Michael Singer: Letting go is very meaningful when you don’t want to. And like I say, it’s not renunciation on the outside — it’s saying, I have an ego, but I don’t have to buy into it. I don’t have to own it. I’m witness consciousness, and I see that there are these things in here. They come up naturally, don’t they? They have a way of finding you.
Tami Simon: In this episode of Insights at the Edge, I am with Michael Singer — a friend, beloved wisdom teacher, founder of the Temple of the Universe, and the author of four books which, in my opinion, are all spiritual classics, books you go back to again and again that stand the test of time.
Approximately twenty years ago, The Untethered Soul was published, followed by The Surrender Experiment, which was autobiographical in nature, followed in 2022 by a book called Living Untethered. So now we’re seeing an Untethered series. And then, earlier this year, the third book — you could say — in the Untethered Soul series, Wisdom Untethered: The Time for Questions.
I have to say, even though I wonder if it’s just because it’s the book I’m reading right now, Wisdom Untethered might be my favorite of all of the books, because it’s so practical, so immediately applicable to the questions in our lives. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about. In the creation of Wisdom Untethered, Michael, along with his team, gathered 1,200 questions.
People wrote in questions to Michael Singer about the issues raised in his previous books. They asked him questions when he gave talks at the Temple of the Universe. They distilled those 1,200 questions into 200 terrific and essential questions and organized them into different categories.
I just want to give people a sense of how incredible this book is — there are chapters on ego and self-concept, desires and preferences, dealing with fear, engaging with the world, relationships, and more. The subtitle is A Time for Questions, and this is our time for questions.
Michael Singer, welcome.
Michael Singer: Hi, Tami. Hi, hi, hi.
Tami Simon: Right at the very beginning, in the preface, you say, “Ultimately, life is asking you a single question” — even though there are 200 questions in the book, a single question: “Are you willing to let go?” Let’s start there. Why do you say it can be distilled into this one question?
Michael Singer: Well, it really explains my entire path. I started off back in ’71 or so, dropping out and meditating six hours a day, just trying to get out. And what life did to me was to say, yes, it’s good, and you should try to get out — but you should also find out why you’re not. What’s the anchor? What’s holding you down?
Because otherwise you’re stretching yourself to try to go up, but there’s something holding you down. And that’s where I learned to let go. People misunderstand some of the teachings — especially in The Surrender Experiment — that letting go means dealing with things on the outside. Don’t argue with anybody, don’t disagree with anybody, don’t have a political view.
Letting go is something you do inside. It’s a form of meditation — some say if it’s walking meditation, it’s constant. And what happens is you walk through life, and not everything fits, if you haven’t noticed. Things happen that cause fear to come up. Things happen that cause desire to come up. Things happen that cause insecurity to come up, that make you feel defensive, and so on.
It took me a long time to get to the point where I realized that’s where it’s at. It’s been in there a long time — that doesn’t give it a reason or an excuse to say, I want it in there. You don’t want it in there. It’s causing all this trouble. Why are you defensive? Because you got hurt previously, or because people said things and you didn’t defend yourself and you were sorry later.
Instead, you get to the point where you say, “I don’t want it in there. I love myself, I love everybody, but I don’t need that garbage in there from my past.” So when it comes up, are you willing to let it go? I’ve learned that’s the entire path. If you are willing to let it go, even to the very deep levels —
Letting go is very meaningful when you don’t want to. And like I say, it’s not renunciation on the outside — it’s saying, I have an ego, but I don’t have to buy into it. I don’t have to own it. I’m witness consciousness, and I see that there are these things in here. They come up naturally, don’t they? They have a way of finding you.
And what you find is, if you’re willing to let them go — I’ll do it quickly — all this shakti starts flowing inside. Where there used to be fears and anxieties, jealousies or insecurities, needs and wants and so on, now all of a sudden there’s less of that. And to whatever degree there’s less of that stuff in there — literally, one to one — you start feeling this beautiful upward flow of shakti, energy pouring up inside of you.
Until you finally reach the point where you say, “I’m going to let go.” Of what? Every single thing that comes up, to the best of my ability. You will not be perfect, believe me. But if it comes up, I’m going to take the position: I don’t need this in here. Then I’ll deal with it. So you don’t not deal with things, but first you let go. That’s what letting go means.
Tami Simon: You mentioned, as you were talking about this path of letting go, that early in your life you wanted to “get out” — and then you discovered this art. One of the misunderstandings of your work, which you address early on in Wisdom Untethered, is this idea that the approach you teach is a type of spiritual bypassing. Is it, or is it not?
Michael Singer: It’s literally the opposite. What does spiritual bypassing mean — what are you bypassing? What came up that was difficult, that you don’t want to deal with, so you put on a spiritual ego instead. I’ll serve, I’ll do anything I can, I’ll wear white clothes, I don’t want to pick on anybody — I’ll do things that look spiritual, while what’s really going on inside is anything but that. That, to me, is what’s meant by spiritual bypassing.
If, when something comes up, you’re willing to address it — not “address it” meaning fix it, you don’t have to fix it, you have to let it go — that’s very different. So you’re not avoiding it. The clearest way I can put it is: you don’t go down to it, you let it come up to you. That’s very deep. It will come up to you unless you push it away.
So it’s not bypassing — it’s inviting it to come up and letting it pass through. It’s literally lifting you. You’re not bypassing it. All the stuff down there — this is called transmutation of energy. Every single thing that’s down there, no matter how dark it is, no matter when it happened, no matter how long it’s been in there, is capable of turning into light as you let it go.
But you don’t do that — it happens naturally as you let go. Yogananda once said, which I really like: “Darkness is the absence of light.” It’s not a bad thing, it’s the absence of light. So if you’re willing to really let go, then what’s underneath it all is God, is shakti. So I’m glad people talk about spiritual bypassing, because some people do that. This is the opposite — this is welcoming it to come up and relax through it, so that it can make its way completely through and not be bypassed.
Tami Simon: To get a little more precise — often when you talk about what it is that we’re letting come up, you describe it, using language from the yogic tradition, as our samskaras being triggered by some event. Can you explain samskaras, particularly for people who are hearing that word for the first time?
Michael Singer: Fortunately, it’s become easy to explain because of modern psychology. I love Freud — he was not an enlightened spiritual being in any way, shape, or form, but he brought to the surface that, you know what, you shove stuff down in there. That’s a samskara.
It’s not a memory. Memories come and go — you can have a memory, you can bring it back, it doesn’t do anything, it’s fine, you should remember things. They pass through and then you can bring them back. A samskara is one that didn’t pass through — it came in and you couldn’t handle it.
It disturbed you so much that your will pushed it away. That’s what a samskara is — a pattern that happened in life. If it didn’t happen, don’t worry about it, but it obviously happened. It’s called reality. And it didn’t make it through you.
Everything will make it through you if you let it, if you let go. You didn’t let go, so now you’ve stored the stuff inside, and that’s where all the negativity comes from, all the darkness. Those blockages that you shove down there are literally blocking the light.
So to sit there with all the blockages and then reach for the light — that’s wonderful, by all means do everything you can. But if you let go of the blockages, it naturally turns into light. So that’s basically what a samskara is. It’s not a difficult concept — it’s basically something that came in.
How do you know? You know — you already deal with what didn’t come in. It happened outside, let’s say — could happen inside too, but let’s say outside. Somebody said something, somebody did something, somebody didn’t say something, didn’t do something. It came in and it hit you wrong, and what do you do? You attempt to protect yourself from it.
It’s not even a thing — it’s just energy at that point. It comes in, and it’s energy inside. If you protect yourself from it, what you’re doing is resisting the energy, and it will stay blocked in there. What I teach is that it circles around itself. Energy has to keep moving — well, the way that energy can move and stand still is in a circle. That’s why the circle is such an important shape in our universe. Planets, everything — it’s because energy can stay in one place and still be moving. But you don’t want that energy in there.
I always ask people, “Did you like that experience you had when you were five, or ten, or fifteen, or twenty, when different things happened?” No. Then why did you choose to keep it? It’s already over. They’re either gone, or everything’s over from your childhood. Why did you decide, because I don’t like it, I’ll keep it?
So a samskara is something you kept. You pushed it away — which I understand, things are difficult to deal with. But you’ll see through this conversation that the essence of all my teachings is: you can learn to be more open. You can learn to deal with it. You can learn to let it go. You don’t know how to now. The natural impulse is to push it away, to protect yourself, and to try to create an environment outside that doesn’t hit your stuff.
Eventually you’ll catch on: come and get it, you want a piece of me, take it, because I don’t want it. I don’t want that stuff in there. So that’s what a samskara is, and that’s what the path of purification is. Purification doesn’t mean “no swearing” — purification means you don’t have all that stuff in there.
Tami Simon: One of the twenty-three chapters is dedicated to samskaras, and one of the things you write in that chapter is: “Since they were generally stored with pain, they’ll come back with pain. You have to be willing to handle the disturbance they create without pushing them back down.” This is a really important point, Michael, because when I read your opening question in the preface — “Are you willing to let go?” — I scribbled to myself, “Yes, but it sounds painful.” And it is painful.
Michael Singer: You know what — childbirth is painful, but people go back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. Why? Because the benefit of putting up with, dealing with, surrendering, relaxing in the face of the pain is worth what you gain. You don’t want that stuff down there.
What do I do if I have it down there? You protect yourself from it. How? By hanging out with certain people you don’t think will challenge you, by being only with people who are friendly, and never dealing with people who hurt you before. It patterns your entire life — it will decide who you marry and who you don’t marry.
It’s like you start making every decision based on what protects you from yourself — protecting yourself from yourself, protecting yourself from life. Life is going on everywhere, all over the place. It doesn’t bother you — all that bothers you is the little piece that comes into you. It’s happening everywhere, and it’s going to hit your stuff.
I moved out to the woods to meditate, in solitude, for at least a year and a half. I’m embarrassed to say it — I was really back in the woods, trying to meditate, and there’s a dog barking. It bothered me as much as somebody criticizing me. What do I do with that dog in the distance? You’re not going to get away from yourself. If you have preferences and fears and desires, they’re going to get stimulated either internally or externally.
You get to the point where you understand — one of the greatest saints once told me, “It’s the pain that ends all pain.” The question isn’t whether it’s painful — of course it’s painful, it was stored with pain. That cycle of energy I talked about: you blocked pain, you blocked that disturbing experience, so of course it’s going to come back. A lot of times somebody says something and you start crying, and you think, “I can’t handle this.”
Well, it’s not how you want to be. Do you want to sit there and say, “That ain’t me”? It’s pain waiting to happen. Which pain do you want — the pain that’s waiting to happen, or the pain you’re learning to let go of so it’s not in there for the rest of your life? I know what I choose, and so do a lot of other people. That’s why they like the different books — because it finally addresses the fact that of course it’s going to be painful, it was stored with pain.
What do they say when you lift weights? No pain, no gain. You’re not trying to get into pain, you’re not putting yourself in a situation you know will be painful — don’t worry, life will do that for you. What you deal with is: am I willing, when it comes up, to ask — do I want this in here for the rest of my life? It does not have to be. That’s the main point people ask me: what about really terrible things that happen to people — don’t they have to stay in there and just be coped with? Absolutely not. Anything that’s in there is in there because your will is holding it in there, either subconsciously or consciously. That’s all Freud — denial, repression, suppression. That’s “I couldn’t handle it, so I pushed it away.” I understand — we deal with each other with tremendous compassion and understanding, especially if you walk this path. You’ll learn to be compassionate for others, even if they’re nothing like you.
They had their experiences that caused issues, and you had yours that caused issues. So you stop judging altogether, and you just sit there and say, “When it comes up, do I want to keep it in there?” Of course I don’t want to keep it in there. And then, on the other side — when you’re willing to let go, you start to see what happens. Instead of the pain being down there, or the fear of the pain, there’s all this shakti, all this God, all this light pouring up inside all the time. That’s your natural state of being.
Why wasn’t it that way before? Because you held all that stuff in there. So you get to the point where you realize, “I don’t want it in there.” And I don’t think anybody does. If I ask you — you had trouble with your mother, your father, your sister — do you want that to bother you for the rest of your life? You say no, but it does, and you don’t want to have to deal with it. Well, that’s spiritual bypassing — and it’s non-spiritual bypassing. You’re pushing life away outside so you don’t have to push it away inside.
Yoga and the deep spiritual practices are about being open to going through what you need to go through. Ram Dass used to say, “Use it to go to God.” And that’s what you start realizing — God can be whatever you want it to be, but part of it is love and ecstasy and joy. And you start realizing that’s what’s in there, and you’re willing to go through this and let it go.
You play volleyball and you block a spike — you may get a black-and-blue mark on your hand. “I’m never going to play again”? Of course you’re going to play again, you enjoy the sport, you enjoy the challenge — not to mention football players. So you stop being a baby and realize, I’m not going to limit my life because I can’t handle things. Some things, as they’re cleansing, are going to bring back memories and thoughts and feelings that aren’t comfortable. They weren’t comfortable to start with, so they’re sure not going to be comfortable now. Good. We’ll go deeper into this — the right attitude about how to deal with that stuff in there.
Someone once asked, “What’s the approach you take to releasing samskaras?” And you said — being neutral in most things is the path that you take. What did you mean by that?
That means: don’t worry, life will take care of you. To me, life is the guru. Every moment of every day — things are happening, Earth is a happening place. No matter where you go on this amazing planet, there’s something happening. Can you handle it? That’s what my path has evolved into, and apparently for a lot of others too, which is — of course I can handle it, it’s just an experience, it comes and it goes.
But what if I can’t handle it? Then work on learning to handle it. You can’t play the piano when you first sit down — well, we might as well quit. You can’t play Beethoven or Tchaikovsky right away, you can’t play a sport the first time you pick up a tennis racket, that ball’s going to the net — but you don’t quit. You have this thing called learning, don’t you? We all learn — by practice. That’s how you walk this path.
You understand life is going to do its thing. If it bothers you, that’s because it hit something inside of you. Are you willing to learn to let go? It takes time, it takes practice, and you start with small things. I tell everybody, start with the weather. The weather is your guru, the weather is a great teacher — because you can’t handle it. Can’t handle that it’s windy and blows your hair, can’t handle that it’s hot and you’re going to sweat, can’t handle that it’s cold and you shiver. You complain about something you have no control over, and you get to the point where you say, “Why can’t I handle the weather? What’s the matter with me?” And you start saying, “I want to be able to handle the weather,” not, “I want to be able to complain about it and let it bother me.” That doesn’t do any good.
Or the other example I use all the time — the driver in front of you. Tami, have you ever been behind a driver who doesn’t use their blinker, rides the brakes, drives fifteen miles an hour below the speed limit? Do you ever talk to them? Guess what — they don’t hear you, but you’re bothering yourself about absolutely nothing. It’s a little planet, spinning in the middle of nowhere, and if you let yourself be bothered by the weather, by the car in front of you, you’re going to bother yourself about the fact that somebody didn’t say hello, or that when you say, “I love you so much,” and they say, “Yeah, I love you too,” but you don’t like the tone. You can be bothered by everything.
Instead, you start with the small stuff, like the weather and the car in front of you. Why is that small? Because the cost-benefit — and I’m a businessman — the cost-benefit analysis is one hundred percent cost, you’re bothered, and zero benefit. It didn’t do any good for anybody. That’s not a good business decision. So you sit there and say, “From now on, I’m going to come into life every morning, wake up” — meditate, do what you need to do — “and go through this day without getting bothered by stupid little things.”
And you practice, and you won’t do it perfectly. But then at night you say, “Is there stuff I could have let go of that I didn’t? Am I willing to let go now?” And you start practicing. It’s called practice — you practice being open, you practice letting go. What you should say first in the morning is, “I’ve got all this stuff in here, I’m not putting any more in today. I’ve got enough trouble getting the stuff out.” Have you noticed that if you put stuff down, it’s hard to get it out? But if you don’t complain about it, and you don’t push it down, it doesn’t have to stay down — it will pass right through. So you start practicing letting go with small stuff, and eventually — though I’m not going to brag, because as someone once told me, anything you say you can do is exactly when you get challenged, so I don’t brag.
Tami Simon: Michael, you offer lots of very specific practice suggestions. One of them is this notion of “falling behind.” I’m wondering if you can explain that more.
Michael Singer: Falling behind means falling behind your resistance to the disturbance. You’re in there — call it witness consciousness, call it whatever you want. Maybe you’ve never heard the term, but you’re still in there, noticing your thoughts, believe me. Everybody’s in there. Do you notice that you push things away? Yes.
Falling behind means: the energy that’s coming up is disturbing. I’m not saying it isn’t — you wouldn’t be talking about it if it wasn’t. Are you willing to relax, like in yoga, when you go into a posture — an asana — they tell you to relax into it? So here it starts to come up, and you tend to resist. Are you willing to relax and fall behind the tendency to resist? That’s one of the techniques, and it really is the essence of spirituality. When it’s all said and done, that’s what you’re doing if you’re going anywhere. Otherwise you’re going to stay down here fighting with yourself.
So it comes up, and you look at it, and — when you push it away, you’re resisting. Resistance is an act of pushing away. Tensing — you can’t resist without tensing. If you relax, you can’t tense; you’ve relaxed. You don’t have to sit there and stare at it. You don’t have to go down into it — if you can, let it come up to you. That’s a much higher path. If you’re willing to let it come up to you and let it pass through, it’s going to go out over time. If you go down and get all involved with it, a lot of times it gets worse before it gets better.
There are lots of techniques, and I honor all of them. I just want you to grow, to work on a regular basis to free yourself from yourself. But I’ve certainly gone through times in my early path where something was very disturbing, causing all kinds of trouble, and I couldn’t get behind it. And I learned that if I lie down, stretch my arms out to the side, lift my chest up — and let the energy flow over me instead of trying to get behind it — welcome it to just flow, like getting in the water and letting the water flow over you. So you don’t have to fight the energy.
What you don’t want to do is push the energy back down. If you push it back down, it’s going to stay there. So if you can fall behind it, that’s very high — it has every opportunity to come up and release. Not the first time — it’s not a technique like a drug, where the first time you try to relax it goes and it’s gone. Some things are deep, they will take multiple tries. You don’t learn the piano in one sitting, or tennis. This is something you practice, and the more you practice, the better you get.
But that’s another technique — the technique of lying down. And I said “stick your chest out” — it’s slightly different. Lie down, let your body fall to the floor, and let that disturbing energy pass over you. The “lift the chest up” technique is when I say, offer it to God, offer it to Mother — here, you take it. I don’t want to fight it — here, you take it, and you just keep offering it up. There are lots of ways to work with the energy, and the worst way is to suppress it.
Tami Simon: I want to highlight one word you used — offering — because you talk about how you can take the disturbance in your hands, cup it, and actually offer it up to the divine. I thought that was extraordinarily powerful, almost like a prayer.
Michael Singer: It is — when you don’t know what to do. I’ll tell you a secret: when you give flowers on the altar, to God, whatever it is — I guarantee you, he would rather have you give him that than a flower. You’re giving him what’s keeping you from him or her. That’s what you’re doing — you’re offering something really meaningful. What did Christ say? “You must die to be reborn.” That’s it — the willingness to die of the personal garbage you have, and be reborn in spirit.
One of the questions asked in Wisdom Untethered was: “I’m doing these practices, I’m working with releasing samskaras, I’m not suppressing, but they keep coming back. Michael, help me.” If I were to answer them, you know what I’d say? I would bow to them and say, “Thank you for sharing your deep growth, because that is what’s supposed to be happening.” When you pick up that tennis racket, there are beat balls every time — “What is this doing? Somehow they hit it back, I can’t even get it back, what’s wrong with me?” There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re in a process of learning, and you have the right to learn.
Somebody once said to me, back in the ’70s, “Earth is a place that souls are sent to evolve.” I’ll repeat that — Earth, that little planet in the middle of nowhere, is a place that souls are sent to evolve. That’s how you evolve. You get better at tennis by practicing — you don’t sit there and say, “God, I keep hitting the net.” Good — because someday you’ll learn to turn your wrist, pay more attention, and you’ll be better.
Practice doesn’t mean perfect — that’s the perfect master. But when you practice a sport or an instrument, you get better. You may not become a concert pianist, but you’re going to get better. So that’s my answer if someone says it keeps coming back: good, that means it’s real, that means you really want to let that thing go. Take any opportunity you have, and — no shame, no blame. You don’t judge yourself, you don’t say, “I should have done better.” If you do the best you can on this path — and you know what that means — every day, I’m not stressing. There’s no anxiety. It’s all about: can you handle life? Can you let the reality of life come in and pass through you? It’s going to take practice, and then you think you’re done — well, you’re not done, there’ll be more, don’t worry. But you welcome that.
You ask me what I do — I have learned to take the attitude that it’s not just tolerating that stuff, I welcome it coming up, I throw it a party. Please, come on up. And I’ll tell you — I’m a little embarrassed to say this, because it’s only over the last five years or so — I look down there, and I start crying. I start apologizing to it, as a part of the energy of my psyche that I shoved down into a closet, like locking up a kid for misbehaving. And I say, “I am so sorry that I was not clear enough and evolved enough to handle you when this all happened. I want to help you. Come, take my hand, I’ll take you to God, I will reach up.”
So that’s the active process — you welcome it, you worship it. Why would you not worship what you know keeps you from God? The closest you get to God, while you’re not enlightened, is dealing with that stuff — because that’s what’s blocking you.
Tami Simon: This is so powerful, because I think a lot of times, when buried painful memories, traumas, inherited wounds come up, we think we’ve done something wrong, that we’re off the path — “Look what’s wrong with me, at my age, I’m still having these things surface.” And you’re offering a completely opposite perspective — such an important one, Michael — to say, thank you, I welcome you, you are the agent of my growth.
Michael Singer: You said it better than I could. I’ve been at this fifty-two, fifty-five years now, and this is what I’ve learned over all those years: you pushed it down there, don’t feel guilty about it. We weren’t evolved enough, we weren’t clear enough, we weren’t ready to deal with things, especially as children — but they don’t have to be the formative years, meaning they formed your ego. They did, and you made it through, hopefully, reasonably. Now it’s time to wake up, time to evolve, time to say, “I don’t need that stuff down there.” And I truly am sorry that we all did all kinds of things — but here’s the thing.
Say you’re in fifth-grade math and you fail the test. You thought you got them all right, you studied as hard as you could, and you got five out of ten wrong, and you get held back, let’s say. Now you got your PhD in advanced mathematics — should you feel guilty because of what happened in third grade? No, that’s ridiculous. You should thank the third grader who got half of them wrong, because that third grader went to the teacher and learned something they didn’t know before. You wouldn’t have gotten half wrong if you already knew it. It’s not shameful to have a coach teach you how to do something. So this attitude that we’re supposed to be perfect is ridiculous. What you’re supposed to be doing is practice makes perfect. And so you’re working your way through yourself, and if you do that — the only thing that’s ever asked of you is the best of your ability. And then, when it comes back, if it has some teaching for you, you welcome it. You don’t say, “I did my best and look what happened.” You say, “I did my best, now I can learn to do better, because I learned where it didn’t work.” And you just keep growing, and you never look back.
Tami Simon: One of the things that moved me the most about many of the answers to the questions in Wisdom Untethered is that people would share the real struggles going on in their life — the deep pains, and their inability to let them go — “I’m doing this wrong, and this is happening, and maybe I’m misunderstanding.” And each time, when someone shared their struggle with a lot of feeling, you bowed to them and thanked them — for telling the truth about their experience, for wanting to work with it, for being sincere about what they were going through. That moved me as much as the rest of your answer, Michael — your response of acknowledging people’s spiritual work.
Michael Singer: One of my clearest teachings — because I keep growing — is this: psychology, which I respect very much, says man is the sum of his learned experiences. Go look it up in the psychology books — and they’re not wrong, but it’s not entirely true. I am the consciousness. My psyche, which I’ve pulled around myself, is the sum of my learned experiences.
If you’re bothered by something, somebody next to you doesn’t even know why you’re bothered by it — “I’m not bothered by that, how could you say that, I would never have said that.” You had different experiences. Everybody had different experiences. But yours are not more special than anybody else’s. Everybody had experiences all through their life — in China, in Russia, here, in Iran, everywhere. Every single person, all 8.3 billion of us — not to mention everyone who came before — every moment of their life had an experience, and it was different from everybody else’s.
So why would anybody be like you? And you get to the point where you realize compassion — to me, that’s what Buddhism is about, compassion. You have an understanding so deep that you don’t judge anybody, you don’t fault anybody. If somebody walks up and says something really mean to you, it’s the sum of their learned experiences. They had a bad experience five minutes ago, or five years ago, or you remind them of somebody who bullied them in high school. There’s a reason they’re being the way they’re being. That doesn’t mean you don’t deal with it — but it does mean you don’t resist it, you honor it, you respect it.
A master used to say — a lot of people say some version of this — before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. My master used to say, “By my grace, there goes myself.” That’s an enlightened master’s view, and it’s true — we are all, psychologically, ego-wise, mentally, emotionally, the sum of our learned experiences. If you question that, imagine the worst experience you ever had — imagine it didn’t happen. How would that have changed your life? You know it would change it completely. That’s because what you’re carrying around is the sum of your learned experiences.
So you get to the point where you stop judging people, you stop expecting things. People say, “I got disappointed” — you can’t get disappointed if you didn’t appoint. That doesn’t mean you don’t deal with things. First you let go, first you get clarity inside, then you come out and see what you can do to help — not to help yourself feel better. “You said it to me, apologize, make me feel better” — no, that’s not helping the situation, that’s “I got bothered by what you did.” Get past that first, and then look outside and see how you can help raise everybody, not just yourself.
That’s how I got where I am — the understanding that we are all different, and that’s why we all have different viewpoints. You want to change my viewpoint? Change my life — go back and change what my uncle did, what my grandmother did, what the high school teacher did. That’s why your psyche is the way it is — not you, you’re the consciousness watching all this. I hope you’re back there enough — but whether you are or not, you still are. You know you’re getting upset, you know you have thoughts and emotions — you’re the witness. But you’re pulled down into what you’re looking at, so you’re not able to stay in that seat. That’s how that level of compassion, understanding, true worship, and respect for another human being comes from — realizing they’re just like me. They seem different, but they’re the sum of their learned experiences.
Tami Simon: One of the early chapters has a series of questions on witness consciousness, and one of the things you point out — which I’d never really thought about until you pointed it out, and it’s like, wow, this is obvious, Tami, but you never thought about it — is that there are layers in the mind. Some of the questions were like, wait a second, how is the mind witnessing the mind? Isn’t that the mind? And you said, “Let’s talk about the layers.” Can you share more about that?
Michael Singer: Consciousness created the universe — someday people will realize that. But down at the quantum field — you know I like teaching that stuff — there are no atoms. They’re made of electrons and protons — well, they’re not even electrons or protons, there are subatomic particles, quarks, leptons, bosons. You get down to quantum physics, and that’s what’s really there.
People understand it like ice, water, and steam — they’re the same thing, just vibrating at different rates. That’s what’s going on with every single thing you interact with. It’s down there, and then the scientists got down to: there aren’t even particles, there are just wavelets hitting each other in the quantum field. Well, the yogis understand those as vrittis — wavelets of divine mind, of consciousness. So you start off with just consciousness.
To make it quick: consciousness pays attention to the creation it made. Out of consciousness came the wavelets that created everything, and consciousness is experiencing it. You have this beautiful dance of God creating creation and experiencing and dancing with the creation he created.
Well, what went wrong? I don’t know — that’s the Garden of Eden, maybe Adam and Eve were there, I don’t know, I’m not a biblical person. But something went wrong — I talk about it as the original sin, though I could never fully describe it. What happened is that consciousness, which experiences everything the same — grass, a snake — the vibration is different from a butterfly. Fine, it comes in, you experience it, and it passes through, and the dance of creation continues. But at some point, something came in that was so strong it distracted the evenness of consciousness — distracted it to focus on that vibration. That’s the key word — focus.
The moment that creates duality — you’ve now created something separate from everything else, because you focused on it. And from there, a fall happens. Now that thing determines whether you like things or don’t like things, and all of that goes down into that scenario. And eventually you get to the point where you’re lost — you’re so sucked into the experiences you couldn’t handle that you built a self-concept, which isn’t you, it’s a concept of self.
Going back to your question — it is consciousness, it is God-consciousness, that is looking at your thoughts. It’s just so focused on them that it can’t get away from them. It got distracted — so distracted that consciousness is now focusing on your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, and the world coming in through your senses. And everyone’s running around, divine, getting caught in themselves. That’s what Christ meant by “die to be reborn.”
So that’s a starting position — you are consciousness. Everybody knows they have thoughts. Why do we call that witness consciousness? The difference is: are you aware that you’re aware that you’re aware there are thoughts? Are you so sucked into it that you don’t even want to talk about it? That’s how I see witness consciousness.
We’re all — in fact, I know people say “use it to go to God,” but I’ve started to say, “use it to not leave.” You’re already there. You’re already fully enlightened. You’re the highest being to ever walk the face of the earth — you understand that? But you’re being distracted by these silly little things your mind and emotions pick up — which, how did you pick them up? The sum of your learned experiences. You held on to the ones that bothered you a lot, and to some of the ones you liked a lot too, and they’re causing trouble because you want them to happen again, or you’re judging against them. Buddhists call it clinging — clinging to what disturbs you, clinging to what you hope happens again.
I don’t dwell on it, because there are eight million more things that disturb you than the things that really blew you away. So you built this thing inside of you, and now you can’t get out — but you can get out. Everybody’s capable of getting out, no matter what. But you have to be willing to let go of what you’re staring at. That’s the entire journey — down and back up.
Tami Simon: And the “back up,” which you describe as this rising — you reference it as shakti.
Michael Singer: Yeah, that’s the yogic term for it. Like right now, sitting here with me — are you feeling a shakti upflow as we’re talking? I don’t like to talk about it, but it’s never stopped, from the moment I woke up — as if God touched me.
Tami Simon: I like that — “as if God touched me.” Finish what you were saying.
Michael Singer: I don’t know what happened. One of my first meditations, I sat down and read The Surrender Experiment, and my life never went back from that moment. It completely changed the entire rest of my life, every minute, everything. Am I perfect? No way, shape, or form. Am I better than I used to be? Yeah, I am — glad you know me now.
So basically, I wanted to go back there — it was the most beautiful experience I ever had, and I never let it go. I used to fight to keep it, and I learned not to do that. I learned there’s a reason you’re being pulled — and you go into a deep meditation, which is wonderful, you all should meditate. Yogananda said — I’d better watch it, my guru meditated — but I’m interested: when you go into a deep meditation, how long does it take before you get pulled back down? “Why is somebody calling me, why is that happening, oh my God, I forgot about this” — and boop, right back down. Why are you being pulled back down? It’s really beautiful up there.
Because you have this stuff in there, and it distracts your consciousness. So that’s why the path I’ve learned to walk is: I’m not going to fight to go up, I’m going to let go of what’s holding me down. If there’s an anchor keeping me from sailing, I’m not going to keep blowing wind in the sails trying to keep moving — I’m picking that anchor up so I don’t have to struggle anymore. And that becomes your path, and it works, because the energy that can go up isn’t being pulled back down.
You asked me a question — I don’t like to talk about my state. I am nowhere, I am nothing. That’s why I make sure I pay respect to the great perfect masters, because I’m not one. It’s beautiful to understand we all have a ways to go, but I don’t measure it — I’m just grateful for whatever experiences I have. And what I’ve learned, over time — I don’t even like to say “he taught me to serve,” because that’s a “who’s the he, and who are you, and what service.” Just because you let go of yourself, service happens. You’re not busy taking care of yourself anymore, you don’t need to be taken care of, you’re fine, the energy’s feeding you.
I’m a nice Jewish yogi, but the teachings of Christ — which I don’t study, but they keep coming back to me — he said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” What does that mean? You can get off on what’s happening from the outside — if you get what you want, it feels really good. But there’s this energy inside — call it spirit, shakti, qi, whatever you want. There’s this energy inside, and it’s really there. And when you stop blocking it and come into harmony with it, you wouldn’t trade the outside — any experience — for what can naturally go on inside of you when you’re not blocked anymore.
Tami Simon: I’m not going to press you to describe your inner experience right now — but I do think this is important: when you reference the upward flow, I think for people who have never had that, or have had only little glimpses, it’s unclear — is that shakti flowing in me? What is it? What does it feel like? I know in my own life, when I started to feel this inner rising river in front of the spine, I wished I had heard more about it. And afterward, I wanted to talk to people about it, but I was a little afraid — like, do I really want to talk about that? There’s a sense of a geyser coming up. I think it’s helpful for people to have a reference point for what that is.
Michael Singer: Okay. When people ask me questions, I always tell them — you can sit and listen, but when you walk away you might not remember a single thing I said, because I don’t approach it the same way as everybody else. It is not true that people haven’t felt shakti — that’s absolutely not true.
You’re having a child, and you’re holding it for the first time — how do you feel? It’s one of those magic moments. You’re in love with somebody, and for the first time they come up and say, “I’ve been embarrassed to tell you, but ever since kindergarten I think you walk on water, I love you so much” — how are you doing? You’re feeling shakti. You understand that? You feel an upward rise, don’t you? You feel the heart open, don’t you?
People can have all kinds of deep experiences. A sunset — you turn the corner by surprise, not looking for anything, and there are all those majestic colors, and you go, wow. You use words like, “It touched me to the depth of my being.” Anything ever touch you to the depth of your being? “I felt like I was in the presence of God” — it’s a rare experience. Music can do it to you. You can sit there and just melt completely. That is shakti, period. That is shakti. But it’s conditional — it’s conditioned on things happening the way that match your psyche. What turns you on turns somebody else off. What turned you on yesterday turns you off today, five minutes later. Somebody tells you one thing about somebody — you used to love them, now you never want to talk to them again. The sum of your learned experiences.
So that’s what’s happening — you’ve blocked the shakti. You know it’s there. There’s this tremendous potential for joy inside. So that’s all I’m talking about: stop blocking it. If you stop blocking it, a bird sings and you feel all the shakti come up. Anything, everything.
I always tell the story — you’re standing with a bunch of friends, maybe in college, whatever it is, everyone’s talking together, and somebody starts to walk across the street. You say, “Oh my God, she’s coming up, wait till you see what she has to say” — and she walks up and says, “Oh my God, there you are, I love you so much, you’re so beautiful.” You let it flow. Five minutes later, somebody else starts walking up from the distance who hates your guts, who has nothing nice to say about you, ditches everyone they meet — and you say to your friends, “Oh my God, here she comes, wait till you see what she’s got to say” — and she walks up and dumps all over you, and you feel the same ecstasy from both. You understand that? You didn’t close one bit, because the energy that came in — you thought it was adorable.
I had a spiritual teacher once tell me — a very high lady, a lot of respect for her, she’s passed some years ago — she never talked personal, she was a very sincere yogini. She leaned over to me once and said, “Mickey.” I said, “Yes?” She said, “Don’t you just love when they yell at you? There’s so much energy.” She channeled the energy of people yelling at her. So the point is, we have all experienced shakti. We just block it. We made it conditional — things have to be exactly, and I mean exactly, the way we want, for us to open at all.
And how about the heart chakra? Has your heart ever opened? Can you keep it open all the time? Is it only puppy love? No, it’s love. The trouble is, as you go through experiences together, and have problems, and finances, it becomes so hard to keep it open — you say, “Let’s do it for the kids.” No — if you don’t want the chakra to stop flowing, you can have that love unconditionally, all the time. And it can go up the spine, it can go to the third eye, it can do all these things. People have felt shakti, people have felt energy — it’s all the same energy. The question is, at what level is it expressing itself, and how much are you willing to let it get past your psyche?
Tami Simon: Fair enough — and very helpful. So I’m reading Wisdom Untethered, and I’m feeling the shakti through my system, and then I get to a chapter on preferences, and I thought, “I don’t like this chapter.” And then I thought, “Oh, that’s your preference, Tami — you don’t like this chapter.” I kept reading, thinking I’d skip it — and then I thought, “You should go back.” I started to get suspicious of myself. And then I read there’s a relationship between fears and preferences, and I thought, that makes sense. Because, you know me — I love my preferences. I know exactly the kind of tea I like, I have a special brand, I know exactly my favorite gelato — and not just food and drink, all kinds of preferences. So how are my preferences related to fears, and how do I relate to them intelligently on the path you’re teaching?
Michael Singer: Gotcha. Let’s start this way — of course you have preferences, because you’re the sum of your learned experiences. You like a tea that somebody else spits out — why? Be it biological, be it taste buds, be it experience — maybe you had that tea with somebody once and it hit you right. It’s basically the sum of your learned experiences, including your body — that’s part of your learned experience too. I’m not denying there’s DNA and different factors, but that’s part of your learned experience as well. You’re living with that, and with a psyche, and with all kinds of experiences, so you’ll naturally be drawn toward or like something because you had experiences with it. You see somebody you haven’t seen for years that you love — you open, you love that experience. You see somebody you can’t stand, and they show up — you have a bad experience.
So your preferences are the sum of your learned experiences — that’s what they are. Is there anything wrong with them? Of course not, there’s nothing wrong with them. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I can’t be okay unless I’m getting what I want” — which is what everybody’s saying, whether they say it directly or not: “Give me what I want, or I’m out of here, criticize me, I’m out of here.” If you get your preferences, it opens you — who can deny that? If you get what you want, it opens you. If you get what you don’t want, it closes you. So we extrapolate that into: now I must devote my life to getting what I want and avoiding what I don’t want. I have to choose what job I want, what turns me on, what I have passion about, who I like, who I don’t like — and you basically project your preferences out into the world and say, “Be my way.” You see a lot of that nowadays, don’t you? “Be my way, there can’t be any other way, be my way.”
And you eventually get to the point where you realize — are these things a benefit or a problem? Because they’re causing a lot of stress. If I don’t get my preferences, I’m not so happy. If I get what I don’t want, forget it. And you’re out there struggling with the world. The Buddhist teachings are exactly there — the Buddha said all life is suffering. That doesn’t mean you break your arm every day — but rich people are suffering too. Believe me, read the papers — billionaires are suffering probably more than anybody else, suing each other, having all kinds of problems. Old people, young people, rich people, women, men, everybody is struggling.
The Buddha was brilliant — his noble truths are phenomenal. The second noble truth is that the cause of suffering is preference. It’s usually translated as desire — the cause of suffering is desire. But in the West, we think of desire as passion, lust, greed. No — a desire is something you have because of a preference, and that’s deeper. Seeing it as the cause of suffering is preference, because it is. If you don’t care about a particular thing — here, here’s two teas, you like them both the same, which one do you want? I don’t care.
Tami Simon: And I want to add this, because I realize we don’t have a lot of time, and I think it’s important — I gave examples of things that are innocuous and not important. But I’m imagining the person who says, “I have a preference for not having this illness” — something serious.
Michael Singer: Okay, guess what — if you have a preference for not having the illness, and you have the illness, you’re going to suffer. You’ll suffer because of the illness, and you’ll suffer because you don’t want to have it. We’re talking deep now. Is it possible that I have the illness, and I deal with it, I welcome it — this is what’s happening in my life, this is what’s happening, I have this illness, and I want to grow from it, I want to learn from it? I’m not saying I’m going to resist it — that’s what happens when you have preferences, you resist certain things and cling to others.
But I don’t teach getting rid of your preferences. I had somebody once come to me — a very wealthy person from California, came and visited, and they were very deep, I was surprised — and they said to me, right when they left, same as you: “I like my preferences.” And I remember — you know the Third Patriarch said, “The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” And I thought, the Third Patriarch came down and gave me a special dispensation to change his famous quote to: “The great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything.”
I’ll repeat it: “The great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything.” That’s the same as having no preferences, and I like that much better. Just welcome and prefer life. Prefer every experience, prefer every single thing that happens, and then the great way is over — enlightenment will take place, because you’re not separating what you like from what you dislike.
Tami Simon: You made me go very deep — I appreciate it. And I have one more question, because it’s really the question of our time. Some people would ask: are you willing to let go, are you willing to surrender and accept, during a time when passivity in the face of injustice is unacceptable for people of conscience? I’m sure you get this question in many different forms — you address it in Wisdom Untethered. Can you give us the pith of it?
Michael Singer: It’s very straightforward. If it’s bothering you — let’s say you sit there and say, “I can’t handle this, I can’t handle the injustice, I can’t handle things.” Well, if you can’t handle it, you’re the wrong person. If you’re driving by a car accident and you say, “I can’t handle the sight of blood,” well, keep on driving, because you’re not going to help anybody.
If you literally can’t handle it inside, you can’t do it outside — because what you’re trying to do is change it so that you’d be okay. It’s personal — you’re trying to change it so it doesn’t bother you. That’s not helping. Helping is: “Okay, it’s reality, I’m sorry, it’s just reality — can I handle it? Of course I can handle it, if I really want to.” Okay, now what? I let go. That’s letting go. Now what? Nobody’s asking you to be passive, of course not — life is an interactive sport. You come down with clarity, because it’s not about you anymore. You have clarity, and you look and say, “How can I help?” March, protest, do whatever you want — but do it with love, do it with understanding that everyone else is the sum of their learned experiences. Can you understand that? Now, how can you actually help the situation, instead of becoming another opposing force?
So there’s the answer — no one’s telling you to be passive. We’re saying, don’t be ego-driven. You’re complaining that everyone else is ego-driven — don’t you be ego-driven, because it doesn’t fit what you want. Can you be open enough, non-dual enough, to be open — and then, by all means, for God’s sake, you have a responsibility. You’re God dancing in creation. So dance — but don’t dance in your own name. Don’t dance because you can’t handle it. That’s how I teach it.
In Wisdom Untethered, as I mentioned, there are twenty-three chapters and 200 questions, and we’ve probably covered less than ten percent of all the different topics you touch on in the book. Towards the end, you say, “In spirituality, the most important thing is your motive.” Let’s end there — what is the motive that you think will best support our spiritual growth?
That’s all we’ve talked about all night. The motive is: I’m in here, I’m conscious, it ain’t so good in here — which is why I’m out there struggling with all the different things we talk about. My motive is to let go of whatever’s stuck inside of me so that the natural flow can go up, and you become a servant of God. Not — my motive is not “to become a servant of God,” no, I don’t want you telling me you know what God wants. No — your motive is to let go of what’s keeping you from the higher state, and then the rest will take care of itself. So I don’t like the motive that says, “I want to go to God, I wanted this, I wanted that” — I just see this stuff in here, we all do. My motive and my intention, every moment, is to let go of what’s holding me down, and then let the rest take place naturally, by itself. That’s the best I could say.
Tami Simon: I’ve been talking with Michael Singer. This year, Wisdom Untethered: The Time for Questions was released. It’s a book you can sit with — read one question and its answer, apply it, start working with it, sit for a few moments, and keep it right near you. I love this book, Michael. Thank you so much for the work you and your team did to put it together.
Michael Singer: Thank you, Tami.
Tami Simon: Thank you for listening. I’d also like to invite you to join us on Sounds True One, where you can enjoy early, ad-free access to episodes of Insights at the Edge. Sounds True One is our premium membership platform. It’s built around live classes and online events, award-winning specials, intimate learning experiences, and Q&A sessions with the world’s leading wisdom teachers. You can get your first month free at join.soundstrue.com.
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