Why We Suffer - Mindfulness Teaching with Michael A. Singer

[Music] [Music] welcome my name is michael singer author of the untethered soul in the surrender experiment and i'm welcoming you to our mini course entitled the mind can be a dangerous place or a very great gift it's a very very deep topic and a very very meaningful topic for all of us what does that mean the mind can be a dangerous place or a very great gift we live in two environments our consciousness is aware of two environments simultaneously the outside world and our inner state for now i'm going to call it interstate the mind it's of course a little more sophisticated than that but the mind will do just fine what we'll find is that most of us almost all of us put almost entire focus of our lives on the outer environment why it is the inner environment that we really care about but the only way that we have learned to change our inner environment since we're not really very conscious and aware of the inner environment is to change the outer environment let's take an example you're feeling lonely inside that's an inner environment your mind is bothering you it's sitting there talking about the insecurity when you get older well i have enough funds and what's going to happen to me and so on and you kind of start that when you're 12 right that's called the mind can be a dangerous place if that's how you're thinking when you're 12 years old what do we do about that what we do normally and naturally is to go outside and try to make sure that the outer environment is a way that supports this inner problem that we're having yet the truth of the matter is the only thing we care about is the inner environment that's embarrassing to actually talk about but we care about our inner environment and i'll prove it to you let's say you're not doing good inside you're feeling depressed your mind is bothering you perhaps somebody just died or relationships broke up and you're really in the doldrums you're not doing well inside your mind is bothering you you can't sleep well and so on what i'm going to do is take on a vacation to hawaii and give you really good food to eat and guess what not only do not want to go but if i force you to go you can have a terrible time why because your inner environment is what you're experiencing and the outer environment might temporarily distract you from the disturbance you're having inside but it's not going to stay that way you're going to fall back in most of the time for most people it doesn't even distract you it's just your your attachment and involvement in this inner mind mental place that's going on is what is feeding you that's what you're experiencing and on the other side the other example the other end let's say you just fell in love you just fell in love you just met this person they're so beautiful you're so excited your mind is telling you this oh this is the solution to everyone i ever had i'm flying on cloud nine and you get a phone call saying you didn't get the job that you wish you'd gotten right guess what you say oh i'm okay i'm okay thanks for calling all right let's say he says somebody else got the raise in the office they call you and tell you say please congratulate him oh i feel really good about that just like it is amazing what happens when your inner environment's okay that example shows you that it is your inner environment that you're trying to get right if the outside can make the inner environment right then you say that's what i like if the outside can't make the environment right or if it makes it worse you blame the outside so you understand and i know you all understand that the mind can be a dangerous place if it is sitting there bothering you worrying telling you things might go wrong even when things are fine they might go wrong your mind can ruin your entire life that's why it's a dangerous place why can it be a a very great gift what happens there we're going to discuss that in later sessions in this mini course what you will find out is if your mind is not bothering you your ability to have a beautiful life is enhanced tremendously and your mind can actually enhance your ability to experience life and enjoy life but right now when i want to paint out i want to spend time talking about is your mind is not behaving you're not doing well with your mind i sometimes use this example let's say you woke up in the morning and your arm was going up and down that's all i was doing just going up and down and you couldn't stop it what would you do oh i know you'd say maybe i should be a painter maybe i should be a politician no that's not what you would do you would go out and call the doctor instantaneously something wrong with my arm it doesn't stop going up and down why don't you do that with your mind your mind doesn't shut up for a second it's constantly thinking and talking and worrying and plotting and planning and telling you everything that could go wrong that is wrong that you ever did wrong it even does that right you don't call anybody up i mean i suppose if it gets too bad you do but as a general rule you just accept that the mind is out of control and that is a major problem because it goes wherever it wants to go it goes to places it should not be going i always pick on people my strongest one is your past it goes to problems you had in the past that aren't even happening anymore and it bothers you about them so the mind in and of itself what is going on in your mind is what determines the quality of your life but we don't deal with it that way we sit there and say everything needs to be what i need outside that's what determines the quality of my life and your mind supports that tremendously it keeps telling you you need to get everything outside the way it tells you it's like a dictator tells you you've got to get this person to like you and you better get this raising you better get this otherwise i'm going to bother you so a wise person and we are all wise at the deep level wakes up someday and says i have a problem and the problem is not the outside world the problem is that my mind will not leave me alone it is constantly telling me what's wrong what i've done wrong what's wrong with me that's the terrible part to think we talk about bullies nowadays it's a terrible problem for sure your mind is the biggest bully you've ever walked the face of the earth your nose is too big your feet are long nobody can like you look at your toenails you have a hammer toe all right your hair look it's turning gray that's terrible oh look you have a wrinkle on your face your mind just constantly badgers you to say that things need to be the way it made up that they need to be that is a very dangerous place to live well people don't understand it does not have to be that way it can be a beautiful place to live and if your mind is beautiful then all of life is beautiful it leaves you in a state where you're capable of giving of serving of doing much more productive things than trying to appease a mind that has serious problems i like to to analogize it to driving a car a car is a very productive wonderful thing to have but not if nobody's driving if it's just off on its own that is some dangerous stuff same with your mind the mind as we'll discuss in the next session is a wonderful tool it's a beautiful thing if you drive properly if you're using it if it's just off on its own it goes off the tracks my personal journey taught me a great deal about this particular shift from the mind being dangerous to mine being beautiful because i didn't start off trying to make the mind beautiful i sort of tried to make the mind go away i saw how dangerous it was there was i mean that's very easy to see how much trouble that thing causes you just walk around it's constantly telling you what you did wrong and what you should have done what's wrong with somebody else and decision making and it's just it drives you nuts and i didn't want that i decided that i'm i can't live my life with that going on i want to have a deeper life than that my particular self i actually stepped aside when i was coming out of college i was in graduate school and moved out to the woods and figured i'm going to do meditation i'm going to do intense meditation until i stop this thing fortunately for me and for you i learned that that's not the right path that is not how you appreciate and learn the great gift that the mind can be that's how you bludgeon the mind to make it shut up and the more you fall with it the more it fights back and the more negativity you put in there and you didn't meditate enough you didn't do this enough you're not doing enough yoga you're not trying enough it's just more stuff for the mind to talk about we call it spiritual ego it's just the same ego the same noise it just starts talking about spiritual things and it's down on you just as hard as it was all right you don't look good right you care too much about how you look it's the same thing you're just going both ways so what i learned is that there is a way to deal with this entire environment inside without creating a more commotion by fighting with it to turn it into something beautiful that it can really be beautiful inside and that's what we're going to talk about in these sessions in the future sessions as we move on is how to work with the mind to raise it up it is your job to learn how to raise these energies of the mind up to a higher level so that they become beautiful naturally as opposed to fighting with them and complaining about the difficulty that you have with your mind so the purpose of this mini course is to just have a quick look at how it is now which is which is pretty much out of control right the mind is crazy making dictates and judging and doing all kinds of stuff and how it can be and then how to get it that way so i look forward to meeting you over in session two where we'll be a little more positive and talk about the positive side of why the mind can be a very great gift but in the meantime until we get over to that session i'd like you to take the opportunity to write down below this video you'll see an input box write down what experience you've had where of your own personal life where you have noticed that the mind can be a very dangerous place i know you've had those experiences it's really good that we share with each other that we understand it's not just us that that mind can go off the tracks i'll see you over in session two you

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Keywords: why we suffer in life, why do we suffer, growth through suffering, micheal singer mindfulness, michael a singer, why we suffer, the point of suffering, mindfulness series, the untethered soul, michael a. singer, untethered soul, michael singer, spiritual growth, spiritual motivation, inspirational, mindfulness, suffering, spirituality, consciousness, soundstrue.com, Sounds True

Id: qtr21LqHKcs

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020