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: Mm-hmm. Jai guru dev, jai masters. There’s so many aspects of what we call spirituality — some of them very mystical, some very scientific. Science is trying to break through to find that relationship with the creation, creator, whatever, and I discuss it all the time. They’ve come so close. You, you just, you need to know that, that parts of spirituality at this point are not mystical, not mystical at all, that they’ve worked their way down past the molecules, the atoms, the electron, neutron, or protons.
These are facts. Every scientist all over the world has this thing called a basic model, and it works its way down to basic electrons, neutrons, and protons, but then they’ve gone — I don’t want to get to it now, I do it all the time — they’ve gone past that. They found out that protons and neutrons are not a fundamental element, that they can be broken apart into their component parts, and that’s what quantum physics is studying. So they have quarks and leptons and bosons and…
I don’t want to get into it, but then they found out that they seem like they were subatomic particles, but they behave like waves. First they thought — saw them with light. Is light a photon, a particle, or is it a wave? Light is waves. They don’t have separation. It’s wave-like. And then they found out that everything is that way, that all the subatomic particles are wavelets that behave like particles when they interact together, but they’re really just wavelets.
Well, that’s getting pretty mystical. The Bible said, God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, and He made creation. Well, that’s what they found out, that down there underneath it all — but not underneath it all — it is made of… We just see it… I, I, I try to use the analogy of steam, water, and ice. Do you want to say that ice is made of water?
Do you want to say that water is made of steam? You want to say that all of them are made of H2O molecules. That’s what’s really there. It’s not like it stops being H2O molecules because it froze. It’s just slow-moving H2O molecules. That’s what the whole universe is. All over, all galaxies, every single thing is just a quantum field of energy vibrating, and then it interacts with itself, and this comes up.
It’s like, how do you look at a flower and not understand where that thing came from? Because it’s those wavelets putting themselves together all the way up. Quarks, leptons, bosons putting together into neutrons and protons, putting together into atoms, putting together into molecules, but they’re all the same thing all the time.
It’s not like the wavelet went away. That’s what it is. It’s just behaving like something different. It’s behaving like an atom. It’s behaving like a molecule. It’s behaving like form. And you look at a flower and you just realize — I wish you would, like always — that is what you’re looking at.
You’re not looking at this beautiful flower. You’re looking at these amazing wavelets down at the bottom that manifested themselves all the way up to look like the flower. But what do you mean it looks like a flower? How does it look like a flower? Because your eyes are made of the exact same wavelets that have manifested up as the lenses and the molecules and the cells of your eyes, so that when the consciousness looks through those eyes, which are made of the same wavelets coming up, and they look at the wavelets that made it to the top here, it looks like a flower.
It looks like a man. It looks like a woman. Now, I’m not talking mystical. That sounds mystical. You want to argue, is it really there or not? Ask the physicist. Well, the wavelets are there. Okay, fine. But it doesn’t look like you guys look, all right? It’s because the eyes see it that way. So there’s a part of spirituality that’s getting very close.
I mean, if they understood that they’re down there with wavelets, and that the Bible and every other scripture says that God said, “Let there be light,” and it’s all made of light — Ramakrishna, great saint, they put him over there with those pictures above that wall. I mean, these great masters, these great yogis, you have no idea what great means.
Somebody once asked him, because he was like nuts. He was God-mad. That’s called God-mad. He just danced around and drooled even at the Prime Minister’s dinner when he was invited, all right? He would just stand up and start dancing. He’s heard the name of God. Every hair on his body was standing on end.
Can’t even talk about these guys, okay? And somebody once said to him — one of his disciples pulled him aside and said, “Master, you just had this big dinner with the Prime Minister. They invited you, and you drooled, and you danced, and you sang. Don’t you get embarrassed?” He was very sincere with his disciples.
He was like a little boy even though he’s a grown man. He said, “You know how sometimes you say you see like an apparition of ghost-like figures coming in, floating out, and you just see it like almost as if you’re seeing a different plane for a moment? That’s how I see your world. It is blinding light all the time, and every once in a while, what you call a building starts to come into focus, then fades away.” These are great beings.
Why? Which is it? Okay, we’ll talk about why doesn’t it look like that to us. Why do we… I keep teaching you, there are no problems. Which wavelet is a problem? Which atom’s a problem? There aren’t any problems. The problem is what you’re doing with your mind. So we start to talk about, we’re one in the spirit, we’re one in the Lord.
What does that mean? There’s only one consciousness. What does that mean? God — it’s not that hard, all right? Without moving, can you feel both your hand and your foot at the same time? Don’t move. Can you just feel the presence of the hand and of the foot? Okay. Do you have to leave the hand to get to the foot?
Or is it a simultaneous experience of consciousness being aware of your entire body? Well, of course it is. Whether you pay attention or not, that’s another ballgame. But you are equally conscious at every part of your body at the same time. Fine. So you’re omnipresent. Your consciousness, your awareness of being, is omnipresent in your body.
There, not that hard. Nice word, omnipresent. It’s everywhere, it’s exactly the same. At the same time, consciousness doesn’t have to go anywhere. It just is aware. It’s called awareness, consciousness, awareness, okay? Well, that doesn’t mean we’re one in the spirit. What does that mean? That means I’m one in my body.
How many of you are living in there? There’s only one of you in there. Were you in there yesterday? You sure? You sure you were in there yesterday? Same you. Yes. Were you in there when you were ten and looked in a mirror and saw a ten-year-old’s face? Was it you looking? Pay attention.
You’re in there. You’ve been in there the whole time. It’s not a question of whether you’re in there, it’s a question of what you are aware of. You’re aware of your emotions, you’re aware of your thoughts, you’re aware of your body, you’re aware of the world coming in. But it’s the same awareness. You can be sitting there thinking, having thoughts, feeling feelings, and interacting with somebody outside.
You’re aware. You are awareness, and you’re aware of all these things at the exact — right or wrong? Can I be aware of what somebody’s saying at the same time that you’re aware of your thoughts about what they’re saying? Okay? Let’s get aware of what it means to be conscious. You’re a conscious being, period.
All right? The question is not whether you’re a conscious being. There are two questions. One, what are you conscious of? Consciousness is like a light, a flashlight. It shines on something. The light doesn’t go away because it’s enlightening something. It’s projecting, radiating its light onto an object. It doesn’t have to leave to do that.
Consciousness does not have to leave its seat of awareness to pay attention to your thoughts, your emotions, your body, and the world coming in. It’s aware. It’s just aware. That’s what it is. It’s a nature. Everything has its nature. The nature of consciousness is awareness. They’re the same word. They’re the same thing.
Your awareness, your consciousness — they’re the same thing, okay? So basically, at least within you, you understand that it seems like there’s multiplicity, but there’s not. There’s just one consciousness. Even if you have an argument going inside your own head, you have your mother arguing with your father.
They left these impressions on top of you, and now Mommy says this, and then Daddy says that, and then Mommy says this, and Daddy says that. Who’s aware that that’s going on? Who says, “My mind’s driving me crazy. I got my parents fighting in there like they used to”? How do you know that’s going on? Because the same you that’s looking at all of it — that’s the foundation of spirituality.
And don’t worry about God yet. Just start with you. There’s just one of you, but you pay attention to different aspects, and so you pay more attention to Mommy at one time, and you behave that way, and then Daddy speaks up. It’s adorable. But you’re aware, aren’t you? You’re aware that that’s going on. You go to a psychiatrist, and you sit there and say, “I can’t handle it.
I hear my mother talking in there,” and so on, “and I hear my father arguing.” Who’s this “I” who hears Mommy talking and hears Father arguing, who notices that sometimes your heart is… Do you know sometimes your heart is open? Yes or no? Do you know sometimes it’s closed? Is it the same you noticing when it’s open and — it doesn’t see the same thing.
It sees an open heart. It sees a closed heart. Who does? There are great saints — Ramana Maharshi, his entire teaching was that question: “Who am I? Who is in here noticing that I am in here?” “I have terrible thoughts.” How do you know? “Lately, I’m having these beautiful thoughts.” How do you know? “Lately, when around this person, my heart is so open.”
How do you know? “But then he said something to me. I never thought he would say that. My heart closed. I’ll never…” Who is aware of all of this? There’s just one of you in there. Now, I want to know, can you see that? I can’t go forward unless you see that. Who is that one? Who is the awareness? So there are two aspects of spirituality.
One is, what are you aware of? Okay, we can talk about that. What are you aware of, and where did it come from? We just talked about where the world came from, okay? Came from wavelets, wavelets on a quantum field that manifests as every single thing you deal with. Go talk to a quantum physicist, right? That is what they have found out.
You pay them big money to study universities, to have CERN super colliders bombarding, doing all kinds of stuff to figure out what’s going on. They came back and told you. You just won’t listen, ’cause you don’t like what they told you. Nothing’s going on. Nothing that you would care about. Who cares about the wavelets?
That’s all this is. This is the manifestation of those wavelets. Fine. So you’ve got mind, you have emotions, you have an outside world, okay, and you have consciousness that’s aware of it. The other question — I hope we’ll have time to get there today — is, okay, where did consciousness come from? What is the source of the object of consciousness, and what is the source of consciousness?
Whoa. Now that’s about as deep a question as you can ever ask. Where did I come from? There’s a koan in Zen — Zen has koans — which says, “What was your face before your mother was born?” It’s supposed to turn your mind inside out, all right? But what’s it saying? It’s saying, can you come back to the master and not give an answer, but have touched the part of you that was your face before your mother was born, the source of consciousness?
Okay, so now we’ve got the foundation of being able to talk about the two major aspects of spirituality. Where did consciousness come from, and what is consciousness aware of, and why did it get lost? So let’s do that first. I usually do that for the whole talk, but we’re gonna do that rather condensed.
Where did the outside world come from? I already did that. It has nothing to do with you, and that’s so hard for you. Nothing that ever happened to you, nothing that is happening to you, and nothing that will ever happen to you has anything to do with you. The consciousness is aware that stuff’s going on.
You are the consciousness. You’re the awareness. What’s going on is just the result of the quantum fields vibrating. It’s just the result of reality unfolding in front of you, and you’re aware of it. Fine. Why is that a problem? Believe it or not, it’s not a problem. You make it a problem. How? How did I make these vibrations that manifest differently a problem?
Why do I like red and don’t like blue? It’s crazy. There, they’re vibrating. What are the colors? You all know this nowadays. You’re all physicists. Since you go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and you go to buy a light bulb, you better be a physicist. It’ll tell you its color, its vibration, its heat ratio, right?
This is 4,000. That’s — what’s that? Daylight. And this is soft white, 2,200. You know the numbers. You see them. What is that? Vibration rates of light. Say you like some vibes and not another, eh? You just get to the point you understand it’s all just the quantum field vibrating differently and interacting together and creating what you interact with.
So someday you’ll listen to me, and at least you’ll try to understand that that happens to be the truth, and if you have problems, you got a problem, because there are no problems. But, but, but my husband said something not nice to me — a wavelet on the quantum field vibrated, and it made a noise, and the noise got picked up by the vibrations of your ear.
I’m not gonna get down any further, and you’re getting bothered by it. Why? It’s just what’s happening. It’s just what’s… Be here now. That’s what it means. It’s like there’s nothing happening but what you’re experiencing. Okay, so what went wrong? It’s not just a physical plane. There is a physical plane that is unfolding, but never forget what I’m saying.
It is really just those quantum vibrations manifesting up as what you see as the planets, the stars, the galaxies, every single thing. I once read an article from NASA on the web. I’ll never forget. It was years and years ago, and it said something that blew me away. It said, “The quantum field is omnipresent.”
I only heard the word “omnipresent” used as an attribute of God — omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. Here’s science. It’s omnipresent. All the trillions of galaxies and all the planets are made of the quantum field. They came out of the quantum field. Now let’s just call it God. Excuse me. It’s getting close, right or wrong.
It’s getting close. We are one, all right? So here you have the outside world. Well, why do we inside have so much trouble with it? And I don’t think I need to discuss with you that you do have trouble with it — with every little tiny word, every tiny thing, every single thing that goes on gets you upset, disturbs you, or can, right or wrong.
How did that happen? How did it get like that? All right, this is the truth. It’s called the fall from the garden. This is the true fall from the garden. Consciousness was experiencing form. It made form, it vibrated, created creation, and it’s dancing in it. That’s Adam and Eve in the garden. There’s all kinds of experiences, and you’re just experiencing them.
It’s beautiful, all of creation — good, bad, right, wrong, dark, light — just all creation, and you’re experiencing it. What happens is, at some point, the outside world came in. That’s what it does. It comes in, and your senses pick it up. But for whatever reason, the consciousness that’s experiencing what came in pushes back.
It, in essence, says, “Not on my watch. This is not going to come in.” The vibration that came in is not something that’s okay with the consciousness that’s experiencing it. That literally is the cause of the entire mess that goes on with humanity and all of creation. The moment you say, “No, not on my watch” — but wait a minute, it did happen, or it wouldn’t have come in, and it really is just the quantum field manifesting around you, but somehow that vibration rate, that color, daylight or soft white, right?
It came in, and the consciousness resisted. That’s the only word I can use. You do resist, don’t you? You resist different things that come in, don’t you? You try to push them away. “No, that’s not right. I don’t want to see that. I don’t like that. Don’t do that.” In other words, it’s not okay. Reality’s not okay with me.
That is the birth of the ego. The moment your consciousness is no longer just experiencing creation, but has been pulled down. I use the word “distracted.” Consciousness can get distracted. I said you can feel your foot and your toe and your hand. Drop a hammer — don’t do it — drop a hammer on your toe. I guarantee where your consciousness is going, and it may be difficult to take it off.
It distracted your consciousness down to a point. That is what happens inside. Inside is supposed to be beautiful and empty and experiential, and every moment is just this blissful experience of learning and just experiencing. You’re experiencing. But when something happens and it comes in, and the consciousness, the awareness of being, closes down on it —
that’s what it does. It focuses on it more than anything else. There’s the grass outside, there’s the trees, there’s the clouds, and then there’s this rustle in the grass. Could be a snake. All of a sudden, there’s nothing else going on in your awareness but that rustling. Your consciousness focused. Instead of being expanded and accepting and honoring and experiencing whatever comes in, it focused down on that.
And when it does that, it creates an impression in this place called mind. Not out here. The snake, if it was a snake, crawled away. Not even there anymore, but it is inside of you. That’s the closest I can get to why this thing got all screwed up — because the awareness got pulled down to one little spot instead of being omnipresent and omniscient, being everywhere.
It got pulled down to that spot, and because it got pulled down to that spot, it made an impression on this higher field of energy called mind, and it stayed. Tomorrow you’ll tell somebody, “I’m not going back out there. I think there’s a snake out there.” Whoa. It’s not even there. Maybe it wasn’t even there.
You did that with your mind. You did that with the impressions that got left. All the impressions? No. All of them go through. 99.9% of everything that comes in goes through. You know how many things come into your senses that you pay no attention to? You drive by the trees, you drive by the people, you drive by the road, you drive by the white lines, you drive by the cloud every moment of your life.
You figure out how much got stuck, but all you care about is what got stuck, because that’s what’s in there. That’s so funny. That’s all psychology. What did Mommy do when you were three? Your parents got divorced when you were five. How old are you now? 55? 65? “Still bothers me. I don’t like to talk about it. I hate the word divorce.
I can’t believe they got divorced. I couldn’t handle it at all. I hated my stepfather, too.” What are you doing? That’s 60 years ago. Why is that still in there? Because you held it in there. The awareness of being has power called will, and it pushed down on the experience, and — it’s so hilarious, I have to laugh —
by saying, “I don’t like it,” it said, “Okay, I don’t like it. I’m gonna keep it.” You know, Freud said, “I don’t like it, I’m gonna keep it.” Well, that makes a lot of sense, right? But that’s what happens. Kind of like if your dad’s trying to teach you to play ball, right? And throws some grounders at you, and you’re young, right?
You turn your head when — you go like that, because you don’t want the ball to hit you. Well, then you’ll never play ball. You have to be willing to handle the energy that comes in, and then you can be better at it. Well, it’s the same thing with life. That’s why I teach what I teach. Life’s gonna happen. I’m sorry.
I’m not sorry. It’s just the quantum field manifesting itself, and it comes in. Can you handle it? If you can handle it, it doesn’t leave impressions. Doesn’t mean you don’t have memory. You can bring it back, but it doesn’t leave impressions, so they keep coming back and haunting you and causing all kinds of trouble when they come back up.
You understand that? And so we call those “samskaras.” So because you resisted it, it stayed. It’s that simple, all right? So one thing stayed. Big deal, one thing stayed. You could write a treatise on the effect of that one rustling in the grass. Make believe nothing else did that, just that one rustling. So now you have stuck in your mind that it could be a snake, and then the mind reads something that would have passed through, studying types of snakes, or goes to the amphibian reptile exhibit at the zoo and sees a rattlesnake.
Now it associates fear that it felt when it held onto that rustling. Could have been a rattlesnake. You don’t know what that was. Doesn’t matter. It starts tying it all together. That’s what happens in there. So now there are two impressions — the impression of the rattlesnake, which you never even saw, and the impression of the rustling.
And because rattlesnakes rattle, when you go into a house and the people just had a baby, and its rattle is rattling, you get scared. Or if you walk by a rope, you get scared. Look how it multiplies. So all of a sudden, the one thing you held in there becomes all these yes-or-nos. Come on, you’re aware of this.
It’s like — you were married. It was a wonderful marriage. Hate to use real examples, but it’s good. Wonderful. You love each other. You go dancing, you go to restaurants, you go to plays. You go all over town. You’re having such a good old time until you’re not. And so now it’s not so good anymore, and somebody did something or somebody didn’t do something, and all of a sudden you’re getting a divorce, and it wasn’t a very nice divorce.
Most of them aren’t. So now you’re separated and everything like that. Now you drive around town and you see the restaurant. Your heart closes. The very thing that used to have nice impressions, the mind can turn into negative, right? How about, “Oh my, they’re playing our song”? How about, “Oh my God, turn that off.
That’s a song he used to listen to”? You did that in your mind. The mind is innocent. You’re the one — the consciousness. I cannot describe or explain that original why the divine consciousness focused down on this one event, which meant it focused on you. But it’s also focusing on everywhere else too, all right?
But it’s like rays of light. They can be everywhere. But this one ray got passed through a magnifying glass, and now it’s setting the field on fire. Same ray that’s everywhere else, but it’s magnified because it got attracted and held and distracted onto this. That’s exactly what’s happening. And so now you have this impression and another impression and then an impression about the impression, and pretty soon you’re a mess.
That’s what your mind is. It’s afraid to talk. It’s afraid to wear certain clothes. It’s afraid that it said something wrong. It’s afraid to meet new people. How did that happen? Because you don’t want these bad impressions to be stimulated. They couldn’t be stimulated if you let them happen. If you sat there and said, “Oh boy, there was a rustle.
I don’t know what it was. We’ll find out later” — it’s over. Now you don’t have to be afraid of the rattle. You let it pass through. It just became one of the ninety-five or ninety-nine percent of the things that entered in and passed through. But you just touch one of those. You just touch one. I don’t have to start off with a divorce or this, that, or the other thing.
You’re driving down the street, you’re totally open, and all of a sudden there’s a cloud that goes by, and it has a little curve in it that looks like your grandfather’s rocking chair, and you loved your grandfather, and he died recently, and all of a sudden you don’t like the clouds, or you do like the clouds, or you tell everybody, “There was a cloud that looked like my grandfather.”
You want it to happen again, or you don’t want it to happen again. And it’s just this thing. I don’t know how to explain to you how it multiplies. It just becomes what mind… Mind becomes full of it. Full of what? Full of the stuff that you couldn’t let go through there. That’s what it becomes full of, and your mind is full of that, and now it’s screwed up.
Now it’s sensitive. Now it’s touchy about this subject and that subject. It’s not just about negative things. Let’s say something happened that was really, really beautiful and nice, and you saw this special flower. There was — I like the one where you saw bark on a tree that looked like Mother Mary.
There are those things, all right? It looked like Mother Mary, the bark on the tree, and you’ll never forget. That’s unbelievable. I wonder if I can see it again. I went back there. It didn’t look like it this time, and all of a sudden you’re neurotic about the fact you had a nice experience. Can you get in a row about the fact you had a nice experience?
Well, it happened again. Hasn’t happened again. Anything that gets stuck, you’re in trouble. It’s that simple. If you held on to those experiences that you really liked — I hate to say that, but if you really liked it, you focused on it, and it left an impression. If you really didn’t like it, you got distracted by it, you focused on it, and it left an impression.
What happened to those impressions? They multiply out. They associate themselves with things that are similar to it, okay? Bill used to live here, right? And we’d have meetings and share, all right? And they’d tell me, “I don’t like Christmas.” And they were Christian, right? “I do not like Christmas.
Why don’t you like Christmas?” And eventually they explain that their parents got divorced around Christmas, and their sister got the bike they wanted, in a color, blah blah. And now, for all these years, they don’t like Christmas, they don’t like their sister, they don’t like their parents, they don’t like bicycles.
Yes or no? Come on, you’re aware of this. That’s what happened. So the impressions multiplied out, and now the mind is full of things that it wants to happen again or that it doesn’t want to happen again. Neither of those would be here now. If you want it to happen again or you don’t want it to happen again, you’re not living in the moment.
We’re getting pretty deep very quickly. It is not just about the past. Do any of you have thoughts about the future? Are any of you at all sometimes afraid about what will happen in the future? You have a relationship, seems to be working out, but you’ve had a bad run in the past. Do you know the tendency is for you to be careful and project the problem you had before into what might happen in the future?
Your future isn’t there. It hasn’t happened. You’re making it up. Why are you making up trouble? Why are you making up things to be afraid of? Why are you making up thoughts about all that can go wrong? Because it went wrong before, and you’re projecting those same samskaras. When you look back, they’re there.
In the present, you’re afraid, and you project those into the future. Who’s to say it’s not gonna happen? “I don’t like what happened before, and that could happen again.” Anything can happen again. Anything can happen. Why are you focusing on that? Because you kept it inside. So those impressions that you kept inside, they’re a big problem.
In fact, they are the problem. How’s that? Otherwise, there’s just life. It’s unfolding. You’re experiencing it. You’re learning from it. Otherwise, you’re blocked, and you’re trying to… So what do you do when that happens? Now you’ve caught on that you held this stuff in there.
Everything’s passing through the filter of what you stored down there, and then it’s projecting into the future. Oh my God, there is nothing to be afraid of in the future. It hasn’t happened. But I can think of things that could happen, and I guarantee you they’re the ones that you didn’t like that did happen.
Or you’re saying, “These things happened in the past. I don’t want it to happen again in the future, so I’m gonna be positive about my future.” It’s based on your past. It’s good to have positive energy. It’s a good thing to do. But notice that everything you’re being positive about is because you were negative about it before.
Otherwise, be positive about everything. It is a mess in there. So what do we do with that mess? Now that we’ve built it, what do we do? We attempt to manipulate the outside world that’s unfolding in front of us. You mean those quantum little wavelets? Yeah, those. We attempt to manipulate it so that when it comes in, it doesn’t bother us, or when it comes in, it makes us feel good.
So the answer to your neurosis that’s going on inside because you couldn’t handle reality is to manipulate the reality that’s unfolding in front of you so it doesn’t get to be what it is. The reality — it’s reality. It’s the sum of everything that ever happened. It’s physics, science, chemistry, psychology.
Everything that ever happened culminates together in front of you. You have no right to ask somebody, “How could you say that? I would never have said that.” Of course you didn’t. You didn’t have the same experiences they did. Some of their experiences had them say that thing to you, and you just wake up, and you realize, what kind of solution to that?
I’m gonna take the reality of life and say, “You don’t get to be that way. You’re wrong. You should not have said that.” Well, you’re wrong. It’s the sum of all the experiences that person ever had that made them say what they said. If they didn’t have bad pizza the night before, they probably wouldn’t have said it. It’s just all cause and effect passing through time and space.
But you have taken on the job of saying, “I’m a mess inside. I have all these samskaras, these patterns inside that can get disturbed very easily. So my job is I’m gonna use my will to manipulate everybody and everything, every person, every event that comes toward me or might come toward me in the future, so that when it comes in, it doesn’t bother me.”
And what does that cause? Tension, anxiety, fear, insecurity. Why? Because even though you don’t admit it, you’re a little smarter than you think you are. You ain’t gonna manipulate the world. The world is a sum of its experiences. Everything that ever happened from the beginning of time is unfolding like a motion picture in front of you.
And you, this thing in here — “I don’t want it that way. That shouldn’t have happened. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Having fun yet? And the answer, your bet, is no. And then they teach you how to attract to yourself exactly what you want so that what happens is what you want. In other words, go down there and use your Shakti and the power of your mind to somehow project onto the quantum field, because you better do it at that level, because that’s where it’s happening.
It’s not happening in between, right? It’s coming out of there. Now go down there and manipulate the quantum field so that it’ll be the way you want it to be. It won’t be the way she wants it to be. It won’t be the way you want it to be tomorrow, and let’s make a mess. Well, what’s the alternative? Okay, now we get to talk about what I want to talk about.
Is there an alternative? Yes, there’s an alternative. The Buddhists say, work at the root. What is the root of the whole problem I just talked to you about? That you couldn’t handle reality. That you resisted it. You said, “No, no, that’s not happening.” But the very fact that you said it’s not happening means you know it happened.
It means you’re gonna hold onto it. Well, maybe the answer isn’t to go out there and manipulate everybody and everything, but it’s to come inside and stop saying, “I can’t handle this,” and start saying, “I can handle this.” But what if it doesn’t feel good? I can handle it. That’s where you get down to real spirituality.
Oh, you mean we should be ascetics and renounce it? No, nobody said anything like that. Life will present life. How do you know? The Bible says, “Let those with eyes to see, let them see. Let those with ears to hear, let them hear.” In other words, life’s gonna unfold. Can you handle it? And the answer is, “I can’t handle it.”
Well, learn. Can I learn to handle it? You better. Otherwise, you have that mess going on inside of you. You better handle the fact your parents got divorced 50 years ago. If you can’t handle it then, at least handle it now, all right? At least get to the point where you don’t want that stuff inside of you.
Not, “I want to manipulate the world so it doesn’t hit what’s inside of me.” Then I’m gonna repeat — I don’t want to live the rest of my life thinking that I will never be okay till every one of you behaves and thinks the way I want you to, and acts the way I want you to, and everything is the way I want it to be, including politics and every single thing in the whole world that’s unfolding.
I want it to be the way I want it to be; otherwise I’m upset. All right, well then you’re gonna be upset, and you’re gonna have ulcers, and you’re gonna… I can’t even talk about it. Well, what’s the alternative? The alternative begins and ends — we’ll talk about it in a second — with reality wins. I can handle it.
I can handle it. Does it always feel good? The bright 4,000 kilo-whatever it is, you know, harmonic of the quantum field, that color, right, is a little harsh. And then I like the 2,000 or 2,500, a soft white. Okay? There you are. Can you handle it? I don’t care if it’s a little harsh. Can you let it come in and let it be what it is and learn to handle it?
Learn to be okay with it? Am I comfortable with it? No, I gotta go deeper than that. Can you be comfortable with being uncomfortable? Can you, in there, that’s experiencing the brightness of the light, whatever time it is, all right, generally pretty short, right — you’re experiencing it. It’s not comfortable.
If you resist it, you’ll throw those light bulbs away. At your house, are you using LED bulbs now? What’s the frequency rate? Otherwise, I’m not coming to visit you. You can get pretty neurotic, or you can say, “I can handle it.” But what if it doesn’t feel good? I can handle it. I can handle getting a boo-boo on my hand when I’m playing sports.
I can handle the fact that it’s not exactly what I want it to be, ’cause the cost of not handling it is to own it for the rest of your life. If you can’t handle it, you’re gonna store it in there. “I’m never playing volleyball again. I got a black-and-blue mark when I blocked the ball.” How about, fine, so what?
It goes away. I can handle it. You’re married or whatever, in a relationship with somebody, and you have a little bit of a spat in the morning, and you’re very insecure, especially about the relationship. All day, you’re scared. It bothers you. Will people still love me? What should I say? I wish I hadn’t said that.
And it just bothers you the whole day. The other person never thought about it once ever again. They just, “Fine.” You hear me? But you don’t know that, and you make a mess of yourself, don’t you? And so you see, it’s okay if it didn’t feel good. Can you handle still letting it go? Or if it doesn’t feel good, do you have to resist it?
Because if you resist it, you own it. You touch it, you own it. If you don’t like what somebody said to you, and you can’t handle it, it’s okay that it didn’t feel good. Can you handle that it didn’t feel good? Not, can I rationalize or explain it away, or make them say they’re sorry. Can I try to neutralize it in here because I can’t handle it?
Why don’t you just handle it? Why don’t you just say, “Okay, into every life some rain must fall, so this is my moment to experience something that doesn’t feel so good.” Are you okay with that? Yes, I’m okay with that, because the alternative is that I’ll never talk to that person again. I can’t believe they said it to me.
I thought they were my friend. I’m gonna tell everyone they’re not my friend. Holy mackerel, and all you had to do was let go. All you had to do was sit there and say, “I can handle that. I don’t care why they said it.” I’ve taught you that so many times. It’s like when somebody says, “How could you say that to me?
I would never say that to you.” Do you understand how absurd that statement is? That person had a totally different life than you. Their parents were different. Every experience they had was different. So of course you’re not gonna say the same thing. The psyche’s completely programmed by the experiences they had, and yours is programmed by the experiences you had.
So why don’t you just sit there and say, “Wow, I didn’t expect you to say that. Wow, that’s neat. I just got to experience a moment of your experience.” Not, “How could you say that to me? I would never have said that to you.” And so now we stay friends, better friends, because you feel accepted and they feel accepted. Do you understand that?
Not, I’m trying to make you be me. That’s what you’re saying when you say, “How could you say it? I would never have said that to you.” You’re trying to say, “I’m gonna have a relationship with me,” and you didn’t behave right. So you wake up and you realize there’s a problem, and the problem is resistance. The problem is your inability to handle reality.
That’s the problem. How do you know it’s a problem? Because if you can handle reality, you don’t have any problems. Does that mean you don’t deal with things? Does that mean people walk all over you and it just doesn’t work? No, it does not mean that in any way, shape, or form. Life is an interactive sport, okay?
But you can handle it. When you’re playing a sport, you better not say, “Don’t hit that ball so hard, it could hurt me.” That’s not how you play the sport. You learn how to hit it back, right? You learn how to get it over the net. You learn how to play the piano. You don’t say, “Oh my God, I hit the note wrong.” So first you handle it.
What does that mean? It means I didn’t resist it. It means I’m in here, I’m conscious. I experience this that was coming in, and the tendency was to protect myself from it, and I learned not to do that. I learned the ball bounces up, I better keep my eye on it and catch it, not turn my head and protect myself from it, or I’ll never play ball.
The same thing with learning the piano. If I make mistakes, I don’t want to play again — no, no, no, no, handle it. Now that you handle it, come back and deal with it. Nobody’s telling you not to deal with it. So somebody, in the morning you had a little spat, and you see that you’re gonna resist this.
It’s gonna be terrible. And you say, “No, I’m not gonna. This time, I’m…” It’s like a risk. You’re gonna take a risk that I can handle this. It’s okay, I can handle it. And you let go. You truly let go. Not, “I will let go someday.” Not, “I wish I could let go.” Not, “I’ll hold it and then let it go.” Letting go is a very deep thing.
To close that comment — I try it in the new book, I try to really touch it with the different questions people ask, right — letting go means you have a tendency to resist. Relax. Well, how can I relax? How can I relax? It’s bothering me. Instead of resisting, relax. But then it’s gonna bother me. Yes, it’ll come closer, it’ll come closer, and eventually it’ll pass through.
Everything that comes from the outside will make it through inside if you let it. The outside’s outside. Inside’s inside. You’re in charge of the inside. If you relax around it, just relax. Don’t store it for later. Don’t sit there and say, “Okay, I can handle it. We’ll talk about it tonight.” No, that’s not letting go. We’re just gonna have this tonight.
Okay? Letting go means this is not comfortable. I’m not making believe it is, but I can handle that it’s uncomfortable. I can relax in the face of the discomfort. You can’t both relax and resist at the same time. Resistance is an action of pushing energy away. Relaxation is non-pushing it away, permitting it to flow, and that’s the deepest state — that’s the essence of spirituality — that “forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.”
Okay? Not, “They’ll get theirs later.” No, just literally, okay, fine, this is where they’re at. Pass through. I tell everybody I’m a nice Jewish yogi, and Christ’s teachings are exactly what I’m talking about. “Turn the other cheek.” What does that mean, turn the other cheek? Let somebody smash you in the face?
Turn the other cheek means inside. Something came in, it disturbed you. Can you let go? That’s what turn the other cheek means. Can you, inside, not hold it against them, not wait till tonight to talk about it? Can you just let it pass through? That’s what turn the other cheek means. Can it pass through? Well, then that’s the answer to every problem you ever had and every problem you will ever have.
Are you capable of starting right now of saying, “Wow, that was a nice talk he gave. I understand. I made a mess in here. I made a mess in here because I couldn’t handle things, and then I built a whole self-concept”? That’s something I’d like to talk about — your ego. What is the ego? You got one. We all got one.
What is it? You took all the pieces that you couldn’t handle, you put them all together and built a concept of yourself. Not “yourself” — you’re the one who built it, but you built this fortress that said, “This is how I am, like it or not, and behave accordingly, because this is how I am. I’ve always been.” I love my favorite: “I’ve always been this way.”
It’s about letting go. It’s about letting go, all right? And how do you do this? Well, people misunderstand that also. I like to say it’s easy, but of course it’s not really easy. But it is. The teachings are easy. But you don’t start with the big stuff. You start with the little stuff. You start with the driver in front of you.
You start with the fact that it’s hot out. You start with the fact that reality doesn’t always fit what you want. Are you willing, ready, willing, and able to let go right then, right there? Person in front of you is driving 50 miles an hour below the speed limit. You’re in a rush. Okay, that’s reality. How do you feel inside?
Tense. I’m talking, I yell at the guy — he don’t hear you. And instead, you remember this talk, and you say, “I don’t need to store this inside of me. In two minutes, they’ll turn, or I’ll turn. It’s not worth being bothered about.” But I am bothered. Relax. Relax and let the bother go through. Handle it. Handle it.
You wanna use affirmation? Fine. You wanna use positive thinking? Fine. But ultimately, do not push that away and struggle with the energy of reality, because you’re going to lose. Reality always wins, and so you relax through it. You relax through the fact that it’s hot out, you relax through the fact that it’s cold out.
You still try to get it inside or outside, but while you’re dealing with it, you’re not making a mess inside of you. You’re not making a big deal out of this stupid little spat you had, or somebody said something you didn’t like. You literally say, “It’s okay that they said it. It’s okay that it bothered me.”
I’m not lying. Don’t spiritually bypass, meaning what? Don’t make believe it’s not happening. Don’t make believe it doesn’t bother you. You relax through it, and you start doing it with the small things in your life until you eventually do it with every small thing in your life. Everything. Somebody says, “I’ll give you a call.
I’ll call you back later.” You start being anxious. Why are they not calling? Are they gonna call? Did they mean it? Who cares? I do. Well, don’t. But that means I have to suppress it. No, you can let it go. You’re sitting on a little planet, spinning around in the middle of nowhere. It’s a tiny little planet, ninety-three million miles from the sun, and the sun is one of three hundred billion stars in your galaxy, and you can’t handle the driver in front of you.
You can’t handle something that somebody said. Like, I teach, handle the little stuff. It’s all little stuff. You don’t have to stay here. You’ll be gone in eighty years. It won’t make any difference. It doesn’t matter if people like you or don’t like you. But you do that — if people like me, then they’ll behave the way I want, and they’ll be nice to me.
You don’t want to be doing that. You want to sit there and say, “I am fine. Be yourself. Have fun, all right? Be the sum of your learned experiences.” Psychologists say you are the sum of your learned experiences. Have fun. Do your thing. I love it. I love seeing the sum of your learned experiences. Not, “I can’t handle it, I’m afraid of it.”
You don’t wanna go through your life afraid that people will do things, or something will happen, or you’ll lose your job. You’re on a planet in the middle of nowhere. Expand your frame of reference to include the galaxies, to include all the galaxies, to include the reality of what’s going on, and you will never have another problem for the rest of your life. Okay?
So you start with these things that you bother yourself about, stuff that you need to let go of, stuff that has nothing to do with you. You can’t change the temperature. You can when you get to your house, but while you’re getting there, you gotta be able to let go. And so the next thing you know, you can handle bigger things and bigger things.
And eventually, you get to the point where you become what I call a letting-go machine. You’re so conscious. Why? How come you’re more conscious? Why is the spiritual being more conscious? Because they’re not being pulled down into the garbage that they built. They’re not being distracted by everything that hits their stuff.
“Oh, she sounds like my mother.” No — no one sounds like your mother, and if they do, it’s fine. Somebody once asked Ramakrishna — same saint I talked about — “Does an enlightened being, a fully enlightened being, ever feel anger?” He said, “Yes.” But he said, “It’s just like writing on water.” What difference does it make what you write on water?
No one can read it. It passes through. Your finger passes through water. Therefore, it leaves no impression. So whatever it is, it comes in, it goes through. You just don’t resist it. You learn not to resist. There’s a chapter in The Untethered Soul called “The Spiritual Path of Non-Resistance.” That is the essence of spirituality, non-resistance.
The reason you have to meditate is because you gotta learn not to resist. If you literally did not resist, and there was nothing in there, you’d be merged with God. Now we get back to what we started talking about — what does it mean, we’re one in the spirit? Because your consciousness, God consciousness, that’s the only one consciousness, is not being pulled down to these impressions that you stored in your mind.
As it lets go, the consciousness isn’t being distracted down into the mind. You don’t have to make it not be. It isn’t. I’ve learned to enjoy the heat. Why not? It’s fun. I like it. I learned to enjoy the driver in front of me. It could be my grandmother — last year she could drive. I’m not gonna tailgate her or beep.
I’m gonna feel good about it. You learn to let go, and then the consciousness doesn’t get pulled down with the driver in front of you. It doesn’t get pulled down with the temperature. It neutralizes it naturally, isn’t being pulled down. You’ve grown through things that used to bother you; they don’t bother you anymore.
You grew up with dolls, probably Barbie, whatever it is, right? And you’re all upset — where’d they go? Who took my Barbie? And who’s got Ken too? I want Ken, right? Well, you don’t do that anymore, do you? You don’t care where she is. You outgrew it. How about outgrowing everything? It’s called spiritual evolution.
Darwin’s evolution is survival of the fittest. Spiritual evolution is survival of the fittest — the ones that can handle anything, all right? And then I’m telling you, the consciousness now is not being distracted by as much. And because it’s not being distracted, it stays in the seat of consciousness.
The light is emanating from a bulb from somewhere, and it’s emanating out. Consciousness, awareness, is coming from the center, the conscious center, and it’s projecting down. Why? It’s being pulled down. What if it’s not being pulled down? What if the body doesn’t pull it down? What if you’re comfortable with all kinds of things?
What if the mind has purified? What does that mean? It never swears? No, it means you let go of the junk that you stored in it throughout your life. As it came up, you let it go. Now the mind doesn’t pull you down. Well, what about the heart? The heart can pull you down, can’t it? Well, what if you can handle the reality that sometimes relationships don’t work out?
Sometimes people do things or say things that are not comfortable to you, and you’re able to let it go. Now you’re not scared it’s gonna happen. You’re not being pulled down into the heart. And then all of a sudden, all this energy that used to be pulled down is going up. It’s ’cause you’re being distracted by things — when your consciousness is pulled down into them.
When a thing can no longer distract you, it can’t distract you. Well, what happens to non-distracted consciousness? It’s not distracted. It stays in the seat of consciousness. And eventually, because you can handle your heart, you can handle your mind, you can handle your body, you can handle the world, nothing’s pulling you down.
Doesn’t mean you don’t interact with it, but it’s not pulling you down. And then this thing called the ascent starts naturally. It starts to pull you up. Why? ‘Cause it’s not being pulled down, and your natural state is up. You’re a very, very high being, period. But you’re a high being who got pulled down into the garbage.
Why? I told you why. You did it. Don’t feel guilty, all right? But you resisted. You fought it, all right? So basically, now it starts being pulled up, and you start feeling all this Shakti. We call it Shakti, Spirit, Shakti, call it whatever you want. It starts flowing up instead of down. You can’t stop it. It’s just always flowing up.
Your heart is full. The third eye is awakened. All the chakras are releasing energy. You just naturally feel everything going up. We asked two questions when I started: what are you being distracted by, where did that come from, and where did consciousness come from? But the only way you know where consciousness comes from is to go there.
You can’t think about it, ’cause that’s thinking about it. That’s your mind still distracting you. Don’t have philosophies about it. Don’t think about it. Just let go. You just keep letting go, and it keeps going up. And you don’t think about it going up. You don’t care that it’s going up. You have no spiritual ego.
You’re not trying to impress anybody. You’re not trying to be great. You’re not trying to do anything. Ramana said, ultimately, becoming nobody. Nothing’s pulling you down, and then it goes up, it goes up. And the great ones, the really great ones, not only lived in a state of complete ecstasy, nirvana, by going up, but at some point, it went up so strong, so high, that they couldn’t be the one watching it.
They couldn’t be the one experiencing the ecstasy. It pulled their consciousness into it. And that’s why they say, when the experiencer and the experience become one — music can do that for you, love can do that for you — you just melt, and they melt. Their individual consciousness melts into the upward flow, and that’s what Christ meant by “the Father and I are one.”
That’s what the great masters… that’s what enlightenment is. When you’re no longer there as an individual consciousness looking at you, because there’s nothing drawing you down, the consciousness merges back into the ocean of consciousness, and that’s what we sang about. We’re one in Spirit. We’re one in the Lord.
These are real states. They’re achievable by every one of you. They’re your birthright. They’re who you are. I mean, it’s like — I’m not a Bible guy, I read the Bible, New Testament, once in 1972 — but yet it keeps coming back. You remember it, and even the Old Testament: “And on the sixth day, God created man in His image.”
What’s His image? Consciousness, ecstasy, pure being. And that’s what’s living inside of you — the pure being, just a pure God consciousness experiencing creation. But you got stuck. You dropped. You fell down. So understand who you are. You’re a very great being, and nothing will ever change it.
Muktananda Baba: “Meditate on the self” — meaning your consciousness, the seat of consciousness. “Meditate on the self. Honor and worship your own being, for God dwells within you as you.” You back there that I talked about in the beginning — the awareness of being that’s been there your whole life, aware, just aware of different things, is eternal, it’s infinite, it was never born, it will never die.
Okay, enough. Thank you for listening. I try. And you’re a very great being. If you are having problems, it’s ’cause you decided to. 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.
