transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Jai Gurudev, Jai Masters. Until you're totally liberated, you live in a world of duality. You don't need to feel self-teaching. There's day, there's night, there's high, there's low, there's male, there's female, there's happy, there's sad. But they aren't different things. They're just directions that you're looking at. You can look up, you can look down. They're different, what you see. But it's not as different as you think it is. So for example, people want to come into it with God. Some people are very serious about it, to all kinds of sadhana and practices and so on. Some people are passively interested in getting into a higher state. There's another way to look at it, which you'll find is very, very practical, and very, very useful. Is it about coming in tune with God? Is it about coming out of tune with yourself? If you need to reach up and it's a struggle, something's holding you down. So is that about reaching up harder? Is it about letting go of what's holding you down? There's the epitome of understanding yin and yang. They're not opposites. They're just consciousness, is focusing on different things at different times. So when you're having trouble in your life, some scars, your patterns, your personal self is pulling you down. A lot of times, you don't try to go back up. You just can't succumb to it. You give in to it. You get depressed, you get upset. You get all kinds of stuff. That's because the energy goes both ways. The consciousness is experiencing the energy in different states. So in that state, your consciousness has been pulled down into what we call your lower self. Is it wrong? No. It's just a state of being. There's weather, there's all kinds of things. So there are all kinds of states inside of you, and your consciousness can get pulled down. There are other times where naturally, without you doing anything, your consciousness rises up. You feel this energy, this love, this inspiration, you just can't handle it. It's so beautiful. It's pulling you up. It's the same consciousness dancing in the young, dancing in the positive negative, dancing in the light and dark. They're not wrong. They're just different places on the same spectrum. So which is better? I have found in my life that as much as I've pushed with all the spiritual practices and all this stuff, that the highest, most beneficial is not about coming in tune with God, because you have to make up what that is. But if I say, I want to come out of tune with myself, because I can't do both. You're in tune with something, and the more you're in tune with yourself, the less you're in tune with God. The more you're in tune with God, the less you're in tune with yourself. Meir Baba said, man minus mind equals God. In other words, the ultimate is losing any sense of personal self. Christ said, you must die to be reborn. They're saying the same thing. It's not just reach up the most you can, which is what he tries to do. Then they try to go to work in the morning, right? They go to retreat, and then they go fall back down. It's about understanding what's holding you down, coming out of tune with that. And there's this natural ascent. It's very natural. You don't even notice it. You're just happier. It's better off. You don't get bothered by anything because you've let go of the anchor. You let go of what's holding you down. So there are those who teach, including me, that coming out of tune with yourself, your personal self, your ego, is the same and higher than trying to reach up for this thing called God that's just a concept. Maybe it's the spirit you had once. That's the worst. Because you want to have it again. And so you keep reaching up instead of dealing with, why don't you have it all the time? You're trying to have it even though there's a force pulling you down and you know that. You know there are forces, anger, fear, insecurity, selfishness, et cetera, that are pulling you down. All right, so we're going to talk tonight about what it means to come into tune with God by coming out of tune with yourself. What I like about it is, every one of you know your ego. You live with it all the time. You do think about yourself, don't you? Like 99.9% of the time, what do I want? What do I not want? What do I like? What do I don't like? What am I afraid is going to happen? There's that little I keep showing up. An amazing one letter. It's always prevalent in your thoughts and your emotions. Mostly falls under what do I want? What do I not want? And if that was the end of it, it wouldn't be so bad. But no one stays there. It's not what do I want and what do I not want? How do I get what I want? How do I avoid what I don't want? What's the purpose of wanting it or not wanting it? If you're not going to come out here and kill yourself, try and get what you want and avoid what you don't want. And this is when it gets really hairy for people because they talk about success and failure and talk about aren't they supposed to be motivated? Let's just get it over right away. Motivated to do what? To get what you want or motivated to let go of yourself so you can evolve and grow? See the difference? And most people say, it's about you can get what I want so I can feel better, so I can get my finances right, get my relationships right. Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. Okay? Well, if that's what you're in tune with, that's where you're going. And don't let anyone kid you about that. If you're about the I and you're about saying, I know what I want and I know what makes me happy, and I do know what makes you happy getting what you want. Did I get it? Every one of you could want something different, even at different times. Tomorrow you want something different than you want today because you'll learn something, right? You're happy when you get what you want. And you're not happy if you don't get what you want, and you're really unhappy if you get what you don't want. Can we relate to that? So you have a choice. Do I spend my life struggling to feed my personal self, to feed my ego, to feed the me, I, me, mine, my concepts, my views, my hopes, my dreams, my beliefs, my preferences, my fears? Is that what I'm devoting my life to? And if you're not careful, the answer is yes. The default answer is that it's such a powerful force that you end up devoting your life to it. And get out of the way. Everybody tells you to. You have to do that. You have to be one pointed to get what you want. I did it my way. All right? And there's nothing wrong with it. You'll grow. But when you grow, you're going to find out that that personal self is not your friend. That personal self, we've discussed this many times. Where did it come from? These wants and not wants and likes and dislikes and fears and all that stuff. There's only one place they can come from. They were programmed in you due to your past experiences. That's not a trite statement. It's obviously true. If you haven't experienced something, you neither like it or don't like it. It's because you experienced it in the past and it left an impression on you that that impression becomes your likes and dislikes. And now you go out for the rest of your life and struggle to try and make what you want. It's funny, I don't like the word you, what your ego, what your personal self wants, how it's programmed. You try to replicate it by getting what it wants because you feel better. No question you feel better. And no question you feel worse even if you think you might not get what you want. And you feel really bad if you think you might get what you don't want, don't you? You don't even need to happen. You can make a mess and they're all by yourself. I'm making it sound passive, but this is what everybody does with their entire life. They devote themselves to trying to take care of, satisfy, match the impressions that were left inside from before, that were positive, the impressions that were left inside from before, that were negative, they don't want to do with, and they try to manipulate and control everything in their environment to make it match what they want and make it not match what they don't want. Are you comfortable understanding that? Is that a truth? If you're not careful, that is what you devote your life to. Don't make it sound holy. It's about you. It's about what I want and what I don't want. I don't care what you want is for the world to be at peace, right? The point is still what you want. It's still about you. Maybe you want your world to be at peace. Unless something goes wrong, then you want it to be a war. I don't know. The point is, it's about you. It's about you deciding what you want, when you want it, how you want it, for how long you want it, and how it's supposed to be. I know how it's supposed to be the way you want. Did you know that? Do you have an idea of how it's supposed to be? I guarantee you that idea is what you want, and it isn't what you don't want. And so you start questioning, what is this force inside of me that I'm devoting my life to? Even if you devote your life supposedly to God, it's your concept of God. I want to go to heaven. I don't want to go to hell. Have you been to heaven or hell? I know you have inside, but have you yet been to heaven and hell? Do you know it's there? Have you experienced it? Not so much your emotions in your mind. Do you know that there's heaven and hell? You do not. You know what they told you. They told you that, didn't they? And then someone said, no, there's not. Stop believing. There's nothing. There's no life after death. Don't even worry about it. Okay, someone told you that. The point is, it's just something you made up. It's just something you believe. I'm not saying it's not true. You'll find out soon enough, all right? But the point is, you don't know these things. They're things that have left impressions on you, and now you're devoting your life. I don't want to go to hell, so I'm going to try and do this. What are you going to try and do? Well, I don't know. The Koran says this, and the Bible says this, and the Torah says this. I better make a decision because I want to get it right. Now you're neurotic, okay? Now you go crazy. What's the answer? You get quiet for a minute, and you look. Am I devoting my life to myself? I don't care how positive it sounds, by devoting my life to myself. I want to be successful. I want to have children. I don't want to have children. I want to have a wonderful relation with somebody. I like to have lots of relations with a lot of people. You're all different, aren't you? Which one's right? There's no such thing. It's just an ego that's had impressions made on it that now decides it wants that. Spirituality is never about that, and people misunderstand that. It's not about enunciation. It's not about not doing what you want. It's about taking a look and seeing, why do you want things? Why do you want to have children? Why do you not want to have children? Why do you want to get married? Why do you not want to get married? Why do you want to be wealthy? Why do you not want to be these rich people? Why? Not what do you want? You go deeper, we would just say, work at the root. You question, why is this going on inside of me? That's called witness consciousness. When you can step back and realize your mind is programmed and your heart is programmed with these past experiences. And you ask yourself, well, what if I didn't have that experience, but I feel the same way? You know the answer is no. Well, if it was different in high school, it was different here, and it was different in the first marriage, it'd be a totally different thing going on in there. You wouldn't be saying, I want to get married again. Not to somebody named Ben, I'll tell you that right now. You're just caught in yourself. You're caught in these patterns that got programmed into you. When you work with yourself, the first thing is to step back, not stop it. It's very hard to stop that stuff. I don't even want you to struggle. I've learned so much over 55 years, right? Don't struggle with your mind. Notice it objectively. Watch the mind's thoughts, watch the heart's feelings. But you can't do that. They drive you to action. If your mind says, I don't like this, you're out there trying to stop it. You don't notice where it came from, where's its roots. The same thing, especially with the heart. Oh my God, I really like this person. I have to be with them. I'm trying to analyze. I'm daring to notice that it could change in a moment. And you start noticing. That's what witness consciousness is. The ability, I don't want to make it sound like a struggle. Struggle to not be your mind. You are not your mind. You're watching your mind. The trouble is it's so powerful that your conscious gets pulled into it and you lose your objectivity. Little by little, and we can talk about it in more detail in a moment, you will find out you're capable of noticing the mind's behavior and you're capable of noticing the heart's behavior and you're capable of noticing that they aren't always where you should be listening. Feel as if they follow your heart. Are you kidding me? What if you followed your heart? Be married and divorced the same person six times. That's not, they can't mean that when they say follow your heart. They mean transcend the personal emotions in your heart. Feel the deeper sense of your heart and follow it. But that's not what we do. We have to react to it. The moment the heart is doing something, we're trying to make it not hurt, we're trying to make it feel good, yes or no. We just immediately react to it. We behave accordingly, we yell at everybody, or we grab at them. And the same thing with the mind. The mind just sits there and tells you what you're supposed to be doing to get things the way you want. Eventually, and it doesn't take long in this first step, you start noticing how tenuous this thing is, how easy it is for your feelings to change. And instead of telling somebody, don't behave that way, you know I don't like it. You look inside and say, what's wrong with me? I can't handle it if someone didn't say hello with the right tone, or didn't have their friend that didn't call when they were supposed to. You start noticing, it's crazy in here. It's very sensitive, isn't it? Both mine and why am I following all that? If it can change in a moment, why do I react to everything that's going on? That's what the mind and heart do. The personal mind and heart are extremely reactive, because they're programmed with different programs. You like the person Ben in high school, and now you married one, and you don't have anything to do with the Ben ever again, including the ones in high school. You just paint this, I can't even talk about it. You wake up and you realize, I can notice what my mind is doing. I'm not telling you to stop it. I've learned, don't try to stop the mind. There are much higher ways to deal with the mind than trying to suppress it, trying to stop it. So I started to say, it's not about renunciation. It's not about finding out what you want, but not doing it. That's just dumb. If I know this would have been the happiest person in the whole world, I'm not gonna do it. Why? I wanna go to God. Oh my God, don't come here and talk to me about that kind of stuff. What you're doing is suppressing a part of your being, and you ain't going to God for that anchor down there. That's not how you deal with yourself. And so you wake up and you realize, I'm in here. I notice I have quite the mind that's very opinionated, and it's like a little baby if it doesn't get what it wants, and it throws tantrums if it doesn't get what it wants, and it gets really, really lost if it gets what it wants, right or wrong. Spend that way your entire life. I'm begging you, just notice. Don't do anything. Notice. You're capable of noticing. You'll feel the tendency to be pulled into it. It's a very powerful pull. The pull down is very powerful because it reminds you of all the things that ever hurt you. You could sit there and have one thought that you called out to your friend, Hey, Sally, how are you doing? And she didn't say back and say hello back. And so you start thinking, well, what did I do wrong? And then it thinks, well, that reminds me of the last time that I had a friend in high school that didn't say hello. And look what happened with that. It starts extrapolating negativity all over the place. Doesn't it? You have to do it. It does it by itself because you have all these things you store down there and starts playing billiards to hit each other, okay? Please notice. And if you grab them and try to stop them, you're suppressing them. And they just get really noisy down there and they cause all kinds of problems. And they come up in many different ways. That's all Freudian. Yoga is not about that. So we start by saying, are you reaching for God, coming into it with God, or are you coming out of tune with yourself? Now maybe you're getting it just what I'm talking about. That stuff's going on in there. You don't have to be in tune with it. Everything's going on everywhere. That's just something that's distracting you. And you can learn to relax and not be distracted by it. That's the highest way to work with your mind. You are not your mind, but has the power to distract you, but you do not have to get distracted. There, there's your spiritual path. That's not renunciation. That's not suppression. It's not giving in. It's not yielding. It's not trying to figure out what you're supposed to do. You know what's going on in there. You know when there's garbage going on in there. What do I do? Push it away. No. Honor it, try to exist and let it go. Honor it, try to exist. Here's jealousy. I could lose what I love. Okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Come on, come on, let me hear about it. Don't get into it. This is the highest path. Don't get into it. Don't let it pull you into it, but don't come in tune with it. You will see it's just a feeling. It's just a thought pattern and they're all based on your past experiences. There are people, hard to believe, that have never had a relationship that hurt them and they don't know what jealousy looks like. Literally, their special friend could be hanging in somebody else and dancing and saying, hey, I'm going to go to sleep over there tonight with our friends and so on. You don't even think about it. You never had that kind of pain. You never had that kind of problem before. Therefore, you don't even think about it. How do you like that? Hard to believe in it. That goes for anger, that goes for everything. So you're in here, that's your first step. You're in here, you're not manipulating, you're not controlling, you're not wanting, you're noticing. That's what objective observation, Krishnamurti called it objective observation. You are just aware that you're aware that you're aware of what's going on in there. It will tend to pull you into it. Why? Because it has all this power. You stored the pain from before, you stored the problems from before, you stored all these things that are scary and even things that are good and you want it to happen again. And you get all weird about that because they're not happening again. And so the stuff you stored from before has tremendous power. It has all the power of your energy because you devoted yourself to that. Again, back to, are you coming out of tune with yourself or bothering to come in tune with God even though you're really in tune with yourself? Can you feel that stretch of trying to go up when natural powers are pulling you down? You're trying to, I don't ever want to be angry with what's angry. I don't want to think any bad thoughts. Okay? My experience is you don't fight with that stuff. You notice it. And then if you notice it and you can sit and notice how by letting go, you let the energy pass, you'll start to notice where it comes from. You will absolutely see if you're walking toward fire and there's smoke, and you can't handle the smoke, you'll never get to the fire. If you can handle the smoke and go forward to heat the smoke, you'll end up face to face with the fire. It's the exact same thing inside. You're in there, the stuff is coming up. If you can't handle it, you just try to stop it. You try to push it down or make the world change or do something so you don't have to experience it. Otherwise, you've reached a certain, I'll call it the beginning point of spirituality, where you realize if I devote myself to that garbage that's in there, I'll be in the ride for the rest of my life. Does it change? Does what you want change? Is it the same as it was 10 years ago? Five years ago, yesterday? Do you see how crazy it is to follow that stuff? It's not gonna take you anywhere. It just goes in circles and jumps around. All it does is try to say, how can I be okay now? And the next thing you know, you're trying to manipulate everything to make it not be the way you don't want and be the way you want. Eventually, it doesn't take a genius to realize, I ain't gonna be okay in there. It's never gonna be okay. Look at the richest people in the world. To me, they're suffering more than anybody else. Look at the people. Hollywood has the biggest divorce rate. They say, you say, I'm about to get married. But it used to be said that Hollywood had the biggest divorce rate. Then where's the answer? Where's the answer? Somebody's married for a long period of time and a friend tells them, yeah, well, that's really beautiful. But I had a number of different relationships and there were times when I didn't have a relationship. I travel all the time. You start saying, God, maybe I should have done that. Come on, look at me, look at me. That's what it's like to live in there. There's no peace, there's no solution. There's just trying to stay away from all the noise so you don't have to suffer. At some point, you notice, okay, this is where I want you to start your path. I'm in here, check. I have a mind that talks a lot and has really strong preferences. And when it gets what it wants, it's happy. When it doesn't get what it wants, it's miserable. And when it gets what it doesn't want, oh boy, look out. And my heart, I don't even bother to talk about the mind because the heart is exactly the same. The root of the mind is in the heart. So your desires and your preferences and your needs and your good feelings and your bad feeling, they come from your heart, but they match your mind. The mind will always talk about what's going on in the heart and the heart will always talk about what's going on in the mind. Let's say you're having a nice day and you're driving by a poster that reminds you of Ben, and all of a sudden your heart hurts. And then your mind says, I'm not driving this way anymore. I don't want to say that sign ever again. You do things like that and solve a single thing. What you learn to do is I'm in here and I notice that the mind is crazy. It just goes all over the place. Don't do anything. I beg you. I would love for you to go sit there and notice. You notice, whoa, look what it's doing now. Whoa, glad I didn't go with that one. Whoa, that's what it starts to look like. You start noticing it's all over the place. There and then your heart does the same thing. You notice this, like I said, do not listen to them when they tell you, just follow your heart. It does what it's talking about. It does not. Deep heart, spiritual heart. But boy, good luck to get past the personal heart. Normally, it's just this personal heart. They're spewing emotions, spewing fears and desires and based on your past experiences. Just notice that's where they come from. You have to analyze them. It'll be Freud. Just notice, yeah, high school stuff. That's good enough, wasn't it? Or my parents got divorced and I ended up with stepfather, stepmother, right? And it's like you left stuff in there and that's where it comes from. And when you notice that it's just a bunch of stupid stuff that you had an experience, I keep trying to teach you. What if you didn't have the experience? What if your parents didn't get divorced? You're totally from person? That's ridiculous. How could you tolerate such a thing? Your liberates, your soul came down and born with the earth because your parents got divorced. You had all this junk inside of you. You hear me? And so you wake up and you start noticing. That's why the mind is the way it is. That's why the heart is the way it is. That's where my personal thoughts come from. That's where my personal feelings come from. Ask this question, is that okay with me? Is it okay that it's bothering me? No, is it okay that it's that way? Is it okay that you notice that those past impressions spew themselves and they jump around in there? Have you noticed you can be okay in there? It doesn't give me okay noticing anything else in the world. Clouds go by, people go by, white lines go by. You can be okay unless you make yourself not be okay. The key is, is that okay with you? Or is that not okay with you? If it's not okay with you, I assure you, you're neurotic. If it's okay with you, I assure you, you're going to get disappointed at some point. Because it will never stay, no one behaves the way you think they should, no one is the way you think they are. You start catching on, why can't I have what I want? You ready? You're not meant to have what you want. That's not what it's about. It's about ceasing to get lost in yourself. The more it's about getting what you want, avoiding what you don't want, the more you are now in tune with yourself. And everyone's in tune with theirself. Don't look around at anybody else. That's what they're in tune with, I, me, mine. This is what I care about. They know because if they get what they want, they feel better. If they don't get what they want, they feel worse. And if they get what they don't want, oh boy. So they're struggling to make an outside world match what you want inside. That's what it means to devote your life to yourself, to come in tune with yourself. You don't have to come in tune with yourself. You're very much in tune with yourself. Aren't you? Okay. It's really the full state. What matters is me. And I've discussed that with you at length before. How much what matters is you. Do I have to talk about it? Or do you notice it's all about me, what I want, what I don't want, what I like, what I don't like, what somebody did that I don't like. It's every single thing is about this tiny little piece, little thing. You know, five foot, six feet, a couple of feet wide. And what you do is notice every single thing, if a mosquito bites it, if a feeling comes up, if a thought gets created right or wrong, you're completely addicted to yourself. We're so addicted to it, we don't know it. It's like a heroin addict. I'm fine when I get a hit, but you don't want to be around me when I don't. So therefore the solution is to get a hit. See, I'm doing much better. You're addicted to your personal self. But you think it's normal. It's normal that you think about yourself. It is not. A great being doesn't ever think about themselves. Even great scientists sometimes just get so lost in their work, they're not doing it to win a Nobel Prize. They couldn't care less. They just feel so inspired to express something higher, something bigger than themselves. Scientists can be like that or they can be terrible. That they're all about cheating and faking stuff so they can win a Nobel Prize or get a raise or publish or perish. But a true scientist and a true artist, they're not like that. They're not thinking about themselves. A true artist who's creating music or painting or sculpture, they're not thinking about what they're going to get from this. They're lost in the process of expressing the beauties inside of themselves, not the personal self. A true artist couldn't care less if any cares like there are or not. Unfortunately, a lot of them are struggling, so they have to do something. But a true artist doesn't deal with that at all. Not one, they would never think about it. They're just trying to create and express the beauties inside of them, not the personal self. The higher energy. And that energy is close to God. That energy can come down from really high places. And when you're out of the way, it flows through. And that's a very great being. I told you, a master, that's what it means. You've mastered this whole thing. Meaning what? There's no personal stuff going on. You can come back and be somewhat personal. But I've met very high beings, and we'll talk about that maybe a little bit later. They're not there at that level. They ain't doing anything. It just unfolds and it's beautiful and they're in it. You can't even catch your attention. They're just melted. They're mind ain't doing squat. The heart is just flowing with love. That's who you are when you're not in tune with yourself. Otherwise, do I need to describe what it's like to be in there and be that small, and only think about yourself and worry about everything is going to happen and did happen, not like this. So that's what it means to be in tune with yourself. I told you why it happens. I've done it over and over again because things happen in your life that come in and you in there are not comfortable with them. You aren't able to handle the snake or the really good thing or really bad thing. You get caught in there. I don't need to lecture about it. You know, draw what I'm talking about. And the next thing you know, you don't want things to happen or you do want things to happen. And you just get to the point where you notice that this is a problem to struggle, to make things be the way I want. And I hope you get to the point where you realize I don't want that. That's not the life I'm looking for. To struggle and fight and make everybody and everything be the way I think they need to be. Because the impressions that got left on me from the past. What's the alternative? Are you trying to come in true with yourself? You're trying to let go of yourself. That is Little of Christ meant by Dodd, when we were born. Are you willing to let go of the personal self? And I don't think you guys would be here if it wasn't, yes, that you're willing to work at it. And if you work at it, it can't not work. It cannot not work. Every minute of your life, life is giving you an opportunity to not get what you want. Come on. Life and giving you an opportunity to get what you don't want. Have you noticed? Every one of those things is help for your growth. Every one of those things is to hear and say, do I really want to devote myself to clinging, grabbing, pulling, struggling? Or am I willing to say, fine, not my will, but thy will be done? As the most powerful thing Christ said, what he meant was very simple, which is, I don't need it to be my way. I don't even want it to be my way. I don't want it to not be my way. I'm not suppressing. You hear me? I'm not pushing it away. I am perfectly comfortable letting go of myself and allowing the harmony of life to unfold before me. It's another part of people who misunderstand surrender. I'm not surrendering the outside world to whatever it says. I'm surrendering the resistance inside of me that can't handle what's going on. I can't handle what's going on. Why? Because I don't like it. You hear me? It's inside that you surrender. And as you let that go, you come into it with God. What do I need to do to come into God? That and nothing else. That's what Christ meant by, it was died to be reborn. If you let go of yourself, Mary, Babel, right? Man minus mind equals God. If you let go of yourself, the ascent happens totally autonomously, happens by itself. You have trouble. Let's talk about that. When it starts to pull you up, you have trouble letting go throughout your life. You have, let's say you fall in love tremendously, you have trouble then. You're afraid. I can't let go that much. Have you ever felt a pull up and a fear, a resistance to letting go? Like I said, I've met some very high beings and I know them. I can feel, I see them. They just naturally fall back into the place. Actually, what I thought about, we'll talk about. When I was running the company, they would have these retreats. That's very foreign to me, but they have these retreats, right? And on the retreats, the execs would go for like three or four days and there'd be all these fun games, all right? And they were like the challenges. Can somebody stand behind you and can you fall straight backwards and not look and not try to hold back and just completely surrender and let yourself fall backward and trust that they will catch you? And I remember that Srebrenica and I, I remember what specifically one was that there was this, what do you call them? Bubble balloon things, the runways, okay? And you'd go run as fast as you could and you'd just throw yourself out, right? And fall on top of them. Nobody could do it. These great executives, not a chance. And they later told us that they walked around marveling how Srebrenica just threw herself out there, and bounced off the stupid thing, all right? Like a fun house type thing, right? But you'd watch, they couldn't do it. They'd run and they'd run and hold themselves back. You want to hear me? Okay? That's what it's like to come into it with God. To completely let go of every part of your personal self and the fall back has no handles and no sides and no size and nobody's in there caring. They just fall completely back. That's what it means to come into it with God. It means letting go of yourself, coming out of tune with yourself. Do you all admit that's a fairly hard thing to do? To completely let go of yourself when no holds barred, nobody's grabbing, nobody's holding back, nobody's checking, nobody's even looking, that's a very rare state. Sometimes in intimate moments or something really beautiful like a sunset or something, you can feel the tendency to melt. It's not easy, is it? It's not easy. And I'll tell you a secret. If you ever get there and then let go more than you used to, you will be so sensitive when you come back. You'll be so protective and everything, you'll feel it all pull back together. Please listen to me. It's like the whole ego, all the grabbing, all the need, everything goes, grrr, all right? And it's harder to let go the second time because that stuff ain't gonna let you go. We're having a nice talk. We're talking about the difference between being in tune with yourself versus being in tune with God. But you don't get in tune with God while you're holding on to yourself. Every one of you are capable of the state we're talking about. How do you know that? Because you hold yourself back. Because you go like that, don't you? Spirituality is about not going like that. Spirituality is about the tendency to see that tendency to pull it back toward ego. That's the personal self. It tries to hold itself together into a safe spot that it understands what's going on, that I know how to get what I want. I can buy this and get this and do that, and then act this way and behave this way. You just built a fake self that by being like that, you're trying to hold it together so that the outside will be the way you want it to be, so you feel safe. It's all about feeling safe. It's all about not suffering. It's all about not hurting. It's all about not having disappointment. Well, you're not going anywhere like that. So what do you do? You come out of tune with yourself. How? I always teach you. Not big. It's going to get scary when you try to do too much. Now, some people teach that, and that's fine. That's fine. It's just I have found that if I let go a little at a time, I tell you the driver in front of me is not driving the way I want. Can I handle that? Yes. Good. You're screwed. You just handle the situation you weren't able to handle before. You complain to the driver, you talk to the driver and they don't hear you. Everybody else will use the same example, the perfect examples. Every single one of you have talked to the driver in front of you. Have you not? Do they hear you? Does it do any good? So here's a freebie. If the cost-benefit analysis is 100 percent cost and zero benefit, I think we can let go. There. I'm willing to let you grow like that, and I found it works really, really well. So you sit there during your daily life, not extreme situations, but during your daily life, you practice letting go. You're practicing, I can handle this, and you just relax through it. That's what you're not doing when you're tense. So just in this moment, I can relax. I dare you, I dare you with that driver in front of you. Just relax your shoulders, relax your tummy. Use it as a spiritual practice. It's as important as meditation. No lightning came down from a master yet. All right? It's very important. It is really, that's what that's doing. He said, I don't want to be into it myself. It's an erotic maniac that makes no sense at all. He's being bothered by things that don't do anything. Okay? The other one I give you, the driver in front of you and the weather. They're your gurus. I'm not kidding. There's so much growth. Does anybody have trouble with the weather? The heat, the cold, the wind, the snow, the hurricanes. Anybody have trouble with the weather? Did you change it? Not one iota. Therefore, there's no cost in letting go. It's hot out. You're sweating. It's hot. It's going to be hot till you get out of that car and get into the air conditioning. Is that okay with you? If you say no, you're dead. Why? Because it is that way. I give you this path that's so simple, if you're willing. People do it. They remind me from all over the world. Oh my God, I've grown so. Of course you did. You stopped committing yourself to yourself, at least at the easy levels. And what you're going to find out is if you do that, the next level is easier. If you can handle the driver in front of you, you can handle your husband when he comes home in a bad mood. I already handled that level of disturbance. I handled that level of discomfort. And I realized it's stupid to be uncomfortable about something that doesn't make any difference. It's called letting go of yourself. That's what surrender means. Not some drug dealer comes to you and says, hey man, want some heroin? Well, Mickey said to surrender. No, that's not what it means. It means you're in here and you see the tendency to close, don't you? See the tendency to retract, to restrict, to be negative, to complain. I'm just, that's a part of you I want. It's a simple little thing that there's no reason to complain, doesn't do any good at all, but the weather, the driver in front of you, the fact that the person didn't say hello, and you start letting go of the resistance. That's what it means to come out of tune with yourself. Every moment, every million moment that you come out of tune with yourself, you're more in tune with God. Because they showed you ultimately, when you can let go completely and just fall backwards and complete surrender, that's where the masters went. That's what Mayor Bava talked about when he said, my conscience was a drop of water. It fell into the ocean. Find it. Find that drop. That's merger. That's my father and I won. So you're getting there as you let go of the drop, as you let go of your unwilling. Why didn't the drop fall into the ocean? I don't know. There's a hole on that drop. So little by little, you'd be letting go. I always want to talk to you about that executive training thing. Can you throw yourself out completely without any holding back in any way, shape or form or fall backwards, the trust thing and so on? They seem like stupid games. They're not. They're team training. Okay, you learn a little bit about accepting somebody else might be different than you. But this whole question of just letting go, just throw it on out there. You should be able to do that. Not because you want something enough to do that, but because there's nothing stopping you from being high, nothing stopping you from being free, nothing stopping you from being open and just enjoying the wholeness of your life. But if you get into a car and you're scared to death of getting an accident, or scared to death your backseat driver, you're not going anywhere. And it seems rational, doesn't it, at the time? But you can find out that 99.99% of the time, it didn't do any good except make you neurotic. And so you practice letting go. What does letting go mean? Coming out of tune with yourself. It doesn't mean you're lost and people misunderstand that. You should know yourself. Yeah, but not that self, not the personal self. And so you learn to let go of yourself. And then people ask, well, what will happen if I let go of myself? In other words, if I'm not in control, let's just do it quickly. If I'm not in control, who is? Somebody's got to be. And you just figure it's not going to work unless somebody's running the show. Okay, I'll handle somebody else. I trust you. I'll give that to you. All right. And instead you understand, 99.99999% of your life is happening by itself. And there are way more 0.9s after that. You have 35 trillion cells inside your body. You're doing a lot to run them. You know, they divide, they multiply, they drop out. When they're weak, they drop out, let other cells come in. Heart cells know how to pump. Muscles don't pump. They stretch and relax. Come on, who's doing all that? I want to know right now. Who's running those cells? You? Anybody willing to look at reality? You're not running the thing. You're not running anything. But you say, if I'm not running it, who will run it? I don't know. Maybe a planet stays in orbit by itself. Maybe all the stars and galaxies circle around each other in the perfect harmony. Maybe the black holes eat who they're supposed to. I don't know. All I know has been going on for 13.8 billion years. And it seems to be doing pretty good, doesn't it? Who's running it? You want to use the word God? Fine. I love the word God. My God, my God is the answer to if I'm not running it, who is? Because I ain't running it, I can tell you right now. So you ask the question, who's going to run it? How do I know what I'll look like when I'm 30? How do I know if I'll be sick when I get to 80? What are you doing? You're not running the universe, are you? Do you fall through the floor when you step on it? Why not? The floor stays together because the atoms are bound together. What made you do that? Oh, I see. And your feet don't fall through because they're bound together tight enough so the atoms can't pass through each other, but in water they can. Wake up. You're not doing anything. You're the recipient of everything. So the concept of letting go of what you want or not want, which do you want the planet to stay in orbit? I want the planet to stay in orbit. I don't want the sun to crash into this planet. Why don't you worry about something meaningful? No, you worry about, well, I get what I want and what if he doesn't like me? What if I get old and I get growth lines in varicose veins and oh my God, I'm growing up? I mean mine. Do you see it? Eventually, you understand what spiritual is about. It's about letting go of yourself, about coming out of tune with yourself, and I don't want to say so that you can come out of tune with God. If you come out of tune with yourself, you're in tune with God. Here, do math. I have a scale. It goes from minus 1000 to zero to plus 1000. If I move anywhere in that scale positive, I'm less negative. If I move more negative, I'm less positive. I don't have to do anything, do I? It's a scale. It's the same thing. If you let go of yourself, you're with God. If you cling to yourself, you're not with God, you're with yourself. It's just simple math. It's simple stuff. So this concept of coming out of tune with yourself is all of spirituality. People misunderstand that. They say, you mean I can't do anything to better myself? What you're going to find out is that life is here for your growth. Life is here for your betterment, but your betterment is about your liberation, your freedom. And everything in life, once a day you will understand, not right now, everything in life is for you. It's all for your purpose. There's nothing that ever happened to you that wasn't for your purpose. Nothing that will ever happen. You say, oh, we don't understand. When I was in school, somebody came and they hit me and I was just minding my own business. What'd you do with that? Is it still in there? Do you hate the person? How old were you? Has it passed through yet? Do you understand that people can be like that? Maybe their parents beat them. Where are you from that experience? Because it's all about your growth. I know it's tough, isn't it? Every single thing in life is about God. It's all about the evolution of your being to lift you up and let go of yourself. Christ said, you must die to be reborn, okay? You have to let go of yourself. So your willingness to let go yourself is your willingness to go to God. They work together. If you let go of yourself, you're with God, period. If you let go of yourself completely, bam, the drop falls in the ocean. It just drops off and you merge. That's who you are. If you cling to yourself, whoever read Genesis about the fall from the garden, like I told you once, I don't know if it's like a biblical scholar. I read the thing once in 1972 or something, right? That was that. But it comes back. If I remember correctly, it says, when they were thrown from the garden, when Adam and Eve fell from the garden, now they must work by the sweat of the brow to be okay. You know anything about that? Anybody struggling? Anybody trying to be okay? When you're merged and one with the whole universe, there is no duality. There's just oneness. You just feel creation. There's creation and everything's happening inside of creation. There's dark, there's light, there's high, there's low, there's goodness. There's just everything and you're one with all of it. That's what it means to be in the garden. That's where Adam and Eve were as it symbolically, so the painting, until somebody got lost. I can't help but tell this story. I love this story. I wish I read this stuff, but I don't. But when Adam was in the garden and God was walking around the garden, he remembers that story, God calls out, Adam, Adam, we're all one, man. Come on. Adam, where are you? Nobody answers. Adam, where are you? Suddenly Adam says, here I am, and he stands up and God says, what's that around your waist? Go check it out. I'm of course telling the story different than it's written in the Bible, right? What's that around your waist? A fig leaf. I put fig leaves on fig trees. What's it doing around your waist? That answer is so deep. I was naked. Every animal is naked. Every tree is naked. All of nature is naked. What do you mean? The ego is born. The eye is born. I was naked. I'm separate from the rest of everything else. I have the birth of the eye, and that is the fall from the garden. Have you got one? All right. Coming in tune with God means under all conditions, the willingness to come out of tune with yourself, to let go. Not all at once. Don't even think about it. Just, I'm begging you, little by little is fine. That nice to hear? Just take every opportunity you get to let go of yourself. You'll see that's a constant opportunity. The driver in front of you, the weather, what somebody said to you, what somebody didn't say. How about the willingness to say, my life is not about devoting my life to that. It's about letting go of myself. What I care about is letting go of that part of myself, and I'm willing to do that if it helps somebody else. It is constantly letting go of yourself. You're constantly having it not be about you, and you think everything will fall apart. Your body didn't fall apart with the atoms, the world didn't fall apart, the earth didn't collapse. I just, will you please, I can only talk so much. Will you please take the time to contemplate how many things take care of themselves and include all the physics and all the chemistry and all of the past and all of everything that ever was. I think you're okay. I know you're okay. But boy, are you willing to take that risk as you game. Right? Risk. Check.

Speaker 2:
[50:08] 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.