What Do You Really Want? A Powerful Teaching by Michael A. Singer, Author of The Untethered Soul & The Surrender Experiment

Today, instead of a WW Friendly Recipe, I’ve got some nourishing food for thought. I’m sharing a video from Michael A. Singer, author of The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment and Living Untethered. In it, this longtime spiritual teacher, software developer and successful businessman asks us to deeply consider what it is we really want. I found it powerful and think you will too. For those of you who prefer reading, I’ve transcribed the entire 30 minute talk below.  Enjoy!

Transcription of Michael A. Singer’s Talk: What do You Really Want?

“What do you really want?” We talk about wisdom. People talk about attracting to themselves, the laws of attraction and all those sorts of things. But the question really is from a spiritual point of view, “What do you really want?” And religion’s about what you’re supposed to want. And we know how that works.

Spirituality is not about that. Spirituality is about looking deeply within and seeking truth. Clarity. That’s what it’s about. So this discussion has nothing to do with my feeling what you should want or you even feeling weird or guilty about what you want. The question is, “What do you really want?” And the way to do that and I’m going to be really bad in doing this, is to say here’s a piece of paper, not really, but figuratively, here’s a piece of paper and I want you to write down, not really, but take a little time and write down what you want.

And if you’re like most human beings, probably first on the list is a good relationship. Something that makes me feel important, needed, wanted, loved, secure. All that kind of stuff. So, whether you’re in a relationship, I’d like it to be better. So and so should behave in different ways.  Should understand be better. If you’re not in a relationship, how to find my quote soul mate. How to find somebody who fits perfectly with me and fulfills the meaning of my life. And if we’re really honest, we write down a nice house and a Ferrari or at least some sort of car and perhaps children, or perhaps a little time without the children. And we make our list. Nobody’s judging.  Just be honest. 

The purpose of this discussion is no matter what you put on that list unless you are very highly evolved, in my experience, it’s not really what you want. It’s not that it’s wrong. It’s just not really what you want. And the way that I prove that is as follows.

let’s say you say you put down I want a relationship. I want to meet somebody. I want to have that special relationship. And then I would ask you, “What if you walked outside after this conversation and all of a sudden there was this bush in front of you and it started burning like it did to Moses and it’s talking to you and it’s opening sentence is, “I am the Lord your God and I would like to discuss some things with you” and said enough things that it knew about you where you were pretty freaked out that you were actually talking to an omniscient, omnipotent being or at least bush and the question that gets asked of you is, “What do you want? I can grant whatever you want and having gone through this exercise with me you feel thank God, Mickey. I feel prepared. This is neat. I’ve thought about it and you say, “I want a relationship. I want to meet somebody. I want to have that thing I’ve looked for my whole life. Or I want a house. Or I want the perfect __ that fulfills what I’m looking for.

And what God tells you at that point is, “I can give you that. I have the power to give you that. But there’s a caveat which you probably want to hear before I give it to you which is I can give you that perfect person. They will be loyal to you. They will stay with you your entire life but the caveat is that you will be completely unfulfilled. You will feel sad every time you come into their presence. You will not feel any love. You will not feel any joy, happiness, meaning. But they’ll be there. And they will dote all over you and they will be the most perfect partner that they could possibly be. Or give you the job that you thought would be the most amazing thing. But it’s hollow for you. You thought it would turn you on but it doesn’t. You just loathe going to work and you are not excited about it.”

So therein lies the the question, “What do you really want?” Because what you’re going to find is if you are given the opportunity to have a relations with that person I just described or have the job I just described but if it didn’t do squat for you and it left you hollow inside you would say, “I don’t want it.” “If it’s going to make me miserable inside I really don’t want it.” “Keep it away from me.”

And so to move quickly because we don’t have a lot of time here, then I say to you, “You lied to me when you said it was what you really wanted. It isn’t true you wanted a relationship. It isn’t true you wanted children. It isn’t true you wanted money. It isn’t true you wanted to travel around the world. It isn’t true you wanted etc., etc. What is true is you wanted to feel good inside. You wanted to feel love. You wanted to feel joy. You wanted to feel inspiration, excitement, meaning.”

Those are inner things. They are not outer things. You listed the things you listed because you thought they would give you what you really want. And so wisdom, yoga, spirituality, is about going deeper. Buddhists talk about working at the root.

So the truth of the matter is the only thing you needed to write on the piece of paper when I asked you what do you really want is “a sense of total wellbeing.” “I want to feel love. I want to feel joy. I want to feel inspiration. I want to feel meaning and depth” and you made the mistake of doing this indirectly by saying, “I want something outside that I think will make me feel that inside.”

So without belaboring the point to go deep and to really be on a spiritual journey you don’t let yourself do that any more. Because I’m sure there are plenty of times when you said, “Oh my God if only this happened, I’d be fine” and you find that it didn’t turn out that way. Even if it did for a moment it didn’t stay that way.

It’s not like there wasn’t anything else you ever wanted and likewise something was bothering you you sat there and said if only that would go away I’d be fine. That again is not the truth. So you come down to the point where eventually you can be totally honest with yourself. And it may sound selfish but it isn’t. You say, ‘I want to be happy.” I want to feel love. I want to feel joy. I want to feel inspired. I want to be turned on inside. All the time.

And so now if the burning bush was sitting out there and you were wise enough that when God said to you, “What do you want?” and you said that woooh, you’re a winner.

How can you lose if from the moment you wake up in the morning you are turned on. You are inspired. You can’t wait to see what’s going to happen for the rest of the day. You embrace it totally and at the end of the night you’ve given everything you had. You put your head down and you fall asleep and you wake up and “I’m back, ready to go again.” It would be a beautiful life. 

And that’s what you are looking for. You just think you need all of these things in order to get that. So now we go to the next step of what do I really want. And the question that gets asked by a person who is really deep and wants to grow spiritually is yes I want to feel okay inside. That’s really what I want. The outside is not what I’m about. It just seems that in my past I’ve had the experience that the outside changes how I feel inside. And that’s what a wise person starts to realize. 

That if certain people walk up to me and they say certain things at just the right time in just the right way it turns me on. If the same person walks up to me at the wrong time and does the wrong thing in the wrong way it turns me off.

So I now have taken on the task of manipulating and controlling everybody who walks up to me so that they say it right, what I want at that time, and they don’t way what I don’t want and it comes down to I have this list of what I want and what I don’t want. And most human beings, most means 99.9%, have devoted their entire lives to getting what they think they want and avoiding what they think they don’t want. And the emphasis is on the word ‘think.’ 

Versus it becomes much simpler when you realize what I want is to be okay. I want to feel love. I want to feel joy. I want to feel happiness and inspiration. 

So now as you look at that the next question becomes, “Why don’t you?”

Because your experience is, “I can only feel those things if the outside comes in through my senses in a certain way.” So when you start to get spiritual and go deeper into this is you ask, “Why is it like that? Why is that if I get what I want it turns me on and if I don’t get what I want if turns me off and if I get what I don’t want it definitely turns me off and if I don’t get what I don’t want I feel relieved.”

We take that for granted. The yogi takes nothing for granted. The spiritual person questions everything. “Why is that the only thing that really turns me on is when the outside world is exactly the way my inner state decided it wanted it to be?”

And we can go very deep into this and talk about it a long time. I want to do this very quickly. You could create any situation.

The story I always use is imagine that you just read in the newspaper that there was a 1942 penny that was minted in Denver that’s worth $6M dollars. And the rumor is that it’s floating around in your neighborhood. Well, all of a sudden, when you go into the store and get change you’re looking at your pennies. And you never looked at them before. They never did anything for you and now you’re excited about getting the change and in fact you ask the cashier, “I want it all in pennies.” But it’s 90 cents. “I want pennies.” Alright. Like your whole mindset changed. Your whole relationship to life changed because you got into your mind the thought that I want to find a 1942 Denver mint penny and if all of a sudden you were given a penny and you look at it and it says 1942 all this rush or energy and spirit rushes up inside of you. Excitement. Enthusiasm. And then you see it’s got a P for Philadelphia instead of a D. And all this depression and let down happens inside of you.

Don’t you realize you are doing that. Prior to reading the article in the newspaper there wasn’t any penny anybody could give you that would do that to you. You are doing that to yourself. So, what you start to realize is that when your mind has a preconceived notion that something will make me happy, you believe penny will make you happy, therefore you are looking for it. You want to get it so you projected out to the world that I’m going to be okay if I find that penny. I’m going to be okay if I find the right relationship. I’m going to be okay it I find the right job. I’m going to be okay, etc. etc.

By doing that you set up a condition that said if the world unfolds that way I will open to it. I will be receptive. The word is “open.” We are all spiritual people, we understand the word ‘open.’ It means my mind will be receptive. My heart will be receptive.

And it is because you open that you feel the joy. Objects do not give you joy. That which turns you on turns somebody else off. That which turns you on today turned you off yesterday. All you have to do is hear one more thing and your whole mindset changed.

So it is not proper to think that there is something out there that will ring your bell. There is something you decided inside yourself that you will open if it happens and it is that opening that brings the joy. That brings the love. That brings the light. And that’s an absolute truth. It’s always that way.

Likewise with closing. If you decide I don’t want to see a snake. I don’t even want to know that there’s such a thing as a snake then your whole life is in big trouble because if you see a rope you think it’s a snake and you close down. If on the other hand you don’t have that issue with snakes you see a rope and it’s a rope. And if you happen for a moment to think it’s a snake no big deal.

But if your mind has decided I don’t like snakes. I don’t want to see a snake. You know what it’s going to do to you. So it is this conditioning of the mind, a mindset, a conditioning of the mind that makes it so that things turn you on and turn you off.

And that’s where you get your list of what you want and what you don’t want. It is not true that you want those things. What you want is something that will open you so that you can feel the joy that is natural when you are open. And you don’t want the things that close you so that you get blocked off from any joy and you get the sense of depression.

So, you have a choice even right at that point and we haven’t even gone deep yet. You have a choice. Do you want to spend your life deciding what you want and what you don’t want and then chasing it outside or do you want to sit there and work inside to realize all I really want is the joy and the love and if I stay open I can have those? I don’t need outside conditions to keep me open.

So I make a very important point because in spirituality it gets mixed up. This is not about renunciation. There’s no renunciation. Renunciation says I’ve decided what it is that will make me happy and I’m not going to do it. Well that sounds rather absurd.

Spirituality says it was stupid of me to decide what will make me happy instead of being happy with life. Instead of being grateful and turned on by all of the amazing things that are happening in front of me. And all the past experiences that I got to have. Why don’t I just enjoy all that and come into life filled with love, filled with joy? And give the whole of my being to the moments that are unfolding in front of me. That’s what spirituality says.

So, it’s not about renunciation. It’s not about things are wrong or things are right. It’s about understanding that you did this. You did this with your mind. You set up conditions in which your mind would open and then your heart would open. And conditions in which your mind would close and then your heart closes.

Then you’ll say, “Spirituality is not logical. It’s not rational.” It is so. It is saying to you, “Why are you doing that? If you want to  have a beautiful life spinning around on a planet in the middle of nowheres why don’t you just open?” It’s your heart. It’s your mind. 

How did you decide? How did your mind decide what it is you want and don’t want? You did not make those decisions. They were programmed into you by your past experiences. All of them.

So you had a past experience where something was nice with a certain person. They looked a certain way. They had a certain name. They drove a certain kind of car. Whatever it is. And it really was high for you. It was beautiful years ago.

Now one of those things shows up. You meet somebody with that name. As shallow as that sounds, don’t kid yourself. You meet someone with the name of your ex you close down. Even though it’s not the same person. You meet someone with the name of who you had your first date with in high school and it was a wonderful relationship and you open up. And likewise when you see a car that you had a nice experience in it turns you on. So you are programmed by your past experiences such that if they were good experiences they tend to open you when something reminds you of them. When they were negative experiences they tend to close you.

And that is where you get your list of what you want. That’s why all of our lists are different. Everyone’s list is totally different. If someone tells you their list is the same as yours they are manipulating you because everyone has had different experiences. And based upon those experiences they left these impressions on your mind and you came up with this list of what I want.

So when you make the list of what you want and what you don’t want you are making a list of your past. That’s how you came up with those things. Even colors that you like. Anything. They are impressions. Skinner, the psychologist said, “Man is the sum of his learned experiences.” It’s not true. It’s true that your mind and your heart are the sum of your learned experiences. But YOU are inside noticing this.

So I make a big distinction with BF Skinner, alright. That you are in there and you are noticing that your mind is the sum of your learned experiences. And it is. That’s where psychology meets spirituality. Psychology is right. All of the psyche, your thoughts, your patterns, your likes, your dislikes, your problems, and neuroses, etc. are the sum of your learned experiences. But you are in there. You are the consciousness. The awareness of being who notices that what I am saying is true.

So basically you come to the point where you have to decide. Do I want to continue letting my past leave impressions on my mind and my heart such that only certain things will open and close me and then I will spend my life chasing after, manipulating, controlling, conniving, whatever you want, the world around me so that sometimes it unfolds the way I want?

Or do you want to sit there and understand that you are the one that is making these decisions. It’s your mind that is setting up the conditions. Why don’t you just not do that. And that’s where you get deep spirituality. We are already at the deepest point. Quote from a deep writing; The Third Zen Patriarch. It’s the treatise on faith mind. It’s considered my many as one of the deepest spiritual writings ever written. It’s first line is all you need. “The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” But that is not renunciation. It’s not about getting rid of your preferences. It is about realizing that preferences limit your joy to having to match them.

And if you don’t have all these likes and dislikes and preferences and conditions and so on you are going to find out that life is amazing. Even the challenges of life are amazing. What’s wrong with challenges? We play sports.We like challenges. Nobody wants to play a team that you beat 700 to 1 every time you play them. You want to be challenged. You want to bring out the best of your being.

If you can get clean inside where you are not being run by all these past impressions, we call them samskaras in yoga, all of these past impressions which are telling you. And they are telling you constantly. You can only be happy if this happens. You can never be happy it it doesn’t. And you will never be happy if such and such happens. And then you go out into the world chasing this. As opposed to working inside on yourself to say I don’t need those conditions. Life is amazing. I’m sitting on a planet that is spinning in the middle of nowheres and there’s all these events happening.

Don’t worry they won’t last. You’re not going to stay here. But while you’re here, do you want to run around and fight with life and people and places and things and even the weather to try to make it be what you think you want? Or do you want to work on yourself to clean up this mess inside so you can be open all the time? That’s what spirituality is about.

It’s not about renunciation. Renunciation is too late. You’ve already decided you want something, you need it to be happy but you’re not going to do it.

Depth, spirituality is understanding you don’t need anything. You don’t need anything. It doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. But you don’t need anything. You are whole and complete within yourself.

If you open there is tremendous joy, love, inspiration, that wells up inside you. The moment you open. The moment something happens that you like, watch how fast you feel joy. And if something happens you don’t like, watch how fast you close.

That is not teaching you about the outside. That is teaching you about the inside. That openness is where it’s at. Openness is what you really want. What does ‘opening’ mean? It’s like opening the blinds. If you close the blinds in your house your house is dark. It’s like that chapter in The Untethered Soul, Take Down the Walls.

If you close the blinds in your house then it is dark. Now you have to run around with artificial light trying to figure out how to get some light. If you open the blinds you don’t have to do anything. The light is coming in. But you won’t open the blinds until you are sure nobody is out there. And only the right people are in your house. And everything is exactly what you want. You are afraid to open the blinds. It’s too uncomfortable. So you either decide to spend your life trying to build artificial light inside or you decide to work on yourself so you can leave the blinds open.

Yoga, true spirituality, is about taking off the blinds, take them off the windowsill, throw them out, and never ever close them again.

What is the purpose of closing? It makes you sad. It makes you dark. What is depression? Total darkness. Total closedness. You have closed off to the flow of the energy. There is no reason for that. There is no excuse for that. This is your world inside. It’s your mind. It’s your heart. It is your responsibility to not close it. How dare you think you are going to meet somebody who is going to overcome your tendency to close. What a job! Don’t give me that job.

You’ve been in there your whole life building all of these impressions that bother you, scare you and turn you on and then you say to somebody as a relationship that it’s my responsibility to keep your mind open and your heart open. And you are in there closing all the time. I hope that seems silly and counterproductive.

It is your responsibility to keep your mind open. It is your responsibility to keep your heart open. And once you learn to do that you will feel joy all the time. I mean all the time. From the moment you wake up in the morning you’ll be inspired. You’ll love to go to work even if you went to the same job for 30 years. You don’t ever get bored. Why? Because there is energy flowing up inside of you.

You will get the most out of your relationships. You’ll be able to give the most to all moments that are unfolding in front of you. Why? Because now you are a giver instead of a taker. Often when we come into the moment in front of us we are looking to see what we can get. We are looking to see how we want them to be. We are speaking to change things. We are dressing certain ways and doing all kinds of things to manipulate the moments so that they will be the way we want and when they come inside they will turn us on.

A being who has learned to be open all the time never does that. They don’t need to do that. They are already feeling what they want to feel. They are feeling joy. They are feeling love. They are feeling inspiration. So now when the moment unfolds in front of them they can give to it. They can take this joy and love that they have and they can shine it upon the moment, the people, places, and things that are unfolding.

So this is spirituality. It is not about. I love all teachings. It’s all fine. People work at whatever level they work at. But this whole thing about abundance and attracting to yourself what it is that you want and how to use mantras and spirituality to make sure you have what you want.

True spirituality is about not wanting. True spirituality is about being filled with joy from inside. And then sharing that outside. It’s not about attracting to yourself what you want. Is there a law of attraction. People ask me, “Is there a law of attraction?” Yes. And you better be scared of it. Because if it’s true that you attract what your mind is thinking. You better take a look at what your mind is thinking. Because it’s not only when you are sitting there trying to attract something to yourself with affirmation. What about your mind all day? When it’s complaining. And it’s yelling at people. And it doesn’t like stuff. What if you are attracting that way?

So you eventually catch on that it is not about getting what you want. It is about learning to find out what you really want, to stay open. And not have conditions on that openness. And then it comes down to how do you do that? Are people capable of doing that? Or is that just reserved for some special beings. Buddha and Christ who walked the face of the earth.

Everybody is capable of that. How do I know that? If I tell you to pick up five thousand pounds you may not be able to do that. In fact you won’t be able to do that. So I have told you to do something that you have never done and you are not doing it so you may not be able to do it.

But if you are actually already doing something and I tell you not to do it. You are always capable of that. Because you are the one who is doing it. So inside, you are the one who is closing your heart. You close it. You are the one who is closing your mind. You do that. It’s your thoughts. It’s your feelings. Nobody else’s. So you are in there doing these things.

So if I tell you the way to stay open is to not close. I don’t teach you how to stay open. That’s more like finding out how to get what you want. I’m interested in you learning to not close. What a difference. If I say to you I want you to open your heart right now, you wouldn’t even know how to start.

But if I say to you when someone says something to you that you don’t like, don’t close. You know where to start. Because it is happening inside of you. And you have the tendency to do it. All I’m asking you to do is don’t do that. I’m telling you that will take you the whole way. Don’t worry about opening. Worry about not closing.

There are going to be events that unfold in your life that naturally open you. A beautiful sunset. A bird singing. Sometimes you get what your mind wants you open. Great. There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t close. How come it only lasted a minute? I see a beautiful sunset. You feel like, “Oh my God, I looked into the face of God.” And then you go right back into your mind with all your problems. Why don’t you learn to not close?

Once you get some openness, start to work with yourself to not close. And this is how to get what you really want. The deep spiritual teachings are really teaching you how to get what you want. Because what you want is to feel love and joy and happiness all the time. And so if you can get that from within then you can share it. And again this is not selfish.

What did Christ say? One of his favorite teachings. “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the father.” Only a yogi, a spiritual being knows what that means. It means you don’t live off of what’s coming in from the outside. Bread is much bigger than eating. It’s all of these circumstances that we need that don’t feed us. Alright. You do it by tuning into the energy within. “Every word that leaveth the mouth of the father.” That’s where the spiritual energy is coming from. It’s coming from the spirit.

So as you are in there working with yourself you will find out that if you don’t close you have access to that energy all the time. And I mean all the time. No matter what happens to you. No matter what befalls you. If people are dishonest with you. If you don’t get what you want. If somebody else gets the job you want. If you don’t get the raise you want. These are not terrible things. These are things that make you close. And when you close you give up the meaning of your life. You give up your joy. You give up your beauty. You give up your love.

You fall in love with somebody. That’s beautiful. It’s wonderful. They do something. They slurp their soup. They leave the cap off the toothpaste. They whatever it is. They pull the blankets off in bed. They do some silly little thing and I’m telling you you are going to close.

Why would you trade love, which is so precious, for a stupid little thing like your mind not liking some little trait that somebody has? I’m encouraging you to look at it that way. And say I’m ruining my relationship and giving up love by deciding I didn’t like what this person did or not accepting this or that.

Now you are at the core of spirituality. Acceptance. Acceptance. Surrender. What does it mean? It means I’m not going to let the outside world close me. I have the right to have it be beautiful inside. Nobody has the right to take that away from me. This is my world. I live in here. And that becomes your spiritual work. And so I teach, I’ve taught many times, in my books you can read, in my course with Sounds True you can take, it goes into how do you learn not to close. That’s what matters.

Something happens. You will see your heart start to close. You will see your mind start to complain. I always tell people start with the easy stuff. Somebody’s driving 15 miles below the speed limit in front of you. You are in a rush. Watch what you do to yourself. You are not talking to that driver. They don’t hear you. You are not doing anything of any meaning. But you are in there bothering yourself. You are in there closing yourself. “I can’t believe he’s doing that.” “Look the sign is right there. Why can’t he read it. What’s wrong with people?”

What are you doing? You are making yourself miserable. Stop it. That’s where spirituality is. Don’t worry about finding what you want. That’s too limiting. Learn how to stay open in the face of whatever is happening.

It rains when you don’t want it to. It’s too hot. Don’t let your mind close. Why would you close about the weather? Weather is a nice thing. It’s good that it rains. Plants really need it. Alright. And you need the plants.

Learn to accept, honor, respect, and appreciate the experiences that are unfolding in front of you. They won’t match your past experiences of what you wanted and didn’t want. They are not supposed to and they won’t. The question is are you capable of letting go of this mess you have made inside so that whatever experience is unfolding in front of you keeps you open or causes you to open?

If somebody is standing in front of you yelling at you and you don’t even know who they are it can be fun. You don’t have to freak out. Like this is neat. I am standing on the planet earth and somebody is yelling at me. I dare you to try and be like that. I dare you to work with yourself little by little to where nothing can close you.

I like you. I care for you. I love you. Alright. That’s the teaching. Don’t Close. Don’t expect somebody else to protect you so that you don’t close. Don’t expect somebody else to open you after you close. This is your inner environment. You are responsible for it. Learn. Practice. Just like you practice the piano. You practice math. You practice tennis. Practice not closing.

Start with the simple stuff. If you will do that you will find there is this beautiful river of joy that flows inside of you all the time. Nothing can take it away from you except you. It is only by closing yourself to it, closing your mind and closing your heart that you won’t feel it. And eventually you’ll realize it is the nectar of life. The inner flow of spirit, the inner flow of shakti, that inner flow of energy is the beauty of life. And if you have that you can share it with others. And you become a blessing on this earth.

But if you are willing to keep your personality closing and allow yourself to ruin your life by closing it’s not going to happen. Work on yourself. You have the right every day to work on not closing every moment and every second of your life. I guarantee you if you do it something very beautiful will well up inside of you and it will eventually get so strong that it will pull you into it. And those are the great high spiritual states.

Very good. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being interested in these things because this is how you fix the world. This is how you fix everything. You work with yourself. Thank you. 

My Takeaways from this Talk By The Surrender Experiment’s Micheal Singer

Most of us when asked, “What do you want?” would answer with outer things, such as a new relationship, satisfying work, a new house, money and freedom to travel. Many of us here, might include losing weight and getting fit. 
What we really want are the feelings that those outer things will create. We want to feel joy, happiness, love, satisfaction, confidence, wellbeing. We want to feel okay inside. These are all inner conditions. 
When our hearts and minds are ‘open’ we feel good. When our hearts and minds are ‘closed’ we feel bad.
Our minds are filled with a lifetime of past impressions, thoughts, beliefs, experiences that run our lives telling us what is okay and what isn’t, what makes us happy and what doesn’t. This past conditioning rules us so that we spend our lives trying to set up the conditions under which we tell ourselves we can be happy. 
Instead of trying to manipulate our world and daily life to satisfy what our minds think they want, we can undertake the work of cleaning up this inner mess of the mind and be free of its programming. To learn to accept, appreciate and find joy in what is. This is the spiritual path. 
This is an ongoing practice that you can learn and become better at over time just like learning to play the piano or tennis. 
By working with yourself, cleaning up your inner mess, and learning to keep your heart and mind open when they want to close you can tap into an inner river of joy that flows inside all the time. 
This is your work. Clean up your inner environment. It’s your responsibility. Nobody else can do it for you. Working on your spiritual growth is challenging but leads to a sense of wholeness and is well worth it.  

More About Michael Singer

MICHAEL A. SINGER is author of the New York Times Bestseller The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment and his new book Living Untethered. He had a deep inner awakening in 1971 while working on his doctorate in economics at the University of Florida and went into seclusion to focus on yoga and meditation. In 1975, he founded Temple of the Universe, a now long-established yoga and meditation center where people of any religion or set of beliefs can come together to experience inner peace. He is also the creator of a leading-edge software package that transformed the medical practice management industry, and founding CEO of a billion-dollar public health care company whose achievements are archived in the Smithsonian Institution. Along with his nearly five decades of spiritual teaching, Michael has made major contributions in the areas of business, education, healthcare, and environmental protection. You’ll find several more inspiring talks by Michael here. 

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The post What Do You Really Want? A Powerful Teaching by Michael A. Singer, Author of The Untethered Soul & The Surrender Experiment appeared first on Simple Nourished Living.