Michael Singer: Let Go of Yourself and Surrender to Life

But listen to me right that identification with your personal self which is just your mind's thoughts are what keep you from waking up but i have millions of people that know all these things about me i have to i just have to disappear and build a cabinet no do not do that oprah asked me that once me and oprah i found out you don't need to do that Hi i'm mayam bialik and welcome to my breakdown this is the place where we break things down so you don't have to it's mine be alex's breakdown she's

gonna break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two so now she's gonna break down she's a breakdown she's gonna break it down this is the place where i weep openly so you don't have to before we introduce our incredible guest Michael a singer author of the untethered soul and the surrender experiment i'd like to introduce and you'll have to listen to the whole episode to understand this reference my favorite extension cord jonathan cohen that's awesome this is also the place where you have spiritual awakenings so people can also have

them not so that they don't have to i michael singer told me i don't have to Have a spiritual awakening i just need to incrementally be in spiritual awareness this is a very very heavy awesome amazing experience that we just had he is also the author of his newest book living untethered beyond the human predicament which i love because humans are in a big predicament most of the time and he basically tells us how not to be he had a Very very um surprising awakening in 1971 while he was working on his doctorate in economics

and he went into seclusion and founded in 1975 the temple of the universe which is a now long-established yoga and meditation center where people of any religion any set of beliefs come together to experience inner peace he has nearly five decades Of spiritual teaching under his belt he also has made incredible contributions in the areas of business education healthcare environmental protection this is um a man who i just started crying the second i saw his face because this is um a really the untethered soul is one of those books that i recommend to people that

really is potentially life-changing um it actually has a very interesting tie-in To jonathan and my connection so it's also a really special episode for us it's kind of the reason why we're both on mics right now it's a little bit the reason that we're both on mics right now yes let's welcome michael singer to the it breakdown it's really an honor to have you here i'm very nervous and gonna cry it's really very excited to have you we've been looking forward to this day For a long time and um where are we finding you i'm

in gainesville florida okay is that where you live i live in i live in a town called alachua just outside of gainesville and i'm at a studio in gainesville okay got it um jonathan why are we so excited to have michael singer here We have a very um maybe it's not unique maybe this happens all the time with your first book but we have a what we think is a unique story that book actually was one of the ways that we reconnected after not speaking for almost eight years she and i we john yes jonathan

and i we met when our kids were young and um back in those days people didn't keep in touch the way they do now like we would Email from time to time and i thought it had been like a year since we had spoken and apparently it had been many and i emailed him about your book because i discovered the untethered soul um right around the time that i had vocal cord surgery and i was not allowed to speak i had three months of complete silence and this was one of the books that i Read

in that time so it was a very specific time in my life and i have no idea i mean i guess i do have an idea but um i felt like i needed to ask jonathan cohen this guy that i hadn't spoken to if he has read this book so um we've been together since oh that's a true story um but i really i feel very um i'm very nervous i'm very excited to speak to you I i never thought you would talk to us um because i you're such an enlightened person and i just

felt like you might think who are these people and why do they want to speak to me but um i i rank your book as one of the most important books that i have read in my life and it um it's very deep this is not a light easy Read this is um it's a book that makes you look very very hard um not just at yourself but as the subtitle says beyond yourself um you you have another book as well which i think jonathan you have the you have one of the physical copies do

you have it right there jonathan's been sending me screenshots of living untethered when mime says it's not an Easy read what you manage to do so successfully is break things down that are very complex into very very simple and easily digestible parts and one of the reasons that i got so excited when miami emailed me asking me if i had read that book is because i quote your first book as the easiest and most accessible entry point to the deepest you know thoughts and and practices of the human experience and Right before she had messaged

me literally the day before i was in a room of 30 people explaining that if we wanted to create content you know any type of information on how to help human beings get beyond their state of suffering your book was the first thing to read thank you and then she messaged me the next day yeah so we have a very very special connection to you without you even knowing it you have a very interesting Path that led you to the the person who who wrote this book um tell us tell us a bit about your

life before before 1971 [Laughter] [Music] is that general enough it's general enough my general answer to that is it's not worth talking about i i lived i lived my life and then i Woke up and prior to that i wish i could go back and redo it and treat everybody much nicer and be a conscious person throughout my life but in 70 71 uh i had a very deep experience um i wrote that in i don't really see have you ever seen the surrender experiment my second book yes i shared that experience and that's when

My life started you know that's when i woke up you know and i realized oh my goodness i've been asleep i've been sleepwalking you know just driven by desires and knees and fears and so on and then i i tell the story in the strand experiment that i was sitting on the couch with a friend and I was you said you're nervous i was nervous i we stopped talking he was a friend but we had stopped talking and there's nothing to talk about and my mind kept thinking i need to say something i it's not

comfortable the silence is not comfortable all right it's not normal and so my mind kept thinking with the weather and that sounds stupid what about food we could eat something and that sounded stupid and i'm just Sitting in there with my mind doing this which it probably did lots of times throughout my life but this time for some reason and i i don't want to explain or know the reason i don't need to know the reason i was not being the mind i was watching the mind and i realized my god this thing is neurotic

you know this thing can't even see her for a Minute i'm not saying anything all right and and uh that's when i woke up and i started watching it and just the witness woke up i i don't know how to say it any other way right the consciousness was no longer completely associated with the nervousness and the anxiety that was going on in the mind it was seeing that that was going on and that was the end of it that was it my whole life changed period that very Moment i was never the same period

i'm going to ask a dumb question were you on drugs no you were sober yes you were just just like a just having a day that's right and for people who are only listening my aims face when michael's describing this is like contorting because she's fascinated with this idea of awakening and the questions that are running through her mind right now are like Does it happen all at once is it just that you begin to realize it but then the next day you fall back into your patterns and then you build the muscle or like

is this an all of a sudden transformation and now you're only the witness and nothing phases you like how does it build from the first witnessing of the fact that you are not your mind to you know how you've embodied it now That's a very beautiful question and the answer is it's different for everybody it's not that there's some scientific occurrence that happens for everybody right it can be any of those things you said so i can only answer like that's not true because now i've been teaching for 50 years sorry so i i've interacted

with a lot of people and watched a lot of it a lot of awakenings but basically in my particular case it's it's almost frightening all right Is i woke up and that was that i was never going back to sleep i would never go back into there i was fascinated by the fact that that was going on i i was i was earning my ph.d in economics at the time all right never finished but basically you know i had i had my masters and i was going to be an economics professor i was being grown

to be an economics Professor i was very good in school and the chairman of the department was i was under him and basically i woke up and i went to the what they call the stacks at the university of florida the graduate libraries and i pulled down every single book that freud wrote that i could possibly get my hands on well i had never taken a psychology course a philosophy course a religion Course i was symbolic logics advanced calculus you know that's who i was all right and i wanted to know what this voice was

i just i mean surely freud had talked about it well he didn't he didn't he analyzed the mind beautifully i i love freud in fact i i am born on his birthday my birthday is the same as freud's i figured that was mean something right but basically i brought it down read the different and read or Scan through the different books because it would have stood out if you start talking about that voice talk inside your head sure it did not appear that my friend sigmund had popped out he was analyzing other people and did

a brilliant job of analyzing access aspects of the mind the ego the superego you're just analyzing the mind like a scientist all right but to be back there watching it i kept looking to see if he had done that right and so i i i didn't Know anybody i didn't my friends were all in economics and and so on and uh one day a friend i started talking to everybody about that voice it was my life it became my life have you seen that voice you have a voice it's like i don't think it was

much fun to be around in those days and a friend of mine who was a my fellow graduate student in economics mark baldwin was his name i remember it i always will He apparently had had been more broadly and educated than me and more it brought interests and he handed me a book called three pillars of zen by philip kaploo and they were talking about that voice they made me cry i was like my god here it is zen is talking about shutting up that voice it's talking about that voice it's talking about what happens

when their voice is not talking that's the whole Path that's that's their gig and so i i didn't know anybody and i just took the book and i did it and zen is not funny all right seriously zero zen and i just made myself do it and i started meditating in this and then the other thing and then i did that which i don't recommend to anybody i was so fascinated by that that i said i need to take time aside in my life to focus on this it may never happen Again i may never

have the time again right i'll get jobs or this or that but right now i'm in graduate school and i'm going to step aside and i stepped aside you went into seclusion is that basically i went into seclusion where did you go in 1965 when i graduated high school i went to university of florida i stayed there all right and i found a piece of land and 10 acres of land that way on the Country and i uh bought it i had a little money left over from my graduate education because i was on fellowship

and basically two friends of mine and i who had not built things before built a cabin but it's not a cabin it's a gorgeous house all right one of my friends he was uh masters in architecture and so he made a balsam model and we i just wanted a little hut but we built this thing and It's still standing and i went into seclusion i'll never forget them i told tony robbins once he asked me one of the most meaningful moments of my life when the house got built i was so sincere all i wanted

to do was go way back in there because i had had an experience subsequent to the awakening that really was out and basically i i i stopped at the doorway to that house And you know like the buddha i sat there and said i was that sincere i'm not coming out until i'm out i'm going to do whatever i need to do to work my way outside of that crazy mind and find out what's beyond that and so i spent a long period of time doing that and then i realized that that wasn't going to

do it you know i don't i was meditating six hours a day killing myself whatever it was but i was still there doing it that was When i woke up i i don't know why i was able to do this myself all right and basically i saw that i could not do this through discipline that i could not do this by just trying because i was the one that was trying and that just became another neurosis there's another reason to be upset another reason to get it tight another reason to be whatever and so in

the surrender experiment i explained that and then i don't want to Go too deep in that book i again a realization i realized i need something stronger than me that i have no control over that i surrender to that i let go so that i don't have to do it myself or listen to this thing and i decided that there is something like that in my life life it doesn't ever do what i want it just does its thing you know people do their Thing life does its thing and i have always manipulated it or

fought with it or cared what it was doing and i decided that the highest way to do this for myself i don't mean anybody else was to let go of myself by surrendering to life and that's what the surrender experiment is about and what happens subsequent to that leaves my mouth dry i can't even believe it i can't even hardly even talk about i wrote it in the book just all these things unfolded on Their own just it was just a total path unfolding that led me to write it led me to businesses led me

to money led me to the books led me to full interactions everything that ever happened happened because life did it that's all i can tell you so i surrender to that my embiotics breakdown is supported by better help i get burnt out a lot not just from work Just from all the things that i do in life and i think you probably know what i'm talking about i'll sometimes feel lack of motivation or i'll feel trapped or helpless or i feel detached from things going on i'm really exhausted these are signs of burnout and many

of us experience them without even realizing that's what's going on better help online therapy wants to remind you prioritize yourself if you're feeling these kind of symptoms talk to someone Figure out what's causing stress in your life which can be contributing to burnout better help is customized online therapy therapy is a game changer betterhelp has video phone and even live chat sessions with a therapist not ready to see someone on camera not a problem it's also much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can be matched with someone super quick under 48 hours our listeners

get 10 off their first month Go to betterhelp.com slash break that's better help break my umbilicks breakdown is supported by athletic greens i use athletic greens why why do i do that every day because i'm a person who doesn't always eat the way i should and athletic greens allows me to not start the day feeling like i'm already behind what's athletic greens well with One delicious scoop you get 75 high quality vitamins minerals whole food source superfoods probiotics and adaptogens and they help me start my day out right right now reclaim your health arm your

immune system with convenient daily nutrition just one scoop in a cup of water every day that's it you don't need a million different pills and supplements which is what i used to do to look out for your health and to make it easy athletic greens is going to give You a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin d and five free travel packs with your first purchase all you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com breakdown again athletic greens.com breakdown take ownership over your health pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance okay we're gonna take

it back a second so i mean there's so many things here um So one of the i was just i'm gonna cry i think this whole time so one of the things that i want to ask about is um [Music] if you can just clarify a little bit because you know i i think a lot of people you know kind of colloquially refer to like the voice in their head you know and we talk about like oh you know you can hear negative You know negative things about you and you can trace them back to

like oh my mom said that or my dad said you know those kind of voices in your head and so um obviously anyone who's even you know dabbled in in simple meditation you know there's this notion of like clearing the mind and not attaching to the thoughts as they come blah blah blah but what you're talking about Is literally and this is you know i mean i you know you you really go through it in the untethered soul very specifically but just for people who who may not know you're literally just talking about the the

the consciousness that we have that we exist which is represented by the thoughts that we have when we're trying to think About nothing is that an okay way to describe it i think the simplest way to describe it is do you notice that sometimes your mind bothers you yes okay you have two directions you can go from there you can go into psychology and start understanding why the mind does what it does or you can step back into spirituality And says who notices you just told me you noticed your mind bothers you that means you're

not your mind you know it's a picture you know just you notice things all right who notices it so that's the separation i'm not my i'm not my thoughts you are how do you know that because i'm aware of my thoughts okay i'm aware of my thoughts i i like to I don't do a lot of techniques all right but yet people think that my the way i live is a technique and they do it and it works right but i didn't develop it like a technique right so if i tell you both of you

right now inside your mind say hello over and over again how do you know it's doing it because i'm aware of it that's right and that's that's where it starts and that by the way that's what ends That's everything who are you that's aware of that okay and then you work your way back and we can talk about how i did that and people seem to do pretty well with it i don't consider myself a spiritual teacher you know as a person who's um i'm you know trained as a scientist but i'm also a very

very emotional um i happen to be a religious person but i'm also a very spiritual person Um you know one of the things about your about your writing which really struck me is that it is not highly emotional it is not um [Music] it is you know it sounds like it was written by someone who was getting a doctorate in economics and i say that in a very i say that in a non-judgmental way because You use the least amount of words to communicate that meaning you you use the the minimally necessary words to communicate

concepts and that is really it's very accessible and it's very um it's very it's what makes it also feel very heavy because there's no there there about it you're not offering a warm hug to make You feel okay about existing you simply do you exist you have consciousness and you have then your entire life that is laid out on kind of that template um and that is i i i see why you don't consider yourself um you know a spiritual teacher um however you know the the information here is really it's very um transformative on

a deeply spiritual level sure i know you Don't want to talk about it and it's okay we recently spoke to byron katie who also does not talk about what happened before her spiritual awakening and the reason that it makes me like emotional is because like i want to have it i would like to have you know um something happened that provides a sense of like clarity that then determines the rest of my life and i Know that that's not everyone's journey but i it's true i i want to know like you know were you raised

with a religion or you were just like this dude getting your doctorate in economics and we know what kind of people those are those are very by the books numbers guys like what i i'm i want to know like what were you like were you a spiritual child were you an emotional kid you were just like a dude I can assure you it's irrelevant it has nothing it has nothing to do with the awakening right there's no foundation for it and also but i based my whole life on what happened to me i know but

like and that's like that is the story that's the only story you know that i have and i love telling it like i'll tell you all of my misery okay okay um so what what what is that fix that well We know what that is that basically the mind is very strong and one of the things the mind does is develop methodologies or ways of thinking that let it interact with life and not get hurt and be more comfortable and there's the ego when we develop a self-concept and we change it throughout our lives but

in general there's a self-concept sitting under there saying i was the one that did this and i was the one that Went to this school and i'm the one that went there and the one that my father left or stayed or whatever the hell it is excuse me and basically uh all of this unfolds and you end up developing patterns of thinking based upon the experiences you've had all right and what i'm saying at least certainly in my experience is that's not what makes you wake up that's what keeps you from waking up All right

the fact that you're identifying with these past experiences and saying that's who i am well it's not who you are you are watching your ego you see it get upset you see it fix things you see it have concepts and views and et cetera et cetera and even you're obviously very intelligent you can use your intellect to support the ego to support that and and so on right and i'm yes you're a very special Person very intelligent person and therefore that becomes part of your self-concept okay and then you say you're a religious person part

of a self-concept all of these things are ways you think of yourself and there's nothing at all wrong with that it's wonderful you've been successful you're happy you're doing well all right i'm not happy i'm not doing well i just said that because i'm so stupid i'm also like weeping openly Okay but listen to me right that identification with your personal self which is just your mind's thoughts are what keep you from waking up but i have millions of people that know all these things about me i have to i just have to disappear and

build a cabinet no do not do that oprah asked me that once no i do not recommend anything i found out you don't need to do that okay i also used to fast three days a week and Eat a salad the rest of the day no i ruined my digestive system right no i'm so glad i tried that because you don't need to do that you don't need to do anything like that you can be married you can have children you can have a career it makes no difference no difference as long as you're willing

to notice it's not you as long as you're willing to notice that you have going on inside your mind thoughts That are saying this is okay this is not okay i did good i didn't do good and oh my god i want to get this job and i'd rather do that you know it's just it's just deciding it's talking based on your past experience oh that's based on your past experiences and you you know what what does skinner say right man is the sum of learned experiences no your mind is the sum of your learned

experiences you're not you're the one Who notices that your mind is or something your lord experiences so any way you can do it by hook by crook whatever it is can you step back and be willing to watch that you are doing this like i love that you said you're uncomfortable that's wonderful okay notice that she's uncomfortable you're not uncomfortable you who notices the discomfort i promise you is not uncomfortable in fact it's the most Comfortable thing in the universe but because we project our consciousness onto the part that's uncomfortable or the part that's depressed

or the part that's scared then we identify with that so spiritual awakening it really has nothing to do with that and that's why it's not all tied to your past your ego is tied to your past your self-conceptize your past but at any point no matter where you are at any point You can decide to step back i have a beautiful story i wouldn't tell it but i did prison work for 30 years not because i thought it was supposed to it just happened somebody asked me to go visit someone they were visiting in prison

in bubble the next thing i knew i had a class that i was teaching a maximum security prison for 30 years and the reason i'm telling that is one day i was teaching this class and Uh this really big dude who came into the class and i'm on the floor sitting down with maybe 30 students and he walked in and he tried to sit on the floor and he couldn't sit across like it was like a big nfl lineman all right no no fat just serious at the end of the class he walks up to

me here's a beautiful story i'm sitting on the ground and he says hi my name's creature And i'm an outlaw well the outlaw is a hells angel type gang in florida all right and so i stuck my hand up i said hi i'm mickey right that guy got so awakened unbelievable what i i i watched him wake up he had held meditation classes in his cell block he eventually got transferred to some other places and somebody just wrote me 20 30 years later that they Were in prison with him at another place and he was

running meditation centers there and working in the chapel my god right this guy was he he was held for murders all kinds of stuff had gone on right so it doesn't matter what your past is what matters is what your present moment is and are you ready to step back and say i'm not creature i'm not a hells angel right and yes i have that in me that has how i Came up right but i'm the consciousness that's noticing that and he was able to step back i could i tell there's a chapter in the

surrender experiment that talks about him all right and it's just so powerful that someone like that could wake up and just step back it did it it was amazing so that's the answer the answer is not what was your past the answer is not how do you think of yourself whatever it is Can you notice that you're noticing and you're back to what they call witness consciousness or mindfulness can you notice that you notice not can i try people try to notice that's ridiculous of course you notice if you look at the wall in front

of you do you have to try go on both of you look look what's in front of you how hard was that that's how hard it is to see what's going on inside of you it's you know it you know it if you say I always tell everybody i can't be a therapist or a psychologist you all would fire me instantaneously why you'd come in mickey michael i telling you i'm so depressed all right ever since my girlfriend or boyfriend left me i've been totally depressed i know what i'm going to say to you i'm

going to ask you how do you know what do you mean how do i know you start getting mad at me how do you know you're Depressed how do you know you're depressed because i feel it who feels it how do you know you feel it that's always the answer and that's how simple it is are you willing to instead of getting all caught up in what you're aware of paying attention to who's aware of this and that will wake you up i am the profoundness in the simplicity of what has just been shared to

me is like i want to just like Put a fence around it so that it doesn't get skipped over by the audience if you're listening to this right now i'll go back and listen to the last minute and a half the key to most suffering has just been described and it is as easy as he says of you have a feeling most people and the You know the way i see it is most people are sandwiched up to that feeling you know my hands are together for people are only listening and they're just intertwined with

it and they're waiting for that to ride out and they're going on the roller coaster of whatever the emotion is and simply by doing what you described which is asking yourself to witness it I see you begin to create space between the experience and you yes and in that space it becomes less of a roller coaster because you're no longer and again i don't have any other way to describe but sandwiched or interlocked with it you're able to say it is happening but in saying it is happening you take a step back i see it

when in my mind's eye i see it like a controller like a video Game controller and it's like a little player way in the back of my head right in the occipital that is like has a visual big screen of everything else going on and it sounds simple and if no one has experienced it before you don't really understand the lightness that starts to be created for me first in little little bits but the further you get away from the fact That i am feeling so sad right now instead of feeling this excruciating pain in

in someone's chest from sadness or depression or whatever it is that noticing makes it feel lighter and then that experience has room to shift and and change and and transition to whatever it is by not holding it so tightly so you're the spiritual teacher now i understand That's beautiful that's exactly right my umbilicus breakdown is supported by neutrophil guess what 30 million women are impacted by weakened or thinning hair if you're among them i know i am please know you're not alone and there's a solution you can trust to deliver results neutrophil has two targeted

formulas for women that are clinically shown to improve hair growth and thickness with less shedding through all stages of life But healthier hair growth takes time so be patient you will begin to experience thicker stronger faster growing hair in three to six months and in a clinical study eighty-six percent of women reported improved growth after six months more than fifteen hundred top doctors recommend nutrifoal it's an effective high quality solution for healthier hair which is why i love it you can grow thicker healthier hair and you can also support our show go to Nutrifoal.com use

the promo code break and you'll get 15 off your first month subscription that's their best offer anywhere it's only available to us customers just for a limited time free shipping also on every order 15 off go to nutrafold.com that's f o l n-u-t-r-a-f-o-l-d com promo code break my ambi alex breakdown is supported by ritual Here's a question for you does your probiotic contain clinically studied strains well meet one that does rituals symbiotic plus contains two of the world's most studied strains with over 350 publications of human clinical trials i love starting each day with ritual

because i know that i am taking something i am putting something in my body to help my whole day and all of my health that day be taken care of and what makes the components so clearly Ritual of symbiotic plus well they're science-backed they're research stacked especially when you stack them up against the leading direct to consumer and top selling probiotics on the market ritual is more than a probiotic here you go folks it's a three in one with clinically studied prebiotics probiotics and a postbiotic to support a balanced gut microbiome synbiotic plus and ritual

are here to celebrate not hide your insides there's no more shame in your Gut game that's why rituals offering our listeners 10 off during your first three months go to ritual.com breakdown to start ritual or add synbiotic plus to your subscription today okay and the more you hang out and what we call the self you gotta give us some name who's back there all right not george okay so we'll call it the self atman call whatever we want it's all soul self out it's all the same thing It's basically christ i'm a nice true jewish

boy like you i'm like who i am but i love christ's teachings okay i love christ's teachings he said it's so simple the kingdom is within you and that's what you just said jonathan that it's back here it's within you it's within literally it's within you like when i ask are you in there that's the you jesus is talking about right the soul the essence we make it so mystical i Don't like the word soul because there's so many concepts that go on with that right i just want to know are you aware and yes

if you are willing to do the work of little by little it doesn't have to be all the ones in fact in the new book you'll see i talk about low-hanging fruit take a step back and notice what you're doing my favorite lines in the new book is the Following the moment in front of you is not bothering you you're bothering yourself about the moment in front of you correct so if you notice that i'm driving my car and the driver in front of me he's going below the speed limit i can't pass and i'm

i'm doing all this stuff inside of me why what good is it doing and so if you're willing to say nothing and i will work with that I'll do a mantra or i'll say an affirmation or i'll sing a song i don't care what you do just don't get into the part of you that's neurotic the part of you that causes all this trouble and you're going to find out that you just said jonathan that the distance gets greater and greater and the next thing you know you do with little things it's fun you're right

i like you to see it as a video game i love that okay And you're back here and and you're watching and it's not healthy you don't eat i hope you don't maybe one should do but i hope you don't keep eating things that make you sick okay we're doing things that i one of the big things in a new book because i went through business school i get the right to talk about cost benefit analysis that's what we do right and you if you're brought an investment or something an opportunity and the cost is

100 and the benefit is zero i don't think you're going to choose that one miami you're a business person too all right so that's what you're doing when you're bothering yourself about stupid things like the weather like like the driver in front of you like i think somebody said something that maybe wasn't nice now i mean give me a break okay and then the next thing you know you're bothering yourself yes or no you bother Yourself about it and so or or you're doing your job and you didn't do something perfectly he said oh my

god how about i get fired i wonder who saw that what are you doing what are you doing you're sitting in a planet spinning in the middle of nowhere making yourself angst and then you're wondering why you need a therapist you're doing it to yourself 90 of the time you're doing it to yourself i mean yes are there situations outside that Are difficult to handle yes but those aren't the low-hanging fruit are not you don't have to make yourself anxious about everything but the mind will do that and in a new book in living untethered

i build the mind i go to great detail like you said by them to sit there and say why would my mind be causing all this trouble why would that happen i told you how i and i do it very simply in just the tiniest amount of sentences right is it Not true that when something bothers you you push it away you don't want to handle it you don't want to think about it so you push it away you're storing it inside of you it's not going away you're like you're resisting it and so it

stays there and you basically have made a collection of everything that ever bothered you inside of you you do know that maya don't you oh yeah okay well if you collect everything that Bothers you inside i think you're going to be bothered it's that simple i swear to god it's that simple and so you just get to the point where you sit there and say well maybe i should stop doing that that's the joke uh doctor it hurts when i do this so don't do that like that's literally it well basically you cr we create

the mess within our own Mind our minds your i love your your your in the fact that you went back and got your doctor and did all that stuff while you were working i i honor that i respect that tremendously all right the mind is brilliant and you know your mind is brilliant okay i think everybody's mind is brilliant i think they're just so caught up in the personal stuff that they can't experience the brilliance of their mind But the mind is brilliant why would you take this brilliant mind and use it to make yourself

neurotic it'll do good at it it's really it did good at getting your doctorate it will do good and make you neurotic just tell your mind to worry about something and see how good it does it's very good it's really i that's my other my other doctorate is in worrying okay but miami it's the same mind it's the same intellectual intelligent mind That's figuring out what to worry about and what to do about it and how you can't fix it and just worries and thinks and does that why do that why not use your mind

to fly to the moon or get a doctorate in neuroscience or something like that so all right i've talked too much no [Music] jonathan again i don't think it can be overstated That most people believe that this is just life and their experience and they are caught up in this endless cycle of reactivity where they think something they think that is real they feel something based on the fact that they think something for example someone said something i'm disrespected by the fact that someone they said this thing about me i then they didn't invite me

to they didn't invite me to this Thing or i think she looked at me wrong i'm just listing all the things that can happen they spend all this time in in uh analyzing it under trying to think about why they would do that that it's a huge amount of emotional and creative energy that goes into imagining all these scenarios all the stories they're telling themselves about that experience then Flood their body with uh anxious chemicals and they're gearing up to fight this person you know psychologically fight them they're engaging you know we can't tell the

difference between real and imagined threats so we're imagining all of these threats it's having this very visceral physical response and we're caught in it and we think that that the only way to adjust that is to create a different external scenario and You have an amazing example also just in terms of what people are striving for in the book they want the wedding they want the car they want the beach house they want all of these external things without realizing that that might not and likely won't give them the peace that they're really trying to

strive for in their life like miami said i try to keep things very simple because Otherwise it's a mental exercise and that's not what i do all right so why do they do all that and the answer is just they're not okay if they're okay they wouldn't be doing that if you felt love all the time and filled with peace and joy and tremendous great energy you wouldn't be worrying about things i guess you already feel wonderful but it's because you don't that because you don't be okay inside you're doing all this stuff outside You're

trying to compensate so the question becomes why don't you feel okay inside i already told you because you have stored every single thing that ever bothered you down to the tiniest little thing that somebody said or did or anything inside of you you stored it inside how do i know i did that because it keeps coming back up you understand that it's obviously still in there and it doesn't want to be in there and that's what i talk about in This book and so basically because you stored every disturbance you ever had inside of you

that's why you're disturbed inside so the answer is not to go out there and try to worry about and compensate how to get something that make you feel better is to stop storing that stuff in there i'm telling you if you don't store that stuff in there it's beautiful in there it's it's incomprehensively beautiful that's when you get to real spirituality I mean literally waves of ecstasy of joy well up inside of you all the time so any given you see the sky is pretty you get turned bliss right you don't need drugs you don't

need anything basically you're you're the highest thing or walk the face of the earth uh my yogananda who i follow i this great master basically said there's a river of joy flowing inside of you find it get in There is i assure you there's a beautiful energy that is stronger than anything that can come in through your senses so why are you playing around to keep your problems and then try to compensate for them if if something happened in your childhood that disturbed you that was 50 years ago it's not doing it anymore why is

it still disturbing you maya i'm Asking you why is it still disturbing you because you're keeping it in there because you weren't willing to let it go and you're still not willing to let it go so the answer is let it go is it easy no nothing that's worth achieving is easy all right and this is the highest thing to achieve why is it not easy because it was stored with pain it's going to come back with pain correct Are you willing to what i teach because people ask me to all right is when it

starts to come up and you know it's coming up it comes up a lot of times during the day when it starts to come up relax you're going to want to do something right i want to do something about it that's what you do you relax no that's not intuitive i want to protect myself relax relax relax your shoulders relax your tummy relax your buttocks relax now Relax your heart relax relax that's all if you will do that you will go way beyond where you think you want to go because what will happen is you

won't push it back down it will come up naturally and cleanse and it will pass by you and next thing you know i'll never bother you again i mean i'm not saying do it once it'll never bother you but if you're willing to do this you will purify you will release this stuff that's inside of you And then you'll feel all this beautiful energy that's underneath that stuff something that is inherent in what you're saying that i wanted to just articulate which is that each of us has a programming and an inherent ability to clear

this stored trauma or emotions or whatever it is and so many of us i mean almost all of us have packed all of these issues in And we're not really aware that we have a natural ability you know like a tree is always trying to get upright we all are moving towards releasing it and so when you say just relax i think it's important for people to know that in that relaxation there is a natural process that is unfolding that we can allow to happen or we can uh harness by doing that relaxation and that

it is our natural state to be in this bliss And that most of us you know are just disconnected from it that's beautiful because i think a lot of people think that this is like this you know there's a at least when i started trying to do this and i'm by no means mastered and i don't claim to be this is a hundred percent of practice for me anyway that we assume that like require some magic or that you know when we don't associate That that feeling of discomfort is actually an opportunity to uh release

something we think that there's something wrong because that's our we've been trained that oh i feel this thing there is something wrong i need to fix it i need to distract myself i need a pill in order to make it go away but sometimes it literally is the rising of these stored emotions that we almost uh i mean i don't want to talk about birth because it's not an Equivalent but it is this moving through a discomfort state to know that we are not we will not break during it we will not uh be damaged

by it and actually being able to have that experience of allowing it to move through is the opening that is required in order to feel enormous amounts of other sensation it's like you can't feel the very big highs without Allowing the negative emotions that we've stored to pass through us it's completely true in in the living untethered i explain that their the natural energy spirit shakti chi call whatever you want the underlying energy is trying to flow up but all this stuff you started in the way so it is literally trying to push it up

that's a natural cleansing just like your body Throws out impurities your mind is trying to throw out these impurities and you keep thinking it's bad you think no it doesn't feel good of course it doesn't feel good right it doesn't feel good when you're cleansing your body either okay you go through people fast and they feel pains all over the place when you get a massage you go oh oh there right there why'd you say that because it hurt see you're willing to do it all right This is the massage inside it's basically saying i

am willing if i keep this stuff inside of me it's going to be there for the rest of my life and i have to do all kinds of things to be okay and i'll be scared i don't want it inside of me then as it comes up let it go as it comes up let it go now people like you said people are not used to that they're used to i don't want any pain i don't want to feel any discomfort but you are feeling Discomfort you're carrying it around inside of you all the time

so are you willing to do that which really works which is to say come on up come on up i'll do the best i can you won't be perfect but do the best i can to relax while you're coming up and all if you want to if you're in into spiritual things god and stuff offer it to god right people give flowers to god to give all kinds of things this is what god wants you want your stuff Okay if you sit there and take that and say i'm willing to go through anything to let

this go so that i can feel real natural spiritual energy flowing inside of me that is that's a very spiritual path miami yes no yeah i mean it's hard not to you know relate this to other spiritual practice that you know that i've studied um and i'm not saying this to make you Uncomfortable but this is there's a very very this is a very jewish mystical kind of set of concepts that um resonate with me around this and there's this kind of notion of you know um [Music] you know we get very very attached to

i mean well you know christianity um you know introduced a you know kind of a concept of um Salvation and you know what what's waiting for us next you know and it's it's one way to approach a life and what you're talking about is a very very grounded like what's here and now what's right in front of you and what's in here um sullivan rabbi soloveitchik who was the father of kind of modern orthodoxy in the united states like who brought it to united states You know there's a famous story that he gathered all his

students you know one morning and he banged on the table and he said i've witnessed a miracle you know and everybody's like oh what happened you know what did he see and everybody's staring at him like waiting like what did he witness and he said the sun came up you know and just like that's you know that's that that that notion of i mean that's that's mindfulness right it's present It's that present notion but when you were just talking about kind of like giving it over and it's true like the purpose of of sacrifice was

it was an ola it was an offering that went up it was it was part of you that is elevated you know despite everything that that's here and so i just that notion of like turning it over it's also you know that's the imagery and the kind of concepts that 12-step programs use um I think one of the one of the things that keeps coming up for me is and i you know i love all the things that jonathan is saying and all the things that um you know are are so deeply meaningful on a

spiritual level and also you know practically speaking i'm i i know that a lot of people are very curious like if you don't understand things the way jonathan clearly does Right or the way that the two of you are able to kind of like communicate like i'm kind of you know the the first thing i think is obviously you don't need to go live by yourself you know to have this and you know henry david thoreau had a you know an entire experience um with that as well of a different variety but you know a

similar kind of concept but i'm kind of thinking like Can you do this and still live a normal life and you know i think of you you lived in the in the world i mean you you founded um you know you you founded a center in 1975 correct yeah the temple of the universe which is um that's a center that you founded the year that i was born as a matter of fact and but you you did not stay there you came back down from the mountain as we say and you lived immersed in a

Corporate world you lived you you like did normal people things so you know um the you know the kind of old testament version is like moses went up and he had this experience but what actually is most valuable is that he came back down and you know brought whatever you know enlightenment he experienced to people so what is it like to have the kind of awareness that you had and then Also still be in the regular world because you're how do you maintain that like practically speaking i was ceo of a public corporation went through

all kinds of stuff i see no difference between being in the temple of the universe whatever it is and i found it kind of people started coming out there so it happened that's how my whole life is Right i never decided to do anything i just followed the energy like i was saying i'm there doing services you know meditating whoever it is and different events unfold the one particular one that i tell in the surrender experiment is a a a serif came out to the land and i was barefoot a hippie you know walking around

my land and he walked up to the temple building that we built which i Was a little concerned you know has krishna and jewish things it has all the different religions represented and he's all dressed up in his officer uniform and pulls his big car up there and i'm walking around barefoot no shirt on and he says uh you in charge here and okay yeah i guess i am you know he says did you build this building i said yes He said would you build an addition on my house i swear to god that's exactly

what happened all right and because i was surrendering to life nothing inside of me wanted to build clothes in the garage of this sheriff all right i was like i'm not even a builder i built a couple of buildings on my own land you know rough sawn timber et cetera and i said yes and that founded my first company built with love And they ended up building custom houses and this and that and then i got into computers and the next thing i knew people were asking me to write computer programs and i just i

never took a course in my life i just started writing i found it interesting like you find stuff interesting and bought a trs-80 model one when radio shack first came out with the little tiny computers all right And wrote an accounting program to run built with love and then people wanted to buy the program that's literally how this company started and so i said okay i guess all right and then start surrendering and then i gotta write this and write down and do this and eventually somebody asked me to write a medical building system and

i had i didn't even go to the doctor in those days and i'd never seen an Insurance form of my life all right and i took it and i did it i did it and it became this major company you know with 2 300 employees and public and the whole ball game and so i just had to do it i just did it well while i was doing it i didn't change i didn't say now this is what i'm doing now this is a wonderful opportunity to let go of me like you can bet you

know for sure you can bet that being in that environment i Mean literally i'm on i'm on earning calls with wall street i give you a break all right i can't relate to any of it but i'm doing my best i'm serving and working hard doing everything as an act of letting go of myself and serving the universe i never wasn't about business it wasn't about this the other thing but you do that you try as hard as you can and just try to serve everybody and you're gonna do pretty well and so we were

very successful but so it's not Like i had two lives you know the meditative quiet spiritual life and this business life no no they were the same thing i was doing the same thing every day i i literally i i give suggestion of the book that people can do that i'm a ceo of a corporation running this stuff every single time my secretary buzzed in there and said someone sends on the call before i picked up that phone i stopped it only takes a second I dared him to stop and let go you know i

do i'm sitting for 50 years i remind myself i'm sitting on a plane it's been in the middle of an empty space you want to know why because i am all right and it's so tiny i love telling that story do you know that 1.3 million earths fit inside the sun you know you're small but you know that small okay all right and the sun is one of 300 billion stars All right and one galaxy and there's two trillion galaxies can you stop for a moment and remind yourself what is really going on and i

would do that before i pick up the phone and when i hang it up i do the same thing that will wake you up so fast so you ask how do you stay centered while you're doing all this because you stay centered you decide that's what my life is about and this is really good growth You hear me this is good growth and if you read the surrender experiment to the last whole section you'll see there was a serious growth and basically you just go through it why because you have to life gives it to

you remember i surrender to life life's my guru life's my teacher and it it strips you away in the last 50 years like are there times when you lose it like i am so far from perfect i i am Better than i used to be okay and and i don't have the tendency now for that to happen because the consciousness is way back it's back it's okay all right but during those years that i go through my stuff absolutely okay um and and you know it was funny there's a great it was a great saint

from india called ramakrishna srirama krishna and he was fully enlightened very very high being and they asked him once his Disciple asked him does an enlightened master ever feel anger and they were shocked by his answer he said yes he said it's like riding on water as it happens it goes away and that's jonathan we were just talking about right things happen they come up and you let them go see he was that evolved to where if a situation would happen that would have caused a problem with somebody he felt it And it passed through

and you're gonna say the same thing he said i'm not different than any other man i have the same drive they have the same things they just go through i just don't hang out with them they just pass through i'm curious how you would approach this because some people when you say surrender they say well i shouldn't have any wants or desires i should just sort of give my will To away to other people and just do what they say versus you know be self-directed and so if two people are in a situation and you

know there's a standoff one person wants one thing one person wants another neither are gonna budge but they're sort of you know you can't move forward without some form of agreement what are the principles that can be applied um that you're you know that the Surrender experiment would suggest that you're not sort of butting heads but you know that you don't want to give your will over to someone else all right so i haven't thought of this but you made me think of it i will give an example i can recall sitting at my desk

in charge of the company talking to you know smith klein or some large lab company because i was in medical medical Software and they wanted to use my software to tie their labs in it doesn't matter what it was but i'm talking to the head guy you know senior vice president this and that and i think that i'm having a rational conversation okay and i'm sitting there exactly just described and this guy was trained to be an ah right so basically we're sitting there and i say well i'm we can do this You know if

you'll do this and so on and first he puts down his this is what i want this is what i want and i said well okay we can work with that and we'll do this and that and and he says oh great that's perfect that's perfect i feel like i'm getting somewhere and all of a sudden we say okay what are we going to do and he goes right back to what he said originally just i mean he was trained that way okay literally exactly What i thought we just had a conversation right so i

do it again i just let go okay don't get upset don't do anything let go and i did it again he did the same thing three times just right back he did not budge one single drop okay and so i sat there and looked at it and i had to let go of the frustrated part of me that didn't understand what's going on and realized we're not going to get any worse okay this is the game he Wants to play i'm not going to get upset i won't do anything and just said to him if

you want to do something together when you're ready come back and talk to me because obviously you're not ready and that was it and guess what happened somebody else came down later and we got this big contract that was way away from anything he ever talked about it just wasn't the right time and you gave it the time and the space but you didn't get upset about it and take it personal Fair enough that that's how you deal that's what i've learned how to deal with things you let go of yourself that's what surrender means

surrender doesn't mean surrender to him certainly doesn't mean not do what you're supposed to do okay surrender means there's a part of me that can't handle what's happening right now well if i can't handle it then i can't handle it i don't have the right to handle it Because i can't i understand that i'm not the right person for the job because i just said i can't handle it so first handle it you have to be able to handle what's happening because it's happening then decide when you're clear what's the best way to go forward

and it may be there's no way to go forward then that's the best way to go forward so you're not all caught up in desires or needs or fears or anger or frustration you're clear Does that answer you yeah no it makes total sense and often the timing isn't right the situation the timing and a lot of people have an expectation myself included all the time this is actually my biggest thing lately is when is the timing right just because i think i want something to happen or i would think i need something to happen

pushing it through or trying to exert will to make it happen won't Necessarily make it happen right and that goes into a whole other discussion of where did you get the idea what you want and who says has anything to do with what's supposed to happen michael there's there's not enough there's not enough time in this in all of the galaxies to uncover the answer to that question for jonathan there's so many assumptions that we're All operating with and we think that you know it feels real that something is urgent something needs to happen but

unpacking that is is huge and letting go of that uh changes motivations for sure i try to touch that in a new book i don't know how many people are willing to open up enough to comprehend the following at any given moment i'm going to talk to ma'am i'm at any given moment mom you're having an experience like right now You're having experience right and you're learning from that experience you're becoming a greater person you've met me you've been thing you hear jonathan all this stuff's going on right but i want to know is at

this exact moment how many experiences are you not happy that are going on simultaneously come on you're smart come up with a number i mean infinite that's the right answer right Therefore you only know the nothing of the tiny statistically insignificant amount of experience that you're having and that's happening every moment so jonathan you don't know anything and all of your desires and preferences and concepts and views are based on the data you took in during those nothing moments i am you see that yeah absolutely so how can we know anything if you had a

different experience you'd be different you'd think Differently wouldn't you throughout your life every moment if your boyfriend was different in high school every single thing right i think like that i hold michael to the point that remember that you don't know anything you think you do and you think you're right because everything you picked up which is nothing fits perfectly in the way you think because that's the data You have okay and that's one view on the right and the other view is that people work so hard to reinforce all the things that they know

to justify their knowledge base and then try to apply that to the world instead of saying i i know very little and i'm not sure what should happen you start with truth we're talking about truth what i just said was the truth it's a difficult Truth and people don't want to hear it right that really doesn't fit the ego at all all right that i don't know anything but by definition you don't because you missed everything and you only stored the nothing that you experienced and a whole bunch of nothing rounds to zero it's frighteningly

true isn't it and then people stand there and do what jonathan said and sit there and say i know what's right no i know it feels right i know you had that experience but Now look at all the experiences you didn't have and if you had if a born-again christian right had gone to a hindu temple and gotten enlightened they would be different they had a different experience all right so that's that's what i like i said by i really like that you're you're known to be very intelligent you obviously went through neuroscience etc etc

why don't we use our mind to think like this That's a very intelligent way to think well because it's um it is not it doesn't have instant gratification i mean i i mean people you know it it um it feels good to blame things on other people you don't have to look at yourself i mean like honestly but that's what that's what a lot of interactions are you know and um you know i i mean one of the the One of the greatest challenges you know of i think the human experience is being in partnership

you know with an other um and that doesn't always have to be a romantic you know conversation um but there's something that jonathan sent that i actually was going to be kind of my next um set of questions and You know i instantly think of these principles that you're talking about and what it was like being a parent you know to small children because that was an environment of extreme stress and tension and um you know i lost a lot of my i mean i gave away a lot of my sanity you know uh because

of really not having this kind of grounding but Um i wanted to just if you don't mind you wrote it so i'm sure you don't mind um humoring us for one second so um this is from this is from your new book if you're in a relationship the other person has lots of patterns of their own quite different from yours this is why relationships are so complicated and you give a good example if somebody Yelled at your partner at work they're different when they come home than if someone hadn't yelled at them at work this

is something you know that um yeah i i have a lot of feelings about that because we do we carry everything that hap i mean we carry it to our kids you know it's with us and what you say is um don't get scared all this doesn't mean you don't have Meaningful relationships there are beautiful relationships and they can last forever in fact they can get more and more beautiful all the time and you talk about samskara am i pronouncing it correctly um they're not based on the world outside matching your inner patterns they're based

on unconditional love once love is always flowing freely inside of you you Will be pleased to share it with another person such love is not based on needs or expectations it's based on pure love wishing to express itself unconditionally and you ask how do you reach such a state of unconditional love and well-being instead of trying to get the world to match your blockages you work on letting go of the blockages and that is the secret of real spiritual growth that is The real paradigm shift so i mean this is incredibly um powerful and i

i would like to know you you know love comes up a lot um [Music] did you choose to partner with someone in your life did you have a a traditional relationship are you a dad i am a dad and a grandfather three times over wow and Been married 45 years or something and so yes i i love that i can point to that also okay and our relationship from the very beginning was founded upon the fact that we were both trying to let go of ourselves so not everybody has that fortune okay so uh donna

had moved out was living a little hot next to where i was up the hill and uh and and basically we ended up falling in love and being together But basically we both very much wanted to follow this path and we gave ourselves the room to do so and the entire foundation of our relationship is based on i'll try to let go of myself the rest of my ability and you try to occur yourself about your ability and i think she's done better than me but basically she's beautiful she's beautiful she's radiant just always glowing

just filled With love and and so on right very very beautiful but she did so by letting go of herself you know by by bothering to say i i'm committed to the life that is in front of me and i will do my best to let go and is it hard it was hard not necessarily the relationship aspect but just our lives you know the lives are you have to let go if you let go of yourself life is easy life is easy this is so silly you're Sitting on a planet for a handful of

years and it's a beautiful planet i mean god look at this planet all right it's like we've been mars has nothing jupiter would you rather be on mars or jupiter or saturn or pluto or anywhere else there's nothing we haven't found give humans a couple more years and it might look a little more like those planets but yes but the net result is you just look at it that i should be Able to handle my few years on earth which is beautiful and have fun and be happy i don't need to make this mess inside

myself but there is the tendency well as i said you don't want to feel disturbance and things happen in life that are disturbing so let them go if they're disturbing why do you want to keep them that's as silly as they were okay okay i'm a super duper with you but i i i want and i want to ask i'm not Trying to be a jerk but i want to i want to know i'm assuming you raised children in this all in this emotional environment as well like you didn't then have children say like you

do as i say you know not as i do like i'm assuming you you brought this to you can bring this to parenting right of course so what are those children like are they enlightened beings First of all i have one daughter all right okay is she is she an enlightened being like did you did you figure out the formula for raising the perfect human i didn't even ever think about it that's not i never thought of the business i never thought about being a teacher i don't it's you're going to get it from your

mind right ramadan said you're not going to think your way through life That doesn't do it because the only data you have is this nothing you picked up and your mind is going to keep telling you i know right so the the way i always looked at it is if i'm willing to let go of myself to best my ability i'm not perfect right but if i'm willing to let go of myself then that which is greater than me can be the parent right i don't want her I wouldn't want her to have to deal

with what's left of me all right so basically keep letting go keep letting go and then interact you know help with school it's this or has a problem whatever it is but don't do it from the personal point of view and you have to be willing to even say your children are not your german your children not your children not your children right they're beautiful right they come through you but not for you and so basically if you let go of Yourself i use i teach people who have trouble with children they come and talk

about it i said you're making yourself neurotic by trying to think how to perfectly bring up this child why don't you get out of the way and let god be the parent because that's what's left when you're out of the way man minus mind equals god okay so if you keep letting go of yourself you're letting a greater part of your being Be the parent what's wrong with that and she turned out beautiful she's beautiful she's beautiful is she live does she live in a spiritual community no is she married with three children and a

beautiful husband yes you know do they they're they they apparently live a normal life and they're very happy and the kids are happy right but i i know her right she's imbibed the teachings we never made her come to the temple we never made her medic i never i don't Know i've ever taught her to meditate okay in fact i remember i shouldn't tell the story i remember one moment where one of the spiritual teachers the saints came through and gave her molly beads right gave her a set of mala beads and she was young

i don't know 14 13 years old and i walked in the bedroom and she's sitting there and i said do you know what to do with those i shouldn't tell this story she said well i think i do because they do they Think they do and so i showed her how to turn them all right and i walked out of the room and i walk back in a little bit later her eyes are turned up she's in complete peace all right and she says is this right right yeah that's really good they're they're natural you

know just i i didn't force anything on her right Period nor to donna so and and but she grew up in a beautiful environment right you grew up with loving parents she grew up with now elaine a trip on her head and et cetera et cetera but she was like a hippie child could do whatever she wanted right right you know if you will let go of yourself you know what to do you can almost be sure that what you're coming up with through your Mind because of your fears and your anxieties however i'm like

i literally people tell me i've had a person tell me i don't want to have children because i'm afraid i'll screw them up man what an attitude all right just use the trial to help let go of yourself use the business to let go of yourself use the relation to let go of yourself if you're willing to use all of these things to constantly relax and release Your ego your personal silly self right that thinks it knows everything you're going to do much better much better because you let go of the problem there is trust

in a larger plan call it the universe call it some force of nature that helps guide all of our lives and a trust in our own knowing beyond the mind most people are so conditioned to listen And look to the mind for answers saying don't do that or saying let you know witness the mind instead of being in direct relationship to it or with it means that there is another knowing that we have that we potentially have not experienced or is unfamiliar to us which i think can scare a lot of people well i i

like how simple my teachings are i'll tell you the truth right because i don't ask people to believe in that or do anything like that Okay and when i talk about mind as we talk about letting it go i'm talking about the personal mind there is a purely intellectual aspect abstract aspect of the mind that which went out and studied neuroscience okay it it's brilliant it's brilliant it created spacecraft it flew to the moon it split the atom it it found it they found this quantum field i mean my god i'm speechless all right i'm

not talking About that mind when i say let go of the mind that's pure that's pure intellectual mind it is what the mind is good at it's what it's meant to do when you take that pure intellectual mind and instead of saying develop air conditioning and find drugs that can fix p you know healing and so on you tell it find out what i can do to be happier okay it's like an ingrown toenail you make your mind focus on yourself all the time That's what builds the personal mind okay that mind you to let

go of it doesn't mean you're not left with a tremendous power that can help solve things you you do bring that in it's just this part of you that's not what happened is the mind it stored all this you store all the stuff in your mind that's not okay and now you're as an intellectual mind figure out what everybody else needs to do and what has to happen every day for me to be okay That's the problem okay so when you're letting go of the problem i don't think it takes a kind of faith that

there's something greater right you're just letting i know that this is a problem so if i let it go it's going to be greater because i let go of the problem let go of the anchor how's that so it's very very solid very grounded okay this kind of writing takes a tremendous Amount i would imagine a tremendous amount of energy and and and work and thought and and editing um did you always think that you would keep writing did you write untethered soul and feel like all right i'm done i don't need to do anything

else um i guess i'm i mean what i said to jonathan you know when we were talking about your new book i said like if i if i were michael singer if i had Written this book i would be like i don't have to do anything else in this world because i wrote this i wouldn't want to write anything i would just like i would just live in peace forever but d do you is there a feeling of oh there's more to say that i collect in a certain way and that's what sort of drives

that do you have other things That you think to i mean i kind of want like an untethered soul for every aspect of my life like untethered soul if you work in you know psychology untethered soul if you're a chemist you know um how does that sort of how does it work for you when you think about what to write i don't i i hate to say i feel embarrassed i don't do that i don't live life at that level I do what's put in front of me and it unfolds and i always know what

to do that's all i just uh i and but it's not a thought process either for money i've never done anything for money or for pride or for this or for fame or for success or anything like that it's just sort of like give me a job universe and i'll do the best i can all right and that there i can explain it i have to do it now but each one of Those books each one of them unfolded in a very natural way and then i put my whole soul and heart into it and

then look what it did look what it did right oprah asked me when we interviewed her a few weeks ago is did you have any idea the untethered soul would have the impact that it did you know still three million copies all these people of course not i one i i never thought of it or even thought to thought of it you understand that Like the ultimate is like when i wrote the computer program i was just sitting alone in a room by myself taking a tiny little but there are no books then okay they're

literally you go to any store you want you never have a computer program before there was no such thing all right you just got this little manual like one page of code i don't talk about it for kids all right and i figured out all right i'm playing now you fear did i think that this would Become a billion dollar company or something like that's ridiculous i would never think about it i would have got scared i wouldn't have done it all right and you just do what's in front of you with all your heart

and soul and that's good enough there's no thought of reward or fruits of your labor or then you don't have to worry about anything you're just doing what the universe gave you to do how do you know because it's in front of me And that i know people get scared but they don't understand that but that's how my life has been lived and look what happened jonathan do you have anything else i mean i'm just writing down the quote do what's in front of you with all of your heart and soul i'm like also then

my mind is like does he have a schedule he clearly has a schedule because he showed up here today so he books things on his calendar but that you're done that Becomes part of it there's part of doing your best is there may be an assistant there may be a scheduling may have to hire somebody right it just unfolds that's all i can say is it's funny it's funny we were um jonathan and i were talking yesterday he was he's um at a point in his life where he has a lot of decisions that he

has to make can make has the opportunity to make And one of them um was um he was thinking about purchasing a house i'm just gonna say it he was thinking about you know should he shouldn't he and whatever and um i had a little bit of a michael singer moment i think because well because he was very you know he was very in his head about it and he was saying you know he was saying things like i i Feel like i don't have enough information to even know what information i need to make

the decision with the information you know and he was saying like no one knows my story and all the intricacies of the things that i need and want but me and you know you can speak to a realtor and they know part of your story and you can speak to a financial advisor and they know part you can speak to your father and he knows party right And and what what i what i said to him is that at a certain point you can sit in indecision forever you can sit there forever and you can

wait and at another point it's all going to be okay anyway and and what i said is i wouldn't take every single dollar you have and put it into a house but you can do something that is not the end of the world either Way and every other decision then will roll from there but until you take that first step in faith right knowing that there's a staircase even if you can't see it all then you can sit in that place literally forever and that's that paralysis that many people experience you know um it's that

fear of not it's like you said it's the fear of not raising the kid right it's the fear of buying the wrong house you know and it's Funny there's certain you know certain parts of me where i'm always like i don't care where i live find me a house i'll make it my own like i literally don't you know so there's so many things though to sit in deliberation about um anyway i just don't want you to think that jonathan is always this enlightened skull so i i could send him to you and just you

could just have a field day With this one but he is very very very much um a spiritual teacher of mine so it's really special also to get to talk to both of you because um you know as as we told you this book is very special to us and um yeah it's just um it's very overwhelming to get to speak to you and um you know to be in in your presence because i just it's um [Music] there's so many things about The way not just that you think and the things you've experienced but

again the way that you communicate them that um just really it pierced something it really broke something open for me and um yeah i can't say it was as powerful as what happened to you in 1970 71 but you know [Music] i'm only i'm only 46. so It's so beautiful because everything you go through like jonathan this decision making what you want to do is say what's behind the anxiety so when when people talk i don't help people make decisions but we talk about decision making is the first thing that matters is what's your motive

not what should you do if how can you fear what to do if you don't even know your motive right and my you became the spiritual teacher with Every word you said about this which is start from the point of view do i want to get a house or not well okay yes i'd like to have a house all right can i afford a house don't worry about what house what's your motive it's very simple you know it's just i'm just want to express myself and have a house and that's that and then stop there

don't say it has to be a certain way when it's all said and done If you're afraid of making the wrong decision who defined it as wrong you well then don't that's what mario was saying right if you don't define it as wrong i was a builder okay you know i before my personal programming before the program company i did build love my company i built this house for this beautiful lady all right who happened to be the manager of the local bank and her name was penny dollar i swear to god her name was

penny dollar Right this is a long time ago back in the 80s and basically she once came to me and sat there and said i'm so scared i said look i i'm going to build a beautiful house for you we've got it everything's fine so i stay up at night i can't sleep what are you worried about isn't it turning out nice i'm afraid listen to this i'm afraid that i will build a house and then i'll go to plug in a lamp and The cord won't reach the outlet wow wow thank you i said

wow that's why they make extension courses i was going to say that's why they make therapists but yes what i'm saying is like that that was the framework i mean look i i grew up in post-holocaust neuroses like it literally was served to me for breakfast you know um with the milk that i was allergic to and no one knew but That that kind of thinking that's like that's literally that's what i was bred in yes you know but what i'm saying to jonathan is don't let your mind do that right let your mind say

wouldn't it be fun if the outlet doesn't reach and i can support the extension cord companies right or i can get a lamp with a longer cord right or whatever don't like a different Lamp don't let it say that there's a way that you'll call wrong you're the one who called it wrong do you understand that you you don't have to do that otherwise your mind will go crazy trying to make sure you figure all your preferences and how to meet them and who says they're the same right and all kinds of preferences come up

and you make your mind and you change it don't do that just sit there and say Okay i'm going to build a house i'm allowed to build a house i got some funny money for the house like my mom said don't spend all of it you know be reasonable just be reasonable there's no absolute answer and then make it be right by working with yourself i love it i love it well don't you notice that the paint didn't i didn't think i would like it i love it i just love that it doesn't match in

those bedrooms oh my god every time i go in it Turns me on you get to do that you're the one who decided it's wrong just don't decide it's wrong and some people say you don't get to do that yes you do it's your house it's your mind it's your life and you can make it beautiful by not making it ugly you understand that so decisions aren't hard unless you're trying to feel that they satisfy all your desires and all your fears and all your preferences remember the third zen patriarch the Great way is not

difficult for those who have no preferences it isn't my own oh i love it that's the greatest teacher that ever lived the third patriarch right he wrote something called the treatise on faith mind that's the first line the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences if you ain't got nothing you got nothing to lose that was uh bob dylan the the other Great prophet um one final question what is your middle name alan allen michael allen yes um really such an honor such an honor to speak to you and i hope

we were more interesting than oprah and he asked beautiful deep questions i i and and and my mom you you don't look for that awakening i don't like when people look for a spiritual experience what matters is your spiritual state not Just for those experience and the only reason you're not in the highest state right now is because you're paying attention to these anchors that you're holding inside of you all right and if you just daily be willing to just okay fine she didn't like that okay something like that let go like this practice letting

go you're gonna find out that your spirit will soar and that's higher than a spiritual experience it's a spiritual state All right thank you amen thank you mr i say things and michael singer says i'm a spiritual teacher you must be feeling cut out that sound bro you must be feeling pretty good about yourself no i'm not it wasn't me oh oh i see oh this is got it okay new jonathan great i guess we have nothing to talk about then what we have to talk about is the Fact that we don't talk about our

problems anymore we don't talk about any witness or problems everything's fine i'm never going to therapy philosophy i'm going to throw away all my pills and see what happens all of your stored stuff will just come up because you're not surprised no and i i don't mean to um i don't mean to belittle also you know kind of what what his approach is and and what he's Talking about and it is it is a process though and the notion is not and you know we didn't we didn't specifically cover this but the notion is not

like you don't have to work on yourself the notion is not that he can he believes he can cure schizophrenia or you know he that he's on a very there's a very different level of conversation that applies kind of you know to everyone in terms of a way to approach Um understanding in particular you know he calls them neuroses but um you know the things that this kind of consistent thinking and practice helps with is things like chronic anxiety um is things like depression that's not just like feeling blue for a day or so but

um you know constitutional kind of depression major Depressive disorder things like that um [Music] you know i i instantly am thinking of like the people i know who are like super anxious like everything indicates that they're super anxious but you know many people don't they also don't want to go to therapy they're just like give me a pill like make it go away and and also i i'm i'm not passing judgment on that but th This is not for necessarily cut made for those people this is made for people who really want i mean he

said it's very hard work what did he say it you know your your memories they go in with pain they're going to come out with pain like and sometimes people need support to understand that process because it can feel so intense i believe everybody needs support to understand that process and um you know especially with trauma work and Things like that you often you know we are relational creatures so it often is important to have a really a partner you know kind of witnessing that process that being said you know this is a book that

you do not go through in a day um the only thing i can compare this to is um the deepest like the the most difficult challenging um Ancient jewish texts that i have read have this kind of mental energy that it requires meaning sometimes a page is enough like to truly read it to truly ask yourself every sentence do i understand this is this resonating it it's exhausting i mean this isn't again this isn't something you do like at the end of a day like i just had a [ __ ] day better pick up

this and i'll Feel better um this is a this is really it's a life approach and i'm just like so in awe of his journey and just how i just have a million questions and you know i was very very overcome you know getting to like see him and hear him speak and just like you know i i feel like i'm in the presence of someone with tremendous wisdom like tremendous Presence you can feel it talking to him no just on zoom the way that he just looks and just his way of being i mean

it's hard to describe except for it feels significantly different to sit in his presence even on zoom than other people yeah what do you think about this idea that we inherently have access to this unbridled joy and You know ecstatic feelings that are we're capable of uh as our you know natural state of being i mean look as someone who you know has struggled with a lot of things it doesn't it doesn't feel it doesn't really feel like intuitively logical to me meaning from my experience but like what's my experience it's just my perception of

The experience um but yes i will say that the moments in my life that have tapped into that i call upon the birth of my second child where i you know was alone until pushing and i had an incredibly intense and enormously ecstatic experience and like that feeling it's the closest that i can tell to when He describes what it feels like to not even like experience love it's just you are love and it's just like welling up like so i i'm not expecting to feel that every day all the time but i have experienced

you know and people have seen me laugh till i cried and peed my pants here with you like there's a source of you know a certain kind of connection that you can have with other Humans you know that makes you feel like you're outside of the realms of like the normal descriptions of an experience you know i've seen you in nature having similar experiences where on a lake kayaking being in nature being around waterfalls where you're just you know i'm not saying it's your second child birth experience but it's a level of um emotional We

all have a deep capacity for that like i don't think that i'm special in that way and i think that's what you know what what um what michael would say i call him mickey now um but yeah we we do we have that capacity and i think for me if we're talking about me personally which you just went there yeah i mean we both went there yeah when you take me out of my computer my schedule my the things that i allow to make me nuts Because i you know i give my serenity away on

the daily um yeah i can have a but but then i also feel like but i have to go back to the real world i can't live in this waterfall forever and then he like ran this gigantic company and like look it's amazing he's amazing i brought up the nature because i think it's important to reset an expectation it's not that like oh you have to go do Mushrooms to be out in nature like you can have an awe-inspiring experience simply by existing and right we're capable of that and then in terms of his company

i just think that re-framing and his expectations it's not like i'm getting on a call to make a deal it's getting on a call and like i don't know what to expect because i know right there's so much i don't Know and that level of being humble and in awe of what i it sounds to me the universe beyond himself i i find fascinating and and like i definitely am going to start to use little bits of this like i'm gonna go back in this interview and i'm gonna listen for those sound bites because the

words of wisdom that he shared like i'm taking notes feverishly and Just by incorporating some of them getting on a meeting and remembering the insignificance of what i'm about to do makes the reaction or interactions that i may find difficult so much less difficult because they're i change it from this is the most important thing in my day to like oh this is generally insignificant and that everything is going to be fine another thing is like when you were talking about the house I was in this constant like trying to figure it out in my

mind and he's like you can't figure it out in your mind and one of the things that you said to me which really helped was like it doesn't sound like it's time to make that decision if it's so fraught with all of this like unknowing mm-hmm then i could figure out an entire plan but that doesn't mean that that's the time To make the plan totally and and also you know while present well being present is extremely important um you know michael when we were just talking as an example you know about like buying a

house he's like you know be reasonable right and so you know being reasonable is part of an entire decision and as i said to you when you think about buying a house it's not just buying a house it's all of the i mean it's a million things and you Know there are many days you know where where i think like gosh i see why sometimes people don't want to you know be this kind of adult you know i'm just being honest like sometimes adulting is really hard and it's dumb and i'm not even talking about

owning things or like first world problems like my garage door broke the other day like yeah that's kind of the thing that Needed to get handled right um but you know the other part of me wishes like i could just devote my life to like studying this book and until i get it right i don't want to re-enter the world you know it's like i want to like and part of why this is an emotional episode is because like of course where does my mind go i've wasted So much time if i byron katie it

is that true no it's not true but i want it to be true can we put byron katie and michael singer in the same room i think they're the same person he puts on a different way just in different forms well i mean we have now spoken to two human beings who Have had profound profound and by profound i mean like transformative profound spiritual awakenings they will not talk about what they were like before both of them said the same thing actually doesn't matter and you went in you're like i really want to know your

your mind was like i need to figure out what it was about his childhood crime well it wasn't even that I'm just like i'm just so curious like i mean like what if you were to find out uh you know that he well he told us he's well he's jewish um you know what if you were to find out that he was raised like super super religious like orthodox like had never met a gentile you know like then that would be also interesting to be like oh he was in college as this like cloistered like

you know person separate from other things because like he's not part of you know whatever like That would be interesting to me or maybe he was raised by you know total hippies and you know but you're right it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if he was primed for it because it's true that's just looking for a place of comparison and i that was the question i wanted to ask him and then you cut me off and that made me cry i wanted to know what other texts he studied in his or because there's he's Clearly

like it's very easter philosophy like no he's very i mean that's what he studied so it wasn't just the yoga and meditate that's the thing that i was worried about that people would get from this episode like he had this spiritual awakening like good for him and then he's just like this like genius person who like you know writes all these books and he's amazing no this is a person who he studied he continued studying and reading like he doesn't just like know All these names of these gurus and masters like he studied them like

he read text he dug in deep and it's easter i mean it's i don't want to say exclusively eastern philosophy because there's also there's a tinge of you know jewish mysticism in there um but yeah a lot of eastern it's eastern like he started with zen buddhism do you feel comfortable talking a little bit about When you said you wasted all this time i kind of cut you off but i think it's an important area because you had a really big emotional reaction at the beginning it's like he was talking directly to you there were

parts of that interview that it felt like he was like just sort of looking at you and like bringing you into his well it felt very uncomfortable doing energy work well what felt Uncomfortable you know is that like i feel very like unworthy and then i was thinking gosh he has all these like not preconceived notions but you know it's a big deal to get a doctorate you know in in the science field and he knows that because he you know studied um you know he studied economics and he was deep in a lot of

similar you know worlds that i was in in Academia and so you know then there's this notion of like gosh i wonder why he thinks i did that or you know does he think i'm this like technical person and i'm really just like i'm weeping openly you know um i just i you know i i'm sad i hate that he can't be my special friend i don't mean special like that i just mean i'm sad that I'm sad that i don't you know i'm sad that everyone doesn't get to have more of michael singer you

know conversations in their life but i guess that's why he writes books i felt so stupid asking like anything i feel very i i tend to like feel kind of i get um i feel a little bit dumb around people like that because it's like i ask something and it's like it doesn't even matter like oh but you know like what how do you decide to Write a conversation right he's like how do you like how do you decide to write i don't decide oh right okay only like you know corporate jerks like me think

that way sit down and like i'm gonna write something here i wrote it pretty much versus the universe is telling me to write i will channel that information to the best of my ability and share it with the masses And then talk to oprah i mean us and oprah in one week i want to just touch for a second on this notion of reinforcing or building like the mind's paradigm around the issues in our life versus his approach and i do believe that understanding ourselves requires a level of examination that is healthy as well We

can get into an analysis paradigm where we now analyze so much that it doesn't allow us to feel or separate from the thing that we're analyzing like for example when i feel an emotion if i try and ask myself why am i feeling this emotion and where is it coming from i don't feel the emotion i go into the mind and i can't process it and i was wondering if that you know was Any part of sort of what you were feeling at the beginning when he was talking that was just a powerful section and

you were having um you know you were you were emotional yeah i mean uh oh i i don't i don't feel like i was having a reaction to that specifically and i think um You know he as he said like it's it it takes all kinds you know there's a lot of different you know pathways and um you know he doesn't know everyone's particular mechanisms you know for why they got the way they are and um and and like i you know like like i said like there are certain aspects also of people's You know

chemical makeup and there are a lot of other factors that influence our ability to slow down and think that way and you know as someone who's had depression that was so dark there was no light coming in i know for sure that we can get into ways of thinking that do not allow us to even contemplate thinking another way and That's very scary and those are like the darkest edges you know of our human experience and so i i have a lot more experience with that than kind of like you know the stuff that you

and he i mean i understand what you and he were talking about but it's also like that's that's at a very like it's very heady you know it's very heady like this stuff you know and i i think have you had that experience though that where you're and i think Like i think i've had that ex i've seen you have that experience where you're like having a reaction and having an emotion and you're like oh wait a second i'm kind of like it's almost like you're going through the motions of an overreaction and you even

like said to me like oh i'm acting in a way that like you're aware of the fact that you're acting versus i mean i'm being so in it that it that it feels real yeah i think i mean what i've noticed You know when you describe what happens for you i think that happens to a lot more men in our culture you know than women in terms of like when the feelings start coming i think for a lot of and i'm not just saying just men but you know in a patriarchal you know kind of

structure like we're in there's kind of an instant like shutting it down to sort of like analyze It because then i don't have to feel it because i can solve it you know or i i i don't know i i think that's no you don't think that's what it is it's not it's not that so well you you don't have differences it's not analyzing it that's it's not the like it's that i'm not gonna just take a step back from being so in it that i can't tell what's you know Leading me because it's very

important to not shut it down and if i personally begin to analyze it where's it coming from what does it look like all that things then i don't feel it enough and then it sort of doesn't pass the only way i would describe it is instead of being so for example angry that the anger is motivating all of your behavior you're able to just step back one second and say oh i see the anger is happening And instead of being just sandwiched together with no differentiation you just step back a tiny bit sometimes there's a

point of no return which if you don't experience rage like i do you don't know what i'm talking about there is a point of no return where you're like you're you see red um yeah there's a well yeah there's the idea would be to To learn to stop it before it gets there um but if we're talking about the last time that i got upset at you and you literally said i looked like a cartoon carrot like i blew my top like i looked like anger in uh inside out that's what it felt like i

felt like that person witnessing in that moment no that moment is all being propelled by yeah but that's a thing michael singer would Say there's probably a million opportunities before that just to witness it rising to take a breath that was all the stuff that i had been storing for the last eight months you know what i mean so for sure anyway um have a great day everyone that was really intense it was amazing and wow check out the instagram account appiah breakdown for clips we're gonna get some of the best sound bites and words

of wisdom you can share them with Your friends and i'm certain jonathan will compile some photos of me weeping openly while michael oh i actually messaged valerie while we were doing this i said the fact that she's slack-jawed in the first ten minutes of the interview or would make a perfect gift what i was actually thinking is i i put on makeup today because i whatever i had some other stuff to film and i don't usually wear makeup like it's the new me Doesn't really wear makeup um when we record and i was thinking i

really hope that my eyeliner doesn't run all the way down my face but then i was like wouldn't that be amazing if my eyeliner ran all the way down my face it would be such a visual of like this is what happened when michael singer came to play and i just look like tammy faye just weeping well next time from our breakdown to the one we hope You never have we will see you next time it's miami's breakdown she's gonna break it down for you she's got a neuroscience phd or two non-fiction and now she's

gonna break down it's a breakdown she's gonna break it down