Tami Simon: Welcome to the Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us@michaelsingerpodcast.com.
Michael Singer: Jai Guru Dev, Jai Masters. The most real and important conversation that we can have about the mind is as follows. The problem is not your mind. The problem is that you’re listening to it. That’s the truth. You don’t realize that until you get very, very far along on the path. When it starts, it doesn’t seem as though the problem is your mind.
It seems as though the problem is the world people, what they say, what they do, how they treat you, everything. That’s the problem. Do you understand that that’s where most of you are? No, you’re not. You wouldn’t have made it here yet if that’s what you think. You’re out there doing something. Yeah. Wasting your time being in here because if the problem’s outside, you got some fixing to do.
You have some control and to do, and that’s where most people are. They have not looked inside. We’ll talk about why and ’cause they don’t look inside, but the inside’s a mess. But they don’t pay attention to that. They don’t know that they think the outside’s a mess. They think it’s what people said and what they do and how they treat them and what happened in the past and all that kind of stuff.
That’s what the mess is. And so if you wanna be okay, you have to fix that. You have to get that away. That will make you feel okay. That’s your default condition. You’re not looking inside. Why? ’cause the inside is such a mess that you can’t live in there. You have to live out here. That’s why people do alcohol.
That’s why they do drugs. That’s most relationships. Not all, but many. It’ll be nice. Many relationships are based on that. I need someone. How’s that? People talk about the difference between a relationship based on love and based on need. You’ve heard about it, haven’t you? What’s the difference? If you need something.
You’re not even defining what you need. You’re saying that person, I need them. I need them to behave a certain way. I need ’em to talk to me a certain way. I need ’em to act a certain way. I need my finances a certain way. You need that word. Need is really neat. It’s the bottom if you need, that’s outside. I need things outside to be what?
To be away that I’m doing better. Well, if you need them outside to be away. You’re doing better without realizing you just said the problem is outside. Since the solution’s outside, the problem must be outside by changing. The outside. Solutions happen by protecting myself from the outside. Solutions happen.
In other words, the outside is the problem. Do you understand that? How many of you think the outside’s the problem, the way the outside is now, that way the outside might be later, and how the outside was all you think how the outside was in the past is the problem. That’s why things are the way they are.
That’s why I am the way I am. That’s all this stuff that happened to me. It didn’t happen to me. Everything. It was bullied. It was this, I was that, whatever it was, I would’ve graduated with honors, but they wouldn’t gimme the A plus for my honors class, and so I just failed and didn’t get to. Okay, great. In other words, it’s somebody’s fault, it’s outside.
The problem is outside. That’s a starting position. Okay? Eventually. I always say there’s two reasons that you do this thing called wake up. Well, waking up means is you notice that the problem’s inside. The problem’s inside, there’s two ways they can be slow, they can be sudden, but two different ways that cause you over time to wake up.
One is you have an experience. I don’t wanna talk about drugs. I don’t. And I, it’s not my business. I don’t wanna talk about it. But you have an experience that is so elevated, so transcendent, so different. It can only last five seconds by the way, that it lets you know there’s something else going on inside.
And you look at the contrast between, whoa, I meditated into a state. It was so beautiful, but I came back to this. You’ll inevitably, at some point. Be inspired to check that out. It wakes you up. Doesn’t mean a lot of people have tremendous wake ups, glue touches, this, that, and everything. Satori experiences and zen, and they go back to sleep.
But you can never, ever go fully back to sleep. Why? Because you are the semi you learned experiences, your mind’s, the semi learned experiences, and you had that experience, not somebody told you about it. You had an experience. That’s one way, and it doesn’t have to be some light shattering thing. Just basically you had an experience that was higher than what your normal life experience is.
That can wake you up. Now there’s another one you go down so far that you can’t tolerate it. It’s so painful, it’s so dark, it’s so disturbing. Not that you touch it for one minute, but you kinda end out there for a while. They call it the bottom. Some say you have to hit bottom. AA says that, right?
Different things say you’re not gonna change, hit bottom your whole life, start falling apart, et cetera, et cetera. So there is this, this dark, there’s this down and it can wake you up. Understand that, and you wake up at some point and realize, okay, you haven’t practiced discipline your whole life. You’ve just been messed up all out there and you realize I can’t go any lower and I don’t wanna go any lower.
And so you start working on yourself, both cases up and down and anything in between. ’cause you all have good days and bad days and some of them stimulate you and inspire you to work on yourself. Okay? So what happens when you wake up the first level of waking up? In a nutshell, as you look inside, really look inside, just you notice that it’s a mess in there.
You notice it’s a mess in there. You notice that there’s lots of negativity. You notice that there’s lots of pain. You notice that it is not right in there. It is not comfortable in there, not, it’s not comfortable outside. It’s not comfortable inside. And so it stimulates you when you wake up to say, I don’t care what that’s, I don’t teach techniques.
I don’t care what technique you use. I don’t care what it is. I just wanna know, did you read that stage? Hmm. Where you’re looking for a way to get better in there. Not better out there. Better in there. Not. I need the outside to fix the inside. To me that’s blasphemy. I need the outside to fix the inside.
What are you talking about? You are in there. My house is a mess. I haven’t cleaned it. There’s bugs all over the place and I’m the only who lives there. And when I took it over, it was a very nice place. Alright, I need something to happen outside to clean my house. You don’t. You need to stop making your house a mess.
You’re in there. That’s your house. You understand that you are the only one that lives in there. Stop for a minute, take a look. Your mommy’s not in there. Daddy’s not in there. Ex-boyfriend’s not in there. Nothing else is in there except you. Are you in there? First of all, are you in there? Check anybody in there.
Is anybody else in there with you? No. You’re in there. So you get very zen about it. If it’s a mess in there, I’m going one in there. I must have made the mess. And that’s your first awakening. And you wake up and you say, I don’t want it to be a mess in here. I would like it to be nice in here. Maybe had a really good experience.
I wouldn’t just stay that way. A really vanish fan. I’m wanna go down there again. Right? And you start looking for how can I actually change my life? You change your life by changing what you’re doing inside. You can’t change your life by manipulating and controlling every single thing that ever happened to you.
First of all, the past already happened. You’ll never change the past. No one has ever changed the past and the past causes you big trouble does it not? Which one? Do you have trouble with your past? Raise your hands at once. Every one of you have trouble with your past. I don’t care whether your childhood or your first marriage or your this or that, or just anything ever happened to you in the past.
You have problems with it. It bothers you. Well, you can’t change that can you? You can change your relationship to it, but you can’t change what happened in the past, and it’s called waking up. It’s just a question of at what level did you wake up? If you really wake up fully, wake up reasonably, you say, Hey, I got some work to do in here.
’cause I can’t change the past. And guess what else? I can’t do totally control the future. All I can do is worry about it. Do you worry about your future? Do you have trouble with the past? But then you’re in trouble, aren’t you? Because you’re not gonna control the future. You can influence it mean you’re not gonna control the future.
And the Beatles say John, life is what happens to your way. You’re busy making other plans. Okay, which one of you has the whole thing unfolded exactly the way you wanted it to and the way you thought it would from the beginning. So you can’t just go waking up now, you’ve turned your consciousness inside instead of outside.
Doesn’t mean you stop working outside. It’s a balance, but at least you have turned your attention inside to sit there and say, I got some work to do in here. And that is your spiritual awakening. That’s the beginning of your spiritual awakening. Like they have words called a worldly person, a spiritual person.
I hear those. Yes. I don’t like them because they’re using them wrong, but a worldly person, that’s not somebody that has money or has this car or that car or that. None. That’s not necessarily a worldly person. A worldly person is someone who thinks the answer is outside. A spiritual person, if someone thinks the answer is inside, so now you’re not categorizing it all at once to look like something, you can’t define it.
That’s the difference. If you think the answer’s outside, have fun. ’cause you’re gonna suffer. Like I said, there’s three aspects to outside the the past, the present, and the future. How much do you have control over? You have no control. Over the past. You have very, very little control over the future.
Anything happen anytime, anywhere, right? And it does And, but then there’s this thing called the present. Good luck. Why? The present only lasts for a moment, I meet you. I really like you. I try to influence you, but then you go to school and I’m left here by myself. And when you come back, you’ve had other experiences and you’re not looking at me the same as you did two hours ago.
You cannot control things. You can influence them, but that’s a very small influence. I said it to you before, I’ll say it again. Maybe you’ll get it. The moment unfolding in front of you, it’s called The Eternal. Now, there’s just a moment unfolding in front of you. The past is not real. It’s over. The future’s not real.
It hadn’t happened yet. It’s the only thing that’s real is the moment unfolding in front of you. The rest is mine. The moment unfolding in front of you. Is the sum total of all the causes that made it be that way. You don’t have to be a scientist. There are a lot of causes that made this mo. Why is each one of you here?
Why are you sitting where you’re sitting? Why are you wearing what you’re wearing? There’s just trillions and trillions of trillions of causes that happened before. The moment that’s in front of you that caused it to be that way. Did you cause all those things to happen? So when I say you can influence them, you know, maybe you yelled at her from wearing what she was wearing yesterday, what everybody else.
What about what her mind thinks about? ’cause you yelled at her. She’s very rebellious. You can do it. You don’t know anything. There are 700 trillion causes coalescing together to create the current moment. For every moment. The causes change constantly. Don’t they hear a news article? Have somebody say something, have somebody not say something, put your glasses down and can’t, can’t find ’em right away.
There’s 80 billion things that go on to create the moment in front of you. Go ahead, influence it. You’re not going to influence it much. We do have an influence. You certainly do, but it’s very little. And so basically get to the point where you understand I have no control over the past. I have really no control of the future.
I can influence a little bit, but even less than the present. The forces that cause the future haven’t even happened yet. At least the ones that are causing the present, 7 billion of ’em for 13 or 8 billion years. And so you sit there and you realize, what am I doing? I’m not gonna be okay with changing the outside.
If I wanna be okay, I’m in here. Maybe I can make it nice in here’s where I live. How much influence do you have like in there? You won’t like me to tell you 100%. You’re not ready to hear that. We’ll talk about it. Why? You’re the only one in there. You say it’s my mind, my emotions. Yours. Yours. They’re mine.
Yours are not mine, are they? You don’t have control of what I do. But they’re your emotions. They’re your thoughts. Ultimately they’re yours that you could potentially be able to work with. So if you’re gonna be okay, you reached a point spiritually where you wake up and realize I got some work to do. And it’s inside.
We haven’t talked about how to do it. I will talk about that tonight. But you have work to do inside. If this is not a way that’s comfortable to live in and you know it’s not. And I know it’s not for every one of you, why you’re busy out there trying to make stuff be the way it will be comfortable trying to find the right person, have them say the right thing, and wear the right thing when they go to your parents and not do what they shouldn’t say when they’re not your parents.
Right? You gotta manipulate that thing out there so you can feel better. What does that mean you’re not okay? Are you busy trying to make things be a way that makes you be okay and not be way that make you feel bad? That means you’re not okay, doesn’t it? But they forgot to tell you. Are you ready? Your natural state inside your natural state, inside is ecstasy because such an aon, eternal, conscious joy, not somebody else’s natural state, your natural state, no matter what you’ve ever done and what you will ever do, it is your natural state.
Just like light is shining on an object, if the object breaks, the object gets old. The object rots. The object is repainted it. Don’t change that light. Not one single iota and never did, never will. You are the light of awareness of consciousness that lives in here, and you are such ananda your eternal conscious joy.
You are indeed God descendant, not your ego, not what you’re looking at is not God descendant. The one who’s looking is God. That’s it. I said the kingdom is within you. It is the consciousness itself that is the kingdom, and it’s filled with joy and light and freedom and ecstasy and nirvana that is inside of you right now.
Okay, so now I’ve come inside. I woke up. I’m on a spiritual path. Beautiful. I don’t care which one you woke up enough to realize this in. Here is the problem. Outside influences it. No question. I don’t have to give up on doing things that make me feel better. Reasonably. We’ll talk about that. You’re not renouncing, you’re just working inside.
That’s all I can tell you. You woke up enough to say, okay, yes, I get distracted outside. Yes, I like this, but when it’s said and done, you know, here you have a meal. You really like it as a dessert, a pecan pie. You just love it with vanilla ice cream. Great. You’re gonna get to have it. Oh, I’m excited for an hour before or 10 minutes before I sit there and eat.
It takes me 15 minutes to eat it, then something’s gonna go wrong. It doesn’t fix anything. It just makes you feel better for a moment. In truth, I don’t teach it that way. I don’t say it makes you feel better. It distracts you from yourself. It distracts you from that mess inside. And then you feel a little bit of who you really are.
’cause you’re not focused on the garbage. That’s where joy comes from. That’s where worldly joy comes from. Just keep running, keep developing, keep creating. Stay ahead of yourself, keep something going. Go to a movie, have it be fascinating, unbelievable. You just feel so inspired and so wonderful. How long does it last?
Okay. It’s over. You win. You saw the movie? No, I don’t think so. That’s very little time. Better go to another one. So the outside can’t fix the inside. I’m make of this statement. The outside can touch the inside. Influence the inside. Affect the inside. Of course it does. Can it fix the inside? Absolutely. Not ever.
It can never ever make the inside. Totally. Okay. People understand that. I, I dealt with some very old people once. I really love what they said. I’ll never forget, she said, you know, her husband died after, you know, 60 years, 65 years, 70 years. They got very, very young. I said, how are you doing? She said, I’m not doing well.
Like it’s amazing. Irving was the meaning of my life. Now that he’s gone, I feel the same as I did before I met him. Do you think that’s romantic? That’s very sad. He spent 70 years together and is still in there. The same impulse and needs that made you have a nice life with Irving. The minute he’s gone, boom.
Here, right back down there. Do you understand that? You know, hunt a trunk real? I’m not saying not to have a 70 year marriage is wonderful, but understand it did not fix what was wrong to start with. It did not fix. I feel lonely. I still feel lonely now. I felt lonely before. I need someone to take care of.
I didn’t need someone to take care before. Right? You just see the outside cannot fix the inside there. You’re gonna see that. You’re gonna see that eventually. So what do I do? You work on the inside. How? What do we do? I don’t know what to do. That’s where most people are. So somebody gives you a mantra, somebody tells you to als somebody you know, tells you to quote the Bible.
Exactly right. It’s like they’ll just give you something and say, this will make you better. There’s real work to do in there. Just like any work, if you go to an engineering project or anything, you need to understand what’s going on. You have to understand the problem, not just think about a solution. Why are you not okay inside?
Now that we admitted we’re not okay inside, now that we see we’re not okay inside. Now that we see the problem is that I’m not okay inside. Why am I not okay inside? I love it. Thank you for asking. Yogananda called Meditation, entering the Laboratory of Soul Research, but I don’t limit it to meditation.
Life is entering the laboratory of soul research. You can learn about yourself. You can learn why it’s not okay in there. How It’s so easy, it’s ridiculous. Just watch it, not get, okay. Watch your boyfriend dance with one of your girlfriends a little too long. See what happens inside. Somebody else sees the boyfriend dance with a girlfriend, their heart melts.
Here are my two favorite people and just loving each other. That’s so beautiful. Yes or no? So why did yours create jealousy and why did yours create that? Dear me, there’s answers to that. You had a relationship previously and you got dumped and somebody ran off of somebody and you weren’t watching. You trusted.
Well, you’re not so quick to trust anymore, are you? You look twice from now on, don’t you? So what does that mean? You have to get quiet to see what it means. Doesn’t mean you don’t have a relationship. It doesn’t mean hate your jealousy. It doesn’t mean be, it means something. It’s so simple that you don’t see it.
It means something from your past left an impression on you, and now you’re acting from that impression. That’s where all of your preferences and psychological fears and all that stuff come from. You had experiences. Many of them were not so nice. How about most of them were not so nice? Even the tiniest little thing.
Somebody said something. Somebody didn’t say something. 300 people showed up for your party, but one didn’t, and it bothers you. Yes or no? It’s like, wow, here you go. You are gonna try playing a song for a bunch of people and every one of ’em clap except one person just sits there looking down. I guarantee it bothers you.
Catch on what’s going on. You have been programmed by your experiences to feel and think a certain way. Do you know that? Did you ever see that before? Do you understand that? Don’t say it’s just the way I am. It is not just the way you are. You’ve had experiences and they left these impressions on you, and they’re bothering you.
They run you. They decide what you like and what you don’t like, and well, when you get jealous, I can’t list all the things you’re in there. Do you notice? Do you notice that your past is affecting how you think and feel in your present? Mm-hmm. Anybody? Mm-hmm. You know, Freud said things happen. You suppress them.
What does that mean? You stored them. Where in, I’m telling you, you’re storing ’em in your heart. You store them in your energy flow and then they stay there and then they pop back up all the time if anything reminds you of ’em. And then you decide, well, I don’t want this to happen ’cause I don’t like to feel that.
And the next thing you know, it’s running your entire life determining who you live with, attorney, what’s happening during every single thing, what job you could take. Everything your inside is not what you think it is. But it is from a yogic point of view, from a spiritual point of view, and I’ve done this for so many years, you’ll come to the point where you see it.
It’s so clear. There is energy flowing inside of you. If it is free to flow, you feel wonderful. It just shockti pouring up your being. You feel inspired. Oh, everything’s wonderful. But if you store one thing inside that energy flow, mm-hmm. It’s like taking a rock and putting it into a clean, flowing stream.
The stream just flowed beautifully to put the rock in. Then what happened? Eddies and currents and sprays. You are there. You’re happy as could be. Somebody walks by and doesn’t say hello to you that you thought should be saying hello. You’re not feeling so good, are you? That’s the rock. Something went in.
And you held it in there. When you see that person the next day, either you avoid them or you ask, why didn’t you say hello? It’s a day later, somebody walked by you. We are that way, aren’t we? So you stored this, you in there decided how many people walked by that you didn’t know? A hundred. Some people walked by, you knew.
Isn’t that fine? This person walked by that you thought should say hello, you did that. You decided in your own little mind that that thing is not okay the way it is. Do you do that? And because it’s not okay the way it is, you stored the pain that you created. Everybody else walked by. There was no pain.
And so basically you stored this in the past. Now it’s causing this to come up and you push it back down and you now have all these problems. There are no problems. Hey, look at me. There are no problems. There are only experiences that you decide you like and don’t like. If something happens outside, you decide you like it.
How you doing? Something happens. The exact same thing happens outside. You decide you don’t like it. How you doing? Why did you decide to like it? Why did you just say, I didn’t like it because of past experiences you had that you did like or didn’t like, and this reminded you of those and therefore you liked that.
I like that color, I like it. This person, I like this and that. You have stored this stuff inside of you from your past and it is now determining how you feel and basically you have bought into it a hundred percent and now the only way you know how to be okay. It is to do what that stuff tells you to do.
Well, why is my mind such a problem? Because your heart is a problem because you stored this garbage in there. It is going to express itself through your mind. If you were able to get back far enough and watch your mind, you know what you’re gonna see. That’s that stuff talking. Why did he do this? Should I say something?
I don’t know. I’m so scared. I said something once before and I got so upset and everybody got upset. I probably, what is all that garbage talking in your head? Why is that voice going on in there? Because you stored this stuff down there and the Shakti’s trying to flow through it and it can’t, it hits the stuff and whatever stuff it hits the Eddies and the spray from that stuff come up and express themselves in your mind.
I just talk to you about the, I don’t talk voice in your head. I always talk about that. Alright. Do you have this constant dialogue going on inside your head? Watch it. Watch what it’s talking. I’m not talking about your intellectual math and this and that. I’m talking about your personal dialogue that’s going on inside all the time.
What I like, what I don’t like, what people should be doing. Why did that happen? What should I do about it that is going on all the time? Should I change jobs? I don’t know. This person didn’t play respect for me. It wasn’t very respectful. Yes or no? Do you have that going on in there? Is it fun? No, it’s a problem.
It’s in there because you stored that stuff in there from your past and it comes up and talks in your head. How do you know? Get rid of that stuff that’s in there. It gets quiet inside and it gets very nice inside. But most people, they don’t try to get rid of like getting rid of the cause. They try to get rid of it by changing the outside to match what it says it wants.
If all a sudden is talking, saying, I don’t know if you’re go on the vacation, I wanna go, but what have the job. I might get fired. I don’t wanna get fired. What am I gonna do? Right? And then you try to decide and solve and. Check the finances and try to find out whether your boss will boss. You understand that you’re trying to do what it tells you to do, so you think you’ll feel better.
I, I don’t always have the best examples, but you do, yes or no. I’m gonna give you examples. I’m telling you it’s going on 100% at a time. It’s called the personal mind. Not the intellectual mind, the abstract mind. That’s a beautiful thing. The personal mind is a part of your mind that is the result of those.
We call ’em some scars, patterns that you stored inside, and what are you doing about it? Try to see what it says you should do to make it better. The very thing that’s causing all the trouble. You are going to that mind and saying, well, what should I do about it? I don’t know whether he really still loves me.
How can I find out? Maybe I should hire a private detective. No, that wouldn’t be very nice. I don’t wanna be like that. What is all that going on inside your mind? Because you have these fears down there because you got them before because somebody cheated on you. Yes or no? This is very important now that you’ve turned your attention inside to see that the problem’s in there.
You have to make sure you’re fixing the problem. The cause, not the effect. All that noise in your mind and all that, that’s the effect of the problem. The problem is you stored this garbage in there throughout your life. Every single day of your life, you put junk in there and it comes back up the next day.
I’m trying to sleep and I’m sleep. You dream about it. Well, ’cause you stored it in there. To me it’s so easy. It’s stupid to talk about, but I know that people don’t look down there. First of all, they’re looking outside. Then, okay, they look inside and say, okay, I wanna be more spiritual. I’ll do this, I’ll do that.
I won’t swear. I’ll wear white. And you basically, you’re not looking in the right place. You gotta look down a little further. Where are the thoughts coming from? They’re coming from the stuff you stored. Literally, it’s coming from the shati. A beautiful energy coming up, hitting your stuff, and then expressing itself in your mind.
It’s a mess and it’s a royal mess ’cause you got a lot of stuff down there and the only way you’re getting free is not to compensate for what’s down there. Mommy means cheat me and so on. So what I’m gonna do is be the best mother that anybody ever had. You’re gonna end up. Kids will be screwed up. Your kids will be screwed up because the motive for your behavior is the mess you stored downstairs.
No matter how good it sounds, isn’t that why you’re doing it? Or I’m ever gonna get married? My parents got divorced. It was so painful. I don’t ever wanna go through that. I don’t want any kids to go through that, so I’m not gonna have kids. Beautiful. Congratulations Zel stuff. You just let 35 years ago make decisions in your life, who you were when you were a 5-year-old, but you think it’s reasonable.
It’s not reasonable. Why that stuff shouldn’t be down there. Now we’re going very fast into deep spirituality. There’s no reason for what happened to you 30 years ago and it’s not happening anymore that it’s down there bothering you. Is there? No one ever told you that before? They all said, well, you don’t understand how my mother was and my family was.
No one is this terrible thing. My stepfather, okay, when was the last time Stepdaddy did anything? 22 years ago. Then why is it down there? I’m challenging you. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? It makes no sense. Why would I have that down there? Especially when it tries to come back up. What do you do? You push it back down.
I don’t wanna feel that. Don’t talk like that. Don’t talk about stepfathers. I don’t like stepfathers. They’re no good. I had a direct experience with the stepfather. I know what I’m talking about. You have one experience. I have experience with one stepfather. How many stepfathers were there ever? And you tell me.
You know something. You sure know a lot about stepfathers, don’t you? What about boyfriends, girlfriends, teachers, this, that, all kinds of stuff. He did the same thing with everything. He couldn’t handle it. So you pushed it away. I’m not blaming you to not handle it. You haven’t evolved enough yet. You weren’t ready.
It happened. Yes. Check happened. You couldn’t handle it. Check. I couldn’t handle it. I suppressed it. Check. I suppressed it. What does that mean? I pushed it away. I didn’t wanna feel it. I did everything I could to have it not come all the way back to where I live back in here. I pushed it down. Does it stay there?
Of course. It stays there. Why? ’cause you keep it there and you just, when you wake up, you start realizing how much Shakti chi energy am I using to push that down there a lot. How many of you stored. Every day throughout your life. I’m telling you, you are holding that stuff down there and that’s where the vast majority of all of your Chi and Shakti and energy life force goes to push that down there, right?
I just said something very serious to you. Do you know that you think it just stays there by itself? How come it keeps coming back up? How come it feels terrible when it comes back up? Doesn’t it? As scary as could be, you do anything, not have it come back up. It because it’s down there. See, it was stored with pain.
It’s coming back with pain. We ain’t letting it come back. You didn’t let it come back when it started. Ain’t letting it come back now. So all the energy, imagine how much energy. Inner energy it takes to push all of that down there and keep, wow, the majority of your energy is used for that. Well, where’s the rest of it go?
A whole nother bunch of it goes trying to manipulate people, placing things so they don’t bring that up. So they’re not the way you don’t want them to be. How’d you decide what you want them to be? Right. They’re your program. So now your whole life is that. All built upon that. Alright, so now we’re getting down there into these levels of, of depth of being a deep person.
So what do you do now? It takes time. I don’t make it sound like it happens in a few days or something. You devote yourself. Oh, I’m like, I wanna cry. Instead of devoting yourself to manipulating the outside world, so be the way distract you from yourself, even though you’re a mess inside or stepping inside saying, oh, I have to fix this.
There’s something wrong with my mind. No, no, that’s too surface level. You eventually come down and say, oh, I stored that stuff. And I keep storing it every day. Anytime something happens, the driver in front of me, it’s too hot out. I, I drop some ketchup on my trousers if somebody said something that I’m not sure what they said, but I don’t think I liked it.
You’re doing it all the time. You haven’t learned not to do it, so you’re storing more and more in there all the time. Plus the deep stuff that’s in there from before. And so what do you do? This person at this level of spirituality, they’re not thinking the outside’s gonna fix them. They know it’s not gonna fix them.
They don’t think controlling the mind and doing stuff alright and moving somewhere to make it nicer inside it. It’s not gonna work. You just keep having problems. They have woken up to the point of saying, okay, I see the problem. The problem is I’m storing this stuff inside. The problem is I stored the stuff inside.
Okay, what do I do? Get it out. Get it out. How much of all of it, if it were all out, your picture would be on that wall? I’m not kidding. If it were all out, all your Shakti. This tremendous upper, the highest you’ve ever felt in a moment of love and a moment winning the lottery of everybody clapping the highest you have ever felt, multiplied times a million.
And that’s going on inside of you all the time. That’s where a master is. Why are you not there? Because you have this stuff in there, and that’s the only reason, is the only reason. So you start devoting your life to what really matters, getting that stuff out. If I can get that stuff out, my life will be phenomenal, and so will everybody around me.
Imagine being depressive of a being’s emanating all this love and light all the time. No matter what happens. Anybody nothing can touch it. It’s unconditional. It’s coming from inside. Again, I’m a nice Jewish yogi, but I love what Christ taught. What does he say? Man does not live with bread alone, but by every word that leaves the mouth of the father.
A yogi knows exactly what that means. You don’t live off what’s coming in from outside. You live off what’s coming in from the Shakti, the poorest spirit from inside that’s feeding you all the time. Once you start feeling that flow, you understand just what he is talking about. How would you like to feel that all the time?
You don’t only ’cause you blocked it, and so you start literally saying the meaning of my life every moment is letting go of this stuff first. Don’t put more in. What’s the purpose of getting rid of him? Put more in. Just start with the easy stuff and watch yourself all day. So a witness consciousness. And notice you just shove that thing down there.
You didn’t even, not like what he said. You didn’t like what you thought he might have said. How did you decide what he might have said? Your mind made it up based on your past experiences. I just decided that this, this person doesn’t like me. Why? Just look how they’re standing. Look what they’re looking at other people instead of me.
Like, you can’t, you can’t let your mind do that. Everybody’s standing there and no one’s getting, but you had some experience in the past, but before somebody broke up with you and did something they had, were looking at you weird. Or they, they were sitting with body language crossing their third chakra uhhuh, and, and so now you project that out into the thing you’re experiencing right now, and you’re, you’re caught in a loop.
Your mind has all this stuff from the past, then it interprets everything you see based on that. And then it belie, I don’t know. I, I, I hope somebody gets this. It’s a mess in there compared to how it should be, can be how compared it really is. You don’t have to live like that. You do not have to live like that.
But what if really, really bad things happen to me? You do not have to live like that. And I’ll talk about that in a minute, but I wanna talk about those right now. I’m gonna talk about the daily little stupid things that you’ll let bother you. Oh my God. He said he would call. I’m waiting for delivery.
He’d spend an hour. He’s wasting my time. And whatcha doing? Do a mantra. Have fun. Enjoy your hour. You are gonna wait anyways. No way. I’m gonna do this thing called come plane. You’ll reach the point in your spiritual journey where that might as well be a four letter word. There is nothing spiritual about complaining.
Nothing complaining is I got stuff inside of me and it’s making me not like stuff, and I’m gonna let you know about it. And the, you doesn’t have to be somebody outside. I’ll let you in there know. I don’t put up with this, I don’t like this, I don’t want that. Right. All complaining does is reinforce your right to be screwed up.
Do you want to justify the garbage inside of you? I’m gonna get real with you. I love you. You don’t understand. I know who you are. I’m so capable of such. Great. Do you want to justify your mess? Because if you justify it, you’re welcome to keep it. ’cause that’s what you just did. You said, I have the right to have this mess.
If you have the right to keep it, you’re not gonna let it go. And we just go through saying that letting it go is what it’s all about. So you don’t justify somebody, a master grew. I knew once said, no blame, no shame. You’re not blaming other people and you’re not shaming yourself. You’re just letting go.
Just get it over with. Do you want that stuff in there now that I give you? Nice talk about what’s in there. Hey, is what’s in there? In there? So you just decide. Now we’re gonna talk about the real growth. Now you’re down there. You caught on as pure, so we can see in your eyes what level you’re at. Are you out there doing the outside?
Have you just woken up to say, oh, it was an inside? Or are you dealing with the cause of every problem you have, which is that stuff stored inside. You don’t understand it if you don’t have that stuff stored in there and you feel this constant flow of love and unconditional wellbeing and you lose all your money.
It’s funny. Why you didn’t need it. Mm-hmm. It had nothing to do. If somebody in a relationship does something that’s not so nice or a thing, it does not cause you down. The up is so strong that you look at it. You may not stand in a relationship, but it’s not out of pain or fear. You’re just making rational decisions.
There’s a thing called unconditional wellbeing. Transcendent wellbeing, it is transcending that garbage. That’s what’s being transcendent. It is not gonna go away by itself. You have work to do, but it’s really funny. Or I’m gonna spend some time here. I never do it. The work’s not as hard as you claim it is.
Why do I need to go down there and find what everything did that caused all this trouble down there? That is not my experience. I’ve been doing this a long time. My experience is as follows. You go into life, which of course you’re going to, and it’s going to show you where your stuff is. Don’t worry, you don’t need a therapist.
You can use one, but it is gonna show you throughout the day where you got issues. Alright? Just work with that. That’s all you have to work with. Life is on your side. It’s your guru. You know what life is? Michelangelo standing in front of a solid marble block that looks like nothing. With a chisel. He’s got a chisel.
And every moment, every day, you’re the block of marble and he’s God. Chip. Chip. And you’re going, ow, ow. Stop it. Oh, and all of a sudden you see David’s arm coming out of the marble with the divine mother holding Christ. You realize at some point, oh, that’s what’s happening. ’cause that is what’s happening.
Life is your friend. It will hit your stuff. Have you noticed you spend the rest of your life trying to protect yourself from it or, okay, I’m gonna learn to be comfortable with the process of becoming. This beautiful, beautiful being that God is creating out of me by chipping away the garbage that’s not needed that I stored down there.
That’s when you working at a very, very deep level, running outta time. Yoga nun, when people moved in the ashram, he had them read only his books, his material. They’re not an eco thing, it’s just you gotta have one teacher with one exception. There was this poem, it’s called The Hound of Heaven. Okay. I don’t remember the whole thing, but I remember a little bit, and it’s a story of a regular person who throughout his life.
He is trying to get away from the problems that life has. And at some point, every step when he is doing that, a voice will echo out of the heavens saying No one will harbor thee. Who will not harbor me. And he kept going. He kept saying, and the end of it is just so beautiful. He said, the hound of heaven, like a dog is running after him.
I said, the hound of heaven running after the guy and he keeps running away and hiding. And at the end it says. I’ve reached the end. He’s, I’m cornered. I’ve been completely cornered. There’s no place to run anymore. I’m so scared. He’s got me. And then he says, oh my. Could it be the darkness I was running away from my whole life was the shadow of the hand of God reaching down to pick me up.
That is what’s going on, okay? And it is your garbage stored inside that God is trying to take out and you won’t let ’em. You just keep messing your life up to run away from purification, and eventually it gets to the point you won’t be able to do it all at once, right? It’s pretty serious stuff. You got that stuff down there.
A long time. You’ve been avoiding trouble life, but little by little, you do the small stuff first. You start letting go. If I teach, letting go, you start feeling resistance. If somebody says something, relax, it will come up. Over time, it will cleanse by itself. What is supposed to come up will come up. When it’s ready to come up.
What is not supposed to come up. Will not come up. It’s not ready to come up. Pieces will come up by themselves. Situations will come. Books will show up. A person will show up. Teachers will show up exactly when they’re needed. And you realize, you look back and say, oh my God, if if life had not brought me that I wouldn’t be able to handle this, and you realize it is God untying the knot.
The knots of your sun scars little by little man, and it takes care of itself if you let it, but you don’t let it. Why? Because you don’t really want it. You know? It’s painful, it’s hard. So what you do, and it’s a terrible thing, but you do it, is justify your stuff. You justify your stuff. I have the right to feel this.
I have the right to be upset. I have the right to have problems. I have the right to have problems. Anybody would have problems? Yes, fine. You wanna have problems. Have problems. Instead, you sit there and say, yes, I’m not done, but I’ll work on it. And I’m never gonna blame anybody else ever. Never ever will I blame anybody else, and I’m not gonna blame myself.
No shame. No blame. Why am I not blaming myself? A child doesn’t know things. If you’re learning the piano, you don’t know how to play. How do you blame yourself while you are learning? Life is a learning process. You never blame yourself. If you’re willing to learn, you never blame anybody else. If you realize every experience I go through and have gone through, I can use for my benefit.
If I don’t complain and justify and rationalize, no, no, no, no. Just relax and let go. Relax and let go, and eventually you’ll get to the point where your relationship with your mind as follows, intellectual mind. Fine. Use it by all means. Right? Your personal mind, you realize you’re talking. I don’t need to be listening because what you’re saying.
You honor, need to be dealing with. ’cause all you’re doing is expressing the garbage. I understand we’re not done yet. So you’re complaining, fine, I can fight with you. But you start realizing that’s not where the work is. The work is not changing your mind. The work is down here where the cause of mind is, and as you let it go, I’m telling you that Shakti, I want you to live there.
I want you to know what it’s like every moment in your life and the moment you wake up in the morning, even during all you’re streaming sleeping, whether it’s just joy, there’s just pure. Unconditional joy pouring inside. Even when terrible things happen, even when you’re sick, even go to hospital and there’s fun.
Go to hospital. Is it fun in the sense that is the body sick? No, but you are okay and you are not your body. You are the consciousness experiencing your body. You’re not your mind. You’re the consciousness. Hearing and experiencing your mind. You’re not your emotions. Your emotions do not have to be filled with everything’s the way I want.
They can be, oh my God, what’s gonna happen? And you’re gonna have fun with it ’cause you’re not it. The light of consciousness can shine on anything. And it’s transcendent so you don’t not feel it. You’re just okay feeling it fine. Haven’t you notice things come and go? Who’s noticed? Things come and go.
Most of ’em in small period of time, but on a bigger period of time. So what do you care? It’s everything I teach you all the time. That’s why I try to take you out into space. You’re on a tiny little planet, how small the planet is. 1.3 million Earths fit inside the sun. Do not look at me as if that’s not important.
What does that mean? There’s squat going on that makes any difference. 1.3 million earths are inside the sun. How many suns are there? 300 billion in your galaxy and you care what’s going on. The stupid planet, is it small? Is that thing floating out the middle of nowhere and you’re gonna let it ruin your life?
What goes on? That’s ridiculous. You can still come down and play. You come down and work with things, make ’em better. Of course you’re supposed to, but how could you take it seriously? How do you take seriously, 1.3 million? Earth side planets fit inside the sun, and the sun is one of 300 billion stars, goes a slight distance away.
There is no earth, no one ever heard of it. The whole thing blew up and nobody would know anything about it. Do you understand? And you just decide, I’m gonna free myself. I’m gonna work my way out and nothing’s gonna stop me. Not the least of which the garbage I stored in there. Alright, now we had a nice talk about mine, didn’t we?
We talked about the layers at which you work with your life. I wanna see, I know you’re not free. We have a lot of work to do. We all do. But I wanna see that the pole star of your life, that the intent of every moment of your life and don’t ever forget it, is getting free, is getting the stuff outta here.
Like I said, you stop complaining. You just start accepting life unfolds. It hits my stuff. Opportunity to let go. Life unfolds, hits my stuff. Opportunity to let go.
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.
