Tami Simon: Welcome to the Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at michaelsingerpodcast.com.
Michael Singer: Mm-hmm. Jai guru dev, jai masters. At some point in your growth, you really come to see the mind. We use the analogy that a fish doesn’t know it’s in the water because it’s never been out. That is its environment. I’m not trying to demean you, but your mind is your environment. And if you haven’t realized that yet, wake up.
You live in your mind, period. 99.99% of every human being that was ever born lived in their mind. Well, don’t they live here on the planet? Not really. They live in their mind. They live in what they like and what they don’t like, what they believe in or what they don’t believe in, and what they want and what they don’t want.
That’s not here on the planet. The planet doesn’t know anything about that kind of stuff, does it? It’s just this ball spinning through space and doing its thing for 4.5 billion years. But no, you don’t live on the planet. Make me cry when I say it. I just want to know, do you really understand that? You don’t live on the planet.
Your body does, but you don’t. You live in your mind, and it’s just thinking. It just thinks. It creates thoughts. Is there anything wrong with that? No. Nothing wrong with rocks, nothing wrong with trees, nothing wrong with water, nothing wrong with mind. But you don’t live in it. It’s not your reality. It’s just talk.
It’s just noise. It’s just something in there talking to you. I don’t like that. Who said that? Your mind did. You didn’t say it. You heard it say that. It walks around, “I wish this would happen.” Who said that? It is literally a talking machine. That’s what it is. It’s nothing else. It’s a vibration of energy that makes noise.
It’s a noise maker. Okay? The trouble is, the noise it makes makes sense to you. You actually listen to it. If it just went, “Quack, quack, quack,” it’s like a mantra. You’re fine. Not gonna bother you one single iota. Understand? Quack, quack, quack. The trouble is it says, “I don’t know. I’m scared. I don’t know if I like that.
Well, what if this happens? What if that happens? I’d be so scared.” It doesn’t talk like that. Well, then no wonder you’re scared. It’s talking to you about being scared. What if it said, “I’m fine. I’m always fine, no matter what happens”? What if your mind said that? “No matter what happens to me, I’m gonna be fine.
I’m just gonna be totally fine, and I’m gonna be fine from now on.” Okay, fine. That’s that. That’s a lot nicer. It’s still mind talking. Positive thinking is a very good thing. Hear me? I’m, I’m never talk against it, right? But it’s still mind talking. You’re still listening to mind, but it’s a much nicer mind, okay?
If you’re going to have a mind talking to you, have it say nice things. I, I’m not kidding, right? It can say anything… All right. I used to do this way back in the, in the early ’70s, right? We’re gonna do an experiment. Let’s see if you’re capable. I’m gonna grade you. All right? Close your eyes, and I want your mind to say hello. Over and over again.
Is it doing it? Mm-hmm. Wow. You mean you have control of your mind? What a novel concept. You can tell it what to say. You, you can use willpower just like you can your… All right, what if your arm did this all the time? In these old lectures, I say, “Well, you’d be good at painting.” All right? But no, you see, no, no, there, there’s something wrong with that arm.
It’s not supposed to do that. It’s supposed to do what I tell it to do. Your mind is exactly the same. It is not supposed to just be in there making up its own words and its own talk and doing whatever it wants, no more than your arm is supposed to be doing this up and down. You go to a doctor immediately, wouldn’t you?
So now close your eyes again. Say hello again, over and over again. Is it doing it? That’s all I wanna know. Isn’t that amazing? Is that– No, come on. Stop for a second. Who’s you? The will, the consciousness, the awareness of being. All right? When I talk to you and tell you to tell your mind to do something, your willpower made your mind do it, at any point, at any time you want.
Your mind is to be your servant. Your arm is a tool that you get to use. Correct? Your mind is a, an amazing tool, an amazing tool. Mind, what is two plus two? Four. And usually it’s right. Not always. Especially as you get older, I’ll tell you right now. And so, y- it is a tool. Oh, I’m gonna cry. It’s just like your body.
It’s a tool. Your arm, your this. Your mouth can chew. It’s nice. Good, good boy. All right? Your mind can think. That’s what it can do. Can your arm think? Can your foot think? Can your nose think? No. Your mind can think. What is thinking? Listen to me. There are vibration rates of energy that create the universe.
And scientists, Einstein, matter is energy, energy is matter. Difference is just a temporary state. Water is ice, ice is water. The difference is a temporary state. That is exactly what Einstein’s saying. You don’t have to be a great physicist. Is it not true that water is ice and ice is water, and the difference is just a temporary state?
Yes or no? Yes. See how brilliant you are? You understand physics, right? Well, what’s the difference? The vibration rate, that’s the only difference. How fast are the molecules moving? They’re the same molecules. They’re the same atoms. In ice, they’re vibrating much slower so they can bond together more. In water, they’re vibrating faster.
In steam, in vapor, they’re vibrating even faster. But they’re all H2O molecules. Okay? That is what Einstein is telling you when he says matter is energy, energy is matter, and the difference is a temporary state. But we can understand that when our senses can see it, but he’s dealing with something what the senses don’t see, what the mind is capable of seeing, which is…
And I go through it all the time with you guys, because it is very important that you understand stuff. Every single thing you’re looking at, you know is atoms. You know that. You understand there’s these tiny little submicroscopic things of which the periodic table has, I think, 98 natural and 108 total, who the heck knows?
So a very, very small number. So basically, test what you’re looking at. That’s what Einstein’s saying. Look past what your sensors are saying, all right? But what do you mean it’s energy? It’s not energy, it’s atoms. Well, we look deeper than that, and what do we find out? It’s not atoms. I mean, it is atoms, just like there’s ice and water, right?
But the atoms are made up of something. Electrons, neutrons, and protons. You know that. Okay, well, that’s still not energy. That’s things. Electrons, neutrons, and protons, and they bond themselves together, covalent bonds, you’ll learn all this stuff, right? And they make atoms, and they bond together and make molecules, and then, hi, welcome back.
But it’s the same thing. Please understand that. Just exactly like ice is water and water is ice, your body is electron, neutron, protons. What about my body? Where’d my body go? No, you’re ri- You’re just not looking at what’s really happening there. It is electron, neutron, proton. Right or wrong? And you care very much about what it looks like.
Oh, yeah, but what a hell of an electron. That’s, that’s gorgeous. Is it the truth that I’m talking or not? And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. That’s truth. So basically, exactly as ice is water and water is ice, your body is electrons and protons. The building is electrons and protons.
The air is electrons and protons. The sun is electrons and protons. All the galaxies are electrons and protons. Just like ice is water and water is ice, the entire universe, physical universe, is electrons and protons. Okay? Well, that’s still not Einstein saying matter is energy, energy matter. That’s electrons and protons.
Yeah, but they have these things called super colliders over in France and Switzerland, right? Miles long and they giant… Billions, billions of dollars of equipment were built so that they could take those protons and aim them at each other at the speed of light, at tremendous speeds, and billions of them aiming at each other.
And every once in a while, one of them will collide head-on with the other. And what happens? They have these giant, giant sensors. They’re unbelievable. They’re like, not as big as the Empire State Building, but really big. All right? As I’m saying, like, you know, thirty, fifty feet, hundreds of feet high. And when that collision takes place, for a billionth of a trillionth of a microsecond, that proton breaks apart.
And there are things that make up the proton, subatomic particles. They gave them names. Who knows the names? Quarks, leptons, bosons. This is, you’re talking about quantum physics here. That’s what quantum physicists study. What happens when you break apart a proton or a neutron? Electrons are primary, they don’t break apart.
But, but they aim protons at each other, and you end up with up quarks, down quarks, charm quarks, strange quarks, and bottom quarks, and top quarks. That, that’s literally… I remember them. I like knowing that. It’s kind of fun to know. That, that’s what’s down there, all right? And did you know that two up quarks and a down quark make a proton?
And two down quarks and an up quark make a neutron? So it’s like these are the pieces. Okay, fine. That’s still not energy is matter, matter is energy. That’s still things, particles, right? That break apart. Why do they stay apart for, like, a trillionth of a second, nanoseconds? Why? Because there are forces that held them together, and those forces will put them right back together.
The moment they break, its natural state, boom, it bonds. Just like water is H2O molecules, right? Break it apart, it’ll put back together. So, but we’re still not down to energy. Well, then they got there, and I love it. I love it to pieces. Mathematically, they can’t actually see it, but they got down and saw that the big question that came up, it happened really very early in the 1900s, I think, is light itself, a photon, right?
Is light a wave or a particle? Is it a bunch of particles bouncing together that make up light, or is it a wave? And they found it had properties of both. If you studied it from one angle, it was particles. Studied it from another angle, it was waves. And they went further down and they found out that ultimately it’s waves.
I don’t wanna get into the details. Ultimately it’s waves. They found out that light is a wave. You know something they found out? So are protons. So are f- quarks and leptons. Every single thing is a wave. There’s no such thing as a particle, no more than there’s any such a thing as ice or water or steam.
They’re just different states, right? Down there in the quantum field, all it is is an irritation, an agitation of a field that could be still, but it has an agitation in it, and that agitation’s a wave, and those waves put themselves together and appear to be quarks, leptons, bosons, atoms. It’s all energy.
Wow. Who else thought that? The yogis. It’s nothing but light. It’s all made of light. Who else said that? The Bible. In the beginning, God said… Oh, turns out to be true that that quantum physics says it’s made of light. That’s all there is, is waves. Just wavelets down there putting themselves together. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.
Hi. Welcome back. Right? But you’re not here. Okay? So that’s what mind can do. The fact that your mind, the human mind, has figured that out, that’s why you were given a mind. Okay? It’s a gift like you have been given an arm. And so basically you get to the point you have a mind. The mind is different. Okay, what’s…
Okay, I’m gonna do it. I’m a yogi. What’s the difference between those quantum irritations, agitations in a field that end up making physical form? Where is mind? I don’t see a mind. Well, that’s right, because mind is a higher vibration rate than those vibrations. Even the beginning quantum vibrations, all right, are slower than the mental plane.
It’s all vibrations. It’s all vibration rates. And you start from the grossest, which is physical form, and then you come on up, and you end up with a field of energy that’s vibrating so fast that it can put itself together in a trillionth of a second, it can go across the galaxy, right? It’s just… It, it’s phenomenal.
It doesn’t have to follow the physical laws, does it? Mind doesn’t follow the physical laws. It just can do anything at any time and make sixty thousand things at once and can travel faster than the speed of light. It has no limitations. Okay? So mind is just a high… Mind, in, in yoga called planes. There’s the physical plane, the Shakti plane, the Prana plane, right?
Emotional plane, whatever you wanna call it. There’s a mental plane. There’s a plane of ecstasy where you go into that plane and… And then there’s the formless that you can literally get back before there was light to where it’s total stillness, and the Buddhists call it empty mind. The yogis call it Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
But it’s just vibration rates. That’s what mind is. It’s a vibration rate. Well, what happens when the physical form vibrates? It makes proton, neutron, proton all pull themselves together and they build this. What happens when, when the mind vibrates? In yoga we have a name for those vibrations, vrittis. I don’t talk about yogic terms.
I don’t wanna. You don’t have to understand any of them. You just have to go there. I’d rather have you experience it than know about it. That’s just mind. But they’re vrittis. They talked about them thousands and thousands of years ago. They’re vibrations in the mind. If the mind is not vibrating, it’s silent.
It’s still. Was it stupid? No. It’s brilliant. It’s just not exercising, expressing. It’s brilliant right then. At any moment, boom. Express it. Here, right now, see a boat. Don’t even close your eyes. I want you to see a boat. You see a boat? Yes or no? How long did that take? Whoa. Now go build a boat. See the Queen Mary.
See the Queen Mary. See it? Giant, beautiful cruise ship, big thing. How long did it take to make it? Billionth of a second. Go build it. That’s the difference between the mental plane and the physical plane. The mind is vibrating so fast it can build anything. There’s no limitations at all. God, I hope you’re hearing me.
That’s a plane of reality. How do you know that there was a boat there when, when you said build a boat? Because you are not the mind. You are the awareness of the mind. You laughed earlier when I said the mind doesn’t stop talking about all kinds of stuff. How do you know? Go to a therapist. “My mind is bothering me so much.
Ever since she left me, it just won’t stop talking.” “All right, I’m gonna be a very good therapist.” Say that for a few moments, and then you say, “Okay, now, just a moment. How do you know?” What do you mean how do you know? I told you, my mind’s driving me crazy. How do you know? I’m in here. I see it. It’s driving me crazy.
How do you know? The mind doesn’t know itself. You’re the conscious being who is aware that your mind can be stratosphere or your mind can be nice and your heart can be closed. Can your heart be closed? Can your heart be open? Yes or no? How do you know? It doesn’t know. You are the knower. You are the consciousness, the awareness of being.
That is the highest vibration. That is the highest, okay? That’s, that’s why Baba moved on and said, “Meditate on the self,” meaning your awareness of being. You who’s in there aware that your foot hurts. You who’s in there aware that you’re hungry, that hunger is there. You who’s aware that your mind is talking.
You who’s aware in deep meditation that the mind’s not talking. I love it. You come back from deep meditation and you sit there and say, “I went so deep. It was so quiet.” How do you know? Because you’re there. You’re always there. You’re the consciousness, all right? So now we have consciousness being aware of the vibrations of mind.
Is your conscious aware of your fingers and your hands? Can something…? How do you know? Because you’re conscious. Are you conscious of the physical plane? Are you conscious of the physical plane? Are you conscious of the mental plane? Are you aware that your mind is doing something? Of course you are. Have you ever felt love?
That’s not mind. That’s the emotional plane. “I’m so in love.” How do you know? That’s a deeper question than why. I don’t care why I’m in love. How do I know I’m in love? Well, I wasn’t before, because I’m in here. Can you be in love one minute and then not in love the next minute? How about the next second, next nanosecond?
Somebody looks at you the wrong way, or says the wrong word, or doesn’t say the right word, or doesn’t look, or looks at somebody else the wrong way. I tell you, it can change in a billionth of a sec- look at the power of mind and emotion. These are higher vibration rates, and they can change very quickly, and then, and y- your will has the ability to make them do what you want.
Now, mentally, you see that. But if I say to you right now, “Open your heart, feel love,” you wouldn’t know how to begin. Something has to stimulate you so that it opens. There has to be some outside thing that when it hits you, or a thought can do it, okay? When it hits you, that your heart responds by opening.
But if I just say to you, “Open your heart right now. Open now and turn into love.” By the way, you are capable of doing it, exactly the same as you’re capable of saying hello, goodbye. Look how easy it was to make your mind do what you want. The moment you wanted it, the minute you exercise will, you didn’t even try to…
You don’t even know you’re exercising will. It’s just instantaneous. Boat. Hello. Goodbye. Not hard. You don’t see you do that with hard. Now closing it you can do that right away. But so you’re understanding that you’re conscious of different levels of reality, different levels of vibrate. They’re all reality.
Is your mind part of reality? Ask that of a physicist. “No, it is not. I don’t see it. It’s not made of protons, neutrons, electrons, or anything like that.” You, “No, no, you don’t have one.” It’s very funny, right? They can’t see it. Why? Because they don’t have instruments that can pick up that subtle rate of vibration.
They didn’t used to be able to pick up X-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, and then when they were able to pick them up, they just made them part of the electromagnetic spectrum. They’re normal. It’s not another plane of reality. It’s just a different vibration rate. Someday, and I’m nice and old, and I’m so happy I will not be here-
they will be able to pick, they will be able to pick up your thoughts. I guarantee you, they’ll be able to pick up your thoughts. They’ll have instruments, mechanical, that they’ll sit there and pick up your thoughts. Isn’t it interesting that you can pick up your thoughts? Whoa. That’s quite an instrument you have that picks up your thoughts.
Your consciousness can pick up every vibration in creation. Because that’s God dwelling in there, that the creator of the universe is consciousness. Okay? So now we’re back to mind. So what is mind? It is vibrations on the mental plane. It’s vrittis, vibrations on a mental plane. Can the vibrations be high?
Yes. Oh my God, I’m so happy. I just feel so much love. I think I’ll always feel this way. Can the mind do that? Yes, it can. Oh my God, I’m so depressed. I’ll never be happy again for the rest of my life. I can’t even imagine. I don’t even know why I’m still alive. Can it do that? Answer me. Yes. Same mind. Wow.
Could that possibly be different vibration rates of energy, some higher? Ice, steam, water, it’s the same thing. It’s just different vibration rates, but this is a plane that’s higher just to begin with, and it can vibrate at high levels and at low levels. My mind feels so heavy lately. It feels like, you know, it feel weight, carrying the weight of the world in your mind.
Okay? That’s pretty neat. Or it can be, I just feel elevated and high. I feel high. I feel low. Vibration rates of energy. So there’s mind. It’s just a thing that can vibrate at different rates, and the neatest part is your willpower, your will, has the ability to make it do what you want it to do. All right, so what happened?
What went wrong around here? No, seriously, you can’t explain it. You can’t understand it. Okay? Vibrations come in from the outside, don’t they? I told you, I, I, I feel I’m repeating myself. You do not look out through your eyes. You’ve never, ever looked out through your eyes, ever in your entire life. Light bounces off objects, photons.
They hit the light-sensitive atoms and molecules in your eyes, which stimulates the nerves, the optical nerves, which send the vibrations back, and you see it in here. You’re not looking at me out there. I’m coming in to visit. That’s why they’re called senses. They’re sensors. They pick up what’s out there.
You don’t go out there. You stay in here. They come into you. So you’ve got a flat screen TV in there that by the time those vibrations from outside come in, all five of the senses come in, you’re the consciousness, the self.
Why do they call it the self? What I’m gonna call you who’s in there watching, you who’s in there experiencing, you in there knowing that you know that you know that you’re in there, all right? It’s yourself. How’s that? The essence of your being is sitting in here receiving the input that came in through your senses.
And so you’re like sitting at the console back there watching the flat screen TV that has five different vibration rates, and you’re picking them all up, and that’s what’s going on. Do you know that? I wanna ask you a question. Is this strange to you? Do you understand that’s what all the science is teaching you?
But it’s, this is spiritual. Why? All of a sudden, you can’t have a problem with the world. You’re not even out there. You’re in here, all right? Why do you think, watch this relationship, something comes in from the outside, does it come back to you purely so you see exactly what’s there? Not a chance in the world.
Why? ‘Cause it has to pass through mind to get to you. And all of a sudden, something coming in, it’s a temperature, say, 90 degree, I mean, 95 today, right? So 90-degree temperature’s coming in. What is that? That’s a vibration rate of energy that’s vibrating at 95 degrees. It’s just physical form vibrating a little faster than it was before, okay?
It’s just all vibration rates of energy. So those vibration rates are coming in through your senses. You pick them up because of the senses. If you didn’t have senses, you wouldn’t know there was a world out there. Comes in through your senses, and it paints the picture in here. But in order to get past the physical plane and to come in, it passes through the emotional and the mental plane to come back to the consciousness.
And guess what those planes do? I don’t think you need to guess. They kinda distort the stuff as it comes in, right? So all of a sudden, it comes in as a vibration rate of temperature, and by the time it passes mind, “Oh, my God, it’s so hot. I can’t handle it. I don’t wanna live in Florida anymore. This is crazy.
It’s all the global warming, and I don’t know what I’m gonna do about this stuff.”
How you doing? Ah! So you can’t handle temperature, eh? Have I told the truth? That’s what’s happening. So the physical plane comes in, it just is what it is. It’s hot when it’s hot, it’s cold when it’s cold. Remember we quote the Zen, “Water’s blue, flowers are red, grass is green. Now go home, grasshopper.” That’s the teaching.
Things are what they are, and they come in. Why are you making this thing out of them? Why do you need this mind judging everything, and this liking and not liking, and… You got a little bit of that, liking and not liking? That doesn’t come from your body. Believe it or not, it does not come from your body.
But what if, what if something hurts? If, if it hurts a little bit? People… Hey, there… I was gonna say football. The people who play hockey out there, with stick, ugh, and beat the hell out of each other, right? Rugby, right? I’ll bet you they feel not so good a lot of times. And it kind of hurts a little bit, and they go right back out there.
Right? So yes, it can hurt. It can feel pain. It can feel not good. It can feel hot. It can feel cold. That’s fine if you’re okay with it, if the mind is okay with it. Like football players, they are okay. They’re used to it. They got soaked in these, you know, tubs, and they get, for a week before they can go play again, and they go right back out there.
Hey, stop for a moment. You’re a quarterback in the NFL, okay? You all… I don’t care if you’re into it or not. You’re sitting in the quarterback in the NFL. And then there are these 11 people on the other side that want to kill you. And they have padding, and they just bash each other and do everything they can to get to you and slam you to the ground, and you come back every play for more.
What is that telling you? I can handle it. I didn’t not feel it. It came in. My mind did not complain. My mind did not say, “I’m out of here. How dare you hit me that hard?” Did it? It got back up and said, “Okay, I’ll do better next time.” The one thing they say about the quarterbacks, I like it. They say a quarterback must have a very short memory.
Ever heard that? Why? Because if they get slammed to the ground on the last play, that better not be on their mind this time. Right. Okay? If they threw a pass and it got intercepted, and somebody ran for a touchdown, that better not be on their mind when they come back out, or they ain’t gonna throw a very good pass.
They won’t be able to be here now. Mind. See it? It has to pass through your mind to get to you. Wow. If that’s all I ever taught you, I’ve done my life’s work. Wow. But you know it’s true, don’t you? Has to pass through your mind to get to you. And what can the mind do with it? Oh my God, anything it wants. Got it?
All right. So why is it negative? Because it is negative. Isn’t it? It tends toward the negative. It tends toward there’s a problem here, and I better solve it. Things are not okay, and if they are okay, they won’t be. If they are okay now, they weren’t. Come on, am I telling the truth or not? I know you’re nice spiritual people, positive-minded.
Is it not true that that’s the tendency toward mind, and you have to work with it for it to not be like that? Okay, why? Okay, it’s not difficult. Mind, in its natural state, is mind. It’s just mind. It’s a field of energy of a very high vibration rate, and it vroom, can go the whole universe. It’s just like there’s a physical universe that goes on forever.
There’s a mental universe that goes on. They all go on forever. But what happens? So now the physical plane comes in. It has a vibration. I teach this all the time. It has a vibration rate. Rattlesnakes don’t come in the same as butterflies. They have different vibrations. Everything has its nature. You didn’t do that.
You didn’t make the rattlesnake be scary. It was meant to be scary. It wants to be scary. Why do you think it’s rattling? Shh, get away from me. And the butterfly lands on you and is so sweet and fun, pretty, okay, and the flowers are really nice. Everything has a vibration. That’s its nature. I’m like, there’s nothing wrong with it.
Everything has its nature. And when it comes in, its nature comes in, it passes through emotional, mental, and then comes back to you, and you get to experience its nature. A rattlesnake, whoa, you experience it, okay? You don’t get weird about it. You don’t sit there and say, “I don’t…” Listen to me. Everything’s coming in, you’re experiencing it, and all of a sudden, way back in here, the conscious says- I can’t say anything, but it’s just, it says, “I don’t wanna experience this.”
That’s the fall from the garden. I don’t want to have experienced this. Now, let’s, let’s go slow. I love that sentence. I don’t, I, me in here, the consciousness. Obviously, you experienced it. You’re back in there knowing you experienced it. All right? I don’t want to experience it. Well, by definition, you experienced it.
You can’t not want to have experienced it if you didn’t experience it. Be logical, okay? I don’t want what is to be. I don’t want that rattlesnake to exist. I don’t want to have experienced it. Sorry, Charlie, it does exist, but I don’t want it to. I don’t want Saturn to have rings. Wow, where did that come from?
That judgment, that resistance. Wow, that’s powerful stuff. Otherwise, the world… God created heaven and Earth, the whole world, created the universe, and he’s now– consciousness is experiencing what it created. That’s what’s going on. Awareness of being is experiencing what there is to be aware of. Don’t worry, you don’t have to experience it all at once.
Your senses are limited, right? You only see so far, feel so much, right? But what is, is what you’re experiencing. It’s supposed to come in, and you experience it. I’m telling you, you’ll get to a point you understand that is God experiencing the reality that God created. That’s what you’re feeling. Just there’s a moment in front of you, a moment in front of you, you get to experience that.
Y- you’re emissaries of God experiencing creation. You know, the consciousness is experiencing the part of creation that your senses are picking up, and it’s being all sent back to one consciousness, and it’s just this dance of creation, and you have a job. Be here now. Be here. Honor, respect, experience.
Just wow. What kind of experience, isn’t it, life? Who’s experiencing it? Consciousness. What’s it experiencing? Life. What’s wrong with that? Obviously nothing, ’cause it is what is, and you will never have it be other. Nothing that ever happened will ever not have happened. So you understand that that’s what happened.
What happened is, at some point, and I can’t say why. No one asked me, why would God resist God? I don’t wanna get into philosophy. But I will tell you that that happened, that consciousness is experiencing creation. At some point, something came in- And resistance was born, as opposed to total openness of experience, oneness.
They say yoga, they say when the experiencer, consciousness, and the experience, the object consciousness, become one. They’re just one. They’re just, it’s merging into each other. That’s a very deep state, okay? And that’s happens to you… You ready? Every one of you are ninety-nine point… I usually say nine. I’ll be nice.
Ninety-nine percent enlightened. What does it mean? If it means enlightenment, that everything comes in, and you experience it passes through and doesn’t touch anything or do anything, mind has no trouble with it, right? Ninety-nine percent of everything you ever experienced in your life did that. The trees, the leaves, the clouds, the dotted lines in the road.
Are you listening to me? I’m complimenting you here, right? Before I wasn’t. Now I’m complimenting you, okay? Right or wrong. People you don’t know, cars that drive by, ninety-nine percent of it. What do you do with it? Do you not experience it? I do experience it. I don’t resist it. I don’t grab it to keep it, and don’t resist it to make it go away.
It comes in and passes through. I’m in the garden. I’m, I’m just experiencing reality. Fair enough? Okay. At some point, you in there didn’t do that. The awareness was aware of it. It got to me, but I didn’t want it to happen. I didn’t want it to have happened, or I don’t want it to go away. Buddhists call it clinging and resisting.
I either resisted what came in or I clung to it. Not so hard to understand, is it? When you do those two things, guess what happens? It stays. What stays? The vibration that came in is energy. It came in, and your will is the most powerful energy in the universe. Look how powerful you are to make your mind do what you want.
You can do all kinds of things. You resisted that energy, and you are more powerful than any energy that exists, and you have the ability to stop it from coming in further. You can’t stop it from having happened, but it doesn’t have to come all the way back. I end up always talking about this because you’re so close to understanding really deep stuff.
This is what’s happening. Have you ever had an experience that was so beautiful, just rare, like a once in a lifetime type experience, love or the sunset or something, that you said, “That was so deep, it touched me to the depth of my being”? I felt like I was in the presence of God. You were because there was nobody in between, right?
It blew me away. It blew what away? Your body blew away? No. Your mind did. It made it in the whole way. It touched me to the depth of my being. That means the vibration came in and went right through, and your experience or you, the consciousness, merged with it. I can’t even talk, it’s so beautiful. How come when there’s deep intimate loving, just merging, just…
That your eyes are closed. Don’t you wanna see what’s going on? No. I wanna go bye-bye. Can you go bye-bye? Y’all know what going bye-bye means, right? Pretty rare, isn’t it? No resistance, just total, whoa, melt in the experience. That’s what it’s supposed to be like all the time. Literally, I know it’s hard to believe.
Things come in, they pass through, and you experience them. You can bring them back. There’s memory in there, too. Mind has this ability to memory, but they don’t get stuck in there. You didn’t hold them in there. I know. Have you ever had experiences that are still bothering you even though it happened a long time ago?
You have experiences, and then they keep coming back, right or wrong. Why? There must be some glue in there that hel- No, there’s only you in there. Nobody’s in there but you. It’s a single occupancy apartment. You’re the only one in there, and if it stayed in there, it’s because you resisted it, and when you hold on to it, it stays.
And I always make fun, have some fun with the exact point in a talk. Isn’t it interesting that the things that bothered you the most, you decided to keep? Didn’t you? You stored that stuff in there. Why? Because I couldn’t handle it. Well, that’s why you should let it go if you don’t like it. No, I couldn’t even handle experiencing it.
But you did experience it. Yeah, but I didn’t want to. Suppression, repression, denial. Is that not the foundation of Freudian psychology? Isn’t it beautiful? We’re not talking abstract. You’re in there doing that stuff. So one thing comes in, and whatever reason, the vibration was too strong. It was whatever it was, it distracted your consciousness to focus on it, and when you focused on it, it stayed.
If you don’t focus on it, it goes right through. But if you focus your consciousness on something and you concentrate… Was that concentrated orange juice? Yes. It’s concentrated, and when it’s concentrated, it’s power, and it freezes, and it holds it in there, and you hold things in there, don’t you? And things is a funny word.
Maybe there’s as many stars in the sky as how many things you’ve held in there over the course of your life, and they’re still in there, and now things come in and hit them. Hit what? I thought it went right through. No, you blocked it with this stuff you held in there. It doesn’t go right through anymore, does it?
It has to pass your filter system. I like it. I don’t like it. I can accept it. I can’t accept it. Don’t talk to me that way. I’ll never talk to you. I can’t believe you said that to me. That’s not the self saying that, I’ll tell you right now. The self experienced what the person said. Your mind said, “My mother talked to me that way.
I’m never gonna put up with that again. You’re talking just like my ex. I can’t believe you.” Whoa, that didn’t make it all the way through, did it? Now you understand mind. Do you understand what’s going on? And I started a whole discussion by talking about that, about mind, right? Now you understand there’s nothing wrong with mind.
It’s brilliant. It can do anything. It’s what you did with it. At some point, you did it. Mommy did this, you couldn’t handle it. Daddy did it, you couldn’t handle it. Parents got divorced, couldn’t handle it. You got divorced, couldn’t handle it. Or something came in that was really beautiful, and you want it to stay, and it didn’t stay.
Couldn’t handle it. Anything you hold onto leaves an impression. Why? ‘Cause you wanted it. You held onto it. It left an impression. This field, remember the field was just an empty field of mind. Now it’s not empty anymore. It basically got stuck in there. That’s your stuff. It hit my stuff. You use those terms.
It hit my stuff. What stuff? This empty plane. No, I stored stuff in there. What stuff? The stuff I didn’t like. Yes or no? Yes. And now things hit it. And even if the outside’s not hitting it, I have a thought that hits it. One thought can hit another thought. Yes or no? Yes. Wow. I love talking to you. What’s that telling you?
One, you’re messed up. And two, you don’t have to be I love the fact that I did it. That means I cannot do it. It’s not like you did it to me. You didn’t do it to me. You did what you did, and then I did that to me because I couldn’t handle what you did. I didn’t like it. Do you understand how close you are to the deepest teachings that have ever been taught?
The Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. All life is suffering. I think you understand that, right? Why? This guy came back 500 BC, meditated, starved himself, went through pos- oh my God, right? To try and learn why is there suffering? Why is there so much suffering? And he came back. Imagine going to the monks that they didn’t go do what he did.
You know, they didn’t know philosophy, right? Religion. And he came back. He said, “I found the cause of suffering.” They said, “We know the cause of suffering. Old age, sickness, dishonesty, fear. We know there’s causes of suffering.” He said, “No, there’s one, one cause of all suffering.” That’s the second Noble Truth.
There’s one cause of all suffering, covers all people, covers all time, covers every single thing that ever was or ever will be. What is the cause of suffering? Preference, desire. The fact that your mind has a way it wants things to be means you’re gonna suffer. I don’t want to die. Okay, suffer. I don’t want to get old.
Suffer. I don’t want a little zit on my cheek when I go to the prom for high school. Suffer.
Any preference is a thing of mine. God has no preference. Not my will, let thy will be done. Okay? God created the whole universe, alpha to omega. It’s just reality. Reality wins. The trouble is, in our mind, because of our past experiences, we held on to things, didn’t we? And now I prefer red over blue. Now I prefer to…
Oh my God, look, look, I have an age mark there. I’ve been counting them. There’s one more. What are you doing? You’re creating preference. Like the Buddha said, translated as the causes of every desire. I use the word preference. Zen patriarchs have used the word preference. Why? Because you all think desire is lust.
Preference? Oh, now you’re getting a little subtler here. What is a desire? A preference. You can’t have a desire without a preference, can you? So preference, you can relate to that, can’t you? Have some preferences? You suffer because you don’t get them. You suffer when you get them and they go away. You suffer when you get them and you’re afraid you’ll lose them.
Come on. If you really, really, really need something so much, aren’t you afraid it might betray you? Everyone betrayed? Everyone betrayed. So you held on to that, so now you get what you want and you’re afraid you’ll be betrayed again. There’s no end to it. Okay? You’ve held onto this stuff, and now everything comes in, hits it, and now you have a filter system in there of preferences.
Preference for, “I want this to happen. I don’t ever want that to happen again.” And there you are. So now you have this filter, and now you’re afraid of life. You’re afraid of people, you’re afraid of life, you’re afraid of food, you’re afraid of everything, all right? Because you’ve gotten sick before. “Are you sure I can eat this?
Is it vegan? You sure? How vegan?” Okay? Which is fine. It’s fine. Just be aware that if, let’s say, you eat it, and then you find out it’s April Fool’s Day. Just kidding, it had meat in it. Ah! Oh, my God. You weren’t doing that before you knew it had meat in it. What’s with you? Mind, mind, mind, mind, mind. Dear mind, hi.
The cause of all suffering is preference, is it not? Well, what’s Buddha’s third Noble Truth? Because that was pretty deep, the second one. To end suffering, end desire. And that is one of the most misunderstood ones. Why? Because they think it means renunciation. It means have a desire. It’s natural to have a desire, we already said that.
But don’t give into it. Don’t deal with it. Don’t have desires. Well, what do I do if I have a desire? Make believe you don’t. It’s called suppression, repression, denial, and that is not the spiritual path. That’s not what it means to end suffering and desire. If you end suffering, you try to end suffering by suppressing your desires, no, you’ve kept it.
It will come up. It’s like, like, a, a computer virus. It just grows and then it come, right? It goes down there and does weird things and gets worse. It’s terrible. Suppression’s a terrible thing. Well then, if suffering’s caused by desire, preference, and I have these preferences, I’m supposed to get rid of the preferences.
No, you don’t want that. No, you don’t want that. But I do. No, you don’t. I like it a lot. Okay? You want to go to God? All right, don’t give into your preferences, but love God. That’s an oxymoron to me. How do you love something that you have to suppress and it’s causing all these problems inside of you?
Are you listening? That is not how you end desire. That’s not how you end preferences. You work at the root. There’s a root of preference. What? You had experiences in your life that you suppressed, that you held onto. If you want to release preferences, release those suppressions. Release the stuff that you held in there and now more can pass through naturally.
I was going to a flower show and I had this rose. It was just the most beautiful rose that could ever exist. I had it in my garden, and I had nets around it and everything. I’m gonna take it to the flower show, and I’m gonna win first place and the most beautiful flower that could possibly be. And I go in there in the morning, and this ladybug took a chomp out of my rose. How you doing?
Oh, are you in that state of deep depression, fear, and anxiety because a ladybug took a chomp out of your rose? No. You have a preference that the rose be perfect, and there not be a chomp in it. If you didn’t have the preference, and you were some New Age hippie doobie, you’d go out there and say, “Wow, look at that ladybug.
Wow, look. W- oh my God, it’s like a decoration on a rose. I wanna take a picture of it.” Totally different attitude. No preference. Acceptance. That’s the opposite of preference, is acceptance. You don’t suppress preference. You don’t get rid of preference. You accept reality, and if you didn’t accept it in the past, and you stored non-acceptance down there, and now it’s still down there, let it go now, and that’s your entire path.
And that’s… You don’t get rid of preferences. You get rid of why you have preferences. Acceptance means I’m open. I’m open to, okay, this is what’s happening, the life did whatever it is. But that’s not what you did your entire life. You didn’t do that your entire life. What you did was anything that didn’t feel good, you said, “I don’t want this to happen ever again.”
And it felt good, “I don’t ever want it to go away.” And you built these samskaras, called samskaras, these patterns in your mind and heart that are blocking reality. That’s what they are. They’re blocking reality. If you didn’t want reality to happen, good luck. And that’s what’s going on, s- and that’s how you get rid of preference.
You don’t get rid of preference. You let go of the reason you have preferences. Why do you like green or, or you have purple on your, on your, your shawl here, right? What if you walk out of here and somebody says to you, “Who do you think you are, Christ, wearing a color like that? Don’t ever do that again.”
You won’t put that thing on without getting scared of being rejected. That’s how easy it is to develop a preference. It comes in and you didn’t, you didn’t like it. It didn’t feel good. Good. Fine. You don’t have to fight it, right? Just let it pass. You let it pass through. It doesn’t matter. Somebody doesn’t like you.
“Hi. Hi.” You don’t have to be weird, right? They don’t like you, just smile inside, not outside. They don’t like when you smile outside when they don’t like you, right? They think you’re mocking them. No, no. Just inside, “Hi. Bye. I’ll see you again later.” You don’t have to resist. And if you don’t resist, it doesn’t get stuck because it’s not stuck.
It’s you holding it there. Wow. We’re going pretty deep today. You hear me? That is what you stored in your mind and your heart, these blockages. If you want to be free, if you want to practice the, the deep teaching, the great way enlightenment is not difficult for those who have no preferences. But don’t be busy having no preferences, ’cause that’s a preference, and a very big one. And now, “Oh, my meditation not working. I still have preferences. I’m embarrassed. I want… I don’t even want to see my preferences. I really want them. I won’t say anything. I’ll make believe, spiritual ego, make believe I’m okay.” No. Let go of the stuff you stored from your past that says things are not the same.
That color is this… I told you, there’s no color. I can’t do it all. There’s no color. Nothing has color. Do you know that? Light has color. The wavelengths of light, the electromagnetic spectrum, they have color. They have temperature and color, the same thing. Color and temperature are the same thing. Vibrates a certain rate, shows up as a color.
We see it as a color. Another rate, we see another color. That’s what’s going on. So it is the light bouncing off that shawl. That shawl has no color. But the particular wavelength of light that is blocked by the molecular structures of that shawl bounce back at me, and those are the wavelength I see. And so you catch on.
Will you please just let go of these preferences? Because then you suffer if you don’t get what you want. This is spirituality. This is the deep, deep understanding. And like purification doesn’t mean never swearing. Purification means there’s nothing in there blocking the reality that passes through.
You’ve purified your mind. Now you can use it for what you want. Otherwise, it gets stuck in there and it starts blabbing. Why is it blabbing? Because it’s trying to release the energy you stuck in there. Go block the Colorado River with the Hoover Dam. I guarantee you it’s still trying to get through. Get the tiniest little hole, they gotta bear patch it.
You can’t block energy. Hear me? And if you do, it better be an opposing force of energy. So you’ve blocked all this energy in there. You stored it. It tries to release all the time. That’s why it talks the way it talks. Even when nothing’s wrong, something’s wrong. Something has to be wrong because it has this feeling under there because it’s blocked all this energy.
Let go of that blocked energy, and you will never have that feeling again. You just feel love. You feel joy, feel excitement, enthusiasm, passion about everything. I’ll stop with once somebody said to me, “Well, the Third Zen Patriarch, you quote that, Mickey, all the time. The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. But what do I do if I have preferences?” And I, I played. I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what we’ll do.” And I got special dispensation from the Third Zen Patriarch to change this. I’m gonna change his famous Zen, the most famous Zen that’s ever said. Okay? And it’s gonna say, “From now on, the great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything.”
That beautiful? You’re welcome to use that. You’re welcome to live that way. I like the ladybug. I love the ladybug, and she gets to eat. And I’m honored that she took a chomp out of my rose, okay? But then you can’t take it to the flower show. Then I won’t go to the flower show, or I’ll take it to the flower show and everybody laugh at me and that will be fun.
The great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything. Have we communicated at all here? Do you understand mind a little bit better than you did? And why it’s the way it is, and that you have the ability to liberate yourself, to free yourself? Okay. 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.
