Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Michael Singer: “I Can Handle This”—A Powerful Mantra for Modern Life, Why We Are Addicted to Our Own Suffering, and How to Release Everything That’s Hurting Us.

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

In this mind-expanding conversation of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Michael A. Singer—legendary author of bestsellers The Untethered Soul, Living Untethered, and The Surrender Experiment, and founder of Temple of the Universe—returns to reveal the real truth behind spiritual awakening...and why most people are getting it wrong. If you’ve ever wondered what a spiritual awakening actually looks like on a practical, everyday level, this is the breakdown you’ve been waiting for. Michael shares a step-by-step framework for building your spiritual identity, and explains why awakenings mean nothing unless you can properly integrate them into your daily life. You’ll learn why resilience is the #1 key to coping with modern stress, and why every authentic spiritual teacher puts compassion at the forefront of their teachings. Michael reveals how compassion and acceptance are deeply connected—and how this powerful combination leads to cooperation, unity, and humanity’s highest good. We also dive into the science behind spirituality, exploring the brain states of acceptance vs. resistance, and how eliminating the distractions of early emotions and personal narratives can open the door to higher consciousness. Michael even explains why we don’t matter nearly as much as we think we do—and why that realization is actually the most liberating truth of all. You’ll hear his bold perspective on why we must fix ourselves before trying to fix the world, his belief that science is finally catching up to spirituality, and why the power of awe might be the missing ingredient in your spiritual evolution. Michael also breaks down the concept of the higher self, how to access it, and what it truly feels like to live untethered and surrender to the universe (spoiler: it DOESN’T mean blindly accepting everything that happens—he explains the difference). Plus: his surprising proof that rich people are just as unhappy as everyone else, and his heartfelt message for beginners stepping onto the spiritual path for the first time. And for the first time ever, he shares an exclusive announcement and preview of his upcoming book, along with his mind-bending thoughts on where consciousness really lies… and what happens to consciousness when we die. If you’re ready to challenge everything you think you know about spirituality, identity, awakening, and the nature of existence itself, this is the episode of MBB you can’t afford to miss. Get 20% off all IQ Bar products - plus free shipping by texting BREAKDOWN to 64000. Go to shopremi.com/BREAK and use code BREAK at checkout for 50% off. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com/breakdown Visit https://untetheredsoul.com/ for more information about Michael Singer. Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You have stored inside of you a lot of garbage. And the truth is, you put it in there, and only you can let it out. The great ones I've found out, you need to expand your mind and your consciousness. If you can't change and bring down something more beautiful, I expect anybody else to. The spiritual visionary Michael Singer is back.

He's spent 50 years teaching us how to wake up and stop fighting with the universe. What does it mean to tap into a higher self? Great mantra would be, I can handle this. You have to start by saying, I am capable of accepting reality. The more that's happening in the world, the more it also seems that people can't handle it. Every single person has totally different experiences. So therefore, the way they think is going to be unique.

Can I handle that everybody's different? I've learned to be open enough to accept reality. It doesn't mean I don't do anything about it, but here's the difference. If I'm not okay, I guarantee you what I'm doing is struggling to change the outside, and I'm acting based on the reaction to that, as opposed to, I've learned to be at peace, calm, open, centered, and now how can I actually help the situation, not help me handle the situation? When we tell people to be an acceptance of something, it doesn't mean you have to like it. You're sitting on a little planet of which 1.3 million Earths fit inside the sun.

You think that you matter so much that everything should be the way you want. When your consciousness ceases to stare at your thoughts, your emotions, your mind, it's liberated. But that's a very high state. So in the meantime, you learn to practice compassion. The world changes one person at a time, and that person's you. Hi, I'm I'm Bielic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown.

Today we have a very, very unique opportunity to view our world in an entirely different way. Not just the world that we live in, but the world that we live in in our heads. We're going to be exploring the notion of a universal consciousness that dictates all of the things that we see and feel the ways we react. but so many of us are looking to react less and respond more. So many of us are feeling like maybe there's something missing about the thoughts that I'm having and the way that I interpret them. What does it mean to tap into a higher self? What does it mean to have access to some sort of divine consciousness?

If all of this seems like too much to handle, we're going to give you the most grounded and most practical stroll through your mind. The only person who can do this with us is Michael Singer. Now, Michael Singer is the author of The Untethered Soul. We spoke to him about three years ago. He's also written Living Untethered and the Surrender Experiment. He had a deep inner awakening in 1971 where he spontaneously realized that there was a voice in his head

that was watching every single, that was going on. And it's led to an entire life of teaching people how to go about their lives to be in touch with something that he believes has already been awakened for all of us. We hear so much about the term awakening, spiritual awakening, becoming more aware. And what Michael teaches is that we are all already awake. We have access to infinite consciousness. the ability to feel at one with everything, to have clarity, to know how to navigate our lives, and yet we limit that.

We reduce our own ability to be connected with the source of all that there is. And in case this feels heady or out there, it's actually one of the most practical conversations that I have heard Michael Singer have, because we ask about things like belief systems, religious structures. We ask about pain.

We ask about challenges. We ask about what if I don't even have a framework for a spiritual identity. In addition, Michael decided to share with us something that we had no idea about. He gives us a sneak peek into what is going to be his next book, which will be coming out in March 26th. He reads us an excerpt and lets us into what is next

for all of us on our next. spiritual evolution. Without further ado, we are so excited to bring back. Michael Singer to the breakdown. Break it down. Hi, Maya. How are you? So excited to see you again. We had the pleasure of speaking to you about three years ago, and not only was it one of our most viewed, most beloved, and most shared episodes that we've ever done, but it was personally one of our, very early conversations that we started to have, which has become a lot more of the mainstay of our podcast, talking about spirituality, about intuition. You really opened up, you know, so many doors for us, and we're so grateful to get to speak to you again. So thank you. Since we first spoke to

you, we've heard a lot in our culture shift in terms of people talking about waking up or having spiritual awakenings or people feeling that they're gaining access to parts of themselves that they never did. Can you describe a little bit either through your own journey or through your work? What does it mean to wake up? What does it mean to have these kinds of awakenings? What does it look like? That's very beautiful. And, you know, I've been doing this for 50 years more. And so I've matured at many different levels, times, and so on. And what I now see, and I, of course, work with a lot of people, is we're all awake, we're beyond awake. Like, but I'm not enlightened, you know that's right, but my understanding and experiences show that we are really connected, as they say,

we're connected to God, we're connected to the consciousness of the universe. So why don't we experience that? Because you're talking about waking up, I always say, why? Why are you not awake instead of what do I need to do to wake up? What's the light to wake up? I know you are a great being. Every one of you, your great beings connected to unbelievable consciousness. So why don't I experience that? And the short story is because you've had experience in your life that have bothered you,

that focused your consciousness, distracted this universal wide consciousness down to a given point of your thoughts, your emotions, and what's happened to you, the ego, right? It pulled it down to that. In a short form, waking up means kind of freeing yourself from that getting lost in the ego, getting lost in your personal self, and then you start, the more Christ said you must die to be reborn. That's what he meant, right? You die of the personal self, and the next thing you know, you're feeling spirit,

you're feeling Shakti. I use the word Shakti. I know you know it. All right. And so you're feeling this upliftment of energy. They call that waking up. Maybe you have visions. Maybe you literally go very, very deep and have a merger.

You know, people do all kinds of things. But they all come back. That's the problem, all right? So my interest is to wake up and stay woken up. At whatever level, I'm not interested in quick little fixes and drugs and different stuff, all right? It's just, why are you not there now? and the answer is because you stored stuff inside of you over the course of your life, and you know you have, right?

Suppression, repression, denial, resistance, whatever you want. So that when things come in from outside and they're not comfortable in here when they get in, you tend to push them away. You understand that? Rationalization, this, that, whatever. What you're literally doing is saying, I can't handle this energy.

I don't like this energy. I don't want it coming into me. I don't want it in me. forget coming into me. You can make it coming with a thought. It doesn't be an experience, right? And what we tend to do, it's natural, but it's not good, right? It's to push it away.

Anything you ever pushed away is still in there. If you did not at some point learn to let it go, it's, ah, I don't care, it's fine. I forgive you really, right? But if you held it in there, you pushed it away, it comes back up, and you know it does. And then you push it away again, all right? So that's what it means to not be. awake. And there's different levels, of course, all right? You're like you're lost in yourself. Your consciousness is lost in staring at Miami and Jonathan. Okay, that's where we live our

lives. It's just the reality. So when people are waking up and people are realizing, wait a minute, I don't need all this junk inside of me. I don't need to control the whole world for me to be okay. Okay? I can learn to work on myself, which is part of waking up. I can learn to work on my inner self so that I can handle things. That's what I found it boils down to. Last time we did an interview with Oprah for Living on Tether, which we worked with that book, right? She said, you know, Michael, you know what a great mantra would be for the Western mind? I can handle this.

Instead of, I can't handle this. Why did you do that? I can't handle this, right? It's, I can handle this. The more you can handle what's coming in, the less you have. have to push it away. The less you don't have to push it away, the more it actually makes through. Like white lines in the road, you drive by, they pass by. Well, the more you grow and evolve, it really is a form of evolution of the consciousness, that it can handle these things,

then that is what they mean by waking up, by having spiritual experiences, and so on. But remember, my teachings, and what I learned is the key isn't your experiences. Because I had a great experience two years ago. Well, then that was two years ago. Where are you now? Why are not there all the time? Because you haven't learned to let go of the garbage. I'm sorry to call it that, but it is, right? Things from the past that aren't happening now should not be bothering you. They're not real. They're not happening. You held them in your mind. All right. So there's a short, not short. There's a foundation of our discussion of what it means to wake up. My Ambialx breakdown is supported by Superpower.

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Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiolics breakdown to help support the show. We're hearing it more in kind of the cultural vernacular. You know, there's workshops. And yes, everybody's doing, you know, we live in Los Angeles. Everybody's doing psilocybin and going on ayahuasca journeys and everybody wants to get connected and all these things. So part of me wanted to ask, you know, what do you see is happening that's leading to that?

But the other side of it is also many of us seem to be devolving in that the more that's happening in the world, the more it also seems that people can't handle it. Meaning with politics, with world events, you hear more and more people saying, I need to be on medication. My doctor doesn't know what to do with me. You know, can you talk about each of these evolutions, both an elevating one and whatever evolution is happening that's making people less resilient? to being able to be in touch with that. Of course. And they're the same, by the way. Okay?

It's like a scale. How far negative, how far positive is the same spectrum, all right? So the reason people are, I don't know what you use the word devolving, but the reason they are getting lost and getting angry and getting tense and anxious and all that kind of stuff, right? It's just they're not letting go. They're sitting here saying, I can't handle this. As they're saying, I can't handle this.

They can't handle this. I can't know what's going on with racism. I can't handle with this. I can't handle. I can't handle this. All right. Stop the world. I want to get off.

Okay? Well, that's going backwards. The more you resist, the more you say, and by the way, when you say, I can't handle it, what you're really saying is, unless it's the way I want, I can't handle it. Right? If it be the way I want, I can handle it just fine. Right? So you're out there getting tense, manipulating, controlling, intensely,

right? And it gets worse and worse. Because the more you shove down, the worse it is. Right. So it's really the up is when you're letting go, not saying I can't handle it. I better go out there and manipulate everybody and everything to get it the way I want. But you're sitting here saying, I can handle it. How? By working on myself inside. When you stop working yourself inside, you stop understanding that the reality of what's happening is your consciousness looking at you. right i i i often talk about and i don't know if anybody gets it right how small are you i don't know you're a great being very popular we love you so much right you're sitting on a little planet of which 1.3 million earths fit inside the sun did you know that 1.3 million earths

at the sun and how much of that planet do you take up this tiny minuscule thing and yet you think that you matter so much that everything should be the way you want Waking up means, hello, right? That's 1.3 million Earth's inside the sun, and there's 300 billion stars in your galaxy. So why can't we just say, hey, I came down to the planet, I'm going to do a few trucks around the sun, and it's cool. Things happen. I can handle them. I can work to raise them.

I can work to make them where I feel a world would be a better place if I do this, but not starting with, I can't. handle this. So that's why the world is more and more, I don't know the world, right, but a lot of people are more and more getting closed. What does closed mean? I can't handle it. I don't want to experience it. Push it away. What does open mean? Okay, okay, fine. It's raining. I didn't want it to rain. I can handle it. The driver in front of me is driving 15 miles an hour below the speed limit. I'm in a rush. Okay. I'm on a little ball, spend the middle of nowhere is scooting around. I can handle it. That's the spectrum. When the internet and all the difference is happening, there's so much more exposure to everything, so much more communication. So there's so much more for you

not to be able to handle. Okay? And you just have to decide, I can handle it. I can handle it. Okay? I want to push a little bit harder on this because, not because I don't think that there is wisdom here and not because I don't think that this is not the path that I would like to go down. And I think that many would. But when the stakes are raised, you know, many of us live in cities, I'm just going to say it, where, you know, agents are coming in, taking people from their homes, taking people from their places of work, you know, the rights of women and people of color and trans people and LGBTQ community, they're being challenged by the day. And, you know, I keep looking around and saying, why we can't do anything to stop it, right? So I want you to apply this to that, because obviously

you're not saying like, oh, people are being deported unjustly and held in prisons and we never hear from them, just let it go. How do we apply this to that kind of scale, you know, of challenge? It's beautiful. They're beautiful. And I love talking about it. Okay. Do I like all the things that are going on? My personal position as a 60s liberal? Of course not. But what I have found is that resistance doesn't fix anything. So the starting position is, as I keep saying it, okay, is this going on? Yes. What's my choice?

Be able to handle it or don't be able to handle it? If I can't handle it, I get neurotic. I get ulcers. I get upset. I yell at the kids. You understand that? Okay. If I can handle it, which is work, that, okay, things happen in this world that are

terrible, even worse than we just talked about, aren't they? Okay, about the Holocaust and terrible things have happened, okay? But they did happen. So you don't get to choose they didn't. You don't get to rewrite history, all right? You have to start by saying, I am capable of accepting reality. You're a brilliant scientist, my own, right? I am capable of accepting reality. Is it reality of these things you said that are going on? Not should they be going on? Not do I like it. Is it reality that are going on? Okay, you start by saying I can accept reality. I've learned to be open enough to accept reality. Now, once I do that, it doesn't mean I don't do anything about it, but here's the difference, right? If I'm not okay, I guarantee you what I'm doing

is struggling to change the outside so I can be okay. I don't want to be disturbed. I don't want them doing this. I don't want that happening, right? So I have this resistance and problem inside of me and I'm acting based on the reaction to that, as opposed to, I've learned to be at peace, calm, open, centered, okay? And now I can come back down and say, how can I actually help the situation, not help me handle the situation? And I think you understand that a lot of what people are doing, right, is dumping. Right? Do they have the right to, of course. there's terrible things happen in this world, correct? I can't, they do, right?

But you have to be able to work on yourself to be able to handle them, then see what clarity says, how can I help? Maybe a smile will help, right? We talk about people that go through terrible things. How proud do you feel is somebody's going to do a terrible thing and they're handicapped, but they stick your hand out to shake your hand.

They don't show that it's a problem. problem, they handled it, right? If people could handle what's going on, we could get along, right? Because I start by saying, I understand. Psychology says what? Man is the sum of his learned experiences. It's not true. You're the consciousness staring at the psyche that's the sum of a learned experiences, the witness. Okay? Fine. But if people are the sum of the learned experiences, everybody, every single person had totally different experiences. Right or wrong.

Look at all the experiences you've had. No one ever had those. They're completely unique. So therefore, the way they think is going to be unique. You understand that? And the way I think is going to be unique. Is my way right? Of course I'm right.

But they say the same thing because their experiences support what they're thinking because they're the cell of the learned experiences. We're talking deep, right? So you get to the point where it's not about fighting and arguing, it's about, can I handle that everybody's different?

Can I handle that everybody sees it different? And it's understandable if there's some of the learned experiences. And so now, like I said, can you handle it or can't you handle it? And more than that, are you trying to understand compassion? Are you trying to understand

what Christ taught, what Buddha taught, what all the great teachers taught, which is, you without sin throw the first stone. Forgive them, they don't know what they were doing, right? All the teacher are the same, which is, if you come from a personal point of view of this is the sum of my experiences, that's the fishbowl I'm wearing over my head, and it is different

than yours. I'm going to be married 30 years. They are not going to sleep the same as you. They went to work one day, and somebody fired them. They're different when they come back because they had a different experience. And you respect the fact that people have had to have. different experiences, therefore they think differently. Are they different? No, the self is the same. When you can get back there, you start understanding, oh, everybody's looking down with their own

minds, right? But that's a very high state. So in the meantime, you learn to practice compassion, you learn to practice understanding. And if you can't do it, then you're both a great beings, right? How can anybody do it? Right. If you're going to get all upset and have road rage, because somebody's not driving the way you want. Okay, what do you expect to everybody else? And so what I've learned, it comes down to the world changes one person at a time and that person's you.

Right? If you can't change and bring down something more beautiful, something with love, something with clarity and compassion, how do you expect anybody else to? And yelling at them, it's not going to happen. So it comes down to, yes, there are problems out there, serious problems that need to be dealt with, okay? but I would rather have the clear person deal with them

than the angry person, the upset person, the person is saying, when you say I can't handle this, then you don't have the right to handle. You're the wrong person. Here, I have a job for you. Oh, no, I can't do that. Okay, we're somebody else. Well, I think you should talk a little bit

about the brain states that happen in acceptance versus resistance. We know that things calm down. We know that there's opportunity to have more openness, more clarity, more solutions. we don't attack in the same way. When we're resisting, we're in a state of attack. So the person is going to seem like my enemy who has a counterpoint. And that's a lot of what's happening right now is as we resist,

the algorithms feed us opportunity to identify an enemy. And it's that person who is making me uncomfortable because I don't like their perspective. I don't like the experiences that they've had. And we've had other psychologists talk about how the brain changes when we enter a space where we feel okay enough to say, I don't like what's happening, but I can handle it. There's a solution here. And it actually leads to what you said earlier in this interview about us being connected to this larger consciousness system. And I would love for you to expand on

that idea because a lot of people are like, well, I kind of hear about consciousness and I hear about the universe, but like, I don't feel it necessarily. If we can start to paint a picture of the possibility, maybe we'll start to open people's mind to have more of the experience of it and finding those solutions that are available when we calm down. Because as we calm, my experience is that our access to the larger field of information and possibility expands, and we're actually shutting it down and tightening the valve to not be able to have that flow into. to us when we're in this enraged state. So the question, I guess, is can you tell us a little bit more about this infinite consciousness and universe that we're all connected to and the possibilities

in there? I have learned over my years that science and spirituality, and you guys know that, are saying the same thing. They just haven't touched yet, okay? They're close. We're working on it. I know. I usually do get in a discussion, but let's just feel very quickly since you guys are brilliant, right? Here's this world that's coming into me. Right? I often talk about you do know you don't look out through your eyes. You are not looking out through your eyes. Light is bouncing off of the atoms and molecules, reflecting being picked up by your optical sensors, being sent up, you study this, right? What am I telling you? It sent up the optical nerves, right? Hits the brain, right? And what they don't know,

Some do, is that that's not the end of it. The brain is the central CPU, right? But the vibrations that get emanated off the brain, electronic vibrations are called vitties in yoga. Vittis. They're just very subtle vibrations that hit what we call the mental plane. Your mind is not in your brain, right? And it causes to render exactly what came in through your eyes into your mind.

And you're looking at it in there, right? what's happening is light is coming in, just like you're looking at your flashscreen TV, that San Francisco is the wall game. You're not in San Francisco. It's being sent up to nervous, so to speak, wires, and then it's rendering on the flash screen. That is literally happening inside of you right now.

Okay, so there. So basically what happens is when science has studied, but what's actually out there, if I don't really see what's out there, I see what came in. You understand that? Your senses are I-O-ports. their sensors.

Okay? Why? Because we don't see anything. It has to come back into our consciousness. Okay? So scientists have studied what's out there, and I'm going to do it very quickly, because I'm not the expert anyway, believe me, right? And they found out, no, there really are no atoms.

No, there really are no protons and neutrons. There's this field. Oh, my God, there's this field in omnipresent. An omnipresent field of, we want to say what it is. We don't know what it is. or call it energy, call whatever you want, that agitates and vibrates, and those wavelets that get created,

put themselves together to make neutrons, protons, electrons, atoms. So that's really what's down there. Okay, well, an omnipresent field that is the cause of all forces that exist and is everywhere, is getting very close to God. Amnipresent, omnipot, okay? Well, it's certainly very different, though, we're looking at every day, right?

But now if you think about it, I make myself think about it every time, all the time, all the time. I am not looking at people, places, buildings. I am looking at vibrations in a quantum field that is across the entire universe. Now we're starting to become one, aren't we? That brings us all much closer together. We're not looking at it the way we think it is because it isn't, all right? And when the great yogis, the great masters, went deep in meditation, they found this amazing thing. they found out what the quantum feels made of.

Consciousness. How do they know? Because they merge with it. That's what yoga is about. That's what the word merger means. Christ meant, I am my father or one. Okay? You're asking, talk more about that state.

When your consciousness ceases to stare at your thoughts, your emotions, your mind, which you come through your senses, it's liberated. It's not distracted anymore. And what they found out, the great ones have found out, that all of a sudden, all the stars and moons and galaxies are who they are. That's one with their consciousness. Why do we live there?

Because we are distracted by what distracts us. And what distracts us are your thoughts. Do your emotions distract you? Oh, my God. They get pulled right down, right? The moment you have an emotion, bam. You're really with God. That consciousness is being focused, pulled down.

to what you're distracted by. And that's what makes a human being. Distracted God. Okay? So when you talk about, how do we talk about these higher states, the great teachings of the masters say the same thing.

One, can you cease to be distracted by what's going on outside? Not, don't work with it, but you can be distracted by it, fixated on it. All right? Then you don't bother suppressing it because I handle it.

So all of a sudden, you're now cleaned out. You don't know all the junk inside of you. You're not all sensitive. to everything somebody says or does, all right, because you let it go. So now your consciousness is liberated, we use that word, to be able to hang out more in the mental plane as opposed to what's coming through physical and the emotional.

And then you start realizing, why am I getting upset because the person is driving weird? Why am I screaming, oh, my God, why is it raining on my birthday? It doesn't know it's your frickin' birthday, right or wrong. What we do with our minds are ridiculous, right? Well, what happens you start cleaning that up? Use your mind for intellectual pursuits.

Use your mind for deep understanding instead of all this personal garbage. I don't like what she said. Oh, my God, look what she's wearing. In the 60s, you should talk about expanded consciousness, right? I learned that so wrong. It's non-contracted consciousness. Consciousness are already fully expanded. It's that you're contracting it to focus on your stuff.

all right when you cease to do that you start to feel sparing you start to feel all this openness and beauty and expansiveness okay and that and ultimately

I started from the top ultimately you merge and that's very great but I was young I don't know if you read the surrender experiment but I was probably 21 years old 22 years old and I had this

very deep experience and and and is more beautiful than anything they could ever exist in the history of the universe, right? And therefore, you want to go back there. And so you spend your life being willing to let go of anything that's keeping you from there.

Not how do I get there? How do I stop putting the blockages inside of me to keep me from going there? And this becomes, that's your spiritual journey. That's your path. And it's what you talk about, you know, that those experiences mean a lot to you. So did I answer your question, Jonathan? Right. That's what's back there.

we are the same, right? Can we be the same? And what we're looking at, have all these differences? That's what compassion is. Compassion is sympathy. Compassion is, I understand why you're different. I understand what you've gone through is totally different than me. I don't blame you.

I don't do anything, right? Now, can we sit down and harmonize, find a way, come on, it's not that big a deal? Right? And the answer is yes, but not while we're down here. insisting that we're right. I know it has to be, and I'm going to fight and battle and do whatever. That's the best I can do.

By the way, that drop from pure consciousness down to staring at you is it's meant by the fall from the garden. Literally. It says, once you fall from the garden, you're in the garden, you're one with God, experiencing creation. That's beautiful, all right?

But now I'm experiencing this tiny little ray of light. Okay, and it says in the Bible, I'm a nice Jewish yogi. I read the Bible once, I shouldn't say that. I read the Bible once in 1972 and has never left me. All right? I think Christ's teachings are phenomenal, right? If people understand what he's saying, all right?

And the deep things he's saying, all right? And the Bible, the Old Testament says, when you fall from the garden, what happens? Now you must work by the sweat of your brow to be okay. You know anything about that? Anybody working hard and getting ulcers and neuroses to be okay? That's it, all right? Where your natural state is, okay, I'm fine, it's fine, it's all God, it's all a quantum field. Okay?

I just like something very beautiful ones. All right. He said, reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. So you think, Jonathan, every one of those wavelets, corks, leitons, bosons, Everyone was wavelets has to behave the same that your bedroom is there in the morning. Do you understand that? That your body is there in the morning.

Wow, how brilliant is God. Give me a break, and that's happening all over the entire universe. You need to expand your mind and your consciousness to be able to start with reality. Then come on down and let's dance. All right, let's see what we can do on the little planet, middle of nowhere for a few years. As I want you to think, are you not on a tiny little planet just for a handful of years? Can you handle it?

It's amazing, and Mime and I recently have been talking about how powerful just having awe is, how much it can transform how we feel and what our experience is just to stop and pause and look at the intelligence in nature, look at the intelligence all around us, and how amazing it is that we even exist, the fact that the light can process, and I can see my hand and all the amazing things that are around us, what you describe in terms of our consciousness is expanded already,

and why we don't experience it all the time is that we are limiting it. Yes, we're distracted. You know, we get a lot of questions from our audience. What do I need to do to feel more okay, more intuitive? well, how do I increase the synchronicity in my life? And what I'm hearing and, you know, sometimes it used to, I used to think, oh, you have to expand, but actually what you have to do is stop limiting.

Stop contracting. Very good. That's beautiful. I always use the example of a magnifying glass. Like I live in a country. So there's fields, all right? And the sun falls pretty evenly on the field. Take a magnifying glass and hold it in one spot.

and you're going to burn leaves that are below you, right? It took the power of the sun, right? And it limited it down to this one spot. That's what you've done. That's what we've done. We've taken the power of consciousness and limited it down to staring at my little thoughts, my little preferences, my little emotions.

It's adorable, isn't it? And that's the cause of all suffering. That's the cause of all suffering. What do Buddha say? We're talking about. Nice to talk about everybody. equal time, right? For a noble truth, all of life is suffering.

It doesn't mean you broke your arm all the time, right? I don't mean he's a negative guy. That's pretty negative, right? It is. You make yourself suffer with your thoughts. The cause of all suffering is preference. If you didn't mind that it was raining, it wouldn't bother you. If you didn't mind that your wife or husband was a bad move when they came home

in some space, you wouldn't yet. at them, don't treat me like that. You would have compassion, your understanding. It's because you have preferences. Where did you get your preferences? Don't you dare think you made them up, not a single one of them, right, based on your past experiences, books you read, experiences you had, people that dumped on you, people that were nice to you, and that you formed these preferences of what I want to go on and what I don't want to go on. And the Buddha teaches have to cause all suffering. It's very deep, isn't it? Because it is the call. was all suffering.

All right? And somebody once said to me, I gave a talk like that. A very wealthy person came up with him hearing one of my talks. And he said, but I like my preferences. I own six homes in, in Bel Air or whatever, all right? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said, I don't want to give my preferences. So I thought about a little bit.

And I said, okay, you know the saying for the third and patriarch, the great way is not difficult for those have no preferences. I said, he gave me love. license the Thursday Patriarch to change what he said. Are you ready? Here's the edit. The great way is not difficult for those who prefer everything. It's deep to think about it because it's the truth, all right?

It's just love it, man. Right? You're having the time of your life right now. It brings up an important point that we also hear a lot from our community, which is it's easy to feel connected to the union. and everything's great when there's a certain amount of comfort. And you can have an acceptance for the bad mood, but if the bad mood starts attacking you, then you're like, well, now how much compassion can I have?

And if you don't have enough to eat, then... So how do we balance this idea of surrendering and experiencing this ultimate consciousness and increasing our connection to all that there is with the material. struggle that people go through. Is it only that you'll change your perspective and that you'll feel better about your circumstance? Or is it that doing that work can also lead to material changes in our lives whereby there is more opportunity that, you know, the universe is trying to help us. Not everyone's going to have six houses, but maybe get us our heads above water and make the struggle of everyday life easier?

Obviously, it is true that the more you have and the more comfortable you are, and it's funny, I really don't want to say it, but I'll say it, right? The more you have an opportunity to let go and do these different things. Guess what? They don't. wealthy people have just as much problems. They're just as unhappy. They have just many divorces.

Do you understand that? It's not true that having things makes you be okay. Now, of course, there's a limit of food clothing. shelter, right, that there's a physiological problem if I don't have those. Are there very primitive cultures that have very little, and they measure their happiness, they find that the happiest people out there. You understand that? Okay? They just live off the earth. They eat herbs, different things, okay? So it's not true that you have to have a lot, or both. Neither is you have a lot to be okay. Or if you have a lot, come up, we get these billioners out there. They

don't look like having so much fun. I'm sorry. Do they? Okay? It's like, why do they have to fight with everybody? Why do they fight with each other? Why does it have to be this constant struggle and headache? Because having things doesn't solve the problem. The problem is how you do it inside. And if you're not doing okay inside, it's because you're messed up in there, straighten it up. So let's start there. And then you take the great examples. He was Gandhi. I mean, he was giving a lecture, you know, a political lecture, stand on a stage, very great being, and somebody came up and shot him, right? And so he has this terrible experience. His body has been shot. He's going to die. What did Gandhi do at that moment exactly at that moment? He pronomed directly to that person as an

act of forgiveness as he fell to the ground and died, right? How would you like to be like to be like that? How would you like to be evolved enough, clear enough to where you're not complaining, right? You just bring Shakti, consciousness, spirit, beauty, love, compassion down to this plane and set an exam. Look at that man, did he free to country? You understand that? And then he just realized it's not about material wealth. It's about your inner state. There's this kind of overlap between a notion of compassion and acceptance.

And I don't think I had thought of it as sort of. strongly overlapping until hearing you talk about it, that when we tell people to be an acceptance of something, it doesn't mean you have to like it. It means that you have to accept that other things can exist besides what makes you uncomfortable. And what you do with that tension will literally determine your own happiness, meaning we're in this prison, right, that we ourselves have the key to release ourselves from. Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today, you know, that notion of, I don't like your political opinion, but you have a right to have it. It's based on your own experience, your own perspectives. It doesn't mean that we can't connect

because, honestly, we're all one anyway. It doesn't mean that you're clear and so on. that when you come back, you don't protest. You have every right in the world to take the sum of your learned experiences and with love, with understanding, with compassion, say, you're on that side of the street, hi, I'm on this side of the street, hi, right? And we at least have a chance of talking and working together.

So it's not that you do nothing, right? You have the right to express your opinions, right? But do it with love. Do it with, you say it perfectly, doing the understanding why people have different opinions than you. Correct? And there are certain subjects that we can bring up, I don't, all right? That it's understandable why they have different opinions.

You understand that? I feel very strongly about the right to so-and-so. I feel very strongly about this right. And you do, all right? But who's you? Who's you in there that's looking at this mind that got programmed by your past experiences? Can you transcend that programming? And then come down and express yourself and do it.

but do it with love and duty. That is very helpful because I think also, you know, there's so much need for cooperation. And so much of that gets lost when there's this polarization. And I won't talk to you because you hold this label. Or I won't talk to this person because they've taken this as their identity as opposed to how can we work together. There's, you know, really important implications for this on a larger scale.

But I wonder, these are all very comfortable things, I think, for many of us to talk about. But I wonder if you were to talk to someone who has kind of no spiritual framework and no sense of kind of connectedness with whatever this consciousness is that we're all talking about, what do you say to a beginner? What do you say to someone who is skeptical or really just doesn't know? How do you frame this for a beginner? What I have found, and I started this, I just woke up, if you will, back in the early 70s, and I wanted to talk about it. I realized, I'm in here watching me, right? The witness woke up. I'm in here watching me.

Are you in there? Hello? Are you in there? And every person I asked, everyone, are you in there? They said, yeah, okay, you're in there. You know you're in there. What does it mean? I don't explain it.

I know I'm in here, okay, I'm in here. I'm not out here. I'm in here, okay? What's it like in there? Now, all of a sudden, immediately, it becomes introspective. They've been forced to look in there, not what's it like out here? What's it like in there? And the truth of the matter is, it's scary, it's jealous, it's insecure, it's this,

it's that, it's all kinds of stuff, needy, right? It's pretty weird in there, isn't it? That's the start. No more. No religious, no this, know that, no shoving tea, And they wake up. I have people write me. I'll tell you a quick story, all right? When I first started teaching, I've been meditating a whole lot. If you remember my book, you'll find out.

And they asked me to teach at this college, all right? And they just gave me a class. And they said, okay, just teach whatever you want. It was very liberal. All right. And I had one lady who came, most of them were hippie kids or young kids would come in. They sit on a floor. You would have that kind of stuff was going on in the 70s, right?

This one lady walked in. It's probably in her late 20s, early 30s, three-piece suit. sat straight up in a chair, okay, and she didn't like my course. She didn't like what was being talked about at all, okay? And when the class was over, the course was over. But I taught the course, you want me for a teacher, right? They said, what about my grade? I said, to write me a paper what you got from this course and just tell the truth,

and I want to hear what you got, and you'll get your grade. Okay? So she was afraid to write because she hated the course, and she hated the course, but she had to come, all right? was required course. So she went to the president of the college because she was connected. Her husband was a great surgeon or something.

I don't know. I'm a little hippie boy and went, and I get called in, right, saying, you better deal with this because she's very upset and she's afraid you're going to fail her. I said, I'm going to fail her. So we had a little talk. I'll never forget it.

This is back in 75 or a way. I'll never forget it. We have this talk. She says, I'm afraid to go out. I said, just write the truth about how you do the class, you're going to do just fine. Don't worry about it. Okay. So that was my interaction with this lady. Two or three semesters later, I'm going to cry. I'm teaching night class and night classes. Like I had literally 70% of the people taking my class were not registered. They were from

the university. There was that kind of time, all right? And I'm sitting there teaching, sitting on the desk in the half-loadist position, teaching this class or all the floor, okay? And somebody walks thin. I didn't recognize. I just somebody walked in the middle of class in a t-shirt and jeans, sits down on the floor, comes up to me, by him afterwards, and says you won't remember me, but

I'm the person who complained about your class. And I said to you, I didn't understand a word that you were talking about, but I did. But I had a terrible marriage. I was a Stefford wife type thing, all right? And I couldn't get out of it. And I was Glocked.

in this and I heard every word you said, but I wouldn't let myself think about it because I knew I couldn't deal with it, right? Well, he left me and I got upset and whatever, I went through my thing. And one day I was, there's a true story. One day I was walking through a bookstore in Gainesville, right? And I saw this book, autobiography of a yogi. And you had mentioned that in your class. And I said, well, I need help. And I picked up the book. My entire life changed. I started doing yoga. I'm the happiest person ever lived, all right? And thank you so much for what I didn't want to hear you say and thank God I heard it because I brought it all back and lived the rest of my time like that. Okay? So when you ask, how do you deal with someone like that, right? You just bring love and openness

and compassionate situation. You don't push it to go too far. You're saying that? You're trying to shove your teachings down their throat. That doesn't work in any way, shape, or form. But that question, you in there? She was obviously in there. She just didn't want to admit it, right? But the moment the damn, all that knowledge, everywhere they were sent to her, all the teachings came right back, and she started practicing. Okay, I told you a story, a little bedtime story. I wonder kind of going along this sort of path, people hear higher self a lot, tap into your higher self, right? And I think, again, it gets kind of throwing around. Can you explain to a beginner, what is the higher self? How do you get in touch with it? And why

should you get in touch with it? You have stored inside of you a lot of garbage that I wish you didn't have to carry. You understand that? But you are carrying it. And the truth is, you put it in there and only you can let it out. You understand that? It's down there because you are using will constantly, perpetually, to push it back down. That's why it comes back in your dreams. That's all the psychologists about the stuff you store that if you don't store the stuff in there they don't have a job hey i can't even fix it so it's because you store that stuff in there that's your lower self your lower self is those energies that you stored inside most of which were uncomfortable almost all of which were uncomfortable right expressing themselves in your mind and your emotions

it's all shakti hitting beautiful energy hitting the garbage you stored down there and then coming up as turmoil, coming up as disturbance. That's your lower self. And that's where you end up, your consciousness is addicted. And that's the right word, right? You're more addicted to that part of you, to yourself, you disturbed self, than people are to drugs or alcohol. In fact, they do drugs and alcohol to get away from that stuff.

Do you understand it? If you were totally blissed out inside, you were touched? You were pretty kidding? Why would I bring myself down to make myself drunk or make myself play around. So that's your lower self. Higher self? The one who's looking at that, the witness.

I don't want to use words because they're not ready, right? Do you notice that you have problems? Do you notice when anger starts to come up? Do you notice when you get depressed? Right? How do you, who notices it? Oh, doctor, I'm so depressed. I've been so depressed.

If I were a therapist, you don't want me to be a therapist. I would say, how do you know? Oh, they get mad at me. How do I know what? Right? How do you know you're depressed? Well, I'm in here. It's so spiritual.

I mean, who's in there? Who's in there noticing you're depressed? Who's in there noticing you get happy? Who's in there? I'm not sure herself. The one who's in there noticing the consciousness, right, is looking at the lower self. That's why I was called higher, lower. It's a beautiful explanation.

And I think we need to really take a second. and talk about how we are addicted to the chaos and turmoil of that pattern you described. Like, if I think about that for a second, all the other behavior people have is coming back to the addiction to that chaos. It's a spike. It's an adrenaline.

It's, I can't handle this. And this is the problem. And then the mind goes off on all the tangents to map it, to understand it, to blame someone, and if this didn't happen to me, I wouldn't have this characteristics, and the thousands and millions of hours and billions of dollars spent trying to extract ourselves from this pattern of chaos, but really what it is is an addiction to that spike of energy. You're absolutely correct, right? But I really get into deep discretion what's going on,

it's all what we call Shakti. It's all spirit. It's all Shakti. All right. And what's supposed to be happening is it's coming down and passing through you and you're having experiences and every experience you have makes you a greater being. If you never touch a piano and you touch one note, you're a greater being than you were before you touch that note. You now know more, correct? Every single experience in life is teaching you, okay, but we can't handle it. So we resist. And the stuff you resist, you push down. Now that energy can't flow freely. It can't flow up. It hits all your garbage and it hits your stuff. All right.

And then it tries to find a pathway. It means things you like, things you're happy with. So it kind of curves around and says, oh, I'm happy because he said, you love me. Wait a minute. He said he loved her too. Ah! Okay? So if it keeps hitting stuff and you try to find a path through life, that's what we're trying

to do. Find a partner, a path through life that finance a job, right, that makes it through our stuff. We're trying to get rid of our stuff. right we're trying to create an external environment that makes it comfortable to live with our stuff and then we feel happy if we get what we want and we don't feel happy we don't get what we want that is those patterns down there so the more you let go i always teach this right don't put more in any more in why would you do that's counterproductive right on a daily basis don't put more down

there right don't resist and as you do you learn to not and then bigger stuff can come and you'll learn to let it go. And all of a sudden, that would seem like a big thing, you know, when you're 10 years old and they took your Barbie away, you freaked, right? Now, I don't care. I outgrew it. Outgrow these problems that you stored

when you were younger, and younger means yesterday, and you just keep letting go. And what happens now is the energy flows freely. And what happens, and that's what you really want to hear, is at some point the energy coming in from below, because it's a cyclical flow from God, human, God, human, all right? What is a human being? God descended?

I know it doesn't look like it, but it is, all right? What is the ray of light that is on the field I talked about? That sun, that's 93 million miles away, it's that descending. Its rays are coming down, all right? So this consciousness flows through and expresses itself through all these different living expressions, all right? When you clean out, that's a big thing, but when you clean up, it doesn't hit as much stuff. Now it's easier to be okay, all right? Again, I'll quote Christ, right? Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that leaves the mouth of the father.

Man does not live by bread alone, the outside world, but by every word that leaves the mouth of the father. What does that mean? There's Shakti in there, there's spirit in there, there's energy in there that's not associated with the outside, okay, but it's being blocked. As you let go, the two merge, right? The higher, there's no higher self or lower self anymore. There's just self. When you say that everything that's kind of in there, we've put there, and so we have the power to take it out, how do we frame trauma? How do we frame intergenerational trauma? How do we frame this notion that, and it is as part of the Buddhist, you know, conversation as well? What have we inherited? What is our legacy, as it were? How do we break free of that? And how much can we say,

I've put this here, I want to take it out, versus it feels like something was handed to me that's not mine? How do I release that? You mentioned Buddhist, okay? So if you want to talk about inherited meaning genetically or inherited meaning past lives, I'll go both, right? So for example, when you work with yourself really deeply, you will see that there's stuff in there that's kind of bigger than what your conscience can get hands around. And you have no idea why it's in there.

Like somebody's scared to death of heights. Let's use that example, all right? Why? Nothing ever happened to them? Then why are you okay with height and you're not okay with height? Right? Is that a physiologically genetically inherited trait

or is it past lives? I don't care. I'm not selling past lives. I'm not doing anything, right? So you see, it doesn't matter. The point is it's in there. Okay? What do I do with it?

Can it be worked out? The answer is yes. Is it in there? It's not in there because you put it in there. You did, in the past lives, whatever it is, all right? But basically, you are will, you are consciousness. Consciousness is the ultimate power of the universe. It created the entire universe.

You understand that. Therefore, if it's in there and it's big, and there are big things in there that people just freak to even think about it. They can't even, don't talk about that. You know you don't talk about that around your father. You can't handle that, right? That means there's something in there.

Why, all right? And it's trying to come up. It gets triggered, and they can't handle it. The answer is, learn to handle it. Can you learn to handle it? Now, you ask me that question. Michael, Mickey, whoever I am, I don't know. All right, basically, can anything that's in there be let go of?

Yes. Is there any super glue in there? That's holding cement in there. No, the only reason anything stays in there is because subconsciously, deeply, whatever, will, the power of will is pushing it down. How do you know? Because when it tries to come back,

I push that damn thing back down, don't I? Correct? That means, what if you don't? Well, it's traumatic. I had a traumatic experience. Don't tell me what if I don't. I know you can't do it right now. But if you can handle the driver in front of you, if you can handle hitting a tennis ball into the net every time until you're practicing it better, you can practice letting go.

That's where I've gotten, understand all my teaching, right? I know it's hard to let go. I know it hurts. It was stored with pain, coming back with pain. You know that. All right. But even old things down there are the same. But you resist them, you react to them.

Practice being okay with little things. with the weather, somebody said, you're going to find out, you get better at it, just like you practice a piano. All right, you practice letting go.

And all of a sudden, you notice, and eventually this stuff will come up. I love when people say to me, I went to work today and something happened at work and I didn't realize until I was driving home,

that would have bothered me. In the past, I didn't even notice. We're going to hit pause here on our conversation with Michael Singer. We've got a lot more to talk about in part two.

We're going to talk about how the surrender experiment is actually the original version of what many people call Let Them and what Mel Robbins has popularized as the let them theory. We talk about how identifying resistance is the first step in changing your reality. And we're going to talk about where consciousness actually lives and what happens to it when we die. Stay tuned for part two of our conversation with Michael Singer and from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my and biolics breakdown.

She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down. Going to break it down.