E206: What Surrender Really Means

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

Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters.

The most important spiritual topic that can be talked about should never even have to be discussed. It’s like saying, “Did you notice the sky is blue when there’s no clouds?” Yeah, but everybody notices that. How do you not notice that? You notice when there are clouds, they take different shapes. What a silly discourse.

Of course, I notice. I’m a conscious being. I see. I see what’s going on. This topic, which is the topic of surrender, is exactly like that. Why? I thought surrender was like renunciation, it’s like this tapasya, this difficult thing to do, where you have to let go of yourself and die to be reborn and all that kind of stuff.

It may look that way because you’re not paying attention. If you pay attention, it doesn’t look anything like that. I’ve been using this lately, but I want you to concentrate on it. A baby comes out. It’s amazing. It cries, it, it giggles, it laughs, it drools, it moves. Who made that? It wasn’t here before. Now it’s here.

If you tell me that the mother made it, they did not make the baby. I always say, “If the mother made it,” I’ll walk up to her and say, “Oh, by the way, make me an eyeball. Make me a kidney. Make me a liver. Make me a pancreas.” They would just look at me like, “What are you talking about?” They did not make the baby.

The father didn’t make the baby. The doctor didn’t make the baby. The ultrasound didn’t make the baby. Where did the baby come from? And you start realizing, if you’re somewhat educated, that there are these molecules inside the cells called DNA molecules. Okay. We now teach that they have the entire genetic pattern of how to make a baby.

Did you know that? Like programming. They’re programmed. They can make every single part, the blood, the kidney, the this, the that. It knows how to split the cells and differentiate. Who does? Those molecules. Not the doctor, not the mother, not the physicist, not the biologist. No. Okay, where’d they come from?

What? The things that know how to make a baby out of little strands of molecular structures. Well, my understanding is those things are made of atoms. They’re molecules. Genes are molecules, and molecules are made of atoms. So if I look at the periodic table, you’re telling me it knows how to make a baby.

How? Please pay attention. You’re gonna see that everything I talk about like this is about surrender. About what? You surrendering the ignorance of thinking you’re in charge. ‘Cause that, that’s discipline. That’s takes so mu- You’re not in charge. You didn’t make the baby. You didn’t make the DNA. You didn’t make the atoms.

You didn’t make the electrons or protons. You didn’t make a thing, and yet you think you’re in charge so much that you have to practice surrender. I don’t understand. But seriously, I do not understand what you’re surrendering other than ignorance, ignoring the reality of what’s going on, and that’s just a baby, and I can’t help myself.

I went down to the molecules of DNA. That’s what DNA is, they’re molecules. Okay? They have the programming. Programming? Yeah, there’s this chemical… I don’t want to talk about it. All right? How they know how to make a baby out of water, milk, Twinkies. It can do it. It knows how to break that stuff down into molecular structures and turn them into cells that are specialized.

Yes or no? And like I said, you don’t stop there. I’m not stopping there, ’cause I know that those DNA or all the molecules that make up the cell are atoms. They’re not something else but atoms. They’re just atoms put together in a way that they appear to be cells, period. There’s nothing else gets added, right?

There’s just atomic structures. And as I’ve discussed too many times, you, you probably get bored, but I hope not. There are electrons. We believe that those, those are base elements. But neutrons and protons, which what make up atoms, are not base elements. They’re not basic structure of the universe. They can be broken apart, and they come up with subatomic structures, and that’s what quantum physics studies.

They break them into bosons, leptons, quarks, and then they get put together. They put themselves together to make up atoms, which make up DNA, which make up… Come on, wake up. Which one of you are doing any of that? I’m waiting. Which one of you have anything to do with any of it? No one. Well then, how’s it happening?

By itself. God? That’s a nice word. That’s a nice word for by itself. You’re not doing it. President’s not doing it. Biologist’s not doing it. Physicist’s not doing it. So how’s it happening? I don’t know. Just kinda happens. So where did the quantum field come from? And where are the vibrations that make up the wavelets, that make up electrons and protons?

Go on, study it. Study it all you want, and get a Nobel Prize because you figured it out. You didn’t do it. That’s hilarious. Why don’t you give the No- Nobel Prize to the quark and the lepton that did it, or to the quantum field itself? They don’t even know where it comes from. You know that. You ask a quantum physicist, “Yeah, there’s these agitations in this field that create wavelets, and the wavelets put themselves together through the natural laws to create electrons and protons, et cetera, et cetera.”

Well, where did the quantum field come from? They do not know. They don’t even try to answer. They said, “That’s more philosophy than something else. I ain’t touching it. We just study it, and we know it’s there, and it vibrates, and those vibrations get put together, very complicated math,” all right? Quantum mechanics.

And they put it all together, and the next thing you know, boom, there you are. And nobody did anything. So do you have to surrender to understand you’re not doing anything? Well, you say to me, “Okay, making babies, I get that. Putting atoms together, I get that.” 93, whatever it is, different types of atoms, natural atoms.

We didn’t do it. We didn’t do it. If they don’t do it, then the bodies ain’t here, nothing here. The floor’s not here, air’s not there, sky’s not there, plants are not there. Right or wrong? They’re all made of this. You are not doing anything. I’ll get down to the part you think you’re doing, but we have a long talk before that.

So you wake up and you say, “Are you willing to surrender that you are not the doer of making the baby or making all the structures that made the baby?” Yeah, I guess so. What choice do you have? You’re not doing it. So surrender, which means letting go of the doer, letting go of the part of you that is ignorant enough not to look at reality, that science teaches you, everything teaches you, and you just say, “Oh, the baby’s so cute.”

My God, where’d it come from? And that’s just a human baby. Let me take a corn kernel and drop it in the ground and never go back. And the next thing I know, there’s an entire corn stalk. Where did it come from? That kernel knew how to take water, dirt, sunshine, and break it apart and turn it into a cornstalk.

It wasn’t there before. How is it there now? You should think it’s a miracle. It’s unbelievable. And guess what? You’re not the doer of any of the vegetables, any of the minerals, or any of the animal kingdom. You did not do any of it. You didn’t make the worms. You didn’t make the roaches either. Just put it aside.

You didn’t make any of it, but it’s there, isn’t it? And instead of paying attention and starting by letting go of the ignorance that is saying, “I’m the doer,” that’s a major part of spirituality, right? You’re not the doer. And I’m just kind of showing you around the edges. You ain’t even close. So how much of what’s there that you interact with every day did you do?

How about might as well say nothing, right? But, but I’m married and I have three children. Where’d they come from? How come they’re growing? Did you make them grow? They were two feet, now they’re six feet. You’re not doing anything. I don’t know how to talk to you because you won’t listen. You kind of say, “Well, that’s true of those things, but I still do things.”

Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine percent you do not do. Of every single thing you’ve ever interacted with, everything you will ever interact with, you are not the doer. So there we have the example in the microcosm, going down to the quantum field, making vibration. Tell you, when you wake up in the morning, is the bed still there?

Is the dresser still there? Is the ceiling still there? Yes or no? Why? The physicists say there’s a quantum field down there that vibrates. It’s just, it vibrate, makes it vibrate, and those vibrations interact together, and they make up electrons and a proton, they make up atoms, they make up molecules, and they make up your bedroom.

In other words, it’s not true that God created heaven and earth. God is creating the heaven and earth. It’s not the quantum field did that yesterday. It’s doing what it’s doing right now, otherwise nothing exists. So it’s all happening by itself, and your consciousness is interacting. We’ll talk about consciousness a little later, but at least let’s get down to the fact you’re not doing anything.

You’re not doing anything. You’re not doing anything. It’s all happening. It’s all holding itself together. It’s all… If there’s a train driving by or a bus, that bus is coming out of the quantum field. It didn’t do it long time ago. It’s doing it right now or it wouldn’t be here. That’s literally what’s happening.

The vibrations here. The heat from the sun is hitting you. When? Now. It’s like be here now. And what the now says is, if I’m not manifesting this field of energy that, that is the lowest common denominator of physical form, the quantum field, if I’m not doing that, then it disappears instantaneously. It’s not there anymore.

I don’t like this thing, God created the heaven and earth. God is creating the heaven and earth every moment, otherwise it’s not here. And you start waking up. How’d I miss all this my whole life? ‘Cause I’ve been busy being the doer. I’m busy. Okay, I won’t do it too fast. That was talking about way down there at the microcosm.

Well, okay, here I’m on a planet, and I have this little stuff in front of me, okay? Well, look up for a minute at night. What do you see? Well, got a telescope, you’d see hundreds of billions of stars in your galaxy. What are they made of? The same vibrating energy that made the baby and is making them, the black holes, every single thing is doing that.

And they say there’s two trillion galaxies all made of the same stuff. What are you doing? Does Saturn have rings? You doing it? So I’m showing you the surrender of the ignorance of doership, which is very Zen. That’s very Zen stuff. I’m not the doer, I’m the experiencer. You’re the experiencer of what’s unfolding in front of you.

You didn’t make it. You’re not in charge of making sure it exists, but you have the consciousness that can experience. You know that you know that you know that it’s there. Fine. That’s very deep, very beautiful. So what happened? How can we be so caught in thinking we’re the doers? And eventually you catch on.

I’ve explained it to you time and time again, and this is part of surrender. To surrender the part of you that created the illusion, the ignorance. What happens? The world unfolds. Don’t you forget what that means, the world unfolds. All those vibrations manifest all over the universe at once. Holy mackerel.

Okay? And it only exists when it exists, then it makes something else. What? The next moment, and you’re there experiencing it. So what’s wrong with that? Nothing. It’s, like, amazing. You’re being shown a picture show of creation. Part of you is experiencing that part of creation, and what’s wrong with that?

How could it be wrong? If you’re not doing anything, you have nothing to do with it. You didn’t make it. You have nothing to do with it. It can’t be wrong or right. It just is. I always tell you, there’s a pear on a table in front of you. Show me male. Show me female. Show me good. Show me bad. I’m waiting. But it’s, everything’s made out of that.

So I don’t understand where you got all these concepts and things. So you start catching on. I’ve explained this time and time again. I’ll just do it very quickly once more. Where did the ignorance come from? Why is it that I think I’m the doer? Why is it I’m fighting with life? Why do I think that I have the right to say, “I don’t like that that happened”?

There, you wanna talk about blasphemy? The quantum field vibrates, something unfolds in front of you, and something inside of you says, “I didn’t want that to happen.” Who the heck’s that? And surrender’s about letting go of that. Under all conditions, under every circumstance that ever existed, true surrender means letting go of this thing that’s talking in there, saying, “I.”

There’s no I. There’s just the manifestation of creation and the consciousness experiencing it. So what happened? Everything creation is made of vibrations. The quantum field is vibrations. Atoms are vibrations. Einstein said it, “Matter is energy and energy is matter, and the difference is just a temporary state.”

It’s all just energy moving. Ice is water, water is steam, steam is ice, just vibrating at a different rate. That’s true of the entire universe. It’s all the same thing vibrating and manifesting at different rates, and you’re there experiencing what you experience. What happens? When it comes in, that’s the whole key, when it comes in through your senses, which are made out of the vibrations, by the way, your senses are made of the quantum field, your eyes, your ears, the tympanic nerves, whatever it is, they’re all coming up right now.

It’s like a movie show that’s being shown to you. It comes in and you experience it. Fine, but it’s not fine because some of those vibrations are very powerful when they come in, very strong, and they can be scary, or they can be really lustful and you want them. You either don’t want them or you want them.

Ever noticed that that goes on in there? That’s the entire birth of ignorance because you’re not the creator, and guess what? You don’t have the right to judge. You didn’t make it, it has nothing to do with you. It existed from the beginning of time and manifests through cause and effect. It’s manifesting around you every moment.

Your, your body is what? 35 trillion living cells make up your body. What are you doing to make that work? You know what happens if one cell goes rogue? There’s a name for that, isn’t it? Isn’t that funny? But the other 35 trillion are trying to do what they can, and you’re not doing anything. So the stuff comes in, and the high state, the natural state is that God, consciousness, awareness of being experiences what’s being created.

That’s the entire dance of the universe. Consciousness vibrated. That’s where the quantum field comes from. They don’t know that yet, but some- the yogis do because they got back there. They merged with the source of consciousness. So basically, consciousness expressed itself. You can think it was a big bang if you want.

It was a big vibration. All right? It was unmanifest, totally still, and then in a trillionth of a second at the speeds of light, expanded out, right? They say nanoseconds it took for half the universe to be created. Whoa, I love the physicists are teaching you, right? So there was a vibration, and consciousness is experiencing what it created.

It’s like an artist wants to look at the work that it created. A, a musician wants to hear their music. Okay? You don’t sit and make music and never listen to it, but you want to hear it. It’s an expression of your being. So the divine force vibrated. The Bible says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,” and basically it was a vibration, and then God created all of universe.

We know how to take vibrations and create the universe. That’s amazing. That’s amazing we know how to do that. You can go down to quantum physics. It’ll show you how wavelets of vibrations can create the whole universe. Okay? So give me vibrations, it creates it, then consciousness experiences it, and that is what is going on.

And if you surrendered and allowed what is to be, that’s what we’d be. There’d be God, you. Your consciousness is a very holy thing. It’d be the consciousness experiencing creation. Then the next moment happens and nobody’s judging, nobody’s liking, nobody’s not liking, nobody’s hating, nobody’s clinging, nobody’s resisting.

They’re just experiencing. It’s the divine force experiencing the divine creation. It’s called God’s lila, the dance of creation. There’s surrender for you. What do you mean? There’s nobody in between. Have you ever listened to a piece of music that you went bye-bye? You just melted into it completely and then came back, “Whoa, where did you go?”

Were you hearing it? Yeah, but I didn’t know I was hearing it. It was consciousness experiencing the experience, right? They say when the experiencer and the experience become one, that’s the depth of the deepest Buddhism yoga. When the experiencer, you in there, that experiences it, and the experience you’re having are not separate anymore.

They merge. You melt into love. You melt into a sunset. You melt into a song that blows you away. That’s surrender. Whether you do surrender. The thing in between that screws everything up. “I don’t like that song.” “You used to melt with it.” “Yeah, but that’s before he left me. It used to be our song, and now it’s our song.”

Somebody got in there in between the experience and the experiencer, okay? So that’s what we’re talking about. How did that happen? Not all experiences feel the same. They’re not supposed to feel the same. Everything has its nature. It comes in, and you experience it. Wonderful. But some of those vibrations that come in are so strong that they distract your consciousness, so it pays more attention to those vibrations than to all the others.

So you’re walking around, and there’s a rattle, and you see grass move. I guarantee you’re not looking at the grass anymore. You’re gonna look at the sky. You’re not listening to music. Your consciousness has been pulled down out of the divine oneness where everything’s the same, everything’s just God’s manifestation of God, that the awareness got distracted.

I love it. I see it, but I won’t explain it any closer than that. You do know you get distracted, do you not? Not everything that comes in has the same effect on you. Some of them are much stronger, and you end up thinking about them in your mind way after they’re over. They’re not even happening. Let’s not be here now.

Let’s be there then. But what happens is the consciousness gets pulled down. What do I mean pulled down? The light is here shining, but it focuses on that object. The light never left anywheres. It’s still at its source. Consciousness never went anywheres. It’s one. It’s been there from the beginning. It just is what is.

But it can get distracted. It can get distracted. It can be pulled down and focused on something more than something else. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. If basically you hear a rustle and a rattle, and you’re okay, and you look, and then you see there’s nothing there, and you keep walking, right? But that’s not what happens.

It pulls your consciousness down, and all of a sudden it starts having this fear of focusing on the fear. Well, there’s natural fear if a rattlesnake is there. But if the rattlesnake is gone or you’re not with it or dealing with it anymore, there’s no reason for that to be in there. You held onto it. When you hold onto it, it stays.

I discussed this too many times already. When your consciousness is focused on something, it burns a pattern on the mental plane that stays there. When the object is gone, it’s not gone from your mind. It’s not open. It’s not be here now. It’s not surrender. You didn’t let it go. You didn’t let that vibration go, did you?

You did not surrender the vibration. You held onto it. So now you have built, you started to build inside your mind, in between consciousness and form is mind and emotions. They’re a vibration rate of energy. You locked that vibration that isn’t even there anymore inside your mind, inside your heart, so now you’re carrying them around with you.

How many of those do you have? Probably as many as there are stars in the sky. Every single time something happens, you hold onto it. I like him, I don’t like him. I can’t believe he said that. I can’t… Constant judgment, constant everything. And so you build inside your mind, which exists in between conscious awareness, that’s naturally aware, and what it’s aware of, subject, object, consciousness, and object of consciousness.

But you didn’t let it come and go. You focused your awareness, which is will, I don’t talk about it. Very few people understand willpower. You meditate deep enough, you’ll understand, you’ll never forget it. Concentrated consciousness is the power of will. Just like a magnifying glass held under the sun creates a focal point that can burn the grass, can’t it?

When your consciousness, which is just a sunlight, when your consciousness is drawn down to focus on a specific point, it brings energy with it. It’s called Shakti, conscious energy. It brings conscious energy there. It has the power to cling or to resist. They can push it away, or it can hold onto it. In both cases, it stays inside the mind.

That wasn’t what mind was built for, not this personal stuff. So now you have burned inside your mind, you made an impression in your mind, these past experiences that left an impression. Why did they leave an impression? Because you got focused on them, and now you can’t let them go. People suppress things.

People cling to things. And so now I have this stuff going on in between consciousness and form that, I don’t know, I’m not gonna say it wasn’t intended to be. You know, I, I don’t know, God, well, I’m not gonna talk about that. I wouldn’t touch it. All right? But it’s called the divine lila, the divine dance, that consciousness gets lost in form and then finds its way back up.

It’s just that whole evolution process, you’re evolving back to God. Okay? The end result is that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is you got distracted, and then you held it in your mind, and then it started judging other things. I don’t like baby rattles now, I don’t wanna have a baby, etc., etc., etc.

And pretty soon your mind is completely full of garbage. Okay? And it’s ignorance. Why? ‘Cause this stuff’s not even there anymore. I hear tell you can have stuff in there from childhood when you’re 60 years old. What do you think? Very funny. That’s what’s going on, and now everything comes in now, hits all that stuff you stored in there.

Made me cry. I beg you to see it. It can’t make it through to touch you to the depth of your being, which is what happened with the music, which happened with the sunset, what happened with the intimate moment. It touched me to the depth of my being. You completely surrendered. There was no resistance. So when you’re not there anymore, and you melt, that’s your natural state.

And so basically, events happen, and they come in, and they pass through. Maybe for a moment they cause a bigger impression than something else, a big noise or something like that, a bright light. You experience it, maybe you jump a little, but you let it go. What do you need to hold onto it? It’s gone. It’s not making the noise anymore.

It’s not making the light anymore. So it comes in, you can react a little, that’s natural, but then it goes through. Everything passes through, and now you have a clean mind, and Buddhists call it empty mind. These are the teachings. Empty mind doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It means you weren’t stupid by holding onto all this stuff that you couldn’t handle.

You built this whole mess in there, and so you did. And now consciousness, we’ll do it real quickly, consciousness, awareness of this, who’s in there? Awareness of being. Do you have bad days? Do you have good days? How do you know? Do you ever feel love? Ever feel disdain? How do you know? Ever feel fear? How do you know?

‘Cause you’re in there. You are the self. You are the consciousness. You are that exact consciousness that made the universe being pulled down and staring at your stuff, and you don’t know how to let it go. That stuff is not real. It’s over. It’s gone. There’s nothing. There’s no future. There’s no past.

There’s just now happening, passing through, but it can’t pass through you anymore, so what do you do? You play with it. “Oh, I don’t wanna be like that. I’d rather be like this. I gotta get rid of him so I don’t have to deal with that anymore.” You just get right in there and try to play around with the garbage you stored in there to make it so that you’re okay when the new stuff comes in.

But you’re not okay, ’cause it keeps hitting your stuff, and so you try to manipulate and control it. No wonder there’s anxiety. No wonder there’s tension. That’s all there is, isn’t it? Come on. And so you literally build a concept. That’s what happens. You take this whole mess that you stored in there, in the mind, in the heart, in those vibrations that are higher than form, but they’re not consciousness.

How do you know? When you feel love, you know it. When you feel hatred, you know it. When you feel fear, you know it. Who knows it? The same you. That’s the self. But you built in there this mess that you’ve collected over the course of your life, and now you’re not okay. You’re not okay. So what you need to do is figure out what you can do to manipulate the world outside of you so that when it comes in, it doesn’t hit your stuff, so that it feels more comfortable when it comes in, and you think that’s what it means to have a nice life.

Well, there’s this word called surrender, which is if you had let go of the garbage… You collected every single thing that ever bothered you, you stored inside of you. Didn’t you? Dr. Freud. What a silly thing to do. If you store everything that ever bothered you inside of you, you’re gonna be bothered, and you are.

And then the next event, which is… All these are not surrender, all right? The next event is go out and manipulate people, placing things in front of you so that when they come in, they either don’t hit your negative stuff, or they hit your positive stuff, or they don’t hit anything. But the point is I am busy trying to make it be the way I’m okay for it to be.

And how small you were, you said you didn’t do anything. You didn’t make the body, you didn’t make… Go back to that part, right? And, and now there’s a doer. Now you’re a doer, aren’t you? You struggle to make it be the way you want and struggle to make sure it’s not be the way you don’t want. Buddhists say all life is suffering.

That’s why. Because you’re not okay. You’re struggling to be okay, and sometimes this stuff matches. It doesn’t hit your stuff, you feel better, but it has nothing to do with who you are. You’re the ones in there noticing that you’re not okay or noticing that you feel better. There’s no such thing. You, you’re Sat-Chit-Ananda.

You’re eternal ecstasy. That’s the nature of your being. But it’s not what you see when you look down there and you see all the garbage you collected. I think it’s really neat, and psychology teaches it, that you then take all those pieces and you try to glue them together into what’s called a self-concept.

Here’s who I am, the person that didn’t like this, that does like that, that had this experience, that wished it didn’t have that experience, hopes it doesn’t have that experience. You build an I. Is it the true I? Of course not. Every one of you watches your ego. You know you have one. Do you have an ego? Do you ever feel defensive?

Ever feel self-conscious? Ever feel needy? You have a thing that got built in there, and you defend it to say, “This is who I am.” It is not who you are. Do you ever notice you’re defensive? Answer me. Well, then is it… You’re not defensiveness. You’re noticing the defensiveness, and you give into it. You try to defend yourself.

Defend what self? The self doesn’t need defending. It’s been here from the beginning of time. It created all of creation. But you made this little house out of your stuff, and that’s what it’s made out of, out of stuff that didn’t make it through. And you built a self-concept, an ego, that says I, I, and it’s either scared or so shy.

And you think that’s not ego. That’s ego. That’s a shy ego. And you build this thing. I don’t care if it’s weak or strong or high or low or whatever, right? You built a fake you inside, and now you present that to the world, and you try to defend it and make sure everybody agrees with you. “Oh, I love how you are.

You’re just exactly what I want.” How do you feel? “Oh, I can’t stand your guts,” they say. “If I even say a word, it just freaks me out.” Oh. It’s none of it’s you. And no one agrees, by the way. You don’t even agree tomorrow about what you wanted yesterday, all right? It’s just one thing happened, and it changes.

Surrender means letting go of that. Letting go of what? Of the ignorance of thinking you’re the doer when the whole universe is reality, and you just experience a little piece of it, but you got all screwed up because you couldn’t handle it. And so you built this castle inside of you that says, “This is what I am, and I want everyone to like me,” and, or whatever.

Surrender. Where does surrender fit in? Surrender doesn’t mean, “I want to eat ice cream, but I won’t. I’ll be disciplined, I won’t.” It doesn’t mean you should eat ice cream. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practice discipline. What it means is it’s way bigger than that. That’s like dealing at a surface level is ridiculous, right?

Why do you want to eat ice cream? Why do you want to argue with somebody? Why do you want to get win all the money and get to travel? Because I’m not okay, and these things I think will make me be okay. That’s why. If I’m okay, I don’t need anything. Right or wrong? But I want my vacation, I want to meet somebody who takes care of me, and I want this, I want everyone to respect me, and I want to get the royal prize, and I want to get, you know, everything, right?

I want to feed my ego because it feels better when it’s getting what it wants. Are you sure? Yeah, I’m pretty sure. And it feels worse when it ain’t getting what it wants, and it feels really worse when it loses what it think it wanted when… I don’t even know how to talk about it anymore. It’s hard living in the air, isn’t it?

It’s not supposed to be. You’re pure consciousness. It’s God expressing himself and creating the universe, and you get to experience that part of the dance that you’re experiencing. It should be ecstasy all the time. But it’s not. And so what basically happens is surrender, even in the pseudo-spiritual sense, is seen as I need to do things to please God.

I need to do things to be okay. I need to do things to get rid of parts of me, right? Ultimately, you will find out there’s nothing to do. There’s nothing to not do. It’s because you built this pattern inside your mind that you’re trying to figure out. Like, here, how’s this? You are God. You are. Your consciousness is the pure, unadulterated God staring down at what you collected inside your mind saying, “I want to know God.

I’d like to know God. What do I need to do to know God?” How about nothing? How about letting go of the ignorance that you collected inside of yourself so you get to know who you are? Big difference, isn’t it? Ultimately, it is about surrender. Total surrender. What Christ meant by you must die to be reborn, he loves to use the word surrender.

Let go of yourself. If you let go of who you think you are, you will find out who you are. The great masters, man minus mind equals God. Do you understand that? That’s why. It’s not that you don’t have a mind, you intellectually think of things, great things. It’s beautiful, right? But this personal mind that built a false image of yourself, who says it’s false, you’re God looking down at this stuff.

It’s like a light is shining on something, and the light thinks it’s it. I’ve been shining there for so long, I’m this woman. Which one? That one over there. No, you’re the light shining on it. It’s, it’s unbelievable. You’re not anything you think you are. You are what’s in there, aware, and surrender means that.

That is the level of surrender. Okay, okay, I got it. Let go. Of what? You. That’s how to be reborn, as Christ meant, the deepest teachings. Let go of the personal self that you built out of ignorance inside of you. And so what’s the path to surrender? Many of you have read The Surrender Experiment. In China, of all my books, it’s the best-selling book in China.

For whatever reason, the Chinese people really like The Surrender Experiment. What’s The Surrender Experiment? It is what I experienced when I tried to do what we just talked about, this understanding that if I let go of this noisemaker inside who’s telling me what to do because I’m not okay, and I just constantly let go of that stuff, it falls off, and that’s what The Surrender Experiment is.

It falls off. Not you rip it off, not you renounce it. You just don’t go with the ignorance that’s going on inside your head. And people ask me, “Well, how do I know that it’s wrong?” You don’t know anything. You just let go of the personal self, and you’re gonna find out that life unfolds. How? The same way it makes babies, the same way it makes the galaxies.

I just don’t understand how you can ask me, “How do I know it’ll unfold okay?” Because you mean by okay what you want. How do I know it will unfold? Because the planets stay in orbit and the… I did that in the beginning, didn’t I, right? Because everything else in the universe manages to keep going for 13.8 billion years, all right?

And everything is making everything. It has nothing to do with you. So letting go of the ignorance of you, of this ego, of this, this false thing that you built in there, is an experiment, and I encourage you all to play with it. Not push it, not freak out, just, “I don’t want it to rain today. Why’d it have to rain on my birthday?”

There’s some ignorance for you. It doesn’t know it’s your birthday. Do you know that? And eventually you wake up and you realize, “I don’t need that going on inside of me. I don’t need to suppress it. I need to let it go.” If it says, “Why’d it rain on my birthday? I feel yucky inside,” relax. Let it go. It’s an ignorant statement.

Why are you storing that inside of you? And that’s the experiment, and that’s what surrender is, right? As I mentioned, that Penguin Random House, who published The Surrender Experiment, it’s its 10th anniversary, and they were kind enough, beautiful enough to say they wanna put out a 10th anniversary edition of the book in hard copy, and it has an extra chapter in it that wasn’t in the other book.

It’s coming out August 18th, so you all are welcome to play the surrender experiment all over again, all right? Now that you understand what we’re talking about. We’re talking not about renunciation. We’re not about denial. We’re not talking about any of that. We’re talking about do you see that you built this ego inside yourself that’s causing you to suffer?

That likes things and doesn’t like things, that wants things and doesn’t want things, that’s afraid of yes or no. You built that in there. It was your will that held on to those patterns. There is no glue in there. I can guarantee you there’s no super glue, there’s no duct tape, there’s just emptiness inside.

Everything comes in and it passes through. But you resisted. You clung to things and held onto things or pushed things away, and you built this model inside yourself of the stuff you stored. Surrender is the willingness, not… You can’t do it immediately, is the willingness to say, “I don’t want that inside of me.”

If I look at somebody and they’re a different religion or they talk a different language or whatever the heck it is, and inside of me says, “I don’t like them,” you don’t even know them. Plus, they were made out of those same atoms that pulled themselves together. The whole universe is exactly the same. Do you understand that?

So what is this like and not like? And you start looking at it with, again, I’m a nice Jewish yogi. What did Christ teach? “You who is without sin throw the first stone,” right? “Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.” Every single thing he taught was surrender, was letting go of yourself, and that’s true of the Buddha, and that is also true of the Kabbalah and the Jewish tradition.

The basic of all spiritual teachings from all the great masters is let go of yourself. Die to be reborn. Man minus mind equals God. So that’s what surrender is. It is not surrendering something out there. It is letting go of yourself. It’s letting go of the part of you that you built over time. Don’t, don’t feel guilty.

It’s, it took a long time to make that mess in there, okay? And it’s not easy to let go of. You just start doing it little by little. Little by little, things happen. You feel the vibration come in, and you feel resistance, don’t you? You feel closing. Your heart closes. Your mind closes. You s- you feel resistance.

What you do, and this is what it teaches in The Surrender Experiment, is as soon as you notice that you’re starting to resist, what do I do? Relax. And you will not want to do that. Do you understand that? The last thing in the whole world you wanna do is let go when you feel the tendency to protect yourself or resist or cling, you know, want something to go away.

You just learn to just relax. Just keep relaxing. Relax your shoulders, relax your stomach, relax your buttocks. Just relax. If you wanna do a mantra, fine. Wanna breathe, fine. Whatever you need to do, don’t resist. That’s what surrender means. Don’t be in there causing more mess. Let go. As it comes in, let go.

As it comes in, let go. And they write me from all over the world, their whole life has changed. Of course it did. You stop putting stuff in there. So if somebody walked up to you and wasn’t really nice, a friend of yours who had a bad mood, is that okay with you that they’re in a bad mood? No, they shouldn’t be in a bad mood around me.

That’s not respectful. Give me a break. Give them a break. And so you start to realize, fine, it didn’t feel good, but that’s just me. That’s just my garbage. Relax through it. Then the next time you see the person, you won’t feel negative. You won’t feel they owe you something or an apology or anything because you let it go.

Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do. Those are not just the words he said on the cross. That is about everything. That is the teachings. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what made you say what you say. You don’t know why you didn’t like this person or like that per- forgive them.

They don’t know what they do. They just have these patterns inside, and they’re lost in them, and they’re very powerful, and so people behave differently. Yes or no? What if you’re okay with that? What if you wake up and say, “I didn’t make the people. I didn’t make the universe, so I’m okay. I’m okay. I’ll let it go,” and just keep letting it go?

You’re gonna find out that you don’t have as much trouble inside as you would if you didn’t let go. Why? You didn’t store the garbage. And then I always close my talks like this. As you let go, as you let go because you’re not putting new stuff in, be aware the old stuff’s gonna come up. Why? In economics, it’s called a LIFO stack, last in, first out.

It’s an inventory type, okay? Those of you who understand business, it’s a LIFO stack. If you push stuff in, that’s the last thing that came in. It’s gonna keep coming out and talking about it all day. But when no big thing happens today, the other stuff starts coming up over time. Why? Because it doesn’t want to be down there.

You’re a very great being. The stuff you shove down there doesn’t want to be down there, but you keep pushing it back down when it comes up or trying to create situations so it doesn’t come up. You got it all backwards. You want this to go away. You want it out. You want to be free, liberated, jivanmukta.

You’re a great being. As you let go of the stuff, then your conscious is not distracted by it, and next thing you know, you elevate. You don’t elevate by reaching up when you have an anchor down. If you have all that stuff anchoring you, all your past garbage and all the junk that you keep protecting, have fun reaching up, because you ain’t going anywhere very fast.

And if you do, it pulls you right back down. Do you understand that? Let go of the anchor, and it goes up by itself like a hot air balloon. Let go of the tethers that tie it to the ground. Don’t keep putting more air in it and bouncing up and down. If you let go of the tethers, it will go up by itself.

That’s what you’re dealing with, with surrender. You’re willing to let go of the things that are holding you down. Don’t worry about going up. Next thing you know, you’ll think, “Wow, why do I feel so much better? I feel this energy flowing inside of me.” We have a name for it in yoga, Shakti. Ah, it’s a beautiful name.

You start feeling this energy rushing up inside of you day and night, all the time. It opens the self, and you feel all this joy, and if things happen you don’t like, you see it for a moment. You see the tendency to resist. You let go. Just let go. At first, let go. But does that mean you don’t do anything? No, it doesn’t mean that.

Surrender does not mean you don’t do anything. Surrender means you don’t think you’re the doer. You interact with what’s happening. You bring your consciousness, caring, love, service down because nothing’s blocking you, and you try to deal with what’s unfolding in front of you to help everybody, to help the situation, not to help you.

But what you’re doing now is, “I can’t handle it,” you try to change it. “I want it another way,” you try to get it. When you let go of yourself, that’s not what happens. It’s not that you don’t interact. You do interact if it needs interaction. The fact that you don’t want it to rain on your birthday doesn’t need any interaction.

It’s just stupidity. You know what I mean? Or the fact that somebody said something you didn’t like, it reminded you of your father. That’s you. That’s not them. Let it go. You just keep catching on that I can let go, I can let go, I can… That’s surrender. Surrender means letting go of the ignorance, letting go of what’s holding you down.

So thank you for listening. I hope you feel the deep passion I feel that you can see what I’m talking about. It’s how you free yourself. You don’t free yourself by getting what you want. You free yourself by noticing, “Why do I need anything? I live in a miracle. I live in a miracle.” Every moment is a miracle.

Where do the flowers come from? The quantum field. We take walks every morning. There’s these wild flowers along the way, little, tiny… How’d they get there? The quantum field. God creates these beautiful flowers. They just come out of nowheres. It’s, it’s worshiping you. God’s worshiping you. He’s worshiping himself by creating creation, and you’re in there in between.

Ah. I don’t want it that way. I don’t like it. I don’t like it. So all right. You’ll work with these things. 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.