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. Rumi once started one of his talks by saying, “The topic tonight is love.” I won’t compete with Rumi
There’s a level of understanding of love. It can’t take you there, because understanding can’t take you there, because it’s deeper than that. But certainly with Western mind, if you understand something, it’s easier to open and quiet the mind down. Understanding love, what it is, where it comes from, why it’s there, why it’s not there, why there’s pain, why there’s joy, all that stuff is understandable through the process of Shakti, the process of yoga.
The teachings are so simple. They’re so obvious. First of all, do you feel love all the time no matter what’s happening, no matter what anybody does? The answer, of course, is no. The question is, why? But that’s not the question we ask. The question we ask is, how do I find it? I need to find somebody. I need to find a job I love.
I need to find things I love doing. I need inspiration. I need to get turned on. I need to do extreme sports. I need to do something. And that, of course, leads nowheres, because the moment you get some love, you worry about losing it, or somebody changes, or you change, and it’s not so easy to say, “I feel love all the time.”
You can get into periods in which… I’m talking about why that happens. You can even have love at first sight. Isn’t that romantic? No, because there won’t be love at second sight. Why? Why is it like that? And is the answer to try to find or create situations outside that help you feel love and encourage your probability of feeling love?
And I’m gonna tell you right now, the answer is no. That, that is no way to find love, because it’s called conditional. It’s only there when certain conditions are happening. So what is love? Love is this beautiful experience of energy pouring up into your heart. If it is not pouring up into your heart, it ain’t love, okay?
You can talk about it all you want, sing songs, do everything you want, but you’re just imagining what it would be like. There’s literally an experience that is not that common to people Where energy, Shakti, call it what you want, energy comes up and it starts feeding the heart, starts filling the heart.
It, it’s unbelievable, isn’t it? Okay? You’ve certainly felt it some, but you gotta admit you don’t feel it all the time, right? Okay, but just know that that is what love is. It’s not a warm puppy. The reason it’s a warm puppy is you like warm puppies. If the warm puppy pees on you, you don’t feel love. It has to be what you want.
There has to be something happening that causes or allows, is a better word, allows that energy to come up and start f- feeding your heart. It does literally. I hope you understand what I’m talking about. It’s a little experience. It’s whoa. Okay? The experience can be extremely strong, and I’m gonna talk about later why, but it can literally connect with another person.
You can feel this energy come into your heart, be sitting with somebody in quiet, and feel this connection, this pillar of that energy come out and adjoin another person’s heart. That’s when you say, “I’m in love with you.” You sing all kinds of nice songs. Have you ever felt that? Have you ever felt not just your love, but the connection that can happen with another person?
Okay? Isn’t that beautiful? Trouble is it doesn’t last, does it? You can be all as romantic as you want, there’s not a chance in the world it lasts. All they have to do is say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, not show up at the right time, wear the wrong thing. Imagine you’re into, into certain kind of clothes and somebody shows up with a bow tie.
No. All right? It doesn’t take much for the love to stop. You’re on a date. It’s wonderful. You know, romantic. It’s just you’re really feeling love, right? And here she slurps their soup. No, my grandfather used to slurp his soup. My mother, I… No, I don’t want a soup slurper. Do you understand that? It does not take much for that flow to stop, does it?
But it takes a lot for it to start. What is going on? That… If you have this discussion, that’s about love. Love is about that flow of Shakti, that flow of energy coming up, welling inside of your heart, and hopefully never leaving. Is it possible that it never leaves? Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s called unconditional love.
It’s unconditional. Why? It’s inside of you. Love has nothing to do with another person I always tell you, when you tell somebody, “I love you,” what you really mean is, “I love what I feel in your presence. If I stop feeling this in your presence, I’ll find somebody else.” It’s like somebody can help your heart open as long as they behave, as long as they conditionally do what it is that helps to open your heart, and the moment they don’t, it’s questionable, and the moment you see them and it closes your heart, you know you’re in the wrong relationship.
But I wanna talk you deeper than that because that’s not what love is. Love is not another person. Like I told you, the other person for reasons which we’ll discuss, can help your heart to open so that the energy can flow up in your heart, but then you get lost in the other person instead of saying, “I love love,” which is what you love, by the way.
I love love. So all right. So what’s going on? I kind of let the cat out of the bag early. Okay? There are things that can open your heart. Maybe you’ve noticed. A job can open your heart, being beyond enthused and can’t wait to go to work and just excited about what you’re doing until the boss says, “That was terrible.
I never think you’d ever do a job like that.” That’s it. How long is it gonna take before you feel comfortable going to work? Come on. It’s not that things can open you. It’s that things can close you. The tip I always give, if you wanna feel love all the time, if you want your heart to be open all the time, don’t close it.
There’s no can opener in there. You’re not gonna be able to pry your heart open. But if you don’t close it… You know what closing your heart is. You do it all the time, all the time. A thought can close your heart, can’t it? A drop of ketchup on your pants, you have to go back to work, can stop the love that you were feeling.
The heart is easier to close, isn’t it? It does it all the time. It is not easier to open. So what’s happening? What’s happening is just what I said. The heart’s natural state is open for everybody. The heart’s natural state is open. The only reason it’s not open is you’re closing it. Why do I close it? Well, I got hurt once.
I don’t want to get hurt again, so I protect my heart, and that’s like putting bars on your windows. I feel safer now. Yeah, but you’re not. You’re not. Okay? You’re scared to go outside. If you protect your heart, you’ll never feel love. Protection means a wall that you have put around your heart, so it’s not capable of being open enough to feel love.
You feel safe, but don’t confuse that with love. You feel better, but don’t confuse that with love. Love is the pour up into the heart. If you put guards around the heart and say, “I got hurt once. I don’t want to get hurt again,” you will never fully feel love ‘Cause what you’re basically saying is, “If you out there behave in a way that gets around my guard, gets around what I’m afraid of, gets around what somebody did before that hurt me, if you can manage to do that, whoa, I can feel love.”
And that poor person doesn’t know how to behave. How the heck do they know what you got going on in there? You be honest, right? So you wake up and you realize love is something that you either do or don’t do inside yourself. You’re the one who lives in there. You’re the one who controls the flow of the energy.
You do. Don’t you make believe you don’t. I don’t understand you don’t. What do you mean I control the flow of the energy? Why wouldn’t I want to feel love? Because you’ve had past experiences that you got hurt, you got bothered by, and now you’re afraid, and therefore you close your heart. There. That’s why.
Okay? Well, how do I not have past experiences that hurt me? I did have those, so what do I do now? You learn to process them. You learn to be a higher being. You learn to sit there and say, “Well, I have a trade-off. I can protect myself for the rest of my life and never feel full love, but feel safe as long as you behave properly, and I’ll let you know when you don’t.”
In other words, “You better be the way I need you to be or I’m not gonna feel love.” The alternative which I normally don’t hit till the end of my talk, is to sit there and say, “That’s a non-starter. I don’t know how people are gonna behave.” Do they ever behave exactly everyone the way you expect them to?
Ha ha ha. Not a chance in the world, therefore you’re gonna protect yourself. So the alternative is instead of trying to make other people be a way that doesn’t hit your stuff, that doesn’t trigger your closing, that doesn’t bring up the insecurities, and fears, and all the stuff that’s in there. Instead of trying to manipulate people, places, and things outside so they don’t hit the stuff, you learn to welcome it hitting yourself.
You learn to sit there and say, “I’m not gonna play that game,” ’cause it’s very temporal. Like training a dog. I trained you how to be. How come you weren’t that way? I’m so disappointed in you. Fine. Instead, this is the tough part, this is spiritual, you go inside and you say, “I live in here. No one else does.
It’s my heart. It’s nobody else’s. It’s what I did historically with my heart that has made it so I don’t feel love all the time. What I need to do is fix that, not fix somebody else.” And wow, wait till you see what that does to your relationships. All of a sudden they last, ’cause they’re not about people being the way you want them to be.
They’re about you using the relationship to get rid of yourself. That’s the bottom line, and that’s the only true way to feel love. Okay? I talk about Rumi to start with. Rumi had a quote, “Yesterday, I was clever, so I was trying to change the world. Today, I’m wise, so I’m changing myself.” That is the only way you will ever have that type of love that should be the meaning of your life.
If you could live one day, one hour with that love pouring through you, you’d say, “I lived full. It was worth it. It was worth it.” Well, I want you to live every moment of your life that way, and you are capable, and don’t you dare think you’re not capable. It’s work, but it’s work to manipulate everybody you meet to be the way you want them to be too, isn’t it?
That’s a lot of work, ’cause you meet new people all the time, and they behave who knows. Okay, I, I have this bone I pick about first impressions. Everybody says the first impression is the most important Come on, guys. He had some pizza that was bad the night before. Your first impression of that person is not anything you should be tied to.
Somebody called five minutes before you met them and told them they won the lottery. Your first impression should not be how you’re judging this person. First impressions, ready, are meaningless. They’re just what happened to happen to that person before you met them, how it impresses you now. They’ll be different 10 minutes from now, they’ll be different a year from now.
Well, why would a first impression be important? I always teach you, people, they’re experiencing different things, and those things they’re experiencing are affecting how they behave now and how they think now. It can change. You’ve changed your mind lots of times. You’ve behaved differently at different times.
So a first impression just happens to be what’s going on at that moment in that person’s life, interacting with what they’re interacting with, and that’s how they behave, and you’re gonna say first impressions are important. I don’t know why they tell you that. That’s crazy. In addition, it’s worse than that.
If you had a bad phone call 10 minutes before you met this person, I extremely doubt you’ll like the person, no matter what they do. You’re not open. So your first impression is really you. Can you believe them? They say first impressions are the most important. They’re the least important. You should take them with a grain of salt.
Let the person be different next time Give them a chance. So we’re basically down to saying the reason you don’t feel love all the time is because of you, not because of somebody else. It’s not because you didn’t find the right person, not because you didn’t find the right job, not because somebody behaved the way you didn’t want them to.
It’s because you stored this stuff inside of you. Psychology says you’re the sum of your learned experiences. You’re not. You’re the consciousness noticing that what you’re carrying in there is the sum of your learned experiences. You’re programmed by your past experiences. Something happened in your formative years that left an impression on you.
It’s gonna come back up when you date somebody. It’s just you had these experiences, didn’t you? And if someone behaves in a way that reminds you of those experiences, then you project that onto that person. So you get to the point where you understand if you want to have an open heart, you have to learn to not cl- not learn to open it, because you don’t know how to do that.
I agree that right now it takes a stimulus from outside to match your stuff good enough for you to feel love. That’s what your love at first sight is. “Look, he wore his hair just like my brother, and my brother died in Vietnam, and I’ve always missed him, and I, I haven’t seen anybody who reminded me as much as him.
I think I’m in love.” It’s not your brother. It has nothing to do with your brother. But it did open your heart, didn’t it? If it doesn’t match the bad stuff you stored, if it matches the good stuff you stored, there’s a tendency for the heart to open, okay? So what is the answer? The answer is to finally wake up and realize what I want is love, not a relationship that makes me feel love, because they don’t last, do they?
Come on around the block. I know there’s a word called marriage. Is there a word called divorce? Ever heard that? I think those people that got married weren’t planning on getting divorced What happened? They, they closed. They closed, and every time they see that person, it reminds them of the financial problems they had together.
There was this, was that. Something happened in that relationship that you closed. They closed, and it’s hard to get it back open, isn’t it? The answer is not to try to make things not happen. The answer is not to try to find someone who matches what you need to match. Here, I met somebody. I met somebody, and their grandfather went through the Holocaust.
My grandfather went through the Holocaust. What are you doing? It has nothing to do with the person. It has nothing to… It’s ’cause you stored this inside, and now you’re closed inside, and this helped you open where you were closed, and therefore, you feel attraction. You feel… Do you understand that? But people don’t understand that, do they?
They literally listen to that as opposed to, “What’s this stuff I have in here? It happened 10 years ago, happened 15 years ago, happened 20 years, happened to my grandfather. What in the world am I doing carrying that inside of me and closing my heart until something happens that helps it open?” I don’t need help opening my heart.
I need to stop closing it. How do you do that? Well, that’s called spiritual growth. How do you do that? You watch. Let’s do it. Like I said, I usually do this at the end. We’ll do it now. You watch. From witness consciousness, you watch. Well, what is witness consciousness? It’s not that you don’t know. You’re in there.
You go to your therapist, you say, “My heart hurts so bad.” I’m your therapist. How do you know it hurts? How do you know your heart hurt? How do you know? Eventually, you yell at the therapist, ” ‘Cause I’m in here and I feel it.” Ah, pranam to you. Who’s in there? Who’s noticing that the heart hurts? Who’s noticing having a bad mind day?
Who’s noticing you met somebody? “Oh, since I met them, my heart is just wide open.” How do you know? Believe it or not, that’s the right question. “‘Cause I’m in here.” Were you in here when it was closed? Yeah. Were you in here when it was open? Yeah. Which one do you like? Well, I know which one you like, but it’s the same you that’s in there experiencing this stuff.
It will always be the same you. That’s who’s in there, the consciousness, the awareness of being. You’re just getting caught and staring at the sum of your learned experiences. That’s what’s down there, your ego, your, your self-concept, your, your stored stuff. Eventually, you catch on and say, “Well, if I really wanna feel love all the time, I can’t have that stuff in there.
I can’t run around with a predisposition of how I want everybody else to be, and if they’re that way, I like them. If they’re not that way, I don’t like them.” Don’t worry. You will have a very rough life You have to look in there and say, “Why am I carrying this inside of me?” I always challenge you guys with this.
You’re very intelligent human being. You’re the smartest, highest species we know of on the planet. How can it be smart to take every experience you had that you didn’t like and store it inside of you so it bothers you for the rest of your life? You do do that, don’t you? You look inside and you see, “I’m doing this.
I’ve stored this.” If something happens I don’t like, what do you do? You push it away. You don’t wanna think about it. You don’t wanna have it bothering you, and therefore you push it away. That’s equivalent to saying, “I don’t like it, so I’m gonna keep it.” And psychology agrees with that. It’s called suppression, repression, denial.
That entire act of what you do to push that away means it stays. Maybe that’s the most important thing I can teach you. Do you know that? Do you know none of it goes away until you let it go away? That which happened to you, you fell out of a tree when you were five years old, you don’t like trees now, you don’t like the woods.
You saw a snake in an aquarium at some sort of museum or zoo, and it was really scary. It was rattling. You won’t take walks in the woods. You store these impressions inside of you, and you think it’s normal. It’s not only not normal, it’s absurd. How many times did you not see a snake? Oh, 700 million. But because you saw it once and it didn’t feel good, you don’t ever wanna see it again.
And the same thing with a relationship. We were getting along really well, and then he or she said something or did something that reminded me of my mother. I didn’t like my mother And you store this, all right? So the answer to feeling love all the time is to do some work inside and to sit there and say, “Do I wanna f- store this stuff and be afraid of myself for the rest of my life that somebody will say something or something will stimulate it to come up, or do I wanna feel love?”
‘Cause that’s your choice. And then you ask the question, “But it really was a very strong thing that bothered me. Can it really go away?” There’s not a single thing inside of you that you’re not holding onto. Every single thing that’s still in there is ’cause you’re keeping it in there. Otherwise, there is no super glue in there.
It’s empty sky. It’s zen, empty mind. It’s just you are the most beautiful being to ever walk the face of the earth. But you stored this stuff in there which gets stimulated, and it comes up, and you feel yicky, and you don’t like that. So you go outside and try to manipulate the world so that doesn’t happen instead of going inside and noticing that you’re the one who stored that stuff in there, and it does not have to be in there, period.
I don’t care what it is or how long it’s been in there. People that are older sometimes ask me, “But I’m 75 years old, and I just started reading your books and learning these things. Really? Can I get that stuff out?” Absolutely. In fact, I think You’re in a better chance to let it out. Why? Why not let it out?
You’re almost done anyways. Why keep it in there, right? The age is helpful. It’s like, man, okay, if I just got a few years to live, at least what do I have to lose? And so you start working on letting go. You take the risk. It is a risk to be willing to feel that which you were not able to feel in the past.
How’s that? Well, how can I do that? Right now, you’re using your will. You have will. You have will in there. You can make things happen and make things not happen. You do. You manipulate people. You decide what you want. You try to make it happen. So instead, you could use that exact same will to let go of the stuff you stored inside from the past.
And that is what it means to grow spiritually. And, and if it tells you otherwise, you can do anything you want. You can do all the techniques you want, everything like that, until you look in there and say, “I don’t think so.” You just look down and say, “Okay, I have these tendencies. Okay, I have these likes and dislikes,” and they’re all pre-programmed.
There’s not a single thing that you like or dislike isn’t based on experiences that you had. If I talked to you about something you’ve never heard of, you’d go, “Oh, oh.” Right? But I say one thing that touches your stuff, positive or negative, whoa, you can relate to that totally. It is the sum of your learned experiences.
Psychology teaches you that. Man is the sum of his learned experiences. It’s not true. Your psyche, the combination of your, your mental and emotional personal self, is the sum of your learned experiences. You’re not. You’re in there noticing that you have tendencies. You’re in there noticing that you have pro- Do you notice you have problems?
Do you notice you have soft spots? A lot of people go see the parents. I like that part. “No, I, I can’t handle my father, my stepfather. I can’t. I hate to go home.” Right? Well, that’s absurd. There are eight point three billion people on planet Earth. You happen to know this one. They’re all weird, don’t worry.
Everybody’s the sum of their learned experiences. Every one of those eight point three billion people are the sum of their learned experiences, not the sum of yours. So they’re different, aren’t they? Wow, that’s enough to wake you up. They’re not gonna be the way you want because they’re not the sum of your learned experiences.
That’s so deep. That’s just this basic understanding of why people have so much trouble with relationships with each other. They expect them to be like them, but they’re not. They’re not gonna be. And so what you do is try to make them be that way. Do you understand that? A person is not going to… I’ve been dating for how long?
Six months. Do you feel you know them? Yeah. They’re 28 years old. They’ve had 28 years of every moment having experiences, and you’ve known them for six months, and you weren’t with them totally every minute for six months. If they went to work and something happened at work, they’re not the same person who came home.
Well, what do I do about that? Ready? Accept it. Honor it. Respect it. Respect that people are not the way you want them to be, and they are not going to be the way you want them to be. And if you have relationships with them, you have to take the following attitude. “Oh, boy, look, he’s just like me.” No. “Oh, boy, I get to meet somebody else.
I get to meet somebody else, not me, because I– what I want is for you to be like me.” I told you, when you’re on a dating service, some people… Which I’m fine with them. I’m fine with everything. I understand everything, right? You go to a dating service online, and they start asking you questions. Be… I’m a programmer.
Be aware. Somebody programmed that, okay? So that’s who’s gonna decide who you date, the programmer. All right, so basically, there are these questions come up. Are you a vegetarian or are you a carnivore? Do you like pets? What kind of pets? Do you like cats? Do you like dogs? Do you like big dogs or little dogs?
How do you like your hair? How do you like your partner to wear their hair? Do you like your parents? Would you like them to like your parents? Do you want to have children? Did you have brothers and sisters? And you start answering these questions all the way down, all about what are they asking? What do you like and what don’t you like?
And I guarantee you they’re gonna pick this dating person based on what best matches what you said you like and doesn’t match what you said you dislike. In other words, you want to date yourself.
The moment the person’s not the way that you feel like, “Oh, I thought you said you like dogs.” I lied.
Oh, it’s so cute, isn’t it? You understand what’s happening? Eventually, if you want to be happy, if you want to feel love, if you want to be inspired all the time, if you just wanna wake up in the morning, you know how great being wakes up in the morning? I’m back. Not a thought on your mind, nothing bothering you.
You didn’t bring yesterday into today. I’m back. I’m ready to go. Bring it on. What’s gonna happen? I don’t know. I don’t care, but it’s gonna be exciting. Why? ‘Cause I said so. But w- what if something happens you don’t like? Then I need to work with that and get rid of that because I’m dealing with a little planet spinning in the middle of nowheres, and who am I, who’s gonna be here for 80, 90 years, it’s been here for 4.5 billion years, to wake up in the morning and decide what I want to happen?
‘Cause it ain’t gonna happen. Okay? What’s wrong with saying, “Bring it on”? Bring it on. I’m ready, and that’s exciting. I don’t care what happens. I just care that I, I embrace what’s happening. I give my best, my whole. Why not? You’re on a planet in the middle of nowheres. If the entire Earth blew to smithereens tomorrow, just gone, it’s just pieces of rock flying all over the place, a few planets would change their orbit, and nothing else in the entire universe would know you existed.
Not just you personally, any of it. One point… Sorry, I have to do it. 1.3 billion Earths fit inside the sun That’s a big number, 1.3 million. 1.3 million Earths fit inside the sun, and the sun is one of 300 billion stars in your galaxy, and there are two trillion galaxies, and you care that you dropped some ketchup on your pants, or that somebody didn’t say hello when you said hello to them.
What do I want? You like being neurotic? No. I would like to wake up in the morning and realize I’m on a little planet spinning in the middle of nowheres. Okay. And I ain’t gonna be here very long. Why would I want one minute of my life wasted on fear, anxiety, ego, self-concept, self-consciousness, embarrassment, guilt?
What am I doing? Why would I want that to be my experience when I dropped on this little ball that’s kind of exciting? We haven’t found any… Someone I read, I just read recently that Hubble, either Hubble or James Webb, focused on an exoplanet more than they’ve ever focused before. What they found was just rock.
Just dead rock. Was it was circling that star. There’s nothing there, okay? It’s like the moon. Wasn’t it exciting we went to the moon? Another astronaut went to the moon. It was kind of barren, have you noticed? It’s kinda, kinda… The dark side didn’t look that different than the other side. It’s just there’s potholes of rocks, okay?
Is that where you live? Or are there dolphins and birds and trees and grass and, and, and music and computers and AI? Are, are there exciting things on this planet? Can you handle it? Can you embrace it? Can you enjoy it? Can you have a good time? What is the purpose of being born on the most beautiful planet that so far beyond anything you can imagine and not have a good time?
Well, how do I have a good time all the time? By having a good time all the time. Well, what does that mean? It means you don’t wake up in the morning with a list of what you want to happen. ‘Cause if you haven’t noticed yet, it’s not gonna happen, and you may be neurotic trying to make it happen. Or you will project that it’s happening, and you’ll find out it wasn’t really happening.
They were lying to you. They just didn’t tell you. Or you project that it’s terrible, and you find out it’s wonderful. It’s silly. You don’t know anything. I talk to you about that all the time. The world unfolding in front of you is not the result of your learned experiences. It is the result of its learned experiences.
It’s called physics, cause and effect. Things happened outside before you showed up. You walked into a restaurant. You want it to be playing the music you want, have the waiter be the way you want, have this happen, and nobody be talking too loud, and the special be what you want. How can it be the way you want?
It existed before you showed up. It has its history, doesn’t it? Every person you meet, they’re not gonna be the way you want. Not supposed to be the way you want. Nothing’s supposed to unfold the way you want. You’re supposed to want the way it unfolds Why? Because it’s realer. Yours is a tiny little bit of information.
Some of your learned experiences, I told you, is statistically insignificant. Not only are there 8.3 billion people on the planet Earth having all had their own experiences, but the whole history of the planet, of every plant, of every single thing had its own experience, didn’t it? And it didn’t know what your experience is.
Here, here’s the ultimate, then I’ll move on, right? I can’t believe it’s raining. Why does it have to rain on my birthday? It doesn’t know it’s your birthday. It has nothing to do with your birthday. How silly is that? What you’re doing is taking the sum of your own experiences, your preferences, your hopes, your dreams, your concepts, your views, and projecting them onto a world that is the result of cause and effect, and those cause and effects, they just stretch together and come together at a moment, and you don’t know about that moment.
You don’t know a single thing about the cause and effect. You have a car that broke down. Why? Why did my car have to break down? I have to get to work. It has nothing to do with the fact you have to get to work. It has to do with the fact that the mechanic, you know, left a wrench inside when he rebuilt the engine, right?
Three years ago. But you don’t know anything about that. So you can’t ever answer why something’s happening, but you can answer why I’m not okay that something’s happening, so now I have a car I need to deal with. A wise person does not try to make the world be the way they want. Neither relationships, nor pets, nor this, nor that.
They are open, and they walk into a situation with respect, saying, “The moments and the people that are unfolding in front of me have history. I don’t know that history.” Then how can it be the way I want? It’s gonna be the result of all that history coming together in this mo- The moment in front of you, every single moment, is gonna be the result of all the causes that happened before that brought everything together to create that moment, and you want that moment to be the way you want, and your wants are the sum of your own experiences, not the sum of the whole.
And that’s where a wise person wakes up. Can you start by looking at the moment in front of you and realizing you don’t know squat about that moment? You don’t know what somebody told somebody else. You don’t know what happened last year. You don’t know anything that caused this moment to be the way it is.
So the question is, are you okay with the moment? When you’re okay with it, doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. That’s the part people don’t understand the teachings. Just because you’re okay… How can you not be okay? I don’t like that Saturn has rings That’s like saying, “I don’t like what just happened.”
It’s, it’s the same reason. The same reason Saturn has rings is the same reason that moment, all the causes of that moment came together and unfolded in front of you, and the fact that you were there for that moment. You could have looked the other way and not seen it. So things are unfolding. You start by saying, “That’s okay with me,” which I think is very big of you.
It’s okay that Saturn has rings, all right? It’s okay that reality exists, and it actually dared to unfold in front of me as it naturally did. How are you with it? Fine. You really feel fine about it? No, there’s emotions inside of me. I don’t feel so good about it, but I’m okay. I’m fine with that. There, that’s the key.
It’s not like I’m trying to make the inside be the way I want. I’m back here noticing this in here is the sum of my learned experiences. That’s what’s going on in here, but that’s not what’s going on out there. So as an intelligent person, I look out there and I say, “Reality wins.” It always wins, all right?
You can’t make what happened not happen. And so I’m in here, the moment unfolds. I go, “Be here now.” I’m in here, the moment unfolds, it comes in. It sometimes hits my stuff. Makes me feel nervous, makes me feel weird, makes me feel jealous, makes me feel insecure, okay? Get straight. I do not teach that you’re not supposed to feel that, nor do I teach that you’re supposed to feel that, get into that.
No, no. It comes in, it hits your stuff, and you’re back here and you let it come up to you. That’s the key. You don’t go down to it You let it come up to you. “But it doesn’t feel good.” Of course it doesn’t feel good. You stored not feel good, now it’s coming back up. It’s not gonna feel good. Are you okay with that?
Are you okay that the moment unfolded? Are you okay that there was this inner psychological reaction based on your stored past experiences, and then it comes up, and you experience it, and you let it go? Because what happens when you let it go? It’s not in there the same as it was before. All of a sudden, it doesn’t bother you as much next time it happens.
I’ve had people tell me they didn’t get along with their parents, so they went down. They have to go to their parents for a certain time at holidays, and now that they’ve grown as much, meaning they honored and respected reality, that they go there, and the parents haven’t changed, but they changed. They think it’s adorable.
Look, they pick on each other all the time. They can’t even pick on me. That’s what used to bother me. Don’t bother me anymore. That’s beautiful. That means you grew. That means you’re capable of handling reality. It passes through you, and I’m telling you, when you learn to handle the discomfort and say, “Fine, there’s discom…”
People play sports. They, they play football. They play hockey. Are you kidding me? Beat each other over the head with hockey sticks. Probably doesn’t feel so good. I’ll tell you, if you’re a lineman in professional football or high school football, anything like that, man, every single time they go at each other, bam, the elbows go up, smash each other.
Serious stuff, isn’t it? They don’t go cry. They think, “Well, I said…” That’s just amazing. They kill each other. By the time the game’s over, look at it. They come out and they hug each other, sweaty mess, just hug the other team. Have you noticed? Isn’t that beautiful? I like that. All right? So you get to the point where you understand that it’s okay that the moment unfolded.
It better be okay because it did unfold. If you’re having trouble with it, it means it already happened, and you’re never gonna make it not have happened. Can you make something happen ever not have happened? Of course not. You have to have a time machine. What if somebody apologizes and it does still happen?
It’s still in there. You just forgave them. Somebody apologizes and you forgive them. What does that mean? Well, it’s better than not, but I tell you right now, if they do it again, you … It’s not that it’s not still in there. You still have that sensitive spot. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have to apologize. Some people say love means never have to say you’re sorry.
In other words, I can handle you. I realize you’re different. I can handle you. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. You’re in a bad mood, it’s fine. You didn’t say hello when you came home. Okay, let’s have a nice evening. It’s okay. That’s what it means. Love means never have to say I’m sorry. It doesn’t mean nobody did anything.
It just means I love you. I love you. You can handle things. You just handle them. You just let go, let them come up, and let them go. That’s your life. Now, what do you do when something happens outside that creates that reaction inside? You’ve let go. You’re not fighting it. It comes up, you let it go. Then what takes place?
Now you come out and you deal with the situation. Some people think that when I talk about surrender and so on, it means you don’t deal with the situation. That’s not true. Surrender is something you do inside. You let go of your tendency to resist. You let go of your tendency, which is based on your past experience.
The only reason you’re pushing it back down is you don’t like it, and the reason you don’t like it is the past experiences you had. If you grew up in a home where at dinner table everybody fought, that’s what they did, it was fun, they just all fought, okay? They argued and it was a, it was just family affair, all right?
Then you go and you’re having a good day with somebody and then, then a little argument’s taking place and you get all upset because that’s not what your family was like. That, it’s just It’s silly. You have to remember they told you, you are the sum of your learned experiences. It’s not right. It’s no more right than anybody else’s.
It’s just the experience you had. If you had different experiences, you would think differently. It’s not something you made up. You were programmed. So you just get to the point where you… It’s called acceptance and surrender, and that means inside, not outside, inside, things take place. You honor their right to exist.
There were causes made them be that way. And so it comes in, eventually you let go. Eventually, you just learn to let go, letting go machine. Whatever comes up, it’s okay if it doesn’t feel good. It’s okay if it does feel good. There are things you get attracted to that you sh- don’t- shouldn’t be going with , okay?
So if you felt a tendency, you didn’t go with it. You felt a resistance, you didn’t push it back down. You allow life to unfold and fit inside of you as it comes up. Then what? Then you deal with it, and you’re gonna find out, oh, I don’t know, 80, 90% of the time, there’s nothing left to deal with. That the only reason you wanted to deal with it is you wanted to change it so it didn’t bother you.
Okay? And that goes for relationships, it goes for everything. I mean, you get to the point where you say, “I don’t mi- it didn’t bother me that it bothered me.” Oh, I like that. Now, that’s sexy, right? I’m okay that it bothered me. Somebody once asked Ramakrishna, a great enlightened master, “Does an enlightened master ever feel anger?”
You know what he said? “Yes, but it’s like writing on water.” What difference does it make what you wrote on water? Nobody can read it. It just comes in and passes right through. Comes in and passes right through. You know, you have a f- friend, a relationship, and they do something that you didn’t… I didn’t think…
I, I like my favorite s- “I never thought you would say something like that,” as opposed to, “Oh, huh, I guess you would.” It passes through. What are you, what are you gonna do? Make them be the way you want? No, they’re not the same as you. But you can love them. Understand that? That’s where we go back to love.
When you don’t close ’cause somebody says something you didn’t expect. There’s two parties in there, you, the sum of your own experiences, and what they said, the sum of their learned experiences. Uh-oh, that didn’t seem like a good chemistry. As opposed to You are the sum of your learned experiences. I do not want you suppressing yourself in order to love me.
As I love you, I want to know you. You just learn that a relationship is that. That’s a relationship. You don’t have a relationship with yourself. Have a relationship with yourself, go stand in front of the mirror. You have a relationship with somebody else, and they are not supposed to be… They are different than you
Just remember, they are the sum of their learned experiences. If they’re not, “Oh, I just like you. Everything you like is what I like,” they’re lying. They want you to like them, and eventually it won’t work. It can’t work. But if somebody is and they’re open, doesn’t mean you can’t work with them. But just basically, you honor and respect that differences are outside.
The outside is very different. It’s not gonna be the way you want, and people will not be the way you want. Are you able to handle that? And that’s what Rumi meant by yesterday I was clever. I was trying to change the world. Today, I’m wise. I’m changing myself. You wanna feel love? Let go. Just keep letting go.
And what it means is not closing. What does that mean? I told you, you are love. You’re walking tremendous love, but you close, so you don’t feel it. It’s like putting clouds in front of the sun. It’s just dark. If you don’t put those clouds, are you gonna feel love? If you let go of the clouds as they’re trying to come up and you release them, the less stuff you carry inside of you, the better off you are.
Somebody once… A great, uh, Buddhist master once said something like this: “Spirituality is never about getting anything. It’s about losing everything Now you understand what he’s talking about? It’s not about getting what you want, it’s about letting go of what inside of you is separate in the world into what you like and what you don’t want.
And you are capable of doing that. How? Now we get to what I always teach. Not by saying, “Oh my God,” I go, “All this stuff in here. I had the terrible relationship with my stepfather 20 years ago. How can I get it out?” That’s not the teaching I wanna teach you. “Well, what’s easy to teach me?” A car in front of you is driving slower than you want it to.
You’re getting uptight, aren’t you? “Come on, buddy. 10 miles over the speed limit. Come on. You didn’t use your blinker. Nice blinker, buddy.” What are you doing? You’re bothering yourself about something you don’t need to bother yourself about. It’s not something that needs to be dealt with. The person doesn’t hear you.
If you talk to the driver in front of you, they do not hear you. So why don’t we start there? Instead of starting with these major events that you stored inside of yourself, why don’t you start with the things that there’s no reason to resist? The weather, the driver in front of you. You said hello to somebody, they didn’t say hello back.
There’s 8.3 billion people on the planet Earth. They didn’t say hello either. That’s how you learn to think. You find out later they had earplugs in, they didn’t hear you say hello, and you made this whole mental mess of yourself because of it. So you start with what I call the low-hanging fruit. Just the things that if you accepted their existence, there’d be nothing to do about them, and the only reason you wanna fight them is ’cause you didn’t like them.
And so you stop. You just little by little let go of that. You just keep letting go. And then next thing you know, something bigger happens. And because you learned how to let go of the discomfort that it’s hot out, or it’s raining when you don’t want it to, or rain on your birthday, that kind of stuff, as you actually worked with that, just let it go.
Relax. That’s how you let it go. You relax through it. Like Ramakrishna, it’s like riding on water. It comes up, it passes through. I don’t have to get mad at myself ’cause I felt bad. No, I just have to let it go. Just keep relaxing. H- how do you relax? By not resisting. Say, I’m gonna say it again. How do you relax?
By not resisting. When you resist, it creates tension. When you resist, there’s two opposing forces, the reality that came in, and you resisting it, and you’re not gonna be happy. So you just relax through it, and next thing you know… I’m gonna have to go quicker now… that the next thing’s gonna happen, and it feels like the other thing did, but now you know how to relax through it.
So you relax through it. Next thing you know, you’re able to handle things that used to bother you. You don’t even notice them anymore ’cause you learned to let them pass through. And eventually, you get to the point where you’re a letting go machine What do you do with your life? Let go. That’s what I do all day of my life.
But how do you have time for that? It doesn’t takes… It takes time if you don’t let it go through. You’re gonna deal with it for the rest of your life, right? If I just relax while it’s happening, somebody says something, starts to hit your stuff, let go. Ooh-wee, exciting. It’s an extreme sport. What is? You are.
You’re an extreme sport, and you just keep letting go. But then you deal with it. If there’s something left to deal with after you’ve let go of yourself, you deal with it. But you’re gonna find out the vast majority of time, the only problem was you. The problem is that you want it to be your way, and it wasn’t.
Or you didn’t want it to be the way it was. But otherwise, it just was what it was, and then moment goes away, and you learn to let it. And now you can bring your whole self back down into… So be here now. You bring your whole self back down into the moment, and you deal with it constructively. Not, “We don’t have to deal with that.
I don’t like what you said.” No, okay, I let go of that. I don’t like what you said. Now, is there something to deal with? Yeah. Well, the charge you drew really isn’t working well, and I need to deal with that. Not because of me, but because constructively, it is best for the whole if we can converse about this.
So you just get to the point, and it’s not that hard, but you have to wake up and realize, if you… I started with love. If you wanna feel love, you need to let go of yourself. Let go of these patterns that you build that keep closing you, and you’ll find that love is easier. And then you’ll find one day you’ll walk outside, and the fact that it’s mommy out…
Literally, you’ll walk outside, and you hear
And you realize, “I’ve never really heard that before.” Of course not. What you hear is, “I don’t like that, but I’m gonna do it.” Right? And the next thing you know, because you let go, there’s these things are turning you on, the natural things in life. And eventually you will keep your heart open, and then it will stay open.
But what if it starts to close? You decide. Is whatever happened worth closing my heart? And eventually you will say, “No. Nothing you did is worth closing my heart over. Now I can stay open. Now we can deal with things.” All right. Very good. 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.
