E203: The Difference Between Reality and Your Experience of Reality

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. Let’s talk about an interesting topic this morning. People often ask, is it true that we create our own universe?

I’m not into philosophy. I’m into just — get out of here, do your work. I told you, the ultimate thing you understand with your life is that you go back up with less than you came down with. Less what? You know what — all that junk in there, all those issues, all the stuff. You go back up with less than you came down with.

Thinking’s good, it’s interesting, but it’s not gonna get you there. It’s all about letting go of yourself. But let’s talk for a little bit. So when people ask me — and they do — “Is it true that teachers teach that?” And it’s wonderful, all the teachers are wonderful, I love them all. They teach that you create your own universe, and what they mean by that, ’cause they go one step further, means go ahead and create your own universe.

Just decide what you want, decide what you like, meditate on it, concentrate on it, be positive about it, and you will attract your own universe to you. Okay? So I approach that many different ways. One, I’ll tell you one way you create your own universe. You really do, okay? And psychology teaches you that, but you really don’t wanna listen.

What do you mean? If you were empty — if it was empty mind, Buddhists talk about empty mind, doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it has tremendous capabilities, like a computer that can do anything, but it’s just not doing anything right now. That’s what empty mind means. If it were empty mind, then what would happen is there’s a world out there…

Let’s stop for a moment with that. What does that mean? I can’t help myself — I like, we’re talking about science, I’m not gonna talk about psychology, but now we’re talking about physics. Is there a world out there? Well, the physicists very early found out there were these things called molecules. There’s a world out there, but it’s not the way you see it. If you had a microscope and you looked at it, it wouldn’t look like this. But isn’t it really that? It really is molecules. You just don’t have senses that are sensitive enough to see that. Einstein said that the greatest impediment to knowledge are your senses, because they lie to you.

It says, “There’s a beautiful woman over there.” No, it’s not. It’s a bunch of atoms. It’s just a bunch of molecules bound together. I would ask you — I majored in business, all right, I didn’t do science courses — but I have a periodic table, beautiful, someone gave it to me, a gift. Beautiful periodic table sitting in my office.

And of course, those are the elements that make up the entire universe. As far as we know, the entire universe is made up of those 103, whatever it is — 98 natural, 103 total, who knows, who cares — but it’s a very small number. There’s a whole bunch of each one. Which one of those do you like?

When you look at a periodic table, what turns you on? Show me male and female. I’m waiting. Where on that periodic table is male and female? Uh-oh. And then you sit there and say, “Well, those are the atoms.” They consider those the basic elements, the building blocks of creation. Then they found out, well, they’re not.

They’re made of things, just like your body is made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of electrons, neutrons, and protons. Oh, there’s only three things? We used to think that. We went a little further, we’ll get there in a minute. There’s only… but just stop for a moment. You mean what I’m looking at is only three things, but my eyes average them out?

We know that to be the truth. Russian scientists know it, the Japanese, Chinese, American, everybody knows that that’s the truth — that you’re not really looking at what you’re looking at. You’re looking at a tremendous amount of electrons, neutrons, and protons holding themselves together. You don’t have to do a single thing.

All right, can I just take a breath here? Do you understand the meaning of what we just said? It means I don’t know whether you create your own universe, but it ain’t what you think it is, in any way, shape, or form, is it? No matter what you think it is. Well, here, which of those atoms are Republican and which are Democratic?

Right? And I don’t want to talk about atoms anymore, because, you know, 103 of those — that’s too many numbers for me. Electrons, neutrons, and protons — you were taught that, weren’t you? Okay, we’re gonna find out it’s not true, but three things in the universe, and we’ll repeat it: electrons, neutrons, and protons.

In other words, every single thing you ever looked at, every single thing you ever heard, every single thing, any word, everything, is just bound-together electrons, neutrons, and protons. And who bound them together? Well, I know I didn’t. I know you didn’t. I know Dr. Livingston didn’t. I know Einstein didn’t. I know Niels Bohr didn’t.

Okay? Well, they kind of made something very interesting, didn’t they? Because that’s all it really is — electrons and protons. How does it look like her? Very good question, right? So if I ask you, did you create your universe, that’s a big ego, that I made those things bond together to be like that. Can we talk like that?

All right, it’s fun to have the truth. But then they found out that they’re not electrons or protons — those are not the basic elements, that neutrons and protons can be broken down and split apart, and they are an accumulation of other subatomic particles put together: quarks, leptons, and bosons. That’s quantum physics.

And they can, in these super colliders, aim billions of protons into each other from miles away and accelerate them to a speed that, when they hit, they break apart. And they have sensors, phenomenal, bigger than entire buildings, right, that can pick them up, and they only stay apart for fractions of a second.

Then boom, they pull themselves back together, because their natural state, the forces of the universe that you didn’t make, pull them back together. All right? Then that’s what’s really there — these subatomic particles, quarks, leptons, and bosons. And so, wow, and what are those? Well, there was a big argument some time ago, still probably going on in physics, about whether light is a particle or a wave.

Light seems to be a wave. It’s just a continuous wave. But when they study it, it seems to be photons. It seems to be particles. It behaves as both a wave and a particle. Well, that’s really amazing. They do double-slit experiments and all kinds of stuff, right, and show that it can behave as a wave and it can behave as a particle.

Then they found out — and this is real quantum physics — that it’s not just light that’s that way, and it’s not just the photons. Everything is that way. Everything. There are no atoms. There are no neutrons or protons, right — electrons are an exception because they are elemental, but there are no neutrons or protons.

There are just wavelets in a quantum field. Just like if you drop a leaf into a totally still lake, what happens? It makes vibrations. That is what this universe is made of. So when you say you create your universe, I’m not gonna argue with anybody, and everybody can think any way they want, but that means you’re down there doing that stuff.

That’s really interesting, how you got down there and created the vibrations of the quantum field, which then collide together, which then put themselves together to make quarks, leptons, and bosons, and put those together to make electrons, neutrons, and protons. Did you know that two up quarks and a down quark make a proton?

And two down quarks and an up quark make a neutron? I mean, this is like, wow. And they are just vibrations hitting each other, and because they hit each other, they have certain properties, they bind together. Two up quarks and a down quark make a proton. So is there a proton, or are there only quarks? That’s like asking you, which is real — ice, water, or steam?

Which one of those is H2O molecules? They’re all. Water’s H2O, ice is H2O, steam is H2O. Well, then they’re exactly the same. That’s why when you melt ice, it becomes water. When you put more heat into water, it becomes vapor. They’re the same thing. Why do we give them different words, right? But they don’t —

physicists call them H2O, okay? And then inside H2O, what’s that? Hydrogen and oxygen atoms. No, no, there are no atoms. So really what it is, is quarks, leptons, and bosons — but no, it’s really the vibrations in the quantum field. I once read an article on the web, years and years ago, but it had a big impression on me, that was put out by NASA, and it said one word that I only heard in my entire life used a certain way, and here it’s using it in this very scientific meaning.

It said, “The quantum field is omnipresent throughout the universe.” Every star, every galaxy, no matter where you go in the entire universe, every single thing is the quantum field vibrating. That’s all there is. Okay? Wow. I only heard the word “omnipresent” ever used before to describe God. How about you?

Omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. So now we’re getting down to a very interesting level, but I’m gonna keep coming back — and which part of it are you creating? Okay, all right, so now let’s come back up. I started with psychology. Now we have a foundation down there. There is not empty mind. Great beings achieve empty mind.

They can come back, but they achieve empty mind. If you have empty mind, then you see what’s out there. As it comes in, your consciousness experiences what we call reality. Now, we just told you reality is really vibrations in a quantum field, and I don’t know, you can interpret it the way you want, but there was this great master, Sri Ramakrishna.

These guys are really far gone. Don’t think you meditate and you do mantra — just forget it. I mean, these beings are very rare, okay? He used to see light. What do you mean, we all see light? No, no, no, that’s all he saw was light. Blinding light, all right? He was once invited — he was very famous in India.

They respect their saints. He was invited to a dinner from the Prime Minister, and his disciples went with him, and he started being weird, because he was very weird, all right. And he’s just dancing and drooling at the dinner table and saying God’s name and crying. When he’d do that, every hair on his body would stand on end.

These are not normal people, all right. And his disciples came to him later and said, “Master, don’t you get embarrassed when you behave weird?” And he was very sincere with his disciple. He was like a little child, and he would talk to him so honestly, and he said, “No, no.” He said, “You know how you have apparitions?

Sometimes you’re looking out and you see a ghost-like figure — something that just comes in and it goes away. That’s how I see your world. All I see is blinding light, and every once in a while, what you say is a building or a person gently fades in and then fades away as quick as it comes.”

All right? Was he looking at the quantum field? I don’t wanna talk — there, he created his universe. At least he saw the real one. Absolutely phenomenal. So fine, yes, there is a world out there. Which level do you wanna look at it? Ice, water, or steam? People — molecules, your body — everybody’s got nice bodies.

They’re all different, but they’re nice. There’s somewhere around 35 trillion living cells that make up your body. Did you know that? They don’t know if the number’s 32 or 35 — give me a break, all right? 35 trillion cells interacting together, talking to each other, sending messages to each other, healing.

That’s what’s making up your body, all right. So is that what your body’s made of, really? Think for a moment — that’s what’s going on, right? And then you come back and you realize, well, what are those cells made of? Molecules, molecular structures. You go study medicine — it’s chemistry, you study molecules. Why?

Because that’s what’s out there. If you look past the limit of your senses, you see what’s out there. Keep coming back to, “you create your universe,” right? Did you create all the cells in your body? You keep them talking to each other, make sure — “Hey, wake up.” Keep your heart beating. This concept is unbelievable.

You did not make your cells, nor did your mother or your father. We talked about that. You wanna get back to reality? A single cell — pluripotent, or whatever it’s called, right — a single cell knows how to make your entire body, period. Nobody taught it. Nobody helped it. It’s just a cell that starts dividing. Well, that’s neat, right?

Making this, dividing, dividing, dividing. You say, “Oh yeah, but the mother has to have milk and has to have food.” It doesn’t — how does it know what to do with food? Here, plop, here’s some food. It knows how to take pizza, Twinkies, Coca-Cola, break them down into their molecular structures, and put them back together into heart cells, lung cells, nerve cells.

Pay attention to what you know. You wanna use your mind? You wanna sit there and say, “I create my universe”? Which part of that did you create? Let’s be honest, you’re gonna find out what’s so, sitting there. I’m not saying there aren’t powers that can control things — we’re gonna talk more about that — but I’m just asking you to wake up and realize, did you create the universe?

It’s really there, okay? We study it down to whatever level you wanna look at. But I’ll show you a place that you do create your universe, and that is with your mind. But not the mind I’ve been talking about — not the intellectual mind, the abstract mind. What happens is as follows. These atoms out there — this ice, this water, this steam.

You follow me? How do you wanna talk? What level do you wanna talk at? I’ll say these atoms out there, but you know what I’m really talking about is the vibration, the quantum field, okay? They’re out there. They come in. Why? Because somehow that cell, that little cell, made nerve cells and made eyeball cells and…

Didn’t it? A single cell made all that. “Oh, here’s my baby.” You did not make that baby, did you? Maybe an eyeball? I’m waiting. It just happens. It’s a happening place. The most phenomenal is out there. And so basically, you look out there and your receptors average it out. They average it out, and then they see it as what they average it out to.

So Einstein called that the first lie, right — that the senses don’t tell you the truth. But that’s okay, all right, now let it come in. We’ll be very open, we’ll let it come in. It comes in, and what happens? Well, if nobody’s in there experiencing it, it’s of no meaning. Stop — I’m getting spiritual on you now.

The world’s out there, the eyeballs pick it up. A camera doesn’t know what it took a picture of. No one knows, except that there’s consciousness behind the camera that looks at the picture. Otherwise, the picture has no meaning. What gives meaning to everything is consciousness. If you’re not aware of it, it doesn’t exist.

So if you’re not aware at all — now, create your universe — you’re not aware, it doesn’t matter. Awareness is the beginning. You are the aware being that’s in there, receiving the input of all your senses. Fine, okay, good — I’m experiencing what I call reality. Whether you create it or not, we will keep coming back.

But the net result is I’ve just shown you it’s out there, okay, and it comes in. All right, fine, what are you having a problem with? Now we’ll talk spiritual. If that’s what’s going on, the electrons, neutrons, and protons are all kind of dancing around out there, putting themselves together and making babies and making cells and making buildings…

Oh my God, far out, all right. There they are, dancing around. They come in, and you experience them, and you’re in ecstasy. You’re just like, “Wow, this is a nice experience, it’s beautiful.” There’s no judging. Why would you judge? How do you judge the atoms? Where’s beauty and ugly? Where’s nice and mean? No, it’s just things moving through time and space, and they’re coming in through your senses, and then you experience them.

That’s what it means to be with God. That’s what it means to be in the garden. It says everything’s just beautiful. It’s neither beautiful nor ugly. It just is, and every experience is meaningful. Do you know, if you reach that state — I usually start from the bottom, now I start from the top, right — if you reach that state, every single experience you have, everything that comes in your senses, would send you into ecstasy.

Every single thing. Darkness — oh my God, it’s beautiful. Light is beautiful. A harmonious song — oh my God. Discord — oh my God. If it came in and touched you — why? Because it causes a vibration in your soul, in your being. Have you ever had an experience that was so beautiful that you said, “It touched me to the depth of my being”?

Ever been touched to the depth of your being? “I felt like I was with God.” You were. It made it in. It made it all the way back there, and it touched the depth of your being. What’s the depth of your being? Consciousness, awareness of being. But is that what happens? No — now let’s go there real quick, right?

No, that doesn’t happen. How often have you had an experience that you just said, “I just melted. I melted into your arms. I melted into the sunset. The music took me so far away, I didn’t know I could come back. I just melt.” Well, that’s really nice — maybe five times in your life. It ain’t an everyday experience, is it?

Okay? Believe me, it was meant to be. That’s who you are — that which is experiencing creation, okay. We’ll get it out of the bag right away. What created the heavens and earth? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” What is a word? A vibration. That’s where it started. It started with the primal, primal vibration.

The moment that field, that field of consciousness, manifested as vibration — they’ll find, maybe they’ll never find out, that’s where the quantum field comes from. If you ask a quantum physicist, “Where does a quantum field come from?” they’ll say to you, “That’s philosophy, I have no idea, doesn’t matter, I just want to know how it built the world.”

Well, I like you for showing how it built the world, because it lets me see how close to God that is. Look how close you are. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” And then God said, “Let there be light.” If you study it, you understand that the photon is the most primary experience of creation, that wavelet of light.

It really is — in the beginning was the Word, was the vibration, and then, “Let there be light,” et cetera, and they created the firmament. In other words, they started combining those together to make atoms. It’s really not so far-gone how they knew to say stuff like that. I won’t talk about it, okay, but in any event, that’s what’s going on.

So now God creates the heavens and earth, okay. Why — to experience Himself. Play music, but don’t listen to it. Paint, but don’t look at what you painted. What for? What’s the meaning? You express yourself so you can experience yourself. You make music so you can listen to it, and you can feel yourself. You can see yourself.

That is what’s going on. That’s the deepest understanding of spirituality. There’s just one force in creation, the divine consciousness, everywhere. It vibrated and expressed itself so it could experience its nature, experience itself. And guess who you are — the emissary of that force, looking down into creation and experiencing creation.

You’re kind of special. There’s so much to talk about, I can’t get it all in in an hour, right. Do you understand that no one who ever lived or ever will live has experienced what you have? Any moment, even in this room, everyone’s experiencing something different — different angles, different light, different things — and then you’re not gonna be with the same people in a moment.

You are having unique experiences. Your entire life is a sequence of unique experiences that only you had. Wow, you are special. See? You don’t have to create your universe. You’re experiencing the divine creation, and you are the emissary of that. It’s your consciousness that is taking in that moment. And if you miss it, then it never got experienced, okay?

That’s what “be here now” means. Be here now. Don’t be there, then — past or future. Experience the experience that is being created in front of you, because it’s unique, it’s special. Okay, all right. So now what happened? Everything is beautiful. If you’re in that state, which is where the great masters, the true masters are, all right —

every vibration that comes in touches the depth of your being. Does that mean it’s nice? It’s way beyond nice. Ramakrishna, again — they took him to a park once, all right, to have a picnic, and he started crying. His emotions were just totally open. He just started crying, and not just crying — “Oh, ouch, oh” — he’s just sitting there. “Ow, oh.” He’s just in pain. And they said to the master, “What’s happening?”

“I feel the experience of people walking on the grass, that the grass is bending, and it’s experiencing that. I experience that while I’m sitting here.” But it’s beautiful. Do you understand that? It’s not wrong, it’s not bad, it’s just an experience. I don’t know what to tell you. If you’re not judging, if you’re not fighting it, if you’re not liking and not liking, what you’re doing is experiencing. Let’s say you love somebody — do you really want to write down how they should hug you, and when they should kiss you, and what should happen, and every single thing?

Or do you want to experience something raw, open, beautiful? That is what is meant to be. That is Adam and Eve in the garden. It’s God experiencing God’s creation, darkness, light. That’s where all duality comes from. That’s where the yin and yang concept comes from. Everything is everything. All right, fine, so now there we are.

But that’s not what happens. Now we get to what I always teach you, which I don’t like to teach you, because I wish it wasn’t true, all right. What happens? Somehow there’s this fall from the garden. I like to live in that place where every single thing that comes in is just an experience. It’s just an experience.

There’s a snake — it’s scary, I don’t have to pick it up, it’s beautiful, it moved me — didn’t it move you? All right. Just everything’s touching you. There’s no right or wrong, or good or bad, or dark or light. There’s just the experience of creation, and you’re the consciousness that’s experiencing it. That’s who you are right now.

Well, what happened? What happens is — and I cannot explain other than God’s will, who knows, right — something came in to you. It came in, and it was experienced as different than everything else. But really, everything’s just the quantum field. It’s all just the expression of creation. But this thing — call it a snake or whatever you want — distracted your consciousness enough to where you focused on it.

You do do that, don’t you? Have you noticed that not everything’s the same — that if you’re walking in a field out there, and there’s grass, and there’s trees, and there’s clouds, and there’s sun, and then there’s this rustling in the grass, guess what you’re paying attention to? Why aren’t you paying attention to the grass, to the trees, to the sun?

Because that caught your attention, distracted your awareness. They’re all the same thing. You have a thing called attention, don’t you? Can something catch it? Boom, like a ball — all right, something caught my attention, something distracted my consciousness. It distracted my awareness. Your attention, your awareness, your consciousness — you in there, hello? Can you get distracted by something? Can you focus on something more than something else? Have you ever? Have you ever had your consciousness focus more on one thing than another? How about all the time? Doesn’t take much to distract your consciousness, does it?

You’re sitting there talking, and boom, a noise comes out, somebody said… all right? You’re talking to somebody really nice, and they say one thing, and it catches your attention because your mother used to talk to you like that. And all of a sudden, you’re not listening to this person anymore.

You’re listening to your mother and how she used to talk to you. You got distracted. Your consciousness got pulled down into something. All right, so the beginning of all this issue happened because there was an initial distraction. Your consciousness is experiencing everything, and it’s just dancing with the yin and yang.

But then something came in through the senses, and it distracted the consciousness to where it focused on it. I’m telling you, if you go deep enough in meditation, these are not things you need to think about. If something distracts your consciousness, do you think about it? Well, of course it distracts my… no, no, you think about it after it happens, don’t you?

Somehow it stays. Somehow it makes this thing called an impression. “He made a strong impression on me,” positive or negative. Well, then you’re going to be thinking about it after he or she is gone. Why? The atoms aren’t doing the same thing anymore. They’re busy doing something else. What happened to you?

You got lost. That thing, because you focused your consciousness on it, either willfully or because it pulled your consciousness down to it or distracted you, consciousness — okay, now you wanna get into yoga? In yoga, we say there’s not consciousness and energy, there’s not chit and shakti. Chit is consciousness, shakti is energy.

There’s chit-shakti, all one word. There’s not — those of you who know something about physics — there’s not magnetism and electricity. There’s electromagnetism. They found out they’re the same force. Coming in from one angle, it’s electricity; coming from a different angle, it’s magnetism.

But it’s the same force creating both. You just look at it from different angles. So we don’t say — we use the word “electromagnetism.” Well, they use the word “chit-shakti.” So the energy that created the universe and the consciousness experiencing it are the same thing. God is one. There’s one force in the universe.

But no — there’s not consciousness looking at the waves. Consciousness made the waves and is looking at itself. Chit-shakti. These are teachings of the great masters, the enlightened ones. They come back and tell you, it’s all light, it’s all the same force, it’s consciousness dancing with consciousness. But then when that awareness gets pulled down to a single point, when you get distracted, not only does consciousness go there, but energy goes there, because they’re the same thing.

And that’s why force gets pulled down, and that force stopped the experience, right — it’s coming in through your senses, it’s picking it up, it’s sending it back to your consciousness. But your consciousness came down to meet it, instead of letting it come up and having it be, “It touched me to the depth of my being.”

It didn’t touch me to the depth of my being. I came down to it. Don’t you, when you focus on something in your mind, your awareness comes down to it? And because chit-shakti focuses there, its power holds it there, and that’s the impression. That’s what makes an impression — that the force of consciousness, of conscious energy, focuses on a single object that came in, and therefore that object doesn’t make it all the way through.

I can say you concentrated on it, and that beautiful — now what? I don’t know really, because it got stuck. Does it get stuck? Does anything get stuck in there, ever? And that’s — I don’t know whether you understand this stuff, but I’m gonna teach it, because it’s the truth. You understand?

You go deep enough in meditation, you see it happening. You’re totally clear, and then you have one thought, and you have that first thought when you come out of meditation — it’s gonna be there when you’re done meditating. It’s the power of consciousness, chit-shakti — it can hold — it doesn’t “can,” it does.

If it comes down and focuses instead of letting it come all the way through — it was meant to come through. You’re meant to experience life here and now. It’s wow, it’s unbelievable — “I get to meet him, but I don’t want him to leave.” Well, then you’re in trouble. And so, what happens — you focus on it, it makes an impression on this thing called mind.

Mind normally is just the vehicle through which thoughts can be created or you can experience things. Yeah, but now you focused on it, it got stuck in there, and that is — like Freud didn’t go to that level, but that’s suppression. That alone is an act of suppression. You’re resisting and suppressing.

You’re holding that object, that snake, more in your mind than everything else around it — therefore it made an impression. Now what? Now, if I see a rope, I freak out. Now if you hear a rattle, I don’t want to have children that have rattles. That is what’s going on. Stuff got stuck, didn’t it? And you are different than him, and you’re different than you were yesterday, because you have new experiences, and they all come in, and different ones get stuck, and other ones make it right through.

There are very few of you that spend your time thinking about the white lines on the road that you drove past last year, or the clouds that went by. I once thought that something like ninety-nine percent of everything you ever experienced made it right through. That’s how high you are.

You’re practically enlightened. You’re all but point one percent. There’s clouds, there’s things, there’s air, there’s boards — here, look at the knots in the wall. You saw them when you walked in. You just didn’t pay attention to them. You didn’t get distracted by them. They’re not gonna have any effect on your life.

All right, but I always tell this story — if you’re one of the people that paint the white lines or yellow lines in the road, and, you know, they sit in a little cart, and they pull the thing to make the dash lines, and sometimes they dribble — ever notice? Well, that guy got fired because he had too many dribbles.

You’re only allowed to have a certain number of dribbles. That guy pays attention to every single white line he ever sees for the rest of his life, ’cause it made an impression. You don’t. See what I’m saying? I’m teaching you something very deep. So you have built up these impressions over the course of every moment of your life.

Most of them made it through. Look at all the colors in the room — just look at them, you’ve seen them. They don’t leave an impression that says, “She’s wearing something like my sister wore, and it made me cry.” You understand that? Otherwise, it comes in and it passes through. That’s what it’s supposed to do.

You can bring it back — there’s memory, all right, I’m not talking about memory. I’m talking about you coming down and meeting it and stopping it from passing through, and now it’s in there. Okay, so what? Are you kidding me? How much do you have in there? How many experiences didn’t make it through? Every single day you have experiences that don’t make it through.

Somebody beeps at you. You look at your cell phone, and the light, and bam — you think about that for a while. “You idiot.” What’s that? I can remember, early in my days — probably it would still happen, I won’t make myself look good, all right — I’d be there, and somebody would beep, right?

And when they went ahead, and if the next light we would’ve pulled next to each other, I wouldn’t. It made an impression. Do you understand that? It got stuck, and now you have to live with that. Beep. That last guy that got in the elevator — it was already full. “What’s the matter with him?” He’s talking about it, telling everybody when he gets to the office.

What are you talking about? It’s just an experience you’re having. No, no — I stopped it. If you never learn anything I ever taught you, you do see it’s the truth, isn’t it? All right? You do stop some experiences and not others, and the ones you stop stay in there. They’re still in there, depending upon the level of intensity it distracted you with and how long you hold onto them.

Okay? Just let somebody say one word to you that you didn’t like — okay, you can sit there and say, “I don’t know, I probably misunderstood.” There, it’s gone. Or, “I’m not letting them talk to me like that. They can’t talk to me like that. If they talk to me like that, they’ll walk all over me. I’ve had other people…”

What are you doing? ‘Cause you’re gonna keep that impression. Okay? You go out on a date with somebody — everything’s absolutely perfect, but then their accent, or the way they said something, reminded you of what that person said when they said that to you when you were five. Like a Freudian — isn’t that what we’re talking about?

You have built inside your mind — oh my God, are you kidding me? And then everything you hold onto, you become sensitive about when the next thing happens. So do you create your own universe? You sure do, ’cause you can’t see what’s going on out there. That’s what I wanted to get at. What comes in, which you see as pure, is a bunch of quantum vibrations, a bunch of atoms.

Neither good nor bad, nor right nor wrong, nor better nor worse — hear me? But they come in through your senses. Well, fine, that’s why you have senses, so that God can experience His creation. It doesn’t quite make it back to Him. There’s a little roadblock in the way, all right. It has to first pass through the filter of what you built in your mind, which is unique from everybody else.

Nobody thinks the same as you. We are all very different. How different? Everyone’s had different experiences every single moment of their lives, and psychology says man is a sum of his learned experiences. They do say that. What did I just teach you? Your psyche, that which you built in your mind and in your heart —

now, you say, “Heart? Why heart?” They’re in cahoots with each other. If something happened to your heart, hurts, your mind talks about it. If something happened to your mind, doesn’t like it, your heart hurts. It’s chakras, energy field — energy passes from one to the other, and so that is your psyche. So psychology is exactly right.

A person is a sum of their learned experiences. Therefore, when you say to somebody, “I can’t believe you said it, I would never have said that” — of course you wouldn’t have said it. You didn’t have the same experiences. There’s no way in the world what’s coming out of your mouth is gonna be the same as somebody else’s, because that stuff you got in there has passed through your filter first.

This is deep spirituality, as I laid the groundwork with the physics, all right. So are you creating a universe? Well, you’re sure creating the one you’re experiencing, I’ll tell you that right now, ’cause you’re doing it from inside. Then a single thing that comes out of those really deep ones, very rare, that touch the depth of your being — it means it made it through you.

Otherwise, “Well, I don’t know, is it too early to kiss on the first date? I don’t want them thinking it’s wrong.” Well, what are you doing? I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, I’m not telling you how to live, but I’m just telling you that that’s not a whole lot of fun, right? “Should I call? I wanna call, I wanna call, but I called him yesterday.

I don’t want him to think that I’m forward.” You can’t live your life, can you? You can’t enjoy living your life because you have all this stuff in there, and most of what you have in there is what distracted your consciousness because it wasn’t pleasant. You couldn’t handle it. You said, “I can’t handle that.”

Well, then it’s still in there. Just say that: “I couldn’t handle what he said to me. I know it was fifth grade, I just couldn’t handle what they did.” Okay, then it’s still in there. Why? Because you couldn’t let it go. That’s what it means: “I can’t handle it.” “I can’t handle what you said. I cannot handle what you said to me.”

What does that mean? “I’m gonna be thinking about that for a long time, and you’re not gonna come near me ever again, and I’m gonna tell everybody what you said.” Right or wrong, it got stuck in there. Why? Because you couldn’t handle it. What does that mean, “I can’t handle it”? Well, I want us to do the opposite.

Somebody says something — “Oh well, it’s okay, they didn’t mean it, I can handle that.” Well, then it goes through. Do you get it? Do you see a difference? “I can’t handle it” means “I’m going to resist it.” I’ll play with you for a minute, right — what you’re really saying is, “Because I didn’t like it, I’m gonna keep it.”

There’s psychology for you. Is that not Freud? The things you really, really didn’t like in your childhood, your formative years and different things, right — you decided to keep those, because “I don’t like them, and I want them to be there for the rest of my life. I will never forgive what you said.

I’ll never forget how you hurt me. You’re gonna suffer the rest of your life, because if you’re gonna bother me that much, you’ll know you caused me to suffer.” Wow, congratulations, I’m glad you screwed yourself up. “No, he did, by what he said.” The words are just vibrations in the quantum field passing through, and if they didn’t pass through, you stopped them, okay?

I told you about this beautiful saint, Ma Yoga Shakti — she’s pictured down in the corner — she used to come visit us. She’s a very saintly person, very quiet. One day she leaned over me, right, and — saints don’t talk personal — she leaned over me, she said, “Mickey.” I said, “Yes, Mother.” She said, “Don’t you just love when they yell at you?

There’s so much energy.” That’s what she felt. She was able to take it and just — it wasn’t personal. Just, “boy, when people yell, there’s a lot of energy in there.” Wow, man, ecstasy, wow. That’s what it means to not resist. That’s what it means to let it pass through. That’s what it means, “I can handle it.” They say the same thing, don’t they?

That’s what it means to be open, to have an open heart. You didn’t close it around what happened. If you close your heart, you don’t get to feel love. “I can’t believe what you said to me. I’m probably not gonna feel love because you said that to me. I don’t understand why you’re doing that.” This is why we’re talking the way we are.

Again, I’m gonna go back — do you create your universe? Yes, you do. You create the experience you’re having. You’re not really creating it, but you’re making it be what you’ve got inside. By the time it comes in, that’s what you’re experiencing. So the problem is not the world. The problem is not the world, therefore the solution is not the world.

The problem is what you have done in your mind that is completely personal, made up of your experiences, and you built this thing called an ego, a self-concept. “I like this, I don’t like that. I’ve always liked this, I never liked that. I don’t want that to happen. I can’t believe you said that.” Every one of those was I, I, I, me, mine, my car, my thing, I, I.

That’s because you built this thing in your mind that’s about you. The universe is not about you. There are hundreds of billions of stars and galaxies, and quantum fields, and none of it’s about you. The only part that’s about you is the part that got blocked, that you didn’t let go of, okay. And you built this thing.

You can go anywhere with this. You understand that? What’s evil? Is there evil? There are people that purposely do every single thing they can to hurt anyone they can. Not a nice thing to talk about, is that true or not? There are people — well, how different are they? Well, they had experiences that weren’t so good and got stuck, and they don’t know how to deal with it, and so they express it.

When the energy gets stuck inside — why did it get stuck? ‘Cause you resisted it. I often ask you, do you ever push away what came in? Do you ever not wanna experience something that happened, and you keep pushing it away? “I don’t wanna think about that.” Yes or no? Okay, what happens to that energy? It’s blocked.

It’s blocked down there. That’s what psychology’s all about, all that blocked energy, right. Well, what happens to it? Well, you suppress it, and then it just, like a virus, it just grows down there, and — oh my God, it can make a real mess, doesn’t it? Ever try to let go of something you don’t wanna let go of?

Something that happened in your childhood, or at some point in a relationship, that really hurts you really badly — you don’t ever like to think about it, you just change the subject. Yes or no? What would it feel like if it doesn’t change the subject, and somebody keeps talking about it, and it keeps hitting your stuff?

How are you doing? Get angry, fear, anxiety, a lot of bad energy. Why? Because you stored it down there and it got suppressed. It didn’t do well. You blocked energy, okay. It didn’t see the light of day, therefore it became very broken. All right, fine. If you leave it down there, it’s broken. I hope you don’t do that.

Don’t ever do that. But what happens if it starts to come up and you can’t handle it? “I can’t handle that, the dark energy is coming up,” right. You express it. What does that mean, “express it”? You let it out, you release it — isn’t that what “express” means? Well, you’re just releasing the darkest energy that could possibly exist.

I’ll use the word “I,” but you take it the way you want. To me, that’s where evil comes from. That’s where Hitler came from. I mean, a nice Jewish boy — what in the world is wrong with a person? Where’d you get there? How’d you get there? You wanna kill all of them. I guarantee you, they have psychoanalyzed that man till the day’s over, right, as to how he looked at things that made him be like that, and then convinced others to be like that and spread that energy out, right.

It’s his childhood, it’s this, it’s that, past lives — I don’t care, but it got blocked. It’s all about blockages. Do you understand that? It’s all about blockages. Otherwise, what’s in there? Light. That’s all that’s in there — the divine consciousness expressing and experiencing itself and getting ecstatic. There’s just love in there. There’s beauty in there. But not beauty that you think is beauty.

Everything’s beautiful. There’s just the experience — it’s just, oh. You know what one name for God is, in the Hindu tradition, in the yoga tradition? Satchitananda — eternal conscious ecstasy. That’s what is in you. That’s who you are. That is the nature of your consciousness. That’s what’s in there — Satchitananda.

It’s looking down right through all the garbage that you held in there, that you hold in there, and now you need to express yourself, or do something, or attract to yourself what you want, and so on. What’s liberation? Let go of — okay, have a minute left — that’s all it takes. What is liberation? One, liberation means you’re free.

Not free to do what you want — there is nothing like that. You’re free to experience reality. You’re free to be the greatest being that ever walked the face of the earth, like Christ. Look at his words: “My Father and I are one.” And my favorite, he says, “And as I sit by the throne of my Father…” That’s your state of consciousness, where you are, where your consciousness is.

“So you shall sit by my throne. As I sit by the throne of my Father, so you shall sit by my throne, and these things which I do, you should do, and even greater things.” Oh, you mean you’re a great being? You are a great being, right? What’s the problem? You have these blockages, and no one really taught you the proper way to deal with them.

They teach you how to behave in a way that other people like you. Why do you care if other people like you? No one dares to say that to you. There are 8.3 billion people on the planet — go please them all. Especially when I taught you that every one of them had different experiences, therefore they’re totally different.

Now, go please them all. No — I’ll just pick a few of them and try to please them. It’s the same. Do you understand that? What’s wrong with you that you can’t come down to this beautiful planet with tremendous experience of love and light, and come down here and experience people, places, things, challenges, differences? Why can’t you just experience life?

Why do you care what people think about you? You know how much trouble you have because you care what people think about you? You have to watch what you’re wearing and what you said. And if you have a conversation with somebody, you’re thinking afterwards, “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that.

Oh, but I forgot, I could have said that, it would have been so much more…” Anybody? No, just me? Yeah. Isn’t that fun? Isn’t it fun being neurotic? No. Then why — you have to look and see why it’s that way. Because you’ve stored this stuff in there. Your mother told you, “Don’t ever wear your hair like that.” Now, you either don’t wear it like that to keep Mommy happy, but you like it another way, or you wear it exactly opposite the way she wants you to, to be a rebel.

It’s the same thing. The same impression is running your life, whether you’re giving into it or rebelling against it. That’s determining your entire life. We’re back to, do you create your own experience? Yeah, you sure do, all right? What is the answer to all this? I teach it all the time, but now I’ll make you understand it deeper.

Let go. Let go. Otherwise, it’s gonna stay in there. How do I let go of all that stuff that’s in there? There’s so much stuff in there. You don’t let it all go at once, don’t worry — the path is much easier than that. I told you, I’m satisfied — if you’re driving behind somebody and you don’t like the way they’re driving, listen to me, be in my teachings.

They’re driving 15 miles above the speed limit, they keep stepping on their brakes. Is it bothering you? Yes. There — no spiritual bypassing — yes, it’s bothering me, all right. What good is it doing you that it’s bothering you? It doesn’t bother the other guy. I know you’re talking to him, “Come on, buddy.” He doesn’t hear you, and nothing’s going on.

And you start being wise inside. You live in there. Your consciousness lives in there. That’s God coming down. You gotta look through that — ah, help, all right. And so you sit there and you say, “Okay, here’s one thing — I don’t have to resist this. He’ll drive that way for a couple blocks.” It happens to me, right.

They drive, then next thing you know, he turns, or I’ll be in a rush, so I’ll pass — I still let him do it, but I’m careful, I stay conscious. On a country road, two lanes, somebody’s driving 10 miles over the speed limit — I got a fast car, so I just pull out, pass him, I feel good. Then I come up to the stop sign a mile down the road, and he pulls right behind me.

I notice those things. I’m a very conscious being, you hear me? And you start playing with it. You start noticing, “I made a mess of that.” Somebody would do that, and they’d go to the office saying, “Yeah, I was behind this guy, he’s driving 10 miles over the speed” — you couldn’t even let it go after it. It went away.

You made a thing of it. If you go to Germany and drive around three years later in a car just like that, you get behind it — “I ain’t doing this again.” You’re doing it. You do not have to do it. You can let go. Now that’s deep. In other words, the energy came in, it was not comfortable — fine, it was not comfortable.

You weren’t getting what you wanted, whatever. Can you let go? Can you see the tendency to resist, to push it away, to not want it, and instead welcome it? That’s what I got. It took a lot of time, right? It is welcome to not feel good. Otherwise, I’m gonna resist it, and resisting makes it stay, and I don’t want it to stay.

I’m perfectly happy driving behind the guy that’s 10 miles above the speed limit and looking at Mickey and saying, “How you doing, Mick?” And relaxing, relaxing, relaxing, and letting go of the tendency to resist. And what happens? It’s fun. All of a sudden it became a fun experience. Go be in a rush and get caught by a train.

We have trains around here, all right, and some of them are pretty long, okay. And you’re sitting there, all right, you can’t cross. Why are you sitting there getting anxious? Count the cars, fine. And then instead of sitting there counting your problems, you can have fun. You can have fun. You can imagine, “Where does the train go?”

Do whatever you want with your mind, but don’t resist the experience. If you don’t resist the experience, it’ll be fun. But if you sit there and start counting, and all of a sudden it’s the longest train — “Oh my God, I never counted above 50 before, how long is this thing?” — get excited. Why not have fun?

Everything can be that way. I’m out of time. You can do that with the weather. “Oh my God, it looks cloudy, it’s gonna rain again. Oh, what am I gonna do, I don’t even wanna go out.” Your whole life is screwed up ’cause you do this, as opposed to, “I love the rain, but I have to get out and I don’t have an umbrella.

I’m gonna get wet.” You get wet when you take a shower. Will you please learn to have fun instead of resisting? That’s the whole key. That’s called letting go. That’s what I mean by letting go. Inside, see the tendency to push the energy away. I guarantee you, if you touch that energy, it’s staying in there at one degree or another, ’cause you didn’t let it pass.

Practice letting go and wait to see what happens. They’re writing to me from all over the world — “Oh my God, it works, I’m so much happier than I used to be.” Of course you are. You’re not making yourself miserable, and you don’t have to own all the stuff you touched. Now, stop — but get a little more serious. Now you have a relationship.

Somebody does something you wouldn’t expect. You know, you said we’re gonna meet for dinner, and you didn’t show up. “Yeah, yeah, I wasn’t feeling well, and I’m sorry.” “You’re sorry? I sat there and waited. How could you do that to me?” No — how about, “I understand, it’s okay.” Whoa. If you understand and it’s okay, it doesn’t have to stay in there.

It doesn’t have to ruin your relationship. It doesn’t have to build up, counting how many times he or she’s done something like that, and now, “I’ve had enough.” Are you listening to me? Let go. Stop resisting reality. We started with the atoms, right — go back, tie the whole talk together, right. Life’s an amazing experience, every moment.

Open, let it pass through, experience it, love it. In essence, what you’re doing — you say, “Give it to God.” You don’t have to give it to God. Stop keeping it from God. 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.