Turning Daily Life into a Spiritual Practice | 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 michelsingerpodcast.com. One topic that people have a lot of trouble with on the path, even if they're quite sincere, is first they catch on that your so-called spiritual life and your so-called secular life are the same thing. As long as you still see your meditations or your church or your beliefs or your Bible or the Gita, the things you do that you call sadhana, as different than your family, than your work, than the different responsibilities you have in the world, the different things you do in the world, you haven't caught on yet. Once you catch on, then maybe people have trouble, but they're doing it. It's the same. There's no difference in your meditation, your mantra, your readings, virtual readings, your traveling places to see holy people, and cooking dinner, picking up the kids for soccer, going to work, dealing with a client, getting fired, searching for a new job. Exactly the same. They're all exactly the same. Until you see them exactly the same, I'm sorry to tell you, you're not going anywhere. You may have some high experience in meditation or visiting holy places and holy lands. Wonderful. But you're coming back. You're coming back to your daily life. So if your daily life is not as spiritual as what you call spiritual, then it's not spiritual. So that's the foundation of right understanding is that it's all the same. You have to learn to treat it the same and use it the same. We've been through that many times. That's where surrender and acceptance and letting go come from. I mean, of course, when you meditate, you have to surrender. You're letting go of your mind. You're letting go of your emotions, letting go of your senses. You have to accept that you have to go through those stages that in the real world, somehow they miss that. That every second of every moment of your life, you're inside. You're watching what's going on in there. You're noticing what's going on outside. Become conscious enough to do that. Meditation helps. All those other things help. You get to a state where you're ready to treat everything as your son, as your spiritual path. So you now see that your inside, your inner state is affected by the outside. You're frustrated. You're upset. You feel insulted. You're jealous. Just all kinds of things happen. All kinds of things happen because of what happens outside. A conscious person who's truly on the spiritual path notices clearly that the inside is affected by the outside. It's sort of like a duh, but people don't pay attention to it. They just get busy reacting. A normal person reacts to what happens inside because of what happens outside. Something happens outside, it makes you feel love. They want to react. They want to run after. They want to grab. They want to cling. Something happens outside, it makes them fall out of love. They don't feel the passion. They don't feel the relationship. Then they want to change it. The inside's reaction to the outside causes one's behavior. You get to the point where you realize that your spiritual path is, you have to work with that. You have to work with that. It is not about getting what your inside wants. That's like just a kid that's throwing a tantrum so you get him or her what they want. You're going to have a very spoiled kid. It's not going to work out very good. If you're using your spiritual powers that you gained through meditation or mantra or your practices in order to attract yourself what you want, someday you're going to wake up and realize that's not where it's at. Nothing's wrong. Nothing doesn't work. The problem is it does work. The problem is it's not about getting what you want. That's like if the kid has mystical powers, throwing a tantrum in Moss Brothers, has the ability to attract to himself the toy he wants. I don't want to be the parents of that kid. That's Dennis the Menace. That's not going to work out well at all. You get to the point where you realize it's not about getting what you want. It's about noticing why you want it. It's about noticing the relationship between what's happening outside and what's happening inside. If you do that, you start realizing it is not about getting what you want. It's not about avoiding what you don't want. That if you notice that something comes up inside of you that wants to grab, that wants to get something, you realize that is keeping you out of your seat of consciousness. That is keeping you out of witness. That is keeping you out of focusing your entire life to the higher state because you're reacting to your personal, nothing wrong with it. Just because I talk about it doesn't mean it's wrong. That's what's going on. But you have to learn how to use what's going on for your spiritual growth. So of course you have desires. Of course you have fears. Of course you have attractions. Of course you have repulsions. That's part of the humanness that's going on inside of you. But while you're human, you can't know God. That's all there is to it. You have to die to be reborn. So what does that mean? It means in your daily life, just like in your spiritual life, you're watching, not stress watching. I don't like the word watching anymore. You are noticing. Watching is an act of doership. Noticing is just noticing. I'm noticing that this is coming up inside of me. I'm noticing that my mind is doing this. I'm noticing that my heart is doing this, and I'm noticing that they're affected by what's happening outside. I was married. I always use that example. I was married to someone named Ben, and it didn't work out very well. And now I notice every time I heard the word Ben, even if I'm in Spain, my heart goes weird. And you start catching on. You stored stuff inside of you based on your past experiences. You're starting to become mature in your spiritual path. It's not like I feel more spiritual if I never hear the word Ben, so I'm going to do something to make sure it never happens. That's ridiculous. It's understanding that you didn't handle the divorce well. You didn't handle the relationship with Ben well, and you end up suppressing it inside, and now you're carrying it inside of you, and now the outside hits it, and you start getting weird. You notice that. You don't do anything about it, by the way. If you notice it, that's it. If you can sit there and notice it, now you're ready to go to the next state. I want to go very deep in this talk, so we'll go very quickly. So now you notice that things outside affect the inside, and you've gotten deep enough to notice that the reason they do is you stored stuff inside you from the past, which relates the outside to the inside. You suppressed things. You held things, and you held onto them, whether they were things you really liked or things you really didn't like. You stored them inside of your mind and your heart. They're called some scars. People call them some scars, patterns from the past that you didn't let go, and so they're stored inside. So now the outside world comes in through your senses. Of course, it does, and if it's related even roughly to that, it hits it, and the next thing you know, you're reacting to your past, not to what's actually happening outside, and that's for everybody, and that's the human state, the human condition, all right? They say you stored stuff inside, most of it you didn't like, and now the outside happens. It hits it, and you're reacting accordingly. So now let's go to the next stage of your spiritual awakening. Now that you realize that's not bad that that happens. That is your spiritual growth. The fact that that was stored inside of you is there. It's going to be there the rest of your life. Unless you learn to let it go, it's going to stay there. So you'll catch on to say, I don't want that in there. What? Anything. You must die to be reborn. I don't want anything in there from my past. It doesn't mean I don't have a memory of my past. It doesn't mean I didn't learn from my past. It means I didn't store it or suppress it and cling to it, hold on to it, because I either couldn't handle it or I really wanted it, and I wanted it to happen again. So I patterned my whole life. That's what you let go of. So don't think that's just because you're letting go of your past that you didn't learn. Of course you learned. If you went to school and in fifth grade you didn't do well in your math class, and then you learned how to do better by the time you hit sixth grade, that doesn't go away because you let go of the embarrassment that you feel in fifth grade math. You let go of the embarrassment, but you still learned what you needed to learn. It's the same thing with life. You go through life, ups, downs, learning, you know, crashing, whatever it is, and you start catching on that I stored this inside of me. I stored that which I liked. I stored that which I didn't like. So you start realizing that that's why I'm a mess. Why am I a mess? Because you stored this stuff from the past inside of you, so you can't be present. You can't be here now because the now is hitting that stuff, bringing it up, and you're reacting to it. So you're like reacting to ghosts of your past instead of interacting with the present. You don't be here now by focusing and staring. I'm here now. No, no, no. That's like you've still got stuff inside. You didn't let it go, but you're trying to be here now anyways. You will fail. So what it means to be here now is to not be there then, okay? That means that exactly. So it means I have to get rid of this stuff. I can't have this stuff inside of me because it keeps distracting me and pulling me down and affecting the patterns of my life. I have to be willing to let them go. Now you're at that next stage of why your daily life is as spiritual, if not more so, than your spiritual practices. It is your spiritual practice. Life is your guru. Life is your spiritual practice. Can you handle life every minute of every day, every phone call, every place you go, every person you meet, every business thing, every family thing, absolutely everything? Can you handle it at peace, centered, contented, ready to interact, has a sense of service, as opposed to, I can't handle it, therefore it hits my stuff and I need to manipulate the world so it doesn't hit my stuff, or if I liked what it hit, manipulate the world so that it does that. Do you understand? That's the next stage of your spiritual growth. And therefore, as I always teach you, your daily life is exactly the same. Every single thing you're doing is equally spiritual once you get to that state. In fact, you start realizing, the reason I have trouble falling into meditation is I have all this junk in here. So the daily life helps me get rid of that junk, so it helps with meditation. And meditation helps me find a place sometimes where I'm a little more calm, and then when I come back, I'm better able to handle the world. They feed each other, they support each other, they're essential, but they are the same. They're called your path. The entire thing, every second, every moment is your spiritual path. All right, so now you've reached that point. Now what are you going to do? Now you realize you have to let go. You have to let go of the stuff that's coming up. You can't just act reactively to try and get what you want or avoid what you don't want. Otherwise, that's what you get, which is fine. We've discussed that plenty of times. There's nothing wrong with if you're doing your best and you end up getting involved with something or out of involved with something, then you learn from it, you grow from it. But all the time, you're understanding that you're letting go to the best of your ability of what's coming up. You're not deciding, this is what should be happening, this is what I don't want happening, and I'm going to make it happen or make it not happen. So when people catch on to that, I started by telling you, this is one question that people have trouble with. Let's say you get to that state and you're really doing that to the best of your ability. Then they ask, how do I know what right action is? I'm trying to let go. I see this stuff coming up. I see my tendency to react. But if I don't do anything, then I'm not interacting with the world. I'm not doing my job. I'm doing this inner thing of trying to let go. But what do I do if the outside world needs me to do something? I mean, okay, so a desire came up and I don't want to get all involved in it. But it also has a side of it that's part of my job, that's part of a relationship, that's part of these different things. I can't just sit there and say, because I see it's a desire, I won't act, or because I see it's a fear, I won't act. So now you get down to really deep spiritual teachings. That's the essence of the Buddhist right action. It's easy to do right action. Should I kill somebody or say nice to them? Well, that's very easy. But if you're sitting there and there's this intertwinement between what you're working on inside and you see where it's coming from, and yet the world needs you to interact, how do you find that? And people use the word balance. I always tell you there is no balance. It's always, for God, it's always my entire life is about my growth, my spiritual growth. And the world is helping me do that. So it's not like balancing your spiritual and your worldly life. On Mondays, I'll do really business stuff. And on Tuesdays, I'll practice renunciation. And on Wednesday, I won't do either. I'll just be being here, okay? I'll meditate a lot. No, you can't make decisions like that. It's not something that your mind can decide how to do this. It's way deeper. So let's say you're in a situation where you either have a desire or a fear and you see it. You see that that's what keeps coming up. You see that your mind keeps talking about it. What do I do? What do I do? So let's take a very present example. Make believe there was this major hurricane about to come and you were getting rather neurotic about it. It's not here yet, but you don't know what should I be doing? What shouldn't I be doing? Every little thing. And so that during the day you're anxious. You have the sense I should be doing something, but I don't know what to do. And so it's just a perfect example of how to use that for your spiritual growth. How do you do that? You catch on. This will help me go to God. Well, being able to handle the moments that are unfolding in front of me. And so you take a look at it and you notice that there is an anxiety. You notice that there is fear of not doing the right thing or whatever. Okay. What do you do? Like some people go shop and buy batteries and things and water. Tons and tons of them and they fill their bathtub. 90% of the time you don't have to do any of that. Okay. But it makes them feel better. Okay. So there's this whole yin yang thing going on as to where's the balance? What do I do? Wise person first starts by saying, calm down, calm down, doggy. Just calm down. It's a weather pattern. You're going to go through it. First question becomes before you get anxious about it. Is there anything I can do about the fact that this storm is going to come? And if you're wise, you realize no. There's not one single thing you can do to stop it from coming, ever stop it from doing what it's going to do in general. That is very nice to understand. That gets rid of tremendous amount of anxiety. That's right understanding leads to right action. But we don't do that. We act as though there is something we can do. But really what you're doing is trying to make yourself feel better. You're trying to deal with the anxieties and the fears that you have. I don't want to have those. I want to do something. But if you looked at it, there are some things you end up doing that will get there in a moment that make perfect sense. But the sense that I want to do something, anything to make myself feel better about this, that is not spiritual. That's neurosis. That's ridiculous. So you start by asking, is this reality? Yes. Is there anything I could do about it? No, not realistic. There's nothing to do about it. This is what's going to happen. Okay. Can I handle the fact that there's nothing I can do about it? And in most cases, your mind wants to say, oh no, oh no, I want to do something about it. I want to do something about it. See, we're going to find the Tao, the balance. So you look at that and you say, well, that's my spiritual growth. I've admitted there's something I can do about it, but I don't like the fact there's nothing I can do about it. Guess what that is? Too bad. That's called surrender. That's called acceptance. You're actually working with yourself, right? This is how this situation can take you to God. Everything can take you to God. Start by making yourself feel better. It's about, is there anything I could do to better this situation? Really, not to make myself feel better about the situation, all right? Because I should not feel okay about reality. And reality is there are hurricanes, reality is there's things you have to deal with. And so this is happening. And so you work with yourself right there, right then. You sit there and say, okay, is it happening? Is it going to happen? Yes. And I can do about it. No. Am I okay with that? And we just put that list, right? The next one, am I okay with the fact that it's going to happen and there's nothing I can do about it? And it's going to say no. And you look at it and you better be okay with it. Why? Because that's reality. Reality is a storm is going to come. There's nothing you can do about it, about it coming. So there's your big picture of finding a place to work with yourself. But what do I do about the scared little guy in there, a little gal in there that, why do I want to do something about it? All right, you help her. It's just a child. It's just the lost part of your being that's afraid, is scared. That fear has no meaning. Why? The fear that has no meaning is the one that is going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it. All fear does is make you incapable of dealing with what's going to unfold. And so it's irrational. It makes no sense, but you still feel it. Good. Help her. Help her. Don't let her be the child who's throwing a tantrum and say, okay, I'll give you the toy. You try to help her. You hold her hand. You talk to her. I don't care what you do. The Gita says one should raise the self of self, not trample down the self. The self that can be self's friend can become self's foe. It's talking about higher self, Atma with a capital A, and lower self, the personal self, right? The higher self, your clarity that we've been talking about. Remember I talked about spiritual growth. Now you're clear. You understand life is for your teaching. Life is for going to God. Life is for evolution and storms are part of life, okay? And so you're sitting there and you're using that to raise her. One should raise the self of self, not trample down the self. You're denial. I'm not scared. And you just get to the point where you find ways, and that's your business. You find ways to work with yourself that don't suppress your lower self, but raise it. One should raise the self of self. And so there are ways that you can do that, all right? First you do that and create a sense that, okay, things are going to happen and there's nothing I can do about that. It's very deep. I can stop right here in the entire talk, and you heard a lot that you need to hear. Are you willing to say that within yourself? Things are going to happen and there are things that I can do nothing. There are things you can do something about, but some of them you can do nothing about, right? I don't want it to get dark tonight. Guess what? I'm in trouble. I don't want it to suddenly come up tomorrow. I don't want there to be a tomorrow. I don't like having fun yet. All it does is create neurosis, but it does that, and you have to work with that. So now you're doing spiritual practices in the middle of the day, in the middle of work, in the middle of storms, in the middle of everything. You understand that? In the middle of picking up the kids for soccer, in the middle of cooking dinner. It's all the same. You're working with yourself, noticing her state, ego state, the personal self state, and you're working with yourself to raise it right in the moment. Every single bit helps that you do. So you start with, is it going to happen? Yes. Is there anything I can do about it? No. Am I okay with that? Yes. That is surrender. Surrender, people who write me, surrender is not about doing or not doing. It's not about if somebody asks you to do something, you have to do it, or if somebody asks you not to do it, you have to not do it. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with what I just said. Is it happening? Is it going to happen? Is there anything I can do about it? No. Is that okay? That's surrender. You're surrendering to reality. You're surrendering the part of you that doesn't want there to be a reality. You got one in there, don't you? You want reality to be what you want, not my will, but my will. That's what you want. I want it to be the way I want it to be, and I can't accept reality. So that's what you surrender. You surrender the part of you that can't accept reality. So now when things are going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it, and I can accept that, I'm honoring that. It doesn't mean I like it. I don't like it, but I'm capable of accepting reality. Now what do I do? Most people can't even get to that point. If you can get to that point, wait to see what it starts to look like. Now you start to say, no, is there anything I can do about not having it happen? I accept it's going to happen. Is there something I'm supposed to be doing to assist the moment that's going to unfold? Not to change it, not to like it, not to not like it, but I'm the servant. Now that I'm not the servant of me, I was serving me. What do I want? What do I not want? What can I accept? Once I'm able to honor and respect reality and accept there's nothing I can do about it, now I can look out there and say, can I serve it? How can I raise the moment? Can I help somebody else? Can I help this? Can I buy water as a smart thing to do in case the thing runs out? Not erotic, looking at it objectively and everyone will look at it differently. There's nothing wrong with that. Just look at it objectively, logically, not emotionally, not reactively, not, oh my God, that will make me feel safer. It has nothing to do with feeling safer. It has to do with, is there right action? That's right action. You're not coming from a personal point of view. You're looking at it objectively and you're acting. You're making a decision, but it's almost as if you get to a point, people say, but what do I decide? I don't know how to explain it. When you're done with you, somehow the unfolding of reality calls upon what's supposed to take place. It's called the Tao. That's what it means by the Tao. It unfolds by itself. I use the example and people get this example. There's a leaf on a tree. It falls off the tree. What path should it take on its way to the ground? Nobody gets to say that, not the leaf or anybody else. As it falls, gravity will pull it down. A wind gust will push it up. Humidity will decide how it falls. Every single thing will decide every single thing about how that leaf finds its way down to the ground. That is what Lao Tzu means by the Tao. You are capable of living life that way, that the forces that are not personal, just forces that are everything, everything combining together will call upon you to interact in that way. I don't want to say it to you because you don't like it. You make no decisions. It's not about you. It's about not you. It's not about initiation. It's just you're clean, you're clear, you're not in the way, and the forces that exist in reality will guide your actions. It's beautiful to watch somebody who's in that state. I quote the Gita. I quoted it the other day. I'm sorry. In the Gita, Krishna's on a chariot driving him toward war with Arjuna on the back. Arjuna's spiritual son. I don't want to get into the story, but Arjuna asked Krishna at some point. Krishna says, you know, Arjuna, there are some very high beings walking around, not many, really high, like enlightened. People have come to know me as I really am. Just the wholeness emerged with the universe. Arjuna said, wow, that's far out. He didn't really say that. But wow, that's far out, modernized version. How will I know such a being when I meet him? Sits, he walks, he talks like any other being? And Krishna answers him, you don't know him like that. He sits, he walks, he talks like any other man, like any other being. If you would know him, joy is not overjoyed, and sorrow is not over sorrowed. Let goodness come when it will and depart when it must. Let darkness come when it will and depart when it must. He walks amongst the qualities of nature as a stranger, like a stranger in the midst of the quality of nature. Just as all the waters and streams of the world pour into the ocean, the ocean doesn't overstep its bounds. So the world of sense pours into the yogi and leaves him as it found him, serene, content, equanimity, peace. When you're in that state, it doesn't mean there's no action. It means there's no reaction. It means there's no reason for you doing what you're doing. It is not a personal thing. It is not a renunciation thing. It is not give it to God thing. You're not there. Just like the leaf. There's just the forces of creation unfolding in front of you, a storm of marriage, a death, a birth, just all of the nature of life. All of nature is unfolding in front of you, and it fits in you, and then you balance into it. There's a natural action, just like gravity affected the leaf, just like humidity affected the leaf. Everything guides the unfolding of a surrendered being. This is exactly what Lao Tzu meant by the Tao. Life unfolds. The trouble is you want it to unfold your way. You understand that? You want it to do what you want it to do. You want it to not do what you don't want it to do. Then you're interfering with the Tao. When you have died to be reborn, as Christ put it, when you've let go of your personal self, you will see. You don't have to see. You don't have to be there to see. There's just this natural unfolding, and people look at you, and they think you're doing something. Why? Because you're acting. They think you're acting, and a lot of people think, God, you must be smart, or you must be manipulative, strong, or rich, or something, or in tune with God, because you're always getting things the way you want. Of course, if you don't want things to be any particular way, you're always getting what you want, but they don't understand that, because they think you're doing it because you want it. So, you're running a business. Yusha Shor told you another. A guru is very wise, very shrewd in business affairs. Is that because the guru wants money? No, they're just business affairs are unfolding, and they know how to deal with them. How? They didn't go to business school, to Harvard MBA or anything. They would be to Harvard MBA 7,000 times over, because they're in harmony with the forces that are unfolding. Instead of fighting everything, opposing everything, hating everything, or loving everything, and trying to make it be that way, they're in harmony with everything. I'm talking about something very deep, how to use life to grow spiritually, and this thing about right action that people have trouble with. Should I do this? Should I not do this? I feel a desire. I mean, I shouldn't have anything to do with anybody. I should renounce everything. I feel a fear. Does that mean that I should throw myself into it? Anything you do, because you're thinking like that, you got some growth to do, because you're trying to let your mind decide how the leaf should fall. Oh, it should have gone up. No, no. There's nothing more perfect in the universe than how that leaf fell. If you took the most amazing computer program and programmed every force that ever happened in creation from the beginning of time, that leaf would fall that way. All right? The fact that gravity exists, the fact that certain strength, every single thing affected every single thing, and no one was interfering. They were just in complete harmony. You are capable of that state. So when people ask, should I do this? Shouldn't I do this? A great being doesn't answer it from that point of view. They sit there and say, why don't you look at your motives? Don't look at your intellectual analysis of what's going on. Look at your intent. Look at where you're coming from. First look there. And if you see that you're coming from desire or fear, personal desire and fear, all right, practice letting it go. Practice being open. See what you can do. Sometimes what you can do, and that's all you can do, is use your mind. You're still mind oriented. Use your mind to say, what if I didn't feel a desire? What if I didn't feel that fear? Abstract from it, at least intellectually, if you're not capable of doing it in reality yet, is sit there and say, what would I be doing if I wasn't feeling this? And you try to look and see beyond that. And then you act accordingly. And then you learn from what comes back. You just keep coming from the highest place you possibly can. I've discussed that with you a million times. Not a million, that's not true. But a whole bunch of times. If you act and do everything to the best of your ability, from where you're at, at the place where you're at, when you do it, that's beautiful. Don't ever be afraid to do the best that you can, because you might fail, or you might make a mistake, or somebody might laugh at you. You just do the best that you can. And then what comes back is your teacher. This is the result. If a teacher gives you a test and you don't really know all the answers yet, you don't think you do, and your teacher just says, look, this answers the best of your ability, and you do that, that test is so beautiful, because it shows every single thing you need to learn. If you get a low score on a test, you're better off than a person who got a high score, because you get to learn more. Because the teacher's going to sit there and say, oh, no, you didn't look at this properly. Oh, wow, okay. From the rest of your life, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to you, that you got that wrong. But our society doesn't teach it that way. You get an A, you get a hundred all the time, but then you don't learn anything. Life isn't like that. Life says, do your best, do the best of your ability at every single thing you do, and renounce the fruits of your action. In other words, don't do it so you get rewards, or money, or accolades, or not be embarrassed, or look good. No, that's basically saying, I'm doing it for a personal reason, but then you don't learn anything. And so, you just finally catch on that this is not how to live your life. You sit there and say, I will do the best that I can, every moment of my life, to the best of my ability, based on what? Based on as clear as I am at that moment. I can't be clearer than I am at that moment. This is what I see, and this is what's happening. It goes for desires and fears also. Sometimes you can't see past the desire. Sometimes you don't even see it's a desire. You just say, this is me. I've always been this way, and so I'm being true to myself. Fine, we'll find out later. And the same thing with fear. People say, fear is natural. Yes, to pick up a rattlesnake, be afraid. To be afraid to talk publicly, to be afraid to get in a car, because years ago, there was a car accident, to be afraid to do something or say something, or something in a movie, and it left an impression on you. No, that's not. But you do the best that you can. But your mind will tell you, oh, this is logical. It's reasonable to have fear like this. There are some people, when they have a child, especially a daughter, and the kid's 12 years old. They're in a public restaurant, and the kid says, I got to go to the bathroom. And the mother or father says, oh, let me go with you. All right, is that reasonable? Yes. The bad things can happen in bathrooms. Okay, yes, but she's 12 years old. All right, is that reasonable? Where is that line? Where is that? Where is it that the mind says it's reasonable, but it's not? Basically, the cost-benefit analysis is saying you're going to screw the kid up, and what's the benefit of that? Because the reason is, it's reasonable to you because you're afraid. And so you start to look at this and try to do the best that you can to make really good decisions for the overall best of everything. Some parents, they told me the other day, they were like that. They've lost a child, and now there are other children. They just are so controlling that the kids can't handle it because they're scared to death. Then you have to sit there and say, look, people die. Things happen. How can I let that affect my whole life and everybody else's life around me? It seems reasonable because of what you've been through, but what if you hadn't been through that? Are you willing to be objective like that? Just sit there and say, what if that person didn't die? What if I didn't get divorced? What if this didn't happen? What if mommy didn't screw me up? Can I abstract myself? That's a reasonable place to use your higher mind. Can I abstract to see how much influence this thing is having on me? And is it rational? It looks rational because you're influenced by that. Wow, I love this. Are you willing, if you want to use your mind, use it to step back from yourself and say, okay, that didn't happen. Now, how would I be if I wasn't letting that run my life? All of these things help you answer the question, how do I know when to act and when not to act? How do I know how much to try to do and not try to do? There's no hard answer for that. You have to be willing to look inside and do the type of thing I'm talking to you about. Define that balance. And this is what it says. What would I be doing if I hadn't made this mess of myself? And it's really fascinating what you start to see. So if somebody does something, you don't like it, and so you get all these opinions, stuff about the person, and then you ask, well, what if they had said that one thing or didn't do that one thing? Would I be like this? And then you look to see what you would be like, and then you'd be like that. Melt my heart. You transcend the effect that that's some scars having on you. You're not suppressing it. You're not denying it. You're not ignoring it. You're giving it the right amount of balance, which, by the way, is almost nothing. The past is over. Learn from it and move on. Don't save that stuff inside of you. Don't let them make impressions. There should be no impressions in there from your past. Doesn't mean you didn't learn. Learning is not an impression. Your computer has a memory, but it doesn't spit it back up whenever it wants to, haunting you for the rest of your life. So you learn from experiences, but you don't let them make impressions on you, emotional and mental impressions, some scars. How do you do that? By learning to let go. I teach you that all the time. That's the essence of how you use your life. Things happen. They hit your stuff. Good. Let go of your stuff. Say thank you. Use to let go of your stuff. You will, at some point, come to a point where you realize life knows what it's doing, and you're a part of it. And if you let go enough, you become in harmony with that part. That's not saying you're going to get what you want. It's not about getting what you want. That leaf didn't know how it was supposed to fall, but you're going to find out when you look back that it was perfection. It ended up helping other people. It ended up doing amazing things when you're in harmony with God. That's the not my will, but thy will be done. All of these are the essence of the spiritual teachings, but nobody will really look at them that way. What they really want is what do I want, what do I not want, and how do I get it, and how do I avoid it? But you notice this talk doesn't say that, does it? It talks about going beyond that and acting out of right action. So part of my right action is we're about to have that storm. So we'll cut a little early tonight so that maybe you'll make it home. But it doesn't mean it wasn't important to understand that. The deepest question people rise and ask is that question, how do I know when to act and when not to act? I'm in this lawsuit with this partner, with my ex-husband, and this and that, and the lawyers, and it's this and that. I don't know if I should fight it or if I should just surrender and let go. I'm like, oh my God, so many questions, so detailed, right? And the answer is where are you coming from? What is your intent? What are you trying to do? Make sure nobody rips you off because you got ripped off once before. Make sure that nobody walks over you. I ain't no way, man. You walked over me the whole time our marriage. You ain't doing it now during the divorce. Is that where you're coming from? Well, maybe you should look at that. Maybe that's the answer. Maybe you know the answer of what you should be doing. Why would I know? You just ask the right questions. Are you willing? People say, how do I use this spiritually? That's how. You just look inside. Now, does that mean that if somebody's suing you or something's happening that you don't act, that you don't do the best that you can? What you do is try to see the best that you can impersonally. What is the best that I can do to interact with the situation, not just for me, but for everybody? How do I serve? If I didn't have this jealousy, this fear, insecurity, or these blockages, how could I? I love that we talked about it that way. How would I be acting? And then you try to act that way and you'll find it will kill you. And that's what Christ means, like die to be reborn. It's like something just tearing out of you. Your whole ego is being torn to pieces because you're not, as a kid, not getting the toy you want. All right? You just come from the highest place you can. 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.