Michael Singer Quotes

If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.

There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it.

Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can.

If you truly love someone, your love sees past their humanness

When a problem is disturbing you, don't ask, "What should I do about it?" Ask, "What part of me is being disturbed by this?

Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.

Eventually you will see that the real cause of problem is not life itself. It's the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems.

The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it

We are constantly trying to hold it all together. If you really want to see why you do things, then don't do them and see what happens.

there is no reason to constantly attempt to figure everything out

True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection.

Your inner growth is completely dependent upon the realization that the only way to find peace and contentment is to stop thinking about yourself.

Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred.In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become thevictor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing then it is the eternal dance or creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing...and dancing...and dancing. Until there is only...the dance.

If experience is the best teacher, there's nothing that comes close to the experience of life.

There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it

If you want to be happy, you have to let go of the part of you that wants to create melodrama. This is the part that thinks there’s a reason not to be happy. You have to transcend the personal, and as you do, you will naturally awaken to the higher aspects of your being. In the end, enjoying life’s experiences is the only rational thing to do. You’re sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Go ahead, take a look at reality. You’re floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience. You’re going to die anyway. Things are going to happen anyway. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You gain nothing by being bothered by life’s events. It doesn’t change the world; you just suffer. There’s always going to be something that can bother you, if you let it.

Billions of things are going on in this world. You can think about it all you want, but life is still going to keep on happening.

Your relationship with God is the same as your relationship with the sun. If you hid from the sun for years and then chose to come out of your darkness, the sun would still be shining as if you had never left. You don’t need to apologize. You just pick your head up and look at the sun. It’s the same way when you decide to turn toward God—you just do it.

You have to understand that it is your attempt to get special experiences from life that makes you miss the actual experience of life.

The only permanent solution to your problems is to go inside and let go of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality. Once you do that, you'll be clear enough to deal with what's left.

Everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that’s the only time everything will be okay.

Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people, rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. If you’re not trying to make people fit into your preconceived notions of what you like and dislike, you will find that relationships are not really that difficult. If you’re not so busy judging and resisting people based upon what is blocked inside of you, you will find that they are much easier to get along with—and so are you. Letting go of yourself is the simplest way to get closer to others.

Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you've been taught that you're being judged. Because you've been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open you connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart. The reality is that God's way is love, and you can see this for yourself.

You're floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience.

To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them... Once you've made the commitment to free yourself of the scared person inside, you will notice that there is a clear decision point at which your growth takes place.

How would you feel if someone outside really started talking to you the way your inner voice does? How would you relate to a person who opened their mouth to say everything your mental voice says? After a very short period of time, you would tell them to leave and never come back. But when your inner friend continuously speaks up, you don’t ever tell it to leave. No matter how much trouble it causes, you listen.

It’s actually a shocking realization when you first notice that your mind is constantly talking. You might even try to yell at it in a feeble attempt to shut it up. But then you realize that’s the voice yelling at the voice:

The only permanent solution to your problems is to go inside and let go of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality.

Fear is the cause of every problem. It’s the root of all prejudices and the negative emotions of anger, jealousy, and possessiveness. If you had no fear, you could be perfectly happy living in this world.

Acceptance means events can make it through you without resistance

Life is continuously changing, and if you’re trying to control it, you’ll never be able to fully live it.

My formula for success was very simple: Do whatever is put in front of you with all your heart and soul without regard for personal results. Do the work as though it were given to you by the universe itself - because it was.

You naturally begin to center more and more on the spiritual part of your being. You do this not by reaching for the Spirit, but by letting go of the rest.

Your eyes are not really windows through which you look out into the world. Your eyes are cameras that send electronic images of the world into you.

Death changes everything in a flash. That’s the reality of the situation. If all these things can be changed in an instant, then maybe they aren’t so real after all.

You really don’t need more time before death; what you need is more depth of experience during the time you’re given.

You just let go. It's simply a matter of taking the risk that you are better off letting go than going with the energy.

The key is to be quiet. It’s not that your mind has to be quiet. You be quiet. You, the one inside watching the neurotic mind, just relax.

You don’t fight the mind. In fact, you don’t even try to change it. You just make a game out of relaxing in the face of its melodrama.

Music shouldn't be just a tune, it should be a touch.

If you decide that you're going to be happy from now on for the rest of your life, you will not only be happy, you will become enlightened. Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is.This is truly a spiritual path, and it as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist.

To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them.

So there are two ways you can live: you can devote your life to staying in your comfort zone, or you can work on your freedom.

What if you knew that the next person you’d see would be the last person you would ever see? You’d be right there soaking it in, experiencing it. It wouldn’t matter what they were saying; you’d just enjoy hearing the words because it would be the last conversation you’d ever have. What if you brought that kind of awareness to every conversation? That’s what happens when you’re told that death is around the corner: you change, life doesn’t change.

What you end up experiencing is really a personal presentation of the world according to you, rather than the stark, unfiltered experience of what is really out there. This mental manipulation of the outer experience allows you to buffer reality as it comes in.

The most important thing in life is your inner energy. If you’re always tired and never enthused, then life is no fun. But if you’re always inspired and filled with energy, then every minute of every day is an exciting experience. Learn to work with these things. Through meditation, through awareness and willful efforts, you can learn to keep your centers open. You do this by just relaxing and releasing. You do this by not buying into the concept that there is anything worth closing over. Remember, if you love life, nothing is worth closing over.

The only thing you have to know is that opening allows energy in, and closing blocks it out. Now you have to decide whether or not you want this energy. How high do you want to get? How much love do you want to feel? How much enthusiasm do you want to have for the things you do? If enjoying a full life means experiencing high energy, love, and enthusiasm all the time, then don’t ever close.

I am so grateful that surrender had taught me to willingly participate in life's dance with a quiet mind and an open heart.

If you really want to see why you do things, then don’t do them and see what happens.

The psyche is built upon avoiding this pain, and as a result, it has fear of pain as its foundation. That is what caused the psyche to be. To understand this, notice that if the feeling of rejection is a major problem for you, you will fear experiences that cause rejection. That fear will become part of your psyche. Even though the actual events causing rejection are infrequent, you will have to deal with the fear of rejection all the time. That is how we create a pain that is always there. If you are doing something to avoid pain, then pain is running your life. All of your thoughts and feelings will be affected by your fears.

It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death. No person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. While someone could tell you that you are not your body, death shows you. While someone could remind you of the insignificance of the things that you cling to, death takes them all away in a second. While people can teach you that men and women of all races are equal and that there is no difference between the rich and the poor, death instantly makes us all the same.

Life itself is your career, and your interaction with life is your most meaningful relationship. Everything else you’re doing is just focusing on a tiny subset of life in the attempt to give life some meaning. What actually gives life meaning is the willingness to live it. It isn’t any particular event; it’s the willingness to experience life’s events.

Ultimately, if you protect yourself perfectly, you will never grow.

When you feel pain, simply view it as energy. Just start seeing these inner experiences as energy passing through your heart and before the eye of your consciousness. Then relax. Do the opposite of contracting and closing. Relax and release. Relax your heart until you are actually face-to-face with the exact place where it hurts. Stay open and receptive so you can be present right where the tension is. You must be willing to be present right at the place of the tightness and pain, and then relax and go even deeper. This is very deep growth and transformation. But you will not want to do this. You will feel tremendous resistance to doing this, and that’s what makes it so powerful. As you relax and feel the resistance, the heart will want to pull away, to close, to protect, and to defend itself. Keep relaxing. Relax your shoulders and relax your heart. Let go and give room for the pain to pass through you. It’s just energy. Just see it as energy and let it go.

To get some distance from this, you first need to get some perspective. Walk outside on a clear night and just look up into the sky. You are sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Though you can only see a few thousand stars, there are hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone. In fact, it is estimated that there are over a trillion stars in the Spiral Galaxy. And that galaxy would look like one star to us, if we could even see it. You’re just standing on one little ball of dirt and spinning around one of the stars. From that perspective, do you really care what people think about your clothes or your car? Do you really need to feel embarrassed if you forget someone’s name? How can you let these meaningless things cause pain? If you want out, if you want a decent life, you had better not devote your life to avoiding psychological pain. You had better not spend your life worrying about whether people like you or whether your car impresses people. What kind of life is that? It is a life of pain. You may not think that you feel pain that often, but you really do. To spend your life avoiding pain means it’s always right behind you.

In the end, if you stay happy, you win.

Reality is just too real for most of us, so we temper it with the mind.

Unfortunately, most of us are not that wise. We’re really not trying to be free of our stuff; we’re trying to justify keeping it.

You will not be able to solve anything outside until you own how the situation affects you inside.

Music is the fastest motivator in the world.

You don’t have to constantly be mulling over what you said or what this person thinks of you. What kind of life are you going to have if you worry about these things all the time? Inner sensitivity is a symptom of non-well-being.

The spiritual journey is one of constant transformation. In order to grow, you must give up the struggle to remain the same, and learn to embrace change at all times.

You must realize that when you defend yourself, you are really defending your walls. There is nothing else to defend in there.

Consciousness is always drawn to the most distracting object: the bumped toe, the loud noise, or the hurting heart.

No matter what happens below you, just turn your eyes upward and relax your heart. You do not have to leave the seat of Self in order to deal with the darkness.

How could I possibly explain the great freedom that comes from realizing to the depth of your being that life knows what it's doing?

Eventually it will become quiet enough so that you can simply watch the heart begin to react, and let go before the mind starts. At some point in the journey it all becomes heart, not mind. ... The mind doesn’t even get a chance to start up because you let go at the heart level.

One of the essential requirements for true spiritual growth and deep personal transformation is coming to peace with pain.

Do not doubt your ability to remove the root cause of the disturbance inside of you. It really can go away.

There is no need for false solidity when you are at peace with the universal expanse of your true Being.

Letting go of yourself is the simplest way to get closer to others. The

Accept the purification power of life's flow.

When you are trained, like a great athlete, to immediately relax through your edges when they get hit, then it’s all over. You realize that you will always be fine. Nothing can ever bother you except your edges, and now you know what to do with them. You end up loving your edges because they point your way to freedom. All you have to do is constantly relax and lean into them. Then one day, when you least expect it, you fall through into the infinite. That is what it means to go beyond.

The more you are willing to just let the world be something you’re aware of, the more it will let you be who you are—the awareness, the Self, the Atman, the Soul.

You end up loving your edges because they point your way to freedom.

The most important thing in life is your inner energy. If you’re always tired and never enthused, then life is no fun. But if you’re always inspired and filled with energy, then every minute of every day is an exciting experience.

Look at this thing. It’s ruining my life. I’m trying to live a peaceful, meaningful existence, but I feel like I’m sitting on top of a volcano. At any moment this thing can decide to freak, close down, and fight with what’s happening.

When you feel the pull, like somebody pulling on your heart, you just let go. You fall behind it. You simply relax and release. And no matter how many times you’re pulled, that’s how many times you relax and release. Because the tendency to get drawn in is constant, the willingness to let go and fall behind has to be constant.

It (a singer's voice) sounds as if it was aged in a whiskey cask, cured in an Ozarks smokehouse, dropped down a stone well, pulled out damp, and kept moist in the palm of a wicked woman's hand.

Spirituality is the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes. It’s an infinite journey based upon going beyond yourself every minute of every day for the rest of your life. If you’re truly going beyond, you are always at your limits. You’re never back in the comfort zone. A spiritual being feels as though they are always against that edge, and they are constantly being pushed through it.

No matter who we are, life is going to put us through the changes we need to go through. The question is: Are we willing to use this force for our transformation? I saw that even very intense situations don't have to leave psychological scars, if we are willing to process our changes at a deeper level.

If you spend your time hoping that it doesn’t rain tomorrow, you are wasting your time; Your thoughts don’t change the rain.

The first problem you have to deal with is your own reaction. You will not be able to solve anything outside until you own how the situation affects you inside.

One of the most amazing things you will ever realize is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you—you are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. It’s not personal—you are making it personal.

Just as the sun does not leave its position in the sky to illuminate objects with its radiating light, so consciousness does not leave its center to project awareness onto the objects of form, thoughts, and emotions.

Eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself. It’s the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes problems. Now this raises a serious question: If so much of what

What actually gives life meaning is the willingness to live it.

The day you decide you are more interested in being aware of your thoughts than you are in the thoughts themselves – that is the day you will find your way out.

Worldly means that you think the solution to your inner problems is in the world outside.

In order to be who you are, you must be willing to let go of who you think you are.

You will eventually get conscious enough so that the minute you see the energy start getting strange, you stop. You stop getting involved in the energy.

relax and release,

Wise beings do not want to remain a slave to the fear of pain. They permit the world to be what it is instead of being afraid of it. They wholeheartedly participate in life, but not for the purpose of using life to avoid themselves. If life does something that causes a disturbance inside of you, instead of pulling away, let it pass through you like the wind. After all, things happen every day that cause inner disturbance. At any moment you can feel frustration, anger, fear, jealousy, insecurity, or embarrassment. If you watch, you will see that the heart is trying to push it all away. If you want to be free, you have to learn to stop fighting these human feelings.

Contemplate this, and let go of the idea of a judgmental God. You have a loving God. In truth, you have love itself for a God. And love cannot do other than love. Your God is in ecstasy and there’s nothing you can do about it. And if God is in ecstasy, I wonder what He sees when He looks at you?

The more you stay open, the more the energy flow can build. At some point, so much energy comes into you that it starts flowing out of you. You feel it as waves pouring off of you. You can actually feel it flowing off your hands, out your heart, and through other energy centers. All these energy centers open, and a tremendous amount of energy starts flowing out of you. What is more, the energy affects other people. People can pick up on your energy, and you’re feeding them with this flow. If you are willing to open even more, it never stops. You become a source of light for all those around you.

You are not your thoughts; you are aware of your thoughts. You are not your emotions; you feel emotions. You are not your body; you look at it in the mirror and experience this world through its eyes and ears. You are the conscious being who is aware that you are aware of all these inner and outer things.

When you walk through a beautiful botanical garden, you feel open and light. You feel love. You see beauty. You don’t judge the shape and placement of every leaf. The leaves are of all sizes and shapes and they face every-which-way. That’s what makes them beautiful. What if you felt that way about people? What if they didn’t all have to dress the same, believe the same, or behave the same? What if they were like the flowers, and however they happened to be seemed beautiful to you?

Eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself. It’s the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes problems.

you are not the voice of the mind—you are the one who hears it.

Extremes are good teachers. When you examine the extremes, it’s easy to see the effects of imbalanced behavior patterns.

do not let this energy build up inside you, but instead allow each moment of the day to pass through you

Just as everything that happens outside in the physical world requires energy, everything that happens inside requires an expenditure of energy.

No solution can possibly exist while you're lost in the energy of a problem.

Your center of consciousness is always stronger than the energy that is pulling on it. You just have to be willing to exercise your will.

If you are doing something to avoid pain, then pain is running your life. All of your thoughts and feelings will be affected by your fears.

But closing your heart does not really protect you from anything; it just cuts you off from your source of energy. In the end, it only serves to lock you inside.

That which is holding you down can become a powerful force that raises you up.

Stress only happens when you resist life's events.

So there are two ways you can live: you can devote your life to staying in your comfort zone, or you can work on your freedom. In other words, you can devote your whole life to the process of making sure everything fits within your limited model, or you can devote your life to freeing yourself from the limits of your model.

Spiritual growth exists in that moment when you are consciously willing to pay the price of freedom. You must be willing at all times, in all circumstances, to remain conscious in the face of pain and to work with your heart by relaxing and remaining open.

This is how great beings live. When you are trained, like a great athlete, to immediately relax through your edges when they get hit, then it’s all over. You realize that you will always be fine.

So you decide to use life to free yourself. You become willing to pay any price for the freedom of your soul. You will realize that the only price you have to pay is letting go of yourself. Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can. It doesn’t matter what others do, unless you decide that it matters to you.

depth of experience during the time you’re given. That’s the way to live each moment of your life. You let it fill you completely. You let it touch you to the depths of your being. There is no moment

You may not think that you feel pain that often, but you really do. To spend your life avoiding pain means it’s always right behind you. At any point you could slip and say the wrong thing. At any point anything can happen. So you end up devoting your life to the avoidance of pain.

In the end, enjoying life’s experiences is the only rational thing to do. You’re sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. You’re floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you're going to be here, be happy and enjoy the experience.

If, for even one moment, you can look at someone with the eyes of true love, you'll know those eyes are not yours. Your eyes could never look with that amount of love. Your eyes could never be that unconditional. Your eyes could never, even in a million years, see only beauty and total perfection in your beloved. Those are the eyes of God looking down through you.

There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind—you are the one who hears it. If you don’t understand this, you will try to figure out which of the many things the voice says is really you. People go through so many changes in the name of “trying to find myself.” They want to discover which of these voices, which of these aspects of their personality, is who they really are. The answer is simple: none of them. If

you label everything that doesn’t fit as wrong, bad, or unfair. If anything happens that challenges how you view things, you fight. You defend. You rationalize. You get frustrated and angry over simple little things.

You just make a game out of relaxing in the face of its melodrama. You simply learn how to release the tendency for getting drawn into the energy.

What you end up experiencing is really a personal presentation of the world according to you, rather than the stark, unfiltered experience of what is really out there.

The bigger the star, the bigger the target.

Instead of thinking that the new job will do it, the new relationship will do it, or more money and popularity will do it, do the necessary inner work to make it beautiful inside.

The greatest gift one can give to God is to be pleased with His creation.

One of the essential requirements for true spiritual growth and deep personal transformation is coming to peace with pain.

To feel great love and freedom, to find the presence of God within you, all of this stored pain must go. It is in this inner work that spirituality becomes a reality.

The natural ups and downs of life can either generate personal growth or create personal fears. Which of these dominates is completely dependent upon how we view change.

I am the one who sees. From back in here somewhere, I look out, and I am aware of the events, thoughts, and emotions that pass before me.

Let go right then. Do not rationalize, blame, or try to figure it out. Don’t do anything. Just let go immediately, and allow the energy to go back to the highest center of consciousness it can achieve. If you feel shame, let it go.

Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you are willing to close your heart over it. When your heart starts to close just say, “No. I’m not going to close. I’m going to relax. I’m going to let this situation take place and be there with it.” Honor and respect the situation, and deal with it. By all means deal with it. Do the best you can. But deal with it with openness. Deal with it with excitement and enthusiasm. No matter what it is, just let it be the sport of the day. In time, you will forget how to close. No matter what anyone does, no matter what situation takes place, you won’t even feel the tendency to close. You will just embrace life with all your heart and soul.

There is nothing wrong with feeling the energies of fear, jealousy, or attraction. It’s not your fault that such energies exist. All the attractions, repulsions, thoughts, and feelings don’t make any difference. They don’t make you pure or impure. They are not you. You are the one who’s watching, and that one is pure consciousness. Don’t think you’d be free if you just didn’t have these kinds of feelings. It’s not true. If you can be free even though you’re having these kinds of feelings, then you’re really free—because there will always be something.

You said to your mind, "I want everyone to like me. I don't want anyone to speak badly of me. I want everything I say and do to be acceptable and pleasing to everyone. I don't want anyone to hurt me. I don't want anything to happen that I don't like. And I want everything to happen that I do like." Then you said, "Now mind, figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it day and night." And of course your mind said, "I'm on the job, I will work on it constantly.

Again, you have a subject-object relationship with your thoughts. You are the subject, and thoughts are just another object you can be aware of. You are not your thoughts. You are simply aware of your thoughts.

In fact, your thoughts have far less impact on this world than you would like to think. If you’re willing to be objective and watch all your thoughts, you will see that the vast majority of them have no relevance.

Real spiritual growth happens when there is only one of you inside. There’s not a part that’s scared and another part that’s protecting the part that’s scared. All parts are unified. Because there is no part of you that you’re not willing to see, the mind is no longer divided into the conscious and subconscious. Everything you see inside is just something you see inside.

You must not be afraid of rejection, or of how you would feel if you got sick, or if someone died, or if something else went wrong. You cannot spend your life avoiding things that are not actually happening, or everything will become negative. All you will end up seeing is how much can potentially go wrong. Do you have any idea how many things can cause inner pain and disturbance?

Ultimately, every change in your energy flow, whether it’s agitation of the mind or shifts in the heart, will be what reminds you that you are back there noticing. Now what used to hold you down becomes what wakes you up.

Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it. When your heart starts to close, just say, “No. I’m not going to close. I’m going to relax. I’m going to let this situation take place and be there with it.” Honor and respect the situation, and deal with it. By all means deal with it. Do the best you can. But deal with it with openness. Deal with it with excitement and enthusiasm. No matter what it is, just let it be the sport of the day. In time,

Come to know the one who watches the voice, and you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation.

Most people just go from day to day protecting themselves and making sure nothing goes too wrong.

The truth is, everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything.

the only thing there is to get from life is the growth that comes from experiencing it.

The truth is, everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that’s the only time everything will be okay.

What it means to live spiritually is to not participate in this struggle. It means that the events that happen in the moment belong to the moment. They don’t belong to you.

When you just look without creating thoughts, your consciousness is effortlessly aware of, and fully comprehends, all that it sees. Consciousness

How did we come up with the notion that life is not okay just the way it is, or that it won’t be okay the way it will be?

It’s all about relaxing. If you’re using your will to relax, you can’t use your inner hands to push energy away or grab onto it.

In the name of attempting to hold the world together, you’re really just trying to hold yourself together.

Consciousness is the highest word you will ever utter. There is nothing higher or deeper than consciousness.

You simply realize that defining what you need in order to stay open actually ends up limiting you.

If you want permanent peace, permanent joy, and permanent happiness, you have to get through to the other side of the inner turmoil.

What you’ll find is that the only thing you really want from life is to feel enthusiasm, joy, and love. If you can feel that all the time, then who cares what happens outside?

If you decide that you're going to be happy from now on for the rest of your life, you will not only be happy, you will become enlightened. Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is. This is truly a spiritual path, and it as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist.

Spirituality begins when you decide that you’ll never stop trying. Spirituality is the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes. It’s an infinite journey based upon going beyond yourself every minute of every day for the rest of your life.

A lot of people don’t feel their heart very much. They are so used to focusing on their mind that they don’t notice the shifts in the heart until those shifts are too strong to ignore. Emotions are messy and much too sensitive, so people suppress them.

As long as you are defining what you like and what you don’t like, you will open and close. You are actually defining your limits. You are allowing your mind to create triggers that open and close you. Let go of that. Dare to be different. Enjoy all of life.

you will see that the vast majority of them have no relevance. They have no effect on anything or anybody, except you. They are simply making you feel better or worse about what is going on now, what has gone on in the past, or what might go on in the future.

For instance, somebody says something, and you start to feel the energy get a little strange inside. You will actually start to feel a tightening. That is your cue that it’s time to grow. It’s not time to defend yourself, because you don’t want the part of you that you would be defending. If you don’t want it, let it go. You

Once you clearly see the disturbed part, then ask, “Who is it that sees this? Who notices this inner disturbance?” Asking this is the solution to your every problem. The very fact that you can see the disturbance means that you are not it. The process of seeing something requires a subject-object relationship. The subject is called “The Witness” because it is the one who sees what’s happening.

You can wake up in the morning, look forward to the day, and not worry about what will happen. Your daily life can be like a vacation. Work can be fun; family can be fun; you can just enjoy all of it. That does not mean you don’t do your best; you just have fun doing your best. Then, at night when you go to sleep, you let it all go. You just live your life without getting uptight and worrying about it. You actually live life instead of fearing or fighting it.

Most people can hardly imagine what it would be like to be at peace with inner disturbance. But if you do not learn to be comfortable with it, you will devote your life to avoiding it. If you feel insecurity, it's just a feeling. You can handle a feelin. If you feel embarrassed, it's just a feeling. It's just a part of creation. If you feel jealousy and your heart burns, just look at it objectively, like you would a mild bruise. It's a thing in the universe that is passing through your system. Laugh at it, have fun with it, but don't be afraid of it. It cannot touch you unless you touch it.

understand this, imagine what would happen if you started feeling tremendous love for all creatures, for every plant, for every animal, and for all the beauties of nature. Imagine if every child seemed like your own, and every person you saw looked like a beautiful flower, with its own color, its own expression, shape, and sounds. As you went deeper and deeper, you would start noticing a phenomenal thing—you are no longer judging. The process of judging has simply stopped. There is just appreciating and honoring. Where there used to be judging, there is now respecting, loving, and cherishing. To differentiate is to judge. To see, to experience, and to honor is to participate in life instead of standing back and judging it. When

long have you been hiding in there struggling to keep it all together? Any time anything goes wrong in the protective model you built about yourself, you defend and rationalize in order to get it back together. Your mind does not stop struggling until you’ve processed the event or somehow made it go away. People feel their very existence is at stake, and they will fight and argue until they get control back. This is all because we have attempted to build solidity where there is none. Now we have to fight to keep it together. The problem is, there is no way out that way. There is no peace and there is no winning in that struggle. You were told not to build your house upon sand. Well, this is the ultimate sand. In fact, you built your house in empty space. If you continue to cling to what you built, you will have to continually and perpetually defend yourself. You will have to keep everybody and everything straight in order to reconcile your conceptual model with reality. It’s a constant struggle to keep it together.

You are not the pain you feel, nor are you the part that periodically stresses out. None of these disturbances have anything to do with you. You are the one who notices these things. Because your consciousness is separate and aware of these things, you can free yourself. To free yourself of your inner thorns, you simply stop playing with them.

Once the energy is no longer blocked and is flowing freely, personal needs are no longer your motivation. Your actions are the expression of love and gratitude for life. Your whole life becomes an act of service.

How do you free yourself? In the deepest sense, you free yourself by finding yourself. You are not the pain you feel, nor are you the part that periodically stresses out. None of these disturbances have anything to do with you. You are the one who notices these things. Because your consciousness is separate and aware of these things, you can free yourself. To free yourself of your inner thorns, you simply stop playing with them.

You should be experiencing the life that’s happening to you, not the one you wish was happening. Don’t waste a moment of life trying to make other things happen; appreciate the moments you are given. Don’t you understand that every minute you’re a step closer to death? This is how to live your life. You live it as though you were on the verge of death, because you are.

You just need to deeply relax and stop fighting with yourself. At that point something amazing is going to happen: All the energy that was pulling you down and out changes direction. It begins to lift you in and up. This is the transmutation of the energy, and it is real.

If you truly want to grow spiritually, you’ll realize that keeping your stuff is keeping you trapped. Eventually you’ll want out, at any cost. You will then realize that life is actually trying to help you. Life is surrounding you with people and situations that stimulate

What if you knew that this evening would be the last time you’d get to see them? Imagine that an angel comes down and tells you, “Straighten up your affairs. You will not awake from your sleep tonight. You’re coming to me.” Then you’d know that every person you see that day, you’d be seeing for the last time. How would you feel? How would you interact with them?

You have a wellspring of beautiful energy inside of you. When you are open you feel it; when you are closed you don’t. This flow of energy comes from the depth of your being. It’s been called by many names. In ancient Chinese medicine, it is called Chi. In yoga, it is called Shakti. In the West, it is called Spirit. Call it anything you want. All the great spiritual traditions talk about your spiritual energy; they just give it different names. That spiritual energy is what you’re experiencing when love rushes up into your heart. That is what you’re experiencing when you’re enthused by something and all this high energy comes up inside of you. You

process to take place inside, that blocked energy will be released. When it’s released and allowed to flow up, it becomes purified and merges back into your center of consciousness. This energy then strengthens you instead of weakening you. You begin to go up and up, higher and higher, and you learn the secret of the ascent. The secret of the ascent is to never look down—always look up.

Elric: We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocation of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things. John Sheridan: Such as? Elric: The true secrets, the important things. Fourteen words to make someone fall in love with you forever. Seven words to make them go without pain. How to say good-bye to a friend who is dying. How to be poor. How to be rich. How to rediscover dreams when the world has stolen them. That is why we are going away—to preserve that knowledge. Sheridan: From what? Elric: There is a storm coming, a black and terrible storm. We would not have our knowledge lost or used to ill purpose. From this place we will launch ourselves into the stars. With luck, you will never see our kind again in your lifetime. I know you have your orders, Captain. Detain us if you wish. But I cannot tell you where we are going. I can only ask you to trust us.

You can live a life completely free from the fears of the psyche. You just have to know how to do it. Let’s take smoking as an example. It is not hard to understand how to stop smoking. The key word is “stop.” It really doesn’t matter what patches you use; when it is all said and done, you simply must stop.

You should know about this energy because it’s yours. It’s your birthright, and it’s unlimited. You can call upon it any time you want. It has nothing to do with age. Some eighty-year-old people have the energy and enthusiasm of a child. They can work long hours for seven days a week. It’s just energy. Energy doesn’t get old, it doesn’t get tired, and it doesn’t need food. What it needs is openness and receptivity. This energy is equally available to everybody. The sun does not shine differently on different people. If you’re good, it shines on you. If you did something bad, it shines on you. It’s the same with the inner energy. The only difference is that with the inner energy, you have the ability to close up inside and block it. When you close, the energy stops flowing. When you open, all the energy rushes up inside of you. True spiritual teachings are about this energy and how to open to it.

Relationships are a great way to work with yourself. Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people, rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. If you’re not trying to make people fit into your preconceived notions of what you like and dislike, you will find that relationships are not really that difficult. If you’re not so busy judging and resisting people based upon what is blocked inside of you, you will find that they are much easier to get along with—and so are you. Letting go of yourself is the simplest way to get closer to others.

If you challenge yourself to live as though it were your last week, your mind may come up with all kinds of suppressed desires. It may start talking about all the things that you’ve always wanted to do, and you may think you had better go do them. You will soon see that’s not the answer. You have to understand that it is your attempt to get special experiences from life that makes you miss the actual experience of life. Life is not something you get; it’s something you experience. Life exists with or without you. It has been going on for billions of years. You simply get the honor of seeing a tiny slice of it. If you’re busy trying to get something, you will miss the slice you’re actually experiencing.

It turns out that the life of protecting yourself from your problem becomes a perfect reflection of the problem itself. You didn’t solve anything. If you don’t solve the root cause of the problem, but instead, attempt to protect yourself from the problem, it ends up running your life. You end up so psychologically fixated on the problem that you can’t see the forest for the trees. You actually feel that because you’ve minimized the pain of the problem, you’ve solved the problem. But it is not solved. All you did was devote your life to avoiding it. It is now the center of your universe. It’s all there is.

You will get to a point in your growth where you understand that if you protect yourself, you will never be free. It’s that simple. Because you’re scared, you have locked yourself within your house and pulled down all the shades. Now it’s dark and you want to feel the sunlight, but you can’t. It’s impossible. If you close and protect yourself, you are locking this scared, insecure person within your heart. You will never be free that way. Ultimately, if you protect yourself perfectly, you will never grow. All your habits and idiosyncrasies will stay the same. Life becomes stagnant when people protect their stored issues.

Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is. You don’t have to learn Sanskrit or read any scriptures. You don’t have to renounce the world. You just have to really mean it when you say that you choose to be happy. And you have to mean it regardless of what happens. This is truly a spiritual path, and it is as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist.

You are living on a planet spinning around the middle of outer space, and you’re either worrying about your blemishes, the scratch on your new car, or the fact that you burped in public. It’s not healthy. If your physical body were that sensitive, you would say you were sick. But our society considers psychological sensitivities normal. Because most of us don’t have to worry about food, clothing, or shelter, we have the luxury of worrying about a spot on our pants, or laughing too loud, or saying something wrong.

How can you define yourself as the things that happened to you? You were aware of your existence before they happened. You are the one who is in there doing all this, seeing all this, and experiencing all this. You do not have to cling to your experiences in the name of building yourself. This is a false self you are building inside. It is just a concept of yourself that you hide behind.

When you pull back behind the mind, you, the awareness, are not involved in the process of thinking. Thinking is something you watch the mind do. You are just in there, aware that you are aware. You are the indwelling being, the consciousness. It is not something that you have to think about; you are it. You can watch the mind being neurotic and not get involved. That is all you have to do to unplug the disturbed mind. The mind runs because you are giving it the power of your attention. Withdraw your attention, and the thinking mind falls away. Begin

It’s really just the most natural thing in the world. Here I am. Here I always was. It’s like you have been on the couch watching TV, but you were so totally immersed in the show that you forgot where you were. Someone shook you, and now you’re back to the awareness that you’re sitting on the couch watching TV. Nothing else changed. You simply stopped projecting your sense of self onto that particular object of consciousness. You woke up. That is spirituality.

If you’ve ever really loved anybody, then you know what true love means. It means that you love them more than you love yourself. If you truly love someone, your love sees past their humanness. It embraces their whole being, including past wrongs and current shortcomings. It is like the unconditional love of a mother. A mother devotes every moment of her life to a child who is physically or mentally challenged. She thinks the child is beautiful. She doesn’t focus on the shortcomings; in fact, she doesn’t even see them as shortcomings. What if that is how God looks upon His creation? Then you’ve lost out if you’ve been told otherwise. Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you’ve been taught that you’re being judged. Because you’ve been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open your connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart.

Now do you understand why Christ said the Kingdom is within you? It is the very essence of your being. Your heights are incomprehensible, and you are perfectly capable of doing this work. Your inner states will just keep getting higher and higher as you keep letting go. The fact that you are even interested in these teachings means you’ve changed the world. You who do the work of liberating yourself are to be deeply respected. With great love and respect, Michael A. Singer

Any time you’re having trouble with something, think of death. Let’s say you’re the jealous type, and you can’t stand anyone being close to your mate. Think about what will happen when you’re no longer here. Is it really all that romantic that your loved one should live alone with no one to care for them? If you can get past your personal issues, you’ll find that you want the person you love to be happy and to have a full and beautiful life. Since that is what you want for them, why are you bothering them now just for talking to someone? It shouldn’t take death to challenge you to live at your highest level. Why wait until everything is taken from you before you learn to dig down deep inside yourself to reach your highest potential? A wise person affirms, “If with one breath all of this can change, then I want to live at the highest level while I’m alive. I’m going to stop bothering the people I love. I’m going to live life from the deepest part of my being.

When your heart starts to close, just say, “No. I’m not going to close. I’m going to relax. I’m going to let this situation take place and be there with it.” Honor and respect the situation, and deal with it. By all means deal with it. Do the best you can. But deal with it with openness. Deal with it with excitement and enthusiasm. No matter what it is, just let it be the sport of the day. In time, you will find that you forget how to close. No matter what anyone does, no matter what situation takes place, you won’t even feel the tendency to close. You will just embrace life with all your heart and soul. Once you’ve attained this very high state, your energy level will be phenomenal.

Let’s say you’re living life without the thought of death, and the Angel of Death comes to you and says, “Come, it’s time to go.” You say, “But no. You’re supposed to give me a warning so I can decide what I want to do with my last week. I’m supposed to get one more week.” Do you know what Death will say to you? He’ll say, “My God! I gave you fifty-two weeks this past year alone. And look at all the other weeks I’ve given you. Why would you need one more? What did you do with all those?” If asked that, what are you going to say? How will you answer? “I wasn’t paying attention… I didn’t think it mattered.” That’s a pretty amazing thing to say about your life. Death is a great teacher.

You will not be able to solve anything outside until you own how the situation affects you inside. Problems are generally not what they appear to be. When you get clear enough, you will realize that the real problem is that there is something inside of you that can have a problem with almost anything. The first step is to deal with that part of you. This involves a change from “outer solution consciousness” to “inner solution consciousness.” You have to break the habit of thinking that the solution to your problems is to rearrange things outside. The only permanent solution to your problems is to go inside and let go of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality.

Yoga is not really about getting your body healthy, although it does that too. Yoga is about the knowledge that will help you out of your predicament, the knowledge that can free you. Once you’ve made this freedom the meaning of your life, there are spiritual practices that can help you. These practices are what you do with your time in order to free yourself from yourself. You will eventually catch on that you have to distance yourself from your psyche. You do this by setting the direction of your life when you’re clear and not letting the wavering mind deter you. Your will is stronger than the habit of listening to that voice. There is nothing you can’t do. Your will is supreme over all of this.

If it took 13.8 billion years for the moment in front of you to get there, and it took 13.8 billion years for you to end up in front of that moment, every moment is indeed a match made in heaven. Nobody else is standing there experiencing exactly what you're experiencing. Truth is, no one ever did, and no one ever will. That exact moment will never be here again. All moments just keep passing through time and space. You are being given a unique show that took billions of years to create—it's right in front of you, and you're complaining about it.

You actually feel that because you’ve minimized the pain of the problem, you’ve solved the problem. But it is not solved. All you did was devote your life to avoiding it. It is now the center of your universe. It’s all there is. In order to apply the analogy of the thorn to your whole life, we will use loneliness as an example. Let’s say you have a very deep sense of inner loneliness. It’s so deep that you have trouble sleeping at night, and during the day it makes you very sensitive. You’re susceptible to feeling sharp pangs in your heart that cause quite a disturbance. You have trouble staying focused on your job, and you have trouble with everyday interactions. What’s more, when you’re very lonely it’s often painfully difficult to

The logical questions become: Why are you storing all this stuff inside you? And if you’re going to store stuff inside, why not make it nice stuff? People collect all sorts of things as hobbies. Some collect spoons, teacups, stamps, or coins from all over the world. But you had a brilliant idea for a hobby—let’s collect bad experiences. That’s what you did: “I’m going to collect every bad experience I ever had and keep it inside me so it can bother me for the rest of my life.” How can that work out well? If you keep doing it, you’re going to collect more and more bad experiences, and your life will get heavier and heavier.

You must look inside yourself and determine that from now on pain is not a problem. It is just a thing in the universe. Somebody can say something to you that can cause your heart to react and catch fire, but then it passes. It’s a temporary experience. Most people can hardly imagine what it would be like to be at peace with inner disturbance. But if you do not learn to be comfortable with it, you will devote your life to avoiding it. If you feel insecurity, it’s just a feeling. You can handle a feeling. If you feel embarrassed, it’s just a feeling. It’s just a part of creation. If you feel jealousy and your heart burns, just look at it objectively, like you would a mild bruise. It’s a thing in the universe that is passing through your system. Laugh at it, have fun with it, but don’t be afraid of it. It cannot touch you unless you touch it.

True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection. This is done by constantly remembering that you are the one inside that notices the voice talking. That is the way out. The one inside who is aware that you are always talking to yourself about yourself is always silent. It is a doorway to the depths of your being. To be aware that you are watching the voice talk is to stand on the threshold of a fantastic inner journey. If used properly, the same mental voice that has been a source of worry, distraction, and general neurosis can become the launching ground for true spiritual awakening.

The purpose of spiritual evolution is to remove the blockages that cause your fear. The alternative is to protect your blockages so that you don’t have to feel fear. To do this, however, you will have to try to control everything in order to avoid your inner issues. It’s hard to understand how we decided that avoiding our inner issues is an intelligent thing to do, but everybody’s doing it. Everyone is saying, “I will do every single thing I can to keep my stuff. If you say anything that disturbs me, I will defend myself. I’ll yell at you and make you take it back. If you cause any disturbance inside of me, I will make you so sorry.” In other words, if somebody does something that stimulates fear, you think they did something wrong. You then do everything you can to make sure they never do it again. First you defend yourself, and then you protect yourself. You do whatever you can to keep from feeling disturbance.

What it means to live spiritually is to not participate in this struggle. It means that the events that happen in the moment belong to the moment. They don’t belong to you. They have nothing to do with you. You must stop defining yourself in relationship to them, and just let them come and go. Don’t allow events to leave impressions inside of you. If you find yourself thinking about them later on, just let go. If an event happens that doesn’t fit your conceptual model, and you see yourself struggling and rationalizing to make it fit, just notice what you’re doing. An event in the universe didn’t match your model and it’s causing disturbance inside of you. If you will simply notice this, you will find that it is actually breaking up your model. You’ll get to the point where you like this because you don’t want to keep your model. You’ll define this as good because you are no longer willing to put any energy into building and solidifying your façade. Instead, you will actually permit the things that disturb your model to act as the dynamite to break it up and free you. This is what it means to live spiritually.

Are you really going to continue making your life so difficult? In essence, you are causing yourself to be unhappy, then you’re going outside and demanding that the world somehow make you happy. The world cannot make you happy while you’re inside making yourself unhappy. It’s that simple. You have to work on letting go of the root cause of suffering. The spiritual path is always about letting go of yourself, and that means dealing with the blocked energies. The blocked energies inside are going to build up and need release if you don’t deal with them. These energies may release in the form of anger, verbal or physical fighting, and other bursts of uncontrolled behavior. When you allow the energies to release unconsciously like this, you’re not in charge. The energies will tend to follow the path of least resistance, as determined by the samskaras. When you allow this to happen, the uncontrolled energy carves channels within you that will make it easier to flow that way again. The energy flow becomes a habit. Not only is “losing it” unhealthy because of what you may say or do outside, but you also increased the probability of losing it in the same way again. This can cause all kinds of trouble. Any time you’re not in charge in there, there’s going to be trouble. It’s that simple.

I remember once, in talking to Mr. Burne-Jones about modern science, his saying to me, ‘the more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint: their wings are my protest in favour of the immortality of the soul.’ But these are the intellectual speculations that underlie art. Where in the arts themselves are we to find that breadth of human sympathy which is the condition of all noble work; where in the arts are we to look for what Mazzini would call the social ideas as opposed to the merely personal ideas? By virtue of what claim do I demand for the artist the love and loyalty of the men and women of the world? I think I can answer that. Whatever spiritual message an artist brings to his aid is a matter for his own soul. He may bring judgment like Michael Angelo or peace like Angelico; he may come with mourning like the great Athenian or with mirth like the singer of Sicily; nor is it for us to do aught but accept his teaching, knowing that we cannot smite the bitter lips of Leopardi into laughter or burden with our discontent Goethe’s serene calm. But for warrant of its truth such message must have the flame of eloquence in the lips that speak it, splendour and glory in the vision that is its witness, being justified by one thing only - the flawless beauty and perfect form of its expression: this indeed being the social idea, being the meaning of joy in art. Not laughter where none should laugh, nor the calling of peace where there is no peace; not in painting the subject ever, but the pictorial charm only, the wonder of its colour, the satisfying beauty of its design.

Dr. Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West was born in New York City on October 6, 1924. He died of cancer on January 2, 1999. Dr. West served in the U.S. Army during World War II and received his M.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1948, prior to Air Force LSD and MKULTRA contracts carried out there. He did his psychiatry residency from 1949 to 1952 at Cornell (an MKULTRA Institution and site of the MKULTRA cutout The Human Ecology Foundation). From 1948 to 1956 he was Chief, Psychiatry Service, 3700th USAF Hospital, Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas Psychiatrist-in-Chief, University of Oklahoma Consultant in Psychiatry, Oklahoma City Veterans Administration Hospital Consultant in Psychiatry. [...] Dr. West was co-editor of a book entitled Hallucinations, Behavior, Experience, and Theory[285]. One of the contributors to this book, Theodore Sarbin, Ph.D., is a member of the Scientific and Professional Advisory Board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). Other members of the FMSF Board include Dr. Martin Orne, Dr. Margaret Singer, Dr. Richard Ofshe, Dr. Paul McHugh, Dr. David Dinges, Dr. Harold Lief, Emily Carota Orne, and Dr. Michael Persinger. The connections of these individuals to the mind control network are analyzed in this and the next two chapters. Dr. Sarbin[272] (see Ross, 1997) believes that multiple personality disorder is almost always a therapist-created artifact and does not exist as a naturally-occurring disorder, a view adhered to by Dr. McHugh[188], [189], Dr. Ofshe[213] and other members of the FMSF Board[191], [243]. Dr. Ofshe is a colleague and co-author of Dr. Singer[214], who is in turn a colleague and co author of Dr. West[329]. Denial of the reality of multiple personality by these doctors in the mind control network, who are also on the FMSF Scientific and Professional Advisory Board, could be disinformation. The disinformation could be amplified by attacks on specialists in multiple personality as CIA conspiracy lunatics[3], [79], [191], [213]. The FMSF is the only organization in the world that has attacked the reality of multiple personality in an organized, systematic fashion. FMSF Professional and Advisory Board Members publish most of the articles and letters to editors of psychiatry journals hostile to multiple personality disorder.