The Truth About Happiness You Were Never Taught with Michael Singer

Some people say, find your passion in life. I say, find out why you're not passionate about everything. The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You're bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. Stop it.

We have a really special treat. If you saw The Untethered Soul or read the book The Untethered Soul, Mickey Singer is just such a beautiful person and he doesn't really go out and do things and we're just so grateful.

The world is not stealing your happiness. You are. You wake up every single morning and you say, I'm back.

Mickey, thank you for joining us.

Hello, Mickey. Hi, dear.

Hi, Sage.

What a delight.

I'm ecstatic to be with you.

We are ecstatic to have you, Mickey. Mickey is a dear brother on the path and a dear friend and has the most beautiful mind and heart and wisdom and understanding. And every time that we've had the privilege to have you, it's just such an extraordinary gift.

So, no doubt.

Thank you, Mickey. Thank you. We love you.

Give it up for him. So it's all yours, Mickey.

Thank you. What an honor. I've never been in Abu Dhabi. Now I'm there, but I didn't have to go. So I love the fact that Tony, who's known for being so strong and so powerful and pushed through everything, has spiritual retreats.. And I already know how spiritual he is. I've been to his house. I've been in his meditation room. What a beautiful soul. What a tremendous amount that he and Sage are giving to the world, not just you all. But this particular seminar grouping is about happiness, joy, ecstasy, a life that's filled with enthusiasm. But my view of what it means to be happy that I want for all of you is as follows. You wake up every single morning and you say, I'm back. All right? Every single moment of every single day, when you brush your teeth, when you're eating breakfast, it's blowing you away. You are so enthused, so excited about absolutely everything. I get to take the garbage out today. Please, it's my turn. It was yours yesterday. No, I want to do it again. Wash the dishes, go to work. I get to sell things. I get to do things. Every single thing is filled with enthusiasm, passion, joy. Some people say, find your passion in life. I say, find out why you're not passionate about everything. Imagine if every single thing made you as passionate as anything ever has. Love this. Special moments. Every moment can be at that level. And people don't believe that, that every moment can be at that level. But what about terrible things happen? You enjoy at a deep level the sorrow, the pain of death, of sickness, of compassion. But it moves you so deeply that it's like I talk about, let's say you're driving on a road and you turn, turn for a corner, turn a corner, and there's this gorgeous sunset, just magenta. It's so beautiful. You never seen anything like it in your life. You tell people, Right? It touched me to the depth of my being. I felt like I was in the presence of God, which of course you were. Why? Because you touched you so deep inside, you touched your own divinity. Every moment can be like that, and people don't believe that. So the question is, what do I need to do for it to be that way? And why is it not that way? Well, I believe that the mind— people think Mick is against the mind. Michael's not against the mind. There is a use of the mind that is so beautiful and so spiritual. And then there's a use of the mind that is so not so beautiful and not so spiritual. If you understand deep truth, deep wisdom, and your mind is capable of doing that, your mind can help you go to the place I just talked to you about. It's not about shutting down the mind. The mind is a beautiful instrument if used properly, and it can help you get into a state of permanent ecstasy, permanent joy, permanent enthusiasm. So the question becomes, if I ask people, what makes you happy? What do you mean happiness is to you? They sit there and say happiness is falling in love, it's having a beautiful relationship. Happiness is taking a vacation that just is so beautiful and the weather's perfect. Happiness is a meal that just touches you and feels so, so well. In other words, happiness is getting what you want. And you have to take a breath with that, because that's what people think, that happiness, joy, enthusiasm is getting what you want. If you get what you want, you feel happy. If you get what you want, you feel open, you feel energy, you feel enthused. Well, Happiness is also avoiding what you don't want. 'Cause once you get what you don't want, it closes you down. You feel closed. So you start understanding this relationship that if I get what I want inside, I feel wonderful. If I don't get what I want, I feel disappointed. If I get what I don't want, I feel terrible. And if I don't get what I don't want, I feel relieved. And that is what I call truth table. We used to say this in school, truth tables. That is a truth table about happiness. And no one will disagree with that. No one disagrees that if you really want something and you get it just the way you want it, it blows you away. I don't care who you are, conservative, liberal, no matter what you believe. If you're getting what you want, you open. And if you're getting what you don't want, you close. Well, that becomes the first clue that you have a choice in life. One is to decide what you want. And go out and get it. Don't let anything stop you. Don't take no prisoners. Just go out and do not stop until you get what you want, right? The other is to sit there and say, wait a minute, yes, getting what I want opened me and I felt joy. A whole nother path other than fighting with life to get what you want is to ask, why do I close? Why am I not open anyways? Why isn't that natural? Why is my natural state not completely open? Why, when something happens outside that I want, do I open? And why, when something happens outside that I don't want, do I close? And that now starts to get spiritual as opposed to worldly. And there's nothing wrong with worldly. Worldly merely means that you believe the answer is outside. Spiritual means you believe the answer is inside. Rumi once said, very beautiful quote from Rumi, yesterday I was clever, so I was trying to change the world. Today I'm wise, so I'm changing myself. If you believe that the only way you can be happy, the only way you can feel love, the only way you can feel passion, enthusiasm is to get what you want, then you're gonna go out into the world and you're gonna try techniques and try different things to try and get what you want. If you understand that what it's really about is whether you're open or not inside. You've had experiences where things turned you on, and then 10 seconds later, they turned you off. All you have to do is have somebody behave the way you don't want them to, that you didn't expect them to, and you close immediately. You can be filled with love and tell somebody, oh, I love you so much. I've never loved anybody so much. And they say, yeah, I love you too. Just like that. Yeah, I love you too. And you don't feel love anymore. So it doesn't take much to open or close you. So spirituality is not about getting what you want. They teach you that, attract what you want, you can bring anything into your life that you want, do mantras. That's wonderful, it's beautiful, by all means do it. But deeper is to ask, why does the outside affect the inside? There's no law saying the outside has to affect the inside. They're totally different worlds. The outside's made of atoms. The inside is not. So you start questioning, why is it that I close? Why is it that I open? Why is it that something that I decided I like opens me? And then if I decided I really don't like it, then it closes me. You've been around people, people get divorced. They, they didn't think about it when they were getting married, right? They were filled with love and filled with joy. And then all of a sudden something goes wrong and now you have trouble being around the person. What happened? You were open inside. Now you closed inside. A wise person— and you all are wise, you wouldn't be there at this retreat— understands you are never ever going to get everything you want, period. Anytime you ever got what you wanted, that means you never want anything else? Never. And anytime you got exactly what you wanted, and then it stepped that way, stayed that way. Every single time you had that meal, it turned you on. Every time you met this person, it blew you away. It's not true. You know, I went through a doctorate, all but dissertation in economics. I'm embarrassed to say, I mean, I'm proud to say. And they had this law, which is a universal law. It's called the law of diminishing returns. You've probably heard of it. See, I'm gonna do business with you. The law of diminishing returns means the more you get something that you like, the less you care about it. And you know it's true. You get a new car, it blows you away. For how long? Then it's a car just like any other car. You use it to go to work. Same thing with everything. So eventually you wake up and you realize it is not about getting what I want, and it's not about avoiding what I don't want. It's about finding out why I open and close. That is something I am doing inside myself. Can I learn not to do that? Can I learn not to close? Can I learn to stay open? And the answer is absolutely. And that learning, that work you do on yourself, is the essence of spirituality. Many beautiful teachers are out there. They teach many, many different techniques. In the end, it's the same. They're teaching you how to learn to stay open, learn to breathe through pranayama, learn to be positive thinking, all kinds of stuff. All right, they're all in the end about How do I get open and how do I stay open? And what do I do if I start to close? In other words, somebody once asked me, Mickey, you don't teach techniques like other people do, right? You talk about staying open. How do I stay open? How do I be open? And I said, don't close. I have found over 50-odd years that you don't know how to open. You need something outside of you to stimulate the opening process. But you do know how to close. You do that very, very comfortably inside yourself, very quickly. All right. Can you learn not to close? And that becomes the essence of all spirituality. Learn not to close. Right. How do I do that? Well, it's so beautiful. I like to say, don't close. You will feel yourself start to close. That's something you feel very regularly. Somebody says something, the weather bothers you, the driver in front of you bothers you., and you're gonna feel your heart close. It's a natural experience. Everybody has it, not just spiritual people. You feel that closing, you feel that tightening that's happening inside. So if you wanna be happy, truly happy, I call unconditionally happy, that is you're happy regardless of what's going on. Just not just because something special is going on. You have to learn not to close. So the way I teach to do it is you don't start with big things. You don't start with the fact that you're having an argument with somebody, you're having trouble at work. You start with the simplest thing. I call it the low-hanging fruit in my new book, Living on Tether. What is the low-hanging fruit? You walk outside, it's hot out. Well, you're gonna find that you start to close. It's too hot. Oh my God, I'm sweating. I don't like when I sweat and my armpits get wet and this happens, that happens. You start getting embarrassed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you can't even handle the weather. Or you're driving somewhere to deliver something and it's a nice day, then it starts pouring rain and you have to get out of your car. And you close. I don't like this. I don't want to do this. That's where you start your spirituality, in the everyday moments that are unfolding in front of you every moment of your day. It's not just some big meditation retreat or something you're doing. It's something you do every single moment of every single day. If you see yourself start to not like something, you look at it and say, can I learn to like this? Can I learn not— at least start this way, forget liking it— can I learn not to close because it's raining? Can I learn not to close? It's raining on my birthday. Why does it have to rain on my birthday? Can I learn not to close? Because as I drive down the street, I catch every single red light, one after the other. Oh my God, how could this happen? They should be timing these lights with computers, but I'm getting every light. And I'm telling you, you will close. You don't have to. You start to work with yourself. You start to ask yourself, is it worth giving up the joy, the enthusiasm of life because the light turned red, or because the driver in front of me is driving 50 miles— 15 miles an hour below the speed limit. Come on, buddy, don't you see the sign? Or isn't using their blinkers. Nice blinker, buddy. All right, you don't realize these things are teaching you to close. These things are teaching your heart to not be open during these different situations. So you start to work with yourself. All right. How I say, what I have found is you relax. Relaxation is a tremendously powerful tool for learning how to close. In order to close, you have to tense. It is an act of resistance, and resistance requires tension. When you're relaxing, it's like judo. When you're relaxing, you can't resist. If you relax every muscle in your body, you can't resist anything.. And so when you start to close, relax, just deeply relax. Don't do anything else. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to judge yourself. And you just start relaxing. And people write me from all over the world. All I did was that and it changed my life. They write, I'm having trouble with my family, with my wife or husband. We're not getting along. And I, I really am not comfortable in their presence, but I wanna be. All right, how about this? Here's, here's a technique. When you sit in the presence of that person, watch yourself close. Just notice that you're closing, and then ask, do I want to close? Not just because I want to love this person or be with this person. Do I want to learn not to close? Well, here's your opportunity. So what do I do? Relax. But I don't want to relax. Good. Relax around the fact that you don't want to relax. Just keep letting go. Keep relaxing around your heart. Relax your shoulders. Relax your arms. Relax in the face of the problem. Relax. And you will learn to relax. You will learn how to be open when you would've normally closed. When, when you wanna learn the piano, you don't start with Beethoven or Mozart. You start with the scales. When you wanna learn a sport, you don't start by playing, you know, the top tennis players in the world. You get a ball thrower or a coach. And you start learning how to do these very basic things. Why don't you learn not to close? If you want to be happy, learn not to close. And don't think it's trivial, because you'll find out you can't do it. I want you to wake up in the morning and say, I'm not going to close today. Oh boy, it turns me on. All right, I'm not going to close today. I'm going to go through this day. I'm not going to manipulate it and make it be such that it doesn't close me. I'm gonna allow the day to unfold, 'cause believe me, it's going to anyways. And I'm gonna practice not closing throughout this entire day. If you, and you won't be able to do it. And then at night you sit down, you say, how'd you do? But don't judge, right? Just like if you're playing tennis, you hit, hit the ball into the net a few times. Good. You'll learn how to hold your wrist differently. You'll learn how to do stuff. Or if you make mistakes on the piano when you're playing the scales, that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It means you're learning. So I sit down at night. Did I close? Of course you closed. Of course you resisted. Learn to let go now. Why? This is where it gets real. Why am I not happy all the time? Why is it not my natural state that I feel joy and ecstasy? Why did God create the universe such that it bothers me so it closes me? Why can't I just be in the Garden of Eden all the time? The answer is very simple. You have to take a look at it throughout your life. Things have happened to you that were not comfortable. You saw things, heard things, experienced things. They went anywhere from somewhat uncomfortable to traumatic, really, really difficult things that you went through. Every single person went through them. It always happens at some point. All right? And the little things happen all the time. The weather, the this, somebody says, you say hello to somebody, they don't say hello back. Why not? Why don't they answer me? Don't they like me? Just everything bothers you. Okay? And you sit down and say, what did you do with those things ever since you were little? What did you do with the things that bothered you? Because I know what you did, and I don't even know you, because everybody does the same thing. I don't want to feel them. They happened. They came in through my senses, but I don't want to feel them. I'm not going to let them in here like I'll let that beautiful sunset in here, or like I'll let that beautiful hug of the person I love so much and I melted in their arms. I know I am letting this rattlesnake that I saw, or this word that this person said to me that, that, that dissed me— I'm not letting that in here. Or, or I, I raised my hand in class and what I said was wrong and people laughed— I'm not letting that back here. I don't want it in me. I don't want that touching me. Just think, you protect yourself from it. How do you protect yourself? You have hands in there. You have to understand that you have this thing called will. You have the ability to push things away that you don't want coming in, and you have the ability to relax and allow things to come in. So when things come in, have come in throughout your life that were not comfortable to you, I'm telling you, you pushed them away. You did not welcome them in. You kept them at a distance. And I have learned, and so did Freud, that anything you push away stays in there. For how long? Forever. Until you let it go. If you pushed it away, It stays in there no matter how small it is. If you saw somebody and they were, you know, let's say holding hands with someone that you weren't comfortable with, that, all right, you change your attitude about that person. You didn't handle that situation, you pushed it away. Now the next time you see that person, I'm telling you, it's coming back up. Even the slightest thing. If you were driving behind a car that was a, you know, I'm old, I better watch my years, a 2020 Mustang, and it was a certain color and the person was driving, they kept stepping on their brakes and they were driving 15 miles over the speed limit. They didn't use their blinkers. All right? Next time you're driving, I don't care if you're in Abu Dhabi and you see a car that looks like that, your heart's gonna close. It's coming right back up. And you think that's logical. No, it's 'cause you stored it in you. The other cars on the road didn't come back. The white lines on the road don't come back. The clouds in the sky don't come back. The trees you drive by don't come back. It's only if you resist it. Otherwise, it comes through naturally. You can still bring it back from your memory. You still have a memory. Your mind has memory, but it doesn't get stuck in there. But if you resist it, I'm telling you, and psychology does too, all psych— if you didn't do what I just said, they're out of business. There's not a therapist, there's not a psychologist, there's no one out there doing anything because you don't have a single problem. It's because you stored your problems inside of you that you don't feel joy all the time. You pushed away every single thing that ever bothered you and made a storehouse out of it, and now it keeps coming back up. Things remind you of it, and you don't need something outside to remind you of it. You can have a thought that screws up the rest of your day, yes or no? Okay, now you can sit there and say, I need thought control so that doesn't happen. That's not what I teach. No way. What you need to do is not shove that stuff down there. You need to sit there and say, if I shove it down there, my thoughts can bring it back up. Your words can bring it back up. The problem is not your words. The problem is not my thoughts. The problem is that you stored this stuff down there. I used to use the example, let's say you went to a restaurant and you had a meal and it made you sick. McDonald's doing it nowadays. If you haven't, maybe you haven't been local in the news, right? Is people are getting sick. So you ate some food, it made you sick.. And so what you did is you called the waiter over and said, would you please gimme a doggy bag? You took the doggy bag home and you put it in what you have labeled in your house called the sick room. And the reason you did that is I wanna make sure I never eat that again. I wanna make sure I don't have that experience anymore. So I have to remember what it was. I'm not gonna, I don't wanna forget what it was that made me sick. So I stored it inside this room and every morning I go in I walk into the room and I taste a little taste just to remember what not to eat. All right. Would you do that? The answer is no. Of course you wouldn't do that. You're doing that with every single thing that ever bothered you in your life. You've decided to store it inside of you so you remember not to have it happen again. So that you— I don't know. I can't even talk about it anymore. It seems so stupid.

Right?

You have made a storehouse of everything that ever bothered you. I asked the question, if you store everything that ever bothered you inside of you, what's it going to be like inside? Oh, bothered. And that is what it is like inside of almost every single human being. And that's why we need all this help that we need. It's not— we don't need help. We just stop doing that. If you don't have that stuff stored in there, let's do that for a second because you guys are high, right? What would happen if I didn't have all that garbage stored inside of me that I'm protecting myself from as I walk through the world and then push it back down when it tries to come back up. What would happen? You will find out that there's this thing that we in yoga call shakti. It's a beautiful word. All right? There is energy inside of you that is beyond your comprehension. You have felt it. In fact, Tony's really good at bringing it up in me.

All right?

It's beautiful to watch him. Right? You have 7 million times more energy than most energy you ever saw Tony show or have or that you ever felt from him. Yogananda once said, you have so much energy potential within you that it would blow you— blow you away. Your body would blow up, right? You have a phenomenal level of shakti. Well, why don't I feel it? Because you shove this stuff on top of it. And I swear to you, if you got that from my teachings, I'm done. You understand? You have shoved all this garbage on top of the shakti flow, and that's why you don't feel it. Well, sometimes I feel it. When somebody tells me they love me, if I love that person, right? And that's because you open. That's because the Shakti finds a pathway through your blockages because you're more receptive, you're more open. And then you feel love and you feel joy. When you say you want a passionate job that you feel passionate about, it's because a particular situation, people you're working with, the facility, who knows, or the particular job they gave you to do, You open, and then this Shakti comes up. So any joy, any love, any enthusiasm or passion you ever felt is Shakti. Don't think Shakti is just, you know, the spirit of God. It is the spirit of God, but it's always there, and it will come up the moment you open. It will come up. People feel Shakti doing terrible things. You understand that? Don't paint it white, okay? There are people— I had a— you know, I did 30 years of prison work, maximum security prisons, and I had beautiful, beautiful men. And one very, very beautiful Black man, right? He'd miss the sessions sometimes. He wasn't big, he was a small guy, but he'd miss the sessions. And I'd ask him, Leon, why do you miss these sessions? I know you love the sessions and we only come in, you know, every other week or once a week. And he said, I was in lockup. And I said, why were you in lockup? For fighting. And like I said, this is not a big man. And I said, why are you fighting? He said, because it's the only way I can release energy. In here. I love getting in fights. I don't care if I get beat up. I don't care if I beat them up. I don't care if I get put in lockup. When I'm fighting, I'm feeling joy. I'm feeling tremendous energy. So, you know, doesn't mean that only good things will stimulate the Shakti. The Shakti is down there. Whatever opens you, like people do S&M, okay? You're immature people, right? They literally go and pay money to go through those situations. Why? It opens them. Whatever, I'm not judging. It opens them and they feel the same shakti, the same love. All right, it's just energies, pure energy. So the question is, why don't I feel it all the time? Because you shove stuff on top of it. You shoved all this stuff on top of it. Well, why do some people open about one thing and others open about another? Because it finds its way around what you shove down there. Everybody shoves different stuff down there. Some people walk into a Catholic church and they feel so open and so passionate. So people walk in, they can't stand it, they won't even walk in the church. Because of how they were brought up, different impressions that were put on them. They were shoved into have to go to Mass or whatever it is, then to be Catholic, could be any religion, any tradition. So you have these impressions inside that are close you, and then certain things can happen and you open. That's all that's happening. Nothing else is happening. It is not about finding what you want. It is about ceasing to be blocked. And that is something you're causing your blockages. No matter what happens outside, it cannot cause blockages inside.— it requires you to resist. So something that's very traumatic means you really resisted it. You resisted it, you resisted it so much that you can't open. That's what PTSD and these very serious psychological issues are. What about somebody who's depressed? Do they have that energy? They have just exactly the same energy that Christ and Buddha had, right? Period. Exactly the same, right? But they've blocked themselves so totally that they don't feel any energy. I used to give the example, I think I used it in Mentor of the Soul, that your girlfriend or boyfriend left you and it was very painful and now you can't even get out of bed, you don't take showers, there's pizza crust all over the floor, you're in a totally depressed state. You don't even talk to your friends, you've lost it, you went down, okay? And you can't imagine coming back. Therapy doesn't help, nothing helps. All of a sudden you get a phone call. Yeah, I don't want to answer the phone. I'm so tired. This is ridiculous. Why are people calling me? You pick up the phone and it's your girlfriend, your boyfriend. Hello? Hello? I am so sorry. The worst mistake I ever made in my life was leaving you. I didn't realize it until I had to live without you. Please forgive me. Can I come over? I love you so much. How you doing? All of a sudden, what, you take an energy pill? No. All of a sudden, all this juice comes flying up inside of you. You clean the room up, you take a shower, you stay up all night talking and loving. Are you kidding me? It is because you're blocked that you don't feel energy. Now, if you want to sit there and say, the only way I can get unblocked is to have something outside— person, place, thing, situation, drug— have something outside of me open me, that's very conditional. You will never reach the state I talked to you about where I want you to be, where you're just filled with ecstasy all the time, sharing it, giving it, handling all of life's situations with openness and compassion. You can't reach that state by conditionally saying, I'm only okay if you love me. I'm only okay if you treat me the way I wanna be treated. I'm only okay if I get the car I want or the house I want, or I get the job I want. It's wonderful. Do it. I'm not telling you not to do it. By all means, go with your business. But understand that's very conditional, and those conditions don't last, or even sometimes don't even happen. So the way to— spiritually says, learn to not shove this stuff down there, and you're going to find out that there's this joy underneath, and that it will flow. And it's not an all or nothing. It's not like, oh, it takes so long to be enlightened. Remember my sweet Lord, I really want to know you. It takes so long. George Harrison, right? No, that's silly. Don't even dare look at it that way. Every single time that you don't shove more in there on top of what's already there, you're closer to that Shakti. And what will happen is if you do what I talked about while you're driving the car, or the weather, or what somebody said, or what somebody didn't say, or what you think they might have said— I like that one. Right? What did he mean by that? And then you start making this up in your head that closes you and bothers you. Why are you doing that? You have to stop. There's a line Oprah said, her favorite line in my new book, Living Untethered, was the following: the moment outside of you is not— the moment in front of you is not bothering you. You're bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. I'll repeat that. The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You're bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. Stop it. Catch yourself and learn to let go. I don't care how you do it. Breathe. Positive affirmation. All right. Use mantra, God's name. I couldn't care less. But I dare you to say, I am not gonna close about that moment that unfolded in front of me. And you keep letting go. Now, what happens if you don't shove more down there I'm gonna have as a warning sign, I'm telling you, the old stuff will start coming back up. Why? Because those of you who know business, it's called the LIFO stack, last in, first out. You shove this stuff down there, that's what you're gonna think about. That's the dreams tend to happen at night, the surface level stuff. And then the other stuff can't work its way up because it's, it's got this blockage in front of it. Don't put stuff down there. I'm begging you, don't shove the moments of the day down there. And you will be happier. Why? Because you didn't make yourself unhappy, right? You didn't do things within yourself that close you and therefore steal your happiness. You're stealing your happiness. The world is not stealing your happiness. You are. The world comes in. The question is, what did you do with it when it came in? And I told you, you tend to do with it is manipulate it, control it, push it away, or cling to it because you liked it. Push it away, you didn't like it. You're building a fortress inside that's very small. And so you cease to do that, and what will happen is the stuff will start coming up. The Shakti? No, the stuff you suppressed. The first thing that will happen once you go through the, what we call the honeymoon period, where you start, oh my God, I'm so much happier. Of course you are. You're not letting the weather close you. You're not letting the driver in front of you close you. So all of a sudden you feel joy, you feel more openness. That's wonderful. But then there's stuff down there that's going to start coming up. Why? Because you're open. You're open. And right, what do you do? You start practicing letting it go. Your next phase of your journey is to say, I don't want this stuff inside of me. But you don't understand how bad he treated me. I do understand. I do have compassion, but I don't want that stuff inside of you. It's already over. It happened a long time ago. And yesterday is a long time ago, by the way, right? There's 24 hours in between. I don't want that stuff inside of you. Because I know what it feels like to not have it inside of you. And so when it starts to come up, you actually feel the tendency to push it back down. You, you relax. That's what I found. Just, you'd have the tendency to push it away. The minute you feel that tendency, relax. Relax the inner arms so they can't do that. But then it's going to come closer to me. Yes, it is. And if when it happened, you would let it come all the way through, it wouldn't be in there. You wouldn't have stored it. No matter what it is, it would have passed through. It would have kept passing through. But you didn't. You kept it. Can you let it go now? And it doesn't matter how that it's unjust. You don't understand. It was just— nobody said about fair or justice or right or wrong or any of that. That's stuff your mind is doing, okay? You just sit there and say, I shoved that down there It is screwing up my life. It's keeping me from feeling the energy I'm capable of feeling that I want. I use all this energy trying to get what I want. Why don't you use some energy to let go of what's making you not be happy all the time? And so you turn that effort inside. Excuse me. You turn that effort inside by relaxing, and this stuff starts coming up. I'm telling you, it's just gonna start coming up. Don't write me and say, Mickey, it doesn't work. Yes, it does work. That's what's supposed to happen. The stuff will start coming up. First, the little stuff, then a little deeper. And you learn to handle it. You practice. It's like practicing piano. Now you can do scales. Oh boy, now you can do Twinkle Twinkle. Oh boy, now you can do some simple Beethoven piece, right? You just keep progressing of what you're able to handle. And you'll realize you can handle anything. Until you close. If you resist it, it won't, it won't keep coming back up. But you have to decide, I don't want that down there. I want a life of joy. I want it. By the way, I haven't used the word God much. The more that energy comes up, the more you know God. And I'll do that before I close to talk about that relationship. But basically, let go of this stuff that is coming up. Do I need therapy? Maybe you might. There might be something down there I love therapy. I love everything. All right? There might be stuff that's so far down there that you don't— can't even see it or anything. The therapist can help bring it up. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I'm telling you that it's gonna come up by itself, period. All right? The only reason it doesn't come by itself, cuz you don't let it. You push it back down. If you will handle the day outside and let go, and then the stuff starts coming up inside, I know it's tough. It was stored with pain. It's coming back with pain. Do you understand that?

Why?

Somebody asked me why, right? Why is that to come back with pain? Because you stored pain. That's what you stored. You stored the bad food. Why is that to make me sick when I taste it again? Because it's bad food. All right? So if you don't like pain and you push it away, when it comes back up, that's exact pain you saved from your 5-year-old situation. Your parents got divorced, whatever it is. That exact pain's coming back up. The question is, have you grown enough, evolved enough to say, I don't want that down there. Yes, it hurt and it hurts when it comes up, but I wanna handle that hurt. I wanna let that go. I wanna relax through it. That's what we call it. You relax just like you do a yoga asana. A decent yoga teacher doesn't tell you the moment you feel any tension, get up. They say, relax into it. Just keep relaxing. Just keep relaxing. No, relax more. I can't. Yes, you can. Relax. It's the same thing inside. I can't handle this. Yes, you can. Relax. Don't resist, and you can handle anything. When you're resisting, yes, then it— then that resistance is pain. And so stuff starts coming up by itself. That's my experience with this path, right? It's a natural path. It's not any extreme thing you have to do. Just handle the natural experience that's happening inside. And when it comes up, let it go. Your first point is you won't be able to. You'll protect yourself from it. You'll try to do things to make it so you don't have to feel it. Okay? Eventually, you will welcome it up. I'm telling you, you will sit there and say, come on up. And then it will go to another level. You'll sit there, and there's a beautiful level you'll get to. Once you let go enough and realize that beautiful Shakti is underneath there and you shove this garbage on top of it, right? When the garbage starts coming up, you'll apologize to it like you would do a child that was mistreated. You say, I am so sorry. Here's this pain of your childhood coming up. You say, I am so sorry I shoved that down, that I pushed you into a closet, into a dark closet. Imagine locking a kid in a dark closet. That's what you did to your psyche. That's what you did to that energy that tried to happen that you couldn't handle. You pushed it away and locked it down there. It's dark down there. Ask Freud. Okay, that was all the teachings, the suppression, right? You pushed it down there. When it tried to come back, you pushed it right back. If somebody's, you know, with a party, with a group, and they start talking about a subject you're not comfortable with, all right, you either walk away or you tell somebody, I told you I don't like when you talk about that. I'm not comfortable with that. You're just pushing it back down, you're keeping it. Eventually you will apologize to that part of your psyche for having pushed it down there. You'll give it compassion, you'll give it love, and you'll help it up instead of not welcoming it. And the pain is the pain of soul birth, not childbirth. The pain of soul birth. People go through tremendous pain to have children. They go back for seconds and thirds, some fourths and fifths. All right, and are you willing to go through what it feels like to let go of this stuff as it comes up inside. And eventually, when you start seeing what's behind it, which is this, this flow of energy— what energy? The same energy you called love, the same energy you called passion. That's where it comes from. It's natural within you. It's flowing up inside of you. When you stop blocking it, you'll notice your days are way more beautiful. You'll notice you don't love— yes, you love this person, a person very special, but you also love everything. It's almost like you can't handle your love. What, what should it be like, right? Take your hand, wave it across your heart. Waves of ecstasy start pouring through your being, enough to where if you want to feel love, just lay down on the bed and pass out. Just feel the love. That is how it is available to you. It is your being. Once those chakras are open— why did I say chakras? Uh, all right. I don't teach chakras, right? I don't have to teach you a thing. If you do this and you keep letting go, you will write me, say— they write me, say, I don't understand, I'm— how all this pressure is happening at the center of my forehead, and I feel a tingling on the top of my head, right? And, and my heart, it's just, it's bursting. What's happening? Well, there are things called chakras, right? You don't need to know about them. You don't need to know their names. They're called— you can, nothing wrong with it, okay? But they're real, and you're going to feel the Shakti come up and open those centers all by herself. You don't need technique. The technique is stop blocking yourself, and all of yoga, all of spirituality, all of beauty will happen by itself because it is your natural state. So you relax through it, and then something bigger comes up, and you decide Do I want to let this go? What would it be like if I let this go? But it's really hard. And this has been— some things will come up that you forgot were in there. They were way down there. And some things will come up that you don't know how they got in there. People talk about past lives. I don't want to talk about it, right? There's stuff down there that's very big, okay? As it comes up, and it will come up, the Shakti will push it up. The Shakti does not want to be down there. She wants to be pushed up. She wants to be free. She's trying to let go, and you're in her way. When you start working with her, right, welcoming her, apologizing for blocking her, you start feeling more and more. And then some big one comes up, really big. People have big stuff come up, and it's— what, because instead of being red hot, it becomes white hot in the center of your heart. It feels like, I could never— oh my God, I can't handle this. But do you want to know what's on the other side? You have to want to know what's on the other side of your little self, because there's something very, very great. You are not a human being. You are not a human being. That's a joke, right? You're a being of tremendous power, tremendous energy, right? Christ blushes when he looks at you. If you had a vision of Christ and Buddha and Muhammad coming down, you who's looking at it are higher than what you're looking at. Your consciousness, your inner being is, is pure divinity. So, but you can't find that if you got this junk in the way. And if you think that you'll find it because you found the right job or the right marriage or the right this, those are wonderful things and I'm not telling you not to do it, right? You work at both levels. By all means, you work outside, do your best, but understand it ain't gonna do it, right? The job that turned you on can turn you off. The person who turned you on can turn you off, right? But this doesn't ever change. The amount that you let go inside of you and you don't put more in, that Shakti is permanent. It keeps flowing and it gets stronger and stronger. And now what happens where it gets interesting? At some point you realize, I'm witness consciousness. I'm the consciousness looking at this thing. Ramakrishna used to call it this. That's what he called his lower self. This, all right, the body, the psyche, the mind, the emotions, they're just this thing I hang out with. You start seeing it and you'll realize it, it runs your life. Your mind runs your life. And you're— I forgot to tell you why. In the, in, in Untethered Soul, I talk about the voice inside your head, and that everyone likes it for that reason, right? Really wakes them up. All right. Why does your mind say what it says when it says it? The more you let go, the more you realize it was this stuff trying to come up, right? And pieces of it chipped off, and they hit your mind, they hit your mental body, and they created thoughts. And that's why you think what you think. And that's why— what is your ego? It is that which the mind came up from underneath, and you built a palace inside of yourself, a fortress that says, I like this, I don't like this, I believe in this, I don't believe in that. This is my I. They are thought patterns whose roots are in your heart, in your blocked heart, and they just create an ego. As you let go of this stuff, the ego melts. There isn't so much, I like this, I don't like this, I like this. It's just love. You just feel unconditional love because it doesn't need to express itself in the mind that way. And now you have pure intellect, and you're going to find out you're way smarter. You have people who have a lot of respect for very smart people. You are way smarter than you think you are. And I don't even care if you're very smart, right? You're, you're busy taking all your energy, all your inspiration, and using it to block yourself. Using to push that stuff down. When you let stuff up and it finally lets go, you're way smarter than you think you are. Your mind's sharp because you're not— it's not all cloudy with your ego. The intellectual mind is brilliant, and everyone has a brilliant mind. When people say they don't think they're smart, I say, compared to what? Compared to Musk? Or I shouldn't use that word nowadays. Anyways, compared to this person or that person, or Einstein— that's a better word— but compared to Einstein,, right? And the answer is no. Compared to a possum, compared to armadillo, and you realize you have a brilliant mind. And so you've blocked it. And so more and more you understand it's about relief, relieving the blockages, letting go of the blockages. They have to let go. You have to be willing to let them pass through you. There's no way out except through. You've heard that. And so it all comes up and passes through, comes up and passes through, and you start becoming happy. Filled with love, sharp. Your mind becomes sharp. You have clarity. And then something happens. At some point, you realize, I'm the consciousness watching this happen. I'm watching myself relax. I'm watching myself be blocked. I'm watching myself close. And all of a sudden, you start relating to yourself as the consciousness that's watching instead of what you're watching. Now you watch your heart open and close. Who watches that? You watch your mind be positive or negative. Who watches that? Who is aware that there are thoughts? Who is aware that there's emotions? Who's aware that there's a body that has feelings? Who's aware that the outside world comes into the senses? Who's the end user in this game? And you start realizing, I'm back here. That's who I am. That I am not the ego. I'm the one who watches the ego. And little by little, as the Shakti comes up— she's done so much already. She brought joy into you. She helped you stay open. You can have beautiful relationships. And that's what you think she's good for. Now you realize, wait a minute, she's pushing me out of myself. She's pushing the inner self, the deeper self, the consciousness back away from this little thing that I've identified with my whole life, my body, my thoughts, my emotions. And you start feeling expansive, not just happy within the container. You start experiencing yourself as outside the container because your consciousness is only limited because you're staring. You stare at your mind, you stare at your thoughts. You know that, that's what you do all day, all night. You stare at your thoughts, you stare at your emotions, and you stare at what your senses are bringing in. That's the only reason you're limited. You're not limited. You're completely expansive. You're universal. Not you can become universal. You are universal. That's something I love teaching, right? They say, or use it to go to God. I want to go back to God. You are sitting in God right now. Every single one of you are merged in universal consciousness, but you're staring at this tiny mind, tiny body, and tiny emotions. You're addicted to staring at that. Well, a drug addict is addicted to a drug. That's all they think about. That's all they deal with. Their whole life is about the drug. That's what you've done with your personal self. You stare at it, but you're really sitting in the seat of universal consciousness staring down. That's the fall from the garden. Don't make it weird— sins and all that stuff, right? If I'm sitting in a seat and I stare at a picture, a photograph, and I never take my mind off of it, I keep staring at it, that photograph is my world. There's nothing else in my world because that's the only thing my consciousness is taking in. That's what you have done. You're sitting in the divine consciousness, totally filled with ecstasy. I can talk about it, right? But you're staring down at this one little tiny person. Oh my God, there's 3.5 billion of— excuse me, 8.5 billion of you guys, right? Just on the planet Earth. And the planet Earth is nothing. That's why I teach this. I love to get into the astronomy stuff. All right? It's like the 1.3 million planet Earths fit inside the sun, and you're on this tiny planet, right? And the sun is one of 300 billion stars in the galaxy, and there's 2 trillion galaxies, but you're busy staring at this little tiny little thing. And if you don't like me telling you that, I'm sorry, right? I, I know you like to feel good about yourself, right? Feel good about the self. Otherwise, you're just staring at this tiny little thing, caring about every single thing that happens to it and scared. It's so funny. All right, so you learn at some point the Shakti will push you up. It's an upward flow. It's a natural— it's a waterfall in the opposite direction pushing you up. It's called the ascent. It starts pushing you up, and your consciousness can't stare down comfortably anymore. It can do it. You do your work, you do your job, but that's not who you are. You start relating to yourself more as the energy than the energy of consciousness, conscious energy, then you do what you're looking at, and it pushes you further and further back. And the further back you go, the more ecstasy you feel. And by the way, it's not selfish. People say, that's selfish, you just care about yourself. No, you become a channel, a vessel to where all that energy can flow through you. It flows through you. You don't have to do anything. People say, well, how can I become a spiritual teacher? I'm sorry, you don't want to ask me because no, you're not a spiritual teacher. Get here, die to be reborn, let go of the ego, stop staring at yourself, and spirit is the teacher. That's the only teacher there is, is God. Get out of the way. People say to me, how do I bring up my child, right? I have trouble. I want my children to understand all this stuff. What can I do, right? Let go of yourself and let God be their parents. Who do you want to be your child's parent, you or God? Get out of the way and you'll see that every single thing flows 7 billion times better than you could ever do it. The ego can only do what it believes, what it learned, how it locked itself into this tiny little place. The Divine Spirit can change everything and do everything. So the Shakti is the answer. Release, free the Shakti, let it come up. All right? And it will start the whole spiritual path. There's your whole spiritual path. Eventually, in the beginning we say will is an important part of the spiritual path. It is. Eventually you will never use will. This energy will come up and push you away from yourself. And eventually the great ones, the truly great ones merged. Meher Baba said— Meher Baba was an enlightened, highly enlightened master, considered an avatar— that his consciousness was like a drop of water staring at himself, and that drop got pushed back and dropped into the ocean. Take a drop of water and drop it into the ocean. Go find it. You'll never find it. It merged. You're capable of oneness. That's what Christ meant by 'My Father and I are one,' right? It's just— it's real. It's literal. And you're capable of that state. In fact, I told you, you're in that state right now, but you're busy being addicted to your thoughts, your emotions, what you like and what you don't like, and what turns you on and what turns you off, right? You're addicted to that. As you let go and realize that— stop blocking myself— you're going to find out you're not addicted. You're addicted to God, right? All right. They say you might as well admit you're addicted to love, right? Well, you're addicted to this Shakti. The Shakti will take over your entire life. So this is spirituality. It is letting go of the block. It's not finding spirituality. It's letting go of the blockages that keep you away from it. That's another quote that Rumi had that's very beautiful. I won't get it exact. It said, it is not for you to seek love, is for you to seek and find all the obstacles you have put in her place. That's exactly what we're talking about. Every moment of every day, you have the ability and the right to let go of yourself, to let go of what's blocking you by accepting the unfolding of life around you When it comes in, notice that it tends to close you. Okay? There's nothing wrong with that. Don't get mad at yourself. That's— people say that I'm mad at my lower self. Don't you dare. You built your lower self. Don't you dare get mad at it. Don't you dare get mad at the tendency to close. Right? You look at it with compassion and understanding, and you do constructive things to not close. And then what will happen? You will feel the shakti. I'm sure you all do. You wouldn't be there if you didn't. Right? But I want you to feel it all the time.. I want it to be something that's constantly— like people say, I meditate and I feel pressure on my third eye. All right? That should be there all the time. Every second of your life, you just feel a flow coming up to your third eye. And let's say you had to do a presentation somewhere, had to do something, right? So a teacher, a professor called in and said, okay, I didn't tell you I was gonna do this. I just impromptu do something, right? You don't have to plan. I don't wanna tell you this. I'll get in trouble, right? It will come to you. Inspiration comes from above. The thoughts of the ego come from below. The ego only knows what it knows. It only knows what it's experienced. From above, it's part of the universal. It has attunement to everything. So you're— all I can say is, you want to talk about happiness? I hope that tells you about happiness, right? Happiness is ecstasy. What does the name for God in the yoga tradition, sat-chit-ananda, sat-chit-ananda, eternal conscious ecstasy. Guess what? There's a name for the soul, for the, for the indwelling soul in the same tradition. You know his name is sat-chit-ananda. They're the same thing. You are eternal conscious ecstasy. To be begging for some joy or begging for love, it's just because you're blocked. Your natural state is this complete openness. Now, what about living in the world? The people say, if I had all that ecstasy and all that joy, why would I get up in the morning? Because love loves to express itself, because passion loves to express, and so on. Because creativity loves to create. You're not doing it to get something, you're doing it to express what you already have. There's the difference. That— and you become a true giver. You're not a giver because I have something and I really need it, but I'll give it to you. That's not giving, right? That's forcing yourself to, to do something nice. All right? When you no longer need anything, you don't need anything. You're whole and complete within yourself. You think you need things because you're blocked. You need to compensate for it. You compensate for your blockages. That's what you're doing, right? If you let go of the blockages, you'll feel whole and complete all the time. Now, when you interact with the world, you're giving, you're creating. It's ridiculous. And it's natural. Lao Tzu called it the Tao. Moments will unfold in front of you. You will interact with them out of love, out of peace, out of compassion, out of giving. No need. There's no need. You have no needs. Yes, you need food, clothing, shelter. Not much. Okay.

Right.

Very basic.. And you're going to find out that such a greatness is inside of you. So I'll have extra minutes. We'll do some more questions. But basically, if you understand this, you understand spirituality. If you look at Christ's teachings, you're going to see these teachings are what he taught, that you have to die to be reborn, right? That I stand at the door and knock. Whoever will open, I'll come in. That's the Shakti talking to you. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that leaveth the mouth of God. All right, what does that mean? You're not living off what's coming in. That's not the only joy or love you have by what comes in from outside. There's this flow inside, every word that leaveth the mouth of God. So I love you. I hope you understand these things, because every moment of your life you can become a greater and greater being.

Not everyone's read your book. I wonder if you just take a moment or two, since so many people are business people here, and tell them what you went through in your business and how you learned to let go in situations that seemed incredibly difficult from a practical perspective. Thank you.

Yes. The first book I wrote was The Untethered Soul, and that everybody likes it. Oprah said it was her favorite book and she tells everyone to read it, so it's done well. Living Untethered— excuse me, The Surrender Experiment was the second book I wrote. 'Cause I figured I've been through so much and I've seen so much, I wanna share that as opposed to making it just teachings, spiritual teachings. And so I don't, I'm gonna, you can read the book, I'm not gonna tell the whole story, but I never had interest in money. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, okay? And now I have plenty. But the net result is it wasn't a goal of mine. I didn't have interest, all right? And what happened is, I started letting go of myself and different things came and asked me to serve, asked me to do things. A sheriff came out to my place in the middle of the woods where I dropped out and saw the temple we built. We built a rough sawn, it cost me $8,000 in those days, a rough sawn temple. And he said, who built this? Did you build this? I said, yes. And he said, would you build an addition up? Would you close in my carport? 'Cause I love the cedar that you use. I never thought of starting a business, right? I didn't think I was starting a business. I was just, okay. I said yes. Why? 'Cause I learned to surrender. That's really what I should say, Tony. But I learned, I was meditating 6 hours a day. I was doing such intense sadhana. Oh my God, crazy little boy. All right? But I was doing it. It was the I that was doing it. And I realized at some point that's not gonna get it. All right? I have to let go of myself. And so I decided to surrender to life, that it was surrender experiment, that if life brought something to me, whether I wanted to do it or not, I would try to surrender. I'd try to let go of the resistance that I have to allowing life to unfold. And so he asked me that and I started building and I ended up with a construction company. Not really big, right? But it was just me and a couple of people, but we were making money. And I then, I'm telling a story, I don't know if I'm allowed to, is I ended up walking to a Radio Shack store in 1978 and saw this thing called a TRS-80 Model 1, a tiny little toy computer that Radio Shack was selling, one of the first ones out there. And it fascinated me. And I never— I took one course in college, introduction to Fortran. It was on punch cards, by the way. And so I knew nothing about computers. I brought it home and I taught myself to program. Why? Because it was there and it was a challenge. And long story short, you both can read the book. I ended up writing a practice management system to run doctors' offices. And before it was done, 33% of all independent practices in the United States of America were running that software. We were installed in the Smithsonian for the contribution we made, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It just went crazy. 11 Blue Cross Blue Shields were private labeling a product and installing it in all the doctor's offices. It just went crazy. I didn't ask for it. There were no meetings. There's no planning. There's no venture capital. It just all happened step by step. I just served where I could. In fact, and I, I tell it because that's what Tony's asking is how'd I end up writing? People say, said, how'd you end up deciding to write medical software? I didn't. I was writing just little packages for a teacher's grading system, little tiny things. And I got the same The next day, I got a call from someone in Jacksonville, Florida, a doctor, and in Gainesville asking if I write a billing system that they could— no one was building, we were doing computerized billing in those days, that I could do a computerized billing that would bill an insurance company. And I didn't wanna do it. It was a lot of work, right? And I said, it could take 2 years, take a year or 2 years to write something like that, all right? And they said, we'll wait. And I had already told them I'll try to find a package. I'd given them, I think it was a $3,500 bid each. I'll find a package. There was something out of Miami somebody had. I'll put it in, it'd be $3,500. It didn't work. It was filled with bugs. I couldn't do it. And they said, we'll wait, will you write it? And I just felt this obligation. It was so beautiful. I feel like crying now. There was no reason to say yes for $3,500 each, right? And I said yes because I said I'd give my word and this is what life brought before me. And I spent the next year and a half of my life writing this package and sort of hiring some people to help and so on.. And that's how the whole medical management, the whole package came. And when it came time to put 'em into theirs, I charged them $3,500, nothing else. That was it. And to me, that's why it all happened because I was letting go. I wasn't doing it for myself. I, I just ran the business as best I could. I became CEO of a public company. We went public, right? At 2,300 employees, we were doing hundreds of millions of dollars of business a year. And I had never done anything like that. I, I didn't know anything about it. I remember the first board meeting I had. Public company board meeting, right? The lawyers had to tell me how to behave and what to say and what to do. I'd never even been to a board meeting. So all these things happen and I just use them to let go of myself. And all these different situations happen. And I won't tell the punchline because Tony knows what I'm talking about, right? At the end of the book, wait, wait, get the last section, you'll enjoy it very much, is I just used every single thing that happened to let go of myself. First, let go then do your best. First, let go of yourself, then do your best at what the universe put in front of you. And that, that was the Surrender Experiment.

Michael, I just wanted to thank you because I read your book in a time in my life where I was deep in it with my fertility journey. When I read your book, it really humbled me to a point where I was laughing and crying, and I was like, what in the world? Who is this man? But your last chapter, I wanted to ask you, when that thing happened that we won't reveal, what was your—

You could talk.

It was that last chapter that inspired me to declare that my 40s were going to be a big surrender experiment. And my question to you is, in that last chapter, when you when you were served, what had you surrender? Like, how did you— because when I was reading it, I was just like, what the heck, how? And the way you described it was just so like seamless, but I know that there's a human here. How did you fully surrender to it?

So what happened is I got arrested and 6 years— the entire company got arrested, but a 6-year journey for them to find out nobody did anything and they dropped all charges other than the one person that had done stuff and lied and said we all did. In any event, it's a very interesting chapter and it's 6 years' worth of the FBI and the entire Justice Department doing everything that they can to put you in jail, even though you don't even know what they're talking about. It was very interesting. So you asked a question, a serious question. How do you go through that? Well, I remember, and I say in the beginning of that chapter in the book, I'm minding my own business, go to work, and I get a phone call from one of my lawyers at the company saying, you need to come home right away, come to the office right away. I said, why? I'm in town. No, no, you need to come to the office right away. Drop everything you're doing, come to the office. Why? Well, the FBI's here. Why is the FBI here? It's a raid, right? It was literally a raid, right? So I drove home, came there. I had no idea what was going on. None. No one in the company had any idea what the heck was going on. And so there was cop cars all over the place and sheriffs and FBI agents and took over the entire place and they had guns. Oh, it was very exciting. All right. And they took me into a back room and said, you sit here, don't touch anything. And I realized once I got some idea what was going on, that somebody had lied and tried to blame stuff on the upper management. And basically, this is what I'm gonna go through. And the moment I realized it, I'm telling you the truth, 'cause I trended all these years. The moment I realized, I said, okay, this is the next thing that's happening. I, I, it's not fair, it's not right, it's not just, it's not anything, but it is what's happening. How do I use it to go to God? How do I use this to be the final nail on the cross to let go? All right. And I just determined that's what I was going to do, that no matter what happened, I was going to let go of Mickey. Yeah, this, this would be a good one if God wants to get rid of him. This is a good one, right? And, and I had to, I'll be honest, I had to let my mind think I don't know how this is going to end up. This could end up in jail. And I knew jail. I did 30 years of prison work. I've been through prison, right? It's not like I didn't know what it was like inside. And so I accepted that. I just said, okay, if that's what happens, then that's what will happen. I will be fine. I will be fine no matter what, period. I will use it for my growth. I will use it for my growth. I will use it to get rid of my ego. And that's how I went through that whole thing.

Yeah.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. Your book is truly a gift. Thank you.

Hi, Mickey. I remember—

Hi, Sarit.

Hi, love. I remember we had the privilege to sit with Mickey at our home, and we were going through a challenging circumstance as well. Certain things in our business, certain circumstances in the media, Tony's health. We had a— there was, you know, just a unique acute stage of life. And Mickey just said that. He said, just keep letting go, and there'll be a day where it just all goes away. And, uh, the notion, uh, what you just said, what Mickey just said, is just so profound and powerful and a reality that it's like, oh, and this too, to use this to get that much closer to one's nature, to God. Mickey, I can't thank you enough. The Untethered Soul is our Christmas gift every year because it's such a powerful experience. Chapter 17, living our life as if it was our last day. You were just ever so lovely, but I just wanted to share that Tony and I, we practice this and continue to. You just keep letting go in the name of your own peace, and it truly, truly works. And then, and oh, and this too, and this too. I'll say that inside my own mind's eye. Oh, okay, God, and this too, to let go of, to simply let go of it all in the name of our peace and happiness. So I just, I'll never forget that conversation, Mickey.

The Tony Robbins Podcast is inspired and directed by Tony Robbins and his teachings. It's produced by us, Team Tony. Copyright Robbins Research International.