Michael Singer: Jai guru dev. One thing you learn when you become very mature on your path is that when you play with the surface of things, you’re the one get anywhere. If you work at the root, the rest takes care of itself. Buddhists always say work at the root, so let’s take an example of the mind. We’re taught to quiet the mind.
We’re taught to be positive with the mind. We’re taught to do all kinds of things with the mind. The trouble is, if you haven’t noticed, it’s a struggle. It’s a struggle to quiet the mind. It’s a struggle for the mind. To be positive shouldn’t be, but it is. I always tell people, they say to me, but I practice positive thinking.
Why? Because it’s a negative otherwise. I mean, why would you practice positive thinking if you didn’t have to? Who wants to do that? And so you start catching on that. The natural state of things is the mind is very negative. It is. And it’s very difficult to turn it around. And it’s way more difficult, by the way, to make it be quiet, for the mind to be quiet.
It doesn’t wanna be quiet. Well, a wise person says, why would the mind not wanna be quiet? What’s going on? And that’s when you start to, instead of questioning, how do I quiet my mind? You ask, why is it not quiet? It’s like the natural state of my mind. Neurotic. No, it’s not natural. State of your mind is peaceful, quiet, loving, open.
It’s a beautiful thing. But that’s not how we find it. And so the question becomes, we’re gonna go many different slices with this time. Why? How do I, everyone wants to teach. How do I, how do I meditate? How do I quiet the mind? How do I get rid of negativity? How do I learn to like people? How do I learn love?
How do I, how do I, how do I? It’s all our techniques. There’s only one technique that really works, which is why is it not that way naturally. Because your natural state is still the highest thing, the face of the earth. Every single one of you. I go, what you’ve ever done. I don’t hear about karma. I don’t hear about anything.
You’re extremely high being, in fact, you’re a Godde descendant. I’ve discussed that before. We’ll get into it more showing why that’s true. But you are every one of you. Everybody. Period. Right? Well, why don’t I feel it? Why’d have to struggle to be okay to struggle to be good. Why I have to know all the precepts of the religions to try and get to heaven?
Why is this a problem? Believe it or not, the answer is so simple. You have had experiences during your life check. Some of them have been pleasant, check. Some of them have not been pleasant. Okay, so what they’re called experiences. I was out boating and there was a leak in the boat. Well, there’s an experience for you.
It must’ve been neat ’cause you tell everybody about it. Okay. And so you had an experience. Nice experience. Not nice experience. They’re coming in from the outside world. They’re made of atoms, they’re made of quantum feel, vibrations. They’re just things out there. I keep, I don’t like to say it ’cause I know you don’t wanna hear it.
It has nothing to do with you. You didn’t make the boat, you didn’t make the leak, you didn’t make the water, you didn’t do anything. You’re just there experiencing what’s happening. Doesn’t matter why it’s happening. Doesn’t matter that in Italy when they, the boat, that guy was having a fight with his wife the night before and didn’t put as much fiberglass coating on it.
You know? And then that’s why seven years later you’re leaking. So what. The point is you’re leaking. The question is not as good as it bad as it right. Is it wrong? It just is. That’s the essence of zen teachings. Flowers are red, water’s blue and grass is green. I was I again? Oh, grass is green. Okay. That’s the teaching.
Well, what does that mean? It means things are what they are. They’re asking why is grass green fine? You wanna study why grass is green? That’s wonderful. It’s a beautiful use of your mind. The intellectual mind is a wonderful thing. Let’s get this straight. The mind is a place where thoughts get created.
All of them. It’s just like a lake is a place that if something falls, a leaf falls in it, it creates ripples. You wanna know why? Go study science, it’s fine. There’s a very good use of your mind. But to ask, I don’t like it. I don’t want there to be ripples. Why? There have to be ripple, and that’s what you’re asking.
That’s not a good use of your mind to complain that there are ripples. You wanna study why they’re ripples. That’s wonderful. See the difference? That’s the intellectual mind versus the personal mind. So I get that out of the way right away in the beginning. I’m talking about the personal mind, still mine.
It’s a place where thoughts are created. The question is which thoughts? So why does the mind create the thoughts it creates? Why is not the mind quiet to start with? What is going on that at the root? If I work it at the root, the mind will be peaceful. It will be open. It’ll be sharp intellectually, but it won’t be full of you.
It won’t be full of I like it. I don’t like it. I wish it happened. I wish it didn’t happen. I hope someday it happens. It’s just full of these thoughts about you. They’re not about intellect. They’re not about solving problems. They’re about anything like that. Well, they’re about solving problems, but you’re the problem, right or wrong, and that’s what they think about all the time.
What do I want? What do I not want? Why did this have to happen? Why did she talk to me like that? What should I do about it? It’s a crazy line. So why? Why is it that way? Not what do I do about it? Well, maybe we should get divorced and I don’t want get divorced, and I really do still love him, but I just don’t like what he did.
That’s, oh my God, what a waste of mind to have that going on in there. You like that? Isn’t that fun? No. And they say, I made a decision. It’ll change in five minutes. One more event and your mind changes. Its mind. The personal mind is not a nice place to live. Intellectual mind, quiet mind. They’re all wonderful, but not the personal mind.
And what happens is the personal mind is taken over completely. Why? Okay. You have experiences. Some are pleasant, some are not. If I squeeze your arm too hard, you go, ow. If I’m massaging nicely, you go, Ooh, they’re just different experiences. What’s wrong with that? They’re just different experiences. So you have these experiences and what happens is, and I go through this all the time with you, I’m gonna do it very quickly, is when you have the experience, instead of accepting the experience and, and then dealing with it, let’s get something straight.
It’s not that you don’t deal with it if someone is squeezing your arm too hard, you sit there and realize, oh, that doesn’t feel good. Okay, stop. Not, why did you do that? How could you do something like that? It’s just very simple. Deal with it. Not be neurotic about it, not freak out about it. What you’re doing is you’re acting properly about the situation.
If somebody’s driving 20 miles an hour below the speed limit in front of you and you’re on an LA Expressway. You have some choices and one is road rage. Okay, what does that mean? It means I can’t handle what’s happening. I can’t handle it, so I’m gonna go out there and let you know I can’t handle it.
Another option would be I can handle it. I’m not going to speed. I want to go, I’m in a rush, but there’s cars in front of me. I can look to see if maybe I can pass. What good does it do to keep beefing my horn? What good does it do to tailgate the person? What good does it do to do road rage? Those are not constructive positive things to do.
It doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. You can look and see if there’s a way to work with it better. Fine. That’s how everything is. It’s not that you don’t interact with it. You don’t react to it, but a reaction says is, I can’t handle it and I’m gonna push that I can’t handle out there. So you change it so that I can handle it.
That is totally different than I can handle it. It doesn’t seem to be the optimal way for things to be going on. If you’re going five miles an hour and a 50, we’re all in trouble. What can I do about it? You look and see what can I constructively do about it? That’s the key. So don’t think that I’m teaching that you don’t ever do anything.
You just don’t ever do it From a point of uncentered consciousness, I am reacting to the FA here. You don’t do it when your motive is. I can’t handle it. That’s the lie I, people write me all the time. They just don’t get that subtlety. Nobody’s saying you just let it happen. They’re saying you let it come in ’cause it comes in.
You look to see that you can handle it. What does it mean? I can handle it. It’s not bothering me. I just need to deal with it. The difference. It’s bothering me. I can’t handle it. It better stop ’cause it’s driving me crazy. Then you can’t handle it. So surrender does not mean you let whatever’s happening happen.
It means you let go of what’s resisting it inside, then deal with it. The surrender is an inner thing you do. If you read the book, the Surrender Experiment, you see what we’re talking about. You see what happens. The world unfolds phenomenally from that point forward. Why? You’re not messing it up with your junk.
If I’m in a relationship with you and there’s a problem, we had a little bit of a spat, something like that. Okay? And then I go to work and I come back, I have a choice. I can bring it back up ’cause I can’t believe what you said to me. Or I can let it go and say, okay, you cut some slack. She had a bad day.
Whatever the heck it is. Bring love into the situation instead of making you answer for why you did that. See the difference. The difference is I can handle it and I’m going to deal with it. I cannot handle it and you’re gonna deal with it. I love your laugh once and for all. Do you get it? It’s subtle, isn’t it?
Especially when you’re so reactive. That you just justify your behavior. There’s this word they keep talking to me about. It’s big, I think in psychology or something. It’s called boundaries. Boundaries. And they write me and say, I understand about surrender and so on, but how do I set my boundaries? Where are the legitimate boundaries?
And I always write the same thing back. If somebody is physically abusing you, there’s no discussion about boundaries. Get out. There’s your responsibility to take care of your body. It’s a gift that was given to you, and nobody has the right to physically abuse your body, right? Easy to say. ’cause then people have finances, they have this, they have children.
But in general, the answer is there’s no discussion about boundaries, about somebody abusing you physically. Okay? And I understand there may be reasons that you can’t get out right away. I understand, but you see, that’s the rule. Now that is not about psychological boundaries, which is what everyone’s really talking to me about, psychological boundaries.
I can’t let someone talk to me like that. I can’t let that happen with a coworker that they took credit for what I did. They’ll just walk all over me. That’s ridiculous. Boundaries. Where’s my boundary? In essence what they’re asking you ready? Listen to me. Okay. You all got real quiet, didn’t you? That’s what you’re asking.
I need to protect my ego. At what point is that the right thing to do? You know my answer is never. If you want to keep your ego. If you’ve learned yet that man may, his mind equals God that you must die to be reborn. That the whole spiritual teaching is about, you don’t need an ego like that. You don’t need to not be able to handle what somebody said to you.
They’re just words. When Christ taught I Jewish Yogi, but I like Christ teaching us, he taught turn the other cheek. That’s not just outside. That’s not someone who walks up and slaps you. That’s somebody says something to you and it’s bothering you. Turn the other cheek. That is always the first thing you do.
Is let go of your personal self. It’s not about boundaries. Words, sticks and stones. I hurt my bones, but names can never hurt. Whatever, right? It’s like, be a kid. It’s like, so what? So if somebody said something you don’t like, so somebody insulted you. So he sat there and said, God, you look like a game or so, 30 pounds since I last saw you.
So what? They’re just words. You don’t build boundaries there and sit there and say, how someone allowed to talk to me. Can somebody talk behind my back? I don’t know what they’re saying. Well, wait, what is somebody? It doesn’t like one. Let’s get real. What if someone doesn’t like me? Did you know there could be people that don’t like you?
Did you know that? Okay. Do you care why or do you understand the deep teachings? They don’t not like you. They don’t like the part of themselves that gets disturbed in your presence. Okay. My, my mother used to say, I talked about noses last time. Alright. My mother used to say that if somebody’s got a big nose, that’s Pinocchio, they’re liars.
She taught me that all the time. Don’t hang out with people with big noses ’cause they’re liars. Okay? So now I have that inside of me. Thanks mom. I’m programmed that way. So when I’m in the presence of someone. Who has a nose like that? I don’t feel good. And I say, you are wrong. That has nothing to do with you ever.
It’s not about I’ll get a nose job and then they’ll like me. They’ll not like something else. It’s not about you. Liking and disliking is about them. Very few people ever understand that they just wanna be accepted. But what do you do? This person likes somebody. That religion, they say, but that religion it like from your nationality, oh my God, don’t, I’m come here together, but I’ll be a different person around you than around you because what am I trying to do?
I’m trying to please you about your problem. It’s not my problem. I a problem, fine. Have a nose, fine, have a religion, find ’em from a different country, find them, you know, I got 16 children or have none. It’s just you are the one who’s judging. It’s not about me. You are in prison. You got put in prison for six years and now you’re out.
Can I handle that? Or I sit there and say, no, don’t come. I don’t throw my children. I don’t want you anywhere to get away from me. It’s like, it’s about sitting there saying. I have a problem with you, not you have a problem. Do you understand that? I know you don’t, but I’m telling you. Alright. Why? Because ego can’t handle it.
Ego’s about being accepted. Why? Because it feels unaccepted when you just had a nice dinner and you’re full, you don’t wanna eat again. Ego’s never full Is it? Never. It always is insecure. Deep inside. It always is afraid of getting hurt. It always afraid of somebody mistreating them, so they put up the boundaries, right?
So my teachings are, yes, there are physiological boundaries on, yes, you should not hit each other. Behave children, and if somebody does and take at least take hiatus, you know, get your breath and so on. You don’t let your body be mistreated. Okay? Psychologically the question is. Boy, this could help me go to God.
That person doesn’t like me. Wow. I love, I used to tell that story. I’ll do it again. You’re standing with a crowd from friends ears and somebody’s walking across the street. And it’s somebody that they think you walk on water. They just think you’re the most wonderful person to ever live, right? And so they’re starting to walk across the street.
You’re blushing a little bit with your friends. So they say, Hey, hey, just watch this first. My God, they think the world of me. They think I’m walking on water. The guy comes up, the girl comes up and says, oh my God, you lays all these accolades on you and so on, right? And so then they leave and you go about your business an hour later or some minutes later.
Somebody else walks off and you see them and you have the same reaction. Oh, well look, you tell your friends they hate my
Speaker 16: guts. Wait till you see how they talk about me. There’s not everything they could say That’s not negative enough. They’ve been like this ever since we’re in kindergarten together.
They unbelievable. What do you see? And you’re so
Speaker 15: excited and they come and they dump all over you and all of that.
Speaker 16: See? See when that need
Speaker 15: there? Now you made it has nothing to do with you. Has to do them. Even if you did something you don’t understand, I said something and they got hurt. There are people out there you can say anything you want to, and they don’t get hurt.
Somebody else gets hurt by every single little thing. Do you know that it’s called being sensitive, aren’t they? Not? Are you sensitive? What are you sensitive about? And you’re gonna find out that you have this stuff stored inside of you based upon the experiences you had before. Do you understand that?
And now when something from outside hits that, ’cause if somebody looks and they’re tall, whether they’re short, whether they’re male or they’re female, they’re heavy, they’re this, it’s like you start realizing it. Just hit their stuff. You have stuff, don’t you? So therefore you like some people, you don’t like some people, it’s okay, but you understand why it’s not true.
You don’t like them. What’s true is you have programmed with your past to have preferences and opinions and concepts of views. That’s programming. I’m gonna get into that more in a minute. So your experience, how do you get programmed? They type it in. Voice recognition. No experiences are your teachers.
You have one bad experience when you’re 10 years old about a dog. You don’t like dogs. If you had a good experience with a dog, you like dogs. That’s pretty fickle because believe me, you could have had a thousand different experiences. I don’t like pit bulls. Some pit bulls are very, very mice. It depends how they deal with them.
It’s just. You’re programmed by your past experiences. Every single one of you. That’s how you have your opinions, your hopes, your dreams, your concerts, your views, every single thing. You didn’t just make it up. Well, I saw a movie. Fine. You didn’t make it up. I read a book, John, you didn’t make it up.
Somebody told me. Good. These are called experiences. None of you have physical experience. You had an interaction. I had a dream. That’s an interaction. You had an experience. Now you’re hearing me. You’re programmed by the experiences you’ve had in the past. If you had had a different experience, you would be programmed differently.
Every single moment you’re having an experience and it’s programming you. That’s why you like things and don’t like things and so on, and that’s why people like you and don’t like you, not because of you. Because of how you mesh with their past experiences there. I never take a breath, I took a breath.
You understand how important that is? What does that mean? I can’t control your past experiences. I dunno why I don’t like my nose. Alright, and so at least inside you do this thing called not taking it personally. Why? Because it’s not personal. That’s one of the hardest things for, I wrote, I tried to write that up in Living Untether.
I spent a lot of time writing about how nothing’s personal and sometimes you write me back, how could it not be personal? My children are personal. My wife’s personal. Yeah. Well you just wait till you see how your kids behaved and this, that, and how you get, I can’t believe my child did something like that.
My father would never have accepted that. I’m programmed every single thing. I’m programmed and it’s not like I’m right. If something different had happened, I’d be programmed different. I teach you that every time I did it last time, I tried really hard to sit there and say, just please, you’re so smart. I can’t believe you don’t get it.
How many experiences do you have in a day? Millions. Every moment you’re having an experience. That doesn’t matter to me. What I wanna know is how many are you missing? How many experiences are going on above you, below you, to the right, to the left, a mile away in every single person’s house? In every single person’s mind, in every single thing all over the earth that you’re not having?
I wanna hear the number, 700 billion zillion quillian. You could have been having any one of those experiences instead of the one you had, and you’d be a totally different person. But you are putting 100% weight on the stupid, minuscule, statistically insignificant experience that you had. You think they matter.
I know what a person like, that’s like I met one once, congratulations. And that is how you are and, and you think it’s perfectly reasonable. I didn’t make this up. I have data. You have one point. Take a breath. This is very hard for you all to take because what it means is, oh my God, that changes everything.
You know what it means? What I think doesn’t matter. Doesn’t mean I don’t come down and vote. I vote, I gotta vote. I had experiences, right? I get to bring it down nicely. Believe me, I’m not married to it. I’m not gonna argue with you about it. You are wrong. I’m right. No, she had her experiences. You had your experiences.
She owned hers. You own yours. Of course you don’t agree. Why don’t you convince me that my experience was more important than yours? I can’t, ’cause it wasn’t. Every single experience is an experience. Not right, not wrong, not good, not bad. Just is. And you are programmed by it and there’s nothing to do about it.
Well, there’s something you do about it. Rise above it. Now you’re starting to understand spirituality. Spirituality is not about owning your ego. We’ll go back to boundaries. So what are boundaries? The places that I say, you ain’t going past this baby. I am right and these are my experiences and you will not talk to me like that.
Net result is you don’t deal with your personal boundaries. Physically, yes, but not this. If somebody says something and it bothers your boundary, it bothered your ego. There’s nothing else in there. But what you built about what you want and what you don’t want and what you like and what you don’t like, what you think is supposed to be happening, but you think it’s fair.
Have you noticed politically now it’s afraid? Divide it. Some people think it’s perfectly reasonable. Some people think it’s absolutely ridiculous, right or wrong, and I guarantee they think they’re right. And they’re not wrong. They just had different experiences. So they see it differently. You say how?
How could they see it that way? Both sides. How could they possibly see it that way? ’cause they had different experiences, so, right. That’s how they see it that way. And they’re constantly having different experiences. Now you’re in a group who see it a given way. That’s an experience. And all of a sudden we get this group consciousness.
All of it is very logical, it’s very understandable, but you don’t understand it. ’cause we only wanna know about ourselves. So you get to the point where you do the thing I’ve been talking about, the world is coming in check. What does that mean? I’m having one experience out of the 700 billion zillion that I could be having right now.
Look to the left. Look to the right. Look up. Look down. Don’t listen. You lost some thought while somebody’s saying something to insulting well, didn’t bother me. I hear it. Okay. And so you just get totally different in there. The world comes in, it has. In effect, ’cause it hits your stuff. Your ego, your aura, your personal self has been collected in your mind.
Your mind’s not empty. It’s full of this stuff that you stored in there due to your past experiences and not all experiences. I once told you that every single one of you, or at least 95% enlightened truth is 99%. But I don’t want, I don’t want you challenging me. 95% of every single thing that ever came in through your senses went right through the trees.
You drove by the people you don’t know. The weather, the temperature, the this. You have a lot of experiences, don’t you? 95% of it’s just fine. There’s white lines on the road. There’s people going by, you know, somebody’s hair got, I don’t know, I can’t listen to them. All it takes too. 95% just go right through 5% sort a killer, or the 5% the part that you won’t let go through.
Now we’re getting down to it. The part that you said, I can’t handle this, that’s what you mean by, have you ever said, I can’t handle this. You know you have. What do you mean by that? It doesn’t go right through. What I can’t handle it means is if left to its own, I can’t handle this. I can’t let this go through.
I don’t want this coming in me. Well, no. Why are you talking to me like that? ’cause I can’t handle it. If I can handle it, it just goes right through. Boys will be boys, kids will be kids, et cetera, et cetera, to each his own. Makes it through. Then you don’t have to deal with it ever again. Perfectly comfortable.
Okay, now you understand why your mind talks so much. And what it talks about, the 5%, the fact that there were things that came in through your senses that you couldn’t handle. So what did you do with them? I tell you all the time what you do with them. You don’t want them to come all the way back and touch the core of your being.
So you protect yourself from them. You push them away so they can’t come in that far. You are not talking to me like that. Don’t you even think about, you will not talk to me like that. Well, how far in did it get? Very little. I didn’t let that touch you. Be able to let that touch me. Are you for crazy? I’m gonna do everything I can to protect myself from that.
Okay. And what happens when you do that is it stays inside your mind and your heart. Why? ’cause you pushed it there. What do you think? Suppression, repression, denial are Psychologically powerful terms that mean I pushed it away. I mean, denial is the greatest. It didn’t even happen. Okay. And repression suppression, they mean I pushed it away.
You pushed what? Away? The event that came in. I didn’t want to experience it. So I pushed it away. Where did it stay inside? And it can really get screwy in there, can’t it? I told you the extreme, you could have an experience that is so traumatic. It can get so traumatic. There are kids who saw some terrible thing, they never talked again, that goes to therapy the rest of their lives.
Why? Why was that? Got to an event happen and they came in because they couldn’t handle it. Therefore, they pushed it away So far. And now they can’t let it come back up and they’re in there blocking it all the time, and then they’re shaking, oh, I don’t wanna talk about it. It makes me feel sad. Do you understand that?
Am I right or wrong? Is it possible then anywhere on the scale? You do it all the time. Okay, Sally. Sally, she doesn’t answer. She’s your best friend. What’s going on? Your mind will keep that. It’s not like white lines in the road like, what’s with Sally? What did I do? What I do wrong? I didn’t do anything.
Lemme think back. All of a sudden your mind is talking about that. It’s not talking about the white lines, it’s not talking about the car, it’s not talking about the things that make it through. It’s talking about the things that didn’t make it through. I’m doing this slow ’cause I want you to get it once in your life.
That’s why your mind talks about what it’s talking about. It mixes it all up together, right? Even your dreams, they’re the stuff you stored and they’re coming back up. And so it needs to release. It is not nice in there and it’s trying to release. So it releases through that voice in your head. It releases through visualization that you have.
It releases through emotions in your heart. There are all the energy you stored in there trying to release itself. So to go in there and say, I’m gonna quiet my again, don’t listen to me, meditate, quiet your mind. I just try and teach. You do whatever you need to do. But the truth is, if you’re in there fighting with your mind ’cause there’s complaining about something that happened 20 years ago, you’re pretty much wasting your time.
’cause all you’re doing is suppressing. The best you can do with that is say, I don’t wanna be thinking about this. And so you’re trying to push it down enough and people do it. It’s just everyone does it. It’s just amazing. Do you have soft spots? Do you have sensitive topics that you get uncomfortable to think about or somebody talk about or see a poster about?
That’s the stuff you push down there. So of course the mind is trying to release it. So in a sense, and I teach this, the mind is your friend. Just like your immune system is trying to throw out infections, your mind and your heart are trying to throw out the garbage that you stored in there, which was the experience you couldn’t handle.
You define them as I can’t handle ’em, and now when they come back up, you push ’em back down. So you’re struggling with yourself all the time. So it’s not about, I don’t like to say, I say yes, there’ll be times you have to work with your mind, but ultimately it’s about working with the stuff you have stored down there.
That’s the root. If you work with the stuff you have stored down there and you work on letting that go. Instead of trying to work out here where the leaves are, you work at the root. All of a sudden, I’m telling you over time it goes away. There are things that bothered you when you were eight years old.
They, you laugh at, to think they bothered you, why you worked them through. You didn’t have to hold them in there. But there are things that when you’re eight years old are still in there. Your sister got the bike you wanted. It could happen, right? And so you resented that for you 30 years that you kept it in there.
They’re, that was the main point I always like to talk about. Do you get it? You made your mind that way. Somebody once wrote me, why did God gimme such a crazy mind? He didn’t. He gave you a brilliant mind, a beautiful mind that’s capable of creating music and capable of creating art and capable of seeing intellectual things.
It can go anywhere from the universe. It can go to siren in a second. You can go anywhere. You can do anything. Microsoft used to say, what, where do you wanna go today? Your mind can go anywhere. Isn’t that beautiful? Well, where does it go? I don’t like this. I can’t believe she did that. I, I want rained tomorrow.
Oh my God. I don’t turn into my birthday. I’d have to, that’s what goes in it. The vast majority of your thoughts that aren’t doing intellectual work. Are about one thing you and what you like and what you don’t like and what you want and what you don’t want, and how you think you’ll get it, and how you think you’ll avoid it, and you’re thinking about that all the time.
It’s called worrying, needing, desiring. They’re just like, I can’t just live my life. I always tell everybody, please, what is life? You drop down onto a bowl of dirt spinning around the middle of nowheres, 1.3 million Earth inside the sun. People say, make you say it all the time. Why do you keep saying that?
Because 1.3 million Earth inside the sun, they should tell you something. It’s meaningless what’s going on here? And there’s this one star, there’s 300 billion stars in one galaxy and there’s 2 trillion galaxies, all with hundreds of billions of stars. And you care about the fact that you’re gonna rip in your pants, you drop some ketchup up on your pants if somebody doesn’t like you, or maybe they don’t like you, I’m not sure.
That’s what you wanna do with your mind. And I understand what the word compassion comes from. I’m so sorry. That’s a sympathy. I wouldn’t do that. Mom sympathy is, I know what you’re talking about. Compassion is, I don’t know if you’re doing that for, but I feel sorry for you. You get it. You’re doing it.
You’re the one who collected that garbage ’cause you couldn’t handle it. And you eventually get to the point of saying the following, Fred, here’s your mantra. I can handle it. I can handle it. Can you handle the big things? No. You’re not ready to handle the big things. I don’t have to play piano. I’ve never touched it.
I can’t play Beethoven or Mozart, but I can do the scales. I can practice tennis. Can I? Well practice handling it. That’s the bottom line of all my teachings. You want a technique? Practice handling it. There’s a technique and where do you see what happens? All of a sudden the little things during the day don’t get stored, and at night you don’t have as many problems.
’cause Sally didn’t say, hello, how do I do with the fact that Sally didn’t say hello? I watch her start. You meaning start. You’re getting neurotic about it. But I’m back here. I’m back here noticing that I have a minus. Neurotic. Do you notice you have a minus? Neurotic? I know you all like to think you’re new age.
Do bs. You’re all positive, just feel in love. Do you have a minus neurotic? Does it worry? Do you ever worry? What does the word worry mean? I have things to be the way I want them to be and don’t want them to be, and I’m scared to death they won’t be that way. That’s what worrying is. You should never worry about anything at any time.
Things will be what they are and you can handle ’em, can’t you? Not right now. You can’t, ’cause you haven’t practiced, no one told you to then what they told you how to attract what you want now, how to handle reality, how to manipulate and control people, place and things so you get what you want. Okay, so I’m sorry.
You just get to the point. You realize if I’m doing that, I still have this problem, that I need things to be a certain way and I’m gonna worry that it won’t be that way. Why do I decide that I need things to be a certain way for me to be okay? Instead of I can handle first, I can handle the way they are now I can deal with ’em.
I’m not telling enough to deal with ’em. But you deal with it from the point of I can handle it. I am at peace. I feel serenity. I’m in harmony with love and God and peace inside. Now I can bring that down. And what do you end up doing? How do you make decisions? You look to see? Not what do you want, not what do you not want, not what are you afraid of, but not what you desire.
What can I do to bring some harmony into this situation? And that includes you, who dissed me, and it hit me, but I handled it. How’s the best way to handle that as opposed to, don’t talk to me that way. There’s a place in there. Where you’re clean. What does clean mean? I don’t have this garbage that’s making me think the way I think and behave the way I behave.
I didn’t store all this garbage. I can let go of myself. I can die to be reborn as Christ put it. I can die of the personal to be reborn in the spiritual. How do I do that? By practicing, by not storing that stuff in you. That’s the bottom line. By not storing every day of my life what I like and what I don’t like.
Like I could ask you, and I don’t want do it, say we’re outta time, what’re right. Do you have to like or dislike anything? Did you make your body, there’s 35 trillion living cells inside your body. Which ones did you make? Which ones are you making sure they breathe and they do this and they feed blood and digestion when you eat?
Where does it go? I don’t know. I used to study my whole life, figure out what happens when I swallow. Oh, go how people talk to ’em. I go to medical school, study everything, and every single system. You can’t figure it out. It’s so complex. Where’d it come from? Oh, I don’t know. There was this one single microscopic cell that made your body, that had the intelligence to take Twinkies and Coca-Cola.
Break it down. It could do it. Okay. Break it down into its chemical components and allocate this one to the liver and this one to the kidney, and you don’t even know what’s going on. And it’s building this body. Is it yours? No. It’s a miracle. It’s beyond a miracle, isn’t it? And that’s where your body came from.
And it keeps happening. It gets older and it gets bigger. It started off a foot long and it goes, how’d that happen? It’s amazing. It’s absolutely amazing, and you are given that. And you’re neurotic. Do you care what size your nose is? Alright. The net result is you start off by saying, I’m sitting on a little planet in the middle of nowhere and what’s going on is incomprehensible, ’cause that that’s not going on about your body.
We drive by out here in the country, there’s corn fields. But they’re not. They’re dirt fields. Certain time of the year, they’re just dirt. They’re just pure dirt, and all of a sudden there’s entire cornstalks that grow up where they come from dirt. Water and sunshine and that seed, that corn seed, tiny little corn seed, knows how to take dirt, suck it in, break apart all its chemical components, mix it with water and sunshine, and grow a corn stalk, and you don’t ever think about it.
You say, eh, the corn’s not as sweet as it used to be.
And you get to the point where you, you say, wait a minute, I got some work to do in here. I don’t have a clue what’s going on. And I never think about it in the sense of reality. All I think about is me. All I think about is there are things that happen that I didn’t like. Now I stored them and it won’t happen anymore.
The things that happen I did like, I stored them. I wasn’t happen more. Now I’m out there trying to make ’em happen and trying to make not happen. Am I right or wrong? Okay. It’s alright. So this thing about go bunch of boundaries. No, no, no, no. If something comes in and insults you or bothers your ego, say, thank you.
Thank you. Ahmed Guru, some of you know are my friend Amed beautiful soul. His guru was very used to meditate like 20 hours a day. He told Ahmed, your critics are your best friends. Guess they get rid of your ego. You don’t want people that. Throw it all over you. What good is that? ’cause you just keep yourself and then you have to make sure it happens again.
You just sit there and say, fine, you want a piece of me here? Don’t say it. You never say it out loud, but inside you first let go. Then you see how you can interact with the situation and. Not from the personal self. From the intellectual self. Of course, of course. Be creative, be intellectual study, do all that stuff, but not for the person winning a Nobel Prize.
Science for the sake of science, music for the sake of music, art, for the sake of art. No ego. The rest will take care of itself. Alright, so basically we’ve come down to the point of saying, why is the mind the way it is? Do you now understand ’cause you made it that way? ’cause you stored garbage in there that you liked and didn’t like held onto it, and you built an ego out of that this’s amazing.
It blows me away. You didn’t just store that stuff in your mind, in your personal mind, your middle collection of that, you got so attached to that collection. That you called it me. I like this. I don’t like that I had this experience. I would never, who’s this? I? It’s the lost soul. It’s your consciousness focusing on this collection of thoughts.
You’re so focused on them that you think they’re you. But a psychology call that. Group of thoughts that you store, your self-concept. Do you have a self-concept? What’s a self-concept? How you wanna think about yourself? Who would you come up with that by my past experiences, if somebody asks you something, say, I’m somebody that likes this.
I don’t like that. You’re defining yourself by the experiences you had and by what you like and what you don’t like. Stored, stored, stored, stored. Every single thing is programmed into your mind, and basically you have the right to look at that from. The sense of self pure consciousness and say, that’s not who I am.
Those are the experiences I had. Yes, we were married, it didn’t work out and we got divorced. It wasn’t a very nice divorce. A lot of them aren’t very nice. So what I came down on the planet Earth, I did my best and I had experiences and that was one of ’em. Do I hate him? No. Do I blame him or her? No. It’s just an experience I had.
What do you wanna do with him? Learn from it. I wanna look and see. I didn’t handle that very well. I couldn’t handle the disturbance and this and that and the disagreements. So I’ve now grown more and I hope next time I can be more open, I can more that. Right. You just use your experiences to become a better person to a more whole.
And so basically you come down and you say, I’m not identifying with the experiences I had. I’m just noticing the experience I had. That’s the witness. You’ll hear about witness consciousness. You are in there noticing that you’re in there. How’s that? Are you noticing you’re in there? You notice she’s in there, she can’t handle anything, can she?
Right. And now the question becomes, when you see you can’t handle it, do you go out and attempt to manipulate the world to make it be a way you can handle. Or do you use that situation to first let go of the party that can’t handle it, which is letting go of your past, letting go of that garbage and just keep letting go and then come down and do your best to deal with it.
That is how you work with your mind. You really wanna work with your mind. That’s how you work with your mind. You wanna fight with your mind, have fun ’cause you won’t. Does it mean? Like I said, there’s many techniques you’re taught of how to quiet the mind, how to breathe. They’re all wonderful major part of yoga.
I like to say, why do I need to do ’em? I do besta and I hold my breath long. I can, and I count one, so, okay. That’s wonderful. I do it. Alright. It helps. Why do you do that? I mean, my mind is talking instead, right? The one I really lied, ’cause I had a very deep meditation doing this back way back in the beginning.
I started by reading a zen book. It said, put your attention. I didn’t even know what anything was at that time. I was just starting everything. Put your conscious to your attention. Let it down towards your belly button and watch your breath go in and out. And the Zen Book has said to say Home, word home.
And I had a very new experience. Okay. It was crazy, but why? Why? Why do I put my consciousness on my belly and then watch my breath go in and out? ’cause the alternatives for your conscious to be on your fricking mind talking all the time. That’s such a deep teaching. You’ve taken this thing called your consciousness, your attention, your awareness of being, and you moved it.
You were addicted to your mind and addicted to your emotions, and they’re sucking you in. You moved it down to where you’re watching your breath go in and out. I mean, literally, that’s a yogic technique. Watch your breath, go in and out. It works. Why does it work? ’cause you’re moving your attention out of your mind.
Can you get your attention off of yourself? And so basically you just get to the point where you understand what’s going on. And I hope you do. Now that we’ve talked about it, your mind is the way it is. ’cause you made it that way by storing garbage inside. Now it’s spewing the garbage up. That’s not your mind’s full.
It’s trying to purify. But you don’t understand this. This thing happens. There’s only, leave me alone. It just keeps coming back. Of course it does. ’cause there’s a big thing. You suppress it, you stored it in there, it’s gonna come back up. Well, what do I do about it? Yes. You’re now not in the position to deal with this big garbage you stored in there, right?
Start with smaller things, but how does that fix the big thing? It doesn’t right away. You can’t play Beethoven when you first sit down at the piano. You have to start at the beginning. You start practicing practice, letting go, practice. Not storing that stuff in there with the things that happen every day and at I sit down and say, did I store stuff in here?
Of course you did. Can I let it go? Of course I can. It’s called neutralizing. Here’s neutralizing it. You look at it. Sally didn’t say Hello. You watch. Oh, Sally didn’t say Hello. Go please. I beg you. Go off the planet just for a minute. And see, Sally, where’s Sally? I don’t. There’s no Sally. I can’t even see the planet.
I even see the planet. I got a picture there, right? I look at every single morning, evening, it’s a photograph of the planet Earth and 2 million miles out on the way to Saturn. She turned around and snapped a, a picture of home.
Speaker 16: It’s this tiny little thing. It’s, I can’t even see it
Speaker 15: against the black photo.
And you’re having, what problem? That’s how you do it, and you let go. Fine. She didn’t say, oh, I can handle it. I can handle it and eventually can handle something more. They handle something more. Next thing you know, you can start handling stuff and then something big happens. There are big things that happen.
Handle ’em. Make it a game. It’s a video game. Can I handle it? But as a feel good, of course it doesn’t feel good. It’s hitting your stuff. But if you relax and release as it hit your stuff, there will be less stuff. ’cause you learn to handle it. It’s so simple. Not easy to do because we have trouble with our emotions, we have trouble with our mind.
But if you keep letting go, I guarantee you won’t have trouble. What will happen? I always close this way. What will happen eventually instead of your mind spewing what you stored inside? Your heart and your mind, right? You stored this stuff in there now, it keeps trying to release. As you release enough, you’ll get to a certain point.
Don’t ask me where that point is, where they ask me, how will I know when that point comes? It’s none of your business. And you’ll know, okay? It is different for everybody. It’s different for everything, right? But you will get to the point where you’re in there doing your life thing, and all of a sudden, instead of this constant pull down into the negativity, into the desires, into the needs, into all that stuff that’s going on down there.
There’ll be this natural flow magically just starts going up and sit it down. You can’t know it until it happens. You don’t know. They’re up and down. You never experienced it. A fish doesn’t know they’re no water. Because they jump out. Oh, look, okay. It’s the same thing with the downward flow of your energy flow when you let go enough, and that’s how you do it, by letting go of the stuff that’s holding it down, and then eventually it starts going up and you start feeling all this love.
Why? No reason a bird flies by you almost pass out. Robert Christian was that way from the age of six. He was very graceful from the age of six. He’s walking on the pad fields in India. With the women with a ants on their head holding the water and they’re walking, and all of a sudden it’s monsoon season and a flock of white birds secrets comes flying across against the black sky.
Very moving like a sunset, right? He passed out, he fell over backwards. They started watching ’em do this every day when things were happening. They thought it was epileptic. They called the doctors. They did everything. He would stay out for hours or days. They were so concerned. He was falling into Samati.
He literally was falling into ecstasy at the age of six. He was a very great soul, and he was that way his entire life. His story is so amazing, right? He got invited to Prime Minute ’cause he was very respected, man. He got invited to the Prime Minister’s house for dinner, that kind of stuff. He’d bring his disciples.
He’d go there in the middle of dinner. He’d stand up and start dancing. Just, you heard God’s name and he just, oh, dancing. His disciples get very embarrassed and later they asked him, master, don’t you get embarrassed? Kinda do this stuff in public. And he said two things that I’m gonna stop. It’s hard to stop, but I talk about the master, right One.
He said, do you know how you all talk about seeing like ghosts or apparitions? That they kind of flowed in and out, right? That’s how I see your world Normally, there’s this blinding light. Every once in a while I see this image of a building or a person kind of float in and then disappear away. That’s where he lived.
He lived in that light. He lived in those transcendent states. Unbelievable. And the other thing he said when they answered that question, he said, I found that there’s only one thing you can do with the respect of another human being. Lose it. Don’t you worry about, so I respect you so much. Now you’re afraid to do it again.
Come on, God. You look so cool when I saw you. What an outfit. How’d you get that? How’d you pick that? You’ll be afraid to get dressed next time. Yes or no? Okay, anyways. We’ve had a nice talk. It’s nice to end with. Whoa. Who are these guys Pictures on the wall. These are enlightened masters. They were able to go out at will and come back at Will.
There was no struggle. Somebody was asked Mayor Baba, another perfect master avatar. ’cause they saw all the time. He said, who is he? Right? They asked him, Bubba, who are you? He said I was in the beginning, but all else was created. I will be in the end when all else falls away. There was never a time I was not, and there will never be a time that I am not.
That’s who he was. He merged and he stayed there. He could come back and interact here, but he was always there. Right. I started by telling you you’re a very great being. Do you understand that you are that? You are those states. That’s what’s inside of you. Addicted and distracted by your mind. Do you hear me?
Right? You learn to let go. The more you let go, the more it takes you up.
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@michaelsingerpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds true. Waking up the world.
