Choosing Joy: A Life Without Psychological Pain | The Michael Singer Podcast

Welcome to the Michael Singer podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer's work, access to all prior episodes, and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com. [Music] So, what causes suffering? One type of suffering is very easy to explain: physical suffering. You have a nervous system; it's sensitive to touch and responsive to passing signals. Some of those signals are difficult; they're painful. They come back, and by the time they return to you, they hurt. That's physical pain—physical suffering. What do you do

about it? Whatever you can. You go to the doctors, you eat better, you do what you can to keep your body healthy—do yoga. I don't need to tell you what to do; there are so many things you can do, and there are things you can do that make it worse and things you can do that make it better. People ask me, what if you just have terrible chronic suffering? It's terrible! I have such compassion for those who are being forced to suffer. Maybe they have to take narcotics; maybe they have to take things that make

it bearable. Perhaps they can try different techniques, holistic approaches, and so on. Don't judge people; different people have different tolerances to pain. Just do the best that you can to keep your body healthy and your nervous system healthy. How you go about it is your business—just take care of yourself. But that's not the majority of your pain; that's not most people's suffering. There's also inner suffering—psychological suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering. Look at me; you have complete control over that—100%. You are the cause of it, and you are the solution to it. They will not tell

you that; they will tell you the world is causing your mental and emotional suffering, that somebody else is causing your mental and emotional suffering. Things that happened to you 20 years ago are causing your mental and emotional suffering. Yes, obviously, that's true, but it doesn't have to be true. That's the nice thing about talking to you: you do not have to suffer, period. Ever. Not that type of suffering. Are you listening to me? You just have to understand. Just like we understand what's going on with physical suffering—we have all kinds of things that can help

with it, and we study it. We understand the nerves, the neurons, and all the chemicals involved, right? Well, inner suffering has also been studied for a very long time by very, very great beings; the Buddha taught it. Buddha's Four Noble Truths state that all life is suffering. It has been studied for a long time. You can study it yourself. Why? Because you're you. You live there. Listen to me: you do not have to suffer. You do not have to suffer. All right, so what causes suffering? Let's take modern times. Some of you are very happy

with the election, while some of you are very unhappy with the same election. I understand. Well, you walked into it with a set of preferences, expectations. Preferences, okay? The Third Zen Patriarch said the following: "The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences." In other words, if you walked into it like a Martian—if you didn't know what was going on, you just walked into the event—you'd be fascinated. "Oh, look, look!" You're open; you have no preferences. Now, don't close down—you're not preferring. I talk like this: don't close down until you hear everything,

okay? Do you understand that if you did not have a preference, you would not suffer? You may have been disappointed. You know how you get disappointed by wanting something, right? You got disappointed; you wanted something, and it didn't happen. So that's what's going on—the bottom line. And again, I know you don't want to live like that. You can't live like that. I know you don't understand, but I just want you to logically understand that if you did not have a preference, you would not suffer; you would not be disappointed. Okay, so there's the basics. Where

did you get your preferences? I know you think you made them up, but that is not true. That is absolutely not the truth. You are programmed with your preferences. Exactly the same—as a computer guy, you know that. Just like we program computers, we put lines of code in, and they behave accordingly when they run according to those lines of code. Your mommy treated you a certain way; they took your blanket away too soon; your first husband left you; your child died. Things happened to you, and they programmed you. Psychology says, "Man is a sum of

his learned experiences." That's not true. That's not who you are, but that is what your psyche is. What about your mind and emotion, your personal self, your ego, your preferences, your hopes, your dreams, your concepts, your views, your beliefs? They are things that were programmed in you based upon your past experiences. If I take a computer, no matter how brilliant it is, and it has no data, guess what? It knows nothing. The only data you took in was what you took in. What you have inside of you is what you took in. Where did you

get it? I read a book—you took it in. I saw a movie—you took it in. I had an experience—you took it in. How much do you know about what you know? Nothing about, as funny as it sounds. You need to listen to me. You have... Had experiences? How do you have an experience? Every moment of your life, you have an experience. Did anyone else have the same experiences, the exact same experiences as you've had during the sequence of your life? No one did, did they? Not your exact twin, not your parents, not your husband, not

your wife, not your kids—no one. Not only did no one, no one ever has and no one ever will. Moments don't repeat themselves. It's just coming and going; it keeps changing, keeps changing, and you see the moments that you see. You experience the moments you see. I'm asking you a question. I know if you get it because it blows your mind. You've experienced a certain number of things. How many have you missed? How many things have you not experienced that actually took place? Seven hundred billion zillion quillion. And you are only programmed with the one

line of code of the experience that you had, then you had another one, then another one, then another one. Okay, now you understand where your preferences come from. They are not holy, they're not evil, they're not sacred; they are the sum of your learned experiences. We're moving into a world now where we have AI, which is pretty amazing at what it can do. If I took— I won't do it, I promise— but they will, believe me, they will. All right, if we took every experience you ever had and you fed it into that AI, it

would act like you. If I change one experience that I put into it, it will behave somewhat differently. If I changed one experience that you had, you had a different one; you didn't have that one, you could be different. I try to show you how tenuous this is because you believe that what you think is truth. Yeah, it's true to you because those experiences you had. Take the most amazing computers ever built—brilliant—and put in one set of data and keep asking the questions; you will get the same answer. It's the only data it has, and

that's the only data you have. I'm talking about you, right? I told you it's not true that you are the sum of your learned experiences. Your mind, your emotions, your psyche are the sum of your learned experiences. They were programmed. Who knows this? Psychology knows this. All right? Freud figured it out. That's what got put in there, then that's what's going to come out. But that's not who you are. Why? Because you know you're the sum of your learned experiences. You can watch your mind tell you stuff, and you know where it came from, can't

you? You are the consciousness; that's who you are. You're the consciousness watching your mind and your emotions be the sum of your learned experiences. Out of that, you've developed a mindset, a mental set. All these experiences don't neatly mesh together properly, right? You met someone in high school named Ben. You really got along. Then you got married to a Ben; it didn't work out so good. So you're kind of bifurcated about Bens. And so you're sitting in there programmed, and you've got to live in there. The self-consciousness has to live in there, but it's very

trite, bifurcated, all right? It's all over the place; it's hard to live. So you make up a set of those learned experiences, and you say, "That's me. This is what I believe," until you met somebody that believes something else. You really love them, and so you change your beliefs. Yes or no? Have you ever changed your mind? Have you ever changed your mind? That's how tenuous the stupid thing is. It’s just you took pieces of stuff— we'll talk about it more a little later. You just took pieces of your learned experiences, you put them together

and created an ego. You created a voice inside your head that's telling you what you believe and what you don't, what you like and what you don't, what should happen, what shouldn't happen, and it's constantly talking. That's where it came from; that's what it is. So it's been programmed in that way, so it's not true that you are the sum of learned experiences, but it is true that your psyche—which you live with every moment—is the sum of learned experiences. So you have preferences. You ended up with preferences. Why? Why? Why do you like this and

he likes that, and you don't like that. Why? And by the way, you're married; you better laugh. So, okay. Why? Because some things that came in from the outside world come in; your experiences come in. When they come in, they feel good, don't they? And some things, when they come in, they feel bad. We can get into that a little later. I get into this very deeply in the new book, "Living in Tether." All right? Very down to detail, right? Why this happens. So they come in; they feel good. I'm going to make a prediction

because I'm a psychic: I'll bet you prefer that the ones that feel good happen again. I'll bet you prefer the ones that feel bad don't happen again. Did I get it? It's just so logical. It's so ridiculous. You're being programmed, but it's coming in. The problem is that if you don't like something— I know, please listen to this—things are going on all over the place, and things are going on in front of you. There are people here; there's clouds, there's weather, there's everything going on. Some of it just comes right in and goes through. What

part? I haven't figured it out. I know it's at least 95%, maybe 99% of every single thing that ever came through your senses has passed right through the white lines on the… Road the cars on the road that you never owned; one you don't think about it. The trees, the weather, the clouds—what's coming in? But some of it, like the car, I do that to the soul, right? The car that looks like your girlfriend's car, and there's somebody snuggling in there. At least it looked like it; really, they were just bending over to pick up

a Kleenex, right? But that's not what you saw. All right, somehow that car stays in there. Somehow, all the other cars drove by, all the other people drove by. But the next time you see your boyfriend or girlfriend, something will be talked about, and it wasn't all the other cars, and it wasn't the white lines, and it wasn't the clouds. If it doesn't feel good when it comes in, and you separate it by the way, right? That car is the same as any other car to everybody else. It comes in; if it doesn't feel good,

you don't want to feel it. I have to qualify and explain it to you: there are times you really do want to feel something, like you turn the corner, and the sunset is so gorgeous you just melt. It blows your mind. You use words like this: "It touched me to the core of my being." I felt like I was in the presence of God. A hug can do that; a kiss can do that; nature can do that; music can do that. It can just take you away and melt you completely into it, can't it? It's

beautiful. That is because you let it come in; you let it come in—that's its nature. It comes in, comes in through your senses, passes through your psyche. It doesn't get blocked; it doesn't hit anything in your psyche from before. All right, you're open—that's what the words mean. You're open, you're clear; you let it in. All sixty's words, okay? It comes in and it touches you. It literally touches you in there—your soul, your consciousness, the essence of your being—and it pours into there. And it's the most beautiful experience you've ever had. There's no experience more beautiful

than being touched to the depth of your being, is there? You know how many times you've been touched to the depth of your being? I can count on my hand. It's always there. What is your consciousness? It's always there. Why doesn't everything touch you to the depth of your being? Because you don't let it. There's no way. If it starts coming in and it doesn't feel good, you're pushing it away. You have hands in there, don't you? Have you ever pushed away a feeling or a thought because you didn't want to have it? No way;

that's going back to the depth of your being, is it? "I let that all the way in?" No way; that happened. I can't stop it from happening. I have to let it all the way in. You're in there doing this, are you not? How often? Every moment of your life. If it doesn't feel good, then I don't want to feel it. It's just a form of suppression. I call it resistance. Do you resist things in there? Let me tell you: if you resist them, they ain't coming all the way back. That's the purpose of resistance,

isn't it? "I don't want it coming all the way in; I don't want to." One of my favorite sentences is this: "I don't want that to have happened." What does that mean? "I don't want that to have happened." It happened. If it didn't happen, you wouldn't not want it to have happened. It did happen, but you can't accept it. You can't allow it to come in and pass through, so you resist it. You push it away; you do it every moment about all kinds of things, don't you? It doesn't take much for you to push

away that it didn't feel good. It's raining; I don't want it to be raining. Push it away. Why? It had to rain on my birthday. It didn't know it was your birthday. I swear to God, it did not know. But you push it away. Anything here is psych. I'm going to cover every single psych course, from 101 to 6422 Advanced Graduate PhD Postgraduate. You ready? Here's the psych course: if you push it away, it stays in there. Anything you push away stays in there. You're supposed to go camping; it starts raining. I guarantee you, two

hours later, or five hours later, on the phone, you're going to tell someone, "That rain when you wanted to go camping." Well, white lines went by, clouds went by, all kinds of things happened, but that stayed in there, didn't it? You didn't talk about everything, but you talked about that, didn't you? Why? Because it stayed in there, and it came back up. It disturbed you, and you kept the disturbance. That's why I try, if I can get this through to you. Why would you want to make a storehouse of your mind and your heart of

every single thing that ever bothered you? If you store every disturbance that you ever had inside of you—did you have any disturbances in high school? They're still in there. How do I know? Go to a high school reunion. I would advise against it, okay? But go to a 20 year high school reunion, and you’ll feel how you feel about those different people. It will be exactly what you stored in there. And don’t call that memory; the computer has memory. It doesn’t throw it back up by itself; it doesn’t keep the I don’t like it. It’s

just memory. White lines, people, things, age, things people said—store them, fine; by all means, they store naturally. You have a built-in memory system in... There hypnotism says they can go down there and find it; every single thing, every experience in there. You have a memory system—that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about some stuff that came in that you didn't want to experience, and so you push it away. That gets stored in a different place than pure memory, pure intellect. That's yoga. Kosa, sim, scars, patterns of energy that didn't make it through. Sort of

like the Hoover Dam stopped the Colorado River when it happened. It's still happening. That river wants to flow through. Anything you ever pushed away is still in there, and not just still in there as memory. It's that if you drive by a sign and some pictures on the sign, or drive by a McDonald's or anything like that, and you had some experience 20 years ago in high school and you embarrassed yourself, you dropped some ketchup, and kids laughed at you—alright, it's coming back. That's not pure memory; that's a samskara, a pattern of energy that you

stored inside. And so it stayed in there. As I explain it again in the books I try to write to you: you have will. You have will; you can do things in there, can't you? Alright, you push things away. You can express will out here; you can lift your arm up—it’s will. You have a power called will. Someday you'll understand. You will, deep out of meditation; you'll understand that is a power of consciousness. Concentrated consciousness has a power of will. For you to apply will, you have to concentrate; you have to apply the focus. Like

a magnifying glass out on a field, you put a magnifying glass out there—it's burning the leaf underneath it. Concentrated energy: your will is your consciousness focusing. And you have this power of will; you just used it to block the energy that was coming in from outside. So patterns come in; they come in, they're supposed to make it through and feed you. It doesn't make it through; why? You stopped it. I always teach the same thing. I feel bad, but you need to listen. Alright, that will is like the Hoover Dam. That energy needs to keep

going through the universe; it's trying to make it through you, but it can't. They hit a blockage. That's what a blockage is: you asserted will—no, I don't want to feel this. What happened to the energy that was passing through? It circled around your will. That's how energy stays in one place—it circles around itself. That is what a samskara is. That's a very deep understanding of yoga, as essence of deep yoga teachings: get rid of these scars. Why? Because they're in there waiting and trying to come back up. That thing that you stored in there from

high school, from 10 minutes ago, somebody sat where you wanted to sit, or was wearing what you wish you had bought and you couldn't afford it. You do this junk in your head, don't you? Okay. And so the energy of it, the discomfort of it, is blocked by your will, and now it circles around and stays there. You have stored that stuff in there, and so it keeps coming back up, and you have to keep fighting with it and struggling with it. This is inner suffering. I told you there’s inner suffering. What is inner suffering?

Things happened outside. That's what happens. It rains, it does all kinds of things. Things come in; there are roaches running across the floor. Yes, things happen, don't they? Have we noticed? They come in; they're supposed to pass through. That doesn’t mean you don’t deal with them. If a roach runs across the floor in your kitchen, you don’t freak out. You don’t think, “Oh my God, it's a terrible thing that has happened.” No, nothing terrible happened. A roach ran across the floor. You feel it, you see it. You have to understand—I told you once before—that's one

of the oldest living creatures on Earth. They were around when the dinosaurs were here. Did you know that? They are serious stuff, those roaches. Okay, that's why they survived and live in your kitchen. So it runs across the floor—you deal with it, but you feel it. You experience it; it's a real thing that happened. You can't block it and never go back in your house again, alright? Or yell at everybody, or do something, right? It's just an event that took place. You want to kill it? That's your business. You want to spray it? It's your

business. You want to pick it up and carry it outside? I pick them up in cups; she picks them up in her hand. She picks the thing up—I can't get myself to do it. So we all deal with it differently, but the point is, first you accept it. First you accept that it happened. You have no right not to accept something that happened. Why? Because it happened. You're a very intelligent person; you can't make it not have happened. “I don't want that roach to have run across my floor.” I'm sorry, it did. What you do

about it is your business, but to sit there and not want it, you deny it and let it ruin your life because something happened—that's crazy. So energy comes in, and because we resist it, it stays stuck inside. And if you store it with pain—somebody asked me, I said, “If you store it with pain, it's coming back with pain.” I said, “Why? Why does it have to come back with pain?” Take the color red, put it in a cup, and go back in three days later—it's still there. To be read: Why? Why is that to be

read? You store it that way. If you take pain and push it away, it stays pain; it doesn't become love. So if it's stored with pain, it's going to come back. Does it not come back with pain? If you had a bad experience in the past and you suppressed it or resisted it, and something reminds you of it, don't you feel happy? They're all excited, and they came back: "Oh, I miss you so much! Thanks for coming back!" Do you do that? What's happening is you're storing pain—that's what psychological pain is. It's events that took

place that you couldn't handle, so you pushed them away and stored them. And now you have all this stored pain in there. So if different things happen that bring the pain back up, you don't like it. You didn't like it the first time, and you don't like it the second time. So what do you do? You devote your life—if you're a normal human, you don't want to be one of those—to manipulating the world outside of you so it doesn't hit your stuff. Do you understand that? It is literally nothing should say anything to remind you

of your stuff. "You know we don't talk about that around your father." Why? Because Daddy couldn't handle his past. And so we don't talk about anything that reminds him of that, because, believe me, it won't be a very nice evening if you do. You're sensitive? You're not sensitive. You store garbage inside of you, and it's sensitive. Why? Because it's trying to come out. It comes out by itself, doesn't it? In your dreams, does it come back up? I love it—psychology is beautiful. Just go a little deeper and realize you don't need to do this. You

did. As I said, if you suffer mentally or emotionally, I'm not—don't feel guilty; it's not your problem, right? You didn't; it's not the nature of things. The nerves have a nature. Yes, things push them too hard; they send pain up, okay? But the psychological stuff you did—you’re the one who couldn't handle the reality that took place. If you could handle the reality that took place, "I was married; I was in love; it was wonderful; I fell in love," then who knows what happened? But he's a schnook; I'm a schnook; I don't know, but boy did

it get ugly. But you seem perfectly comfortable talking about, of course, what happened six months ago. Why would I not talk about it? You're healthy; you're a healthy human being. You handled the situation that took place. Isn't that what health is? What did Darwin say about evolution? "Survival of the fittest," adaptability; the creatures adapted and then survived. How's your adaptability to reality? Terrible! You can only handle what you want, and if anything happens that bothered you before, bothers you again—you're not adaptable. Do you see that? Somebody once asked me, "What is spiritual evolution?" That's spiritual

evolution, just like physical evolution. You evolve inside to be adaptable, to be able to handle reality. If you can't handle reality, ask Darwin: if a species, as it was evolving, couldn't handle reality, is it still here? See? It's not so complicated, is it? The ones that couldn't handle reality are not here anymore. The ones that adapted and could handle reality—humans are supposedly the highest level of this thing. I don't understand it at all, right? Being able—you can live in the desert; you can live in the rainforest; you can live in the cold; you can live

in space. My! You guys are amazing! You can eat vegetarian; you can be a breatharian—I heard about that; anyway, it's cheaper, right? Say you're so adaptable; it's amazing! Okay, what about inside? This is spiritual evolution. You evolve by being adaptable; you're able to handle reality. We just said you are the sum of your learned experiences. So is everybody else, but we also said nobody had the same experience as you; therefore, no one is the same as you. No one looks at the same as you; they don't. They can't—not your husband, not your kids. They're all

having different experiences. They've had different experiences. Are you adaptable enough to handle that fact that not everybody sees it the way you do? That they can't possibly see the way you do? Or do you sit there and say, "How could you do that? I never would have done that! I never would have said that to you." Well, you didn't have the experience as I did. Maybe if you had the experience as I did, you would have said it to me. It's called waking up to reality. So if you're going to sit there and push away

the things you didn't like, then you're going to be very sensitive, and you're not going to be able to handle things because they hit the things you don't like. And so eventually, you get to the point you catch on. That's what suffering is. Suffering is that I stored pain inside of me. I didn't have to, but I did because I couldn't handle it when it happened. I couldn't handle the reality of the moment; I stored pain inside of me. And now, I need events to unfold outside that don't touch that. And I also stored nice

things inside of me. There are moments you've had in your life that were very special—but how many compare to the moments that bother you? You're bothered all the time. When was the last time the driver in front of you turned you on? What was the last time, driving down the road, the lights just—you went in ecstasy? When were the red lights—when was the last time you caught...? Every single red light on your way into town, you're freaked out and told everybody about it. How could it be like that? Programming these lights is ridiculous! Or the

driver in front of you bothered you. Nice blinker, buddy! It's fun to laugh, okay? Because everything has to be the way we want it to be for us to be okay. Sometimes it is; sometimes you meet somebody and they just—man! Right? Don't worry; it won't last because you've had 800 million other experiences, or you have another one at work. You come home and don't like the way he or she is, right? Even though I can't even finish the sentences because it's so absurd—the way we live, is it not? Okay, so you are now out there

with very few really nice things in there that you want to happen again and a whole bunch of stuff that you don't want to happen again. And you're out there attempting to manipulate the world so that what you want to happen happens, and so what you don't want to happen doesn't happen. Anybody guilty? That is not a fun life. And by the way, it's all predicated on fear—fear that something you don't want to happen will happen. So I'm very busy out there trying to protect myself, trying to earn the right money, trying to look the

way I want to look, trying to do this, trying to do that, trying to always say the right thing so I don't disappoint anybody. You see what I'm saying? You're very, very busy. My God, it's almost like every person you meet, you have to sell yourself. You've got to make sure they like you, you've got to make sure you're accepted, make sure it's this and that. You don't like rejection at all, do you? So because you're in there carrying this bundle of problems and pain that you've stored inside of yourself, you have to make sure

nothing touches it. And then even the positive stuff is a problem. Why? Because you want it to happen again. You just appointed it as a positive thing, so you get disappointed—disappointed that it doesn't happen again. You came and you told me you love me so much, and it was so beautiful, I just melted! So much! Then can you do it again? It didn't sound the same as last time. I'm not sure I believe you. Okay, it can never be the same because you've already experienced it. The first time, it was a surprise. You're totally open,

you're not expecting it, there's nothing in there blocking the experience, and it comes in. Someone walks up to you and says, "You know, I haven't told you since kindergarten that I just thought you walked on water. You're so beautiful, you're so special. I was just embarrassed to ever tell you that." That's pretty nice, isn't it? Okay, what if he does it every time? Ever since kindergarten, every time, I say again, I want you to laugh. How true is what we're saying now? Do you want to live like this? Spirituality says to you, "You do not

have to live like this." It is not about coping—that's ridiculous. It's about waking up to what's going on in there and your participation in it, and how to work with yourself at a higher level and evolve to where you're not doing this thing of storing every single thing that ever bothered you and storing everything that turned you on. Because I'm telling you, it's just as bad. Someday you'll catch on—it's just as bad, because if you really, really want it to happen again, it's not going to happen again. Some of you know I went through a

dissertation in economics; they taught us a law I'll never forget. Such an important law! You know it's called the law of diminishing returns. Ever heard of it? Guess what? It's true! The more you experience the thing that you like, the less you care about it. It doesn't mean anything to you anymore. So it's not about getting what you want because what you want is just the stuff you stored in there that made you happy last time. It's not about avoiding what you don't want because what you don't want is the stuff you stored in the

back of your head last time. Now, you know what I'm saying? Be here now. Are you willing to come into the moment and honor it, respect it, appreciate it, get blown away that it even exists? That's why I take you on that trip, you know. 1.3 million Earths inside the Sun in the whole galaxy, it's so big—so big! So you stop being caught in yourself, you stop living your life as if everybody has to be the way you want. Come on, it's bigger than that! Or we talk about quantum physics: nothing's here anyways. See, you

understand that they proved it—there's nothing here. They built giant super colliders to prove there's nothing here. It's just light—there are waves of light, and it appears to be this, and you're getting upset about what you can use your mind for, greater things than screwing yourself up, really. There are higher things you can do with your mind than think about what you want and what you don't want, how to get it, how to manipulate and control everything, and get all upset because you didn't get it. And get scared because you know you didn't get it this

time, but it might happen next time. Anybody worry about anything? You know what you're worried about? You're worried that what you didn't like will happen again, or you're worried that you won't get what you liked last time again. You don't have to do this, and this is spirituality. This is why we have these talks—that's what it's about. You can have a beautiful life and not even struggle to have it. You do not have to suffer inside. Like I said, physical pain, okay? I respect it; I understand. Do what you can to be healthy; do what

you can to help each other. Yes, we should help each other with physical pain. Psychological pain is self-inflicted. You did that by setting aside what you like from what you dislike. You decided, "I want this to happen; I don't want that to happen." What happens if what you want to happen doesn't happen? I get disappointed, and I get depressed because I don't think it will ever happen again—she loved me. I don't think anyone will ever love me, okay? Or I'm scared to death that something will happen. I'm so scared; I wake up every morning scared,

and I try to see what I can do to make sure it doesn't happen again. I devote my life to the lowest part of my being, the part of my being that was not able to handle reality as I grew up. All the way up, you have now devoted your life to make sure it doesn't happen again. You want to go back and visit your house where you lived before? No, I do not. Why? It was a terrible experience. I don't want to go back to the state. There are therapists; I don't blame them. I'm

not picking anybody. There are therapists that, if somebody had a bad relationship, got divorced, and really got hurt by it, and are fixated on it and so on and so forth, they literally tell them, "You have to move. You can't live in this town anymore because every time you drive by, the restaurant reminds you; every time you go here, it reminds you." When you get hurt over and over, they say, "No, you're too sensitive. Just find another place to live." And it's perfectly logical. Why? Because you are too sensitive. But that is not the answer.

The answer now already can you live a life with no psychological suffering? Forget that; that's non-negative. That's not good enough for me. Can you live a life that every single morning you wake up and you're so excited that you woke up and that the pressure is still there and that everything's still there? You basically just get excited to go through the day. You don't know what's going to happen, but it's going to be exciting. Well, I guess something's going to happen. Can you be that open? Would you like to be that open? Would you like

to enjoy every moment of your life? But what if somebody says something and it doesn't feel good? Can you be open enough that reality fits inside of you? Well, people say to me, "But what if someone you love dies? You can't be happy that someone you love dies." You can honor and respect and appreciate the experience of pain—of that type of pain, of sorrow. Your pain that you feel because that person has died is equivalent to saying, "I love you." The same heart that said, "I love you" is now saying, "I love you; I miss

you." You can honor and respect it just because it isn't what you like feeling. It's a deep feeling. I always tell you, like the funeral march. You know that one, right? It was written by one of the greatest composers to ever live—Chopin wrote that. What are you telling me? I'm telling you he caught beautifully that vibration, didn't he? And it's beautiful in its own right. He caught a beautiful vibration; it's a low vibration. "Rite of Spring" is a much higher vibration. Why can't you honor them all? Why can't you be open and let it pass

through you? It doesn't mean you're laughing, but it means you're richer. If you never, ever had anyone die in your life, you don't know squat. Somebody who's experienced the death of a loved one is more educated. They are more whole; they've had a richer life. That's true of every single experience. Someone whose kid took drugs to school and got expelled, that person had to deal with something other people don't deal with. Is it difficult? Yes. Is it special? Yes, it's special. It's a special experience. Every single experience is a special experience. Did you grow from

it? Did your child grow from it? How did you handle it? If you honor and respect that this experience is the one that was picked—it's the one you're having—it must have been picked for you. Is it karma? I don't like when people talk like that. Karma is not a punishment; it's a teacher. If you're going through something and you're having difficulty with it, it's teaching you how to go through something. And if you go through it, you learn from it. Look back and say thank you. Though I had bad karma, oh my God, I don't

want to live because I think I built all this bad karma from the past? Don't do that. Just learn and learn and learn and learn and learn. Learn and learn and learn. That's what you're here for. That's how you evolve—by handling reality. And if you didn't handle it before, don't judge yourself from before. If you were not as conscious before, in high school, when you were growing up with your parents, when you were 8 years old, and the things you did were not nice, were not pleasant, you look back at them—you should be saying thank

you. If you look back at them now and say, "I can't wait to do them again," no, then you have karma. But if you look back now and say, "I can't believe I did that. I feel so bad," right? Good! Then you learned; you grew. Don't feel guilty; be grateful. When you went through algebra, you… Know how to do calculus? So maybe, maybe you failed math in fifth grade, and then you became a math professor. Don't look back and judge yourself. Look at what a psychological mess we make ourselves. You're building that junk inside yourself.

Learn to walk into the day, every single day. Wake up and say, "I come back! Come back!" Experiences are going to happen; you bet on it. But don't—I have control? I don't have time to tell you what I’m going to tell you. Twenty-five to thirty trillion living cells make up your body: liver, pancreas, pineal gland. Every single part of every single nerve cell, every single part of your body is a living cell, right? Did you do it? Which one of those did you make? Which one? Do you—do you not do anything? You do 1% of

what's going on, and you think you're the doer. That's ego. Like some people have minds that are smart—did they do it? I tell them what they learned. Just some minds are smarter than others; some people are taller than others; some people are more athletic than others. You didn't do it; it was a gift that was given to you. Your whole body was a gift that was given to you. Your mind was a gift that was given to you. Your heart is a gift that was given to you. Do you have feelings? Did you make them?

Did you decide, "I'll create feelings"? No! All of these are gifts. Start by waking up and honoring the reality that you're living with. So you wake up, and you say, "I'm awake! Thank God! I don’t know how I woke up. I don’t want my body—thanks, cells!" You might try it sometime. You get all upset if the liver has a problem or if you have a problem. When was the last time you thanked them? They are living cells working for you, day and night, and they communicate with each other. There's a whole system going on in

there. When was the last time you said, "Thank you"? This is what it means to grow spiritually. You get out of your head about what you like and what you don’t like, which is just stuff you made up based on your past experiences that you suppressed and held on to, and you start living in the now. You start sitting here saying, "Wow! I'm on a planet! Really nice planet! Would I rather go to Mars? Would I rather go to Jupiter or Saturn?" The gas just flies right through; there's nothing happening anywhere else! Did we not

send the James Webb and the Hubble telescopes up? They can see from millions of light-years, billions of light-years away. Now, there was no sign of any living thing ever. We went—we had probes run around these planets. What have we found that would interest you in more than five minutes? I tell you the story when we first flew one of those robots to Mars. They showed it because it was the first time we landed on Mars, right? I'm telling you the truth. They had little shovels; the little robots had shovels so they could dig, and little

ones like a toy shovel that they could dig in and get soil samples. It was so boring after a while that they gave names to the ditches—Snow White! They really did give the Snow White names. Okay, that's really interesting. What was the last time you named the scuff you put on the dirt? Alright, you are on the most exciting planet that anyone ever could dream of! It's like a Disney World! That's what you’re on every minute. There’s something going on; there are all kinds of things to do! Why can't you live like that? Why does

it have to be that you couldn't handle some of the things that happened? You stored them. Now you don’t want it to happen again, so now you’re not accepting and honoring reality. You want reality to be what you want. I'm telling you, it ain’t about getting what you want; it’s about honoring and respecting and appreciating reality because it's pretty far out! Every bit of it—the fact that you have a mind, the fact that there is a heart, the fact that there’s a body, the fact that other people have them, the fact that you can talk—oh

my God! There are so many things. Every second should blow you away. That's because you got your consciousness out of yourself. It's no longer attached to, "I can't handle this; therefore, I have to think about it all the time." And so what do you do? The bottom line of everything we’ve talked about so far is you resisted reality throughout your life, your childhood. Every day you are resisting reality. You don’t want to experience this; you cling to what you want and resist what you don’t want. And they're both stored in there. And then you've made

a whole you out of them. You want to grow spiritually? Real spirituality—don't do that! If you don’t do that, it won’t be in there. If it’s not in there, you'll be in the now naturally. You’ll be here, present, blown away that there are clouds—not, "Oh, it might rain. I don’t want it to rain." Or, "It’s hot." Right? It’s hot because you’re so close to a star! You are so close to a star; you feel it heat. It should blow you away! You sit there, "Oh my God, this is unbelievable!" Right? Imagine being close to a

star, one of those big, burning, gorgeous things, and then think you’re 93 million miles away from that star. How hot is that star? How are you not blown away by this? Why just go, "Oh my God, this is far out! I'm circling a star!" This is called using your... Abstract, intellectual, impersonal mind—that's what we talk about. Yoga. There's a personal mind, that which you stuff, you kept from the past and stored in there, and built a "you" out of the thing. And then there's this great mind, and you all have it. You all have the

ability to think about that. The star is up there; poss can't think about that. You're evolved enough to have a mind that is that evolved. Use it, okay? Think about that kind of stuff. Like I say to you, “What did you do today?” “Oh, you're this, I like this, and this happened to me.” No, you did a 360 on your axis—1, 360 on the axis of the earth—that's what you did today. Wouldn't that be fun if that's how you looked at it? “How was your day?” “It's great.” “What went wrong?” “Nothing.” “What did you do

this year?” “I took a little lap around the sun.” That's what you did this year, didn't you? You took a lap around the sun. Now put your whole heart and soul in the moment. Don't nod; it's not renunciation. You, you interact. It's an interactive sport. But you don't interact because you're not okay with the way it is, and you need to manipulate it to be the way you can handle, which is how we all interact with life. You interact with life because I am okay; I'm filled with love and joy, and I'm going to express

it. Have fun because you will! I'm going to sit down and play the piano, and I'm not good at it, and if everybody laughs and walks out, I had just as much fun as if they clapped. See, I wasn't doing it for them to clap for me; I was expressing the beauty and the music that's inside of me. I'm just not as good as Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, and you're just having a blast expressing the beauty that's inside of you, because that's what's inside of you. And if you're not experiencing that beauty, it's you—you blocked it

with that garbage you stored in there. If I take dark glasses and put them on, the whole world turns dark. If I store garbage inside of me that I'm afraid of, and I look out through that aura into the world, it's dark. If you really want to grow, stop storing this stuff in there. And that's what the great Masters taught you: purification, getting rid of some scars. If you stop storing the stuff—how do you do that? You can't start with the hardest part, of course. You can't handle the stuff you couldn't handle and stored in

there. By the way, it doesn't just store down there; it rots down there. It gets worse and worse. It's like stowing a virus inside the computer—it just touches everything. You had a bad experience in the past, and now somebody else says something that has nothing to do with it, but it reminds you. Obviously, you don't like that person, and then yes, it's just all you—it's yicky. So don't start with that stuff. Don't start with that stuff. Start with the simplest, tiniest little things that there is no reason in the world you need to resist, but

you do anyway. You're driving down the street, and a skunk was around before you got there. “Ah, oh, oh, oh, okay, that's right, that's a perfectly natural reaction for a minute.” Now, “Oh my God, where is that skunk? What the government should get rid of these skunks? What kind of—I'm going to vote this, my vote; I want to go get rid of skunks.” What did you do? You couldn't handle the bad smell for a minute; you had to make a whole thing out of it. Let it go; it's a tiny little thing. The cost-benefit analysis

is keeping it is 100% cost, then you go. There's no problem, no cause—zero cause. That's your choice; that's your choice about heat. That's your choice about rain. You know who your guru is? The weather. You're all busy wanting to find a guru off in the top of a mountain. You learn to let the weather be your guru; you will evolve tremendously. Why? Because you're not in charge of the weather. Can you handle it? It's just weather. “I can handle weather.” Then do! Then handle it! Then be happy about it! Then appreciate it! When it's raining,

I would say this way: “You know what happens when it's raining when you don't want it to be? There will be food produce in Publix.” Okay, but now, when I don't want it to rain, it should rain when I want it to rain? No, it shouldn't. It should rain when it rains, and you need to appreciate it. Work with yourself! If you will work with yourself with these tiny little things, you don't realize how much negativity you store in there. Somebody walks by you, call out to them, “Hey Sally, how you doing?” No response—that bothers

you. You think about that. “What did I do wrong?” She had earbuds on; she didn't hear you. Just let go. This is the art of learning to let go instead of what I just spent an hour talking to you about. If you can let go of things, you'll learn to let go. Now you can let go of the rain, and the weather, and the driver in front of you. It is very important—and the red lights—these stupid little things that you bother yourself about. You let them go, and next thing you know, you'll call out to

Sally, and she'll turn around and say, “I don't have time for you.” Oh, she actually responded, but you know—like what she… "She said that's bigger than she didn't respond. Then I have to figure out why she didn't. Now, oh my God, she dissed me! Handle it, because to not handle it means you get another one of those. Is that what you want? Another samcara? Another thing. Now you can't like Sally because she said, 'I don't have time for you right now.' Handle it. Let it go. Let it go. Once you let it go, you did

a great thing for you and for the other person. Become open with a little stuff first, then you're going to find out that you actually—just like you practice a sport—you get better at a sport, don't you? If you practice a sport, do you get better at it? Does it mean you'll be a pro? But you get better at it, don't you? If you practice an instrument, do you get better at it? Practice letting go. Practice handling reality. Start with the small stuff, and all of a sudden you'll be better at it. Now, something will happen

that's bigger than you. My favorite thing is when someone comes to me and says, 'I don't know what happened. I went to work, and I found myself driving home, and I realized something happened at work that would have bothered me. I didn't even notice.' Oh my God, I guess I'm growing! Yes, that's growing. So basically, practice letting go. I dare you! And then there'll be something that you can't do—something you didn't let go. You say, 'I tried to let go. It bothered me. I dreamt about it. I woke up in the morning, and I was

just as mad.' Good! Notice you couldn't handle that. You weren't ready to handle that yet. Don't judge yourself. Don't get mad at yourself. Just say, 'Okay, I hit the ball into the net. I thought I was better than that. They went to the net. Great! I'll get better.' That's how you should live every single day. Every single day, you're a better person than you were before the day started. When you wake up every morning, you should be a different person because you let go. And then what's going to happen when you start handling the day?

Now, I have to warn you: the stuff that's in there is going to start coming up. Why? Because you're not shoving stuff on top of it. If I can't handle Sally—she says hello and talks—then I'm not worrying about what my mommy did 20 years ago. But if you start handling it and you're not shoving stuff back on top of it, I'm telling you, it’s going to come up by itself, and that's wonderful. Because you're going to start finding out you don't want that stuff in there. You do not want that stuff in there. Not only

does it cause all kinds of problems, worry, negativity, and anxiety, it’s blocking your natural, shakty flow. Talk about yoga: you have a beautiful, beautiful ecstatic flow of energy inside of you that's always there. The only reason you feel it is because you push the stuff on top of it. The only reason there's not light coming is you close the blinds. If you stop closing the blinds, light comes in, and then the stuff starts coming up. And you start complaining, 'They write me, "I was doing so well. I was so happy, and I don't know what

I did wrong." All of a sudden, this stuff from the past—I’m driving down the street, and I'm crying!' Alright, back! Congratulations, you're growing! You want that to happen. You do not want that stuff in there. So, be willing to go through the growth of releasing the garbage that you stored in there, and all of a sudden, you start feeling higher and more love, and more beauty. You say, 'Ooh, it's worth it!' You know, women go through childbirth. I hear it's painful; they go out for seconds and thirds. Guess what? You're going through soul birth! You're

birthing your soul! Alright, I told you I'd never have enough time. I would keep at it. I hope you're listening. Life is a beautiful experience, but not the way we're living it. That's psychological suffering. We stored it in here, so of course we have it. Let it go, and you will never suffer. You just have deep experiences. Alright, thank you for listening. Work on yourself." [Music] "Jag, you've been listening to the Michael Singer podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael's body of work and all back episodes, please

join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True, waking up the world." [Music]