Making it Personal

 They are moments in time and space and they got nothing to do with you.

Michael Singer

Michael Singer, in the below linked video, reminds us that we are all great beings...that tend to limit our greatness to the sum of our learned experiences. We narrow our great focus down onto these psyches we created and call "me".  We suffer because we tend to resist Life and make it all personal. 

You are not meant to suffer! 

I agree. Sure suffering exists, as the Buddha claims in the First Noble Truth...but...I believe we are not meant to suffer.

You are not meant to suffer!

There is a difference, I believe, between experiencing the unfoldings of life that our senses perceive as unpleasant...and suffering.  Physical pain, for example, is only suffering when you resist it. Judge it as bad, wrong, shouldn't be; resist it, and there will be 'suffering'.  Make it personal...and the suffering intensifies! 

We are not meant to "suffer" but yeah we are here to experience.  And pain is a part of that experience. Thirty trillion individual cells working together in that body that is experiencing pain, that body that takes care of itself...that body that isn't yours. 

WTF! Say what crazy lady???  

You are just renting the body you are in for a period of time. Sure notice that pain, listen to it, and do what it is asking you to do...but you don't have to turn that pain into personal suffering.  Even that pain isn't personal because the body you are in really has nothing to do with you. When you make it personal and say, "Look what is happening to "me"; this is "bad, wrong, and shouldn't be!",  this physical pain becomes suffering.  It is taken  beyond an experience you in the form can observe and feel-  to full blown suffering.  

Suffering is of the psyche!!

Rejected love efforts are certainly unpleasant and they feel so very personal, but they too are not suffering until we deem them as bad, wrong, shouldn't be or when we label them as personal.  And they are not personal.  If that person...that body of 30 trillion cells with an individual psyche based on the sum of their learned experiences (experiences you know nothing about) decides it doesn't like you ...it has nothing to do with you!  It has to do with all the thousands of  things that body/personal mind, over there that you are seeking to please, stuffed and stored...that made their psyche what it is. It has to do with where they are at during that moment they decided to react to something emerging from your psyche or personality or body, leading them to a judgment, "I don't like you!" Certainly feels personal to your psyche (the "me" you created based on all your stored experiences, your stuffed samskaras ...in that body you are in with its trillions of cells all reactive and firing) ...but ... It isn't personal!!!

They don't even see you...I mean truly see you...through the veil of their own samskara stuffed psyches. Pull your focus back away from your own reactive psyche to observe their reactive pysche. You are not your reactive psyche or the body you are in.  They are not their reactive psyche or the body they are in. Pull your focus back a little more to see hundreds, then thousands, then millions, and then billions of reactive psyches that make up the human race and know that all of these created "me's" are not real and simply hiding what everyone actually is! Pull your focus back even more to see how you  and the "person who has rejected you",  as well as all the other billions of humans that share this planet with you, are just tiny specks of salt on a bigger speck of salt, floating around a small little star in a small little solar system, in a great big galaxy which just happens to be one of trillions of galaxies with an infinite number of experiences happening. These experiences got nothing to do with you!

We have narrowed the brilliant, beautiful Mind of the Universe that we are a part of down into billions of little, suffering personal minds. Most of us  listen to this personal mind as it chooses to suffer our entire lives.  We do not have to listen to it, though.  We really don't. We can allow for purification. We can relax into its chatter and attempt to look behind it to the brilliant, impersonal Mind we all share. 

Remember: 

Your consciousness is the whole universe looking down through you. 

You don't have to take it personally. Just let go. 

The purified Mind is no different than the Self. (Ram Krishna)

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe/ Sounds True ( February 10, 2025) From Personal to Universal: Transcending the Ego's Constraints. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjjajdg5GWQ&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=1