E172: Stop Chasing Happiness—Remove What Blocks It

Hmm, Jai Guru, Jai Masters. People get so lost in these things called goals. And then they ask questions, is it okay if I have this goal? Is it wrong to have this goal? How can I live life without a goal? And that's what I mean, they get lost in these things called goals. You're born and you die. You don't need a goal for that. It kind of happens totally naturally. When you're born, know your business, it just happens. When you die, believe it or not, it's not your business, it just happens. You may know a little more about it, plan this, have a life-threatening disease, all kinds of things, but when you die, that's when you die. How do you know when you die? I guess that's when you die. In between, the more I grow, it is such a short period of time. What, 80, 90, 100 even? Sometimes it's less. That's a very few number of years, guys. The earth has been here for 4.5 billion years. How does 80 or 90 compete with that? It's nothing, not even a blink of an eye. It's just the truth. So you're just here on this planet for a tiny, tiny period of time. Let's step back for a minute. What is a reasonable goal to have during your life? If you had to pick one goal, what would you pick? If you're wise, you would pick happiness, joy, love, well-being. Instead, you pick money, relationships, fame, glory, not getting hurt, trusting people, isn't it? You got lots of goals, don't you, Donner? Your real goal is to enjoy your life, to enjoy the fact that you're here on this planet. There's tons of things going on to do, aren't there? All over the place, every single place you are, there's tons of things to do. Right? And enjoy your life. Why would you bother wasting your life by being neurotic? Wasting your life being scared? Wasting your life having fear and anxiety and jealousy and insecurity and etc. etc. etc. Is that what you want with your life? And the answer is no, that makes sense. I don't want that with my life. Then why do you have it? Why do you not feel love all the time? Why do you not feel joy? Why do you not feel happiness? How do you not feel total well-being? Why? Let that be your goal. To find out why I don't feel these things. Why did I fill my mind with all these thoughts that I can only be okay if when I'm 63 years old I want to look as young as I was when I was 40. No, good luck. No, good luck. Because I can't work out real well. Right? I don't have good finances, but I want people to be impressed with me. So I'm going to rent some Rolls Royce. I probably know what you want. But I'm going to rent something and make believe that for that day that people are impressed with me. What are you doing? If tension, anxiety, right or wrong. Or I want someone to like me. I need love. I don't have love. I want someone to like me. So I'm going to behave a certain way that I think that will make them like me. How does that work out? You worry about what to wear the next day. You worry about what you said. You worry about whether you turn somebody on or off. So you didn't pick a very good goal in life. Right? Because you ended up picking suffering. You ended up picking anxiety, stress, worry and security. You picked those things. Nobody told you what to pick. You're in here. And if you want a goal, we're going to talk about a real goal. Happiness. Let's just call it happiness. Love, happiness, bliss, well-being, give it a name. All right? We'll just call it happiness. You can feel happiness. First, I want to know why would you not pick that goal? Because the truth of the matter is every goal you pick is really picking that. I want to have a great relationship. Why? I want to be happy. I want to have a job that turns me on. Why? I want to be happy. I want to have a child that's just the best I could. Why? I want to be happy. You want to have a child because they're going to enjoy it to your life. You want to get married because they're going to enjoy it to your life. You want to have finances. You can travel and you'll see things and be changes in your life because you don't like boredom. You don't like being stuck. So you want happiness. Every single thing you say you want, I could knock it down to you. Right? I want to say no, I want that person. I'm so in love with that person. That will make me happy. Notice it will make me happy. Not I am happy. How do you know it will make you happy? Do all marriages end up in happiness? All the time, by the way. So you've picked something that says in order to be happy, something has to happen. Otherwise, I won't be happy. That's the gross mistake. That's the primal misunderstanding of life. It is because you picked something that you have trouble being happy. Because I'm only happy if she loves me. I'm only happy if she loves me and treats me like I want to be treated around my parents. I only happen if she loves me and doesn't ever act like she doesn't love me, no matter what's going on. Like, okay, you're not going to be happy because you made it conditional. Happiness is called unconditional well-being, unconditional happiness. They don't teach you this. They don't tell you you're capable of that state. It is your natural state. If you're not in that state, it's not because something didn't happen. It's because you put a cloud in front of the sun and the sun represented permanent happiness. Sun's there for 4.5 billion years too, you know. And you just hear from 80, 90. Give me a break. How hard is it to be happy for 80, 90 years? There's nothing that sneezes. So there must be something that you've done that keeps you fulfilling filled with joy, filled with love, filled with love. The answer is yes, there is something, but they don't tell you that. They don't talk to you that way. They tell you you have to set goals and meet them in order to be happy. And you have to make sure that there are things that you don't want to happen and make sure they don't happen and you won't be happy. It's conditional well-being. Okay, let's start simple. Who set the conditions? They're conditional. How someone's supposed to treat you, how they're supposed to talk, what your job's supposed to be like, what you're both supposed to be like, how long you're supposed to be married, they're all conditional. Who set the conditions? You did. You at one point in your life said, oh, I want to get married and have a less for 50, 60 years. I only have one relationship in my entire life. I'm so happy. Somebody else watched some other movie and said, man, I like change and be happy all the time. How can I be happy with one person? Which is right. No, don't be stupid. You decided what has to happen for you to be happy. Neither is right because they're both conditional. You set conditions under happiness. Unconditional happiness says there are no conditions of my happiness. I am going to be happy every moment for the rest of my life. Why? Why not? If I have a choice, should I be happy all the time? Should I feel love all the time? Feel freedom and beauty? Why would I choose that? Because you just fell into the trap of saying something has to happen in order for me to feel happiness, in order for me to feel love. And it's not true. It is not true. Nothing has to happen for you to feel love. Nothing has to happen for you to feel happiness. Nothing has to happen for you to feel total freedom. Your wings are open all the time. Nothing has to happen. Something has to not happen. Which is you deciding that you can't be happy unless this happens. Listen to me. People won't dare to think like that. They don't understand why. They have evidence. I wasn't happy and then something happened made me happy. I better keep that. If I cling on to that, I better make sure this keeps happening. Or if I thought it was happening and then it stops happening, I better find another thing that will make me happy. It's not working anymore. And so you struggle because of what you did. Nobody did that to you. The problem was you weren't paying attention. When you're born, someone should sit down with you and say, hey, come on, happiness is your goal. It just makes happiness your goal and stays true to it. And let go of anything that blocks it and you'll be happy for the rest of your life. I'm serious. You think I'm kidding? All right. So why can I do that? Because you block yourself. I've talked to this over and over again. There's only one problem in your life. Well, there's many of them, but it's one problem. You have blocked experiences that you have had that were not pleasant to you and decided I cannot be happy while those things are going on or where they went on, by the way. A lot of you have things left in there that they're not going to go away. They're like, well, I want to go away. You want them not to have happened. Will they ever not have happened? They will never not have happened. Therefore you'll never be happy. So you put blockages to your happiness inside of you. Those blockages determine the conditions for your happiness. It's just at some point you wake up and say, why did I do that? Because you didn't know any better. Things happen. They were difficult to experience. Do things happen that are difficult to experience? Yes or no? Do they come and go? They don't stay in there your whole life. Your divorce from five years ago is not happening every day, but your mother did or daddy did or in Freudian stuff. It's gone a long time ago. Why are you keeping it in there? And that I'm telling you, that is the only reason you're not happy all the time. Because you stored inside of you that which blocked your happiness. And now it becomes conditional that unless this happens, that happens, or this doesn't happen, I can't be happy. So what's the solution? Going out there and trying to make the world make you happy? Good luck. That would make you happy yesterday makes you miserable today. Have you seen that? It could happen to build not even yesterday. You're doing really well with somebody. They're talking to you, love them. It's what it's all about. And all of a sudden they stand differently, reminding you of your uncle Charles, he didn't like it at all. All right? Or they shrug their nose in a way, you know, like, that's it, man. It's over. You're not happy. Can it change quickly? Yes or no? All right, you're doing that. You have to understand that. You'd be happy all the time. You have to own what's making you not happy. Not you have to go out there and make the world match. What you stored inside. It's not going to do that, is it? It's not going to match the stuff you decided you want to happen all the time. So you'll struggle to be happy sometimes. And you'll struggle to not be unhappy. That's a waste of your life. Every once in a while you'll be happy. A lot of times you won't be happy. You'll be worrying about how to be happy. Be wondering why couldn't I be more, but it's a midlife crisis. It's a midlife crisis. I struggled my entire half my life to be okay. I'm afraid it could change. I'm afraid it could go away. It feels so tenuous. Still get jealous a little bit. I still get worried about my finances. I'm in a midlife crisis saying I'm halfway here and I've wasted it. I'm not any happier than I was when I was a child. Maybe not even as happy. Why? Why would you do such a thing? Because you're not paying attention. That you couldn't handle the situation that happened to you. And therefore you stored them inside of you. That the essence of every teaching I've ever taught you. When things happen that are not comfortable to you, you push them away. You try to make them not have happened. You suppress them, repress them, deny them. You do something. I don't like that this happened. Because you don't like it, you keep it. If it happened, then okay, it happened. And then you don't keep it. You're fine. You can tend to close. It's better when closing. You can tend to close for a moment and catch yourself and say, I don't think so. I don't need to close over this. And guess what? You won't. But if you say, I can't handle this, I can't. I never think I will handle this. I'll never be able to handle this. All right. I don't have anything to do with this ever again. You're never going to be happy again. Not truly happy. Because you stored unhappiness inside of you. Don't just see that. You understand that. And now you're saying to be happy, that has to be placated. I have to somehow make it so that I can handle what my mother did or whatever it is. I can go and show many examples that I don't bother. Because it's so voluminous that it's ridiculous. You make yourself unhappy by storing the things that bothered you inside of you. And you do do that, don't you? And then you try to compensate by taking vacations, having drugs, doing this, winning an award, have people applaud because of you not feeling rejected. Try to do things for the outside that make you feel better inside. I don't want you to think like that. I want to know why you don't feel wonderful all the time inside. It is your natural state. You can be that way all the time. And the only reason it's not is because you store that garbage inside of you. And that's the essence of yoga, by the way. All this stuff about chakras and shakti and Kundalini. Don't even bother. It's all about cleansing the centers that are blocking your shakti flow. Well, why is it blocking the shakti flow? It's a mystical thing. It's a mystical at all. You stored this stuff in there and it's blocking the flow of your energy. And as long as it's in there, it's going to block the flow of your energy. You get high once in a while, have a wonderful experience, go to a big long retreat. That's wonderful. How long is it left? Next thing you say, oh, I had this really beautiful experience at a two week retreat, right? When was it three years ago? Let me tell you about it. I don't know what you're talking about. I want to know why you're not there all the time. Because that's why you're not there all the time. Because you stored this garbage inside. So the cleansing of the chakras, the opening of the heart, all the centers, is all about letting go of what you stored in there. Nobody put it in there. Yes, you have drives. Can you handle your drives? Oh, go to Freud. Talk about the it. Can you handle your drives? Of course, you have drives. There's a body. You live inside of a body. It's an animal. It is an animal. Do you understand that? Don't ever say your body is not an animal. It is an animal. And it has drives. It has impulse. It has fears and anxiety. It has animal level things. Can you handle that? No. Well, then you're in trouble. Because it's a reality of what you're living with. And you are capable of called transmuting the energy. You're capable of taking any of these drives, any of these animalistic tendencies, or more based based on level tendencies, and raising them up instead of pushing them back down and saying, you're not supposed to have done that. You shouldn't have done that. This is wrong. You need more of that. You just find that you can work with the energy and you can work with yourself, but it all comes down to cleansing. The entire path is about letting go of the stuff you stored in there. The entire path from lost to enlightened is about letting go of what you stored in there. Yoga Nanda has a technique. It's called Kriya Yoga. I don't want to tell you about it. I want to tell you what the word Kriya means, cleansing. It's a technique for cleansing the chakra system, cleansing it of what? How to get dirty. Because you store junk in there. And so it's still in there and it keeps trying to come back up. And it does come back up, doesn't it? You push it back down. So happiness is about not doing that. If the cause of not being happy is that you're blocked, you don't feel your energy flow, you don't feel the shakti welling up inside of you, it's because you've blocked it. So the answer is not getting things the way you want. Getting what you want is so overrated. So it's the beginning of your path to catch on. Boy, I lost there. But if I get what I want, I'll be okay. No, if you get what you want, you'll worry you'll lose it. If you get what you want, you'll struggle to try and get it. And then plus you'll change what you want anyways. The minute you actually get what you want and you feel fulfilled, you want something else. There's no end to it. So goal orientation and I'm not fucking against it. It's just it's not, there's nothing wrong with goal orientation. You've picked the wrong goal. It doesn't work. And all of you have the exact same goal. Enlightenment, Self-realization, cleansing, purification, uplifting of the energy. Well, how do I uplift the energy? And that's again, what I've learned over my life. You can struggle to all kinds of junk to uplift the energy. Or you can say, wait a minute, why is it not uplifted by itself? How come the energy doesn't shoot up in there? Because you're blocking it. Prove it to me. Okay, I will say one word to you. You don't like you're out of here. You're determining what turns you on or turns you off. And when you understand that it's all about opening and staying open and not closing. And when stuff comes back up, now let's talk real. How do you be happy? Worship the stuff you have down there. Give it the opportunity to come up. The more it hurts, the better. The more difficult it is to let it go. Wonderful. Don't push it back down to the best you can to let it up. What does that mean? Now you're getting into real spiritual teachings. It's not about chakras. They say, yes, of course it's that, but it's deeper than that. It's about understanding. Well, that stuff's down there. Here, you got divorced five years ago. It was a terrible divorce. Bought the hell out of you. All right. You know, talk to anybody. You rip the pictures out of the photos. It was not a good thing. Can that happen? Yes. All right. Is it happening now? No. So are you willing to say, I got a problem? And it's my problem. It's not his or her problem. It's my problem. I was unable to handle the situation that took place. And so I stored it inside of me. How do I still in there? Because it comes back up all the time. You're sensitive about the subject. You're sensitive about hearing his or his name. You're sensitive about hearing that. Oh, he remarried. Who? What? It's just, you still got stuff in there. Is it possible to not have stuff in there? Yes. You're not supposed to have stuff in there. You have experiences. You handle them. You grow through them. You let them go. And you let them go. Why? Because they're not worth holding in there. Because they're stealing the meaning and depth of your life. Don't ever doubt that anything that is still in there from your past, whether it was 10 minutes ago, something seven years in life, or 15 years ago, something happened, if it is still in there, you will not know happiness. You will try to compensate for it by going to a movie or doing this or doing that, to try and make you feel better. But it's coming back. You understand that? Unless you're willing to let it go, it's going to come back. And so instead of waking up and saying, that's why I'm not happy, you say, I need the relationship to make me happy. I need the money to make me happy. I need your travel to make me happy. I need your drugs to make me happy. Do you understand that? You don't need anything to make you happy. It's not about getting things, it's about getting rid of things. That's the depth of the spiritual teachings. Like people talk about law of attraction. Is there a law of attraction? Yes, there's a law of attraction. You can learn to do mantras and focus and really focus on stuff and learn to attract it to yourself. All right. I would just ask you, how do you decide which one to attract yourself? How do you decide? I want a bigger house. I want a better relationship. I want the kids to stop getting all screwed up. What are you going to do? What are you going to attract? I want to travel. I see the world more. It's not going to make you happy. That one event will momentarily distract you from the garbage you stored inside that makes you want something or needs. Let's be stronger. There are no needs. There are no psychological needs. They won't tell you that. There's physiological needs, but they're pretty simple. True clothing shelter, not mansions and lobsters. There's food, clothing, shelter. No one's questioning about that. You have a responsibility to carry your body. Beyond that, there are no needs. You made them up. You watched a movie once with Grace Kelly in it, and it was so beautiful. You want to have a wedding like she had. You could do rock Hudson or whatever it was she married. I don't know. All right. And now you got that in your head. And now you can't be happy in your life unless someone's got the chin. Whatever. So that regard is you have limited your happiness by setting conditions on it. So even attracting to what you want is setting a condition on your happiness. It's way higher than that. So instead of trying to get what you want, you have to look inside and say, why did I set these conditions? Why did I say I needed a boat to be happy? It doesn't mean you can't have a boat. It's not about renunciation. It's about not setting conditions on your happiness. If you're happy and someone loves you a boat ride, you take them, enjoy the boat ride, you go. You have a lot of fun and somebody comes and you say, hey, by the way, do you like the boat ride? I like riding my hair. Here's my boat. Oh, take the damn boat. But you didn't have to go down in order to compensate to go back up. You don't need the boat to be happy. You take the boat. You're fine with the boat. It sinks. Boy, that was fun. Just enjoy your life. We haven't learned how to do that, have we? We've only learned how to struggle to get what we want and avoid what we don't want. Can I repeat that? You struggle to get what you want and you struggle to avoid what you don't want. Therefore, you're struggling. Therefore, you're not happy. And the fact that every once in a while, you get a shot of happiness. So you're sitting and having to match what you wanted. That doesn't impress me, not at all. I love you. I want you to have eternal, constant, unending joy welling up inside of you all the time. Now go out and have fun. Now go out and have a relationship. You don't need it. By all means. It's wonderful. If it happens, it's there. It's natural. You enjoy it. But if it breaks up, you enjoy it. But isn't there pain? You enjoy the pain. You learn to enjoy every single moment of your life. Not tolerate, not put up with, not compensate. That no way that's good enough, is it? You just sit there and say, if I have a choice of what I want to do in my life, bliss and health sound really good. Constant state. Told you a young another one said, oh, what has that done to me? Wave upon wave of endless joy. Saturates me day and night. Throng upon throng of ecstasy. You want to say that? It doesn't mean you don't live your life. You're married. You have children. Have a job or money. It doesn't touch it. You're already whole. You're already complete. You're enjoying every second of your experience. Now people say to me, how can you enjoy death? Because death is part of life. But it doesn't feel good. Of course it doesn't feel good. There's a sense of loss. It's perfectly logical. I talk about it in Living Untether. If your energy flow comes out and connects with somebody else's heart, somebody else's being, when that breaks, it feels lost. It feels disconnected. Is that okay with you? Can you enjoy the experience of the depth of humanness, of feeling? You just learn to enjoy everything. Not hehehehe, but just deep inside. This sense of learning, this sense of contentment. I was giving you the example of Roman Julia. Roman Julia is not a comedy. You don't go there to watch Roman Julia to laugh. But you do go back. If they were really good, you bring your friends back. Oh my God, I cried for days. You feel a sense of loss. You feel a sense of missing. And it touches you really deep. And it's beautiful. All of life is beautiful. All of life is joy, love, shakhti, expression of your being. Totally open all the time. That's called what is your goal in life. Some people say I have no goals. You can have that goal. The goal that's unconditional doesn't change. But what about things that I like? Why can't I go after things that I like? You don't have to. You don't understand. Every moment in life is an opportunity to bless out. Every second in life, if you're driving down the road and all of a sudden the lines, instead of being white or yellow, and they're perfectly parallel to each other, you should bliss you out. You be here now. You pay attention to what's happening. And everything that's happening has the effect of touching you to the depth of your being. You don't need, I can say you don't need special things. They're all special. They're all special. Let's say you have thoughts. They're all special. It's not that you suppress your thoughts. It's not that you don't want to have the thoughts. You're just in there saying, wow, there's thoughts. And look at this one. Wow, you're pretty negative. You just have fun in there, please. The only is you're not having fun in there as you decided not to. You decided if so and so doesn't like me, I can't have fun. I used to tell you this story. Here's how high being lives. You talk with your friends and all of a sudden you see so many coming from the distance and you kind of get a little quiet. And you tell your friends, right? It's like, it's very embarrassing to me. This person, I swear they think I walk on water. They just think I'm just flowing right here. Just wait and it's okay. Just watch. The person comes up. Oh, oh my God, it's you. I just love seeing you again. You're so beautiful. I mean, your presence, they just feel so much love. Now you're standing there put up with it, right? And they walk away. Now you tell your friends, see, I told you, right? So then all of a sudden you talk a little more. Another person's coming from over there. You have the exact same reaction. Oh, oh, look, it's so and so. He could never talk negative enough about me. Anybody sees, he just said, chairs in a piece. Just wait, wait, wait. What do you say? First come out, chair in a piece of, oh my God, you piece of dirt. I can't believe what you did. How you live terrible. The worst person ever lived. Then they walk away. You say, well, I can't see this neither. Then you've arrived. You don't need people, place or things to be a certain way for you to be okay. Why? Because you are okay in there. You're more than okay. And then it's a crazy, I keep quoting Christ. Nice Jewish yogi. I, more and more I grew. I just love Christ's teachings. He says, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that leaves the mouth of God. It means you're not living off us coming in from outside. You're living with that flow of shucked, the spirit of energy pouring inside of you, which is always there. And just the whole attitude. I am not going to close. Period. I'm staying open and nothing's going to touch me. And you just take that attitude and you sit there and say, isn't that fun? You still go to work. Why? It's fun. Why not? It doesn't matter what you're doing. Somebody else got the raise that you wanted. That's not how it works. It works like you're fine. You don't need the raise. You don't need the money. You actually feel good for the person that got the raise. You want it. You have to fight with it. You have to struggle with it. You actually feel compassion about every single thing that can ever be. They're all growth experience. They're learning experiences. They challenge you to be okay and know how it happens. Are you willing to even look at that as a goal? I'm goal oriented. How you like your goal? I gave you so far. You just understand if you do that, you will be the happiest person on the face of the earth all the time. And the funny is, somebody they're right when they say, isn't that selfish to want to be happy? If you're there, everyone comes along with you. You're always bringing positive, beautiful energy into every situation and helping everything and everybody. So until the soul is the path of unconditional happiness, a lot of people are challenged by that chapter. Are you willing to say no matter what happens, I am to be okay. Now the question becomes fine. Now we set our goal. I would love for you to be your goal. Not every succeeds all the time with their goal, but you set one of that few succeed. It's over. You won. You won the prize. Okay. It's not temporal. Why can't you get there? Because you're not paying attention. It really is that. It's not all this spiritual work. It's I'm in here and I notice that I don't like things. And if I don't like it, my storm in there. I've done my entire life. It rained on my birthday. So I didn't call for half hour when I was dying to hear from them. I got jealous and I got secure entire life. I stored garbage in there. So if that's what took your happiness away, getting rid of that will give you happiness back. And it's the truth. So you decide that I'm going to do what I'm going to work on myself. Not working everybody else. Not working making the outside world be the way I want. That's a whole another talk I give, which is just phenomenal that you think that the answer to you not being happy is to manipulate every single thing that happens that comes in front of you to be the way you want it to be. Wow, there's a task for you. And you just wake up. You wake up. He's really not going to do that anymore. What am I going to do? I'm going to look inside and I teach. Start with the small things. It's really funny. I live with strong with the big things. The bud bothering you. Let's go through therapy. Let's rip it out. Whatever it is, you know, push yourself through it. I respect anything anybody's doing to grow. Somehow, as I grew 55 years, right? Has a matured in the process. That's the opposite. Take the small stuff first. Take the fact that you can't handle the rain. Take the fact that you can't handle the car in front of you, how they're driving. Take the fact that somebody didn't say hello when you said hello to them, like a really shattering things. And notice you can't handle them. You notice that you have a conversation with somebody. And then you say something at the end, that last last interaction, right? And your mind keeps saying, I wish I didn't say that. I wonder if they took it the way I didn't mean it that way. Should I ask them? Has anyone ever done that? Okay, you're making yourself miserable. You have to learn to stop doing that. But doesn't it encounter a certain amount of risk? If that went on inside and you're afraid that you said the wrong thing, but I'm willing to say, I don't know whether they took it that way. I'm so busy with me, they probably need to think about me again. You're busy thinking about you. They're not busy thinking about you. They're busy thinking about themselves. Don't ever think that something you said bothered somebody because you don't know. It looked like it from your point of view. And even if it bothered them a little, they probably let it go in 15 seconds because they got overwhelmed with their own problems. And so this concept of you fixing it and getting it right and apologizing, just do the best you can at every situation you're in and do your best you can to let go of all that garbage that comes up in the aftermath. It does no good. It doesn't. All right, let's get real. How many things have you worried about that never happened? Talk about every little thing. Right? Oh, I'm going to be late. I'm going to be late. Oh, my God. Oh, God, I'm not. Look, the tire pressure is down. Do I have a flat? I don't know. What's the thing? You worry about everything. You think everything's going to go wrong. What if you didn't do that? What if you sat there and said, let's just start with the simple things in life. The this I call low hanging fruit, the things that are easy to let go of, but you don't bother. Here, drive down the road and the light turns yellow right before you go under it. And you're concerned that you ran the red light. You don't know that look around. See there's any cops around and then think for a while, what if I had run it? I'd be late for my appointment. A cop would pull me over. You're making yourself miserable for no reason. So there's a certain amount of risk involved in my teachings. Right? Not a whole lot. Like if I sit there and you say, I don't want it to rain tomorrow. Okay, it's not a great risk to let it do what it does because it's going to do it anyways. Right? And you step on that worry about it's going to rain or not. You got an issue. Right? We could do better than that. But this thing about the light or something like that, it's like, you're afraid to start worrying about all kinds of stuff. Are you willing to stop? Look and listen. Don't fight it. Don't ever fight your mind. There are reasons it's doing what it's doing. Your fears, your insecurities, blah, blah, blah, blah. You sit there and say, am I willing to take the risk? That I went through that light and that maybe I should have stopped and maybe three blocks later some cops going to show up and I'm willing to take the risk and just say, all right, that's what happened. Drive on. Because I'm telling you 99% of the time nothing's going to happen. You made it up in your mind. You make up what can, don't you make up what could go wrong? What can you make up what could go wrong? Anything, everything. Anything can go wrong. The meter could hit your car. Like anything can happen. So anything you want to think of can make you miserable. How about taking the attitude if you want to be happy, let go. What does that mean? Let go of the part of you that's making neurotic that 99% of the time doesn't happen. I assure you if you watched the negativity and issues or worries that you do inside your head, really watch them, you would see 99% never happen. Wow. This is a good talk then. I can liberate myself and I'll tell you right now, if I have a choice that 99% are not going to happen, I will take that chance of 1% every time and I'll enjoy it. They said, there's you and young. I'll pay the 1% for the 99% that I have to do it for and you'll find out every single time you'll be just fine. And because you didn't make yourself miserable for the 99%, you will be filled with strength and shock to have a handle of the 1%. And so you wake up. It's called waking up and you realize I can be happy. I said, so you can be happy if you let yourself be as a true statement. And don't think your problems in life are making you unhappy. They're not. You are making you unhappy. But wait a minute. I fall in love and I really love this person very much. And I want to be around the left of leaving. What if they left me? Do they seem to be actually going to leave you? No, but my past relationship left me and really hurt me really bad. You're in trouble, you think like that because that will never go away. And now you've taken away the love that you felt to feel anxiety and jealousy and worry. And you traded love for that. So that's one form of feeling love and joy. Don't trade it for anything. If your goal is to feel unconditional happiness all the time and unconditional love, catch yourself and you're ready to trade it off. I feel tremendous love for this person, but I'm worried that they might leave me. They might hurt me. I got hurt once before. You want to trade off that for the love because you just traded it off. Your heart will not stay open if you're sitting and saying, but I got hurt before. I don't want it to happen again. I have to protect myself not so fast. Oh, you close your heart. Do you understand that? Or does that sound rational to you to worry about whether you're going to get hurt? If you're worried about whether you're going to get hurt, you don't know what love feels like because love has this tremendous openness. And this is the difference, right? You don't love somebody. You love what you feel in their presence. For some reason, the energy, the aura, perfect, I don't care what happens. It hits you and the next thing you know, you feel love and you say, I love you. That's not true. You love love. You love the feeling of that beautiful open heart, well, inside of you, but you make it conditional. You say, only if you keep behaving this way and don't do this and don't that, and make sure you don't ever hurt me. You promise you promise you won't hurt me. I got hurt last time. You're really bad. I can remember in younger years, you know, junior high, this kind of thing, talking to somebody and saying stuff like that. If I love you and I open you won't hurt me. Will you? No, I won't hurt you. Are you sure? You promise? It's not funny. In other words, you can't feel love. You will not feel love. You will feel a conditional holding back because you're afraid. Otherwise, you wouldn't be asking those questions. Otherwise, you sit there and just, I just, the sun is shining. I love it. And if it stops shining, I will still be wonderful and fine. That's how you think. Do I feel joy and love in the presence of this person? I absolutely do. Can I handle if they change or something's different than what I thought it's going to be? Yes, ma'am, I can. I've practiced every moment of my life to say I'm okay no matter what. Now you practice the goal of unconditional happiness. Anybody catching on? Or do you feel, do you feel that protecting yourself makes you feel more love? There's no way. But basically, tell me your heart, don't open. Do not fully open. So you'll never know what it feels like to just melt. You'll completely melt. The masters live there. That is where the lightening lives. It's a constant state of whatever's happening. It's just touching the depth they're being. Robert Christian, they used to walk behind him. He said, any moment he would think of God, he'd hear something or see something, he'd fall over backwards in Samadhi. They have to cat-lilly. One of the devotees had to walk behind the master every day all the time. At any point, he was going, oh, every hair in his body was standing in. His head would go back, tears would pour down his eyes. I think, go into Samadhi, go next to him, you have to catch him. Anybody want to do that? All right? You're a high being. There's nothing, these higher beings, these high beings have reached that. I'm not already going on the side of you. But you temper it with this garbage that you put on top of yourself. So it does take a certain amount of risk to be willing to say, if 99% didn't happen throughout my life, check it out. I want you to check it out. Keep score of everything you worry about, everything you're afraid of, everything you have anxiety about, how often does it happen? Instead they say, okay, am I willing to dare to risk the 1%? You want to risk the 1%? You do want to risk it? Okay? I think people are amazing. Let's say you're an older person and you watched a movie with a plane accident and people died. They even made a news clip, could be real. All right? You know, 55 people died in a plane crash. All right? You watched that movie 20 years ago. You have grandchildren in California, you live in Florida, but you never see them. Why? I'm not going to take a plane. They're not safe. There are people like that, aren't they? All right? Have you checked the statistics of how many car accidents there are people dying in car accidents versus plane crashes? Not close to ridiculous, right? But you got it in your head. That's not safe. And now you can't do things. Are you willing to trade off this absurdity that you do every moment of life to trade off love, joy, and happiness in order to protect yourself? And eventually you'll sit there and know, I'm not. But what if I get hurt? I can handle being hurt. As opposed to limiting the love and joy of my life throughout my entire life, to try and never be hurt, I would take being hurt sometimes. And you know what? I will learn that the reason I got hurt and had expectations, I had needs, I had desires, and the more I let go of those things, the more you don't get hurt. You just experience life fully. Be here now. And you eventually trade off this craziness of thinking that happiness is a goal that you have to achieve things, do things. I bet we write all the time. Have you ever thought you could blow it? Don't look at me now as you don't want to. Have you ever thought you could blow it? If you say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, act the wrong way? Yes or no? Isn't that fun? Why? You can't blow it. It's inside of you. It's your natural stain. It's because you store all this stuff in there. Nothing can go wrong. See, you can't hear that. What do you mean nothing can go wrong? Nothing can go wrong. You're a great being inside experiencing God's love and joy. Things happen. Yes. Can they be difficult to handle in the moment that they happen? Yes. That's not wrong. That's learning. Every time you go through a difficult experience, you become stronger, assuming you don't suppress it, you become stronger, more capable of handling those things. Eventually, you don't look down and say, I wish that hadn't happened. You say, thank you for happening. Thank you for giving this opportunity to go through a thing. You're in a relationship with somebody. You love them tremendously. They do something. You start a question. Oh, no. All right. You know you do it. Or you have insecurities or fears and this or that. And you just stop. You stop. You say, I don't care if it happens. I can handle it. Now I don't have to worry about it. Now I don't have to be the one who brings up the topic and the subject and pick on somebody. I can handle whatever happens. And eventually, like I said, when things happen that are challenging, you reach the point. I know I'm rushing you. You reach the point where you say, thank you. You don't wait for it to be over. Or you don't pray to God to make it go away. You just look at it and say, if I can handle this, I can handle the next thing. I want to be able to handle life. Every moment of life, every situation of life. Okay? You're a great being, but you need to start practicing handling things. Practicing saying the meaning of my life is happiness, is joy, is love. And I'm not trading it off for anything. And I'll wake up in the morning, remember it. I'll remember the noon time, remember the evening. If I didn't do well, I'll learn from it, I'll grow from it. And I'm ready to be higher the next day and the next day. Believe me, your significant other will love you for it. You don't have to tell me anything about it. They're just changing you. You're not jealous, not clean, grabbing, worrying. It's just like, wow, free yourself. Liberate yourself. Okay, hope that helps. You're a very great being. You're a very great being who's holding yourself down. Let go. I'm a digraph. You've been listening to the Michael Singer podcast, produced by Sounds True, in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael's body of work and all back episodes, please join us at michelsingerpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds true. Waking up the world.