Tami Simon: Welcome to the Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at michaelsingerpodcast.com.
Michael Singer: Mm-hmm. Jai guru dev, jai masters. It’s not difficult to understand what compassion is. People suffer. People suffer, not just in war zones and not just because of detention centers or financial problems. People suffer. Yes, there’s degrees of suffering, but in general, people suffer. They worry about things.
They have anxieties. They have fears. They suffer. And you have to get a little bit out of that to understand what compassion is. Compassion is you look at the suffering. It’s not that you feel sorry. It’s not sympathy. Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is an understanding that you don’t have to suffer, but you are suffering.
That creates compassion. There is a way out. I can’t make you take it. A person can’t make another person not suffer. But when you look at somebody who’s suffering and you realize there’s a way that they don’t have to suffer, it’s a lack of understanding, a lack of… I-I always realize the word “ignorant” means “ignoring.” They’re ignoring the truth, but they can’t see the truth. Why? Because they’re too lost in their suffering. So compassion is a very beautiful thing. It doesn’t really try to change somebody. It just understands so deeply that it creates this opening. It’s a form of pain, but a form of deep opening in the heart of the person that experiences compassion, more so because they know the person does not have to suffer.
Now, what does it mean, you don’t have to suffer? There are many different levels of that. Let’s start, okay, start with war zones and people dying and families are being killed and kidnapped, and that’s very hard not to suffer when that stuff’s going on. It’s possible. When I finish, we’re gonna talk about it.
It is possible not to suffer, period. No matter what’s going on, it’s possible not to suffer, but that’s extremely deep. But that’s not where most of the suffering is. Most of the suffering isn’t even physiological. Most suffering is psychological. You just worry. You have anxieties. You’re, you’re uptight, and you have things you want to be a certain way, and they’re not that way, and it makes you suffer.
You have things you’re afraid will be a way you don’t want them to be, and it makes you suffer. This psychological suffering is all-pervasive, and everybody’s got it. Doesn’t matter how much money you have, doesn’t matter male or female, doesn’t matter old or young. It goes on in there, and that’s the one that it is more reasonable for people to learn that they don’t have to suffer.
You start with, why are you suffering? Well, let’s analyze it, okay? Do you all suffer for exactly the same reason all the time? Even you? And do you suffer the same reason other people do, or is it kind of like a personal thing, suffering? You suffer because this happened, you suffer because that didn’t happen.
You suffer because this person said this, you suffer because this person didn’t say this. You suffer because you have what you thought the person was saying that they might not have said, so you’re suffering trying to figure out whether they said it or not. But the person next to you is not suffering about that.
They’re suffering about what they’re doing. So the first thing you do to understand suffering: it’s pervasive. It’s all-pervasive, but it’s not universal in its cause. It is very personal in its cause. First of all, do you all agree? Do you understand that? That which makes you suffer, it couldn’t care less.
And it’s just like you have to understand. If you want to understand suffering and understand what’s going on, you have to start with the truth. The truth is, your suffering is different than everybody else’s, and your suffering very likely yesterday was different than it will be today. It’s a constantly changing thing, and it absolutely is not the same, really, with any two people.
So what’s it all about? You take a look at it and say, “Well, why? If it’s that personal, what’s causing it?” And you understand, and we talk about this all the time, but it’s the foundation of understanding life and suffering in people: you suffer when you want things to be a certain way and they’re not.
That’s anything from disappointment to true anxiety and issues and problems, because things aren’t the way you want, right? And you suffer because you don’t want things to be a certain way, and you either think they might be, they were, or they are. How’s that? Those are the only reasons everybody suffers.
That’s the universal aspect of suffering. You have made up in your head, and it’s very personal, what you want and what you don’t want. There’s… We’ll talk about where that came from in a minute. But you have, haven’t you? All right? You know what you want, and you know what you don’t want. And if what you don’t want is happening, you suffer.
If what you don’t want might happen, you suffer. If what you don’t want used to happen or did happen, you suffer. So it takes two to tango. It takes you in there having decided what you don’t want, and situations outside to unfold in a way that they did, are, or might match, or might not match, what you want or match what you don’t want.
Do you understand now? Really, I can’t go on if you don’t understand this. Do you see it? See how true it is? Okay? You don’t suffer because it’s raining, unless you don’t want it to rain. You don’t suffer because somebody didn’t call when they said they would, unless you really, really are invested in them calling at that time.
Somebody says, “Oh, when I get a chance, I’ll call you,” and you’re sitting by the phone all the time. You suffer. If somebody says, “Hey, when I get a chance, I’ll give you a call,” you don’t even think about it. They said when they get a chance. You cause the suffering because you say, “No, she said she’d call.”
But if you didn’t care whether she called or not, if it was not a big deal to you, then you don’t suffer. So it is you making up in your mind what you want and what you don’t want, and then the world unfolds, and depending upon how those two things match each other, you’re either happy as could be or you suffer.
Do you get that part down? I could send you home. You’ve learned everything you need to learn. In other words, you’re causing the suffering. “I am not.” Yes, you are. Like, this person got a new car. Fine, they got a new car. That’s nice, they got a new car. You wanted to have the new car. They got exactly the car you wanted to have. Who caused that?
The person getting a car? No, you, having a preconceived notion of how you want things to be. Do you have those kind of notions, preconceived notions about how you want things to be and how you don’t want things to be? Can we be honest? Do you ever not? All right. Therefore, you suffer. I’m telling you, that is the cause of suffering.
It’s the combination of you deciding what you want to be and whatever, you can be totally invested in it, a little bit invested in it, to whatever degree you’re invested in it — that’s the degree you suffer. “I am very jealous. In past relationships, I’ve lost them to friends, and I’ve lost my significant other to people, and I just turned out I’m very jealous now.
And now my significant other is dancing with somebody else. I’m watching very carefully. Where’s the hands, and how on the back is it? How close are they dancing? Are they talking? What are they talking about? Yes or no?” Okay. Or, “I love that people I love, love other people. I love to see them dance and be happy with each other, especially if they’re my friends,” as opposed to it was your friend who took your last one away.
“Now I care, friend over him,” and his friend stuff. How many ways can I say it so you understand? You’re deciding how it is, but it is truly suffering. So when things don’t match what you want, this psychological suffering takes place, which, by the way, can become physiological. Do you understand that? Ulcers, truly, muscle cramps, headaches, all kinds of things can happen because the tension and anxiety that gets created by the world coming in and not matching what’s inside of you nicely hits all your stuff and can come down into the body.
The energy flow gets messed up, and then by the time it comes into the body, you’re not getting clean energy. You know? So acupuncture’s all about this. So tai chi and all these different things are about — okay — and more and more Western science is understanding that your mental state affects your physical state.
You don’t have to be a genius to figure that out. Now you have physical suffering as well as mental suffering. I’m telling you, the cause is that you decided how you want it to be, and now it’s either not that way or it is that way. Therefore it makes you feel good, it makes you feel bad. And what we end up doing, which causes more suffering, is we say, “Okay, I feel good when it’s the way I want it to be.
I feel bad when it’s not the way I want it to be. I need to make sure it is the way I want it to be.” That’s my job in life, and you all take that on, and that’s very sad. That’s where compassion comes in. Running around like chickens with your heads cut… I’m not sure you particularly, the human race, running around like chickens with your heads cut off, trying to make the outside world be the way you’ve decided you want it to be inside.
Fair enough. How do you define success and failure? I guarantee every one of you defines it differently. Success is, “I got fired, I lost my job. I can go travel around Europe. I always wanted to do that. I just bum around,” right? Failure is, “I got fired from my job. Oh my God, what am I gonna do? What are people gonna think of me?”
You’re doing it. It’s a question of how it matches what you decided inside, and then it causes all the anxiety, or sometimes you feel joy because it did match. But you kinda know, every one of you kinda knows that it’s not just gonna match by itself. You have some work to do, don’t you? You go out there and make people like you.
Go out there and make somebody love you. Make sure they love you, they keep loving you. Make sure you act in the way they want you to act. Make su- come on. You have this thing called, what’s it called? Oh, insecurity in a relationship. What does that mean? There’s a way I want it to be, and it might not be that way, and I want it to be that way, and I don’t even know what to do to make it be that way, and now I’m anxious, and therefore I’m acting weird.
Ever been there? Okay. People live there. What’s the cause? You have a way you need it to be to be okay. In other words, you’re not okay within yourself. You have the outside world needs to unfold in a way that makes you feel right. And what determines how you feel right? You do. You do. It comes down to, you do this inside.
It’s yours. Okay? And then basically, you’ve caught on that if it matches what you want, you feel really good. If it doesn’t match what you want, you feel disappointed. If it matches what you don’t want, you get really uptight and really bothered. So therefore you have a job to do. What’s your job? I know what your job is.
Stop it. If you’re making this stuff up inside, make it up different. Be happy. Just sit there and say, “However it is turns me on.” Hippie, hippie talk, back to the ’60s. Have a good time. You’re here on a little planet in the middle of nowhere, spinning around for a handful of years, making yourself suffer because you decided that you want it to be a certain way for you to be okay.
Why don’t you just decide, “I need to fix that part of me so that I’m okay with how it is, and I’m just enjoying this journey no matter what happens.” Everything’s beautiful. The sun is shining, and if it’s not shining, good, it’s not so hot. If it is shining, oh, it’s beautiful. If you’re okay inside, it’s all okay when it comes in.
Do you understand that? I’m leaving off the extremes for now, but I’m talking about the psychological suffering everybody goes through. It’s because they decided how they want it to be, and then they double down on it by saying, “This is how I want it to be,” or “I don’t want it to be. Now I need to go outside every minute of my life” — don’t you make believe you don’t know what I’m talking about — “and be anxious and self-conscious and insecure and tense to make sure that I’m doing what I can to manipulate everyone I know.”
You manipulate your friends just as much as your not-friends, because you want them to keep being your friend. You’re careful which… Ever walk away from a conversation with a friend, and when it’s over outside, it’s not over inside? “Oh, God, I can’t believe I said that. I wonder if that bothered him.” Yes or no?
Okay? Don’t give me a friend or not-friend. The only thing that’s going on is you are trying to make the world be the way you need it to be, so when it comes in, you feel good about it. Instead of, “I got some work to do in here, because I made this stuff up how I want it to be.” She’s, she’s very short.
Okay? I wish I was taller. I wish I was taller. She’s in residency to become a neurosurgeon, but she’s very short. So how do you do the operation if the table’s up there? So she has a step stool so she can climb a step to get to the head. So what are you gonna do? Run around, “Oh my God, I wish I wasn’t short”?
That’s just crazy. Enjoy being short. Short people have more fun. It can be however you want. No, I didn’t say the outside can be however you want. They’re teaching that. I don’t wanna talk about it, right? I said, your interaction with the outside can be however you want. Why? ‘Cause you’re more than half of the interaction.
You’re the one who decided how it needs to be a certain way. If it’s not that way, you get uptight. You know you do. And you feel — no question, no question — that if it is the way you want it to be, you feel good. There, I gave it to you. How often do you think when you wake up in the morning that it’s all gonna be the way you want it to be?
That’s your first thought. “Oh, boy. It’s all gonna be exactly the way I want it to be. Everything will be just the way I want it. I can dress the way I want to. Everything will be exactly the way I want it to be.” Never. Okay? So you wake up, and you realize, “I have a choice. I don’t have a choice as to whether matching what I decided inside matches or doesn’t match the outside.
That’s gonna cause suffering if they don’t match. My choice is, do I now go out there and struggle with the outside to try to make it match what I decided inside?” And we’ll talk about that in a minute. “Or do I work inside to change my stupid head that’s making everything seem like it’s wrong, making everything seem like it’s not the way I want it to be, or will be the way I don’t want it to be,” and so on.
Which is your work? Because one work you can succeed at, which is the work that says, “I need to change what’s going on in here. If I change what’s going on in here, all of a sudden everything changes.” “I like blue and red and green. I don’t like any other colors.” Okay, then you’re in trouble, ’cause there’s lots of colors in this world.
“I like all colors. They’re so colorful, and they’re so much fun. Even the ones I don’t like, I like, ’cause they make me feel yucky, and that’s fun.” Do you hear me? It’s your choice. You either work on the outside to make the whole outside be the way you need it to be for you to be okay inside, or you realize, “Wait a minute, I just worked real hard at getting him to like me, but now he’s not there.
Now another person’s there. Gotta start all over.” Don’t think I’m not telling the truth. Go impress somebody. You tell the story, and I’ve heard, I’ve heard very famous people say this is true, right? Go play a beautiful musical thing, or sing a beautiful song, or play a sport beautifully, and somebody loves you for it, right?
You don’t wanna play again… Mm-hmm… ’cause you stand the chance of failing. You stand the chance that they won’t like me next time, or I’ll mess up. And so you just… I don’t know what to say. You can’t win trying to make the outside match the inside. Why? ‘Cause it doesn’t match. It doesn’t match. Why can’t it match?
I can give you the answer. I don’t know if you’d like to hear it. Why can’t the outside match the inside? Why can’t it just be like the way I want it to be? ‘Cause no one agrees with you. Because everybody you know, including you yesterday and tomorrow, doesn’t agree with how it’s supposed to be.
Okay? And why would everybody agree with what you want? Let’s go to war and decide who wins. Okay? And you start to catch on. Wait a minute. It can’t be the way I want it to be. One, because everybody else has something different. But there’s another reason. You come down to say, this is intelligent, clear, rational thought.
Why can’t the outside be the way I want it to be inside? Well, to analyze that, which only takes you a few minutes, you ask, “How did I decide how I wanted it to be?” You didn’t willfully decide. You’re programmed. You listen to me. I’ve been doing this for a very long time. You’re programmed by your past experiences.
If you met somebody blonde and it was a lot of fun, blondes have more fun. You meet someone who’s blonde and they’re a bimbo, and they cause all kinds of messes all over the place, can’t move away from me. It’s your past experiences that program what you want and what you don’t want. How else would you know?
“I had this experience.” No, you had a different experience. You change. Does anybody disagree with me? Because you know who doesn’t disagree with me? All of psychology. They say man is the sum of his learned experiences. It’s not true. You’re the consciousness watching the mess that happens because you’re the sum of your learned experiences, but your psyche is the sum of your learned experiences.
Not a single thing in there that isn’t made up because of an experience you had reading a book, watching a movie, meeting somebody, not meeting somebody. That’s all part of experience. “I was supposed to meet you. I was supposed to go to a Beatles concert, and I lost my tickets, and it was five, ten years ago, and I’ve never, ever…”
You had an experience, or you didn’t have an experience, and it programmed you as to what you like and what you dislike. You gotta get that. Is that insulting, to say that all your preferences, likes and dislikes, beliefs or hopes and dreams are the sum of your learned experiences? “No, they’re me.” No, they’re not you.
They’re experiences you had that left these impressions on you, and now that’s determining how your mind thinks and how your heart feels. “I wanna get married. I wanna get married to someone really, really special. I just never met anybody yet. He or she is special. They’re exactly like the way I dreamt they would be.”
That’s really good. Why? ‘Cause they’re not the way you dreamt them to be. They’re somebody else. You’re projecting your dreams onto them, right? “They walk like… Oh, look, they look… I had a dream once, okay?” And then you marry them, and then they don’t turn out to be the way you thought they would be. Of course they don’t, ’cause they’re not.
Sorry. Right? They’re not. They’re the sum of their learned experiences. But that didn’t show up until, you know, the first or second year, until this happened, or you lost your job, or you had a kid. Whatever it is, all of a sudden that match isn’t so good anymore. All right? It can’t possibly keep matching.
Why? ‘Cause every single day you have a different experience, and every single day she has a different experience. And so the sum of your learned experience is a pretty complicated thing. It’s a very dynamic thing. It keeps changing. And that’s why you have trouble with relationships, ’cause you truly believe that that other person is supposed to be the way you want them to be.
You truly believe that. How do I know that? ‘Cause if they behave in a way that isn’t the way you want, you say, “That is so wrong. I can’t believe they did that. How could they do that? I would never do that.” Of course you would never do that. You’re the sum of your own experiences. They’re the sum of their learned experiences.
That’s why you have so much trouble with relationships. And that’s why people don’t stay together so long, and if they do, they do it for the kids, and they resent that. “Yeah, I had a relationship before. We stayed together for the kids. It really didn’t work out very good, and the kids got all messed up, and so on.
I don’t wanna get married ever again.” There you go. That’s how you feel. No, it’s not how you feel. It’s how you’re programmed. If you had a different experience with that first marriage, you would have a different mindset. But you’re not. Can you see? I know it’s tough. Can you see how true it is? It is 100% true.
They are not your preferences. They’re not your likes and dislikes. They are what got impressed upon your psyche, your mind, and your heart based upon the experiences you had, and now you say they’re mine. No, they’re not yours. If somebody didn’t yell at you once, then you like them. If somebody did, then you don’t like them.
And not only do you not like them, you don’t like people from the same nationality or the same country or the same religion, because they yelled at you, and you understand that. Where does prejudice come from? It’s learned. Daddy was that way, or I had a bad experience with this kind of person or that people from that nationality, whatever the heck it is.
You’ve had experiences that left impressions on you, and then you sit there and say, “It’s how I am.” No, it is not how you are. It is how it is because of the impressions that were left on you. If something different had happened, you’d have different impressions, and therefore you’d think differently and feel differently.
I love when they say to me, “No, it’s not my mind. I feel it in my heart.” The mind and the heart are in a conspiracy with each other. If your heart feels something, your mind thinks it. If your mind thinks something, your heart feels it. Have you noticed? Okay, so that is why the inside is the way it is, because each person is a sum of their own experiences.
That’s why people have different preferences and hopes and dreams and concepts and views and beliefs. These are just all impressions that they had. Well, why can’t the outside match what I want? Because the outside is not the sum of your learned experiences. It doesn’t know anything about your learned experiences.
It’s been happening for billions of years — 14.5 billion — the outside’s been manifesting. It didn’t ask your permission. It didn’t ask what you think should happen. So the outside, ready, is the sum of its learned experiences. It’s called cause and effect. Why does it have to rain on my birthday?
That’s you. It doesn’t know it’s your birthday. It’s rainy because of El Niño and La Niña and the mountains in Spain and the winds. You wanna know why it’s raining? Study meteorology. You wanna know why people are the way they are? Study psychology. It’s this chain of cause and effect that makes the outside be the way it is.
You, ten minutes ago, ate a pizza that made you sick. The outside doesn’t know anything about that. It doesn’t change its behavior. It just unfolds, and you sit there and say, “Oh, how dare you bring me a pizza?” And then you say, “Oh, my God, you’re bringing more pizza. I don’t want more…” You did that. It’s not wrong that somebody brought you a pizza.
They didn’t know what the heck you went through. They didn’t know you got sick yesterday. They’re just gonna bring you a present. “No way. You don’t even know me or like me. Get away from me.” That is what you’re doing. The outside is the result of all the causes that made it be that way, almost none of which have anything to do with you.
They’re happening all over the place. In astrology, the place of the stars affects what’s unfolding outside, and not only physics — everything, physics goes all the way down there. Things affect each other, but not because of you. They affect each other because of the laws of the outside. You have made up what you want based on the kinda laws — I don’t know what they are — of how you decided to be weird. And you are weird.
“I am not weird,” that’s what people think. I mean, you’re weird as can be, every one of you. Why? Because you’re the sum of your learned experiences, and they were completely random. You had a car accident, now you won’t ride in a car anymore. You watched a movie in which airplanes… What was it called?
Airplane!, or who knows, right? And Snakes on a Plane, I don’t know, and you watch that stuff, okay, and then basically now you won’t ride in planes anymore. You refuse to ride in a plane anymore. There are people like that. Do you understand that? Lots of them. They won’t ride in cars, and they’re not driving in traffic, they won’t drive at night, they won’t…
Some of that has reason, because if your eyesight’s not good. But this thing about “I’m not riding in a car anymore because I was in an accident ten years ago,” that’s a problem. Problem for you, a problem for your kids, problem for your spouse, problem for your grandparents who you like to visit. Why did that happen?
What if you didn’t have the accident? Then you wouldn’t be like that. Can I get through? So inside is the sum of your learned experiences, outside is the sum of its learned experiences, and the two things have nothing to do with each other. You grew up in New Hampshire, and you had trees, you had this and that, and all these experiences.
What’s unfolding right now in front of me doesn’t know squat about any of that, does it? It doesn’t affect any of what’s happening in reality. And you have decided that I have… Oh, oh God, I can’t even say it. You’ve decided, “I have to make the outside match the inside. That’s the only way I can be happy, to make the outside match the inside.”
Now, there’s a chore. Outside has been going on for 4.5 billion years just on this planet, and everything affected everything else, and you have decided that the outside should match what you want. That is the cause of suffering. That is the cause of suffering, and basically the deep teachings all teach that.
So the net result is the world is not gonna be what you want it to be, and now you understand why. You wanna know why? ‘Cause it’s not supposed to be. You, the sum of your learned experiences — it is this thing called… What is it? Oh, yeah, science, the natural laws that cause everything to be the way they are, the law of…
The most basic scientific law is the law of cause and effect. If there was no law of cause and effect, there’d be no science. The fact that if this happens, it’ll cause that to happen — okay, now we can figure out why and what’s gonna happen, and study it, and see what we can do about it. But if there is no law of cause and effect, if it’s just completely random, then there’s no science.
Okay? So that’s what the outside world is about, which is the sum of its learned experiences, and your inside world is the sum of your own experiences. Now you have a choice. Do you wanna go outside and try to manipulate every moment that’s unfolding in front of you? I mean every moment. It’s not, “You left the kids home with a babysitter, but you don’t trust the babysitter, so the entire rest of the evening you’re uptight, anxious, calling.”
Every moment has to be what you want it to be. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t ever stop. There are people, when they drive in cars with somebody else driving, they’re constantly uptight that something’s gonna go wrong. There’ll be an accident. They’re grabbing corners. They’re doing everything just to… I’m not in control, so I’m not comfortable.
So you have this whole thing about, “It has to be the way I want it to be, otherwise I’m not okay.” And I ask you over and over again, how do you make it be the way you want it to be when it’s not? And so you eventually reach the point of deep spiritual understanding. “But what do I do about this?” You let go of yourself.
That’s the only thing you can do about it. You can’t make everything be the way you want it to be. It keeps changing. You keep changing. It’s just a total losing battle. So what do you do? Look inside and say, “Okay, it’s not exactly the color white that I wanted. I guess it’s white. Contractor said it was white, but that’s not the white I was thinking about.
Do I repaint the whole kitchen, or do I say, ‘Eh, it’s okay’?” I can live with that color white. And then you get a little better, you say, “Well, if I can just live with it, cope with it…” Okay, that’s better than fighting and spending all the money and fighting with everybody and suing the contractor because the color’s not exactly what you said you wanted.
But what about deciding that I like it that color? Well, how do I decide I like it when I don’t? Because you’re the one deciding whether you like it or not. It’s just an impression left on top of you. If you had had that color in your first kitchen with your parents and you loved that house, you would want that color, I guarantee you.
If it was even slightly off, you’d say, “No, that’s not the color I wanted.” So you’re sitting there making a big mess for no reason. Can you work with yourself to let go? That’s what it boils down to. “So I should lie to myself?” Okay, we wanna do it. You’ll… I’ll be you talking to me. “So I lie to myself and say I like it when I don’t?”
Nope, nope, don’t do that. Don’t you dare do that. It’s called suppression. You can look inside and say, “Okay, shh. Why do I feel so strongly about this shade of white?” And you’re gonna see, in general, I don’t even look that deep. I just say, “Oh, you don’t like it? Here, give it to God.” Just, don’t… I don’t go down and find out why you don’t like it.
It’s just some stupid reason. You just go down and you sit there and say, “Okay, he doesn’t like it, but I’m not him. I’m watching him not like it.” And these stages — this is real growth. You go from, “I don’t like it,” and make a big mess, right? “I don’t like it, but I can handle it. I’ll handle it ’cause it’s too much of a mess to fight it.”
Okay, but you’re not happy. That’s a form of suppression, just repressing the fact that you don’t like it. See, I’m having a nice talk with you. All right, so what do I do? What do I do? You try to see why you don’t like it, and you’re gonna see that there’s no reason. There’s no reason. I was a contractor a long time ago, right?
There are these color fans that people use when they’re picking what colors they want. There’s an entire fan called white. Do you know that? And so basically, you sit there and say, “Okay, I have this impression” — that’s all it is — “left on me by something.” I don’t care if you can identify it or not. Fun, if you can identify it, right?
It’s left there by something, for some reason. They like that color versus another. Okay? And you sit there and say, “Do I wanna not like it and suppress the fact that I don’t like it?” No. That creates all kinds of psychological issues and problems, and the truth is, “I don’t like it, I don’t like it. I’m saying I do.”
Well, use positive affirmation. “I like it. I like it. I like it.” And then behind that, you know you don’t like it. You’re just saying that. If you liked it, why do you have to say you like it? That’s what goes on in your mind. It’s kinda fun, isn’t it? Not so much so. So you go deeper and say, “Okay, there is obviously an impression left upon my heart and mind” — normally it’s the mind — “left upon the mind of why I don’t like it.
Is it reasonable?” Let’s say, business people: what’s the cost-benefit analysis? Ready? What is the cost-benefit analysis of not liking it versus liking it? There’s 100% cost if you don’t like it, and there’s 100% benefit if you do like it. And since you’re deciding, I wonder which one’s more fun. So you sit there and say, “Okay, I get it, but how do I change what I want and what I don’t want?”
You start off by this understanding. It’s called right understanding. There’s no reason that I don’t like it. It’s just some leftover, stupid thing, and it’s costing me my happiness. It’s costing me my money. It’s costing my relationship. Maybe the husband likes it one way, the wife different, and there’s, you know, all these problems and fights and arguing.
It’s causing me a lot of trouble. Is it worth it? And you look inside and you see, no, it’s not worth it. And you don’t suppress it. You don’t fight with it at all. You welcome it to come up, whatever the reason is. “You are welcome inside of me so that you can pass through once and for all,” and it will. And people write me from all over the world and talk about how it works.
You just look at it, and there’s this part of you. It’s not you. How do I know it’s not you? Because you’re the one who’s noticing that part of you. You notice there’s a part of you that doesn’t like it. Who notices? You do, the self. And you sit there and say, “Okay, I’m gonna let it go,” not rip it out, not push it down.
“I’m gonna welcome it. Okay, hello, part of me that doesn’t like that shade of white, come on up. You’re welcome. Say whatever you wanna say. Just come on up. Feel it completely, ’cause I’m gonna let it go.” It’s just a — what is an impression? Oh my God, we’re there. I said it leaves an impression on your past. It’s called a samskara. It’s a pattern of energy that didn’t make it through you. It came in, you resisted it or clung to it, so it stayed there, and now that impression is made upon your psyche. That’s what it’s called. They call it a samskara. It’s a pattern of energy that got stuck. It didn’t get stuck.
You pushed it there. You held it there, and now it’s there. All right? And it can be very deeply ingrained, so it’s hard to let go of. Why? ‘Cause when it starts to come back up, you don’t like it. It felt icky to start with, it feels icky now. And so you think, “No, I really don’t like it.”
No, it just means there’s this pattern stuck inside of you that’s giving off bad energy when it gets stimulated. So every time you walk in the kitchen, “Oh, I should change it. I can’t, I can’t change it,” or whatever it was. It’s just adorable, right? So you’re causing suffering. So is there something I can do about it?
Of course there is. Don’t you dare cope with it. Coping with it is a form of suppression. What I’m saying is, “I don’t like it, but I’ll say I do. I’ll make believe I do. I’m not gonna make a mess out of it.” That means you’re pushing still. You’re pushing the energy away that caused it to be that way. You’re not dealing with it.
There’s a big difference. Yoga’s very, very deep. It sits there and says, “No, don’t do that.” Welcome that it come up, that the samskara release the energy that you couldn’t handle when it happened. Here it is. It’s painted that color, or it’s my parents’ house is that color, whatever it was, that comes up, and every time it starts to come up, you feel yicky, you feel weird, all right?
Welcome that. Relax. The whole idea is relax in the face of the energy. The energy that needs to come up is gonna come up. It’s trying to come up. It’s always trying to come up. The fact that you feel bad when you look at the color is it trying to come up. It’s trying to express itself. It’s trying to release.
But you: “No, no, I don’t like what it feels like.” Well, that’s too bad. You have to sit there and say, “If I want to grow past this to where I can enjoy my life, I have to be willing to let go of the impressions that the past left on me that are making me not enjoy my life.” Not trying to make life match those impressions.
That’s a battle you’re never gonna win. Then life isn’t fun, is it? It’s a battle. It’s a struggle. No, it’s not. You do the work inside, and you sit there and say, “Okay, I got this thing about this color white. First, weird that I have this thing,” all right? And you realize there must have been an impression left on me when I was a youth or this or that, that made it that way.
It doesn’t just happen by itself. An impression got left there. Why did I keep it there? Because it felt yicky. When it took place, you didn’t like it, and therefore you pushed it away, so it stayed there. Now you have to be willing to say, “I don’t want it in there. I don’t not like it, not not like it. I don’t like it. I’ll push it away.
I neither like it nor not like it. I just don’t want it in there. It’s messing my life up.” So what do you do? You let it come up. But it feels yucky. Yes, it does. A great master once said to me, “It’s the pain that ends all pain.” It’s exactly the pain that ends all pain. It comes up, it’s trying to pass through, and you don’t push it back down.
You get to the point where now I’m not pushing it back down. I’m understanding it’s the cause of my suffering. I don’t wanna suffer over the color of those stupid cabinets. I don’t wanna suffer ’cause it’s raining out. I don’t wanna suffer ’cause the driver in front of me didn’t use their blinker. You start saying that about a lot of things, and you realize, wow, I got all this junk in here.
I don’t wanna have all that junk in there, and therefore it has to come up. Therefore, I look at it, and not only do I tolerate it coming up — that’s not high enough. I have to have a deep talk with you. Childbirth, I heard, is kinda not so much fun at certain periods of the experience, but it’s worth it, isn’t it?
There are people who go back for seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths. Wow, I don’t get it. It’s worth it. It’s worth going through the pain because it gives something beautiful. This is way beyond childbirth. It lets go of all the garbage you have inside of you that’s making you be weird. I don’t mean the no-mind calling you weird.
Are you weird? Answer me. Isn’t it kinda hard to live in there? Figure out what’s gonna go on and what’s not gonna go on, and whether you’re gonna be happy or not happy, and you’re sensitive and emotional, and trigger points, and come on, okay? Compared to a clear being, it’s pretty weird. Okay? How about moods?
You ever have moods? Anybody ever have moods? Does anybody here have moods? You know what a mood is? You’ve got that stuff in there that got stimulated. “I was doing fine, and then somebody said something, and now I’m in a bad mood,” because you got that energy — it got hit, and that’s what’s coming up now. At some point, you wake up and say, “I’m not gonna go out there and try to manipulate everything to have that not happen.
I’m going to let go of what makes it happen inside of me.” And the way you do that is not only tolerate it — you catch on that if you can let it go, even a little, the more you let it go, the less it bothers you, until eventually you look at the cabinet and you laugh your head off. “That used to bother me.” You grew past it.
How do you grow past it? By letting go of what was holding you down. Does that make sense? Do you understand that? “My husband,” or “my wife has a tendency that irritates me.” Let’s see you try to change it and see what arguments take place. “I have the right to do this, you, I give you blah, blah, blah, blah.”
As opposed to, “Why does that irritate me? It’s kinda cute.” These are tendencies. It’s kinda cute. And if it irritates me, there’s something wrong with me, ’cause I love this person, so why would I want something irritating me that they do? The way they walk, the way they dress, the way they talk, whatever it is.
And eventually you sit there and say, “It’s cute. It’s cute that it’s different than the way I would be. I enjoy it.” And you welcome it. The more you welcome it, the less it bothers you. The more you’re willing to say, “I am fine with this, so why am I picking on somebody because they have a tendency that — that it’s my stuff?”
And then you say, “Well, I’m not gonna be like that. I’m gonna let it go.” And you not only then don’t cope, you literally start welcoming it. That’s what I want you to get. Does it feel good when it comes up? Of course not. It was bad energy you stored. That’s why it’s bothering you now. Do you want it to stay in there the rest of your life?
At some point you have to say — and that’s why I talk to you all the time. We’re talking about compassion. Imagine looking at somebody who’s suffering over the color of the cabinet, and they can’t afford to have it repainted. They’re thinking about suing the contractor. Hello, just like it. There’s a solution.
Like the color. How? “I don’t like it.” Who said so? “I did.” There you go. Isn’t that beautiful? Well, how about working with yourself to find out why? And it doesn’t mean knowing where the situation first happened. It means, “I’m looking. It’s a samskara.” Why does it bother you? Because I have stuff caught in me from before.
There, that’s as far down as you have to go. You don’t have to go to therapy and go back to your childhood house. You can go back to your childhood house and find out they painted over it, so it’s just scraping the paint off the wall to see the original color. That’s why I say weird, okay? And you just say, “Okay, it’s not the way my impressions like, but I don’t want to keep these impressions inside of me.
I would rather be happy all the time, regardless of the color, or regardless of what somebody said, or regardless of how somebody’s behaving, regardless of what they’re wearing, regardless of their religion, regardless of anything.” And then what happens when it comes up — it’s not gonna be comfortable. You stored it with bad energy, it’s gonna come up with bad energy, but you start welcoming it.
You start catching on that this is very great, that it doesn’t feel good. Good. I’m glad it doesn’t feel good. Now I can deal with the part of me that makes it not feel good. How? By facing it, by honoring it, by respecting it, by welcoming it. I’m telling you, get to the point where you welcome it. “If this is causing pain, I want it out. It’s hitting at some scar from my past.
I don’t care where it came from, I just don’t want it in there.” Well, you can’t not have it in there by pushing it away. It stays inside. You have to relax through it. Surrender, relax. So that’s the next step. One is resistance, second is cope with it, third is I can tolerate it, and the fourth is, okay, this works.
“I’m gonna welcome this.” And I tell you, I remember the moment I got to that point, I couldn’t believe that it was like that. I looked down at it and I realized, wait a minute, I did that. I didn’t do the event, but I’m the one that couldn’t handle the event and pushed it down there from my whole childhood and different relationships and all, right?
And you apologize to it. You literally… So, I was talking about compassion. You look down at that part of you. That’s a part of your psyche. That’s a part of your Shakti. You pushed a packet full down there and hold it down there your whole life. And instead, you look at it and you say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Give me your hand. I wanna help you up.”
That’s different than positive thinking. Positive thinking can be a form of knocking down your negative thinking. This is getting to the root. The root is you pushed that thing down there, okay? And just like if you lock a kid in a closet because they misbehave, I don’t wanna be there when the kid comes out of the closet, because it ain’t gonna be healthy.
Well, it’s the same thing with that stuff you shoved down there. So you can become this beautiful being whose entire life is about cleansing. Not cleansing somebody else. Cleansing your heart and your mind. How? When it comes up, you welcome it, you apologize to it, you stick your hand down. There’s actually a line in the Gita that says, “One should raise the self with self, not trample down the self. For self, which could be self’s friend, can become self’s foe.”
But it’s using Atman, capital A, and atman, lower a. Higher self, lower self. One should raise the self, lower self, with self, with your higher being, not trample down the self, hate it, push it away. All that does is suppress it more. “For self, which can become self’s friend, can become self’s foe.”
And literally, I think there’s a line after that says, “If self becomes self’s foe when it hates the self, is not itself.” Whoa. Everybody gets confused reading that because of all the word “self,” but you get it, don’t you? If you look down at that part of you, being that you created it by shoving it down there and locking it in a closet, and now you don’t like that part — “I can’t even live with it, I hate it” — wow.
Instead, you get clear and you say, “I’m into this cleansing process. I’m into liberation. I’m into freeing myself from myself, not for myself.” You think of lectures like that. Is freedom, freedom for yourself, or freedom from yourself? Go contemplate on that. And you just basically start offering it up. As it comes up, you just stick your hand down, you say, “Come, come on, come up.
Come on, you can come up here. I don’t care what it feels like. You’re welcome. You are welcome inside of me. I don’t care what needs to be released. I want it to be released. I’m open to it. I’ll breathe. I’ll do what I need to do, but I ain’t pushing you back down. I’m welcoming you up, everything. Wait till you see how you grow.”
There’s an equivalent to saying, “Take it and give it to God,” because giving it to God means I’m not pushing it back down. I’m saying, “Here, you want it? You take it.” I give flowers every day. Give this instead. He’d much prefer it. Lay your stuff at the altar, okay? And you just get to the point where you understand the entire talk I’ve had about compassion and understanding.
When you’re that way with yourself and you look at other people, they don’t even know they could be that way. They’re busy fighting, struggling to make the world be what they want, and basically you have compassion because they’re suffering for no reason. Now you understand the “no reason,” okay? It’s not no reason.
I showed you the reason. The reason is you got caught, and liberation means freeing yourself. And I love the fact that Christ said you must die to be reborn, and I guarantee you what he means by that. That’s what we just talked about. You must die the personal self. You must die this part of you that says, “I don’t like this. I like this,” and then you’re reborn as spirit. You’re reborn as Shakti. All of a sudden, all this energy comes rushing up inside of you all the time. You’re a being of great light, but you’re busy staring at this garbage that you stored down there and then going out there and trying to manipulate the world to match your garbage.
It’s the truth. If you have a way you want something to be, you better check it out before you start bothering other people. If you sit there and you wanted the corner office, somebody else got the corner office, and you resent it, and you’re mad at them, you don’t talk to them, you don’t go to the family, these three are your friends, and suddenly it all falls apart.
What are you doing? You should congratulate that person from the bottom of your heart, feel, “Oh, thank God he got that. I didn’t need it. What do I need it for? I’m happy as a lark.” So get okay inside, and you won’t have to do all this garbage outside. But the way you get okay inside is by letting go of yourself, by surrendering, by releasing, by accepting, by honoring, by respecting.
Those are all the magic words. And eventually, by welcoming. It’s welcome and thank— It’s like you get to the point where you say, “God, guru, stuck his or her hand in there, grabbed my stuff, and is pulling it out for me. All I have to do is let them.” And, oh, boy, that’s how it is. Okay? You’ll catch on at some point.
You don’t have to do anything except let it happen. Free yourself. Free yourself. 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.
