E212: Living Every Moment as Its Own Reward

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: Hmm. Jai guru dev, jai masters. One of the most beautiful and often misunderstood aspects of your growth on the path is the understanding between doing, not doing, or renouncing the fruits of your actions. That’s one of the main themes: renouncing the fruits of your actions. It means — and you can’t renounce or refuse the fruits of your action if you’re not acting.

So the whole thing about renunciation and solitude and separating yourself out from life is not that. It actually talks — there’s two ways. One is the way of sannyasa, of renouncing life, and the other is the way of participating in life. When you participate in life, in both cases, it’s talking about renouncing the fruits of your action.

We don’t know much about that in the West. We do things for a reason. We do things that we’re motivated to do. We plan, we want to get something. We’re trying to get something. Now, if you wanna get something that’s low, you know, harm to others, and get revenge and so on, now, that’s one thing. But even to go on to get something where you wanna help others, you wanna do things, you want people to recognize that you’re a good person, prove yourself, et cetera, et cetera, that is not renouncing the fruits of your actions.

That is still saying that I’ll act, that I have a reason for acting. Any reason. I have a reason for acting, I have a motive. That’s the key word. I have a motive behind what I’m doing. Now, we are used to thinking there can be good motives and pure motives and impure motives and so on. The deep spiritual teachings are that there is no motive.

There’s no motive. You’re acting, and that’s the end of it. Here, now, means you act. We’ll talk about what you do and why you do it, but you don’t do it to get a result. You don’t do it not to fail. You don’t do it to succeed. You don’t do it to please others. You don’t do it to earn money. You don’t do it to get famous.

That’s all motives. That’s a motive behind your action. And you’ll find out as you grow on the path, any action that’s taken with an intent of personal gain, of motive, is not going to attract to yourself what you think you really want. Or maybe it may attract what you think you want, but it’s not gonna end up being what you want.

Why? Anytime there’s a motive, there’s stress. Anytime there’s a motive, there’s a concept that it might fail, the concept that it might not work out the way you want, and then you end up working harder. You’re not working harder to serve, you’re working harder to get. That’s the difference. When it talks about renouncing the fruits of your actions, what ends up in the end is you’re not doing anything for yourself.

You don’t have to renounce. This renunciation and denial and, you know, giving things up is very early in the path. As you grow spiritually and you learn to let go of yourself, you find out the only motive is letting go of yourself. The only motive is to free yourself from your desires, your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your concepts, your views. They bind you.

They’re all things that you’re doing for yourself. We don’t think that way in the West. We think, if I have hopes — but I know what you hope. You hope things will be the way I want. Mm-hmm. I have dreams. I dream that someday my ship will come in. You don’t dream that it won’t. So you don’t realize you have this motive behind your actions, and wherever there’s a motive,

you’re dealing with yin-yang. You’re dealing with success and failure. You’re dealing with the mind thinking, am I doing it right? Will I get what I want? Did somebody else get what I wanted? I’m jealous. I’m insecure. There’s a lot of junk that comes behind motive. But you’re taught you have to have motive.

You have to know what you’re doing and why, and then kill yourself to try and get it. And you’ll find out, at different stages of your life, that you look back and you realize it didn’t happen. You didn’t get what you really wanted. It’s called midlife crisis. You look at, I worked hard my whole life. I tried, I gave, I did everything I could, my family, but I’m not fulfilled.

I’m not whole. I’m just somebody who did good. All right. I was reasonable in my actions. But that’s not what the Gita teaches. The deep teachings teach: renounce the fruits of your action, not don’t act. And that’s what I’ll talk about, ’cause it’s so confusing to the Western mind. Why would I act if I don’t want anything?

How do I not want anything and be motivated? So I started off by telling you, no, if you have motive, any motive, any motive, eventually you’ll catch on that the really deep teachings say that even enlightenment will cause stress if that’s how you’re measuring yourself. How long did I meditate? Did I know my mantra properly?

Did I miss something? And you end up judging yourself based on your personal self, and the personal self ain’t going anywhere. I’m talking to you deep. So the concept of renouncing the fruits of your actions says what? There’s a world unfolding in front of me. How do you know? I’ve discussed that many times with you.

It’s there. And it’s gonna come in. Why does it come in? Because you have senses. The whole idea was that you interact with the world out there: the interaction with the world, other people, business, money, this, that, every single thing. And it comes in. The question is not, does it come in? The question is, are you trying to get something from it?

And the answer is, if you will look, you’re gonna find out, yes. I’ve always wanted to get something from it. I always wanted, you know, name, fame, relationships, finances, cars, people. Every single thing you’re doing, come on, has a motive behind it, and that motive will destroy you when it’s said and done.

I want a relationship. Why? I have this motive, I need a relationship. Most people don’t do all that well all the time with their relationships. They’re not that easy, right? And I’ve discussed at length why. Because you think a relationship, in essence — I’ll do a short term. You think the relationship you want a relationship with,

it really is, this is how I’ve grown up to be, and this is what I like and what I don’t like and what I want and what I don’t want. Okay? You wanna be on my page. I don’t want you coming to me saying, well, that’s not what I want. Well, then I don’t want you. You don’t want what I want. Your motives have to be the same as mine.

Your objectives have to be the same as mine, and you have to behave the way I would expect you to. I don’t wanna have you behave differently tomorrow than you did today. I don’t want you telling me that you love me and then you come home one day and say, well, I had a bad day, I don’t know how much I love you.

No, no. Get outta here. You’re supposed to be the way I want you to be. Right or wrong, you’re supposed to be the way I want you to be. That’s why I married you. That’s why I’m hanging out with you. That’s why I’m in relationship with you, because we have this synergy. That’s what you… All right, but I’ve discussed this a million times.

That person is not — you take a breath, I’m not gonna do it again. All right. I love doing it because you can’t deny it, right? You have had your experiences. They programmed you. They programmed your mind and your emotions as to what you like, what you don’t like. That was a person that had the same experience as you from the day they were born?

Totally different experiences. So you happen to meet. You’re fine. You spend six months together, three months together, wonderful. You get to the point where you realize they’re not going to be the same all the time, ’cause their background, all of their programming that went into building their ego and building their self-concept, even your superego,

or Freud, right? Society has taught you. Society has taught you about right and wrong. Well, based on what? What part of society you hung out with, what your parents told you, what your preacher told you, what the rabbi told you. So everyone’s programmed differently. So basically you come down to understand it’s not going to be the way you want.

So if the objective of your behavior patterns is to get things the way you want — your finances don’t always turn out the way you want, your relationships don’t always turn out the way you want, right? The movie doesn’t turn out to be the way you wanted it to be. Things are not going to be the way you want.

Why? I’ve done it a million times. Because inside of you is the sum of your learned experiences. And what’s happening outside is physics, chemistry, psychology, science. That’s what’s happening out there. So what’s happening outside of you is the sum of its learned experiences. What’s happening inside of you is the sum of your learned experiences.

I didn’t go too deep. Do you all understand that? Does that make sense to you? Those two are not the same. You grew up in Connecticut, and then you had this mother and that father, and you did this and did that. The world in front of you didn’t know anything about that. Wasn’t even there. So everything is in accordance to its nature, and what’s going on inside of you,

your psyche, is in accordance to the experiences you’ve had, and everything’s different. And then the outside is in accordance to the experiences it had, called cause and effect. It rained yesterday, so now it’s muddy. I don’t want it to be muddy. Too bad, it’s muddy. Why did it have to be muddy? Stop it. And you just catch on that the outside is the outside, marching to the laws of science, the laws of the outside world, laws of physics, chemistry, et cetera, and psychology.

That’s part of it. You interact with other people. Okay? And inside, it is not about all that, is it? It’s about what happened to you. If you get that, it changes your life. It changes every minute of your life. If you get the fact that, of course, what’s going on inside of me is different. I’ve had totally different experiences than everybody else.

I can’t expect people to be the way I want them to be, and to act the way I want them to act, and always match. Not a chance in the world. If they tell you, I’m just like you, they want something from you. They have a motive, ’cause they are not like you. And if you think the world outside is supposed to be unfolding the way you want it to — if I’m behaving, I’ll get what I want.

The right people show up and the money will show up and this will happen and that will happen. No bad things will happen. How you doing so far? And so you catch on that if you work with motive, any motive, it’s because you’re not okay inside, and you’re trying to figure out how to make the world outside of you,

people, places, things, everything, be a way that you feel better. And that’s your motive, right? And you’re taught to have that as your motive. You’re taught that if you don’t have that as your motive, you’re not gonna go anywhere in life. And the deep, deep teachings teach you, if you have that as your motive, you’re going to suffer.

Why? Because it’s not going to happen that way. I don’t care how strong you are, how powerful you are, how rich you are. Have you noticed that nowadays there’s some really, really rich and powerful people? Do you find that you wanna change places, go through what they’re going through? Doesn’t always work out

so good, does it, for any of them? Okay. It doesn’t lead to happiness. What doesn’t? Trying to get what you want does not lead to happiness. It leads to stress, it leads to insecurity, it leads to jealousy, it leads to a sense of inferiority. If you don’t understand that, okay, there’s your foundation for your spirituality.

Well, what’s my alternative, not to work? Why bother? Why bother, it’s not gonna work anyways. No, that’s not what’s taught. What’s taught is exactly what I started with: act to the best of your ability with all your heart. Put every moment of your Shakti, your energy, your spirit, your everything, into what you’re doing, and renounce the fruits of your action.

That is so non-Western, it’s hard to even talk about. It says, why would I bother? Because that’s how you liberate yourself. That way you’re serving. You’re not hanging out with yourself, you’re giving of yourself. That’s true giving, when you give of yourself. But if you expect something in return, it’s not giving.

It’s taking. And if you actually learn this deep, deep teaching, like I said, the entire Bhagavad Gita is about that topic. It has all kinds of chapters, all kinds of things, but it’s about act. Do your absolute best all the time, the best you can. Then renounce the fruits of your action. Don’t do it for any reason.

And so what it comes down to is you realize at some point, that’s liberating. That’s freeing me. I don’t have to carry, but I did that hard work, why didn’t you gimme a raise? How come he got the corner office and I didn’t get it? What are you doing? You’re creating tension and anxiety and fear and insecurity

by saying, I am the one who decided what I wanna do, and I’m the one who decided what’s supposed to come back. It’s all coming inside of me, right? How do you know what you want from your actions? I wanted a new car and they gave me a house.

It’s like, you’re doing everything. I don’t know how to say it. You’re doing it all within your head. You are deciding what to do, you’re deciding what you want from it, and you’re deciding whether you like what you got from it. In other words, you’re caught inside your mind, and so you’re all yourself, doing everything for yourself.

That can’t ever lead to anything but anxiety, fear, and tension. You know you’re afraid of failing. You know you’re afraid that people won’t accept you. You know you’re afraid that they didn’t respect what you did, deep inside. From the moment you wake up in the morning: I don’t wanna fail. Many people are afraid of meeting new people, ’cause it’s like a chore.

Oh, you have to do it all over again. I have to impress them. I have to let them know that I’m good. I have to let them know that I’m worthy. I have to sell myself. Never feel like you have to sell yourself. You better feel like that, ’cause that’s what ego is. Ego is something you made up because of your past experiences, and now you need to get the outside world to agree that that’s who you are.

That’s what the self-concept is. It’s called a self-concept, a concept of yourself. It’s not the self. The self, I told you, it’s so easy, you’re in there. Hello. But you’re busy doing stuff in there that causes tremendous anxiety and senses of fears and insecurity and so on, as opposed to, I am in here, and there’s a world out there.

Well, what should I be doing? What’s in front of you. There will be things put in front of you every moment of your life. Would you please do your best to raise them, to love them, to serve them? Just do what you can to help what’s unfolding in front of you be higher. I used to teach this. The highest life you can live is that every moment that passes in front of you is better off because it did.

A smile will do it. A nice word will do it. Reaching your hands out to help, giving, they can all do it. But don’t expect anything back. That completely negates the entire gain that you get from acting. All right, well, I went to this church and I fed them and I did all this, and no one even said thank you.

What’s wrong with these people? And that’s not giving. That’s taking. That’s ego, right? It’s just amazing. It’s amazing that we don’t catch on, that it creates tension and turmoil both in you and in who you’re supposedly serving, because you’re not serving, you’re taking. And they don’t behave the way you expect them to.

Whether it’s finances, relationships, anything, you get upset, you get disturbed, ’cause it didn’t match what you expected. So what’s the answer? I told you the answer is not don’t act. That is not the answer. The answer is, can you get to a place inside where it’s clean enough that you can give of yourself completely every moment?

Just take everything that’s in your heart and soul and just serve what’s in front of you and expect nothing in return. Not even think about the fact that you want something in return. I told you, you say you’re inspired by your job. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a job you’re inspired by? Then why do you expect to get paid?

You should be paying them, that you get to go to work and be inspired all the time. It’s like going to camp. You paid to go to camp. All right, but that’s not how we do it. If they don’t pay you what you think you deserve, then I’m leaving. But I thought you were inspired. I did. I love the job. So they didn’t respect me enough to pay me what I expected.

You better smile, ’cause you know you’re like that, right? So we’ll get later to talk, we’ll talk about how to not be like that. So which do you want? Do you want the tension and anxiety of trying to make everything be the way you want, and get back what you expect you deserve, and have people behave the way you expect them to, et cetera, et cetera?

I got dressed up so you’d respect me. Yeah, but there’s a costume party. What? Did somebody tell you? How would you like to never screw up? Now, there, listen to me. How would you like to never screw up? That’s not gonna happen ’cause you got it right. It’s gonna happen ’cause you serve to the best. I love getting dressed up, and I couldn’t care less whether anybody likes what I’m wearing or not.

I enjoy what I’m wearing, and that’s it. I don’t expect anything back. I don’t expect anybody else to think I’m neat. There’s nothing I am expecting back. That goes for money, that goes for acceptance, that goes for relationships. Why am I in a relationship? Well, I’m in a relationship because I have this love, and it’d be fun to share it.

Well, what if they don’t accept it? I don’t care. I’m feeling love. What am I gonna do, stop feeling love ’cause you don’t accept my love? No. I won’t hang out with you. Fine. You don’t want the love, that’s fine. I don’t have any problem with it at all. Okay. I’m not doing it to have a relationship with you.

I’m doing it to express the perfection that’s inside of me. And that’s what it comes down to. Getting closer and closer to the deep teaching. Why would I work and try and do all this stuff, and relationships and finances and kids and every single thing? Why would I put my whole being into it and not expect anything back?

Because the action itself is your reward, if you come from the deepest place inside of you with nothing challenging, no fear of results. Think about how free that is. I’m not expecting anything back. Not, well, I do expect, but I know I’m not supposed to. Now that’s expecting something back. All right? There’s literally nothing inside of you that thinks the interaction isn’t done when you’re done serving. When you’re done giving everything you can, then the next moment comes, and there’s no one clinging to the last moment.

No one expecting anything from the last moment. No one judging the last moment. How free is that? You’re free to go to the depth of your being with nothing challenging you. There’s no fear of failure. There’s no fear of not being rewarded. What if you’re able to give your entire being, to the bottom of your heart and soul and all your mind and everything, to the moment you’re in, and then you don’t look back?

I don’t expect anything from it. I don’t want anything from it. I don’t even know there is a “from it.” I thought the world’s unfolding, and you interact with it, and that’s the end of it. It’s done. That is liberation, and that’s why it’s taught the way it is in the Gita. It’s the essence of karma yoga. You do the best you can.

You renounce the fruits of your actions, right? But I don’t even like the word “renounce,” ’cause that’s something you’re doing. It’s like, I have a need for the fruits, but I’ll renounce them. The deep state is, you’re fulfilled. Go sit down and play an instrument that you love, with yourself there. Play it and just merge into the beauty of creating that music and hearing it.

Okay. If you get up and say, boy, I wish other people were here, because that was really beautiful, right? I wasted it. Whoa. Now you feel depressed. You see? Do you understand? You now have lost. You created a situation where you gave your whole heart and soul into creating this beautiful music, but you lost, because you weren’t satisfied with the act of playing, with the act of expressing.

And it boils down to, you express. Say, okay, so you’re in a relationship and it’s really, really working just beautifully, and you’re in intimate moments and you’re melting into each other. You wanna lose yourself, and once you lose yourself, there’s nothing to talk about. It’s the most beautiful experience you ever had.

It can touch you to the depth. If somebody touches you to the depth of your being, what do you want back? That’s what you wanted the whole time, that something could touch you that deeply. Do you understand that? I said to you, do you think you know what you want? What you want is to feel whole and complete and self-fulfilled.

That’s just joy of the music, joy of the dance, the joy of action, whatever it is. It is so fulfilling, you don’t need anything back. You wouldn’t even think of getting anything back. You sit there and you’re hugging, and you do a kiss, right? What is supposed to happen? I used to challenge people. I don’t talk about relationships much that way, but I challenge people to say, what is the purpose of a kiss?

What is the purpose of a kiss? If you answer anything other — there is none other than the experience. You don’t understand anything. It is whole within itself. The very act of hugging and being there and kissing is fulfilled. It’s gestalt. It’s over. You’ve done it. It’s that, yes, that’s what I was looking for my whole life, to melt.

Not, did you like it too? Did I do it wrong? If you are expecting something back, you ruined it. And if you have a second kiss, guess what? It’s not gonna be the same as the first. Why? Because it’s not the first. Everything’s different. Have you noticed that, the law of diminishing returns? Don’t try to make the second kiss be the same as the first.

Oh, it was different. You don’t love me as much anymore. You honor and respect what’s happening. And if you’re fulfilled with it, you don’t even think there’s a reward. You don’t think there’s anything back. You don’t even look. Why would you look? You’re too intoxicated. And I’m not talking about kissing, I’m talking about going to work.

I’m talking about children. I’m talking about going to soccer, picking kids up. I’m talking about every single moment of your life can be lived like that, can be completely fulfilling. But not if you expect something back. If you’re driving the kids to soccer and your wife’s turn it was to do it and she didn’t show up, so you’re driving them, and you’re just pouting the entire time.

I had another thing I needed to do. Now, that’s really nice, a lot of fun taking the kids to soccer, isn’t it? There has to be no motive for you to feel whole and complete and fulfilled all the time. There has to be no motive. My motive is to serve. My motive is to give. My motive is to experience. My only motive is to fully experience the moment I’m in.

Be here now. That’s what it means. Can you imagine living like that? Can you imagine if you’re open enough that every single thing you did blissed you out? You understand that, everything? But what if you go to a funeral? It’s a different kind of bliss.

It’s a way of feeling death. It’s a way of sharing that someone has departed, learning, growing, that every single thing has a beauty to it. Everything. But if you have a preconceived notion about what’s supposed to happen, then it doesn’t have a beauty. You’re judging all the time, and you’re comparing, and it’s just — please listen.

You can’t get anywheres like that. You can only go into tension and anxiety and fear and insecurity and resentment and jealousy, ’cause you have a way you want it to be and it’s not going to be that way. We started that way. You made up what you wanted to be, didn’t you? Unfortunately, no one knew what you made up, and you’re not going to convince them.

And if you do — and I said there’s really powerful people nowadays. They are trying to make things be the way they want them to be. A lot of people suffer from that. You understand that? Not anybody in particular, but that’s what happens with powerful people and rich people. They think they have the right for things to be the way they want, and in doing so, they’re not happy.

There’s no way they’re happy. Look around, read the papers. Things aren’t happening the way they want. Okay? And so basically they have anxiety and tension and insecurities and so on. They’ll show it. That’s what they have, and then they fight with everybody and everything. Is that what you wanna do with your life? I’m telling you, getting what you want is so far oversold.

It’s ridiculous. Giving the whole of your being with everything you’re doing, without expecting anything in return. Are we getting it? That sounds really nice. That sounds like playing music that’s blissing you out and not caring if everybody listens. You know, think about it, right? You wrote something beautiful. It touched your heart. It may come back, it may not, but I’m not gonna come down, right, because nobody heard it.

And the same thing goes with a sport. You know, they teach you that really in all sports, but I’ve seen them really teach it with quarterbacks and in pro football and college football, and with baseball. Let’s say it’s the bottom of the ninth, the last out. The coach doesn’t tell you, you better hit that ball.

The coach tells you, really, they tell you, make believe you’re in the sandlot when you’re playing with the kids. Literally the coaches will tell you that. Same thing with the quarterback. They say this with the quarterback, right? A quarterback should have a short memory. Why? Because if he threw an interception the last time he was out,

he is not gonna do well if he’s thinking about that. There has to be no motive. Oh, I’m gonna cry, ’cause we’re doing really good here. You understand that? You can understand this. There better be no motive. I don’t wanna throw an interception this time. Get off the field, right? Because it’s gonna block your Shakti.

It’s gonna block your energy. It’s gonna block your ability to bring the best you have. Go to a concert, a recital, as a kid, and be worried about making a mistake. You’re gonna make a mistake. I don’t play the piano much, but I try to play some stuff that’s beyond me, right. And I notice when I get to a certain point, he still does it.

I get to a certain point, I smile, I always say this, where he messed up last time, he will mess up again. There’s not a chance in the whole world. And that goes for any athlete. That goes for, you know, the Olympic stuff. They are not supposed to bring their mental past into the present moment. It has to be down to a point where it’s just natural flow of energy, flow of Shakti, and then they can do amazing things, right?

They used to say, I think it was Ted Williams, that once explained — he was one of the best batters in all of baseball. He said that when he faced a pitcher and they threw a fastball, it didn’t come in fast. Some weird thing happened and it came in in slow motion. And you hear me, a lot of athletes will talk to you about that, that moment, that special moment that can happen, which transcends the personal, and you’re there.

You’re there. That’s what I’m talking about, being there. You can’t be there if you have any motive behind your action, because now your mind is thinking, what am I gonna get? How did I fail? Will I get it? Is it right? Okay, I’ll get it closer. Now you understand that that’s called renouncing the fruits of your action.

It’s said a little differently, but it really is saying, bring the best you have into the moment, but there better be nobody expecting something back, or that’s not the best you have. That’s being held back by your mind, by your concepts, your views, opinions, hopes, dreams, fears. That’s all the personal junk that

is there. And so it’s very beautiful to see throughout our culture, there are these very great moments that they understand, some people understand. And I thought it was beautiful that there are a lot of football coaches that teach their team yoga. They bring a yoga instructor in to help them get to that point, that they are able to let go of themselves more and more. Society’s understanding that it’s about letting go of the insecure self, of the personal self, instead of trying to get what it wants and serve what it wants.

So this concept, this notion of renouncing the fruits of your action, we’ve talked about it in circles all around so far. You getting a little closer now, right? It means liberation. If you renounce the fruits of your action, there are no expectations. But it doesn’t mean you don’t act. You do the best that you can.

Why? ‘Cause it’s fun. Because it’s exciting to do the best you can, isn’t it? All right, let’s say you’re a football player, college football player. You really like winning. I really, really like winning. Well, go play the fifth graders. See how much fun that is. Not fun at all. Much more fun to play somebody who’s really evenly matched with you and that brings out the best you have, right or wrong.

So it’s not about winning or not losing, it’s about the challenge of digging deep inside your heart, your being, and bringing the best that you have into wherever you are. And that’s what I really wanna talk about. Why can’t you be that way all the time? You were born onto a tiny little planet in the middle of nowhere.

I say that all the time. There’s 300 billion stars in your galaxy. Nothing you’re doing has any meaning anyways. Wake up. Come on, man. There’s one star out there, 1.3 million Earths fit inside that star, and you care what’s going on on this stupid planet, and you’ll only be here for what, 80, 90 years? And what you do is make complete anxiety out of yourself so you can’t enjoy it.

You have to have special moments for you to enjoy your life, and they do not come that often. You work all week so you’re gonna have a weekend. You work 50 weeks a year so you’re gonna have two weeks off. And boy, I can’t wait. What would you do the 50 weeks? What’s the matter with you? You should have just as much fun during those 50 weeks as when you take your vacation.

Otherwise, you’re wasting your life. Every moment of your life can be beautiful if you let it. But if you sit there and say, it’s only gonna be beautiful if I get what I want, you are gonna find yourself suffering. So that’s the secret. And again, that’s what’s meant by renounce the fruits of your action. So you learn that if you can let go of thinking you want something back — I’d rather have you understand you don’t need anything back.

The joy you feel from that kiss is inside of you. The joy you feel from the success, when you think you succeeded, there’s some energy inside of you, it rushes up. You get all this energy rushing inside. That’s inner energy. It’s not outside. How do I know it’s not outside? Because when you do that kiss, if you have to do the kiss and somebody turns around and kisses somebody else — oh, my energy went away.

Not for them. They liked it, both. It’s you. If you’re open, there’s this Shakti, this energy that rushes up inside. That’s life. That’s the joy of life. Don’t only allow yourself to have that because something happened the way you wanted it to. I have two ways I teach this, right? One is, don’t expect to get what you want.

All right? It’s not gonna happen. The world’s not gonna lay out there. The other is, instead of expecting to get what you want, increase the things you want. If you like this and only that, then you’re limited to liking that. What if you like this and that? How much even? Okay, you’re twice as likely. What if you like this, this, this, and that?

What if you didn’t like maroon, but now you like maroon and yellow and blue and orange? Well, man, you got it made. Who decided what you like? What an idiotic thing to do, to limit your joy to something you decided you like. Why don’t you decide, I like all the colors and I like all the people? They’re like flowers, they’re all different.

Some are really mean, they’re so cute, and some are really nice. Did you know that? Right? And it’s just, okay, fine. Just fine. And what if you have a job and somebody gives you at your job something you really like doing? Oh, that’s wonderful. What if I give you something you don’t like doing? That’s great. This is gonna be fun to do it.

I don’t like doing that. Oh no, instead I like doing this. I like doing this. Okay. I try to ask you, who decides what turns you on? You do, right or wrong? Look at me in the eyes. ‘Cause what turns him on turns you off. What turns you on yesterday turns you off tomorrow. Can it switch that quickly? All it does, mind just changes its mind.

I didn’t think I liked you, but now I do. Uh, no I don’t. And if you do, then you feel love, you feel joy, you feel excitement to see them. If you decide I don’t like them, then you feel icky to have to go see them. Who decided that? I’m gonna do it very quickly. Your past decided what you like and dislike. Take a breath.

I wanna make sure you agree. You’re programmed by your past experiences. If you had an experience in the past, it turned you on, you want it again. An experience in the past turns you off, you don’t want it again. You didn’t make up what you want or not want. They were experiences you had, and you were programmed by that.

You know where neurotic comes from? I had an experience that really turned me on. Then three days later, the exact same experience really turned me off. Then five days later, it turned me back on again. I can’t decide whether I want it or not. That’s why there’s so much trouble with decisions. You’re trying to see which ones — come on.

Can we do that? There’s a whole chapter in the new book about decisions. You are trying to decide what will turn you on. That’s how you make your decision. You know, you go to a department store — I don’t ever… I wear the same clothes all the time. But you go to a department store and there’s these mirrors, these 16-sided mirrors, and you put the clothes on, and you turn around and turn around.

Oh, no, no, no. What are you doing? What are you doing? The clothes need to fit or they don’t. Okay? This is not something that you need to be doing, the 16-mirror thing. You’re not trying to see if the clothes fit. You’re trying to see if it turns you on. You’re trying to see what you’ll feel if you wear those clothes. You understand that? That’s neat.

Now go and buy ’em, and then go to the party and have three other people wearing the exact same outfit. You’ll never touch it again. And so what you’re doing now is you’re saying, yes, of course, I like being turned on. True. Spirituality does not say there’s anything wrong with being turned on. Get turned on by everything.

Work with yourself to say, I love it. I love it. It’s not that hard. I’m born onto a planet — I started telling you that — I’m born onto a planet in the middle of nowhere, spinning around in dark, black, empty space. Not a very important planet. 1.3 million of ’em fit inside one star, and there’s 300 billion stars in your galaxy, and there’s 2 trillion galaxies.

Oh, I guess it really doesn’t matter what’s going on here, does it? In the realm of things, it’s kind of meaningless what’s going on here. If the entire planet Earth blew to smithereens tomorrow, a few other planets would change their orbit, and nothing else in the entire universe would even know you were here.

It liberates me to think like that. I don’t have to deal with anything. Are you kidding me? All right. Your one star is 93 million miles away, Miami’s 360, and you are worried about the fact that you’re cold or you’re hot. The driver in front of you is not driving the way you want. They didn’t use their blinker.

Catch on. Life is unfolding. So what you start by saying, wow, imagine how it was on Mars. There’s nothing happening on Mars. There’s nothing to do. There’s no place to go. It’s all just sand hills. You wanna trade places? Come on. And here, it’s exciting. There’s all these things going on. But you can’t do that, because your mind has been programmed by your past experiences to say there’s certain things that happen that turn me on.

That’s ’cause they turned you on before, and you want them again, and you expect it to happen again. What happens if it doesn’t happen again? Then you get disappointed. And you’re just playing around, making yourself a complete mess. Said a wise person? No. I said, renounce the fruits of your actions. The easiest way to renounce the fruits of your actions is to be in ecstasy with every action you do, so that the experience is whole within itself.

Nothing has to come from it. It was beautiful. You see it, right? Everything can be that. He said, how can everything be that? Because you decided which ones it is. No one else did. No, my father did. Yeah, your father laid a trip on your head. Now you’re programmed, and so now you’re afraid to act, or you’re purposely acting the way he said or didn’t say.

You have all these motives. You have all these issues. Instead, you sit there and say, the world’s unfolding in front of me. It’s been going on for a very long time. Every moment I’m having experiences. I might as well enjoy ’em. Why? Because they’re the ones you’re having. It doesn’t do any good to say, I wish I had a different one, ’cause you didn’t. Hear me?

That I’m gonna do — I have figured it out. I’m not having the experiences I want. Having all year, three or five years in a row, no day is the way I want it to be. But now I heard this inspiring lecture from someone saying, you know, visualize and think what you want, and it’ll make it happen over time. So now I spend the next three years of my life,

now it’s eight years of my life, trying to get things the way I want, so that if it’s the way I want for one moment, I say, wow, look how wonderful that is. How long does it last? Ever get a new car? How long does it last before it’s nothing? It’s nothing. It’s any other car. And now what have you done? You’ve wasted your life.

No, no, I’ve spent my life seriously trying to get what I want. You wasted your life. Why? Because the entire time that you say I wasn’t getting what I want — if you decided that’s what I want, you’d have the ecstasy all the time. What’s stopping you from doing that? What’s stopping you from saying, okay, I was programmed this way, it’s my neural pathways or whatever, but I’m in here.

And it’s stupid. I can’t have joy all the time ’cause it’s only if it happens to unfold the way I want it to be. I wanna have joy all the time. That’s what you want, by the way. I wanna feel love. I wanna feel joy. I wanna feel peace. I wanna feel total wholeness of being all the time. Very good. But then you put a limiter and said, yeah, I can be like that.

I was like that once before, so I gotta find what happened and make me be that way again, and stress myself out trying to make it happen again. Can you relate to that? What’s the alternative? I told you at some point I’ll tell you the way out. What’s the alternative? Take one look at that mind and heart in there,

the personal mind, the personal heart that’s programmed by your experiences, and say, I don’t think so. That is so limited. It’s so limited that I have to make happen again what turned me on once, and never happen again what turned me off. Now I have to struggle with all of life. No thank you. I think I’m gonna learn how to enjoy life.

Not only the life that I want. I’m going to learn to enjoy life. How do I do that? Expand your frame of reference beyond yourself. What does that mean? I told you, get off the planet. Can you get off the planet? Can your mind get you off the planet? You don’t have to be the astronaut. Your mind can take you off the planet, you know, travel.

Go travel from star to star and look back. I got a picture right there. If you walk in this door over there, there’s a picture of the Earth. It looks like it’s just a blank black eight by ten. People look at me like I’m weird. I look at it every morning, every evening, for so many years. I wanna tell you, all right, why? It is an actual photograph of the planet Earth from 2 million miles out, on their way to Saturn.

They turned around, took that picture. How can you have a problem sitting on a little ball of dirt in the middle of nowhere for a few years? And it’s kind of a nice ball of dirt. There’s golf and tennis and pianos and cellos, and there’s all kinds of people, and there’s computers and AI even, right?

There’s just so many things. There’s different colors and different shapes. And how many types of animals are on the planet? Thousands. Millions. Oh my God, it’s unbelievable, right? And there’s all this learning you could do. People came before you and they have all this knowledge. How can you not be having a good time here?

Because it’s not what I want. It’s not what I want it to be. It’s not what I expected it to be. It’s not happening the way I’d like it to be. It’s an amazing planet, and it’s miraculous that these things are going on. I once told you, your body is made up of what, 35 trillion living cells? I’m sure I don’t have the number exactly right, but if you wanna count ’em, have fun.

25 to 35 trillion living cells. They communicate with each other, they eat, they move, they do all kinds of things. What’s that? Somebody said thank you. If they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, your liver doesn’t work, your kidneys don’t work, nothing works. In fact, if one of ’em goes rogue,

that’s the big C, isn’t it? But the vast majority of the time of your entire life, everyone’s entire life, there’s this miraculous thing going on, that these living organisms are making a body for you, and you don’t think like that, ever, ever. My favorite, and I talk to you about it all the time, is a baby. How dare you say it’s your baby?

Make me an eyeball. Make me a liver. Make me a kidney. Make me a pineal gland. Make me a nerve system. Make me a nerve cell. Nothing. You have no idea how to make any of it. And you say it’s my baby. No, I don’t think so. I think that thing miraculously made itself out of a single fertilized cell. One single cell knew how to make that baby.

Do you understand that? You better think about that. This is how you’re able to renounce the fruits of your actions, because you’re so fulfilled with being full of life, filled with every moment of life. The miracle of life. It’s just an amazing thing. Drop a corn kernel, put it down in the dirt, and come back in some months.

There’s a cornstalk. How did that happen? Who did that? Who did that? I bet you think you know something. Who did that? Where did it come from? That’s matter. That’s solid matter, right? Look at it all. Many, many, many atoms and cells and molecules. Who put them together like that? Not you, not the scientists, not the ag people.

They just dropped that little kernel, and somehow that kernel had the intelligence built within itself to take water, sunlight, and dirt, plain old dirt, and break it apart into its molecular structures like a chemist and put them back together into a cornstalk. And you don’t know what to do with your life.

How about being in awe of that? How about everywhere you go, every second of your life is OMG? Wow. Every single thing is a miracle. It’s incomprehensible, and it’s so special, it’s ridiculous. Okay? If you have that mindset, that frame of reference, there’s no thought of the fruits of your action. What was the fruit of the action?

That I fell in love with the cornstalk and freaked out ’cause of how miraculous the baby is? It’s whole within itself. You’re not getting anything back ’cause you don’t need anything back, ’cause you’re whole and complete within yourself. We’re getting there. I hope you’re any closer. It’s not really weird what the Gita is teaching you.

Act. And it says that: act, do the absolute best you can all the time at whatever you’re doing, whatever’s given you to do. Do the best you can, but don’t expect anything in return. Right? And that is so weird to think, well, why would I do the best I can if I don’t get anything in return? Because if you do the best you can, you’ll feel joy, you’ll feel good.

I did the best I could. But what if it didn’t turn out the way you wanted? So what? I got the joy of doing the best that I could. Right? Have your three-year-old kid come home with a finger painting. You can’t even figure out what the thing looks like, but you hang it on your refrigerator. Right? Why? He did or she did the best that they could.

They’re so proud of it, and you’re proud of them. There’s nothing to get from it. The experience itself is whole, if you are not ruining it by thinking you’re trying to get something back, or afraid of not getting it. Anybody hear it? Finally, once and for all, that is your spiritual journey: how do you get to that space?

Okay, fine. You’re not there naturally. Naturally you think that getting what you want is the only way you’re gonna be okay, and avoiding what you don’t want. You better do both those things. It’s not fun to get what you want and have what you don’t want happen at the same time. All right? It has to be, I’m getting what I want,

I’m not getting what I don’t want, and then I’m having a nice life. Well, go ahead, have fun, ’cause you won’t. You will suffer. You will struggle. All right. What happens if I learn? What if I learn to like more things? The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. The great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything.

It’s exactly the same. Do you hear me? To have no preferences and to prefer everything are the same thing, ’cause you’re not differentiating and struggling to get what you want, ’cause you’re already getting what you want. So that’s a beautiful path for you guys, all right, to say, I agree that when I get what I want, I’m happier.

So why not want more things? And you sit there and your ego says, eh, that’s lying to yourself. You’re not being honest with yourself. I’m being honest with myself. I made up what I want. Which one should I be honest with, the one that I am now, or the ones that were my entire life, that built all this garbage inside of me that likes things and doesn’t like things?

I think I’ll vote right now for who I am now, and I will learn to make a better version of this. And the way you build a better version, I’m telling you, is like everything, like the moments that are unfolding in front of you. How do you do that? You practice. You literally practice. I always use the same example.

Too bad. The driver in front of you is not using their blinker. They keep stepping on their brakes. They’re driving 10 miles an hour below the speed limit and you’re in a rush. How are you doing? Not well. I don’t like it. Well, then you’re not having a good time. Am I not having a good time because of how the driver in front of me is driving?

No, you’re not having a good time because you’re bothering yourself about how the driver in front of you is driving. You see the difference? That’s why you’re not having a good time. If instead you said, oh, that could be my grandma, the last year that she gets to drive. She can’t drive anymore. I will not

tailgate you. I won’t beep you. I won’t even pass you. I just feel honored to give you the space you need to enjoy this drive. How’s that feel? You get to do that. You get to change how you are inside. ‘Cause how you are is just the sum of your learned experiences. And so you sit there and say, I’m not the sum of my learned experiences.

I’m the guy who lives in here. Those learned experiences are a problem. It’s not a solution. I don’t know why I carried them with me. I ask you that all the time. If every single thing that ever disturbed you throughout your life you decided to keep inside, you’re gonna be disturbed. How about you decide, I’m not gonna keep it inside?

And I’m not even gonna say I don’t like it. I’m gonna have fun with it. I’m gonna have fun being positive. I’m gonna have fun saying I like it. Over time, you will like it. There’s foods that you used to eat — maybe you were not a vegetarian, and now you eat some vegetarian food. Maybe you thought they tasted terrible.

What’s all those vegetables? All right, and now you start to enjoy them. You can change your taste, can’t you? You wanna change your taste? Fall in love with somebody who has a different taste than you. All of a sudden you like their taste, right or wrong? Pretty quick, that stuff changes. It’s very funny. All right.

It’s pliable in there. You just have to be willing to work with yourself, and the objective — and that’s why I started the conversation, ending at that — the objective is to enjoy your life. How’s that? Why would I work so hard? To enjoy your life. If you’re doing something, do the best you can. What’s the purpose of not doing the best you can?

How would you like to be on a volleyball team? And how many people are on a volleyball team? Nine of them, I forget. Six, nine, seven, whatever it is. All right, on the team, everyone’s doing the best they can. It’s a fun intramural sport. Doing the best they can, except one person. He missed a spike and hit the net, and he is just sitting there pouting.

How much fun is it to play with that guy? Want him on your team? No. You want the person who’s gonna do the best they can. Well, that’s what you catch on to. If you’re trying to do the best you can, you’re enjoying what you’re doing. Stop judging the results. It takes away the joy of the experience, period.

And now you understand renouncing the fruits of your action means all this stuff I touched on, which seems more familiar to the Western mind: that if I’m enjoying what I’m doing, I’m enjoying my life. But then enjoy what you’re doing. How? By training your mind to learn to enjoy what you’re doing. You can enjoy everything.

You just work with it. You just work with it. And that becomes a major part of spirituality, by the way. People write me and they say, well, I was doing really beautiful, and I felt really open, and I felt love all the time, and now all this stuff’s coming up. I don’t want that. Well, then you give away your joy.

How about, I love this stuff’s coming up? That’s what I teach. You know I do. I love this stuff coming up. Why? Because I don’t want it in there. It’s garbage. You have some sickness, a virus inside of you. You want it inside? Keep it inside. Don’t ever see it, hold it, hide it. No, I want it out. And that’s how you become about all of life.

If anything can bother me, bring it on, ’cause I don’t want to be bothered. And the only way I’m not gonna be bothered is to let go of the part of me that’s bothered by something. And this becomes the entire… See, you don’t think you learned the Gita tonight, did you? I’m telling you, ask anyone who knows the Gita. It is about, do the best you can and renounce the fruits of your actions.

You’re capable of living your life with great respect, with gratitude, with joy, with appreciation, no matter what happens. The very fact that you’re alive. The fact that you can see. What a miracle that you can see. Man, I talk about the baby being made out of a cell. How did your eyes… I can’t talk about it.

It’s unbelievable. Everything is a miracle. All right, I hope you heard some of it. If you heard even a fraction of it, it lets you understand how to have a beautiful life. And if you have a beautiful life, you don’t need the fruits of your actions, ’cause the action itself is the fulfillment of life. All right. Jai guru dev.

Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to the Michael Singer Podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael’s body of work and all back episodes, please join us at michaelsingerpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True. Waking up the world.