Michael Singer - Rising Above Likes and Dislikes

Quick Overview

Spirituality is fundamentally about raising oneself to experience the highest states of being, such as love, beauty, and ecstasy, by realizing one is the eternal consciousness (Sat-Chit-Ananda) and not the mind or heart programmed by past likes and dislikes, which requires learning to let go of stored emotional residue rather than fighting it.

Key Points: Spirituality is not about attracting abundance or getting what you want; a spiritual person focuses on fixing what is wrong inside, not compensating for it, unlike the common human predicament. The human predicament involves basing desires and aversions on past experiences, which the speaker likens to building a house upon sand because the data taken in is a minuscule portion of reality. The true self is the consciousness, the awareness that notices the mind, heart, body, thoughts, and emotions; "You are the consciousness having experiences, you're not the experience." The reason consciousness gets pulled out of its seat is due to stored, resisted experiences—both positive desires and negative hurts—which constantly try to release, causing mental noise and emotional perturbation. The deepest spiritual path is letting go: learning not to store new junk and allowing stored emotional residue to pass through without resistance, which lessens being bothered and restores the seat of self. Being established in the seat of self means maintaining well-being regardless of internal or external events because the consciousness is aware of the perturbations without being pulled into them, leading to a state of 'eternal conscious ecstasy' (Sat-Chit-Ananda).

Context: Michael Singer discusses the nature of deep spirituality, contrasting it with superficial self-help concepts focused on acquiring wants or avoiding dislikes. He establishes that the foundation of true spiritual work involves recognizing the self as pure, unchanging consciousness, distinct from the constantly reacting mind and heart, which are conditioned by every past experience, good or bad.