Tag: Michael Singer

Managing the Natural Ripples of Life

Michael Singer provided a podcast discussion on the topic, Ceasing to be Caught in the Waters of the Mind. He uses the analogy of a bird floating on the waters of a lake, enjoying the smoothness and serenity of its existence.  When the wind whips up waves, the bird needs to ride them out, not fighting them nor imagining that they can control all the forces that create the waves.  So it is with us, Michael suggests that we need to relax in the face of the ripples of life when confronted with disappointments, setbacks, hurts over personal slights and grief over the loss of a loved one.  He argues that if we try to fight these ripples by suppressing the natural reactions of our mind and heart, we will temporarily suppress them and their effects, only to have them resurface in a more damaging way later on.   

Primary versus secondary ripples

Primary ripples are a natural part of the order of things and a natural consequence of our human condition.  We do experience disturbing thoughts in the face of the natural ripples of life but the major problem arises when we create secondary ripples by being caught up in anger, resentment, denial or any other emotion that takes us away from experiencing the primary ripple that set our response, of mind and heart, in motion.  Michael asserts that the real damage to our peace and tranquility is not caused by the primary ripples but by the secondary ripples that we create.  We can even become angry about our anger, resentful about our resentment or indulge in any other consequential emotion that denies the impact of the primary ripple and enables us to avoid our discomfiture.  Michael provides a guided journal for writing practices to enable us to experience the freedom of journeying beyond ourselves and our tendency to create secondary ripples.

Seeking comfort

When we are disturbed by the natural ripples of life, rather than resting quietly and relaxing so that the ripples pass by, we often seek out comforts that are designed to avoid the pain of our disturbance.  We can turn to food or drink, seek to have people say nice things about us, pursue our thirst for acquisitions, seek a better job or leave a relationship because the other party does not conform to our expectations.  We try to control our world, avoid the pain and hurt and seek relief in what makes us feel comfortable – all the while denying the reality of the primary ripples and their effects on our mind and heart.  We try to stop the ripples rather than riding them out and acknowledging that they will eventually pass.  Even grief or boredom too will pass if we accept the reality of loss or the momentary absence of stimulation.

Trying to manipulate the outside world to avoid discomfort

We can indulge in complaining; self-protective stories like, “Why me…what have I done to deserve this!’; wanting other people to change to conform to our expectations; or taking inappropriate action that aggravates the situation (e.g. road rage, harbouring hurt and resentment).   A recent example of trying to manipulate the outside world to restore comfort in the face of an uncomfortable situation was highlighted by Dr. Grant, an emergency department doctor in Victoria, Australia.

Dr. Grant wrote about the sense of entitlement driving construction workers to obstruct traffic in Victoria because they were now prevented from using their “tea rooms” because of concerns about potential transmission of COVID-19 infection.  She pointed out with a graphic photo of herself at the end of a day’s work, the physical toll and emotional drain of working with COVID-19 patents – causing personal deprivations for more than two years, including having no formal place to eat lunch.  The construction workers are trying to manipulate the outside world so that they do not have to experience the discomfort of losing their tea rooms. 

Reflection

Michaels’s core message is the “world is unfolding in front of us” and there is a lot of things and forces that we have no control over.  Instead of suppressing our discomfort, he suggests that we “become comfortable” with the different states we experience, both in our mind and heart, when we encounter the ripples of life.  This accords with the exhortation by Karla McLaren to understand and experience the wisdom of difficult emotions.

Michael encourages us not to be caught up in the waters of our mind – not to be caught up in turbulence of our own making, the secondary ripples that we can create through our own efforts to replace disturbance in our mind and heart with feelings of comfort that we create artificially.  He offers an online course, Living from a Place of Surrender: The Untethered Soul in Action, that incorporates journalling for self-reflection and training videos.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and mindfulness practices such as journalling, we will be better able to rest and relax in the face of disturbance caused by primary ripples, gain insight into how we personally create secondary ripples and become comfortable with the different natural states of our mind and heart.

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Image by silviarita from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Growth through Mindfulness in the Moment

n a recent interview podcast, Tami Simon of Sounds True interviewed Michael Singer, author of The Untethered Soul Guided Journal: Writing Practices to Journey Beyond Yourself and The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection.  Michael made his teachings available in the form of a series of podcasts covering his perspective on spirituality and being in the moment.  The podcast I want to focus on in this post is one Michael titled, Giving Meaning to the Time Between Your Birth and Your Death.  Michael offers several insights that can enable us to experience the moment, live life fully and joyfully and realise what he terms “spiritual growth”.  His insights revolve around our “acquisitions”, our conditional “okay inside” mindset and our tendency to be “bothering” about life instead of experiencing it.

Our tendency to want to acquire

Michael’s salient point here is that whatever we acquire with our short life on this planet, we cannot take with us at our death – whether it be our house, money, car, marriage, status or personal looks.  Yet we spend so much of our lives trying to acquire more.  We look to have a bigger house in a better location with more comforts; to make more money to be able to purchase the things that we desire to own; to have a newer car with more comforts and features.   As Michael points out, these desired “acquisitions” do little to resolve the issue that we are “not okay inside” – they do not provide lasting satisfaction or happiness.  The reality is that we spend much of our life in fruitless pursuit of what we want to acquire – none of which we can take with us when we inevitably die.

Our conditional “okay inside” mindset

Often we believe that we will be “okay inside” if our life was different to what it is.  If we were someone who was brighter, more educated, better looking or married to someone who was eminently flexible and available.  We are not okay because we cannot accept “what is”.  He points out that we carry a lot of “garbage inside” that impacts our experience of the world.  Some of this is related to our expectations and our perception of the expectations of others. Part of it relates to a false belief about what brings happiness and fulfillment.  He makes the humbling point that we are fortunate to live on earth with all its richness in nature, people, places and beauty– even though it is a speck of dust in a vast universe that is mind-boggling in its magnitude. 

Being “bothered” by life instead of experiencing it

Michael maintains that a lot of our ”not-okayness” relates to the fact that we let a lot of life “bother us”.  We are bothered by the slowness of the car in front of us, by the lack of our favourite dessert in the supermarket, by the annoying habits of our partner, by the lack of comfort of a chair, by the fact that a restaurant meal did not turn out as well as expected, by…  Because of our “bothered” frame of mind, we do experience life as it is.  Michael maintains that each experience has personal growth potential – we can learn and grow through every experience, no matter how small. 

We just need to “work on ourself” and recognise that we are bringing to each situation a pre-set idea of how it should be.  We seek to have others be like we want them to be so we don’t have to change the way we are.  We become locked into our way of doing things and stay like we are, unwilling to evolve and be what we are capable of being.

Experience, according to Michael, is a teacher but often we do not want to learn the lesson that experience brings. He argues that “every moment is designed for our growth” and part of the meaning of life is to realise this growth by “getting rid of why we are not okay”.  Often current experience can be a catalyst for memories of past bad experiences that we linger over and sometimes build resentment about.   Michael argues that these can leave a “scar” unless we learn to let them go – so much of what he suggested related to “letting go”.  If we can let go of the “garbage inside”, we can truly experience joy in the moment and free ourselves to feel the beauty that surrounds us and our own openness to life and living.

Reflection

Michael’s podcasts offer real insights into the ways that we block our own happiness and the realisation of our true growth and potential.  He offers an online course through Sounds True that inculcates his teachings and cultivates the mindset and habits that enable us to be “okay inside” so that we can experience the world as a place of growth and joy.  His course, Living from a Place of Surrender: The Untethered Soul in Action, incorporates video sessions and journalling for self-reflection.

Throughout his podcast, Michael illustrated his points by making frequent reference to tennis, my favourite sport.  He suggested that the experience of playing tennis has growth potential embedded in it.  If we make a mistake and hit the ball into the net, we could rail against the wind, the court conditions, the unpredictability of our opponent’s game or the tension of our racquet strings or become bothered by what others might think of us and our competence as a tennis player. 

Alternatively, we could experience gratitude for the opportunity to play tennis (which millions of people in the world do not have); appreciation that we can run and hit the ball (which many people in the world can’t do); acceptance that mistakes are an integral part of playing tennis (despite how competent we are at tennis);  wonder at the capacity of the human mind to rapidly process all the information required to execute a tennis shot;  and learning from what we did wrong in trying to play the shot (positioning, stroke choice, speed and direction of our tennis shot).

As we grow in mindfulness by working on ourselves through meditation, self-reflection and insight courses, we can be more open to experience and less bothered when things don’t turn out as we expect them to.  We can feel joy instead of disappointment, gratitude instead of envy and wonder instead of feeling uninspired.   

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Image by Antonio López from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.