you. But it’s bothering me. Who’s noticing that it’s bothering you? How do you know it’s bothering you? How do you know the person’s not driving the way you want? You know. Well, I guess it’s bothering you. How do you know it’s bothering you? If I kept asking you that, at one point you’d look at me and you would get so angry and you’d say, “‘Cause I’m in here and I notice it, I feel it.” At which point I would pranam to you. You’re in there, are you? And you notice what’s going on in there. That’s called witness consciousness. It’s called objective observation. That’s Krishnamurti’s term, objective observation. That’s what he called it a long time ago, way before witness consciousness or mindfulness. Objective observation. I am objectively noticing what’s going on in there.

So there’s a you in there that’s noticing what’s going on in there. That’s a very spiritual state, a very great state. Now the driver can be driving the way he’s driving, and you use it as practice. I get a practice shot. Can I handle that the driver in front of me is not driving the way I want them to? It doesn’t feel good. Can you handle that it doesn’t feel good?

Anybody want to listen to the next step? Can you be there and notice? Okay. And I have this thing — I’m a business person, you know, I went through all this stuff — there was this thing called cost-benefit analysis. You know, as CEO of a company, they bring ideas, you take a cost-benefit analysis. You tell me you’re driving behind somebody, and they’re not driving the way you want. What is the cost-benefit analysis of getting upset versus not getting upset? 100% cost, zero benefit. Well, that’s a pretty stupid executive decision.

So you sit in there and you’re a conscious being, and you say, “Okay, it doesn’t feel good.” If I can handle it and feel good, it doesn’t have to bother me for the rest of my life. I don’t have to do anything. It’s just fine. And guess what? If you can handle that it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t bother you anymore by definition, because I handled it fine. I’m playing volleyball and I jumped up to block and it got a bruise there. I go, “Boo-boo.” You just handle it. You learn the piano. You hit a wrong note. “I quit.” No, I can handle it. I can handle the feeling that I feel when I notice the guy’s going slower than I want to go or didn’t use a blinker. And you do what’s called let it go.

Let what go? Let go of the fact that it was going to disturb you that the sun is hot or not hot enough, or that I didn’t wear the right coat out today so when I have to go outside, it’s a little bit cold or a little bit hot. Does it bother you? Sometimes it bothers you. You sit there and say, “I can’t… What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I listen to the weather forecast?” What are you doing? You’re bothering yourself about the fact that it bothers you. You are more of a problem bothering yourself than anything could ever bother you. Guilt, shame, fear, insecurity. You are in there bothering yourself all the time. “I shouldn’t have said that. I can’t believe I said that. Oh God, if I hadn’t said that, probably he’d like me. I wonder, should I tell him I didn’t mean it? No, maybe he didn’t hear me. But I don’t know what’s…”

Why are you that way? Because you can’t handle things. And so you start practicing being able to handle things. How? By not closing, by not suppressing, by not resisting, by not complaining. So the driver’s driving like that or the temperature’s what it is, or it’s raining when you don’t want it to be. Do you get upset because it’s raining when you don’t want it to be? How about we learn not to do that? Because it will change your life.

So you start with the little stuff. You can handle it. That’s what you say: “I can handle it. I can handle this.” I’ve given a discussion before. If your mind says once, “I can’t handle this,” you’re not the right person to be dealing with it. How about, “I can handle it”? Why? Because I said so. Because it doesn’t feel good. I can handle that. That’s the important link I gave you.

You hear me? But the boss comes up to you and says, “I want you to stay late tonight. I need this to get done.” “No, I can’t handle that. I can’t handle that you asked me to do that.” That’s not a nice way to be at work. Instead, you feel the tendency to close, you feel the resistance, and your mind says, “I can handle that. I know I want to do something else, but it wasn’t that life-shatteringly important. I can handle it.” That’s all it takes. You change your attitude, but it doesn’t mean that the feeling doesn’t feel bad to start with. But I’m telling you, the minute you sit there and say, “Okay, okay, I can handle it,” you handled it. You let it go. You do the work. That’s how you grow spiritually, and that’s how you learn to open your heart — by not closing it.

Look at the example I gave you. You do it all the time. You close the damn thing all the time. Any time anything is not the way you want outside or inside, you protect yourself, close your heart. Well, then you’ll never know how to open it, and I want you to know how to open it. I want you to know how not to close it. This is a deep talk because you are capable of those situations I just talked to you about — of saying, “Okay, I can handle it. I can handle the momentary negativity.” And you let go. You go about your business, handle the driver in front of you, handle the weather, handle this, handle that. And next thing you know, your husband or wife comes home. And they’re in a bad mood. Why? They had a bad day. They’re allowed to be in a bad mood because they had a bad day, and they couldn’t handle it. You can’t expect everybody else to handle it. You have to handle it if they can’t handle it. And so they come home, they slam the door, go in the bedroom, and brood. And what are you doing during that time? “I can handle it.”

Wouldn’t that be beautiful? If when he or she comes out, there’s love there, there’s understanding, there’s compassion? Not, “Don’t you dare slam that door on me.” Come on, let’s just play it off of each other. He couldn’t handle his day, you couldn’t handle him. That makes for a nice relationship, right? You’re being very quiet because I’m being real, aren’t I? I’m talking about being real. So you sit there and say, “I am going to learn to handle things,” and you make it a video game. I want it to be fun.

I want you to look down there and see that person making a big deal out of the fact that it’s hot, or that you dropped some ketchup on your pants and you have to go back to work. Wow, it will teach you all the time. Get off the planet. You know, our astronauts took pictures of the Earth floating out there. They took one picture from behind the Moon. The Earth was this big. Please look at it. You’re on a little planet in the middle of nowhere, and you can’t handle the ketchup on your pants.

Practice handling it. Make it fun. You see ketchup on your pants, look at it, look at the pattern it made. Show it to someone. “Look at the pattern it made. It’s really neat, right? Looks a little bit like a Monet.” “It’s very impressionist.” Have fun with yourself instead of taking it so seriously. And next thing you’re going to know, some bigger thing’s going to happen. You get fired. Okay, what can I do about this? Get angry, get mad, get resentful, turn into a hateful person. “I’m never going to get a job again because I could get fired.” Or I can handle this. I can handle this. Why? Because you’re practiced. And you’re going to find out that if you practice, you can handle things that don’t feel so good. You let them go, and then you’re good at it, and good at it, and eventually you wake up in the morning and you realize, “I can handle it.” What? Anything.

That’s where I want you. I’m saying to you, “I love you.” I want you to wake up in the morning and know to the bottom of your heart, “I can handle anything that happens.” Why? Because I learned how to. I learned how to handle it. Well, what if someone you love dies? Am I supposed to be happy? No. You’re supposed to feel a loss. That’s very natural. Can you handle feeling loss? It’s not, do you feel loss, and not, did they die. They died. You love them. You feel a loss. Can you handle that feeling? Can you honor it and respect its right to exist instead of resisting it? If you resist it, you suppress it. If you suppress it, it scars you. It leaves an impression. You’ll always carry that with you as a terrible feeling, as a thing of, “I had this bad experience in life. Someone I love died.” Well, guess what? People die. And the question is not do they die, the question is can you handle it?

But notice I say, “Can you handle it?” That doesn’t mean I feel joy. It means I feel sorrow. I feel loss. Can you handle feeling sorrow? Can you handle feeling loss? How do you know you feel loss? How do you know you feel sorrow? How do you know your heart hurts? Because I’m in here noticing it. Be the one who’s in there noticing it. Honor and respect what’s coming up, and you’re going to find out that every single experience in your life is for your growth. Life is your teacher. Earth is a place souls were sent to evolve. How are you doing? Or are you fighting to make it be the way you want so you don’t have to evolve?

So you get to where you realize, “I can handle everything because I can handle me, because I can handle disappointment. I can handle fear.” People handle fear. You understand that? Firemen, they march into flaming fires. Aren’t you glad they get to do that? Doctors, they go to car accidents, and there’s bleeding, blood all over the place. Somebody can’t handle it. Well, then they can’t help. Learn to handle it no matter what it is, but don’t start with the big stuff. Practice makes perfect.

If you think it doesn’t matter, this stuff matters. Practice with the small stuff and you’ll learn how to handle yourself. And then it gets bigger and bigger and bigger until eventually I’m telling you, you sit there and say — Ramakrishna used to say “helter skelter, come what may.” Just bring it on. Okay? I can handle anything. But you have to practice. And don’t tell me you don’t know how to practice. Start with the mosquito that’s bothering you. I don’t care how small it is. Learn to let go, handle it, and you’ll get better and better.

So now you know how to open your heart. Don’t close it. Do you see it’s the truth? If you don’t close it, it’s filled with Shakti. It’s filled with love. Jai guru dev.

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.

 

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. There are so many techniques, paths that people often struggle with to try to come closer — not to God, but to who you are, because that’s who you are. All of them, at some point, deal with the mind. You have to deal with the mind. Why? Let’s say you’re an alcoholic or a drug addict. You’re not gonna go further until you take on that problem.

The mind is the reason that you don’t feel tremendous Shakti, spirit pouring through you all the time. It’s very important to understand the nature of mind, and more important — as important — which we’re gonna discuss tonight, is its relationship to the heart at some point. You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.

You have stepped back and realized you are aware of your mind. You are not the mind. You’re aware of your heart’s emotions. You’re not the emotions. You’re aware of them. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know they were there. It’s that simple. The spiritual teacher shouldn’t be very complicated. Are you aware you have thoughts?

What part of you is aware that you have thoughts? You have positive thoughts, you have negative thoughts, you have all kinds of thoughts, and you are the same one that is aware of all those thoughts. And you have emotions of all different shapes and sizes, and you are aware of those. There are no emotions that you have that you’re not aware of.

That’s why you know you have them. But in general, we struggle with them and we think that that is a spiritual path. You’ll reach a point in your growth — which it takes a long time to become mature in your spiritual path — but there comes a time where you realize there’s a reason that the mind is the way it is.

It’s not enough to say I’m gonna stop it, or I want it to shut up for a few hours in meditation or on a retreat. Those are all wonderful, nice things. Go ahead and practice. But there’s a reason it’s doing what it’s doing. Everything in the universe is cause and effect. There’s a reason there are causes.

Why your mind doesn’t shut up, why your mind tends toward negativity — every single thing your mind says, it originally said. Do you understand that? And that is when you’re ready to become a more mature spiritual being. You sit trying to suppress the mind, you’re trying to stop it. Sometimes you have to, a little bit. But you want to understand: where’s it coming from?

Why does it say the things it says? One clue is to watch the relationship between your mind and your heart. Which, again, I don’t think should be difficult. Why do you see it all the time? Your mind just drifts a little bit and it just starts free association. And it sits there and it says, “Oh my God, what? I forgot to turn the stove off.” Where does your heart feel? Fear. They’re in cahoots. They work together, and then that fear increases the mind’s anxiety, and you’re not gonna stop that thought. That’s a very difficult thing to do, and if you decide to stop it, you will be suppressing. You have to push it away.

There’s a reason that that is going on, and what you’ll see — all said and done, and we’ll talk about it — is the heart has been left with many, many impressions over the course of your life, and most of them are not pleasant. Senses of rejection, fear, anxiety, on and on and on. The heart has these feelings.

Why is it natural that the heart have these feelings? Those are deep teachings. They don’t sit there and say that fear or anxiety, jealousy, or any of these feelings in the heart are not natural. They’re natural to the human race. They’re natural experiences in the heart. They’re lower vibrations, but vibrations can vibrate high or low.

Those vibrate low. Then there are other vibrations where you have a thought and all of a sudden your heart opens up. You feel love. You feel excitement. You feel enthusiasm. Those are higher vibrations emanating from the heart. The important thing is to realize, yep, the heart can feel those things — not that they’re wrong, not that you shouldn’t. Do you know what jealousy is? Do you know what fear is? You know what anxiety is. Do you know what insecurity is? Any of you? Of course you do. These are natural vibrations that the heart is capable of experiencing. It’s that simple. But when you get to the point that you see it as that, you’ve had a major breakthrough, because then you’re not judging them as wrong or as bad or anything like that.

They’re just what’s there. And if you can see them as just what’s there, you can start to see past them. But first, you have to be able to not get caught in the mind’s expression. The minute it starts to feel jealousy — right, let’s just pick jealousy — the minute it starts to feel jealousy in the heart, and everyone knows what that feels like, the mind starts. What should I do about it? Is it real? What should I check? Should I hire an investigator? It just tells you what to do. It gives you advice — good advice, right? It just sits there and thinks thoughts that are about what the heart is feeling. And by the time we’re done with this talk, I hope you understand that it is thinking thoughts about what the heart is feeling.

So if I have to go and give a talk tomorrow — school or something like that — and I feel anxiety, I feel tension, wait till you see what your mind talks about. What do I do about it? Should I change the topic? That was such a stupid talk, I wish I hadn’t picked that. Do you understand that? You just say those are my thoughts. They are not. They’re the expression of your heart expressing itself in your mind. The root of the mind is in the heart, and what you’re gonna see if you get quiet enough, you can. What happens is, if you walk up to an eight-cylinder engine and it’s running full speed, you can’t see the pistons, you can’t see the crankshafts, you can’t see the timing belts, you can’t see a single thing.

It all happens at the same time. A lot of you guys — in high school, auto mechanics, right? — don’t realize that that thing, that tachometer, that you look at — you know there are two dials on there and sometimes it goes to three, four, 5,000 — that is revolutions per minute. 6,000 revolutions per minute. RPM. That’s pretty fast, isn’t it? Those pistons, they go up and down 6,000 times in a minute. You’re not gonna see anything. If you slow it down, you can start to see what’s happening. You see the pistons in harmony, or in different sequences moving up and down, and the valves operating. You can slow it down and see it.

It’s the same thing with your heart and your mind. If it’s moving too fast — and it’s moving fast — you can’t see the relationship. You can’t see what’s happening. But meditation helps, surrender helps, letting go helps, working with yourself helps. And at some point you’re gonna see your heart has an issue.

Your mind, like the big brother, is trying to solve that issue. You don’t really wanna listen to what it says. But if you watch, you’ll see: I have to give that talk here. I feel anxiety. I have to give this talk. And the mind sits there and says, “Well, maybe you should call in sick.” Why would it say such a thing as a potential solution to what the heart is feeling? And I clue in when it says maybe you should call in sick — the heart, for a moment, feels a little bit better. Understand that your mind, even though what it does is not good advice — I’m not talking about judging it — I’m telling you, all that noise in your mind, that is what’s going on.

All the time. But it’s so subtle and so fast that you just listen to what the mind has to say. You think those are solutions. Spirituality is about understanding. Quiet it down a little bit — why is the mind giving you the advice it’s giving you? There are people, let’s say they take a class and they think they deserve an A, and the teacher gives them a B. So they don’t feel good about it. Watch what that mind tries to come up with. I’m gonna challenge it. I’m gonna look at everybody else’s papers. I’m gonna see what the average is. It starts challenging what isn’t the way they want it to be, and so they try to figure it out with their mind. Is that bad? Is that good? I don’t wanna talk about that. I just want you to understand that’s why the mind is going a mile a minute, and that’s why you can sit there and be having a problem and then it comes up in the mind and the mind comes up with a potential solution. “Oh wow, I could call George and find out whether Sally said she liked me or not.” All of a sudden you feel a little bit better, and then they say, “No, no — I don’t want George to know I care about that. That’d be embarrassing.” And all of a sudden it sinks back down. Anybody know anything about such a thing? Come on. I’m sharing with you something very deep — that is what is going on.

And let’s say the heart feels open and it feels love, and the mind comes in, but you feel some insecurity. I’ve gotten hurt before. And the mind tries to think, “Well, don’t go too fast. Don’t rush it. No kissing on the first date. Don’t — I’m telling you, don’t.” Where did that come from? Well, does the mind know about what should happen? It doesn’t know anything. It’ll say one thing one minute, another thing the next minute. It’s trying to solve the particular problem that the heart is experiencing, positive or negative. It will talk that way.

So the root of the mind is in the heart, but that is not where we live. We live lost in the mind, trying to come up with solid solutions, and that stuff isn’t — watch. “Oh, I see it. That’ll do it. I’ll go to California first, then I’ll go over there.” And you feel there’s some solidity. Then all of a sudden, the bottom falls out and the mind says, “Well, what if I don’t like it there?” Do you understand? That’s what you’re dealing with, and you will never solve it in your mind. You will never, ever solve that problem with your mind, because the problem is not in the mind. The problem is in the heart. And so you go the next level down. You should — and you will, spiritually, at some point — you will reach the point where the heart is as clear as the mind. You can see what the mind is saying and you can see what the heart’s feeling. You see them both the same, even the subtle, tiny little things.

People say to me, “Well, how do you make decisions?” You should not have trouble making decisions. The question is, why do you wanna decide? What’s the problem going on in there that the decision seems so important? Should I live in California or in Florida? And there’s all this stuff that comes up. The heart goes, “Well, that’ll be fun.” But then it says, “Yeah, but I’ve had that situation before.” I’ll give you an example — I don’t need to give you examples, you live in them.

So you get to the point where you understand the mind is not evil. It does tell you to do terrible things, but it doesn’t do it on purpose. It doesn’t want to. It’s trying to find a way to release the bad energy that’s existing in your heart. There’s no chance that your heart is doing wonderful and your mind is disturbed. It doesn’t work that way. If the heart’s emanating love and beauty, the mind tends to talk about it. But something will happen. Something will bring up a past scar, a past pattern, and all of a sudden — how fast can the love go away? Look at me in the eyes. Just like that. All of a sudden one feeling, then the mind starts talking about it, and you’re not sure anymore. “I really felt sure yesterday I was gonna propose. I’m glad I didn’t.” And the next day, “Oh my, I can’t believe I didn’t propose.” It’s just the heart.

Now, why does the heart be the way it is? We’ve been through this, but I want you to understand it once and for all. Your heart is naturally open. The natural state of your heart is open. You don’t have to do anything. It’s filled with love, filled with inspiration, filled with joy and love, and it wants to express it. That’s what it is. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful instrument. What happens? Things have happened in your life that ended up hurting the heart. Things happen — it’s a happening place. People betray you. People die. Things happen. And the next thing you know, you store patterns in the heart that are closed, and the heart doesn’t wanna be closed. And so it’s always pushing up, trying to create thoughts that will help it feel better. But because the thoughts are coming from a core that’s negative, that’s hurt, that’s got problems, the mind is going to have problems. And by the time you’re done, that’s all that’s going on in there.

There’s a whole bunch of noise and issues, and most people don’t feel their heart. I remember once, after a circle — we had our Sunday services — a very beautiful man came up to me, very sincere. He said, “I’ve been practicing yoga and meditation for years.” He was a professor. He looked me in the eyes and said, “Mickey, I’ve never felt my heart. I’ve never felt my heart.” And he read The Untethered Soul, or whatever it was, and he came back weeks later. Now I see it. I see why intellectuals don’t wanna go there. The heart is emotional. The intellect is pure. Pure intellect is beautiful. The trouble is it is affected by the feelings of the heart. Very rarely can Einstein have pure intellect. There are those. There are those scientists that had pure intellect, but still, you look at their lives. Look at Beethoven’s life. Look at even Einstein’s life — his family life. I love the man, right? He did not do good with his children. He did not do good with his wives. He did not do real well with relationships. Because it takes a lot to work with the heart. And what we do is hide in the mind. You understand that? That’s what scientists tend to do. They hide in the mind so they don’t have to deal with the heart.

But you wanna deal with the heart. The heart is pure, the heart is beautiful, the heart is filled with love. The question becomes not, why is the mind doing what it’s doing — you know why the mind is doing what it’s doing, because you stored garbage in the heart and it’s trying to release it. That’s what it boils down to. You push stuff down there when you suppress. Yes, it shows up in your mind, but you suppress it into your heart. When you push things away that you don’t wanna experience, you are pushing the energy of the event down so that it doesn’t come up into the mind. But it does go down to the heart, and you didn’t want it in the mind. You sure as heck don’t want it in the heart, and so you just keep pushing it further and further down.

Have you ever been in there pushing something down? Something you don’t wanna feel? Something somebody said? Don’t you have this tendency to push away? I want you to feel that. Do you or do you not push stuff away? The heart’s not feeling what it wants. “I can’t handle this.” You can’t handle it. Now what do you do? I don’t wanna experience it, but you are experiencing it there. That’s the basis for suppression. You got that? That’s the formula. “I can’t handle what you said.” Trouble is, you said it, and I can’t make it not have been said. But I don’t like what it feels like in here. So what do I do? I push it away. Push it away from what? Push it away from my center of experience, my center of self, my center of being. I don’t want that coming in here. So I have this tendency — some of you do it so much you don’t even know you’re doing it — to push it away, push it away. You’re pushing that energy down into your heart, down into the core of where the energy comes from.

Like the spring — if you go to the springs, you’ll see that way down low, there’s a rock that’s opened up and this stream of water’s coming up, and it pushes up and then it surfaces. That’s what’s happening with your heart. It’s all happening down there, and it surfaces up and it bubbles into the mind. That’s what your personal thoughts are. That’s what all the neurosis is. I don’t want you to be afraid of it. I don’t want you to judge it. I don’t want you to hate it — it doesn’t do any good at all. It’s happening because of the natural forces. You shove stuff down there and it doesn’t want it down there.

The heart does not want that stuff down there. Anything you shove down there, the heart does not want it down there. How do you know? Because it keeps trying to come back up — 30 years later, it’s coming up. You stored it down there and you pushed an energy, a blockage, on top of an energy flow. And that energy flow is the Shakti. The energy flow is bliss, is love, is beauty, is a natural expression of the heart. But you pushed this on top of it, so now it’s blocked. The heart doesn’t want it to be blocked, so it keeps trying to push it back up, and you keep pushing it back down. And that whole dance between the mind and the heart — the mind tries to figure out: “I got divorced years ago and it still bothers me. What should I do? Move. Don’t stay in the place where things remind you. Stay away from anybody who has the same name as that person.” It’s just giving you advice on how to avoid what you got down there, what you stored down there, and you of course listen to the advice. And it’s not wrong, by the way.

Psychologists will tell you, if they’re working in therapy with somebody who had a bad relationship, had a divorce or something, and it’s been a fair enough time for it to cool down and they can’t — they drive by a restaurant they used to go to and it bothers them terribly, or they hear a song, and it’s like, “Oh, they’re playing that song.” You stored that stuff down there and it’s gonna come up as negative. So they may advise you to move. I’ve seen them do it. “The only way you’re gonna get around this is to get away from it.” It’s fine. All things are fine. But I want you to understand what’s going on. You shoved it down there and it keeps trying to come back up. Things trigger it. You say, “It triggered me.” What does that mean? It came back up, and you have to learn to deal with it. Spirituality is not about pushing it away or avoiding the outside that brings it up. Eventually you get to the point where you want it to come up. That’s how you learn to work with your heart.

I’ve been through the stages with you. At first, you can’t handle it, so you push it away — fine. But you see it comes back up, and it can ruin your whole life. Your entire life can be ruined because you shoved the stuff down there and you’re making decisions in the mind based on the fact that you’re trying to avoid what’s in there. And I’ve talked about that before. You’re trying to avoid yourself. You’re trying to create friends that agree with you and never say anything you don’t like, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You don’t want anything touching that stuff down there. I actually heard people say it once: “Don’t talk about that subject. Your father can’t handle that.” What’s wrong with daddy? You got some stuff down there, eh? Well, I’m sorry for that, because you’re not supposed to have stuff down there, because you’ll never feel full love if you have stuff down there. Listen to me. It is not okay that you pushed that stuff down there. It is not okay that the stuff is down there. You’ll never ever feel fully alive while you’re protecting yourself from yourself. It will determine the decisions you make. It will determine what you like, what you don’t like, who you like, who you don’t like, where you live, what you eat — every single thing. That’s how it happens. It’s not you — it’s because you stored this stuff down there and the mind’s trying to figure out how you can be okay. “I’ll be okay, but never meeting this kind of person or that kind of person.” Your heart got disturbed, so now your mind’s got it all figured out. That is how it leaves the impressions, and then you have to deal with it.

So you start to come down to understanding it’s not about the mind, it’s about the heart. But the mind is causing disturbance in trying to solve the problem of the heart.

Alright, let’s take something more down to earth. People have babies. If the baby is crying and doesn’t seem well, that mind will not stop. “What could it be? Did I feed it wrong? Did I do this wrong? Is there something bothering it? Maybe the diaper’s too tight.” The mind will go berserk because the heart is not comfortable with what’s going on. I’m not saying it’s wrong. But you do admit it’s happening, isn’t it? As opposed to what a wise being does — a wise being doesn’t play that game. A wise being sits there, gets quiet first. Quiets down the heart. “I can handle the fact that something seems to be wrong.” Can you handle that? If you can’t handle it, you’re gonna try to solve it with your mind, and your mind doesn’t know anything. Do you know that the mind knows so little? It only knows what it’s experienced before. So maybe a sister of yours had a baby and they found out, “Well, if you feed it licorice…” and the next thing you know you’re sitting there shoving licorice into the kid. You’ll grab anything, won’t you? That’s because the heart’s not comfortable.

So the first thing a wise person does is get comfortable — the opposite of what your tendency is to do. I’m not trying to solve it, I’m trying to see what’s going on. And you quiet the mind down and you look at the heart and you see all that anxiety, all that tension, all that fear. Does fear make good decisions? Fear doesn’t make good decisions. It makes terrible decisions, because it’s just based on — I want the fear to go away. I don’t wanna solve the problem, I wanna do something that makes the fear go away, because I can’t handle feeling like this. Anybody listening? That’s what it means to work at the root, to work at a deeper level. And this is how you work with the mind, even though I’m talking about the heart. The root of the mind is in the heart. So when you get high enough, clear enough, that you can just — yes, the mind is gonna do this, isn’t it? Can the mind be neurotic? Can the mind jump around like a jumping bean, just go from one thing to the other? Yes, it can do that. Is there a solution in that? No, there is not. Maybe — you know what they say — like twice a day a broken clock reads the right time. Maybe you hit on something. But no, that is not a reasonable way to behave. That’s what’s meant by neurotic. That’s what’s meant by a troubled mind.

But the problem is not the mind. The problem is the heart is not able to handle — using a very simple example — the child is crying a lot and can’t go to sleep, a young baby. You’re not okay with that. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t be either. I understand. But I’m talking to you — you better be okay with it. Why? Because it’s happening. I teach you that all the time. If something’s happening and you’re not okay with it, you’re the wrong person to deal with it. You’re not trying to solve the problem, you’re trying to solve the fact that you can’t deal with the problem. You’re trying to erase the disturbance that you are feeling, as opposed to putting your energy into actually finding a proper right action. We call it right action. See the difference? And I’m telling you — I took 50 years before I saw this stuff. You’re not trying to solve the problem. You’re trying to come up with something to make you feel better about the problem. Maybe the licorice thing is still a stupid example, but who cares.

And so now your sister-in-law tells you, “Oh yeah, we use licorice and it stopped the baby from crying,” and all of a sudden you feel better. “At least I found something. I can try it.” You understand that? You’re just trying to get yourself to feel better so you can try it — as opposed to what? As opposed to realizing that fear, anxiety, insecurity, jealousy — these feelings that try to express a solution in the mind — are never the solution. What you’re trying to solve…

Okay, we get more real. Jealousy. You’ve all felt jealousy at some point in your life. What does your mind tell you to do about the jealousy? “Leave them. I can’t trust them. I don’t wanna live with somebody.” Oh, there’s a good one. Let’s go do that, since you kind of weren’t sure if everybody’s doing anything. Or, “Challenge him. Don’t be afraid. Be powerful. Confront the situation.” That’ll be real good for the relationship, especially if he’s not doing anything. Your feelings that you’re trying to get rid of are not the solution to the problem. The problem is you can’t handle the feeling. What if I can handle the feeling? All of a sudden I become objective. “I’m not sure there’s a reason to be jealous — it’s just something that is happening inside of me.” So that’s a much nicer way to approach the situation. Is there a way I can approach the situation that is trying to solve the problem for all of us, for the whole thing, not just for me?

And you’re gonna find out that when the mind quiets down, because you quiet the heart down — why? Because you can handle the situation. You always want to be able to handle what the heart is emoting, because if you can’t, you’re gonna do stupid things.

Let’s talk about anger. Is anger an emotion? Ever felt anger? You wanna hear what your mind tells you to do about the anger? I don’t wanna hear what your mind tells you to do about the anger, because you don’t know what it’s talking about. It’s only gonna talk about, “How do I get rid of this feeling of anger, of turmoil that I can’t handle? What do I do? Throw pots and pans around? Say some really evil stuff?” It makes you feel better for a moment, but go have fun — it’s never the solution. The expression of anger — how can I make good decisions? Come on, guys, you’ve been on the block. So what you’re saying is, “I feel anger and I can’t handle it.” But then what you’re gonna do — you’re gonna get rid of it. You can find a way to either suppress it because you can’t handle it, or express it. And you don’t wanna be around when expressing it, you hear me? It makes a mess. What’s the alternative? Quiet down in the face of the heart’s experience of anger.

Or fear, or jealousy, any of them. Can you stay seated in the seat of self, consciousness, awareness, and notice that your heart is having a problem with anger? And if you can, you win the prize. Like a video game, you get to the next level. First level is mind — you’re going after it. Second level is you control your mind some by holding it together, something like that — better than throwing it out, but it’s not gonna solve anything. Third level is you start seeing why it is the way it is. You start seeing this stuff in your heart, right? And then you sit there and say — not, am I gonna express or suppress? Why is that in there? You gotta be really — meditation will take you there, or deep spiritual practice will take you to where you’re there all the time. It’s called becoming established in the seat of self.

You’re in there. Something happens, no matter how big — you start feeling fear or anger coming up, and you’re a seasoned spiritual aspirant. You notice what it is and you sit there and say, “Where’s this coming from?” And you can find out that other people can handle the situation. There are people whose house catches fire and they’re very clear. They get the children out, they do this, they do that, they call. You hear me? Other people just freak — completely freak, unable to handle this, yes or no? So you get to the point where you learn that you can handle this. You don’t want to, but you can handle it. And then what’s beautiful is you’ll see deeper inside. The next layer is there are patterns that you stored inside yourself — because of a movie you watched, because something happened — and these patterns are coming up. Maybe it’s just a little fire and you can deal with it easily, as opposed to you freaking out because you watched a fire movie. You’ll see you stored stuff in there that caused you to behave a certain way out of the situations.

And you realize — and this is when you’re going very deep — that every single thing that ever happened to you, and every single thing that comes up from your heart, is for your growth. None of it is a punishment. None of it is karma — that kind of karma, “Oh, you deserve it.” No. There’s no such thing. You are here to grow. And growing means the ability to handle reality. If stuff is going on inside and starts to come up and you can’t handle it, learn. And we’ll talk about how to learn to handle it.

Eventually, you’ll get to a point — very, very peaceful, very deep — that no matter what happens, your first impulse, your first reaction, is to step back, not to step in. You don’t get closer to it. You first step back behind it, find your center — call it being centered. You find your center and you look and see what’s happening. And in general, you’ll find out that from that seat of consciousness, of awareness, of witness, that things aren’t as bad as they looked. You go to the next level.

It’s not about whether to express it or suppress it. You realize at some point, deep in your life, that every bit of that energy can be transmuted. What does that mean? Instead of pushing it down so it stays and builds up inside of you and blows up like a volcano, and instead of letting it all out and making a mess of yours and everybody else’s life — it’s energy. Energy pushed down causes a problem. Energy released comes out, causes a problem. Why can’t I channel the energy up? Why can’t anger turn into love?

You’ll get to a point where you’re centered enough that you step back. Your first reaction, when the energy gets weird, is to step back — not to push away, and not to express, but to step back. And then you’ll see: I am stopping that energy from being able to go to a higher center. I’m unable to handle it enough to let it burst through, to go from the third chakra to the fourth, from the second chakra to the third and fourth. These energies can move. The reason they stay in one center or another is you hold them there. And little by little, understand that every single one of these emotions, every single one that ends up creating all these weird thoughts that are difficult to deal with — it’s not that you don’t let them express that way, it’s that you couldn’t care less.

Come on. You’ve seen your mind go berserk crazy for no reason at all, and you step back and say, “Okay, fine, do your thing, man, but I’m not gonna hang out there.” I don’t have to push it away, I don’t express it — it’s just something that’s going on. It’s like, you know, you got a boo-boo. Fine, I got a boo-boo, I can still play ball. You can deal with the fact that the mind’s having some issues. But you look at the heart, and what you’ll see in the heart is this energy that’s causing the issues. And you go down in there and you step back: Can I handle that? My heart is having some issues. If you can’t, you’re gonna express it or suppress it, and then the mind will go with it, and it’s just a complete mess. “They’re sensitive, they’re reactive.” You step back, and you’ll see — if you step back — there’s room for you to see the energy as it is.

And anger — you never wanna go with anger. Anger is not a meaningful emotion that does any good at all. It just causes damage. It just causes bad decisions. It causes turmoil and suffering for you and everybody else. But I have anger. Yes. But if you step back and do some work with yourself, anger’s a natural expression. I’m not judging myself, I’m not freaking out over it. But I don’t have to get involved in it. I can give it room. You give it room — not to get into it, but give it some room to release. How? I’ve found the word is relaxation. You relax, or release. And when you feel it, you’re gonna wanna tense against it and either push it out or push it down. Instead, you relax. Can you relax in the face of anger? Relax in the face of jealousy, relax in the face of fear. You better be able to. Otherwise, if you can’t relax in the face of it, it’s gonna express itself. So you relax more, and the next thing you know — over time, it takes time — you’ll find out that each time you go through something and you give it relaxation, you give it the space it needs, you will go higher and you’ll get stronger, become more capable of handling more powerful emotions.

So it’s not that they’re wrong. They’re not wrong. They just need to be brought up higher. And the only reason they’re lower is because you blocked them — in a past life or in this life, you pushed stuff down on top of them. So now they’re coming up disturbed. Otherwise they come up pure. They come up beautiful.

I told you once that my yogini, Shakti, who gave us the Durga statue — a beautiful saint — she passed many years ago. One time she leaned over to me out of nowhere and she said, “Nikki.” I said, “Yes, mother.” She said, “Don’t you just love when they yell at you? There’s so much energy.” And her eyes lit up when she stopped, as her disciples got mad at her and yelled at her. You can go there too. You understand that it’s just energy, right? But that’s a very high being.

You can channel those energies to that level, but you are a high being. You can handle anything. You’re in there — it’s just an experience. What’s anger? Something you feel. It’s like a mosquito bite or something like that. But you can’t handle it. So it leaks out. Either you push it down and it makes a mess, or you let it out. So you learn to work with your heart. That’s my hope for this talk.

You’re not trying to stop the mind from doing it. If you wanna work with a tree — we have these, I don’t like them — the carnations, those peppermint colors, you know what I’m talking about, right? They don’t paint them and they don’t inject stuff into the root system. They just pour the color down in the water, the roots suck it up, and they become peppermint. Same thing with you. You work at the root. It’s happening in your heart. And it’s not — there’s fire in there, isn’t it? Passion and fear and all that — that comes as strong stuff, right? And you just learn to relax and release, little by little, in the face of those energies, and you’re gonna find out your mind changes completely. The day you can handle anger, it doesn’t make a lot of noise about it. Literally quiet. It’s quiet. It has space, and the next thing you know, you’re sitting there, you’re channeling it, you feel fine. You channeled it up, and you look outside and you see what’s actually going on. What are the forces that are interacting together that have created this disturbing situation? Because the solution doesn’t mean you are okay — it means you raise the whole situation.

It doesn’t do any good to yell at somebody who yelled at you, they apologize, and that whole cycle is absurd. They yell at you, you yell at them, and they scream and yell and say, “You apologize or I’ll never forgive you.” And then all of a sudden they apologize. You didn’t solve a single thing. Next time somebody does something, it’s coming right back up.

And you understand you have to be able to deal with the energy — how? By relaxing. If you can relax in the face of the energy, you can step behind it. It will pull you in. You have to tense to get pulled in. That act of relaxation gives it room to find another channel. It won’t happen all at once, but this is what it means to evolve. You’re talking about serious growth here — that you can handle things you should not be able to handle.

A beautiful situation — you maybe visit your parents, or an ex, or something like that, and you’re fine. They say something that used to trigger you. There’s nothing to trigger you to do anything. In fact, you feel compassion. The Buddhists say the highest stage of compassion. What does that mean? You go visit your parents, you need to get along with your ex, something like that. Then the next thing you know, they’re behaving the way they used to, and you don’t feel a single thing. Absolutely nothing happens. And what you look at, what you feel, is: “They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re just throwing their stuff around.” And so you feel compassionate, you feel understanding. You don’t wanna fight. You don’t need to fight back.

So this is what it means to be able to look into your heart and see what’s going on in there, and make a commitment. Your commitment is: I’m gonna work at the heart level. I’m gonna notice that all that noise in my mind is my heart trying to find a solution for the disturbed energy that it’s feeling. And I am gonna breathe and look at it — not just in meditation. That’s what I learned. I used to meditate six hours a day, which is wonderful, it’s fine, do it. But out here on the battlefield of life — that’s what you grow. You’re going about your business and all of a sudden this stuff comes up, and you just use every moment of your life, every moment. There’s not one moment in your life that’s not about spiritual evolution. And you start seeing where it’s coming from, and you do your best to relax, and you’re gonna fail. And that’s fine, because it’s not failure, it’s growth.

I always tell you: you go to play the piano, you’ve never played before. The piano teacher gives you scales. You didn’t fail. You’re practicing. You can’t sit there and say, “I have to do the scales perfectly, otherwise I failed.” You’re supposed to be trying, and when you’re trying, you’re gonna make mistakes. And by making mistakes, you will learn to do it better. Take up a sport, see how good you are at it. Go play some ping pong with good ping pong players — you can find them. You’re not so good at it. You’ll have to learn to concentrate, can’t hold the racket right, all kinds of stuff. But you learn with every single ball that comes across that net. You’re better. You’ve had the experience of how to deal with the slice, and how to deal with this, how to deal with that. It doesn’t mean you succeeded. But because you tried and did your best, you got better. The best that you can do is a very honorable thing. It’s a wonderful thing.

Forget ping pong. Let’s say you’re in a relationship and you always end up in these fights and you don’t wanna, and you see the pattern of how it happens. You go in next time and do the best that you can to rework the energy. And if it ends up in a fight, fine. Just do the best you can each time, and I assure you at some point you’ll be a good ping pong player, a good tennis player, a good piano player, and good at “I can handle the relationship.” Because you practiced. Are you allowed to practice? And this whole key is your willingness to do the best you can.

But people give up. “I can’t handle it. I can’t handle it.” There you go. Can’t handle what God gave you to handle. Can’t handle the reality of the situation that’s facing you. No. There is no “I can’t handle it.” There is: “I will march into that the best that I can, and if I fall down, I will get right back up, having learned more because I fell down.” You hear me? Kids learning to ride a bicycle — the father takes off the training wheels, that kid’s gonna fall. And every time they fall, they become a better bike rider, because they’ve learned that sense of balance. It can’t be talked to you — you have to practice. It’s the same thing with all the stuff I’m talking about.

So you get to a point where you realize, no matter what it is — I don’t care what it is — inside my heart, my position is: I can handle it. I step back and handle it. If you fall, that’s fine. That’s what it means to practice. Don’t judge yourself. Don’t feel negative — that’s how you get in trouble. You think it’s supposed to be perfect, that the first time you do anything… no, no way, shape, or form. You just do your best, and then you get up and you do your best. And if you keep doing that, wait and see what happens.

And so that’s how you evolve. That’s how you grow. That’s the meaning of life. And it comes from your heart. The root of the mind is in the heart. The heart is the center, the core of your being. So you learn to work with it. And I’ve given you some clues. One is, don’t ever say “I can’t handle it.” Well, the first one is no suppression. The hierarchy: suppression is the worst. Now temporarily, if you had to put something aside, that’s fine — but come back and deal with it. But literally suppressing so you don’t have to deal with it, that is the lowest form of yoga. That’s the slowest form of working with the energy, because it’s gonna stay in there and it’s gonna spread like a virus in there, and it’s gonna keep coming up in different ways. The next thing you know, you’re yelling at somebody you don’t even know because of something that happened five years ago. So suppression — no. Temporarily, you may be in a situation where it’s gonna blow up, and you just step aside. “Hold it down, down boy, down boy.” But you go down and do your work afterwards. Bring it back up. You do not want that down there.

Expression is the next level. Believe it or not, other than what I said — this momentary thing — expression is better than suppression, which is why psychology is based on expression. “Take up a sport, do something to let the energy out.” And they’re not wrong. Expression is better than suppression. Guided expression is better than wild expression. But basically, that’s a level. But neither of them are close. It’s transmutation — that’s the essence of yoga, the understanding that you don’t have to suppress or express. Just take a step back.

“Simon says, take a step back.” Back into what? Into the one who notices the anger, the one who notices the jealousy. And don’t say, “I can’t handle it.” Say, “Not only can I handle it, I want to handle it, because I don’t want that in there. I can handle it — it’s difficult, but I can handle it.” And you start using affirmation: “I can and I will.” That’s how powerful I was. In yoga — “I can and I will. I can and I will handle it.” May not handle it perfectly, but that’s what I’m telling you. “I can and I will.” His guru, the being of great will, used to tell him — when his master would tell him something’s gonna happen and you were sure — you sure would say to him, “Sooner the sun and the moon should change places in heaven than this won’t happen.” I ain’t playing around. I ain’t quitting. Doesn’t matter. “I can handle this.” You start using affirmation like that, and you grow. You grow. You fall down, you get up. Then what? Then it’s not only “I can handle it” — it’s “I want to handle it,” because I’ve seen what there is underneath that. All that disturbed energy that I have to struggle with — that I can handle. It’s really beautiful energy that’s hitting the rocks that I stored down there, and it’s pushing them up. Till you go through bad times, you welcome that. “I love it, man. Yeah, bring it on. Bring it on.” Is it hard? Yeah. Does it hurt? Sure. So does childbirth. It’s just worth it. You hear me? And you literally start looking at it that way. And when you’re that open, it doesn’t hurt as much. Why in childbirth — what are you taught to do? Relax. Relax, relax, relax. It’s the same thing inside of you.

It’s like, if you relax around it — “I can handle it, I want it, literally. I can handle it. I want it out. I do not want this in here. And I’m welcome to go through whatever it takes, and I’ll relax through it all day, all night. I’m just letting it go.” That’s your next step.

And I told you there are deeper steps even than that. Not “I can handle it,” and not “I want it out.” Once you get far enough back, you look in there and you see what a mess you made of your heart. One of the most beautiful instruments ever created — love, devotion, caring, compassion. That’s a beautiful instrument. And you shoved all that junk on top of it. But now you’re far enough back, and you’re not saying “I can handle it coming up.” You look in there and you apologize to your heart. “I am so sorry that I shoved all that stuff in there on top of you, because I couldn’t handle the reality of my life. I’m sorry.” And you mean it. That’s a part of your being you shoved in there. You understand that? It’s like a piece of your psyche — you took a piece and shoved it down there, and you apologize to it. It’s really beautiful when you get to that state, and you put your hand down — instead of to push it down, you reach your hand down into your heart to give her a hand, to help her up. She’s just a part of your being that was a child that couldn’t handle stuff. That’s what all your suppressed stuff is, and you’re there now as a big brother, big sister, to put the hand down.

And you literally — people talk about reaching down there. They call it the dark side of yourself, or all kinds of names. I don’t get into that stuff. But you have the natural feeling that, “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry that I shoved him into a closet. How can they help?” And you’ll find out it doesn’t let go right away. But eventually something really beautiful happens. When something happens that disturbs that part of you, it’s amazing to watch. All of a sudden, instead of closing, it reaches up to you. Now you’re reaching down to it, and it realizes it’s got a big brother, a big sister to help it. And it’s seen it enough times that when it gets hurt, it reaches up and says, “I need a hand.” And that’s when the Shakti changes direction. All of a sudden, instead of reaching down, everything’s going up. And that becomes a whole. There are many stages in your growth, I’m telling you. You wanna go through these, don’t you? Wouldn’t that be nice?

She’s freaking out in there, and instead of throwing stuff around or suppressing, she realizes there’s something deeper in there that can help her, and she reaches up for that. So that’s what they’re saying — you can’t do it alone, you need God’s help. So in that case, you’re reaching up for a notion of God that can pick you up. But the beauty is, really, that is God in there. Your highest being is in there, and you’re literally reaching up for help. And it’s always there, because you’re always there. If you can be clear, it can come up. If you get down into it, it’s muck and mess. So you just constantly get to the state of bringing the energy up.

And we could stop. We’ve gotten nowhere in the hierarchy. I call it the launchpad. Your consciousness is now calm enough to sit on a launchpad and wait for the launch. Nothing brings you down. You’re clear. From that point, it goes up by itself. When — especially, especially — once the lower self starts reaching out for the higher self. That’s a beautiful stage, and you just help it up. And then all of a sudden the energy changes direction. You start feeling this tremendous pull all the time — 24/7. In the mornings it’s going on, you go to bed at night, it’s going on. You learn to live with it, and it’s pulling you up instead of the forces pushing you down. And then eventually, little by little, it takes care of itself.

The final stages of the growth of your path — they are not actual will, they’re not things you’re gonna do. They’re the complete surrender of letting go of yourself, of any sense of the personal self, to realize you are holding yourself down by being separate. When in truth, the whole universe is inside of you. And as it pulls you up, eventually it takes a great being to let go. Those really great ones, when they merged, they let go. The ego fell apart. There was no sense of individuality, and there was no littleness left. There was just the whole universe of consciousness. And that’s what enlightenment is.

So there — I hope that helps you. And what it’s all about is, are you willing to work with your heart? Or are you caught in thinking your mind’s gonna solve the problem of the heart? The mind cannot solve the problem of the heart. It just comes up with temporary, hopeful solutions — the heart feels a little bit better. It didn’t solve the problem of why the heart is the way it is. That’s all about purification. It’s about welcoming, releasing, helping, growing. Alright, I hope that helps.

Tami Simon: Welcome back 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.E182: Stop Closing Your Heart—The Real Path to Love and Freedom