E186: You Don’t Need to Rise—You Need to Release

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. Your growth comes in layers. If you try to force it and skip a bunch of layers, you’re going to go back. If I have a very high spiritual experience or have something, even deep meditation, you’re coming back. Why? Because there’s a reason you haven’t finished. There’s a reason that you need to do forceful, and I’m not speaking against them by the way, forceful, willful efforts in order to rise above yourself.

That’s what you’re doing. You understand that? You’re trying to raise the energy up through the different centers. That’s wonderful. That is the process of yoga. That has a lot to do with different spiritual teachings. But the real question is, why do you need to do that? Because there’s something holding you down, and eventually, which sometimes takes lifetimes for people to catch on, it’s not about going up, it’s about getting rid of what’s holding you down.

If you’re holding on to a hot air balloon, don’t try to figure out how to get enough helium in it or hot air in it so that it pulls you up with it. Figure out why is it not going up? Its nature is to go up. Is it not? And if you look, you will see it’s not going up because I’m holding onto it. If I wasn’t holding onto it, it would go up.

So the question is not now I figured out why it’s not going up, because I’m holding onto it. That’s not deep enough. You started. You caught on. There’s a reason it’s not going up. Now the question is, why are you holding onto it? That’s called working your way to the root. Buddhists speak about working at the root.

The root is not why the balloon’s not going up. The root is I’m holding onto it. I got it. That’s why it’s not going up, but that’s not the root. Why are you holding onto it? You’re working your way through the different layers of your being, and as you work your way through, things become clearer and clearer, not because you got higher, but because that which was holding you down is no longer holding you down.

That is permanent growth. From that state, when you realize, “I’m holding onto this balloon. I’m holding onto the string. Okay, I got it. That’s why it’s not going up. How do I make myself not hold onto the string?” No, don’t you dare. You have to ask, why am I holding onto the string? Why do I have to make myself not hold onto the string?

Why do I have to find out why I’m holding onto the string? Why am I holding onto the string? And if you look, because you made it past, “No, I want to be up. No, I want the balloon to go up. How do I make the balloon go up?” That’s great. It’s good growth. Everything you do is fine. But you ain’t staying there, not a chance in the world, because you still have the tendency to hold yourself down.

The fact that you’re strong enough to fight that tendency, I’m not taking anything away from it. It’s very beautiful, but it’s not natural. It’s not the natural path. The natural path is, if I’m holding onto this balloon, why? Not how do I make it go up even though I’m holding onto it. Just listen to me. Why am I holding onto it?

Once you get to that point, you’ll look. You’ll see, oh, it’s not going up because I’m holding onto it. What a stupid thing to do, hold onto it and expect it to go up. It’s not gonna go up. Very good. I’m glad you reached that state, but that’s not high enough. I’m realized. I realize I’m holding onto the rope.

Oh, very good. Now the question is, why are you holding onto the rope? What is it within you that seems innate, seems natural? Of course, I’m holding onto the rope. There’s something inside of me makes… I’m scared. I, I need to hold onto the rope. Well, you don’t need to hold onto the rope, but you don’t know that yet.

So you start challenging each layer, going down, not up. There are great spiritual teachers who taught very much in the Buddhist tradition that say spirituality is never about getting anything. It’s about losing everything, and that’s what we’re talking about. You want to lose what’s making you hold onto the rope, and what you’re gonna see, you won’t like.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t be holding onto the rope. You understand that? You’re gonna look in there. Of course I’m holding onto the rope. I have fears. I’m exposed. People hurt me. I’ve gotten hurt before. Of course I’m holding onto the rope. Well, good. Hold onto the rope, because you ain’t going anywhere. And eventually you get to the point of realizing, while I’m holding onto the rope, it seems rational, seems reasonable, and everybody agrees with me, by the way, and eventually you reach the point where you question Which is more important?

Giving in to, surrendering to these reasons that I’m holding onto the rope, or exploring what it would be like to not hold onto the rope? You become an explorer, just like astronauts took all those risks to go to the moon. They were big risks. I don’t know if you understand that. Talk about that a little bit, right?

You, you put twenty gallons of gas in your car, you know it’s flammable. You don’t want to smoke around it, do you? They put seven hundred and forty thousand gallons of the most flammable material that we know. What do you mean it’s flammable? You don’t understand that? They had to keep it at minus four hundred and fifteen degrees when they filled up those tanks, otherwise it would explode.

Holy mackerel, and they’re sitting in this little capsule on top of that. Okay? I guess you want to find out what it’s like to get past that, otherwise you ain’t going past it. That’s what it means to work through the layers. How did they work through those layers? Well, most of them were, were fighter trainer pilots.

They have experience of taking risks and doing these things, and they got used to doing this, and they built their way up. Okay? It’s really very beautiful, isn’t it? Okay? You have to respect that. Well, in you, it’s not about going to the moon, it’s about going to God. It’s about going to places that, believe me, you want to go way beyond the moon.

They had to come back from the moon. You hear me? They had great experiences, but they’re talking about experiences they had. I’m talking about reaching a state that never goes away, which is what’s inside of you if you’re not holding onto that rope. What happens when you don’t hold onto the rope?

Everything goes up. Not the anchor goes up with it, so it can only go so far. There is literally… What did Christ say? He said, “You must die to be reborn.” In other words, to go up, you must let go of what’s holding you down That must be willing to say, “I am willing to go through myself, not somebody else. I’m willing to go whatever’s inside of me that’s closing my heart, that is holding my mind into a given conceptual place.”

All right? The heart is not limited. You limit your heart to the spaces that you’re willing to let it go. Even you fall in love, you’re afraid to go there. “Not so quick. That’s dangerous, I got hurt before.” And so you put boundaries on your willingness to open your heart. Well, until your heart’s completely open, you’re not going anywheres.

You can go relatively, have a nice relationship or so, but you have no idea what that heart is capable of. That heart is all the energy to just have wings. That’s what Sufis… The heart with wings. Okay? It has wings. It can fly off to God. It does not have to stay trapped in the cage as you put it in. It’s the same with your mind.

You say, “I’m very open-minded.” You are not. All right? You are not. The moment something happens that doesn’t match your open-mindedness, “I don’t believe in that. It shouldn’t be like that.” You understand that? You still have boundaries. It can only go so far. I try to teach you, a very major part of my teachings is both the infiniteness of space, I talked to you about, you know, 1.3 million Earths fit inside the sun.

I wish that meant something to you. If 1.3 million Earths fit inside the sun, you ain’t squat, are you? If the entire planet blew to smithereens tomorrow, a few other planets in our solar system would change their orbit, and nothing else would know you were even here. How special are you? You don’t wanna hear it.

That’s part of protecting yourself. “I matter.” You do not. How could you matter? Am I listening? Are you willing to hear this? No. I want a spiritual discussion about how to feel I’m great and how to feel close to God. No. While you’re busy being individual and trying to make yourself great, you ain’t going anywheres.

You can relatively say, “Oh, look, I got a degree. Oh, look, I help people.” That’s wonderful. There are 8.3 billion people on the planet Earth right now. How many have you helped? You’re really great. It’s just you have to be willing to die to be reborn. Do you understand that? Christ said, “Those who are last will be first.”

Are you willing to let go of this ego? Are you willing to let go of this concept of yourself that you matter? I’ve discussed with you before, do you matter? The Earth’s been here for 4.5 billion years. How long are you gonna be here? Come on, I know you matter a lot. 80, 90 years? 4.5 billion, let’s say. 80, 90, 4.5 billion.

I guess I don’t matter so much. And even your being here is meaningless because 1.3 million Earths can inside the sun, and there are 300 billion suns in your galaxy. How important are you? You try to make yourself important, do people clap? They think you’re adorable. As long as you’re holding onto that rope, that I am separate, I am important, I…

Not only important, I am the most important thing in the world. If I say that to you, you say, “No.” You live that way. Your emotions c- are more important than anybody else’s. Your thoughts are more important than anybody else’s. If somebody else does something to agree with your thoughts, they’re wrong. If somebody else does something to your emotion you don’t like, they’re terrible.

I’ll never see them again. In other words, you are the center of your universe. What do I want? What do I not want? What do I like? How do I get what I want? How do I avoid what I don’t want? How are my children supposed to be? I, me, mine. Everything’s I, me, mine. In other words, you are the center of your universe.

Are you really? You’re here for 80, 90 years. Does everything go the way you want? No, that’s why you’re anxious. That’s why you struggle. That’s the cause of every problem you have. You’re holding onto the rope of me. That’s the rope you’re holding, and while you’re holding that rope, you ain’t going anywhere.

You must die to be reborn. You must let go of that rope in order to expand. Not ex- It’s, it’s like in the ’60s, we talk about expanding consciousness. I learned many years ago when I grew among my layers, you’re not expanding consciousness, you’re ceasing to constrict it. It’s already expanded. You won’t let it.

You keep holding it down to you. But if you didn’t hold it down to you, it could be itself. It would go to its natural state. There. Spirituality is about dying to be reborn. It’s about letting go of yourself. How do you do that? Because on a daily basis, you don’t do that. On a daily basis, you have a way you want things to be, and you consider success if you get them that way.

Nobody else does. They don’t want it to be the way you do. You want it to rain tomorrow because you need farmer and you have this and that, and somebody else has their wedding tomorrow. They don’t want it to rain. Who’s right? Have fun, because you’re gonna find out there isn’t any You know what’s right?

Ultimately, it’s cut to the bottom. Zen says it. The Zen master, when you go before the Zen master, he says, “Flowers are red, water’s blue, and the grass is green.” And they send you home. You say, “What kind of teaching is that?” It’s the teaching. In other words, it doesn’t matter that you don’t want the grass to be green.

It doesn’t matter that you don’t want the water to be blue. It doesn’t matter you don’t want the flowers to be red. What matters is they are red, they are blue, they are green. Are you okay with that? No. Okay. Struggle. You’re not willing to accept reality. I want reality to be the way I want. Let’s spin that for a moment.

Don’t you? You want the moments unfolding in front of you to be the way you want, both now, they should be the way I want, and they should be the way I want in the future. Your future should look the way you want it to. The fact that you change your mind tomorrow, then it should change. You’re making up your future.

Are you not? You make up your future, and you want it to be the way you made up, and you change your mind all the time. I don’t wanna get married, but my friend got married. They seem to be very happy, and they have a baby. I should probably get married to have a baby. Okay, then your friend gets in a fight with the person they married, and in three days they’re getting a divorce.

I, I ain’t getting married. I don’t wanna get married. You’re so cute. And you catch on that things are not supposed to be the way you want. Really? How do you know? Because they aren’t the way you want unless you fight with them and struggle with them and have anxiety and get ulcers and worry. Oh, worry.

What do you worry about? That things won’t be the way I want, or I worry that they will be the way I don’t want. Okay, having fun yet? You can’t have fun, ’cause you’re busy looking at reality and saying it’s wrong. I’m gonna say some deep things tonight, which you’ll not like one iota. Reality’s never wrong.

Well, how do you define reality? That which already happened That which already happened will never not have happened. It’s truth. Is it good? I don’t know. Is it bad? I don’t know. Is it preferable? Depends on who you are. Good or bad is your choice. Like, your friend had this fight with their spouse and they got divorced, and you always liked him.

Oh, boy. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, what the heck is right or wrong? What is good or bad? What is better or worse? You decide, don’t you? And what do you decide based on? I teach you this all the time. First of all, will you shake your head yes that you get to decide what’s right or wrong? Liked and not liked, preferable and desire and fear, right?

One person’s scared to death of something, the other person can’t wait for it to happen. And you are scared to death, and tomorrow you can’t wait for it to happen. It can change that quick, can’t it? So you are in there making up what you wanna suffer about Okay? And basically, that’s the present. You want the present to be the way you want.

In a moment, I’m gonna go back to what I said. How did, how’d you get that way? How’d you decide what you want? But the future, you project… Well, let’s, let’s start this way. How did you decide what you want? That’s a question nobody asks. It’s one of those layers. Because I want it. Because it feels good when I get it.

There you go. That’s very rational. It feels good when I get it, therefore, that’s what I want. How do you know it’s gonna feel good? Because I have past experiences, and they felt good. Ah, there’s the truth. So your preferences of like and dislike are based upon your past experiences. If you never experienced anything, you don’t know whether you want it or don’t.

If you experience it, it hurt the hell out of you, you don’t want it. If you experience it was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever had, you want it to happen again. That’s what determine what you want and what you don’t want. And now you take that, and you look back at your past, and anything that happened you don’t like, you say, “It was wrong.

You hurt me. You’re wrong. It was wrong to hurt me.” Okay, we’ll discuss that. I don’t think this will come out the way I want it to be now, so it’s not right, or it’s right. And the future, it’s gotta be the way I want it to be. I have dreams of the future. I have hopes. I have concepts and views and opinions and preferences, and I’m gonna get them in the future.

Where did you get all those? They were programmed in you based on your past experiences. That’s where stuff comes from. All your preferences, your fears, your desire. You’re not afraid of something you never experienced. Although probably you’re afraid of everything at this point. You’re afraid of so much.

Do you wanna meet Sally? No, I don’t know Sa- I don’t know Sally yet. I, I would’ve met her for three, eight years before I decided whether I wanna meet her. That’s how we are. So we’ve glued ourselves into this box, a tiny box. Does the mind have to be glued in that box? Of course not. Your thoughts can be anything, can’t they?

They can think about the stars. They can think about galaxies. They can think about eternity. They can think about 4.5 billion years ago. You can do anything with your mind, but you don’t. You think about I, me, mine. What do I want? How do I get it? What do I not want? How do I avoid it? So you’ve locked this brilliant, expansive mind into this box.

You do the same thing with your heart. Just don’t do anything that bothers me and do things that I really like And you’re trying to manipulate people, places, and things, and it’s a rough life. So again, there are layers in your growth. So one layer is where most people live. That’s your layer. I’ve had experiences that made me feel good.

I want them to happen again. I’ve had experiences that made me feel bad. I do not want that to happen again. What does psychology say? Man is the sum of his learned experiences. People are the sum of their learned experiences. Are you not? You had a bad experience, you don’t want it to happen again, do you?

You make decisions based on it 10 years later, whether it’s your formative years, that could be 30, 40, 50 years ago, you’re still, psychology tells you that those experiences are determining whether you wanna get married, who you wanna marry, where you wanna live. Ooh, why would I want my three-year-old person to decide what I wanna do when I’m 53?

It is. Freud will tell you. So you catch on that you just have this stuff in there, and it limits your life totally down to a tiny little box that things have to be the way you want them to be, or there’s trouble inside of you and inside of everybody else around you. Okay, I’m gonna go back to the layers.

That’s not a layer you wanna live in. That’s an extreme clinging to your past experiences and saying, “That determined what I want to happen again.” If the same experience happened again, nobody said you’re gonna like it again I like people who they’re not getting along. They got married at Niagara Falls.

They had their honeymoon in Niagara Falls. It was so beautiful, right? And now they just fight all the time. They’re not getting along at all. They go to a marriage counselor after, you know, 15 years of fighting, and the marriage counselor says, “Well, why don’t you go back to the very exact room where you stayed, the villa you stayed for your honeymoon?”

Are you kidding me? I mean, there’s no way that that is gonna make this all come back because you got 15 years of junk sitting in there. It’s not gonna go away. Why? You know why it’s not gonna go away? ‘Cause you won’t let it. You go there, “I remember we had this wonderful time.” Then your husband or wife will do something.

You say, “Why did you do that? It’s exactly what I told you I don’t like you doing.” It’s coming right back. Wake up. It’s not gonna happen by trying to stretch up and make believe you don’t have all this stuff in here. It’s gonna happen by letting go of what you have accumulated inside that is creating your boundaries.

“Don’t talk to me like this. I don’t like your attitude.” That’s a psychological thing. Why don’t you like the attitude? “‘Cause my Uncle Charles used to talk to my mother that way, and I hated it.” And Uncle Char- he’s been dead 20 years, and you let that program you. And so now anybody talks like, like Uncle Charles or anything like that, or mother, you close down or you open up.

Yes or no? The sum of your learned experiences. So you catch on. I don’t want to be the sum of my learned experiences. I want to be me. I want to be here now. I want to interact in the current moment without this garbage inside of me that… Look, you do not see the world the way it is. What do you mean? There is physics out there.

There’s photons and protons and neutrons and atoms, and they’re coming in. But you don’t see that. Of course you don’t see that. Your mind and eyesight average out, but they don’t average out right. He looks like my brother, and I really miss my brother. He died young. I, I wanna date him. He’s not your brother.

The fact that by the time this form comes in, it hits all your stuff. By the time it comes into you, you’re not seeing anything real. You’re seeing what you like and don’t like. There’s a filter in there, isn’t there? Where’d the filter come from? The sum of your learned experiences. It’s your ego. It’s everything, right?

And that’s who I am. So I don’t wanna date you, but I wanna date her. I did wanna date her, but I don’t like the little flowers on her blouse. My sister wore stuff like that. Anybody listening? Get a sum total of those over every experience you had across your life. That’s what you see Get divorced and live in a town and you can’t get over it.

And you go to the therapist. The therapist says, what do you mean you can’t get over it? Well, I drive by the pizza place where we used to eat and I just feel, oh my God, we ate it there. I hate it. I drive by this. I hear the song that I used to say, oh, they’re playing my song. Now I say, it keeps coming up. I hate it.

The sum of your learned experiences. And the therapist says, you know, you need to move. You can’t be okay living in this town anymore. As opposed to, hey, the person’s still in there, isn’t he or she? Can you let go of the sum of your learned experiences? That’s a layer. We talked about layers. You’re living at the layer that what you see is what got stored in there.

And then when it comes in, it filters it, filters every bit of it. It shows up as your likes and dislikes. There is no like or dislike. There’s just reality. What does he mean by that? He means that every single thing that just unfolded had reasons that it unfolded. I mean, they were right? No. They were fair?

No. They were good? No. They were bad? I don’t know. There just were causes that coalesced together to make the moment be what it was. It’s science. She said what she said because her girlfriend said something mean to her in the afternoon. And then she saw her girlfriend talking to other people and it looked like they were talking about her.

So that’s why she said what she said to you when she came home. Everything is a result of all the causes that coalesced together to cause the moment to take place. That’s called reality. If I say it had to take place, you will get up and walk out. Because there’s things that happen in your life that you will not let me say they were cause and effect.

I got in a car accident. Person ran the light. Now I, I can’t walk as well as I used to. That’s terrible. It’s wrong. If you check out how you ended up at that same corner at the same time as someone who ran the light, you will find out there were causes. I always use the example of, well, if your coffee maker worked a little better, it would take three more seconds to have your coffee made in the morning, and you would not have been in that spot when that person ran that light.

Okay? Everything is the result of everything that ever happened before. You can’t pick out one thing and say it was right and it was wrong, right? Well, why was the coffee maker three seconds slower? Well, two years ago, when the coffee maker was made, the person who was making the coffee maker, who was in, in charge of soldering the final elements together, had a fight with their wife the night before, and they weren’t paying a lot of attention, and that solder didn’t hold after three years.

If that did not happen and she didn’t have that fight, then you would not have been at that moment, at that time when the accident took place. There’s no such thing as an accident, I’m sorry to tell you. There’s just the result of all the forces that coalesced together, not right, not wrong, not good, not bad, just there they were.

‘Cause you say this one’s wrong, trace it back as to why it existed, and eventually you’ll get back to the Big Bang. It all came from something, and it all interacted together. Every single thing is a result of every single thing that ever was. What does that tell you? Stop it. The Bible says, “Judge not that ye shall not be judged.”

The Third Zen Patriarch says, “End the burdensome process of judging.” Do we judge? Come on. We judge based on what? Based on our past experiences. You may be in a relationship. You don’t know him in any way, shape, or form, and you don’t know her in any shape or form. You weren’t together during your formative years.

You weren’t together with all the relationships he had. You weren’t even together today when he had trouble with his boss, you know, like his attitude when he came home. There’s a reason. Everything has a reason. So a wise person looks out there and says, “Oh- Beatles had a song, Let it be. Let it be, speaking words of wisdom.

It’s not that it’s good or bad or right or wrong, it just is. That’s very Zen, isn’t it? It just is. Why? Because. There. Life’s very simple. It is because. You want to know the because? Go to school. Go study physics, go study psychology, go study meteorology if you want to know why it’s raining on your birthday.

Is the outside world unfolding in front of you right now the sum of your learned experiences? What, are you kidding? It wasn’t even here. You grew up in Alaska. It’s here now. They have nothing to do with each other. So the outside world is not the sum of your learned experiences, but your inside world is the sum of your learned experiences, and never the twain shall meet, and you will get ulcers trying to make them meet.

Can I use my spiritual powers of will to force the moments in front of me to be the way I want them to be? You want me to talk about the laws of attraction and so on? Ready? Yes. Yes, you can, and I feel sorry for you. Why? Because a whole lot of people don’t want it to be that way, and they didn’t get to have it the way it naturally would have been.

Okay? Either you accept reality and let go of the garbage you stored inside because you couldn’t handle the reality that happened to you before, or you go out there and try to manipulate reality to be the way you want it to be right now. I mean, who do you think you are? I should control the universe.

What about everybody else? Who cares about them? So you get to the point of working your way through the layers. A great spiritual being, they don’t want it to be the way they want. They don’t have a want. There is no want. There’s just experiencing reality and seeing what I can do to raise the energy. Not for me.

What we do is we look out there, it’s not the way we want, we want to change it. Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t act like that. Don’t do this. Don’t do it. Why? Because I can’t handle it. So your whole attempt to change it is for you. I need it to be the way I want it to be, so I’ll use my powers or I’ll use manipulation or I don’t know, lots of ways I can try to make it be the way I want.

But that’s not helping anybody else. You’re not even trying to help anybody else. You’re trying to make it so I can handle it. I don’t like what you said to me. Apologize. Don’t ever say it again. Sign a piece of paper. I knew somebody that their, their parents would make them sign a pledge that they wouldn’t do it again.

How about there was a reason you did what you did, my darling daughter or son? Can we discuss that and work with that? No. Just sign this thing, otherwise you ain’t staying in this house. You’re, you’re docked for three weeks every… Hear me? That’s not working at a very deep layer, is it? And what’s it based on?

It’s based on the parent couldn’t handle what the child did. So I need it to be a way I can handle it. If you live in this house, it can be the way I can handle it. How is that helping the child? And so the wisdom comes when you sit there and say, “It’s not about me. I have to be able to handle reality.” The child did this.

They did drugs. They did this, they did that. Things happen. The husband did that, whatever it is. Things happen. Have you noticed? Things happen. Okay, can you handle it? No. Okay, then you’re not the right person to be interacting with it. You’ve admitted you’re incapable of handling it, and if you’re incapable of handling something, you are exactly the wrong person to deal with it because you don’t care about anything except your ability to handle it.

I’m gonna change the situation so I feel better about it. That doesn’t fix anything. Then the person has to suppress or whatever it is, or lie or act different. I don’t know. And so you wake up. You don’t want things to be the way you want them to be You want to honor and respect the way they are. Once I can honor and respect what’s happening without getting offended, without getting hurt, without reacting to try and protect myself, just okay, this is how life has unfolded at this point.

It’s neither good nor bad, nor right nor wrong, but it is. How do you know it is? Christ said, “Let those with eyes to see, let them see. Let those with ears to hear, let them hear.” I’m not sure that’s what he meant, but that’s what I mean by it . Okay? There it is. Come on. How do I know that’s reality? Because it’s there.

It’s happening. I don’t want it to be. I’m sorry, because it is, and it will never not be. Something that actually happened will never not have ever happened. You can do anything you want with it, but it happened, so either you honor and respect it… Not you like it, I didn’t mean that. But you honor and respect its right to exist.

Why? Because it exists. What’s your choice? I’ll suppress it. I’ll deny it. Those are psychological problems, suppression, repression, and denial. So instead, you do this stuff called spiritual work. You work your way through the layers of your being, and that’s… I’ve gotten to a very deep layer now which says, if it happened, I honor its right to have taken place.

I don’t have to like it, but I honor its right to take place. Why? Because it did take place, and I don’t want to study all the reasons it did. Okay? I don’t want to study why you said what you said, but you did say it. There must be reasons or you wouldn’t have said it That’s enough for me. Whoa, now we’re getting deep.

Hear me? I’m letting go to layers. You don’t even owe me an explanation. I know the explanation. You’re the sum of your learned experiences, just like I am, and the sum of your learned experiences made those words come out of your mouth. Maybe 10 years ago something happened, maybe yesterday something happened, maybe five minutes ago something happened, maybe a phone call, maybe I looked at you a certain way and it reminded you of something.

Something happened that made that come out of your mouth or your action be the way it was at this time. I have to honor that. Not like it, honor it. Honor its right to be. Why? Because it is. I don’t know how to talk to you. You’re never gonna make it not have happened. Take it back. “Oh, I’m so sorry. If you ever say it again…”

The guy will get offended immediately. Apology doesn’t make it go away. You put it on top of the fact that you didn’t like it, because it’s never going away until you sit there and say, “Okay, I understand the sum of your learned experiences. I can honor and respect that I’m different. I would have never said it, but I respect that you would.”

Why? Because you did. And that’s the end of it. There’s no discussion in your own mind. You get to the point there’s no longer discussion. It’s not hard to let go of stuff, because it doesn’t do anything. I don’t have to understand why you said what you said. It doesn’t mean I’m not gonna work with it when it’s all said and done.

Your kid comes back and they find drugs in his locker. I’m the parent. I have to deal with that. I don’t want to. It’s not fair. The neighbors will judge me. I’m sorry, that has nothing to do with your kid. It has to do with you. That’s not any way, shape, or form to deal with the situation, is it? You have to look in there and say, “Okay” Okay means it happened, and it did.

If you don’t accept that it happened, you can’t deal with it. But that goes for everything all day. If it took place and you’re having trouble with it, that’s your work. Not to work on it so it didn’t take place, to work on your ability to say, “Okay, it took place. I accept that. I surrender. I’m open.” Doesn’t mean suddenly you’re gonna like it.

I’m evolved enough, high enough, to let go of my personal stuff and look out and say, “Okay, this is what happened.” What is the highest way to interact with it for the entire situation, not for me to feel okay about it? That’s called selflessness. That’s called clarity. You’re not bringing your personal junk into it.

We talked about it last time, how when you focus on something, if you put too much energy into it, “I can’t believe my kid did drugs. What are people gonna think? What am I gonna do? How do I stop them? It’s gonna be so expensive to send them to these therapy things. Why did he do…” It’s gonna get worse and worse and worse, and you are the last person in the world that should be dealing with that child.

You’ll just get yourself into a shtunk, right? “I had a friend whose son kept going to these clinics and so on. I can’t afford that.” Now you’re bringing all the past experiences. You’re not dealing with your child. You’re not dealing with the situation. You’re dealing with you and your in- inability to handle the situation.

It starts with acceptance. But acceptance doesn’t mean I accept they do this. It means I accept that it happened, and I’m at peace. I’m at peace with it. I’m okay with it. I understand how things happen It’s no different than anything else. Why are the stars where they are? Same reason my kid did the drugs.

The sum of all the forces that ever were, there it was. Oh, another one. It’s my fault. My fault. How, how could I have brought up a kid that did drugs? I’m so ashamed of myself. I’m embarrassed to go out. That’s a great way to handle it, ’cause you’ll never handle your kid, ’cause it ain’t about your kid, it’s about you.

What’s the alternative? I am a clear being that understands that everything is the sum of its learning experiences, and this is what happened. What’s gonna happen next? Well, I guess this happened next. Can I honor and respect its right to exist? That’s so hard for me to talk to you like that, because it’s hard to do, isn’t it?

But that’s the only way to deal with it. It is what is because of all that ever was. Can I deal with it? It’s not my fault. You know, did I do things along the way? Of course. You’re part of the experience, but you’re not all the experience in any way, shape, or form. Not even close. You’re not .01% of the experience.

There’s genetics, there’s peer groups, there’s the web. There’s so many things that have nothing to do with you. Do you understand that? We just make a mess of everything, ’cause we’re caught in this little box that’s about I, me, and mine. Get out of the box. How? Accept. You start by accepting. You start by looking at it and say, “Did this happen?

Yes. Can I handle it? Not right now I can’t, but I can breathe a little bit. I can work on myself until I get to a point,” and you shouldn’t be interacting with the kid or the principal till you can, so you’re clear when you interact with things. You know what clear means? Clear of yourself. Clear doesn’t mean you know what to do.

You have to wait and see it unfold and learn and be open, and you’ll be guided and guided. Who guides you? Life. All right? You go to see the principal, and you sit down, and the principal says, “We found, you know, .001 ounces in a lo- in a locker, and we were forced to talk to you about it, but I wouldn’t worry about it.

80% of the kids in the school here have that.” Right? You don’t know what’s gonna be said, and you just be open. You’re clear, and you try to make decisions based upon your clarity of what will help the situation, not what will help you. That’s the highest thing I wanna teach, but that’s hard ‘Cause you have to die to be reborn.

You have to let go of yourself. The situation has nothing to do with you. It has to do with this child that’s having a problem. Can you deal with that and not be with you? Once you can do that, and you can do that. How? Not by changing everything outside, by changing yourself inside, by sitting here saying, “I want to bring down to my child, and to my spouse, and to my community, and to the world, the clearest being that could possibly exist.”

That’s my gift. That’s what I’m gonna do with my life. I once told you the highest thing that you can do with your life, with people you interact with, is that they are interacting with the highest being they’ve ever interacted with. That’s it. When they look and see it, like they’ve dealt with a clear being.

How many people get to deal with a clear being? Come on, look at your politics. Look at everything. Well, it’s nice to meet one, and that’s who the high beings are. That’s what an enlightened master is. They’re not bringing themselves in the situation, right? The great ones taught you what I’m talking about, which is, if something takes place, get clear.

First, get clear. Let go of yourself, then interact with it to the best of your ability. Will you get it right? I don’t know what right is. You do the best you can from the clearest place you can be, and you see what comes back, and you learn from what came back. It’s your teacher. So whatever state you were in, maybe you could see, oh, I d- wasn’t seeing clearly.

Now I can see better. Every moment, if you do the best that you can to whatever you’re interacting with, what comes back is your teacher. You do the best that you can. So something great came back, good. It’s very reinforcing. Something really messed up came back. Take a look. What did you learn from that?

Life is a place you’re supposed to learn. So this is what it means to go through those layers. I started with layers, didn’t I? Imagine, uh, living at the layer we just talked about. You wake up in the morning, and you say, “I’m back.” Back to do what? Interact with life. Bring the best that I have into the moments I’m interacting with.

Well, how do I know what to do? You won’t until you interact with the moment. John Lennon had one line that was behind one of the songs, really quiet, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Can you relate to that? Is it not true? Well then why be busy making other plans? Why don’t you just plan to deal with life?

And all of a sudden your mind gets quiet, and your heart’s open, and you feel this power and openness and beauty inside of you. Why? ‘Cause that’s what’s in there. But not when you’ve locked yourself inside this box. Not when you’re clinging to the rope and saying, “I’ll only be okay if someone stops pulling.”

All right? It’s just when you sit there and say, “I am open. I don’t know squat, but I’m open to learn, I’m open to experience.” And when something comes in and hits my stuff, I am grateful. I don’t want the stuff to be in there. Not I don’t want you to do what you did, I don’t want to have a problem with what you did.

Then I can deal with you. Otherwise, when we get in a car accident, instead of my understanding, oh, I guess that coffee maker was just on time, right? Instead, you go into road rage. “I can’t believe you did it. I, I, I was yellow light.” That’ll help everything. Get in lawsuits, sue everybody, as opposed to how do we deal with this from a peaceful, centered point of view.

All right? And what, what people come back and tell me, “Well, I got in an accident,” right? “And we did the thing and the thing, and the cop came and he was really cute and we got married. I wouldn’t have met him.” All right? Or even the person you got in the accident with. Right? There are these layers of your being And life has its own expression.

And one layer of your being is to resist and to fight and to try to make it be the way you want and get all upset if it’s not that way and then suppress all this stuff and make a mess out of your entire psychological state. There’s all kinds of stuff that happened in the past that you can’t handle now.

It’s not even happening anymore. I keep challenging you guys. How silly is that? To be bothered by something that happened 20 years ago that can’t happen anymore. You were trying to ride your bike and you thought you wanted to please your father and you fell over and you felt really embarrassed and you thought he was judging you and you never had a close relationship ever since.

You’re 30 years older. How can you have a problem with that? It’s a moment in life that unfolded because you weren’t able to handle it. And so you suppressed it. The answer is to don’t do that. How? Well, what’s the technique? The technique is not to go back 30 years ago and try to work through what the heck you put in there.

No. The technique is can you not put any more in now? I make it so easy for you. Forget what’s in there. It’s in there for now. We’ll deal with it later. If you want to play the piano, don’t start with Beethoven or Mozart. You don’t start with them. You start with the scales. You start with Twinkle Twinkle.

Same thing here. If you want to learn how to not store this stuff in here and learn to honor, respect reality, start with the weather. Start with the driver in front of you. Start with practicing acceptance. Start with practicing. I don’t need to resist the fact that this guy keeps putting his brakes on and it’s a pain in the butt to drive behind him.

I don’t need to beep. I don’t need to tailgate. I can give some space. And how I ever do that, two blocks later he turns. Come on, Mick. You can handle it, right? Or it’s hot or it’s cold, hear me? Or somebody said something or somebody didn’t say something. You just start handling the stuff that you can handle, but you don’t bother.

That’s like practicing the piano, like practicing a sport. Practice honoring and respecting its right to be. That person, I wanna drive, I drive five mi- at least five miles an hour above the speed limit. I figure that’s perfectly okay, no problem. Somebody else drives five miles over below the speed limit, I hope they’re not in front of me.

Okay? Or I’ll handle it. They have the right to drive the way they want, don’t they? And I have the right to drive the way I want within reason. Am I willing to give them that right? All of a sudden, it’s a selfless act. I’ll just stay back a little bit. If I can pass, it’s safe, I, I may pass, but I’m not gonna keep pulling out and trying to watch him, right?

And come on, man, you can handle this for a little while, and I handle it. I practice handling the simple stuff that you’re busy resisting and fighting and suppressing for no reason at all. That’s how easy the path is, and when you can handle that, you’ll find out what I handle wasn’t the driver, it wasn’t the weather, it wasn’t what somebody said or didn’t say.

It was the disturbance that was happening inside of me because of that. That’s what I handled. I learned to handle what it feels like to not get what I want. I learned to handle what it feels like that this resistance is happening in there. I can relax through it, so I do. I just relax. Just relax. Relax.

You don’t have to resist. You don’t have to resist. You’re gonna find out 95% of everything you’re resisting, you don’t need to resist. The weather’s not gonna change, the driver’s not gonna change. Hear me? What somebody says is not gonna change. It’s just within reason, let go. Let go, relax, and have fun doing it.

It’s a video game Now can you handle Pac-Man? Can you handle yourself? And the next thing you know, you can. If you can handle that level of discomfort, the driver, the hot, what somebody said, then you can handle anything at that level. Because it wasn’t the event that you learned to handle, it was the disturbance inside yourself because of the event.

So now anything that has that level, easy, you’ll learn how to do it, like learning a sport, learning how to play the piano. Now you’re good at it. And then the next thing you know, something bigger happens, and you realize, wait a minute, I practiced this. Can I handle that? And all of a sudden you’re going through these layers.

All of a sudden you can handle things you weren’t able to handle before until you get to the point where you don’t even understand why you couldn’t handle them. Somebody comes home and they’re in a bad mood. They go in, they slam the door. Fine, he had a bad day. She had a bad day. I don’t have to say anything, right?

I don’t have to, “Don’t treat me like that.” I don’t have to do anything. I can handle it. I’ve learned to handle what? The disturbance I don’t like. And eventually you can handle anything. How would you like that? How would you like to be able to handle anything and then be a positive input when you come back out and interact with whatever happened?

Wow. You’re a great being. You’re a great being, and you learn to live life in a very healthy, high way, and that’s nothing. We haven’t even talked about… I said to you, “If you’re holding on, you’re not gonna go up. Don’t struggle to go up while you’re holding on.” I said, “Let go layer after layer after layer.”

What happens when you let go enough? Something very special happens, and I hope you all can experience it and have experienced it. When you let go of what you’re holding onto, your garbage, all of a sudden you realize, wait a minute, there’s all kinds of beautiful energy inside of me, and it starts coming up by itself.

I was using it to fight my stuff. I was using the energy to push away the garbage I stored in there, to hold down the… Freud said you suppress. Who suppresses? Me. And what power do you use to suppress? Me. So I’m using all my energy to push down the stuff that happened to me 20, 30 years ago. Well, when you let go, this energy comes up, and then more comes up, and then more comes up.

Now you’re on the ascent because you work what’s below you. And then what happens is so much comes up that it never stops coming up. Every single morning it’s there to greet you, and then you have that. That’s what’s happening. And then during the day, you see the tendency to close, and you let go. And the Shakti never stops coming up.

Then it starts coming up enough to where you’re always feeling joy. You just feel joy all the time until something starts to close you, and then you’re not stupid. I don’t want to close. I’d rather feel joy. I, I don’t like what you said to me. So what? I don’t care. And then if I feel joy, then all of a sudden you won’t say it anymore because you say, “Well, he’s glowing.”

I don’t know what to tell you. You start getting high, and it spreads. But that’s nothing. That’s nothing. Then it starts going up and up until it gets scary. What do you mean? It’s getting so high that it’s challenging you to let go of yourself, your independent existence. The Shakti’s so strong, like the water can be so strong, well, it sweeps you away.

Well, I had fun swimming, but now it’s sweeping me away. What if it’s okay to sweep you away? What if where you’re gonna go when it sweeps you away is really a nice place to be? But it’s scary, and the great beings pass that, that fear of letting go of yourself, the fear of dying to be reborn, literally letting go of any sense of individuality.

And where they ended up was always in the same place, no matter what tradition they were, what religions they were. Meher Baba said, “When I let go, my consciousness had been a drop of water. It fell into the ocean.” Find it. Go on, find that drop You can’t, can you? It merged, and that’s what Christ meant by, “My Father and I are one.”

That’s what all the great ones talk about. They let go enough that they merged with the universe. They merged with all that is. They merged with God. That’s what’s in there, and you’re fighting it every day of your life to make sure it doesn’t get you? Yogananda had a poem that he didn’t write. All right?

It’s called The Hound of Heaven, but he loved it, and he had everybody read it. I could tell the whole thing, but the story, the poem, is that this guy is running away from goodness, from surrender, from different things that life was trying to push him through, and he called it God, running away from the hound of heaven.

The hound was chasing him, and he kept hiding and going through different things. And then at the end, he sits there and says, “The hound, I’m cornered. I’m cornered. I can’t run anywheres. I’m so scared.” And then he stops, and he says, “Is it possible that the darkness that I was running away from my whole life was the shadow of the hand of God reaching down to pick me up?”

That is what’s going on. That is what’s going on, and eventually you catch on and say, “Okay, come and get me. I’m ready. I’m ready to let go.” All right. There, now we’ve talked about very high layers. We talked about the lower layers, too, didn’t we? You have to deal with those. How? By releasing, accepting, honoring, respecting, and letting go.

All right. 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