E204: From Form to Energy—The Secret of Spiritual Freedom

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. Mm-hmm. Jai guru dev, jai masters. At some point, the consciousness shifts its awareness from form to energy. It’s not something you can force to happen. They can teach you all kinds of things, but it’s what happens. You used to, for example, look at — let’s start with your heart. You look at your heart, and you realize, “God, it can feel good, and God, it can feel bad.

And people make it feel good, and people make it feel bad. And my thoughts can make it feel good, my thoughts can make it feel bad.” But what you’re focusing on is this heart, this thing that you have there that can basically open and close. If it opens, it feels wonderful, life’s great. If it closes, it doesn’t feel so good.

And sometimes it really closes so tight that it hurts. Painful. This is suffering. It’s hot, okay. If you wanna look at it that way, you got a ways to go. The other part I left off is sometimes it can connect with other people. You feel love for other people, okay, you feel connection. And sometimes you feel the opposite.

In their presence, it feels disturbing. Instead of going with all that, which is fine, and saying, “Therefore, I need to be hanging out with people that make me feel good. I need to be having relationships that keep the heart open and don’t close it. And if the relationships start off and I feel good and then they go bad, it’s time to change the relationships.”

People write me all the time: “When’s it time to get out of a relationship?” Usually, which I respect, they say because it’s caustic, it’s not working, it’s a cause of suffering. But there are plenty of times, though you don’t like to talk about it, where it’s just not what you want it to be. And you figure, “I can find something better than this.

Look at George, he fell in love and he’s floating on cloud nine. Yes, we have a relationship, but how do I know there aren’t other things to experience?” And so what you end up doing is getting lost chasing external things that will make your heart feel good — it says, “Open your heart” — and avoiding external things that close your heart.

And that determines your life. If something opens you, you wanna run after it, you wanna be with it, you wanna cling to it. Then it closes you, you’re gonna run away from it, and you think that that’s your choice. Either put up with the fact — like coping. To me, the word “coping,” coping with a relationship does not work so good.

Coping — to me, coping has C-O-P-E, four letters. It’s a four-letter word. That is not how I’m gonna live my life. Oh well, it’s the best it can be, we’ll just cope with it. You only have a certain number of years here, right? Don’t be coping. You need to find out what’s going on, and that’s when the shift takes place, when you wake up and say, “Yes, I’ve had relationships.”

Somehow they come and go, and if they don’t come and go, we kind of settle, stay together for the kids. But it’s not love. It’s not that passion. It’s not that thing that you really like, that you really want. So you make the shift eventually. Not everybody does — most people don’t, for a very long time in their life, if at all — to realize, it’s not another person I want.

It’s not a house I want. It’s not a relationship I want. It’s not a job I want. I want to experience inside of me what it feels like to get that job, without getting the job. In other words, my inner state of wellbeing is not dependent on the outside world. It’s not dependent upon people’s behavior. It’s not dependent upon finances.

It’s not dependent on anything outside. It’s inside of me. My heart is inside of me. Yes, things can act as a catalyst to cause it to open, but if you run after those things, I don’t know about you, but you’re gonna find out it doesn’t last, and you think you can control this stuff. You think you can make the heart be the way you want it to be based upon your mind.

It doesn’t work that way. So you start to understand that there’s this stuff called energy — Shakti, Qi, spirit, I don’t care what you wanna call it — but it’s not form. It’s literally an energy flow that’s inside, and if it’s flowing, especially upward toward the heart, it’s ecstatic. It’s beautiful. The more it flows, the more intoxicated you become, the more blown away you are.

Yes, outside things can stimulate that, but they won’t last. Why? Because they’re what you call conditional. “I like you because you’re nice to me, and you’re this and that, and I get along with your parents, and your sister — I love your sister so much, she’s so beautiful — and the finances, I don’t have to worry much about them because she seems to have that together.”

Wait and see how long that lasts. Either you get used to it, so it doesn’t seem special anymore — you already got the nice house, you got this, you had the kids — now what? And don’t you dare think that that doesn’t happen. There’s no way the outside can keep that heart open, right? I told you the other day, there’s this thing called the law of diminishing returns.

Ever heard of it? That’s a true economic law, and it’s neat that they teach that, these great economic scholars and so on. What is the law of diminishing returns? It means once you get something once, even once, it will not have as strong an effect as it had the first time. That first kiss, that first meeting — you’re open.

You’re not expecting it. If you were waiting and looking, “Okay, I wonder if this is gonna work,” it won’t. It won’t do it, because your mind’s in the way. You’re actually blocking the energy with your expectation of looking to see whether this is gonna be the right person or not, versus if somebody surprises you — going down to the cart and you bump into somebody, and you look at them, and I don’t know why, but it’s just love at first sight.

That’s beautiful. But it won’t last, because they change and you change, and the finances change, the circumstances change, and next thing you know, it’s not staying open all the time. That’s how it happens. It’s not weird, it’s not wrong. There is a law of diminishing returns. If you sit there and eat a meal that you like, I’ll give it to you tomorrow also —

“Wow, thanks.” Next day, how about breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Get that away from me. There is a law of diminishing returns. Why? Because when the energy flow isn’t expecting something, when something just happens spontaneously, it catches your mind, your ego, off guard. So you’re not looking for it, not judging it, just a surprise takes place, and you just — you’re open.

Don’t worry, you’ll close. You’ll get used to it, you hear me? Okay. The problem is, if you’re looking for it outside, you have to keep running. Get a job that gave you a raise, wait to see how long it is before you want another one — do you not think it’s reasonable, what you’re doing? Move somewhere and find out, well, by the time you settle in, it’s the same.

Why? Because you brought you with you. The only way this works — and it can work, don’t get depressed, it can work, everything can work — how? By realizing it’s not about owning or grabbing or clinging to the outside. It’s about saying, “Look, when it opens, it means there’s this energy flowing inside, and when it closes, it means there’s not energy flowing inside.”

That’s as far as I want you to go. Not, “How do I do it, why is that happening” — just notice that when the heart opens, there’s this beautiful uplifting of Shakti, of energy. When the heart closes, it’s depressing, it’s cold, it’s dark. It’s not for some other reason. It’s because of that. When the energy flows, it’s light, it’s uplifting.

It literally flows up. I once said, “Do you know why you smile?” When you smile — is it like a frown? No, it turns the cheeks out, because Shakti’s coming up. Do you understand that? And it literally brings the muscles up, and when you’re sad and depressed and heavy, they go down. It’s all about energy. It’s all about Shakti, and you get to the point where you realize, if I’m going to be happy for the rest of my life and be turned on by things and be enthused and passionate and just ready to go, that energy better be flowing. And if I try to get it flowing by something outside — I swear to you, you’ll notice you get neurotic.

Something happens that raises you, “I have to keep it. Where’d you go today? Who’d you eat lunch with?” You get jealousy and insecurity, need. It’s a need. It turns into a need. First it’s this beautiful energy, then it’s, “I need it, how do I keep it, how do I get it?” And you start becoming neurotic, and that will not let the energy flow.

You just shifted the Shakti from the fourth chakra down to the third. That’s exactly what’s happening. The third chakra doesn’t feel all that love. If it likes something, it gets open — it’s because the energy went to the heart. But boy, that third chakra is really hard to keep open. What’s this third chakra? I, me, mine.

“I like this, I don’t like that. That’s my car, that’s my child, get away from it, I don’t want it to be like that, and I don’t want to get sick, and I…” Just every single word of the third chakra starts with an I, a me, or a mine. The fourth chakra, when it’s truly open, it’s not about you.

It’s a selfless energy that’s flowing inside that’s so intoxicating that you don’t have any need, because it’s satisfying, it’s fulfilling. So basically, we’re getting to the energy. So what is that energy? Where does it come from? Why is it open sometimes and not others? And why is it closed? What do I do about keeping it open? How can you do this? It’s not that hard to understand, and I’ve talked about this time and again. It comes down to as follows.

You have had experiences in your life every moment. You’re having an experience. Some of those experiences are not so pleasant. They can come in and have weird vibrations, uncomfortable vibrations. Some of them we call primal vibrations, meaning, yes, it’s true that if your sister yelled at you and you don’t get along with her, then when she calls on the phone, you close down.

That’s because you’re reacting to a previous reaction. But there are primal reactions. A rattlesnake comes coiling up and rattling, right, there’s this fear, there’s this closing. You don’t feel love, okay. You had an experience that, from a primal point of view, was rather disturbing and shocking. Fine.

What I like to ask you is not, did you have that experience, but what did you do with that experience? And I’m embarrassed to tell you that I know what you do. You decide — it sounds stupid — “I didn’t like that experience. The snake’s not there anymore, but I don’t ever want it to be there ever again. Therefore, I’m gonna keep the experience of disturbance so that it can’t come all the way inside of me.

I’ll push it away because I don’t want to have the experience.” I teach this all the time. It’s the essence of spirituality. It comes in, it’s energy. It does not come in as a snake. The snake doesn’t get in there, right? Mama doesn’t get in there. Girlfriend doesn’t get in there. What gets in there is a vibration, an energy.

That’s what’s happening. Even physics says that. Your senses are sensors. They pick up vibrations. So if you see something, what you saw doesn’t come in — what comes in is the light bounces off of it, the object, it then comes in, and you have photosensitive cells in your eyes, and they transmit the vibration of it.

That’s what you’re experiencing — the vibration that comes in. And so basically, if you don’t like it, you push it away, and that’s the biggest problem. Right from the beginning: if you push away what you don’t like, you know what happens? It’s equivalent to saying, “Of all the things that happened to me, I wanna keep that one.”

Listen to me. If you push it away, it’s staying in there. It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t dissipate. It doesn’t melt. “Oh well, I don’t have to deal with it, at least it’s not bothering me right now.” Yes, it is. If it didn’t make it through you, it’s the energy, an energetic experience that’s happening.

Do you understand that? That’s what you’re actually feeling, is energy inside. There’s energy flowing. What does it mean to be depressed? No energy. How’d you get depressed? “Well, I don’t know, there’s childhood problems and this problem.” Are they happening now? “No, I’m 53 years old, and if I think about my mother, I get all upset, and I think about formative years and all this kind of junk.”

I don’t understand — it’s not happening. Doesn’t matter, does it? Because you couldn’t handle it when it did happen, and so what you do inside, really, you vote to say, “Of all the things that happened to me, I want to keep this one.” Who said that? Freud. That’s what suppression and repression are. You’re basically saying, “This will not pass through me,” and therefore you push it away.

And when you push it away, it stays inside. Every time, period. Someday you’re gonna wake up and realize if you push it away, you just cause yourself big problems for an hour, ten hours, the rest of your life, whatever it is. Until it’s able to release — and it can, we can talk about that — it’s going to make an impression in there that’s not comfortable.

Why? That’s why you pushed it down, because it wasn’t comfortable. If no one ever taught you this before, right, I’m just really glad we’re talking about it. Do you push things away inside? Do things come in that you don’t want to experience? You try to get your distance, okay. It’s staying in there, then. Why?

Because you didn’t let it pass. Every single thing that comes in has a vibration. If you let it, it will pass through you. Okay, then you don’t have to own it. You don’t even have to be afraid it’ll happen again, because you handled the experience so well that you’re not afraid it’ll happen again. Let’s say you see a snake, and at first it really scares you, and then you calm down, you look at it, and you say, “It was just a snake.

It’s fine,” and you let it go, and you let it come right in and say, “Well, this is kind of exciting. I don’t even know what kind of snake it was, right.” But it comes in, and you let it go. The next time, you don’t have this samskara, this pattern inside of you that’s totally freaked out about the possibility of a snake, because you let it go.

I know you can’t hear me — you let go of the fact that your sister got the bicycle you wanted when you were three. But when you were three, you didn’t know to, so you kept it inside. There’s a resentment against your sister, and you never fully opened again, ever. You don’t even know why. Things happened that you didn’t accept happened.

And what do you do? You push them away. “I don’t want to feel that, I don’t want to experience it.” But you are experiencing it, or you wouldn’t be pushing it away. Do you understand, the moment you touch it, you’re stuck with it? There’s this thing called openness. If you wanna have Shakti flow, you realize, “I cannot push this thing away.

I have to learn how to be okay with it.” Into every life, some rain must fall. What’s wrong with rain? It makes the plants grow. You just get to the point where you understand the world is everything. It’s everything, alpha to omega. Things are gonna happen in front of me. Is that okay with you? I didn’t say I have to want them, I didn’t say I have to like them.

I said I have to say, “Okay, they happened. This is my time to have that experience. To the best of my ability, I’m going to honor and respect the energy that came in and let it pass through.” That is the essence of spirituality, period. When you get to the point you catch on that that’s what it’s about — that through your everyday life, not just meditation, during your everyday life, as you go through life, do not things happen?

Are they always the way you want them to be? Are they always what you expect? Never, right? Life happens. You want to get into why — I like that, “Why did that have to happen to me? That was not fair, why’d it have to happen to me?” If you want to know why it had to happen to you, it would take me about half your life to go through every single experience that happened in the universe that was unfolding at that moment in time, that through time came together, and at that moment manifested in front of you.

It’s not something you did. It’s something that life unfolds as it happens. It’s hot one day, it’s cold another. Had nothing to do with you. Why’d it have to rain on my birthday? It doesn’t know it’s your birthday. Now you don’t like rain, or you don’t like birthdays. That’s what happens. If you can’t handle it, it stays inside of you, and then you have to deal with the fact that now you’re not getting hit by what’s coming in.

You’re getting hit by what’s already in there. Have a dream — I know people who say, “I had a dream, I’ve never been the same, I’ve been screwed up ever since. Unbelievable.” It was a dream. What are you doing? It hits your stuff, and that’s what Freudian dreams are about, the fact you stored that stuff in there, called a wish-fulfillment or non-wish-fulfillment dream.

You store that stuff in there, it has to come up, but you won’t let it, so it sneaks around you in a dream. It comes up and it codifies it, all right. You know, Jung was into this kind of stuff, right — the symbols. You had a younger brother who died young. It always bothered you, but you never even talk about it. No one in the family talks about it. That’s how families are — no one talks about it, right.

And you go to sleep, and all of a sudden there are these beautiful birds, hawks, flying around, and one of them comes down and lands in a nest, and there are these babies that just hatched. And as they started to fly away, or the mother came to feed them, one of them fell out of the nest down to the ground and died. That’s your little brother. It’s symbolizing.

Why did it do that? Because you won’t let it pass by with what it actually looked like. That’s how brilliant the mind is. It’s pretty unbelievable. What’s it telling you? The mind is telling you, “I don’t want that stuff in there. I’m gonna push it up any time I get a chance, and if you can’t handle it, I’ll hide it. I’ll symbolize it.”

That’s what it’s all about. Do you hear me? It’s not complicated. You want to understand all psychology? You shove stuff down there. Now let’s talk about what happened ’cause you did that. Let’s talk about how you screwed up. Let’s talk about why you have certain desires and certain fears. It’s because of the stuff down there. That’s why you can’t be open. Okay?

And so basically, you wake up and you realize, if I want to have a nice life, if I want to have a full life where I’m open and experiencing life, I can’t shove that stuff down there. I cannot protect myself from the natural unfolding of life. Things are going to happen that are not your fault. Were you involved? Of course.

You said something, and it hit somebody the wrong way, so they hit you, or they ran away, or they don’t like you. Of course there’s some interaction you’re involved in, but there were 800 million interactions before you got involved that caused them to react the way they did. It’s so complicated to even talk about it. It’s been going on for 13.8 billion years all over the universe, and people interact and all kinds of stuff happens.

Doesn’t mean it should happen or shouldn’t happen, or it’s good, it’s bad. It means it does happen. Does it have to? Is this predestination? Of course not. Your past helps mold how you look at things now, and the world is unfolding in the way it is, and those two have got to meet. And the only way you really deal with it is you get to the point where you say, “I can handle it.” What? Anything, everything, it’s all together. I can handle it no matter what happens.

No guilt, no shame, no blame. Events happen, and I’ve got stuff in here that gets hit sometimes, and I can handle that. I can handle discomfort. And if it’s so uncomfortable I can’t handle it, I’m conscious enough that I purposely and willfully hold it back a little bit so it doesn’t freak me out, and then I spend time afterwards letting it go.

But I never keep it. There’s no way in the world I’m putting all that garbage down there and letting it determine the rest of my life. Do you hear me? That is a spiritual attitude, okay. That’s how you end up growing. And you understand how, with an energy flow, if you don’t do that, the energy will be a mess in there.

Why? The energy — we talked about this in Living Untethered — the energy, the Shakti, wants to come up. There’s — I can’t talk to you about the big flows — there’s a flow from God consciousness down into form, filtered, and back up, and there’s this constant circular flow of Shakti, of energy, and it’s ecstatic.

All right? Does it mean there’s no sickness? No, it means sickness is part of life. Does it mean there’s no disharmony? Disharmony is part of life. The question is, when disharmony comes, do you stop the energy flow so it’s not allowed to continue its journey through the cycle of life? And the answer is, you know you do.

And you sit there and say, “No, I don’t want that to happen, I didn’t want that to happen.” You do that with your past. “That wasn’t right, that shouldn’t have happened.” Well, obviously it should have happened — it happened. How can you say it shouldn’t have happened? It’s what happened. “But I don’t like it” — that’s a different story.

You sit there and say, “I don’t like that it happened.” Can you change it? No. Can you get weird about it? Sure. So you finally catch on it’s not about the form, it’s not about what’s happening — it’s about how you, in there, take the attitude: “I have experienced some beautiful energy inside, and that’s when I was open.

And I’ve experienced terrible energy, and that’s when I was closed. I don’t wanna be closed. I wanna be open. I wanna feel love. I wanna feel joy. I wanna feel inspiration, all the time.” Not, “I say I do” — I want it to. All right? And there’s only one way to do that — or I’ll say two. One, stop putting stuff in there.

If it’s the stuff in there that’s causing the energy to get blocked — and it is, literally — when you push stuff away, it stays stuck inside your energy flow, and the energy trying to come up — that’s all supposed to be ecstatic, beautiful energy. It is, but if you block it, it hits your blockages, and now there are currents and eddies and rapids, because the energy got screwed up.

Everybody understand that? That’s literally what’s happening in there. The Shakti’s trying to come up. It’s always trying to come up. I think Christ said something like, “I stand at the door and knock, whoever will open, I’ll come in.” That’s how the Shakti’s talking to you: “I wanna come up, I wanna fill you with love, with joy.

I want you ecstatic all the time. This energy is gonna feed you.” Again, Christ’s teachings: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that leaveth the mouth of God.” What does that mean? You don’t live based on what’s happening from outside. There’s this energy inside that’s feeding you from inside, and you catch on to that.

So I’m talking about when you start to notice it as an energetic experience instead of a physiological experience, a physical experience, or a psychological one. Your thoughts can screw you up. They’re your thoughts. Where do your thoughts come from? Right, to tell you the truth, they come from that stuff you stored in there, hitting the blockages, and then the disturbed energy comes up into your mind, and that’s what you think about.

“Why did he have to say that five years ago? Why did she have to do that? Why couldn’t it have been like this? I’m afraid of what it’s gonna be like later.” How could you be afraid of what’s gonna happen in the future if you hadn’t experienced it in the past, if it wasn’t disturbing? All right, so you project your mess from inside.

You don’t have to try. The energy comes up, it hits the blockages. They get stimulated because they’re trying to release, and then you have to push them back down, and that resistance causes disturbance and eddies and tension and turmoil. Do you understand that? It’s an energetic dance that isn’t working well.

I’ll tell you, the Colorado River used to flow right through where the Hoover Dam is now. It loved it. It did a free flow, every minute it’s flowing. Then we dammed it up. Now it can’t flow through it. Is it trying to? Is that river, after all these years, continuing to flow past that dam? Darn right it is.

There’s a little crack, you have to plug it, right? That river wants to keep flowing. So you have to block it, and then on the other side of the river — and we do it to get electricity, and the reason we do it, nothing wrong with it — but on the other side of the dam, there’s no water. Sometimes there are towns on the other side of these dams that are building electricity, and they can’t grow plants.

They can’t get water because we’ve held it back so long that there’s no water coming through. So that’s what’s happening inside of you. The Shakti is trying to come up. It’s pure light, pure love, pure beauty, everything you’d ever want coming up, but you shoved all this stuff down, and you continue to do it every day of your life.

You don’t handle life well. You don’t handle your day well. How do I know? Because you have a way you want it to be. Well, how did you get it where you want it to be? “Because I had other experiences in my past that weren’t the way I wanted them to be, and I don’t want them to happen again, so I’m gonna project that out into life.

And I’ve had some experiences that made me feel good, I’ll project that into life. Now my responsibility is to go out and manipulate every moment of my life to try and make it be what I want it to be.” How are you doing with that? Neurotic, uptight, scared. You don’t understand — it doesn’t work. What does work is understanding the outside is not what determines the state of your being.

It’s how the outside affects the inside, therefore it’s about the inside. And you eventually get to the point where you say, “My work is inside, not outside.” Doesn’t mean you don’t deal with things, but if something comes in and hits you the wrong way, you know what you say? “Wow, I still have that? I didn’t know I still had that — that somebody could say something to me and I get all upset, or somebody could not smile and I wonder why they did that.

I think about it for hours.” And you look at it and say, “I am not gonna be like that. I want to be able to handle reality.” What’s reality? That which is happening. In Living Untethered, I define reality. That’s tough — define reality, people write books on it, right? Ready? That which already happened. How can that which already happened not be reality?

You ain’t gonna change it, it already took place. So either you handle it or you don’t. There’s nowhere in between. You can rationalize it away all you want. All you’re trying to do is neutralize the fact that it didn’t fit well. And believe me, you come in with a rationalization and then something betrays it, it doesn’t fit anymore.

You have to struggle to keep it that way. The only thing that works is to get out of the way and allow the energy of life, the Shakti, to pour through you, and accept that things will feel good, accept that things won’t feel good, and honor and respect the flow of life. Honor and respect the Shakti flow. It’s not about trying to get things the way you want so that the Shakti can flow properly.

That alone screws you up, because you have to struggle, you have to worry, you have to plan and plot and have anxiety, anxious that it won’t happen, anxious it won’t be the way you want it to be. The moment something happens that doesn’t even begin to look like the way you want it to be, you’re getting scared. The only way that actually works — I’ve never gone that deep with you — the only way that actually works is to say, the only reason I do not feel ecstasy, joy, and just God all the time and light all the time, is because I block that flow of energy.

That’s what’s in there, and it’s trying to come up in your dreams. It tries to come up into thought, into your thought patterns. It’s that energy being blocked by the stuff you stored in there, projecting like a motion picture bulb passing through film. You all don’t know about that anymore.

There’s such a thing, it’s not all digital. It comes up, flows through, and puts this film, this movie in your mind, and that’s why your mind talks all the time. And if you look at why it talks all the time, it’s about what I’m afraid of, what I don’t want, what I do want, how do I get it. It’s all about the fact that I’m not okay.

And therefore this disturbance is expressing itself in my mind, and my intellectual mind is trying to figure out, “How can I make myself be okay? How can I get things the way I want? How can I make sure people treat me the way I wanna be treated? How do I make sure?” Do you understand that? Okay? And you just watch that voice in your head. You get into a relationship and watch that voice in your head: “Can I trust her? I don’t know, I got hurt last time so bad.”

And you think that’s normal. That’s not normal, that’s neurotic. It’s wonderful — you have a relationship, see if it works, be open, share life, share love. Not, “I’m scared to death because I got hurt before, and I don’t want it to happen again, therefore I’m gonna keep borders, boundaries around myself so that I can’t totally open, because I gotta be careful.”

I told you, here’s a perfect example — I hope it doesn’t happen, but I know it can, all right, I’m exaggerating. You fall in love, you’re in a relationship with somebody, you’ve never felt that much love in your entire life. You build your whole life upon this relationship. It’s so beautiful. It’s unbelievable.

And then a friend of yours comes and says, “You know, I did that once, he left me. He or she left me. It devastated me, I got so hurt.” Okay? And so therefore your mind says, “Gee, I don’t want that to happen to me. So maybe what I should do is have another relationship on the side as a fallback, an insurance policy,” all right.

“That if someone dumps and hurts me, I can always go over there.” Laugh all you want. You understand that? Our minds are capable of thinking like that, of protecting ourselves. So you get to the point where you realize, “If I do that, I will never feel love. I will never feel a pure flow of Shakti, because I’m trying to control the world so that it matches what happened to me before, or doesn’t match what happened to me before.”

All right? That’s a lot of work. That’s a lot of tension and anxiety. That’s no way to live your life. That’s ridiculous. Why do I live my life protecting myself? Well, it makes sense — I don’t wanna get hurt, so I’m gonna do every single thing I can to protect myself from life. Have a good old time. Hope you’re having fun.

“I’m doing very good at it. I insured everything. I made enough money to buy really, really good insurance, and disability insurance, and health insurance, and all kinds of insurance, so that no matter what happens to me, which I don’t want to happen to me, but if it does, I’m totally covered.” How do you feel?

Scared that it will happen, and hoping that I covered myself. What if I didn’t have enough insurance? You can’t be free that way. Freedom comes from understanding the joy of life is something that’s inside of you. You are blocking it, and you can’t make up for that by doing things outside to compensate for the blockages you created inside.

You have to, in essence, say, “Okay, I don’t wanna be blocked. I wanna drive down the road and see a sunset and have it blow me away. I wanna walk outside and have a bird chirping, and have it just melt me as if somebody’s hugged me, and it’s the most — I wanna have beautiful experiences.

I wanna see a giant rock fall down near me and just miss my car, and get all excited. That could happen any time to anybody, and it happened to me,” all right. “I want to love life. I want to be able to embrace life. I don’t worry about life. I don’t have to control life.” The only way you’re gonna do that — ’cause you can’t control life, no matter what you think —

it happens. Things happen. People get sick. People die. People leave. People come. Every moment there’s something going on, right? It rains when you don’t want it to. It’s hot — ah, it was hot out today, wasn’t it? Okay? Do you celebrate the heat? Do you celebrate that it’s hot? “The sun is so bright and so strong, and I get to experience it.”

You just take every single experience and let go. Let it unfold within you, and you’re gonna find out that if you do that, within a very, very short period of time, at least 50% of all your problems will go away. Why? ‘Cause you’re creating your own problems. You’re sitting there saying, “Okay, somebody came and redecorated my kitchen, and I said I want it to be kind of like robin’s-egg blue.”

Okay? And they paint it, and you walk in — let me tell you something. If you’re that picky, there’s no way it’s gonna match what you wanted. So just walk in there and say, “Well, can we repaint it?” “Well, we already put the cabinetry up, right? Should’ve painted before we put the cabinetry up.”

“Well, can you take it down?” “Well, we can take it down, but when you put it back and get it lined up just right, it never comes out perfect again, right?” What are you doing? Why don’t you just like it? I’m gonna ask you a question — who said you don’t like it? You did. If something inside just says, “I don’t like it,” you got a big price to pay.

If something inside says, “You know, I like it,” it’s over. And so, at least for 50% of your problems, you create them, ’cause you decide what you like and what you don’t like, and they’re very unimportant things. “I don’t want it to be hot. I don’t want to live anywhere where there could be a snake. I don’t want this, I want this,” right.

And then you go out there and try to manipulate life. I’ve discussed this with you time and time again. What is out there? A bunch of atoms. It’s just a bunch of molecules, a bunch of atoms dancing around together based upon the laws, okay. You wanna control them all?

You want me to charge your heartbeat, your lung thing, your kidneys, this, that, your pineal — you want me to charge every single thing? No, just the ones I don’t like. Good luck, because it’s all one system. It’s all connected. There could be a solar flare that knocks one of the satellites out, and therefore you don’t get a phone call.

Anything can happen at any time. You’re not gonna manipulate life to make it be what you want. And so what’s your choice? Get depressed? Be scared? No — just sit there and say, “I can handle it.” That’s how easy it is. You wanna grow spiritually? Just say, “I can handle it, I can handle that.” Well, what if, what if, like my friend said, their husband or wife left them, and what if — I love him so much, I love her so much — what if they left me?

Ready? I’ll be okay. Do I want it to happen? No. Can I learn from it? Can I grow from it? Can I honor and respect the fact that things happen, and now it happened to me? Of course you can, but you have to learn how to do it. Otherwise, be scared your whole life. Why would you want to live like that? I don’t wanna live like that.

So you look at it and you realize the answer is, “I can handle it.” Handle what? Well, you can handle the sunshine, you can handle the driver in front of you, you can handle the spot on your pants, right? Okay, doing good. I’m not saying you can handle someone you love dying. You can, and you better — you better, over time, adjust to reality, ’cause reality is not going to adjust to you.

If they die, you sit there and say, “This is a painful experience.” Is it? Yes, it’s a painful experience. Why? Let’s do that. Why does the heart hurt when someone you love leaves you? Why does the heart hurt when someone you’re attached to — a good word, I’m gonna use it in a second — is no longer there?

They died, they left. Why does the heart hurt? Does somebody hit it? No. Feels like it. What is that? So, I dare tell you — the Shakti flow is trying to come up. When it comes up, it’s beautiful, and sometimes it’s so beautiful that it wants to express itself. It can’t. Wow, it’s like it almost can’t handle how beautiful it is.

And it flows out, not down. You’re not pushing it away. It flows out. Have you ever felt that connection with somebody? Literally, and I’m asking you truthfully — have you ever sat in the presence of someone the love is so strong you can feel a beam from your heart to theirs? You don’t have to talk, you don’t have to do anything.

You’re just tied together. Yes or no? Okay. That is real. It’s all about energy, just like water. It’s trying to come up. When it comes up — and by the way, that’s a beautiful expression — that’s fourth chakra tying together. There’s fifth, sixth, seventh. You hear me? I’m not telling you not to feel that, right.

It’s very beautiful and very rare for humans. That’s human love, right, and it’s fine. And if you work with it, you’ll learn to go higher. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you will never, ever bring it down below sixth and seventh centers. The energy flowing up there will flow constantly and feed you all the time.

Again, do you feel love? Of course you feel love, but you’re not afraid of losing it. How could you lose it? It’s part of you, it’s there, it’s a flow. And so this is the thing I’d like you to get into, and I’m glad we’re talking about it. But if you have that flow, literally — that’s an energy flow, a Shakti flow, coming up in your channels, coming out and connecting to another person’s heart, and they’re feeding you, and you’re feeding them.

I hope you do feel this. I hope you understand what I’m talking about. Believe it or not, it’s rare. It shouldn’t be rare. But basically, it comes out of your heart, connects to theirs, and they feed each other. The energy flows off of each other, and it’s just — I’m telling you, just sit there, blissed out. You don’t even talk to each other. You don’t have to touch. You don’t have to do anything.

It’s just the most beautiful experience, all right. It’s true love. Okay? What happens if they die? What happens if they leave you? What happens if something happens? What happens to that flow? It can’t flow like that anymore, can it? The connection’s not there, all right. So what happens? It’s blocked. It doesn’t know where to express itself. And then you get all weird. You get hurt. It’s painful. You feel like razor blades inside your heart.

That is that Shakti that used to come out as love not being able to, and it gets all blocked and messy inside, okay. But the reality is, a yogi or yogini understands the energy. They appreciate that it can be connected, and the connection can break. It doesn’t have to be somebody’s fault. It’s not right or wrong or good or bad.

It just happens. Can you handle the shift in the energy? If you can handle the shift in the energy, it literally — and I’ve seen this time and again — very spiritual people, where you got attached, and by the way, that’s what it means to be attached to somebody — you’re literally attached. The Shakti flow is attached.

The whole thing’s just connected. It’s living as a unit, right. Well, that’s beautiful. What happens if it breaks? Then the energy doesn’t know where to go, and it hits and causes all kinds of disturbance inside. Is that okay? It’s more than okay. It means that you learn from that, that there are higher expressions of the energy.

It’s not that you lost something. Channel the energy. Let go. Honor it. Respect it. Honor the pain. Why is there pain? Because when a nice river that’s flowing beautifully hits the rocks, it becomes rapids. So when your energy that was flowing really beautifully hits the blockages that it can’t express itself, it can’t come out right, it’s gonna be very painful.

It has to be okay with you. And I’m talking very advanced now, very advanced spirituality. It doesn’t mean you feel good. It means you’re okay feeling what you’re feeling. You’re okay allowing the energy to shift. In the Jewish tradition, we have a thing called sitting shiva, I think it’s called — I’m Jewish, but I don’t know any of this stuff, right.

And I think it’s like seven days where, when someone you love, your partner or something like that, dies, you put aside that time, and people can come in and be with you, right. This is the time to go through the grief. Doesn’t mean the grief is wrong or bad, but it’s gonna feel like that. It’s gonna feel hollow, because the energy used to be able to flow somewhere.

Now it can’t. It can be painful. You allow, you honor and respect that time. It’s just as important as any other time in life. A shift is taking place, and if you’re wise, you honor it, you respect it, and you say, “I can handle this. Do I want it? No, but it’s here. It’s here. It’s my time. And I’m going to take the time to release, to let go, and not suppress it.”

It means you have to be willing to go through the reality you’re going through. It’s not pleasant, but you take the attitude, “I can handle this. I can go through this.” And what you’ll find out is if you don’t let it go, it will stay in there. People say to themselves, “Never another relationship for the rest of my life.

We were married for 30 years, I ain’t never going through that again. Just get away from me, I don’t want to meet anybody, I want to…” In other words, you didn’t handle it very well, did you? It closed you, as opposed to, “I am a yogi or yogini. I am a person who’s growing, and this is part of life.” How do you know?

Here’s a line in the Bible that says, “Let those who have eyes to see, let them see. Let those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” Well, there’s “be here now.” In other words, the reality of what’s going on is going on. Can you handle it? And if you can’t, you’re gonna push it away. And if you push it away, I told you, it’s gonna stay in there.

So even these beautiful energy flows can go through changes that don’t feel so good. In fact, they don’t. If you have loved somebody with all your heart and they betray you — although you didn’t know anything about it, all of a sudden they leave, or find out it wasn’t the way you thought it was — whoa.

What are you gonna do with that energy? It’s gonna try to go out, and it can’t. And anger — that which was love becomes anger, becomes pain and anger and resentment, right. It gets to the point where you realize, “I do not want to push this energy away.” It’s as simple as that. Which energy? Any of them. If it’s coming up, it’s time to pass through.

How do you know? Because it’s coming up, and the only choice I have is to push it back down, to deny it, to fight, to scream, to carry on throwing pots and pans all over the place. What is that? It’s — the same energy that you felt as love an hour ago is now coming up as disturbance and pain and anger.

They’re the same Shakti. The water that’s creating the rapids is the same water that used to flow smoothly. It’s the rocks that are causing a blockage in it, that’s causing it to behave the way it does. We’re talking about Shakti today — that’s what that is. It’s exactly that. It used to flow beautifully.

It was open. She was open to you, you’re open to her. Then all of a sudden something changes, including death, okay — that’s a big change. Or somebody leaving, somebody betraying, somebody saying something, right. Then the energy can’t flow. What does it feel like? It is the same exact energy you felt as love one hour ago.

It’s the same Shakti. It’s just blocked. If it’s blocked, it hits the blockages, then it shoots out, and it’s like pins and needles, and ice picks sticking you in your heart. People say to their therapist, “My heart hurts so much, it’s so painful, I’ve never felt that much pain before.” I told you, I’m not a therapist.

Don’t you dare come to me like one. “Is there any way you can help me? It’s just so painful.” Yes. Who noticed that it’s painful? What do you mean? You just told me how painful it is. How do you know? I don’t know that it’s painful for you. How do you know it’s painful? And eventually you’ll yell at me, “Because I’m in here and I feel it.”

Very good. Namaste. Who’s in there experiencing these changes in Shakti? And eventually you reach the point where I’m not gonna fight with it. Life has its own reality. I respect it. Will I talk about going to marriage counseling? Yes. Will I talk about discussing it? Yes. You just do it. Do it to try and help the energy, but not because you can’t handle it. If you’re doing it because you’re freaking out and you’re trying to force somebody else to be the way you want them to be, because you’re not okay, it will never work, ever, because you’re trying to manipulate people, places, and things so they’re the way you want them to be. That’s not love. That’s not a relationship. That’s dictatorship.

And so you just finally reach the point: I need to learn to let go. I need to learn that things happen in life, and I wanna be able to handle them. Doesn’t mean they don’t hurt, doesn’t mean — I will go through everything, but I’m not gonna push it away, because I know if I push it away, it’s gonna stay in there. And people do that with their relationships, and they have a bad relationship in high school, then they have this and they have that. Next thing you know, they’re making a mess out of every relationship they have.

Somebody’s having dinner with them and slurps their soup — “No, I’ve had soup slurpers before, no, I’m sorry.” It’s hilarious, and it’s their past experience. You store it, and now you close, as opposed to, “Isn’t that adorable, he slurps his soup, I love him so much.” And you just get to the point where you sit there and say, “I can handle life.

I can and I will, but I will accept and honor that it doesn’t always feel good. But I’m not gonna push that away so it stays in there.” Well, what do I do? I try to teach this. I do — you’re in there, it feels icky. You see the tendency to push it away. People get a little wry with me, right, because they didn’t read my books yet, and they sit there and say, “How do I make this stop?”

You don’t try to make it stop. You give it the room to pass through. But it doesn’t feel good. That’s right. That’s right, it doesn’t feel good. Now you make a choice — it’ll not feel good for a short period of time, or it’ll not feel good for the rest of your life and screw up your entire life. Can it screw up your entire life?

One relationship in high school, you’re with the same person — wake up. You have to decide, “I can handle this.” And it starts to go through, and you tend to push it away. What do you do? You relax. If, if you don’t understand — the last thing in the world you wanna do with that energy is to relax and let it get closer, because that’s what it’s gonna do.

If you don’t resist it, it’s gonna come right up in your face, and you’re gonna tend to push it away. That’s fine, you got your attitude with that. I’ll do better next time, because there’s no way — and watch, if you do push it away and can’t handle it, watch how often you think about it. Watch how much it builds your resentment toward other people.

Just instantaneously, if you can’t handle it, it’s gonna stay in there. But it’s okay — you can’t handle it? Fine, do the best you can. This is the teaching. Be conscious enough to notice what’s happening. It’s all about the Shakti flow. Every single one of those centers — the energy can leak out through first, second, third, fourth, and fifth.

Energy can either come up, or go out, or get pushed down. Okay? That’s all it can do. You’re gonna push it away, let it come out. When it comes out, it can express itself as anger and this and that, all kinds of stuff, or channel it up. And how do I channel it? You don’t. You leave it alone. It knows what it’s doing. This will make people more mature. The Shakti knows how to go up. They say Shiva wants to go to Shakti. This energy knows how to go up. You don’t have to teach it. I can tell you right now that Shakti knows how to go up, that Shakti wants to go up more than you want her to.

Master Mooji once said, “Spirit loves spirit.” Shakti loves flowing, and the only reason it’s not is because you’re stopping it. So the answer’s not how to make it flow. The answer is, how do I stop stopping it? Its natural state is to go up, and you start noticing when it’s going up, it causes trouble. It hits stuff from before, and so on, and you sit there and say, “Good. Good.

I’m playing tennis, I don’t know how to play, and it goes into the net. Good.” Why is it good? Because you’ll do better next time, because that’s how you’re gonna learn. You don’t pick it up and it works perfectly every time. You pick it up, and you change your wrist, maybe get a coach, I don’t care — change your angle, your swing.

Golf’s a perfect example. They spend a lot of time with their golf swings. But at least have fun doing it. Just everything you do, do better. Just do better. Don’t quit, don’t get upset. Just say, “Okay, every single thing I do that doesn’t work out the way I want it to, I have the opportunity to try again.”

It never stops. You always have an opportunity to meet life and do better. And when you do better, that’s wonderful, and it’s fine, and you just keep growing and growing. That’s what spiritual growth is. So we’ve talked about it as an energy flow. It is an energy flow. It is the flow of the Shakti that’s trying to get back to God, and somebody’s in the way.

And if you want to know who it is, just take a look, and you’re gonna see yourself resisting, pushing, fighting, rationalizing, justifying. Whoa, it’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. So you learn to not do that. Little by little, you honor the Shakti. We give flowers to the gurus. What you’re doing is taking that stuff inside of you and offering it up. That’s what it symbolizes: “Here, I don’t want this inside of me. You take it. Here, I honor it.”

And you just keep giving it up. Keep relaxing. If you relax through it, it will pass through. If you tense around it, it will never pass through. And that’s the essence of what we’re talking about, and that’s the essence of yoga, by the way. When you’re doing an asana and it’s tight, the teachers say, “Oh, it’s tight, don’t push.”

No — they sit there and say, “Try to relax through it. Just relax, relax into it even.” And so you just understand, this is all inner yoga. So we’ve talked about handling the Shakti. We basically talked about life, didn’t we? Talked about every single situation you go through throughout your entire life. It can be the cause of tremendous growth. Yeah, I love Shakti. Eventually, she will never stop flowing. You stop blocking it — that’s all you’ll feel, is God’s presence pouring through you.

Mm. 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.