Stay Free - Russel Brand


Michael A. Singer (Happiness Is An Inside Job)


Summary

In this episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, we discuss the recent revelations that both Pfizer and Moderna are testing for Myocarditis as a potential consequence of their vaccines, and the recent appearance of former British Health Minister Matt Hancock on the British TV show 'Get Me Out of Here'. We're also joined by Michael Singer, the author of the book 'Living Untethered' and a regular contributor to the New York Times, to discuss the current state of paranoia surrounding the topic of vaccination and the potential link between it and heart disease. Stay Free with Russell Brand is on all of the social medias, if you search for Stay Free, you'll find us. This episode is brought to you by Vevolution, a leading global health and medicine company. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsorships/StayFree with RussellBrand. We're part of the Gimlet Media Podcast Network. See all the great network shows on the network including Gimlet, The Anthropology, The Huffington Post, and The New Statesman. Subscribe to our new podcast Gimlet and leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe and review our latest episode, Stay Free! Subscribe here. We post polls, questions, thoughts and thoughts on all things social media including the latest viral topics, and we'll be answering them in next week's episode. Send us your responses to this podcast! We'll be looking out for the next episode next Tuesday. Thanks for your questions! Music: - The Good Morning, Bad Morning, Good Morning - Bad Morning - Stay Freezing - Good Day - Bad Day - Good Life - Good Luck - Good Ol Oled - Good Omens - Good Morning! - Bad Luck - Great Day - Sleepy Sleepy - Good Blessings - Good Night, Sleepy, Good Night - Good Rest, - Listen to Me! - by Russell Brand - by and Good Olediee - and Good Luck, and Good Day, by , and Good Life, by Michael Siegel - Thank You - and Stay Free - Love Birds - by Mr. , & , Michael Sincer, Michael Sacks . , Thank You, Michael, and , the Good Omened - - and we'll See You Soon


Transcript

00:00:00.000 [Music]
00:00:21.000 Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:23.000 We've got a fantastic show with you today.
00:00:26.000 We're talking about myocarditis and the recent revelations that both Pfizer and Moderna are testing for myocarditis as a potential consequence of their vaccines.
00:00:38.000 We frame this also with the recent appearance of the former British Health Minister Matt Hancock on the British TV show, I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.
00:00:47.000 And I suppose what question that leads me to ask is, Are we kind of living in a bizarre spectacle now?
00:00:52.000 We've asked this question so much on this show.
00:00:54.000 Where politics is entertainment, where entertainment is politics, and where conversations with a former high-ranking government official pass for entertainment on a mainstream TV show before We've had a chance to resolve many of the issues that affected so many people during the last two years, whether it's lockdown, regulations around medications, there are so many questions to ask.
00:01:19.000 Then we'll be talking to our guest Michael Singer, who's the writer of the fantastic book, Living Untethered because as you know on this show, we
00:01:26.000 believe that your personal spiritual awakening and Political activity are connected that if we are not in a
00:01:34.000 fit state to deal with our own Emotional and psychological reality we won't be able to
00:01:39.000 deal with the complex sociological conditions that we live within
00:01:43.000 We've been talking about Pfizer and Moderna's recent tests for myocarditis
00:01:52.000 On the NBC website that we looked at the story broken on, it says they're testing for any connection between the vaccines and myocarditis, if there is any.
00:02:02.000 So there's literally no confirmation that there is a connection between vaccines and heart disease, but it is now being trialled for.
00:02:09.000 That's just to sort of set out what the conditions are.
00:02:12.000 But the conversation, generally speaking, around the pandemic is altering.
00:02:16.000 And I think it's important for us to avoid hysteria when discussing this subject, to avoid conspiracy, speculation, pointless pontification, to focus on just what's being proven and what's demonstrable.
00:02:29.000 But it does seem that people are starting to re-evaluate their perspectives on this subject.
00:02:35.000 People that were Very, let's say, pro-vaccine, pro-mandates, pro-lockdowns are starting to suggest now that condemning unvaccinated people, for example, as you know, many unvaccinated people lost their jobs, for example, are starting to suggest that this situation ought be looked at differently.
00:02:56.000 Even in the same article it says both Pfizer and Moderna are launching clinical trials to track health issues, if any, in the years following a diagnosis of vaccine-associated heart problems in teens and young adults.
00:03:07.000 But in the same article it then says there have been around a thousand reports of vaccine-related myocarditis
00:03:13.000 in children under age 18 according to the CDC.
00:03:17.000 So even as I say in the exact same article at the start they say if any
00:03:21.000 and then they go on to say that there have been reports of around a thousand.
00:03:25.000 So we do know that that's the case and that's in the same article.
00:03:28.000 Right so it already suggests there's a connection.
00:03:31.000 Suggests that there is a connection.
00:03:32.000 And obviously this has been something that has been, you know, we know about the Florida surgeon who was banned from Twitter for recommending that men under 40 didn't get the vaccine due to cardiac related deaths.
00:03:44.000 Obviously it's one of those areas where you have to Where the idea of censorship comes into, I mean it's very important at this point, like who's able to talk about it and who's not?
00:03:55.000 Even on this channel, or certainly on YouTube, we've had to wait until it's been discussed in the mainstream media.
00:04:02.000 And I also, sort of from a personal perspective, don't want to find myself encamped with people that are kind of crazy about this stuff.
00:04:10.000 But what is troubling me existentially is that a couple of years ago there was a complete inability to discuss these things.
00:04:18.000 Take just any one of many examples.
00:04:21.000 The emergence of coronavirus.
00:04:24.000 Was it from a laboratory leak or was it from a wet market?
00:04:28.000 That was once the territory of conspiracy, the necessity for lockdowns and their success and impact.
00:04:36.000 We now know that across the world, and speaking particularly and personally about the UK, that the government ministers and officials that were in charge of implementing those lockdowns were ignoring them.
00:04:48.000 Now, the most cynical analysis of that would be that, for some reason, they did not share the fear that they were inviting us to participate in.
00:04:57.000 You could even Further, extrapolate that a culture that is governed by and guided by fear is a culture that's easier to manage.
00:05:07.000 If you note how often you're invited, outside of the issue of the pandemic, just generally to be in a state of anxiety, desperation and fear.
00:05:16.000 Desire continually stoked, fear continually provoked.
00:05:22.000 You have to ask yourself, what kind of society are we inhabiting?
00:05:26.000 What kind of culture are we being invited to participate in?
00:05:30.000 This is why I reiterate that there is a necessity for a personal and collective spiritual awakening.
00:05:36.000 One of the challenges that I find with spirituality is that it's often presented as a kind of solipsistic issue, something that's personally undertaken in private.
00:05:45.000 But all of our morals and ethics and systems of government are undergirded by, for example, humanitarianism, which is derived from spiritual ideas like, for example, I don't know, equality, human rights.
00:05:59.000 From where do you derive those principles if there isn't something spiritually valuable about humanity and even life itself?
00:06:06.000 That's why I'm so excited to be speaking to Michael Singer, the author of Untethered soul and also his new book, Living Untethered, who's been on our show many times and who I'm always personally grateful to see because I'm always quite close to a mental breakdown.
00:06:23.000 Michael, thanks for joining me today.
00:06:27.000 Oh, thank you, Russell.
00:06:28.000 It's a real pleasure.
00:06:29.000 I love talking to you.
00:06:30.000 You're a lot of fun.
00:06:31.000 Michael, thank you so much for saying.
00:06:33.000 The last time we spoke, I was in a state of crisis.
00:06:37.000 I recall using you almost as a therapist.
00:06:40.000 I felt like, right, I'm talking to Michael Singer now.
00:06:43.000 This is a person who I regard as a sort of a modern day sage, a contemporary yogi, an unordained priest.
00:06:52.000 So, now that I'm in this position of crisis, instead of interviewing Michael in an abstract way, I'm going to speak to him plainly and candidly about my fears.
00:07:01.000 Well, today, I feel that because of the nature of the work we generally do, where we talk about political corruption, centralised power, the nature and role of the media in keeping a population spellbound, I wonder how you feel that your work, which focuses on individual and personal awakening, an ability to sort of almost become, I don't want to mangle your life's work, but to become the witness consciousness rather than the objects within our consciousness, to try to get beyond the stored fear and anxiety that most of us experience.
00:07:36.000 How do you feel that this individual work relates It's actually a very easy answer.
00:07:41.000 The question is, how do you want to go?
00:07:43.000 systems that we occupy and also Michael, because I know your answer, I pray your answer will be a long and coherent
00:07:48.000 one, how do you feel that these are individual problems that we're
00:07:53.000 experiencing or problems that are somehow socially induced?
00:07:57.000 Okay, thank you.
00:08:01.000 It's actually a very easy answer. The question is how do you want to go?
00:08:05.000 Let's start with a hypothesis.
00:08:09.000 Let's say that every single person on the earth was completely content, happy, filled with love, and feeling peace inside.
00:08:19.000 There would be no wars.
00:08:21.000 There'd be no conspiracies.
00:08:22.000 There'd be no conspiracy theories.
00:08:25.000 There would just be people getting along.
00:08:27.000 John Lennon.
00:08:27.000 Imagine all the people living life in peace and sharing all the world.
00:08:32.000 If you're okay inside, You're not manipulating other people.
00:08:36.000 There is no fear of some centralized government that wants to take from you or has some motive that individual, you know, Congress and different people have motives to stay in power and so on.
00:08:46.000 The only reason people want all that is because they're not okay.
00:08:50.000 That's why people want power.
00:08:51.000 That's why people want to control other people.
00:08:53.000 Because they're not okay with themselves.
00:08:55.000 So kind of a fun way to talk, which is very different from how people talk.
00:09:00.000 What if everyone was okay?
00:09:01.000 Yeah.
00:09:02.000 You wouldn't have these problems.
00:09:03.000 All right.
00:09:04.000 So I don't see it.
00:09:05.000 I don't see working on yourself as an individual thing.
00:09:09.000 I see it as the only solution in the end.
00:09:12.000 That can bring about peace and harmony and people not manipulating each other.
00:09:17.000 Because that's all you're talking about is why are people manipulating each other, right?
00:09:21.000 Why do big companies try to make money?
00:09:23.000 Why does this happen?
00:09:24.000 Why is all the difference happening?
00:09:25.000 Because they're not okay.
00:09:26.000 Why do people, other than basic needs, why do people need all this money?
00:09:31.000 Why do they need Jets?
00:09:32.000 Why do they need to do all this stuff?
00:09:33.000 The answer is they don't.
00:09:34.000 But they do because they're not happy.
00:09:37.000 They're not satisfied with their lives.
00:09:39.000 They need to do things to compensate for the fact that they're not okay inside.
00:09:43.000 That's the basic bottom thing.
00:09:45.000 Everybody is out there, whether it be relationships, whether it be money, whether it be power and pride and success.
00:09:53.000 I'm not okay, and I feel great when everybody claps.
00:09:56.000 I don't know about you.
00:09:58.000 If everybody writes, if I get, excuse me, if I get 7 million upvotes, I'm not a Facebook guy, I'm not on Facebook, but I think there's such a thing as, you know, acceptance, whatever it is, you feel wonderful that day.
00:10:10.000 If all of a sudden you get a bunch of downvotes, you don't feel so good.
00:10:13.000 That's because you're not okay.
00:10:14.000 You need things from outside to fix what's wrong inside of you so that you can get energy inside so it can come out.
00:10:21.000 I like to imagine what it would be like if everybody naturally felt all this beautiful energy, this beautiful love.
00:10:27.000 We would not have a single problem.
00:10:29.000 You might not have a podcast.
00:10:30.000 I don't know what I would do.
00:10:32.000 All right?
00:10:33.000 There'd be no reason to be having all these talks, because people would respect each other, they'd honor each other, they'd share with each other.
00:10:39.000 Why would they share?
00:10:40.000 Because they don't need anything, right?
00:10:42.000 If I'm totally content, I would rather help you, because I don't need anything.
00:10:46.000 So that's what this work is inside, and it's not an individual thing.
00:10:52.000 It's how to fix all of society.
00:10:54.000 If people are not okay, they rob, they steal, they rape, they do all kinds of things.
00:10:59.000 Correct?
00:10:59.000 Yes.
00:11:00.000 What if they were okay?
00:11:01.000 The only way to actually change that is for a person to work on themselves.
00:11:07.000 You're the only one in there.
00:11:08.000 Only you can work on yourself, right?
00:11:10.000 You can get other people to behave in a way that makes you feel better inside, but then you're manipulating.
00:11:15.000 All right, I'll stop.
00:11:17.000 Now I'm not OK inside, and I still believe that my inner life can be improved by the management of external circumstances.
00:11:26.000 I've found this to be Sisyphean, an endless daily task that seems futile and resets each day at dawn, draining and unsuccessful.
00:11:37.000 Even though I've been in recovery for almost 20 years, that means I'm abstinent from drugs and alcohol, even though I meditate every day, even though I place spirituality at the forefront of my life, I still find that a lot of my time is spent feeling inadequate, inferior, hungry, hungry for pleasurable experiences.
00:11:56.000 My primal drives often dominate my psychological life.
00:12:01.000 Now, I...
00:12:03.000 I don't want to make excuses for myself, Michael, but when we talk about, say, if we isolate even the issue of mental health and the sense that we are experiencing a decline and a deterioration in the area of mental health, on one level this is of course a situation experienced subjectively by each individual, presumably, but on the other hand It appears that we're living in a culture that is inducing this state.
00:12:29.000 Now I'm not suggesting here that this is a result of a centralised massive conspiracy, but it does indicate to me that there are a set of values that are promoted and almost enshrined, that are to do with materialism,
00:12:43.000 individualism, and a kind of negligence of the kind of principles that we're
00:12:47.000 discussing, surrender, gratitude, acceptance.
00:12:51.000 You know, in your book, The Surrender Experiment, it's almost like you said you used the fidelity of
00:12:54.000 surrender as a guidance principle, and the results were a kind of
00:12:58.000 abundance.
00:12:59.000 So, I suppose what I'm trying to say is that these conditions,
00:13:03.000 you know, to just speak of myself, are not occurring in a vacuum.
00:13:06.000 I'm a participant in a cultural discourse and my own not-okayness in here is being exacerbated and stoked by cultural conditions that, admittedly, I'm participating in and seem unable to surmount.
00:13:20.000 But what is the role of our culture and how do we alter that culture?
00:13:28.000 I'm weird, right?
00:13:29.000 I look at the core of things because I think things have to change at the core, and I can't change everybody else.
00:13:38.000 I really can't, okay?
00:13:39.000 I can manipulate somebody or try to make them be the way I want them to be, but I can't do everything, all right?
00:13:44.000 So I have to decide at some point in my life, and I decided very young, Am I going to sit there and let all that stuff you just talked about ruin my life?
00:13:52.000 Because it is that way.
00:13:53.000 It was that way when Christ was here.
00:13:54.000 It was not that way when Buddha was here.
00:13:57.000 It's been that way for a very, very long time.
00:13:59.000 Why is it that way?
00:14:00.000 Because people are not okay.
00:14:00.000 I told you.
00:14:02.000 That's the core.
00:14:03.000 People are not okay.
00:14:04.000 So therefore they're doing all the things that you talk about, right?
00:14:08.000 They're manipulating, they're taking, they're advertising so they can make money.
00:14:11.000 They're doing everything you say.
00:14:12.000 You're right, you're absolutely right.
00:14:14.000 If things are the way you want them to be outside, you feel better inside.
00:14:18.000 If things are not the way you want them to be outside, you feel worse inside.
00:14:22.000 So you have a choice.
00:14:24.000 Go out there and say, I have to change everything which you already told me, makes you neurotic.
00:14:28.000 I have to change every single thing, every single moment, so I can be okay inside.
00:14:32.000 Or you can say, wait a minute, I'm the one who's in here, and you're going to find out if you do real work on yourself, and I'm not saying you don't, but if you do real work on yourself, that you're causing your own problems inside.
00:14:43.000 You're not causing everybody else to be the way they are, but you're causing the fact that if somebody doesn't like you, it bothers you.
00:14:50.000 Well, that's silly.
00:14:51.000 Everybody's different.
00:14:52.000 Everybody likes different people.
00:14:54.000 It doesn't have to bother you.
00:14:55.000 So you start to work inside to say, can I at least set an example for humanity that you can be okay in the middle of all this?
00:15:04.000 Or you can complain about it, but it doesn't do any good.
00:15:07.000 You don't just sit there and talk and complain about how things are.
00:15:07.000 You understand that?
00:15:10.000 Yes, they are that way.
00:15:11.000 You are absolutely correct, they are that way, okay?
00:15:13.000 And it does affect you inside.
00:15:16.000 Why?
00:15:16.000 You're inside, it's outside.
00:15:19.000 Can you do something to where you're at peace inside, you're whole inside, so that now you can come out and instead of complaining, I'm not saying you're complaining, you're very good and you help a lot of people, but instead of it just being a lot of what's wrong, you can come out here and help.
00:15:34.000 Right?
00:15:35.000 But you have to be okay yourself.
00:15:37.000 So how do you do that?
00:15:38.000 And you talked about meditating, and you talked about, you know, beautiful that you got off of substance abuse, and so on and so forth.
00:15:45.000 I'm very, very proud of you.
00:15:47.000 It's very beautiful.
00:15:47.000 And it sets a good example for everybody, all right?
00:15:50.000 And I'm very happy that you're such a popular physician, and you can set that example.
00:15:54.000 That comes naturally.
00:15:56.000 But inside, why are you bothered by what's going on outside?
00:16:00.000 Literally, let's be scientists.
00:16:02.000 Why are you bothered by what's going on outside?
00:16:04.000 If you close your eyes, you're still bothered what's going on outside.
00:16:07.000 You understand that, right?
00:16:09.000 It's because your mind has decided how things should be for you to be okay.
00:16:16.000 But everyone's mind is different.
00:16:18.000 Remember Skinner?
00:16:18.000 I'm the sum of my learned experiences.
00:16:23.000 Is that B.F.
00:16:24.000 Behavioralism?
00:16:24.000 Skinner?
00:16:25.000 Yeah.
00:16:26.000 And he said, man is the sum of his learned experiences.
00:16:29.000 You're not the sum of your learned experiences.
00:16:31.000 You're the consciousness that is aware that your mind is the sum of your learned experiences and your emotions are the sum of your learned experiences.
00:16:38.000 You know that.
00:16:38.000 Period.
00:16:39.000 One change and all of a sudden you're thinking different.
00:16:41.000 Okay?
00:16:42.000 So you look at it and you realize, I have made up in my mind how everything needs to be for me to be okay.
00:16:49.000 And I've made up in my mind how if things are a certain way, I won't be okay.
00:16:53.000 That would kill me.
00:16:54.000 I can't handle that.
00:16:54.000 My favorite word, I can't handle that.
00:16:57.000 In other words, I'm going to get screwed up inside.
00:17:00.000 Why can't you change that?
00:17:01.000 You're in there.
00:17:02.000 And what I found over years and years, 50 years, is it's because I blocked everything that ever bothered me throughout my life.
00:17:12.000 If my parents got divorced, if this happened, if I hurt somebody and now it bothers me, I stored bother inside of me.
00:17:12.000 Right?
00:17:20.000 Correct?
00:17:21.000 Yes.
00:17:21.000 Everything that ever bothered me.
00:17:23.000 It comes back up.
00:17:23.000 It comes up in my dreams.
00:17:24.000 It comes up when somebody says something.
00:17:26.000 Oh my God, that hurt me.
00:17:28.000 Because you stored this stuff inside.
00:17:28.000 Okay, why?
00:17:30.000 And my experience is, as you learn to let go of that stuff inside, underneath it there's this beautiful energy.
00:17:38.000 The energy that you feel when things are the way you want, whether it be relationships, whether it be success, that energy is always there.
00:17:46.000 It's just you set up conditions that have to happen for you to feel it.
00:17:50.000 When you start to let go of those conditions which are based upon your suppressed stuff, it's not different than psychology, it just goes deeper, all right?
00:17:58.000 It's based on this.
00:17:59.000 Freud was right.
00:18:00.000 You store stuff inside.
00:18:01.000 You have hands inside that push things away and grab things, don't you?
00:18:06.000 Yes.
00:18:07.000 Okay, well you learn to stop doing that.
00:18:10.000 It's very deep.
00:18:11.000 You learn to relax when you would have pushed it away.
00:18:14.000 What happens?
00:18:15.000 All of a sudden it makes it through.
00:18:17.000 Like 99.99% of everything you ever experienced made it right through.
00:18:22.000 But that .001, that's a problem.
00:18:24.000 All right?
00:18:25.000 And you see trees, you cars drive by, the weather happens, all kinds of things happen
00:18:25.000 You understand?
00:18:29.000 every moment in life.
00:18:31.000 You don't store those inside.
00:18:33.000 You can bring them back with memory if you want, but you do not suppress them, 'cause you don't need to.
00:18:38.000 But the things that bothered you, they're kept inside.
00:18:42.000 So this is what I have found is why everybody's bothered.
00:18:46.000 Everybody, it's the same answer for everybody.
00:18:48.000 You're bothered because you made a storehouse of things that bothered you inside yourself.
00:18:54.000 If you will work on letting those things go, you can be okay all the time and feel great joy.
00:19:00.000 And then you come out and give.
00:19:01.000 It's not that you don't interact with society.
00:19:03.000 You just don't interact to get, to get it the way you need it.
00:19:07.000 You interact to give because you don't need it to be a certain way.
00:19:11.000 There are things that you are saying that have a universal resonance.
00:19:18.000 It appears that my inner life is a response to a set of embargoes and injunctions that I have placed upon reality, that I have curated an inner geometry that traps certain experiences.
00:19:33.000 I identify with what you say about there being hands, that I am curating a museum of personal misery and experience within myself.
00:19:44.000 I know this to be true.
00:19:46.000 I know that what you're saying is true.
00:19:49.000 Where I am, and there are times actually, and it's exactly in accordance with your guidance Michael, there are times where I think I'm going to let go of how I think this organisation that I work within, this movement, is going to be run.
00:20:03.000 I'm going to let go of it.
00:20:04.000 I'm going to let it be happen.
00:20:05.000 I'm going to just let it happen.
00:20:06.000 I'm going to even let go of how I think my children should regard me in reality.
00:20:10.000 I'm going to let go of how my wife sees me.
00:20:12.000 I'm going to let go of what I think I want and what I think I'm entitled to, this sort of inner religion, because My understanding of reality is negligible.
00:20:23.000 The amount of reality that I experience through my limited five senses, it's so close to zero that it's almost not worth basing opinions on.
00:20:34.000 The sum total, in fact, of human knowledge when compared to the vastness of all potential knowledge is negligible.
00:20:43.000 So is it then that what you recommend at the level of the individual, a kind of total surrender and recalibration towards service, is what you believe ought be the guiding principles of humankind?
00:20:59.000 And if this is so, why Why would the optimal state for a human being and the optimal state for a society and a culture be so hard to achieve, to be so antithetical?
00:21:14.000 Why have we found ourselves at odds with reality?
00:21:19.000 Okay, deep question.
00:21:21.000 No, I like it because we have to work at the core.
00:21:26.000 So even this thing about saying that there's a concept we're supposed to give.
00:21:30.000 No, I don't teach that.
00:21:32.000 No.
00:21:33.000 If you let go of what's making you take, you don't even know you're giving.
00:21:38.000 You understand that?
00:21:39.000 In other words, you don't need to be taking from other people.
00:21:42.000 You don't need to be making things be the way you want.
00:21:45.000 You're at peace.
00:21:46.000 You feel contentment.
00:21:46.000 You're at whole.
00:21:47.000 You feel joy.
00:21:48.000 Then giving happens.
00:21:50.000 Love likes to express itself.
00:21:52.000 So it's not like you don't interact with people.
00:21:54.000 It's not like you don't interact with your organization.
00:21:56.000 You don't do it in order to fix yourself.
00:21:59.000 There's no motive under there which says, I'm not okay and I need things to be a certain way for me to be okay.
00:22:06.000 You are okay.
00:22:07.000 That's the core.
00:22:08.000 I am okay.
00:22:09.000 Now what?
00:22:10.000 I don't go sit in a cave somewhere.
00:22:12.000 The Bible says you don't light a lantern and put it under a bed.
00:22:16.000 Okay, I'm a nice Jewish yogi, but I love Christ, right?
00:22:19.000 I love his teachings anyways.
00:22:20.000 You don't light a lantern, put it on a bed, you put it on a windowsill.
00:22:23.000 So when you become whole and complete within yourself, you don't hide, you don't need to.
00:22:28.000 You interact the same as anybody else, except you end up not taking, you end up giving.
00:22:34.000 So now you asked the question, why, if it's true that that's the highest state, and of course it is, right?
00:22:39.000 It's called, you didn't fall from the garden.
00:22:42.000 That's what the fall from the garden is, right?
00:22:44.000 Why did that happen?
00:22:46.000 Okay, the great masters teach when the consciousness drops into the body.
00:22:51.000 Consciousness is individual.
00:22:53.000 You see your body.
00:22:54.000 You're the one who sees your body.
00:22:54.000 You're not your body.
00:22:56.000 You can see your hand.
00:22:57.000 I do that in the book, right?
00:22:59.000 It's very clear.
00:22:59.000 I'm looking at my hand.
00:23:01.000 That must be me.
00:23:02.000 Cut it off.
00:23:02.000 Don't worry about it.
00:23:04.000 Cut it off.
00:23:05.000 It's not there.
00:23:06.000 Do you know it's not there?
00:23:07.000 Is it still you who saw that it was there and now you see it's not there?
00:23:10.000 Well, then it's not you.
00:23:11.000 It's time to experiment.
00:23:13.000 Take a variable out and put it back in.
00:23:16.000 You're still there.
00:23:17.000 You can take it all away.
00:23:18.000 You're still there.
00:23:19.000 So basically, when you drop into the body, the consciousness is like stunned.
00:23:23.000 There's all this input.
00:23:24.000 It's true.
00:23:25.000 Psychology teaches this.
00:23:26.000 That's so far out, right?
00:23:28.000 They just don't start with consciousness.
00:23:29.000 There's all this input coming in.
00:23:31.000 There's sound.
00:23:31.000 There's this.
00:23:32.000 There's sight.
00:23:32.000 There's people picking you up.
00:23:34.000 Millions of things.
00:23:34.000 Oh my God.
00:23:36.000 So you're lost.
00:23:37.000 You need to somehow find a way to pull it together, to get some stability.
00:23:41.000 That's what it's about.
00:23:42.000 So what you do is you pick, this is my mommy, this is my daddy, this is my crib, this is my blankie.
00:23:47.000 And if things are constant, you build a self-concept that I am the one who lives here that does this.
00:23:54.000 You just build a fake you.
00:23:56.000 that says I am this person. You're not. You're the one who's protecting yourself by building
00:24:01.000 the self-concept. It's a mask that you put around yourself and if you can get things to be the way
00:24:06.000 you want them to be, you feel better. Somebody takes your blankie, you freak out. They give it
00:24:10.000 back to you even as a baby. We're doing the same thing now.
00:24:13.000 There is no difference. You understand It's just more complicated, because you use your mind now, not just your physical stuff, to figure out what your blankie needs to be, how everyone needs to talk to you, how everyone needs to behave, what they need to wear.
00:24:26.000 Everything you talk about, how society enforces everyone to be the same way, because that's the only... religion does that.
00:24:33.000 You understand that?
00:24:34.000 Religious history says everybody should be the same way.
00:24:37.000 Which, my way.
00:24:38.000 Okay, here it is.
00:24:38.000 There's the rules.
00:24:39.000 Because if you are that way, I can trust you.
00:24:41.000 I can know what you're going to do.
00:24:43.000 I can control you.
00:24:45.000 You understand that?
00:24:45.000 And even if controlling you is for a good reason, it's still controlling you.
00:24:49.000 So we're still doing the same thing the baby does.
00:24:52.000 So ultimately, the answer is, can you inside go deeper than your self-concept?
00:25:00.000 Or do I have to make things be the way I want them to be to be okay?
00:25:05.000 So I'm not saying you should, I'm not about renunciation.
00:25:07.000 I don't think people should renounce what they want.
00:25:09.000 I think they should go deeper inside so they don't have needs and they don't have to be a certain way.
00:25:15.000 Then they can come out and enjoy your pizza and enjoy your car.
00:25:18.000 I don't care if you want a Tesla, Ferrari, it's your business, right?
00:25:21.000 But you're not doing it to show off.
00:25:23.000 You're not doing it because I feel better when I pull up on my Ferrari.
00:25:26.000 Right?
00:25:27.000 And people awe and ooh at me, right?
00:25:29.000 Except nowadays you pull up in the Ferrari and it's not a Tesla, they boo at you, right?
00:25:33.000 Look at how it changes, like you're talking about.
00:25:36.000 The only reason society is a problem is because you let it be a problem.
00:25:40.000 Because you are saying it needs to be the way I want for me to be okay.
00:25:44.000 The moment you stop that and you look inside and say, I can be okay inside, then interact with society.
00:25:50.000 I'm now a plus.
00:25:52.000 I'm not part of the problem.
00:25:53.000 I'm not causing trouble.
00:25:55.000 All right?
00:25:55.000 So that's why it is.
00:25:57.000 I go back to your question.
00:25:58.000 Why are people this way?
00:26:00.000 Because they protected themselves and they built this concept of how it needs to be for me to be okay.
00:26:06.000 And everybody did it.
00:26:07.000 And they've always been doing it, except for some great masters.
00:26:10.000 You understand that, right?
00:26:12.000 That's why I'm into that stuff.
00:26:13.000 Except for some beings who work with themselves enough to where they don't need to do that.
00:26:19.000 And somehow they have had a major effect on the world.
00:26:22.000 I mean, Christ died thousands of years ago, and what he taught is not any different than what we're talking about.
00:26:28.000 Okay?
00:26:29.000 The kingdom is within you.
00:26:31.000 Correct?
00:26:32.000 The kingdom is within you.
00:26:33.000 It's not in society, it's within you.
00:26:37.000 If you find that, you're a positive input to everybody.
00:26:41.000 Imagine if you interacted with your kids and all there was, was love.
00:26:46.000 Doesn't mean you don't discipline them.
00:26:48.000 You may need to, okay?
00:26:49.000 But it's not because you need them to shut up.
00:26:53.000 It's because they need to learn to shut up.
00:26:55.000 Not because it bothers you when they're ruckus.
00:26:58.000 Do you follow me?
00:26:59.000 It's not about you.
00:27:01.000 You're not interacting to make you be okay.
00:27:04.000 Because you're already okay, right?
00:27:04.000 Why?
00:27:06.000 And so I don't like when people, somebody say, oh, you mean I should behave this way.
00:27:10.000 No, I don't mean anything like that.
00:27:12.000 I mean, you should do the work inside yourself to let go of why you're not okay.
00:27:17.000 Then be however natural it is.
00:27:19.000 Everyone will interact differently.
00:27:21.000 But not because I need you to be this way, because that's really your beef.
00:27:26.000 Society is trying to make you be the way that makes the majority or the powerful people be okay.
00:27:33.000 Right?
00:27:33.000 Behave this way because then I can control you.
00:27:35.000 Right?
00:27:37.000 Why do they need to control you?
00:27:38.000 Because they're not okay.
00:27:39.000 The people that have the most power are the most not okay.
00:27:42.000 You understand that, right?
00:27:43.000 I mean, look at what's happening in the world, right?
00:27:45.000 They're out there taking land, they're out there taking this, they're out there killing people.
00:27:48.000 Why?
00:27:48.000 Because they're not okay.
00:27:50.000 Why did Hitler kill the Jews?
00:27:52.000 I'm a Jewish, right?
00:27:52.000 I can talk about it.
00:27:53.000 Why did Hitler kill the Jews?
00:27:54.000 He wasn't okay.
00:27:56.000 Seriously, not okay.
00:27:57.000 That's a not okay dude, all right?
00:27:59.000 And he decided, I can't be okay while there are Jews.
00:28:03.000 Right or wrong, right?
00:28:05.000 He was not okay with it.
00:28:07.000 He was not okay.
00:28:09.000 And look what he did.
00:28:11.000 He overreacted.
00:28:12.000 That's to say the least.
00:28:15.000 The point is he was unable to work with himself.
00:28:19.000 Imagine if he could say, oh, this is silly.
00:28:21.000 They're people like anybody else.
00:28:22.000 Let me get my act together.
00:28:24.000 All of World War Two doesn't take place.
00:28:26.000 One person.
00:28:27.000 That's how important it is to say the answer is inside, not outside.
00:28:31.000 The cleansing.
00:28:34.000 You see, it feels like we have a set of systems that are based on materialistic drives.
00:28:43.000 The reason that the 12 Steps continues to fascinate me is because it's predicated on the idea that Speaking personally, my addiction to alcohol or drugs is merely an epitomising symbol of a kind of attachment to an external object required in order to be okay.
00:29:05.000 And even in the most rudimentary and formative texts of the 12 steps, it says,
00:29:11.000 your alcoholism, for example, is merely an outer symbol of a deeper problem
00:29:18.000 that are defined colloquially in that literature as self-centeredness.
00:29:22.000 You're obsessed with yourself and you're obsessed with your desires.
00:29:26.000 Firstly, let go of the alcohol.
00:29:29.000 Then you will be confronted with the degree to which this self-centeredness is governing your life.
00:29:35.000 Then we will show you what this self-centeredness looks like.
00:29:39.000 And interestingly, one of the aspects of the 12 steps, steps 4 and 5 in particular, are an inventorying and confessional protest where you say, here are all the things I'm not okay with.
00:29:49.000 My mum did that, my dad did this, this person broke my heart, my body's not how I want it to be, this happened, that happened.
00:29:55.000 And then on sharing that, you recognize that it isn't the objective facts in
00:29:59.000 themselves, but that at some point you've formed an impression
00:30:03.000 of how reality ought be. And I suppose where I get fixated, and it's probably
00:30:09.000 just another blankie, Michael, just another object, is that I wonder how we might
00:30:15.000 influence cultural artifacts and conduits in the way that you do for your writing.
00:30:22.000 I've got Living Untethered here.
00:30:25.000 Influence these spaces so that they become avatars of a different type of reality.
00:30:32.000 Because I don't know why I fetishize the global, perhaps because of the scale of my own ego, but like I Fetishise, oh this is what's happening in social media, this is what's happening in geopolitics, the current war in Ukraine.
00:30:46.000 Why are we being told this information and this information is being excluded?
00:30:49.000 Why during the pandemic was this aspect of truth highlighted and this aspect of truth neglected?
00:30:56.000 And obviously the answer is this truth suits the interests of the powerful, this truth is inconvenient to the interests of the powerful.
00:31:04.000 My idea, Michael, one of my challenges is that I find it impossible to move between these rather narcissistic, personal travails, like, you know, I want this, I want that, people need to treat me this way for me to be okay, and these, like, extraordinary
00:31:27.000 Just global issues, which I suppose in the scope of the cosmos are similarly trivial, if you can adapt and adjust to that scale.
00:31:37.000 So, I suppose then, it seems to me that your way of dealing with this has been to continually devote yourself to this truth, the truth that you explain obviously better than I could, and To not allow yourself to latch, limp it, attach or connect to any of these glittering baubles on the carousel of apparently external experience.
00:32:03.000 To remain devout, to remain faithful to this idea, to this sort of one truth, to this one truth of I am the awareness, like I am free from this.
00:32:14.000 And I wonder, I wonder then, Michael, when do you experience either grief, agitation, pleasure stimulation, desire?
00:32:23.000 Has it happened to you in the last 24 hours?
00:32:25.000 What happens to you around the rudimentary things like the appetite, hunger, sex?
00:32:29.000 What happens to you around competition?
00:32:32.000 The drives that we fetishise, the drives around which we formulate a culture, sexuality, appetite for food, desire for status.
00:32:41.000 What happens to you when you experience them?
00:32:43.000 And are there, in your experience, more insidious forms or simply more personally effective forms?
00:32:50.000 And how do they affect you?
00:32:53.000 I always come back to the same thing.
00:32:56.000 If you're not okay, all of those things you talked about help you feel better.
00:33:03.000 Okay, including alcohol, right?
00:33:05.000 I mean, not long run, okay?
00:33:07.000 But like, I love the teachings of the Twelve Steps because they're my teachings.
00:33:13.000 I mean, I'm their teacher.
00:33:14.000 I don't know, I never read them, right?
00:33:16.000 I hear them when you talk about them.
00:33:18.000 I wasn't a drinker, right?
00:33:19.000 So I didn't get involved in that.
00:33:21.000 But the more I hear about it, they're the absolute truth.
00:33:24.000 Like what you said, making that inventory, what's it saying?
00:33:27.000 You have stuff inside that made you drink.
00:33:30.000 It's not like you like drinking.
00:33:32.000 You need to drown the stuff in there that's causing all the trouble inside.
00:33:35.000 Well, that's what I'm talking about.
00:33:37.000 You need to get that stuff out.
00:33:38.000 That's what they're saying.
00:33:39.000 You need to get that stuff out.
00:33:41.000 So basically, at some point, if you're okay inside, it doesn't look like you're talking about.
00:33:47.000 There's not a fetish about sex.
00:33:48.000 There's not a thing about having to have special foods.
00:33:50.000 There's not a thing about needing acceptance and all that stuff.
00:33:54.000 Why?
00:33:54.000 Have you suppressed it?
00:33:55.000 No!
00:33:56.000 Underneath all that junk is a river of joy.
00:33:59.000 Literally, there's a flow of energy that is always flowing up inside of you, intoxicating you all the time.
00:34:06.000 It's feeding you all the time.
00:34:08.000 Okay?
00:34:09.000 So, imagine for a moment that that's going on.
00:34:11.000 Then the question has no relevance.
00:34:14.000 There's no need for any of these things.
00:34:16.000 Okay?
00:34:16.000 Do you need basic food?
00:34:17.000 Of course you do.
00:34:18.000 Food, clothing, shelter.
00:34:19.000 Okay?
00:34:20.000 Does it have to be a really big house?
00:34:21.000 No.
00:34:22.000 Does it make any difference?
00:34:23.000 Why?
00:34:23.000 Because you're totally filled with joy.
00:34:25.000 You're filled with love.
00:34:27.000 Now, does that mean you go in there and just become a hermit?
00:34:31.000 Right?
00:34:31.000 That I have so much love I don't need anything?
00:34:34.000 Love loves to express itself.
00:34:37.000 Therefore you may get married, you may have children, you may do all kinds of things, right?
00:34:42.000 Inspiration loves to create, do things, but you're not doing them because you're not okay.
00:34:48.000 You're doing it because you are okay.
00:34:50.000 So it's a real paradigm shift.
00:34:52.000 People think paradigm shift is I change what I like.
00:34:54.000 No, no.
00:34:55.000 Paradigm shift is I'm so full I don't have a preference, right?
00:34:59.000 I'm not renouncing anything.
00:35:00.000 I'm not renouncing anything.
00:35:02.000 I'm just enjoying the beauty of what it's like to be, relatively, clean inside, right?
00:35:08.000 And that there's all this joy, there's all this, like, here, Christ.
00:35:12.000 Again, I don't know why, I read the Bible once, in 1971, and when I talk, the words pop back in my mouth, right?
00:35:19.000 Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that leaveth the mouth of God.
00:35:24.000 That's talking about what I'm talking about.
00:35:26.000 You're talking about people live off the bread, off the sex, off this, all this outside stuff, right?
00:35:31.000 There is this river of joy, of the rush of holy waters, call it whatever you want.
00:35:36.000 There's something very beautiful inside of everybody.
00:35:39.000 You know, I did three years of prison work, right?
00:35:41.000 So I got, and that's maximum security prison, killers, rapists, right?
00:35:44.000 There's beauty inside of everybody.
00:35:47.000 The trouble is the psyche is so screwed up, That it causes them, in order to be okay, to do very unacceptable things.
00:35:54.000 You understand that?
00:35:55.000 Sociologically unacceptable.
00:35:56.000 I mean, you hurt other people.
00:35:58.000 All right?
00:35:59.000 If you tune in to the beauty of this inside, and you actually do the work that's necessary to get rid of this personal psycho mess.
00:36:08.000 I call it, I don't call it psyche, I call it psycho.
00:36:10.000 Right?
00:36:11.000 That's causing all this trouble.
00:36:13.000 The question has become totally different.
00:36:15.000 Okay, they just become, okay, if you had beauty going on inside of you and some radical activist came to you and said, oh my God, there's all this trouble with the virus and this kind of stuff, the first thing you would do is look with compassion and understand that is a view.
00:36:32.000 I can see it.
00:36:33.000 And here's another view, and I can see it.
00:36:36.000 A truly wise person is not caught up in their own views, not caught up in themselves.
00:36:42.000 They have compassion and understanding why people see things the way they do.
00:36:45.000 Why?
00:36:45.000 Because I am the sum of my learned experiences and you are the sum of your learned experiences, right?
00:36:50.000 And that doesn't always sit real well.
00:36:52.000 So you basically do the work on yourself so that you can be a positive input to society.
00:36:59.000 So you ask me a question, what about those things to me?
00:37:02.000 I don't ever think about them.
00:37:03.000 They don't cross my mind.
00:37:04.000 I don't suppress them.
00:37:06.000 I don't do anything.
00:37:07.000 The moment unfolds in front of me.
00:37:08.000 I'm generally, okay, not completely, but generally I'm happy to interact with it.
00:37:15.000 I appreciate it.
00:37:17.000 You know how I look at the world?
00:37:18.000 You're sitting on a planet spinning them out of a little nowhere.
00:37:21.000 That's the truth, okay?
00:37:22.000 It's just as true as anything else you talk about.
00:37:26.000 1.3 million Earths fit inside the Sun.
00:37:28.000 1.3 million Earths fit inside the Sun.
00:37:31.000 And the Sun is one of 300 billion stars in one galaxy of which there are two trillion.
00:37:37.000 Get your act together, okay?
00:37:40.000 Your mind is welcome to think about that.
00:37:42.000 Why?
00:37:42.000 It's the truth.
00:37:44.000 Correct?
00:37:45.000 Yes, yes sir.
00:37:46.000 I'm just marking that as a clip that should be used in social media.
00:37:50.000 That's what that was.
00:37:52.000 But you see what I'm saying?
00:37:54.000 Yes I do.
00:37:56.000 I have a question though, Michael Singer.
00:37:57.000 It is about the nature of consciousness.
00:37:59.000 Whilst materially we may be demonstrably finite, is there something about the nature of consciousness that may be beyond spatial and temporal dynamics?
00:38:11.000 And if that is true, does it matter?
00:38:14.000 And what do you feel about atheism as a sort of the pinnacle of material rationalism, i.e.
00:38:23.000 you are your...
00:38:25.000 Atheism appears to me, and I'm sure there's much more complexity to it than this, but it seems like a certainty that what is materially rendered and measurable is the apex of reality.
00:38:37.000 And it seems to me that that's at odds with many of the things that you are saying.
00:38:41.000 And it's curious to me that much of what you're saying is found in various spiritual, which I suppose by its nature means not material, Not dogma, but writing and scripture.
00:38:55.000 So what do you think, may I ask you sir, is there something about the nature of consciousness that is transcendent of these systems of limitation and measurement?
00:39:08.000 We can either make it a difficult question or a very simple question.
00:39:12.000 Do you notice that you have thoughts?
00:39:14.000 Yes.
00:39:16.000 Oh, I think you do.
00:39:17.000 Do you notice you have thoughts?
00:39:18.000 Do you notice you have feelings, emotions, drives?
00:39:21.000 Yes, yes.
00:39:21.000 Who notices that?
00:39:23.000 Who notices that?
00:39:24.000 Okay, there.
00:39:25.000 I don't care if you're an atheist, or the most religious person, or agnostic.
00:39:29.000 I don't care.
00:39:30.000 You're still in there, right?
00:39:31.000 And you're noticing.
00:39:33.000 An atheist notices a mind that says, I don't believe in God.
00:39:36.000 A religious person notices a mind, I believe in God.
00:39:39.000 A spiritual person, a truly spiritual person says, I know God.
00:39:42.000 Okay?
00:39:43.000 And there's the mind talking.
00:39:45.000 Okay, or let's say a spiritual ego person says, oh yes, I'm close to God, right?
00:39:50.000 And you're in there, you're conscious, that's as far as I'm going with consciousness.
00:39:54.000 So you are transcendent, and we can talk about it, but you are transcendent to what you're looking at.
00:40:00.000 Those are objects of consciousness.
00:40:02.000 All your talk about materialism, those are objects of consciousness.
00:40:06.000 That's something that is out there, that is coming into your consciousness.
00:40:10.000 So you're aware of it.
00:40:12.000 The problem is, you have a psyche in there, that while it comes in, says, I don't like this, I want this, oh my God!
00:40:18.000 And so you can't stay conscious.
00:40:20.000 You're conscious, or you wouldn't know what's going on, but you can't stay centered in the seat of consciousness.
00:40:25.000 How about that?
00:40:26.000 Right?
00:40:26.000 There's a way that you can sit inside, your natural state is to sit inside, notice the thoughts, notice the emotions, and notice the world.
00:40:34.000 You didn't make any of them.
00:40:36.000 Right?
00:40:36.000 If your mind is that somebody learned experiences, you didn't make it.
00:40:39.000 It's like a computer and the learned experiences programmed it.
00:40:43.000 Your emotions are the same thing, all right?
00:40:45.000 You did not make this world.
00:40:46.000 All this thing about, you know, co-creating and all that kind of stuff.
00:40:49.000 Give me a break, okay?
00:40:50.000 You didn't make anything, right?
00:40:53.000 Every single thing in front of you.
00:40:56.000 Yes, you have a thought, so you say something.
00:40:58.000 Did you make the microphone?
00:40:59.000 Did you invent the microphone?
00:41:00.000 Did you make the wall?
00:41:01.000 Did you build the house?
00:41:02.000 You didn't do anything, right?
00:41:04.000 You just wake up and realize this is my ego saying I is important, but the I is in the middle of this whole universe of which It's vast!
00:41:12.000 So, you stop with that kind of thinking, and the next thing you know, it's more peaceful inside, because your mind is not pulling you down into it, which is what our minds do.
00:41:21.000 They pull us down into it, because we're not... they bother us.
00:41:25.000 How about like that?
00:41:26.000 You just said that, that what people are materialistic.
00:41:30.000 What does that mean?
00:41:30.000 I'm not okay.
00:41:31.000 I need material things to be okay.
00:41:33.000 People are not materialistic.
00:41:34.000 They renounce things.
00:41:35.000 What does that mean?
00:41:36.000 I'm not okay, so I need to stay away from things to be okay.
00:41:39.000 I won't touch money.
00:41:41.000 Sooner a camel should pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man go to heaven.
00:41:46.000 Well, what if there's a tremendous rich man and he's sitting there giving money to everybody and all the poor.
00:41:51.000 He doesn't go to heaven?
00:41:52.000 It's just these things are not true.
00:41:54.000 The problem is that you are not okay inside.
00:41:57.000 So therefore it's saying that if you're not okay inside and money's making you be okay and you're a miser and you're grabbing and you're holding and taking it, well then you're not, you know, definitely not in a good state.
00:42:08.000 So materialism is not a problem.
00:42:10.000 Material objects are not a problem.
00:42:13.000 The problem is that you need them in order to be okay.
00:42:16.000 So the whole conversation changes if you keep coming back to, I'm not okay.
00:42:21.000 What am I doing because I'm not okay?
00:42:23.000 There's your 12 steps stuff, right?
00:42:24.000 Make the list of why you're not okay.
00:42:26.000 Now, what are you doing because you're not okay?
00:42:28.000 Well, I'm so not okay that I'm drinking.
00:42:30.000 That's not okay.
00:42:31.000 The only time I'm okay is sex.
00:42:32.000 I'm not okay.
00:42:33.000 And so the only time I'm okay is if people are googling over me.
00:42:37.000 Probably googling also, right?
00:42:40.000 But basically, I'm doing things because I'm not okay.
00:42:44.000 So, if you don't start there, everything looks different.
00:42:48.000 If you sit there and say, why are people materialistic?
00:42:50.000 I told you, they're not okay.
00:42:51.000 Why do some people like this and some people like that?
00:42:54.000 Why do people not like gay people?
00:42:55.000 Why do people like gay people?
00:42:56.000 I'm not okay, I'm not okay, I'm not okay, I'm not okay, I'm not okay.
00:42:59.000 Therefore, I'm judging.
00:43:01.000 Therefore, certain things need to be a certain way for me to be okay, and I can't handle that, and I really like this.
00:43:07.000 It's so much deeper.
00:43:08.000 Who is noticing this inside?
00:43:11.000 Who's noticing that if you see a person of a particular religion or culture or something like that, that you either feel good or you feel yicky?
00:43:19.000 Somebody's noticing, right?
00:43:20.000 What is prejudice?
00:43:22.000 That if somebody comes in my presence, something inside of me doesn't like it.
00:43:26.000 You hear me?
00:43:27.000 I don't like it.
00:43:28.000 And don't tell me I should.
00:43:29.000 Okay, well, why don't you like it?
00:43:33.000 My daddy, there's all kinds of reasons that you got programmed to be that way.
00:43:38.000 So ultimately, you come down to the point that the answer is always, you work on yourself to let go of this garbage that you've collected inside.
00:43:47.000 And only when that ends up happening, people will be okay.
00:43:51.000 And the people that are okay are helping everybody else.
00:43:53.000 You understand that?
00:43:54.000 The people that are not okay are taking from everybody else.
00:43:57.000 But there are plenty of teachers out there and plenty of good people out there that are helping others around them.
00:44:03.000 And they do it naturally, because they want to, not because they were told to.
00:44:07.000 So, basically, it all comes down to, you just may have consciousness.
00:44:07.000 All right?
00:44:11.000 So, consciousness is noticing all this.
00:44:15.000 Okay?
00:44:15.000 It's noticing.
00:44:16.000 If you feel hate, it notices you feel hate.
00:44:18.000 If you feel love, it knows you feel love.
00:44:20.000 What is the nature of consciousness?
00:44:22.000 Awareness.
00:44:24.000 Where does it come from?
00:44:25.000 That's my world.
00:44:27.000 What is the source of consciousness?
00:44:30.000 Okay?
00:44:31.000 You know you're conscious.
00:44:32.000 What is the source of consciousness?
00:44:35.000 When you meditate deep enough, and it can happen naturally, by the way.
00:44:38.000 Meditation should not be, and doesn't have to be, that I go sit down somewhere and make my mind shut up.
00:44:45.000 When you're clean inside, relatively, only the great masters are clean inside, right?
00:44:45.000 Okay?
00:44:51.000 But when you're clean inside, it happens spontaneously.
00:44:54.000 Instead of watching a football game, And all of a sudden, all this joy wells up inside of you for two hours.
00:45:00.000 You can't even watch the stupid game.
00:45:02.000 You keep falling into these, just like we fall into terrible states, you start falling into these beautiful states inside.
00:45:08.000 They overwhelm you.
00:45:09.000 They're just gorgeous.
00:45:10.000 They're wonderful.
00:45:11.000 You would never trade them for anything, and that's the key.
00:45:14.000 Would I trade it because somebody doesn't like me?
00:45:16.000 No, I'm not going to trade the joy inside of me.
00:45:18.000 He has the right not to like me.
00:45:20.000 Does that mean I don't deal with it?
00:45:21.000 I deal with it, but I deal with it out of compassion, out of understanding.
00:45:24.000 He doesn't not like me.
00:45:26.000 He doesn't like himself.
00:45:26.000 Do you understand that?
00:45:28.000 He doesn't like what happens inside of him or her when I'm around.
00:45:31.000 Isn't that what it means?
00:45:33.000 Okay?
00:45:34.000 It has nothing to do with me.
00:45:35.000 Nothing.
00:45:36.000 Okay?
00:45:37.000 So basically, consciousness has a source.
00:45:40.000 You can't find that source when you're busy being involved with your thoughts.
00:45:44.000 Because then you went the wrong way.
00:45:46.000 You went down, right?
00:45:48.000 Or you're busy being involved with your emotions.
00:45:50.000 You went down.
00:45:52.000 So basically, when you naturally start to understand, I can let go of my addiction to myself.
00:45:59.000 How?
00:46:00.000 My teachings, I know what I've learned, which means nothing.
00:46:03.000 It's just what I've learned in my life.
00:46:05.000 Relax.
00:46:06.000 Relax those hands in there, right?
00:46:08.000 They start to grab, they start to push.
00:46:12.000 Relax.
00:46:12.000 Just relax.
00:46:13.000 Relax.
00:46:14.000 And you're gonna find just what Tulsa finds.
00:46:17.000 If you relax and don't push it back down...
00:46:20.000 It comes up.
00:46:21.000 Oh my God, that hurts!
00:46:24.000 Yes, it was stored with pain, it's coming back with pain.
00:46:27.000 If you want to go drink to get rid of it, it's just going to go right back down.
00:46:31.000 If you want to suppress to get rid of it, join a blog where everybody has the same problem and we all agree we have the right to have this problem.
00:46:38.000 My mommy did this to me.
00:46:40.000 Go on, it'll stay in there.
00:46:42.000 If you want it out, relax.
00:46:44.000 It will naturally come out, just like your body has an immune system.
00:46:48.000 Correct?
00:46:49.000 You don't do anything to make the white corpuscles, white blood cells come up and attack the enemy.
00:46:54.000 It happens all by itself.
00:46:56.000 Your heart and your mind are way higher than your body.
00:47:00.000 They have a natural system to try and push the garbage that you shoved in there out of the way.
00:47:05.000 But when they do, you shove it back down.
00:47:08.000 The mind tries to purify itself.
00:47:11.000 There don't need to be teachings.
00:47:13.000 If it pushes the stuff up that's causing all your trouble, keep your hands off of it.
00:47:18.000 Let it happen.
00:47:19.000 That's hard!
00:47:20.000 You ask me why it's hard.
00:47:21.000 That's hard!
00:47:22.000 I couldn't handle it when it happened when I was five.
00:47:25.000 But you're 55!
00:47:25.000 Your mommy died a long time ago!
00:47:28.000 Right?
00:47:29.000 Why are you still reacting to something that's not happening?
00:47:33.000 And at some point you're going to say, well, that's not logical.
00:47:35.000 You're very logical.
00:47:36.000 You're a very intelligent man.
00:47:37.000 It's not logical to be bothered by the past.
00:47:40.000 by your past. Why? It's not happening anymore, but it did.
00:47:44.000 I know, but it shouldn't still be in there.
00:47:47.000 And what happens when it tries to come up, you push it back down. So that's the total teaching.
00:47:53.000 Don't push it back down. But that's hard. And you read, you know, "Living Untethered." It gives you
00:47:58.000 stages, just like 12 steps. It doesn't have 12 steps. All right.
00:48:02.000 It has a few steps.
00:48:03.000 It gives you stages.
00:48:04.000 It says, I know that when your mother dies, and you weren't able to get there because the plane was late, and you felt guilty, and you had all kinds of trouble for the rest of your life, alright?
00:48:13.000 I know that when you hear the word mother, you feel weird.
00:48:16.000 When you hear the word death, you feel weird.
00:48:18.000 When a plane is late, you feel weird.
00:48:20.000 Because you stored all that stuff in there.
00:48:22.000 So what do you do?
00:48:23.000 You can't start with that stuff.
00:48:24.000 That's too big.
00:48:26.000 Just like you don't start your piano with Beethoven.
00:48:29.000 You start with scales.
00:48:30.000 So you start by saying, I am bothering myself about things that are meaningless.
00:48:36.000 The driver in front of me.
00:48:38.000 The fact that the sun is hot.
00:48:39.000 The fact that it's cold.
00:48:41.000 Okay, yes, I don't have to stay in the cold.
00:48:43.000 I can walk toward heat, right?
00:48:44.000 But while I'm doing it, And I say, oh my god, it's so cold!
00:48:47.000 This is terrible!
00:48:48.000 And then once I get into the heat, you have no idea how cold it was!
00:48:51.000 Right?
00:48:52.000 You're making... One of the best lines in that book, Oprah said it was her favorite line, all right?
00:48:57.000 Is, the moment in front of you is not bothering you.
00:49:01.000 You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you.
00:49:04.000 Right or wrong?
00:49:06.000 Not all the time.
00:49:06.000 You know, if there's a fire in the house, it's bothering you, you better do something, right?
00:49:10.000 But if the driver in front of you didn't put his blinker on, and you spend the next five minutes driving, damn drivers, what's the matter with them?
00:49:17.000 If they're driving in the wrong lane, when they're going slower, you're bothering yourself about stuff that you don't need to bother yourself about.
00:49:24.000 So you start practicing Truly practicing, not on a meditation pillow, in real life, practicing letting go of the meaningless stuff.
00:49:34.000 As a business person, you know I did business, right?
00:49:37.000 I sit there and say, we made decisions based on cost-benefit analysis.
00:49:42.000 If somebody came to me and said, here's an investment, the cost is 100% and the benefit is zero, do you want to do it?
00:49:49.000 Oh, let's see.
00:49:53.000 That's what's happening inside ourselves.
00:49:55.000 What is the benefit of being bothered by the driver in front of you?
00:49:58.000 What is the benefit of being bothered by the color of this wall or by this or by that, right?
00:50:03.000 They're just things you're bothering yourself about.
00:50:06.000 If you will stop doing that, it will all happen.
00:50:09.000 Literally, it will all happen if you take the attitude, I'm going to watch today what I bother myself about that there's no benefit for doing that.
00:50:16.000 Oh, it doesn't screw me up.
00:50:18.000 And I'm going to learn to let that go.
00:50:20.000 That's what letting go means.
00:50:21.000 It doesn't mean letting go of money, letting go of a relationship.
00:50:24.000 It doesn't mean that.
00:50:25.000 It means learning to let go of what's bothering you when you bother yourself.
00:50:30.000 And then what's going to happen when you learn to do that, and that's not that hard, you understand that?
00:50:34.000 You just make it, it's so logical it's ridiculous, right?
00:50:37.000 Stop bothering yourself about things that have no benefit to bother yourself, all right?
00:50:41.000 And then what's going to happen is something bigger is going to come up.
00:50:44.000 Either because somebody does something or it comes up by itself.
00:50:47.000 And you're going to find, I can handle this because I practiced the piano.
00:50:52.000 Now that I can do the scales, I can play Twinkle Twinkle.
00:50:55.000 You understand that?
00:50:56.000 And so now you start letting that go.
00:50:58.000 And just, it's called the ascent.
00:50:59.000 It just happens naturally.
00:51:01.000 It's not a fight.
00:51:02.000 It's not a struggle.
00:51:03.000 It's not hard.
00:51:05.000 If you will do it step by step, step by step, right?
00:51:08.000 And you just keep letting go.
00:51:09.000 And you're gonna find there's no reason to drink.
00:51:11.000 There's no reason to be, you know, overly sexually driven.
00:51:14.000 People are that way because they need to be because they're not okay.
00:51:20.000 And it gives me joy.
00:51:21.000 No one can argue these things don't give you joy.
00:51:23.000 No one can argue that if you're really, really bothering, your mind's driving you crazy, that drinking helps that, right?
00:51:29.000 Or drugs help that.
00:51:30.000 So the answer is not, don't do drugs.
00:51:32.000 The answer is, stop bothering yourself so that you need drugs, right?
00:51:36.000 It's a core thing.
00:51:37.000 We're to say, work at the root.
00:51:40.000 So there's the answer, right?
00:51:42.000 And then what happens is this joy starts flowing inside of you, and the more joy you have inside, the less you feel attached to things outside, and the more you're okay, and then you become a giver.
00:51:53.000 So we didn't answer the source of consciousness.
00:51:56.000 You're welcome to go back to that.
00:51:58.000 Yes, because Meister Eckhart says, the eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me, and that suggests that the idea of source, a teleology, an origin and a destination, is a difficult one to frame in an aspatial and atemporal, I can't even use the word context because it suggests that it's somehow contextless, So, when you talk about Source of Consciousness, and thank you for that by the way, I was really trying to do it and I was really recognising how embodied this pain is for me, that I wake up and I immediately feel like it's here and here, anxiety, pain, unhappiness, what's going to make it happen?
00:52:42.000 Like, you know, something for the mouth is what I always think.
00:52:46.000 Put something in your mouth.
00:52:47.000 Put a person or a substance in your mouth.
00:52:52.000 Eat something up.
00:52:55.000 to do something about this.
00:52:56.000 And of course, the sort of dedicated clinical trials that I've been doing for 45 years, by the way, Michael, I hope 55 was an arbitrary example, because I caught that when we used the number earlier, and it was 10 years on top of my stated chronological time on this planet, in this form, with this identity.
00:53:15.000 The 50 was me.
00:53:18.000 My 50 years of doing that.
00:53:20.000 Go ahead.
00:53:22.000 So, You know, it doesn't work.
00:53:25.000 It doesn't work.
00:53:26.000 And the other thing may I say, is that there are times when I experience this actual non-separateness, this beyond abundance, total unlimited-lessness.
00:53:42.000 But like I, you know, I don't want it ever to go.
00:53:45.000 I want to kind of live there.
00:53:46.000 I'm like, I have this greed for bliss.
00:53:48.000 I have this greed for bliss.
00:53:52.000 I want it.
00:53:54.000 That's beautiful.
00:53:54.000 And you can live there.
00:53:57.000 And you were meant to live there.
00:53:59.000 You weren't meant to put garbage inside yourself and then wonder why it smells, okay?
00:54:04.000 If you're in a house and you're the only one living there, and you're the only one living in that house, and there's pizza crust all over the place, and boxes, and roaches, and all these things, you did it.
00:54:12.000 There's nobody else in there.
00:54:15.000 Russell, you're the only one in there.
00:54:17.000 You're the conscious being.
00:54:19.000 It's a single-occupancy apartment in there.
00:54:21.000 Your mother's not in there, your wife's not in there, your husband's not in there, kids are not in there.
00:54:25.000 You're the only one in there.
00:54:26.000 So if it is a mess in there, you did it.
00:54:29.000 Now, psychology doesn't like me saying that, right?
00:54:32.000 But if it's a mess in there, you did it.
00:54:34.000 But it's wonderful because it empowers you to say, if I did it, I can undo it.
00:54:38.000 I can stop doing it.
00:54:39.000 And that's all I'm teaching, right?
00:54:41.000 I can stop putting messes in there.
00:54:43.000 I'm so, so sorry you feel the pain that you feel these things,
00:54:47.000 but it is an indication that something's wrong.
00:54:50.000 The answer is not aspirin or Pepto-Bismol, right?
00:54:54.000 Or food.
00:54:55.000 Why do you like putting food in your mouth?
00:54:58.000 It distracts you from yourself.
00:55:00.000 You understand?
00:55:01.000 The senses are strong enough to pull the consciousness into them, listen to me, to pull the consciousness into them so that then you are distracted from this garbage as you store it inside.
00:55:12.000 That's why everybody's doing everything, to distract themselves from themselves.
00:55:17.000 Why not fix what's wrong inside and live a totally different life, which you say you've experienced sometimes, that is really beautiful in there?
00:55:24.000 It can always be beautiful in there.
00:55:27.000 Let's start by... Stop here.
00:55:29.000 Let's say you feel love in a relationship.
00:55:32.000 You feel love.
00:55:33.000 You're just sitting there blissed out.
00:55:34.000 It happens, right?
00:55:35.000 There's a little love pouring out of yourself.
00:55:37.000 And all of a sudden, the other person, right, does something that is not, you think, you wouldn't expect them to do that.
00:55:45.000 They say something, right?
00:55:47.000 You actually leave the love to get involved in the disturbance inside of you.
00:55:53.000 What a trade-off!
00:55:54.000 What's wrong with you?
00:55:55.000 I'll tell you what.
00:55:56.000 I'll give you a quarter, give me six million dollars.
00:55:59.000 That's what you just did.
00:56:00.000 You just sat there and said, I love the love.
00:56:03.000 You do it the way you want.
00:56:04.000 I ain't giving up the love.
00:56:06.000 Why would I give up the love?
00:56:07.000 Because you said something.
00:56:09.000 Because you didn't say something.
00:56:10.000 Understand that?
00:56:12.000 Yeah.
00:56:12.000 So you just finally get wise.
00:56:14.000 You're so smart.
00:56:15.000 You're so sharp.
00:56:16.000 You use this wisdom to look inside and say, I am screwing myself up!
00:56:21.000 That's a perfect example, right?
00:56:22.000 You said sometimes you feel this joy, this openness and spiritual.
00:56:26.000 Why does it go away?
00:56:28.000 Because something happens that brings you down.
00:56:30.000 But it happens outside.
00:56:33.000 That doesn't bring you down.
00:56:34.000 The outside, all kinds of things.
00:56:35.000 Like you said, the whole world, billions of things are happening all the time.
00:56:38.000 They don't bring you down.
00:56:39.000 It's because it hits something inside of you and you left.
00:56:43.000 You left that state to go get involved with the garbage inside.
00:56:48.000 You understand that?
00:56:49.000 Yes.
00:56:50.000 All right.
00:56:50.000 You decide, I decided 50 years ago, no, that is not logical.
00:56:55.000 It doesn't make sense.
00:56:56.000 Right?
00:56:56.000 I'm going to learn not to do that because I really liked that state you talked about.
00:57:01.000 Okay.
00:57:01.000 And I'm going to learn to stay there.
00:57:03.000 But yet I built a business and I did this and I got three grandchildren.
00:57:07.000 I'm not some way out there.
00:57:09.000 Will you live alone?
00:57:10.000 I do live in the woods.
00:57:13.000 I still live in the woods, but now there's all these people calling.
00:57:17.000 So it's your willingness to say, I like this interstate.
00:57:24.000 Everything I ever, even the sex and even the food, it's because you enjoy what happens inside of you.
00:57:30.000 Right?
00:57:31.000 You don't need these things outside to distract you from your problems inside.
00:57:36.000 If you get rid of your problems inside, then it is always that way.
00:57:40.000 And then, basically, people sometimes say, well, then you're not part of society, you're not being social.
00:57:44.000 Well, you're very social!
00:57:45.000 You're just out here giving, loving, compassion.
00:57:49.000 That was a Buddhist thing, right?
00:57:50.000 It's all about compassion.
00:57:51.000 But people don't understand.
00:57:52.000 People think compassion is sympathy.
00:57:54.000 No.
00:57:54.000 Sympathy is, I have the same problem you did, at least I did.
00:57:58.000 I can really relate to what you're talking about.
00:58:00.000 Oh my god, I'm sure it hurts a lot.
00:58:02.000 That's sympathy.
00:58:03.000 What's compassion?
00:58:04.000 I used to I feel things like that.
00:58:08.000 And now I've learned to be higher than that, that I can let go of that stuff.
00:58:11.000 And so can you.
00:58:12.000 So I'm compassionate that you're suffering for no reason.
00:58:15.000 You're suffering because you haven't done enough work.
00:58:18.000 So now you're helping somebody instead of getting down there with them.
00:58:22.000 Right?
00:58:23.000 You're teaching by your example, not with words.
00:58:26.000 Right?
00:58:27.000 Somebody once asked Ramakrishna.
00:58:28.000 Great.
00:58:29.000 Ever heard of Ramakrishna?
00:58:30.000 Great master.
00:58:31.000 Fully enlightened master.
00:58:32.000 One of the really great ones.
00:58:34.000 Does an enlightened being ever feel anger?
00:58:38.000 You'll like this.
00:58:39.000 He said, yes.
00:58:41.000 Everybody pulled back.
00:58:43.000 He said, but it's like riding on water.
00:58:46.000 As soon as it starts, it's gone.
00:58:48.000 It just passes through.
00:58:49.000 It just passes right through.
00:58:51.000 Right?
00:58:51.000 You can do that with the stuff inside you when it comes.
00:58:54.000 There's nothing wrong when it comes up.
00:58:56.000 There's nothing wrong that you have different needs and things like that.
00:59:00.000 They just come in and they pass through.
00:59:02.000 They come in and they pass through.
00:59:03.000 And your consciousness stays seated in the higher state.
00:59:07.000 And it never leaves.
00:59:08.000 Never leaves.
00:59:09.000 Never ever leaves.
00:59:10.000 Nothing can bring you down, all right?
00:59:13.000 And then there's, how about that?
00:59:14.000 Nothing can bring your consciousness out of the seat of consciousness.
00:59:17.000 You're established in that seat.
00:59:20.000 Things go on down here, right?
00:59:21.000 And you let them go.
00:59:23.000 That state is nothing compared to the high state.
00:59:28.000 Should you be in a state of joy and not being disturbed by anything, you haven't gotten anywhere yet.
00:59:34.000 That's the source of consciousness.
00:59:36.000 We're very high beings.
00:59:39.000 You're a very great being, Russell.
00:59:41.000 You don't need to be struggling with all this stuff.
00:59:44.000 It's just a matter of being willing to do the work.
00:59:46.000 The appetite feels so strong sometimes.
00:59:48.000 I recognise there is no choice but to become awakened immediately.
00:59:54.000 There is no choice.
00:59:59.000 Thank you so much, Michael Singer, for spending time with us today, for providing a beautiful, expansive framework for the challenges that we face individually and culturally and collectively.
01:00:13.000 I found your books incredibly useful, evocative and powerful.
01:00:19.000 Living Untethered and Untethered Soul, I love them.
01:00:22.000 The challenge is, I suppose, for me personally, is that I have to continue this practice.
01:00:28.000 I must have some kind of, accompanying these extraordinary drives that I feel, a type of amnesia.
01:00:36.000 I move so easily away from principles that have been successful for me in the past.
01:00:43.000 So it's very beautiful to not only hear what you're saying, but to feel what you're feeling.
01:00:51.000 It's a very, very helpful experience.
01:00:54.000 Thank you.
01:00:56.000 Thank you, thank you.
01:00:58.000 You're a beautiful being and you help a lot of people.
01:01:00.000 And I would love, because every time I talk to you, you talk about these problems that still hurt inside, right?
01:01:06.000 I hope they're getting less.
01:01:08.000 And in terms of remembering, 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the evening is all it really takes to remember the purpose of my day is to let go of this stuff that's inside and not put any more in.
01:01:21.000 when you're done at the end of the night, did I let go? It's very still stuff stuff, right? Did I
01:01:26.000 let go of what I stored inside during this day? I'm sitting in a little plasma in the middle
01:01:30.000 of nowhere. I'm supposed to be able to handle what goes on.
01:01:33.000 All right. If you will do that morning and evening, morning and evening, you will wake, you will
01:01:39.000 go, excuse me, you will wake up and you will go to bed at night in a higher state than you woke
01:01:44.000 up in the morning.
01:01:45.000 Every day.
01:01:46.000 Because you didn't take out more stuff and you let go of stuff.
01:01:49.000 Wouldn't that be fun?
01:01:50.000 Every day.
01:01:50.000 It's a video game.
01:01:52.000 Every day, you go to bed in a higher state than you woke up.
01:01:56.000 And it gets beautiful.
01:01:59.000 Alright.
01:02:00.000 Thank you.
01:02:00.000 Thank you, Michael.
01:02:01.000 Imagine if all I took from that was, yeah, I'm going to go and live in the woods.
01:02:05.000 Yeah, living in the woods.
01:02:08.000 Yeah, the woods.
01:02:09.000 It's the woods.
01:02:10.000 Yes, yes!
01:02:11.000 If I change the outside, I understand now.
01:02:14.000 All I have to do is manage everything around me all of the time and then I'm going to be fine.
01:02:19.000 Michael, thank you so much.
01:02:21.000 Thank you for that.
01:02:21.000 It's so beautiful to spend time with you.
01:02:23.000 Thank you.
01:02:24.000 Thank you, Russell.
01:02:25.000 Thank you, Michael Thinger, as always.
01:02:27.000 Let me know in the comments, let me know in the chat how you find that helpful.
01:02:30.000 And if it makes you feel better about the things you're personally experiencing in your life, whether that appears to be induced by social, cultural or economic conditions.
01:02:39.000 I want to let you know that this Wednesday, we've got Books with Brad and we're going to be talking about Alice in Wonderland.
01:02:44.000 And our guest this Friday will be the farmer Will Harris, who's the owner of White Oak Pastures.
01:02:49.000 He's a regenerative farmer.
01:02:51.000 Who's overtly, adeptly and articulately critical of Bill Gates in ways that I think you'll find very interesting.
01:02:58.000 I also want to let you know about a live event that we're doing in the town that I'm from, Gray's.
01:03:03.000 There's a campaign to save the theatre there, save our Thameside Theatre, but when they were investigating they discovered council level corruption that involved billions of pounds.
01:03:12.000 It's an extraordinary story and we're doing a one-day event on the 5th of December Tickets are £22.
01:03:18.000 You can come and see me, Brad Evans, Mr G and participate in a one day event that will lead to that theatre being handed to the community.
01:03:26.000 That thing that I'm always saying is the solution.
01:03:28.000 Decentralising power and allowing communities to run their own lives.
01:03:32.000 It's something that we're focusing on this event.
01:03:34.000 There's a link in the description if you want to join me there on the 5th of December.
01:03:40.000 Thank you very much for joining me.
01:03:41.000 Thanks everyone that's in the chat.
01:03:42.000 ET, Free Local, Bob the Bird, Blessed El Bird, Sue Thomason, Mr Galway.
01:03:49.000 Thanks all you guys for joining us.
01:03:51.000 I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Michael Singer.