E193: The Path from Personal to Impersonal

Tami Simon: Welcome to the Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at michaelsingerpodcast.com.

Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. There are so many different doorways, if you will, to enter and walk the spiritual path — or to understand the spiritual path. In the end, they’re all the same. But there are core concepts, core truths. One of them, which absolutely swings open the doors to spirituality versus not, is personal versus impersonal. That’s been taught from the beginning of time when people turned toward God.

There are different aspects of your being. Starting position through your evolution — first, second, third, and the lower part of the fourth chakra — are personal. They’re all personal. Why? Because it’s like Maslow’s needs. You’re bothered by them. They call to you. They demand that you pay attention to them. You’re okay when you get them, and you’re not okay when you don’t. It’s just black and white. It’s very simple. What makes it personal? It’s about you. How do I feel? What do I like? What do I want? What do I want my life to be? What is my life missing? I, me, mine. The Beatles — “I Me Mine.” That’s what makes it personal. It’s a good word for it — personal. Why? It is personal. It’s about you.

And there are people — most people, almost all people — that spend their entire life in the personal. If what you said I like, I get happy. If what you said I don’t like, I get sad, I get bothered. If I’m getting what I want materially — otherwise — I have the car I want, the house I want, the color that I want, everything I want. It’s what I want. We’ve discussed this before. It’s not that hard to understand that getting what you want makes you happy, right? It’s what you want. And it’s not that hard to understand that if you’re not getting what you want, or getting what you don’t want, that it messes you up. That’s just the lowest part of your being. Animals are that way. Lab rats are that way, mice are that way. It’s just the avoidance of pain and the seeking of pleasure. So whether it be a physical pain or physical pleasure — we’re more evolved nowadays, and so it becomes psychological pain and psychological pleasure.

My mind has made up what it wants. That’s what happens. It makes up what it wants. It builds a model inside of you, inside your head, saying, “This made me happy before. This made me sad before. These are urges and desires that I have, and these are things I’m afraid of and feel repulsed by.” And it just builds a model of what you like and what you don’t like. They’re called preferences. They’re not natural. Everyone’s are different. The things that you built — you built something of solidity within your mind that sits there and says, “This is who I am, this is what I want, and this is what I’m going to go out and get. This is what I don’t like, and this is what I’m going to avoid.” And then you spend your whole life doing that. How you go about doing it — there are nice ways to do it, there are not nice ways to do it, there are socially acceptable ways to do it, and there are completely socially unacceptable ways to do it. You just get to the point where you understand that if you want to live in a society, try to be socially acceptable. Otherwise, it doesn’t work very well.

But when it’s all said and done, that’s not very high. If you’re still about you, if you’re still thinking, “What do I want and how to get it? What do I not want and how do I avoid it?” — that’s a very small life. We’ve discussed that before — how small. Just the planet itself is so small, it’s stupid. And then you look around, and you understand that 1.3 million planets fit within the sun, and there are three hundred billion stars in your galaxy, and there are trillions of galaxies. How in the world can it be about you? It is not about you. It never was, and it never will be. But you make it be about you.

And if you don’t, that’s what happens: if the ego gets what it wants, it feels fine. It goes anywhere from “I’ll feel fine” to “I’m totally happy. Everything’s wonderful.” If it doesn’t get what it wants, it feels disappointed, or it gets upset, or feels betrayed, or whatever it is. That’s how it works. So therefore, since you don’t like those feelings — you do like the others — you let the ego be your guru. You let the ego determine what you’re doing, what you’re not doing, how you’re trying to change everything and build a life for yourself based on that.

Well, I hope you see how small that is. And that is not the life that a spiritual being lives. Why? There’s another life that’s quite different from that. It’s called the life of the impersonal, and spiritual is always impersonal. The personal life does not lead to God. In fact, when Christ said you must die to be reborn, he meant you must die the personal life to be reborn in the impersonal life. The impersonal life is divine. It leads to God. The personal life never leads to God. Why? It leads to what it’s trying to do. It leads to you. It leads to, “These are my preferences. This is what I like. This is what I don’t like, and that’s what I’m living.” So you made yourself the center of the universe.

So what’s the impersonal life? How about the right answer: not the personal life. And that’s the truth. To describe the impersonal — I can describe the personal life. Why? It’s small. You can get your arms around it. You understand where it came from. Psychologists and different people who study these things can understand why, based on your background and your previous experiences in life, you want what you want and don’t want what you want, why something turns you on, why something turns you off. It’s totally understandable. It’s all based on your past experiences. And then you leave these impressions inside, and you choose which ones you want to identify with, and you build a self-concept, and then that’s your personal life — to try and make it happen, and do everything you can to manipulate, control, and make it be that.

So that’s easy to define. You literally can define it all the way down to somebody who left an impression on you three weeks ago, and now you have trouble being in their presence. You don’t feel the attraction that you used to feel because they hurt you. It’s not hard to understand. It’s totally definable.

The impersonal life is impossible to define. Why? Because it has no limits. It’s what is left that’s not the personal life. Well, what’s left that’s not the personal life? It’s infinite. There’s no limit to it. Goes on forever. How does one live the impersonal life? By not living the personal life. Christ says you can’t serve two masters. That’s literally what it’s talking about. If you are working for you — if you’re living only for yourself and everything you’re doing is for yourself, to make yourself feel good, to make yourself not be depressed, to make yourself be happy, to make yourself feel loved, to make yourself feel whatever it is — if it’s about you, then it’s personal.

So the impersonal life will start with a simple definition: it’s not personal. Well, how do I do? I have personal inside of me. Personal is very strong. Personal is like an addiction. What do you mean? If I don’t get what I want, I’m not doing well. That’s what happens in an addiction. If you don’t get the drug or the alcohol or whatever you’re addicted to, you get all messed up. If you do get it, you feel much better. So that’s the extreme of the personal life — it’s down to just a substance. But in terms of your concepts, views, opinions, preferences, hopes, dreams, that which opens you, that which closes you — you devote yourself to yourself.

Please understand that. But don’t feel bad, because everybody does that. That’s what everybody’s doing. They don’t know how to do otherwise. They devote themselves to themselves. So what happens with the impersonal life is it can’t be discussed with somebody who’s completely immersed in the personal life. The only thing they care about is how to get what they want. That’s what they want. They want to be with who they want to be with. They want to do what they want to do. They want their job to be the way they want it to be. They want people to treat them the way they want to be treated. They want to hear only what they want to hear. It’s about me. So that person can’t understand the impersonal life. It just doesn’t make any sense to them. What they understand is, “How do I get what I want?” “I’m going to take classes on how to get what I want.”

Like I said, there are ways to do it that are socially acceptable and ways to do it that are not. So a society tries to build people — yes, of course you want to get what you want. You know, you want to do it your way, but there are limits. That’s where the Ten Commandments come in. I told you they’re not very high. They’re all about the personal life. They’re all assuming you’re living the personal life, and let’s put some limits on it. Don’t start killing people, don’t start stealing stuff, don’t start telling lies, and don’t covet your neighbor’s husband or wife. Now let’s at least put some limits on it to where you’re not creating destructive behavior, which we see lots of. That’s not the impersonal life. That’s limitations on the personal life so that you all can at least get along enough to live together — which, in general worldwide, we don’t.

So what is the impersonal life? You start with: if you’re living the personal life, I’m telling you, you can’t know about the impersonal life. Why? You don’t want to. If you are completely absorbed, and all you care about is getting what you want and having it be the way you want and avoiding what you don’t want, you don’t even want to know about the impersonal life. There’s no place within you that it fits. It means nothing. So you can’t learn about the impersonal life because you don’t want to, and therefore everything you do is devoted to your personal life. How do I get the house I want? How do I get the husband or wife that I want? Do I want to have kids? Do I not want to have kids? All these big decisions — they’re all personal. They’re all, “What do I want? What will make me happy? What will fulfill me? What will make the parts of me that I’m not content with be content?” Me, me, me. But like I said, I don’t know what the percentage is, but it’s a real big percentage — that’s how everybody lives. So it’s like a fish doesn’t know they’re in water. There’s no way to understand the impersonal life or why you would even want it if you’re completely dedicated to the personal life.

So your first position, if you want to explore the impersonal life — I don’t know how you get there. You want to understand the impersonal life? I can’t explain it to someone who doesn’t want to know. What they want to know is how to get what they want. They want to build that life for themselves, whatever it is.

So the first step with the impersonal life is to understand they are mutually exclusive. The personal life and the impersonal life are mutually exclusive. If you’re looking to the west, you don’t see to the east. If you’re looking down, you don’t see up. It’s just that simple. So if you’re completely devoted — lock, stock, and barrel — to the personal life, you cannot see or understand the impersonal life, and nobody can teach you about it, because you don’t even want to.

You start to understand the impersonal life in one of two ways. I’ve taught you this before. One: you have an experience. It’s just grace. There’s no reason to talk about it, really. You just have an experience which lets you see that there’s a higher life than the life you’re living — that the life you’re living is full of worries. What if I do it wrong? What if somebody doesn’t like me anymore? What if I lose their attention? What if I get old and I don’t look so good anymore? What if I get sick? What if this happens? There’s just worry, worry, worry, worry. You have an experience in which you don’t experience that. It often lasts a very short period of time. There can be some experience that lets you see there’s something higher inside of you than getting what you want. Let’s get this straight: there’s something higher inside of you than getting what you want.

Why? Because to get what you want, you have to work. You have to do things. You have to please people. You have to dress certain ways. You have to act certain ways. You have to make sure everything’s the way you want so you get what you want all the time, and it’s very stressful.

So that leads us to the second way that somebody decides to at least investigate the impersonal — to see what the alternative is to the personal — and that is: you catch on that it doesn’t work. It looks like it works. It works for a little while, no question about that. Remember, I’ve talked about this before. Getting what you want opens you. It makes you feel open. It lets you feel the joy and the love and the excitement and the enthusiasm and the inspiration of being open. The trouble is it took something to open you. So what happens then? You don’t want to lose it. You start becoming anxious. You start being scared. You start becoming possessive. All kinds of things happen, because I need this in order to feel good.

The second thing that happens — and only a very wise person who has lived long enough catches on — is you realize there’s a law of diminishing returns. A song that turns you on, if you play it over and over and over again, you’re going to find that you don’t even hear it. You get used to it. It doesn’t have the effect on you that it used to, and that happens with everything. The more you experience something, the more commonplace it becomes to you.

That’s why Gibran… Gibran is beautiful. He talks about, “But let there be spaces in your togetherness. Eat together, but not out of the same bowl. Drink together, but not out of the same cup. Because the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak trees can’t grow too close together, or the shade will keep them from growing.” So that’s somebody who understands the law of diminishing returns. It will not keep going. You feel whatever you want. You think whatever you want. It doesn’t. It can’t, because you get used to it. And when you get used to it, you need new experiences. You need more exciting experiences. You need change. You need something.

And so people are still running to be okay, even when they get what they want. Some people sit there and say, “Oh, if I get the house that I wanted, and the car and the right person, I’ll just be fine.” Nobody’s fine. It’s not like that. They go to Hawaii. There are lots of people in beautiful places with everything wonderful, and they’re not fine. They get divorced. They have fighting. They have all kinds of stuff. Do you understand that? They lose interest in each other because there is a law of diminishing returns.

And so the more you get used to something, it doesn’t have that effect on you, and then life keeps changing. A wise person catches on that either because they have some experience — even for a moment — that’s more beautiful than anything that getting what you want can give you. Because getting what you want is binding. It holds a responsibility. When you feel this freedom, this liberation — that’s why we call it freedom and liberation. You’re free of having to do anything to get it. It’s free of charge. Otherwise, you are busy getting it. You’re busy making sure that it stays there, whatever it is. It’s the entire personal game: the job, the money, the respect from people, the relationship, whatever it is. It’s all about me. And so you have to maintain it.

But when you have an experience that gives you all of that — the experience, the joy, the love, the inspiration — and there’s no price to pay, whoa. That’s why we call it liberation. That’s why we call it freedom. Does freedom mean freedom to do what you want — freedom for yourself, so I can do whatever I want — or is freedom from yourself? That becomes a dividing line between personal and impersonal.

So those are two reasons that somebody would seek the impersonal: because they caught on and saw there’s a lot of pain and suffering in trying to get what I want — it doesn’t always work, and if it does work, it doesn’t last. You don’t see that till you see it. And so eventually you wake up and say, “There must be another way. There must be something higher. I’d like to seek that.” Something that doesn’t come and go, something that has no law of diminishing returns. That’s why the master calls it ever-new joy. Until you experience the flow of the Shakti high enough, you don’t understand these things. He didn’t call it joy. He called it ever-new joy. What do you mean there’s no law of diminishing returns? This I assure you. There is no law of diminishing returns when the Shakti is flowing inside of you and feeding you and raising you. That can go on forever, and it’s the same as if it happened for the first time. It’s totally fresh, it’s totally new, because there isn’t any you involved in it.

So basically, one of those two ways, people wake up to some degree. Most people don’t, and if they do, believe me, they go back to sleep. This is a very strong pull. The pull of the personal is phenomenal. It’s very powerful. It’s more powerful than a drug, more powerful than other addictions. It is part of the evolution of your soul that it went through first, second, third, and parts of the fourth chakra. It believes in that. That’s what it’s experienced. All of its experiences lead to that. Somebody says, “Oh, that’s what I’ve always wanted. I was never okay without this.” That’s your samskaras talking. That’s what happened — you got stuff left inside of you that either hurt you or made you feel good, and so now you’re living your life based on that.

So the start of the impersonal is you have to want to, and most people don’t want to, and they don’t even understand why they would want to — which is fine. So let’s just say you caught a taste that there’s something going on inside that’s higher than what’s going on outside. That’s the key. There is something going on inside that is higher than anything you can experience outside. Doesn’t mean the outside can’t be beautiful, but it’s temporal. That’s what the Buddhists teach you. It comes and it goes and it changes. Inside, you can tap into energy that doesn’t change — or it does change: it gets higher and higher — but you don’t have to work for it. It’s a natural state.

All right, so let’s say you do have interest in exploring the impersonal. You understand that the personal is kind of constricting and small and tight, and it’s there forever — you have to fight for it all the time. Let’s get this straight: the universe and the moments that unfold in front of you, their purpose is not to give you what you want. Their purpose is to unfold in a natural way. When it rains, it rains because of the clouds and the pressures. When a plant dies, you die — there’s just life, and it does not come to you and say, “Oh, excuse me, sir. What do you want me to do today?” The weather doesn’t do it. People’s births and deaths don’t do it. Life unfolds to the beat of a different drum. It does not unfold to the beat of your God — the one who gives you what you want and ensures everything unfolds in accordance with that. It does not do that, and it will not do that, and it has never done that. It is marching to the beat of God, to the beat of nature, to the beat of total impersonal. It’s amazing. Weather can come — it can be beautiful and balmy, and then a tsunami can come in and blow everything away. Then the next day, the sun comes out. Blue skies. It doesn’t say, “I’m sorry.” Life is impersonal. It’s just — it didn’t do it for you. It just does the natural nature of things. It unfolds.

That’s so hard for somebody who’s caught in the personal. They don’t like that. They want there to be a God who makes it be the way they want it to be. In general, God allows the universe to unfold in accordance to the laws that are causing it to unfold. Doesn’t mean there can’t be intervention, but that’s not what’s going on. What’s going on is the natural flow of things. So life beats to the drum of nature. It beats to the drum of the Tao. It beats to the drum of the natural unfolding of things that goes every second. You are personal, and therefore you have a way you need it to be. And so you’re at odds with life.

I say it in the book: there’s a line that says, “It’s not going to be the way you want. You want to know why? It’s not supposed to.” It is not true that the whole world was made for you. What’s true is things are what they are. It’s not even true that a person was made for you. A person is a result of the sum total of the experiences that they’ve had, unless they’re very deep, and then they’ve transcended the experiences — but that’s not you either, and the experiences they had are not you.

And so basically: stop it. That’s not what’s going on. What’s going on is life is unfolding. You’re interacting with it. You, in general, are very personal unless you’ve grown a great deal, and therefore you don’t like what life’s doing sometimes, and you do like what life’s doing other times. So you wake up and you realize, “I don’t want to live like that.” It doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s a constant struggle. It’s a sense that I have to keep things together, and you do, because if you don’t keep them together, they’re not going to do what you want.

Do you have the ability to manipulate and control people, places, and things to try to make it be the way you want? Some people are very good at it. Some people are not so good at it. That’s what we call in this world success and failure and stuff. But no one has the ability to keep it that way. No one. That’s just not the way it unfolds. So basically, you get to the point — eventually, this lifetime or another — where you realize there must be something else going on besides this struggle with life, besides the human predicament. What’s the predicament? If I get what I want, I like it. If I don’t get what I want, I don’t. That’s the predicament. It’s that simple. Do you understand that? And you’re caught in that — caught in trying to get what you want and avoid what you don’t want.

All right, eventually you wake up. Nobody can make you wake up. You just wake up. I gave you a couple of reasons why it might happen, but at some point you look and say, “There’s something higher going on. What would happen if I wasn’t devoting my entire life to myself?” That’s what you explore. That’s what the impersonal life is. How do you explore that? Go and get impersonal? No, you’re not going to go and get impersonal. You don’t know the impersonal life. You let go of the personal life. That is the only way.

If you’re sitting there addicted to smoking or alcohol or drugs, there’s only one way to stop: you stop doing it. You have to sit there and look and say, “This is the pull of the personal. I want to explore something higher. I’m going to explore something higher.” You have to let go of the pull of personal. Does it mean to renounce the world? It hasn’t anything to do with the world. It has to do with you and your attachment to the pull of the personal, you and your attachment to what you like and don’t like, and your manipulating of the world to try and get it and keep it and hold on to it.

There’s a far cry between that and saying: life is unfolding. I’m not renouncing it. I’m not denying it. But I’m not manipulating it in accordance with what I want. I’m honoring its right to unfold as it does. I’m honoring people’s right to be different. And it may be that I’m a therapist and I’m supposed to help people. Fine. That’s not your personal likes and dislikes — it better not be. But it doesn’t mean it’s not your job, your dharma. So what you’re doing is you’re allowing life to unfold. And what you’re going to see is that you take it personally.

Let’s get that straight. All it takes is somebody saying one word that you didn’t expect them to say — bye-bye. You’re not so good anymore, are you? All kinds of things happen. You get hurt, you get scared, you close down, whatever it is. One word. It’s hilarious. And then they say one word that you do like, and you’re all fine. Well, somebody wakes up and says, “I don’t know. I don’t want to live like that. That’s crazy. That’s not liberated.” And so what it boils down to — and I’ve taught you this over and over again — life unfolds and you can’t handle it. Why? Because you take it personally. Because you’re devoted to the personal, and the personal cannot exist in this world and be happy all the time. Why? Because the world keeps changing, and the personal has a particular way it wants things to be, and so it has to struggle to make them be that way.

So the impersonal life starts with — and in the end, ends with, by the way — you’re not going to grab the impersonal life. The impersonal life exists when you let go of the personal. That’s what’s left. She’s an artist, and she taught me about positive and negative space. If I’m staring at a positive space — a still life object — I don’t see the negative space. I only see the positive space. And if only I could take my eyes off of that thing, I’ll never see the negative space. I have to be willing to not look at that still life object and realize: oh, look, all around it there’s space. Throughout the universe, everything that’s not the object is negative space that is defining the object. But if you’re going to keep staring at the object, you’re never going to see the negative space.

Well, if you’re staring at the personal, you will never see the impersonal. Don’t kid yourself. I don’t care if you read books about it. I don’t care if you study it. If you’re staring at the personal, you will not see the impersonal. The impersonal is what’s left when you cease to stare at the personal.

So that’s your growth. That becomes a spiritual path. What? I am living in this world. It does not always fit what I want. Sometimes it does — very nice. Sometimes it doesn’t — good. So I see that it hits the personal. I have a self-concept of how I want things to be. When they’re not that way, I’m not doing well. So now the question becomes: there are one of two ways you go from there. Either you go down and use your will to try to manipulate and control the circumstances around you at that time to try and make them so that they are what you want and are not what you don’t want. Or you look at it and say, “If I do that, I’m going to be doing it forever, for everybody, everything.” Or you let go of the personal.

You let go of the personal. What do you mean? I don’t mean you renounce the world. I mean you let go of the attempt to reach down into the world to make it be the way you want so that you’re getting what you want. That’s the personal. How do you do that? Well, now we’re talking. If you get to the point where you’re actually interested enough to say, “How do you do that?” — I’m very proud of you. Those of you who even want to do this, who want to free yourself and want to live the impersonal — you’re to be greatly respected. That’s an honorable life to live. Doesn’t matter how well you succeed. Just the fact… that’s Meher Baba with a new life. His new life is just defined as the impersonal. And he says, “If no one is here to live it, it will live on by itself.” Just the ideal of the impersonal is so great, as opposed to just being caught inside yourself.

So let’s say you at least become interested, and then you have enough experience to realize the ego is a problem. It wants things to be the way it wants, and it gets upset when they’re not that way, and it gets excited when they are. So you just blow off the ear, fly anywhere, criticize me, I’m leaving — that’s ego. Where are you going to go? You’re just going to run around in a circle. There’s no purpose to that life. There’s no intent other than yourself.

So if you get to the point where you’re interested in the impersonal life — to realize there’s something greater than yourself, much greater than yourself — I’m not talking about God, or needing to believe in God. No. Just stop believing at that level of yourself that is so small. It’s not true that the Earth is the center of the universe. You’re not the center of life. It’s not all revolving around you. It’s revolving around itself. There are galaxies, and, oh my God, there’s everything. It’s got its own life. So you get to the point where you at least have interest in the bigger thing — bigger than you. That’s what it’s about. Impersonal is bigger than you.

So what do you do? You work on yourself. You don’t work on getting what you want. You work on yourself. You don’t renounce getting what you want. It’s so subtle — I don’t know how to talk to you about it. You don’t renounce or deny getting what you want. You just are not driven to it because you want it. It unfolds. It is what it is. And you see that a part of you gets hit — a part of you either likes or doesn’t like — and you can see that. And you get to the point where you say, “I don’t want that to determine my life. It’s not high enough. It’s too small. I just stay caught in it. It’s like an ingrown toenail. I just stay caught in myself.” But if you don’t see, you don’t see it. But someday you will, and then you start to work.

And what does it mean to work? The real work is when something unfolds outside and it causes the personal to get hit. And don’t worry — you’ll know. Like, if somebody writes me and says, “How do I know it’s personal?” You’ll know it’s personal. You’ll get hurt. Your heart will hurt. Your mind will go crazy. It’s personal. It didn’t fit what you want, and so the personal got activated and let you know that it’s there. Otherwise, you don’t know it’s there. Everything’s fine. But boy, you know it’s there when it doesn’t get what it wants, don’t you?

It’s like somebody throwing a tantrum — like a baby in the terrible twos. “I didn’t get what I want, so boy, am I going to carry on.” Except you don’t do it consciously. It just happens because you devoted yourself to that. Or if all of a sudden something happens and you’re ready to just throw your life away and follow it and get it because you like it — leave your family, leave your job, leave your friends. “I liked it.” Well, that’s like a drug. You just get to the point where you see this is about me. Something happened I didn’t like. Something happened that I did like. It’s personal. It’s about me.

And are you ready, willing, and able to say, “Because it’s personal, I don’t want to devote my energy to get what it wants” — like a brat throwing a tantrum? “I don’t want to give him what he wants,” not now, not while the tantrum’s going on. I want to let go of that part of me. I want to use my energy to release the baby, to release the tantrum thrower, to release the selfish, grabbing person that’s in there — the little me. So you look at it and you just say, “I don’t want to be like that.” That’s good enough. You’re conscious. You look at it. Is that who you are? That one who grabs or suppresses or pushes away and gets all upset and so on. Is that who you are? Because you’re going to stay that way if you devote yourself to it. So it looks and it says no. It doesn’t mean it’s going to work right away.

It’s not going to work right away, and you can’t put a time limit on it. It’s just that you intend to devote your life to letting go of that part of yourself. And if you do, and you keep letting go a little at a time — it doesn’t matter if you succeed. If you’re willing to do your best and have the intent, you will end up succeeding. Time is on your side. The other way, time is not on your side. If you have another cigarette, you’re going to smoke more. I know it made you feel better at the time. So if you go down there and devote yourself to your personal self, it’s going to stay there, and in fact it’s going to get stronger.

So basically, you get to the point where you’re willing to work on letting go. That’s called letting go. That’s all we talk about. Letting go of what? Not life. Yourself. And people can’t make that distinction. It’s all so tied together. You’re letting go of the baby in there. You’re letting go of the tantrum thrower. You’re letting go of the non-evolved being who is drawing you down into it and causing all this trouble by either grabbing or resisting.

And so little by little you let go. There are techniques. Hatha yoga is a wonderful technique if you’re using it for that reason. If you’re using it to learn how to stretch into a position where it’s not comfortable and relax through it, that is exactly what we’re talking about — except this position is inside, and it’s harder to deal with than your physical discomforts. And so you feel discomfort, you do the exact same thing: you relax through it. You let it go. What happens if you’re in a Hatha yoga position that’s really stretching — it’s not hurting you, but it’s stretching, and you know you should be able to go deeper? You have to drop behind it. You can’t go into it. You drop behind it. You breathe. You do the exact same thing inside when your personal self is causing trouble. You just don’t devote yourself to it. You don’t try to make it so it never happens again. You sit there and make it so that you can let go. Forget what happens again — it won’t happen again because it’s not in there anymore. And you just keep letting go.

You just keep letting go. And you don’t care about right or wrong. You don’t care what anybody else does. Eventually, you get to the point where you say, “Wait a minute. If I let go of the thing that’s disturbing me, I’m not going to be disturbed anymore.” If somebody says something and it causes me to panic and get all scared, and I sit there and try to train the person never to say it — good luck. If instead I let go of the part of me that got offended — that’s permanent. You don’t need luck there. You just keep letting go. You keep letting go.

Or if something draws my attention that’s out of place and it doesn’t fit my life and it’s not part of my dharma — you know, it just happens to be interesting, attractive, or… I’m not talking about any one particular thing, just anything. And I see that it’s just not where I’m supposed to be going. Are you capable of letting go in the face of desire? Are you capable of letting go in the face of hurt? And in most people’s cases — they don’t want to hear this — the answer is not only, “No, I’m not capable,” but, “Why would I want to be?”

Well, I already talked about that, didn’t I? Because there’s something higher inside — much higher than getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want. Much higher, and it’s free of charge, and it never stops. Who’s willing to explore? Who’s willing to risk letting go of the garbage — and the tension and control and all the anxiety it creates and the pain — in order to find something higher?

And so how do you do it? You sit there to the best of your ability, and you at least, at least in the beginning, when something happens, try to let go. You may not succeed — fine — but at least you tried. You just try to let go at least a little bit. That’s why I ask: just try to let go. Before you go get lost in there, you try to let go. And what will happen is, if you do that — you breathe, you relax, you do something that is not in the direction of giving in to your personal self — it is the impersonal that’s doing that. Somebody has to be letting go of the personal. You will end up in the impersonal. It is the self, and there’s no end. Just like there’s no end to the personal self as it gets smaller and smaller and smaller, there’s no end to the impersonal self. It expands. The masters have told you: as high as we think we’ve gotten, we haven’t gotten as high as the masters. And they have told you that when you let go enough of yourself, you become God. You just merge. You drop back. The personal self is gone. It’s not an anchor anymore. And therefore, the consciousness which was staring at the personal self and getting all involved in it passes through stages and stages and stages of expansion — not contraction, expansion, expansion, liberation, not binding — until it merges with what? With that which they call God, that which they call the infinite universe, that which is infinite, eternal.

I love — Meher Baba said, “I was before all else was created. I will be after all else falls away. There was never a time I was not. There will never be a time that I am not. I am. I am that which is.” And all masters talk like that. Christ talked like that. Buddha talked like that. That’s who you are. That’s who you are.

So the question is, do you want to stay caught in this tiny little thing that has to work to be okay and has all kinds of conditions and needs and et cetera, et cetera? Or do you want to work on liberating yourself, freeing yourself, so you can explore the greater parts of yourself, which are all impersonal? That’s why none of my experiences could ever be the same. Why? If you don’t take it personally, it just passes through. The only thing that causes disturbance is when it hits your personal.

So that’s a slight discourse on personal and impersonal. It is the beginning and end of all spirituality. That’s it. That’s the line. If it’s personal, it’s going down and out, and it’s not in the realm of spirituality. It’s in the realm of ego, in the realm of me, me, me. It’s all about me. If you are letting that go — not life, but this reaction inside, the personal reaction — if you’re letting that go every day, all the time, about everything, with no exception… “But I really like this.” Fine. Doesn’t mean you let the thing go. But inside, you don’t want to stay attached. You don’t want to stay devoting yourself to that. You devote yourself to letting go. You’ll find out that your relationships work much better, that your job does much better, that everything gets better. It gets better because you’re not constricting it and holding it, and you’re in tune. You’re getting more in tune with the natural flow of life because you’re not in tune with yourself.

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all things shall be added unto you.” That’s what happens. That’s not a law of attraction. That’s the fact that you’re not screwing things up with your personal self. And then it naturally becomes what it is, which is pure grace.

So I hope you understand this. I hope you do. At some point in your life, you’re going to. That’s all it boils down to. You’re going to understand that the personal is a problem. The personal does not take you where you want to go, and it does not give you what you really want. And the impersonal is a phenomenal life. 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.