E213: God Beyond the Mind

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

Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. Let’s talk about a very meaningful topic, and that is those three letters, G-O-D.

There’s one God, and that is, God is literally the entire universe. All the atoms, all the molecules, all the wavelets in the quantum field, all the thoughts, all the emotions. Every single thing in creation is the same. It’s just this force, this omnipresent, omniscient — always, everywhere, aware of itself — and omnipotent, all-powerful.

I mean, there’s no other force that’s needed to create everything. It is the beginning and end, alpha to omega. But it’s not what we do with it. We create what’s called God of the mind. And don’t deny it. He’s a wish fulfiller. This is what I want to happen. Please make it happen. Okay? I wouldn’t take that away from you.

I really wouldn’t, and don’t let my talk take it away from you. You leave here, just wipe out everything I talked about. To denigrate the creator of the universe, that is everything, to “this is what I want and this is what I don’t want” — who’s asking? Who has separated themselves from that which is everything, to be separate enough to ask?

And you’re not even asking for everything. You’re just asking, please, I want a car, I want a house, I want someone to get well. Come on, make it be the way I want. And then you’re taught — Christ taught you, not my will, but thy will be done. That doesn’t sound like that. I’m not talking about not praying. I would never say such a thing.

I don’t like to talk about it. All I know is, if you’re asking for something to be other than it is, then it’s not thy will, but my will. Everybody see that? Do you understand that? That’s really deep. That’s ridiculous. That goes against all the teachings. Well, it is. Of course you pray. Of course you need help, because you’re not okay.

Who’s not okay? I don’t wanna say it. God, in the form of you. ‘Cause that’s what’s there. You understand that? Your body is not your body. We’ve been through this a million times. There’s 35 trillion living cells. Are they yours? Do you make ’em? Do you make sure they behave properly and do what they’re supposed to do, and contract and expand?

When you pull your muscles different ways, are you doing all that? And you realize, no, I’m not. Okay, then who is? The creator of the universe, the force that creates everything, the force that is everything. Well, the force that does everything, ’cause that’s all there is. If it’s omnipotent, then it is all the powerful force that’s needed to create the universe.

So that’s a different God than the God that we’re taught. We’re taught the God that does what you want him to do. If you behave, that’s even better. If God behaves, he’ll do what you want him to do. I don’t know. It gets very confusing. Eventually you catch on that that’s called God of the mind, that you have created a God with your mind, which of course is not God.

Well, I guess, because your mind is limited. And everything you want is based upon your past experiences. We’ve discussed that over and over again. There’s not a single thing that you want that somehow didn’t tie to something that turned you on before. Okay? It’s a book you read, a movie you watched, a person you liked. You stored these past experiences that you liked, and you stored way more past experiences that you didn’t like, and you built a you.

Not the physical you. That just keeps changing. It starts about two feet and gets about six, right, and gets old. It does it by itself. Don’t you see? You don’t do anything. It’s hilarious. In fact, you don’t wanna get old. Well, everything gets old. You don’t wanna die. Do you know that? Come on, everything dies. So what you’ve done is build a mind that’s out of harmony with reality, and now you suffer, and you try to find ways to not suffer.

I’ve been through this over and over again. Try not to get into it too deep tonight, ’cause I want to keep talking about the real God, the real thing, right? So where did creation come from? We’ve been through that a bunch of times, right? There is a force. What does that mean? It’s just a force of conscious awareness called Chit-Shakti, conscious energy. Where does it start? It doesn’t. Where does it stop? It doesn’t.

It is just what is. I am that I am. All right. That’s it. The mind can’t think about that. The mind doesn’t wanna think about that. The mind will sit there and ask, well, if it’s beyond the galaxies, what’s beyond the galaxies? What was before the beginning of time?

That’s what the mind does. Well, there’s no such thing. It’s called non-dual. There’s no duality. There’s just one force that’s always there. It always is, it will always be there, and that force vibrated. It just vibrated itself. And those vibrations are the quantum field. And so all form comes from that.

Those vibrations are your thought forms. That’s where your thoughts come from. You have different vibrations in your mind. Some of them are low, right or wrong. You have low thoughts, depressing thoughts, heavy thoughts. They’re heavy, right? ‘Cause they’re more like solid. Okay, ice is heavier than water,

and water’s heavier than steam, but they’re the same thing. They’re just vibrating at different rates. And if you vibrate slow enough, the exact same force that makes water becomes ice. Why? ‘Cause the molecules bind together. Which molecule? The exact same one, H2O molecules that make up steam and water.

Do you understand that? I’m gonna make you a physicist before it’s all over with. You understand that the only difference in water, ice, and steam is the vibration rate of the molecules? Well, I don’t understand. If they vibrate slower, it means they have less energy stimulating them. They can bind together as it moves slowly.

If they move faster, they can’t bind together as tightly, and they become water. You can pass your hands through them, all right? And if it moves very quickly, then they don’t bind together hardly at all, and it becomes mist or steam and you move right through it. If you understand that, you understand God better than most people ever even begin to start.

All right? The same thing is happening with everything. It’s not just ice, water, and steam. It’s also with every single element on the periodic table, vibrating at different rates. Therefore, more electrons can bond together, all right, or it throws them off. And that’s where all the atoms come from, all different structures of atoms.

It’s how much energy, if you will, is involved in bonding nuclei together and involved in holding the electrons together. And basically they bond with each other. It’s just, there’s these vibration rates, different vibration rates. And ultimately, which I love it, they went down — I’ve told you this before — there are no atoms.

What do you mean there are no atoms? Well, if I say there is no ice, it means there’s water or there’s steam. It’s just a form of it. Well, it’s the same thing. There are no atoms. There are vibration rates in the quantum field that, when they vibrate in such a way, the wavelets bond together and they form neutrons, and protons and electrons are there, and then they bond together. But they never go away.

The quantum field vibrations, the steam, the H2O molecules, are still always there. Now you’re talking about form. You’re talking about all the form. Told you once, I read an article on the web, years and years ago, from NASA, and it used a word that I had never seen used before except in religious terms. It said the quantum field is omnipresent.

Whoa, that’s big time. You understand that? It means it’s everywhere. Every galaxy is made of it. Everything, all the trillions. You hear me? It’s all the same thing. It’s just vibration rates bonding together to create every single thing, including your body, including your cells, including every single thing. That’s what’s going on.

God. Now we’re talking about God. You get it? All right. You’re not talking about what you want and what you don’t want, and what you think is right and what you think is wrong. It’s just what is, always was, always will be, and it vibrates. But that’s one force: the force of form, the force of creation. All right.

Then consciousness, awareness of being, looks at it. I don’t know how to tell you. That’s what’s going on. Consciousness vibrates. It creates what are called rids. It vibrates, and then it slows down, slows down, slows down, slows down, slows down, and all form manifests. And the same consciousness that vibrated looks down into what it made, and that’s all there is, is conscious energy.

It’s conscious energy. That’s what he used to sing: spirit and nature dancing together. Right? There’s these quantum vibrations, form, nature, and then there’s consciousness, spirit, dancing with it, playing with it, interacting with it. That’s the closest your mind can get to comprehending the creator of the universe,

the creation of the universe. The trouble is, the vibrations in your mind are exactly just a higher vibration rate of form. And then what you do with those things is, instead of letting things be what they are and letting form exist, and then you experience it, you start holding onto it. You talk about it all the time.

Things come in. What does form… It doesn’t really come in. The energy emanated from form, light, comes in through your senses, through your touch, feeling, all that, and it comes in, and then you’re in there, consciousness, and you’re experiencing it. Their consciousness is experiencing what comes in from the outer world, and it causes vibration rates inside, in what’s called mind,

at a higher vibration rate. Fine. What happens? You, in there, the consciousness, literally the awareness of being, which is the divine consciousness looking down at its creation, you just start liking and not liking. I don’t know how to talk about it. Buddha tried to teach it, right? Some of the vibrations that came in, your consciousness gets distracted so much that you say, I don’t wanna feel this.

That’s the birth of the ego. It’s the birth of separateness. It’s the fall from the garden. That’s what happens. It’s just consciousness experiencing its dance, but it also has the ability to get caught. And it just basically starts to hold on to these vibration rates that come in and it says, I don’t want that to happen.

I don’t want that to happen. I want this to happen. And you start building within this place called mind, which is just a very high vibration rate of the energy. You use your will, which is the consciousness dancing with form. You use the power of will, the power of consciousness, to push it away, to hold onto it, to cling to it, and you build this psyche.

And that’s where every human being is lost, except for the enlightened ones. So what does it mean to be enlightened? You caught on? I mean, here is God looking at God. Do you hear me? No judgment. No right, no wrong. Uh-oh. No good, no bad. No like, no dislike. No preference. No hopes, no dreams. All right. It’s just

consciousness dancing with its creation, experiencing its creation everywheres at all times. That’s all that’s going on. The trouble is, consciousness has the ability to focus, to concentrate. Concentrate — that’s what you do when you focus. So your consciousness focuses on something that distracted it, and now that gets stuck.

It doesn’t get stuck. You hold it. I didn’t like this — I always pick on you — I didn’t like this, so I’m gonna keep it. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me. I’m making sure it never goes away. I’ll keep it in here, and if it ever tries to come back, I’ll push it back down. Okay. That’s what you did in there.

Who did that? You did. Well, I don’t remember doing it. Of course not. Because your consciousness got lost. It fell from the garden. It got lost in form. Right. It focused so much on it that it said, that’s who I am. I’m the person that this happened to. I’m the person that got married, the person that got divorced, and the person that had three children.

I’m the person that one of my children got so sick, she almost died. That is not who you are. You existed without those things happening. You are not the experiences you had. But if you hadn’t had a different experience, you wouldn’t exist. You in there, you’re having experiences. Good. You’re supposed to have experiences.

That’s what’s going on. The trouble is you can’t handle it. You in there start suppressing. You start pushing things away, then they stay inside. Or you like it so much that you cling to it. I don’t want it to go away. It’s either you want it to go away, so you push it away, or you don’t want it to go, so you cling to it. And you end up with all this stuff built inside your mind, and the stuff will stay there.

If you pushed it away, it’s coming back up. You know that. You are literally afraid of yourself. You’re afraid that things will happen outside that hit your stuff that you stored inside. So you try to control the outside world so that you’re safe. And you’re afraid that something you want, that you had before, might betray you or go away.

And you get jealous and insecure. It’s just, you built all this. Why? I don’t know. It’s not much fun at all. I know that, because you have to drink and do drugs and run away and do all kinds of crazy things, ’cause you can’t handle what’s going on inside. And you’re trying to figure out, what can I do to make it nicer inside?

And you decide, I can get this person to like me, get that person to leave, get that person to gimme money. I can do something outside that, when it comes in, makes me feel better. Sure you can. Good luck. It won’t stay. It doesn’t stay. You know it doesn’t stay. You’re afraid you’re gonna lose it.

You’re afraid something’s gonna happen you don’t want to happen. You just live in there, not very comfortable in there. And you think the answer is to go outside and make the things that happened before that made you feel good happen again, and make the things that happened before that didn’t make you feel good not happen again.

And so you built this thing, this personal mind. It’s all about you. And it’s hard to even talk about. You talk about compassion. Now you understand compassion. It’s when you look at someone and say, oh my God, you poor thing. You have all that going on in there. No wonder you’re suffering.

No wonder it’s hard to live in there. You stored all this garbage in there, and now it’s very strong in there. And what happens is, you end up pulling your consciousness, which is divine consciousness, spans the entire universe. You are the universe. That’s what you are. Your consciousness is the expanded, non-dual universe throughout. But you got so distracted by these tiny little events that happened to you that you say, I am this person.

Well, you’re not. Okay? You are the consciousness looking at this person that you built ’cause you couldn’t handle life. Okay. So now what is God? Well, it’s very different than what people talk about. You know, the thing, God is the answer to my prayers. Mm-hmm. That which will make it so that everything is the way I want.

That’s God’s job. I like the bumper sticker that’s on some cars. It says, God is my copilot. OMG. No, no. I won’t even discuss that. God’s the entire universe. He is your car, he is you, he is every single atom, all of creation, all of consciousness. And God is my copilot? That’s what you’ve done to God.

So I thought maybe we’d talk a little bit about God. Okay, what does God want? How can anything be other than it is? Everything is the way it is, and it was the result of all it ever was, and it will be the result of all it is and was, and it just is. Everything is. But what about things that are not nice?

There are things that are not nice. Did you know that? Have you noticed? Well, what should I do about that? The only thing reasonable to do about it, when you understand what’s going on, is to start with acceptance. People totally misunderstand when I’m talking about that. Acceptance doesn’t mean you let things be what they are.

Acceptance means you honor and respect their right to exist. It doesn’t mean you like it. It doesn’t mean it’s nice. It doesn’t mean anything like that. It’s just, every vibration in creation is an expression of God. How do you talk about it? It’s like, for a moment — I talk about the quantum field mostly.

You’ve heard me before. You understand there’s just these wavelets, like little waves in a still lake. They start making waves. That’s all that’s out there, everywhere. These wavelets, and then they put themselves together, and they come out as him, they come out as her, and as her glasses, and as your car.

So you’re driving your car on the planet Earth. Just for a moment, let your mind melt and understand what that means. What’s the planet Earth? Wavelets that have put themselves together over 4.5 billion years and pulled and made this planet. And your consciousness is here, and you’re driving this car. And what’s the car? I don’t know, it’s made in Japan, and there’s these people that hammered the metal and made machines.

Every single thing is those wavelets coming up. Will you, for once in your life, dare to see that? Do you hear me? You have no right not to see that, because that’s what is. That’s your physicist. That’s not what your preacher told you. That’s what your physicist told you. That’s what Einstein told you, and all the great physicists

and all the great thinkers throughout time. They said, oh, I figured out that’s what’s going on down there. Will you pay attention? No. I’ll pay attention to the fact that my car has a scratch on it. Pay attention. Then she said what I didn’t wanna hear. It gets so small. I don’t know how you can live in there.

And that’s what true compassion is, where you’ve liberated yourself enough, not perfectly, but enough to look and see how much people suffer. Why do they suffer? ‘Cause they can’t handle reality. What is reality? That which is there. I’m finished. This is just truth. It’s the truth, and it will set you free.

But no. Truth is what I want and what I don’t want, what I like and what I don’t like. What happened to me in the past? What happened to you in the past? That’s terrible. It’s irrelevant. Why? It’s over. It’s over. It’s not there anymore. It’ll never happen again. The same event will never happen again.

That’s exactly what’s going on. But no, you hold onto it, and then you define yourself as your problems. Well, you’re not your problems. You’re the consciousness that’s experiencing life. And a wise being starts to work with themselves and say, wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to look out there

and say, I’m okay? Why? Because I’m okay. Because everything that’s going on is going on, and I can handle it. I can honor, respect God, reality. To literally sit there and say, it’s okay. I didn’t create it. It wasn’t made for me, by me, in me, out of me. It just is, all of creation happening at once all over the place.

That’ll blow your mind. Okay, now why would I do such a thing? No, the question is not why would I do that. Why would you do this? Why would you make a complete melodrama out of this that happens to be going on? So the entire spiritual path is about God, and there aren’t separate paths. The entire spiritual path is to say, why have I done this with my mind?

It’s not working out well. I have fears and anxieties and tensions and all kinds of garbage. Why? It’s just life unfolding everywhere throughout the universe. But I’ve made this drama out of it. Why? Because I identified with my past experiences as me, and I built an ego in there, and that’s who I am, and that’s who I’m trying to be, and that’s what I want.

And you suffer, right? So some people say, why would God do this? When you expand it out to understand it’s everything, you don’t say, how could God do this? God does everything. What you mean when you say, how could God do this, is, I didn’t like it. Mm-hmm. Somebody else liked it a lot, but I didn’t like it.

Well, the problem is not, how could God do this? How could you have done that to God? How could you have just made this little bubble around your head and said, that’s what I want and what I don’t want? And if it happens the way I want, it’s a miracle. It’s the most amazing thing. Look what happened. Look what God made happen. And if it doesn’t happen the way I want, it’s evil.

It’s wrong. You have built this inside your mind, and as long as you’ve done that, not only will you not come to know God, which you’re capable of — you’re capable. You’re not just capable. No, it’s not true that you come to know God. You become one with the force of creation. That’s where the great masters are.

That’s what enlightenment means. It doesn’t mean you go to heaven where everything’s nice. It means your consciousness is no longer staring at this personal garbage that you built inside your mind and your heart, right, that’s so sensitive, everything has to be the way you want. Instead you let go. You let go of clinging and suppressing and resisting.

You open up and you allow reality to pass through, and then there’s nothing in there that needs to cling to anything or change anything. And what happens? You naturally then merge back into who you are. Christ said, my father and I are one. Who understands that? That’s a pretty big statement.

My father and I are one. Guess what? So are you. Period. That is your natural state of being, if you’re not caught looking at this thing you built inside, which you’re calling me. It’s not me. It’s something you’re looking at. When you feel depressed, how do you know you feel depressed? Because I’m consciously aware that what I’m looking at is a very low vibration rate.

My thoughts are low. My heart is low. I’m staring at a low vibration. Just like ice, water, steam, the mind can have low vibrations, higher vibrations, and your consciousness is aware of what is going on there. Why? ‘Cause you built it in there. What do you mean, I built it in there? You’ve had events happen to you in your life that you did not let go of,

and they bother you when they come back up, and even to think that they might come back up bothers you, right? And anybody that might make them come back up, you’re not interested in. And so you basically struggle inside. And I don’t want you to struggle. If I try to talk to you — what nobody wants to hear — you are not a human.

You’re divine consciousness. The divine consciousness, the one that was there in the beginning and will be here in the end, that which always was, that’s exactly what’s back there, looking down at his creation. But it gets lost. That’s the fall from the garden. It gets lost and it starts staring at things, and then picking these tiny little events, so small.

I say that all the time. 800 billion zillion things are happening at once, but you only care about the ones that are around you, and you say they’re really important, and then you build them inside. And that’s just truth. I hope you can see it and see why I talk about it. You actually use willpower, which is divine consciousness focused.

It creates a power that can hold onto thoughts. You can hold onto thoughts, can’t you? You can try to push ’em away, can’t you? You have power in there. But what you’ve done, instead of using it to be open, to accept, to honor and respect reality, you use it to fight. You use it to fight to make things be the way you want and not be the way you don’t want.

You know that as a truth, but no one will talk to you this way. In fact, they encourage you to do it. Decide what you like, and let’s all get together and try to make it happen. Well, those are my friends. You agree with what I want, at least for now. And you just built this human thing. What is the soul?

Divine consciousness staring at a human. That thing in between that starts to identify. But it’s not, it’s still the consciousness. But it’s staring so much at this human thing that it thinks it’s the human. But basically your consciousness is divine. It’s my father and I are one. It’s just the same thing.

The problem is you’re staring at something that’s a very low vibration. Is there anything wrong with low vibration? Now you’re really going to get deep teachings, right? No, there’s nothing wrong with ice. There’s nothing wrong with water. There’s nothing wrong with steam. But if you’re gonna bash your head against something, you’re better off doing it against steam than against ice.

They all have their nature. Do you understand their nature? Do you understand how to come in harmony instead of to struggle and fight and misuse things? That’s the difference. That’s what Lao Tzu meant by the Tao. You come in harmony with the nature of things. Ice has its nature. Don’t go sticking your head into it.

Water has its nature. Take a shower, it feels really good. All right. Steam, if it’s really hot, doesn’t feel so good. Become an intelligent, centered being who respects the nature of things. Doesn’t mean that things don’t exist. They exist. But are you in harmony with them? And the answer is no. No, you’re in harmony with yourself.

You’re in harmony with — I told you, what do you mean by self? Your ego. What do you mean, your ego? You have collected experiences from your past that you either didn’t like, which is most of them, or did like a lot, which is a few. And you built this structure out of it in your mind and in your heart. And so now you look out into the world through that structure.

So everything either looks good or bad, or right or wrong, or better or worse, or preferred or not preferred. And you judge. You judge everything, absolutely everything. Judge it against what? Compare it against what? Against what I want and what I don’t want. And you look out into the world and see whether it matches the collection of your past experiences. Do you understand that?

Did you hear that right? That’s what you’re trying to… What do you judge? Based on my past experiences, things that I liked and I didn’t like. How do you know what you liked or didn’t like? I had the experience. And now you look outside and see, is it gonna be that way? If so, I like it. Is it not gonna be that way?

I don’t like it. And then you struggle your entire life. That’s what Buddha meant when he said all life is suffering. All of life is suffering. People are suffering. Do you see that? Have you suffered? Have you ever seen that things aren’t the way you want them to be? It gets pretty hot in there. Pretty uncomfortable.

You do anything you can to escape. Escape what? That you’re trying to make the world match you instead of honoring and respecting. Now let’s go to the positive side, right? You can have a beautiful life, period, if you honor and respect life’s right to exist. If you honor and respect the fact that every single thing that’s happening has history.

It’s the result of all that ever happened. Can you handle that? Can you come in harmony with that? What does that mean? It means you learn to be open. It means you learn to open your heart and open your mind. Open it to what? To what’s in front of you, to what’s happening, to reality. But what if I don’t like it?

I’ve talked to you about it all the time. You have two choices. If you don’t like it, go out and struggle with it, fight with it, or learn to honor and respect it. This is something that’s happening. It’s not comfortable, but I can handle it. I can let it pass through. I don’t have to carry it with me for the rest of my life.

And that is your spiritual growth. You learn to honor and respect all of life. I mean, it’s too strong for most people to listen to. They don’t like when I talk that way. All of life? What do you mean? If it’s happening or has happened, you’re not going to change it. No one has ever, ever changed what already is.

So you have to start by honoring and respecting its right to exist. What? Everything. Everything. Like, you can’t handle what’s going on in your family. You can’t handle what’s going on in your job. You can’t handle what’s going on in your town or city. You can’t handle what’s going on in your country.

Really, look at it, right? You can’t handle anything. This is a tiny planet. I teach you all the time, 1.3 million Earths fit inside the sun, and there’s 300 billion suns in your galaxy, and you can’t even handle what’s happening on that tiny little planet. There’s stuff happening everywhere. Did you know that?

Black holes and things and galaxies passing through. Can you handle that? You don’t even think about it. You just put yourself in a little box, right, and say, can I handle this tiny little microcosmic thing that I got stuck in? As opposed to, of course I can handle it. I can handle anything. It doesn’t mean I don’t do something about it.

We’ll come there in a moment. But what’s the purpose? If you don’t understand that you can honor and respect reality, you can’t deal with it. If I’m in a car accident and you can’t stand the sight of blood, I hope you’re not the first person that comes by. Think about that. That goes for all of life. Can you handle if your husband or wife’s having a problem, or do you have to defend yourself before they even tell you what it is?

Or do you think about it all day? What do they wanna talk to me about? What am I gonna do if they say this? You can’t even handle the thought that you have to talk to somebody, even somebody you love. You’re afraid. That’s what defensiveness is. I don’t wanna hear this. I defend myself before they even say it.

Eventually you catch on that that is the cause of suffering. To not suffer, you have to honor and respect the reality of what’s taking place. But how can I honor and respect the black holes? You don’t start there. You start with where you are, with the relationships you’re having, with the interactions you’re having. Can you handle life?

Can you handle life? ‘Cause if you can’t handle life, you’re going to suffer. Well, how do you handle life? By handling life. That’s what I said. The path is so simple, it’s ridiculous. How do I handle the fact that she yelled at me? You handle the fact that she yelled at you. Can you handle the reality of the fact that this person was upset, and some heavy energy came off of them and it came into you?

Could you handle that? ‘Cause if you can’t handle it, you know what you’re gonna do? You are gonna take all the negative energy you can get your hands on and throw it back at them. Don’t you yell at me. Don’t talk to me like that. Yes or no? All right. It’s so beautiful. And so you have all this junk, lower vibration stuff, passing around.

What’s the alternative? I can handle the fact that you’re upset. You had a bad day, you ate something bad, I don’t know what the heck it is, right? And I can handle it. So you talk to me heavy, and I let it pass through. It passes through, just like ice passes through steam, right? Heavy vibration, it goes through. And what you don’t understand is, if you do that, it changes everything.

You listen to me. I’ve done this for the whole latter part of my life, you know, 55 years. I’ve watched so much. If you can handle the lower vibrations, then not only do you do better, but so is everybody else, ’cause you don’t throw it back at them. You’re not fighting back to push the negative energy away. And then that brings up all this disturbance inside of you and more disturbance inside of them.

So if you can handle it, it passes through. Literally, ultimately, a great saint, a great being, just totally lets it pass through. And then what’s left is something very beautiful. What’s left is high energy, not low energy. And over time, it changes things. That’s how you grow spiritually, and that’s how you come closer to God.

You can come closer to God. How? By stop being so close to yourself. All right? By stop being married to you. You’re not married to your spouse. You’re married to how you want your spouse to behave. You have a way you want them to be. I picked you. You’re the one person I picked. You’re supposed to be the way I want you to be.

No. Why don’t you just go marry yourself? They’re not the same as you. They had totally different experiences their whole life. Why can’t you honor and respect that? Do you see how relationships get if you do that? You sit there and say, that person that I married, that person I’m dating, that person I’m close with is not supposed to be the way I want.

Did you hear me? They’re not supposed to be the way I want. They’re supposed to be the way they are. And then I get to love them. I get to help them. I get to share with them. I get to grow with them. Not, you’re supposed to be the way I am. They can’t be the way you are. Why? They had totally different experiences their entire life.

Do you understand that everyone had different experiences? How can they be the same? But we’ve been married for three years. Yeah, but they’re 33 years old. They had 30 years of every moment of their life, different experiences than you. Yeah, but they should respect me. No, no. You should respect them. You should respect that people are different.

You should respect that situations happen. You should absolutely respect completely. Your first act is to respect the reality of what’s taking place. And then you don’t resist it. You do your best not to resist it, and you’ll feel that difference. You’ll feel that tendency to push it away, to protect yourself.

I don’t wanna feel it. It feels icky. Lower energies feel icky. Did you know that? You got bad vibes, in the sixties talk. All right? Like, you can go into houses that have bad vibes. You know, you can walk into a house where people have been arguing, but they don’t want you to see ’em arguing, so they stop right away.

They just sit up there, nice. You feel it? Not a chance in the world you don’t feel it. Go on in there. Do you understand that? You feel the vibrations of life. Fine. Can you handle it? Can you honor and respect it and let it come in and pass through, and raise it up? You raise it up. We talk about God.

One nice thing to do with the notion of God is to sit here and say, God created the heavens and earth, which means every single moment that’s happening in front of me, right? Every single thing that happens, it comes in, I offer it right back up. Here, it’s yours. Here you go. In other words, I don’t own it. I don’t keep it.

I don’t store it. I don’t cling to it. I don’t fight with it. It’s just, this is what happened. Okay, here. And that act of offering it up, of saying, this doesn’t belong to me, and giving it back, liberates you, frees you. And then it frees — the point is, it frees everybody else. Some will say, well, that’s selfish.

No, it’s not selfish. What you do changes everything. If somebody comes to you and is arguing with you, and you’re at peace inside — don’t tell them that, they don’t like that, they’ll get madder — but you are at peace inside. What happens is, you can hear the words, they’re heavy and strong, but you can stay centered. So you can see, as they’re talking to you, as they’re putting this energy out,

if you’re calm and centered inside, you start to see the right action of how you can help this situation, instead of how can I protect me from the situation. I’m now clear enough to handle the situation. What can I do to help? You get so clear that that’s what you’re about. What can I do to help?

How can I raise the energy? Not, what can I do to protect myself? What can I do to get what I want? What can I do to make this guy shut up? Right? I’m just clear. What can I do to help? And there’s people that come to me and say, well, how will I know what to do? You know, because you’re clear and the energy is there, and you can see how to work with it.

I can’t tell you. Every situation is different. The question is, if you’re in there protecting yourself, reacting to the energy that’s coming in, you’re not gonna help anything. Not gonna help yourself, ’cause it’ll stay stuck in there. Somebody yells at you, you see ’em the next day. I don’t wanna see ’em. I walk around the block to avoid them.

Or maybe if I do see them a year later at that, you know, high school reunion, I ask them, why did you yell at me? I didn’t do anything. Holy mackerel, where are you? You’re caught. All right. And so you sit there and say, I don’t wanna be caught. I wanna, so to speak, go to God. I would like, before I die, to experience what it would be like to be done with me.

I mean, die to be reborn. Oh, I see. To be done with me and to feel that merger with a divine being, to be done. My father and I are one. And I’m not gonna spend my life protecting this thing that I made because it can’t handle reality, it can’t handle life. What I’m gonna do is use life to help get rid of me.

I’m going to use life, that if it bothers me, I’m gonna let go. That’s what I’m gonna do, is practice letting go. Practice being in harmony with what’s taking place. I know you like to argue. But what if it’s not nice? What if it’s wrong? There’s right, there’s wrong, there’s good, there’s bad, there’s everything.

And they all exist and coexist. What she thinks is right, he thinks is wrong. What she thought was right yesterday, she thinks is wrong today. Have fun, guys. And you just reach the point where you say, I don’t wanna play the game anymore. Right. I would like to let go of my — it’s exactly what Christ meant by die to be reborn.

I would like to let go of this personal mess that I built inside by clinging to my past experiences and liking them and not liking them, and fighting, and building this self-concept, this ego in here, right? I would like to let go of that so that I can be clear and open and in harmony with what’s unfolding.

And what’s unfolding, nobody said it’s what you want. It is not, right? It’s very rare that you get what you want. You understand that? You try to fight to get what you want. Eventually you’re gonna catch on, you don’t want what you think you want. You wanna be free. You wanna be open. You wanna feel love no matter what. It’s unconditional wellbeing.

Unconditional wellbeing, that no matter what is happening, I am fine. I don’t have to fight with it and to struggle with it. I am fine. Doesn’t mean I don’t just come down and take my fineness and share it with the moment that’s happening, see what I can do. There’ll be little cracks. It’s just amazing that you can make change by not getting involved in the disturbed energies.

If you are open and you interact with people, you don’t know what effect it has. You know what effect it has if you don’t. Understand that. If you put a wall up there and you push back — think about it for a second — they’re having trouble with their energy. There’s no one yelling at you that’s not having trouble with their energy.

You understand that? Did you hear that right? That’s why they’re yelling at you. That’s why they’re complaining, right? They’re having trouble inside themselves, right? And they’re pushing that energy out to try and get rid of it, try to express it, right or wrong, right? Even anger, throwing things, right? It’s just, I have to express this terrible energy I have built up inside myself.

If you can’t handle that, then you push back at them, at least the energy they sent to you, plus your energy, that you can’t handle that they’re upset and yelling and angry, and I can’t deal with that kind of stuff. You hear me? And so now you’ve doubled the negativity, the low vibrations that got dumped into the world. Talking about polluting?

Polluting isn’t just a physical thing, chemical thing, right? You’re polluting the environment. They’re polluting the environment, and you’re polluting right back. And is that not what makes the world go round? Take a look. And so you get to the point where you understand, I have an obligation. I can grow. I can let go.

I can be open. I can bring good energy down. But how do you do that? You have to practice working on yourself. That’s what the spiritual path is. You’re working on yourself instead of working on everybody else to be like you are. And it’s fun. It gets to the point where it’s fun. It’s like a video game.

Pac-Man is trying to eat you, right? And now, seriously, it will be fun. And the truth is, the worse it gets, the better it is, ’cause then you have a bigger opportunity to deal with these lower energies. And then big things can happen. Really big things can happen in life. Have you noticed that? Did you notice big things can happen, and they’re not always explainable, they’re not fair?

I like to say it’s not fair, right? Why did this person die? I didn’t want them to die. You don’t want the answers to why they died. It’s very complicated. Everybody dies. Do you understand that? But it doesn’t mean you liked that they died. It doesn’t mean you laughed that they died. It means you can handle it.

It means it comes into you and you feel the sorrow, you feel the pain, you feel the loss, and it has a beauty to it. I just used the word “feel” three times. Some people don’t feel anything. They’re so closed, they don’t feel deeply. So if you feel sorrow, if you feel loss that somebody dies, there’s a beauty to that.

Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t be afraid to feel. Don’t be afraid to go through experiences. And you’ll eventually get to the point that that experience of loss is an expression of love. If somebody dies you don’t know, you don’t care. But if somebody dies who you love, you feel all this expression from your heart.

That is your heart saying, I love you, I love you. And you just learn to be open. You learn to honor, respect, and accept everything. Then you deal with it, but you deal from a place of clarity. That’s the essence of everything I ever learned. All right? You do this stuff every day of your life for 55 years, you learn a few things, okay?

And what you learn is what works. And what works is letting go of yourself, your willingness to let go of your personal self with its preferences, hopes and dreams, and concepts and views, and likes and dislikes, and just all the garbage that goes on in there, and be present with reality instead of being present with you.

Are you hearing me now? You’re so present with you, you can’t even hear me say, be present with reality. You don’t see reality. You see it after it comes through you. It passes through the filter of this thing you built in there. And so what you see is you. Okay, I know she doesn’t like what I said. I gave a talk.

I could see she didn’t like what I said, right? She may have loved what you said, but you’re so insecure that you’re looking at little, little signs. Oh, she didn’t pay attention, or her eyes were blinking, and you think you’re seeing something, you think you understand something. Someday, you don’t understand.

You don’t understand anything. You’re looking through the veil of your own making, and you see yourself. And it happens on the positive side too. Somebody’s out there trying to talk to you. Oh, they’re telling me I’m doing great. No, they’re not. They’re trying to tell you something. It just passes through the filter of your self-concept. And what’s beautiful is your society,

it kind of knows that, but it wouldn’t admit it. And it teaches you. I’ll teach you how to be so that people like you. I’ll teach you how to be so you get what you want. I’ll teach you how to look so that everybody wants to be with you. Just reinforce this you in there, this little personal self. You understand that? You just really, really want people to like you.

And wait, you see what happens with everyone you meet? You’re scared they don’t like you. Do you understand that you have a show to put on? You better be looking the way you wanna look and talking the way you wanna talk and walking the way you walk. You better do absolutely everything, and then you’re worried.

Did you do it right? Okay, I told you once, have a conversation with somebody, I don’t care if it’s a friend, and see whether when you walk away, something inside your head said, oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I can’t believe I did. This would’ve been very impressive. Should I go back and call her? Anybody answer me?

Anybody have that going on inside their head? Isn’t that fun? No, it’s not fun at all. It is called suffering. Worrying. What does worrying mean? What does worrying mean? Well, obviously it didn’t happen yet ’cause you’re worried about it. Tell me you don’t worry about what already happened. Okay. You’re worried about it.

And what do you mean, you’re worried about it? I have a way I want things to be, and I’m concerned they won’t be that way. I have a way I don’t want things to be, and I’m concerned they will be that way. Go ahead and make yourself suffer. It’s not fun in there to live like that. And you don’t have to live like that.

You’re not supposed to live like that. You’re a great being. You’re God descended, literally. If you wanna know where you get eventually, you are God descended, having fun with his creation. You are literally God consciousness experiencing the divinity of creation. Have fun. Have fun. Enjoy it.

Enjoy being young. Enjoy getting old. Will you please have a good time? Enjoy being healthy. Enjoy getting sick. Just experience every single thing that happens with a sense of openness and joy and appreciation. And then the next moment will happen, and the next moment will happen, and you can get so high, you can’t hold yourself down.

It pours off of you, literally. People feel the energy. People go to great saints, to places where great enlightened beings lived a hundred years ago. People go on pilgrimage ’cause the vibration is still there that they left. And that’s a true statement. I know people that went to some of the mahasamadhi shrines in India of great masters, and they all came back,

and they all told me, it’s like, you can’t even think straight. The energy is so strong that got left behind from their presence of existing there. Woo. Be like that. Bring me more of those guys. You are a great being. You do not have any problems. Oh, he said it. I don’t know you at all, right? I know what your problems are.

Your problems are that things may not be the way you want them to be, or weren’t the way you wanted them to be. I’ll bet that was a problem too, wasn’t it? All right. You defined your problems. Who decided what a problem was? I want you to decide what a problem is for her. No, she won’t tolerate that. I get to make my own problems.

Leave me alone. Don’t you take away my problems. They’re mine. Wake up. You do not have to live like that. You just start practicing acceptance. You practice, the moment’s unfolding in front of me and I can honor it. There’s a part of me, a habit-formed part of me, that wants to fight to make it be what I want. But you catch on eventually

that that just causes tension and anxiety and fears and insecurities. So what do you do? My experience is, you relax. What does that mean? It comes in. I don’t like it. How do you know? ‘Cause I wanna push it away. I don’t want to experience this. ‘Cause here’s my favorite sentence:

I don’t want to have experienced that. Lemme repeat that. Watch, break it down. You know, break the sentence down. I, me in here, don’t want to have experienced what I experienced. Well, you did experience it, and you’ll never not have experienced it, and now you have created an absolute lose-lose situation for the rest of your life.

Right or wrong? You can’t not have experienced it. And the fact that you don’t want to have experienced it means you will fight with it for the rest of your life. So you start practicing not doing that. It doesn’t take a genius, right? It’s like, fine. The driver in front of me is driving 15 miles an hour below the speed limit and keeps stepping on his brakes or her brakes and not using blinkers.

Okay? Do you like that? Can you handle that? Of course you can handle it. It’s a stupid car driving in front of me. What am I gonna do, cause myself trouble because the person’s driving like that? And you find out — I always see this — three blocks later, they turn, and I look at it, making you say,

Tami Simon: [Laughs.]

Michael Singer: You gotta have fun with this.

I laugh at him all the time. He can be the way he is, you know. He’s got his likes and dislikes. I just laugh at them ’cause I see how stupid they are. So you sit there and, can I pass? It’s a double line. Can I pass? And then three blocks later, they put on a blinker and they turn, and it’s over. What are you doing?

Causing yourself trouble for absolutely no reason in a million years. And you start doing that with everything. First, you let go, and you use the situation to help you grow, help free yourself from yourself. Free yourself from yourself. That’s what freedom is. Freedom, not freedom for yourself. It’s freedom from yourself.

Okay? Imagine being free from yourself. You wake up in the morning, you’re happy. And you don’t worry about anything, ’cause you’re happy and knowing that you have nothing to worry about, ’cause no matter what happens, you’ll be fine. How would you like that? As opposed to, I have to go out there and make it be the way I want in order to be fine.

No. All right. And the funniest part is, if you can handle it, you do much better at everything. Imagine you could handle a relationship where somebody’s going through a bad space, and you’re not being defensive, you’re not fighting, you’re not worried. You’re just there for them. You say, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re in a bad space.

I can handle it. Don’t worry about it. But I said really mean things to you. It didn’t mean anything. It was kinda cute. Don’t worry about it. Would you like to be married to someone like that? You can bring beauty and love into everyone’s life if you have that within yourself. But if you’re busy being you, that’s not gonna be fun for you or anybody else.

So you really catch on what it means to grow spiritually. And the amazing part is, if you do that, you get closer to this G-O-D thing. Why? Because you get further away from yourself. You get further away from the habit-formed patterns that pull you down into this little you. And you literally start feeling what we call Shakti.

This energy starts coming up inside of you, right? What energy? There’s God, divine energy inside of you, but it’s blocked. You’ve blocked it with all your stuff. In fact, it’s being used to try and manipulate everybody to match your stuff. No matter how tired you get all day, trying to make everybody be the way you want them to be and worry about things,

that is the same energy that you are using and channeling to feed your ego, to feed that stuff. If you let go of that stuff, the Shakti starts rising up all day constantly, just rising up, feeding you. Okay, that’s a little bit nicer than having to struggle for it. It’s free of charge. Okay. All right. So there was a little discussion about God in the end.

It rises up when I’m about to close it down. So much energy rises up inside of you, you can’t not smile. You can’t not feel bliss, joy, all the time, until no matter what anybody does or whatever happens, that’s what you feel. You’re coming from that place. And then it’s not hard to let go. There’s nothing holding you down.

There’s nothing pulling you down. And because you’re not being pulled down, it naturally goes up, and the Shakti gets stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. And eventually, the highest place is, it pulls you up so much that you actually get scared. Because it is not that what you’re staring at is the problem.

It’s this sense of letting go of yourself. Letting go of the one that was staring, the witness. That’s still a separate thing, looking down at this, you know, big deal with witness consciousness. It’s a state of individual consciousness looking down at the junk you made. Well, what if the Shakti’s going so strong that it’s causing you to let go of that sense of individuality, that literally you’re just being pulled up into God?

Well, if you have that problem, come and talk to me. The great ones let go. Right? Go read Autobiography of a Yogi, the chapter called “An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness,” where Yukteswar, his guru, touched him, and that was it. He got pulled up so strong that he merged with the whole universe. He felt his body was expanding at the speed of light in every single direction. He was

all the galaxies. You are. You are everything. You are God descended. But you don’t have to descend. You can ascend. Well. 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.