Part Two: Michael Singer: “I Can Handle This”—A Powerful Mantra for Modern Life, Why We Are Addicted to Our Own Suffering, and How to Release Everything That’s Hurting Us.

In this mind-expanding conversation of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Michael A. Singer—legendary author of bestsellers The Untethered Soul, Living Untethered, and The Surrender Experiment, and founder of Temple of the Universe—returns to reveal the real truth behind spiritual awakening...and why most people are getting it wrong. If you’ve ever wondered what a spiritual awakening actually looks like on a practical, everyday level, this is the breakdown you’ve been waiting for. Michael shares a step-by-step framework for building your spiritual identity, and explains why awakenings mean nothing unless you can properly integrate them into your daily life. You’ll learn why resilience is the #1 key to coping with modern stress, and why every authentic spiritual teacher puts compassion at the forefront of their teachings. Michael reveals how compassion and acceptance are deeply connected—and how this powerful combination leads to cooperation, unity, and humanity’s highest good. We also dive into the science behind spirituality, exploring the brain states of acceptance vs. resistance, and how eliminating the distractions of early emotions and personal narratives can open the door to higher consciousness. Michael even explains why we don’t matter nearly as much as we think we do—and why that realization is actually the most liberating truth of all. You’ll hear his bold perspective on why we must fix ourselves before trying to fix the world, his belief that science is finally catching up to spirituality, and why the power of awe might be the missing ingredient in your spiritual evolution. Michael also breaks down the concept of the higher self, how to access it, and what it truly feels like to live untethered and surrender to the universe (spoiler: it DOESN’T mean blindly accepting everything that happens—he explains the difference). Plus: his surprising proof that rich people are just as unhappy as everyone else, and his heartfelt message for beginners stepping onto the spiritual path for the first time. And for the first time ever, he shares an exclusive announcement and preview of his upcoming book, along with his mind-bending thoughts on where consciousness really lies… and what happens to consciousness when we die. If you’re ready to challenge everything you think you know about spirituality, identity, awakening, and the nature of existence itself, this is the episode of MBB you can’t afford to miss. Visit ⁠https://untetheredsoul.com/⁠ for more information about Michael Singer. Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Iyan Bialik.

• 0:06Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 0:07Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to part two of our conversation with Michael Singer, bestselling author of The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment, Living Untethered. In the first part of our conversation with Michael Singer, we talked about how our culture has shifted towards increased spiritual awareness and awakening. And Michael explained how we are already all awakened. We hope that you will listen to the first part of our conversation. Part two of our conversation is going to go even deeper into understanding what it means to surrender, how that applies to resistance and compassion. In addition, where does consciousness live? And what happens to consciousness when we die?

• 0:49Mayim Bialik?

  Spoiler alert, Michael tells us we never really die. All of that and so much more in part two of our conversation with Michael Singer.

• 1:01Mayim Bialik?

  I want to touch on something that The Surrender Experiment highlighted quite ahead of its time in so many ways. And there's been a lot of conversation in the last year or so about the notion of letting everything happen, right? The let them theory that Mel Robbins came on and talked about. But when Jonathan and I were preparing for talking to you again, Jonathan had a very interesting revelation. And he said to me, "Michael Singer's Surrender Experiment was the original let them, meaning do whatever is put in front of you with all your heart and soul, without regard for personal results,

• 1:43Mayim Bialik?

  letting go of your needs, letting go of what you wish other people would do." That really is the original, just let it be without trying to force, manage, manipulate, control, and martyr yourself over it. Can you give us a little bit of framework of how The Surrender Experiment and how really your entire journey has been one giant letting go?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  A letting go. Some people misunderstand surrender as meaning, let anything happen outside that's happening, just let go and just accept it. And so I say to those people, so if a drug dealer comes up to you with heroin, right, and says, hey, you want some? You should say yes, right? Obviously not, okay? That is not what surrender means, all right? Surrender is something you do within yourself when you feel resistance coming up due to your stuff. You understand that? You feel it coming up in you. First, surrender. Let it go, relax. Let it pass through you.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Then come down and either have a talk with the drug dealer, don't bother talking to him, whatever it is. Make a decent decision, like I talked before, right? Based on clarity, right? But it's not true that surrender means I did every single thing that ever got put in front of me, right? Whatever got put in front of me, I got clear to the best of my ability. I'm not all there, right? But to the best of my ability, got clear and then tried to deal with it from a place of understanding, compassion, fairness, and so on. Not me. So surrender means letting go of yourself inside. And then you come back and you deal with it, all right? And yes, acceptance, again, doesn't, it's not an outside thing.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  It's I accept reality. I accept that it happened. Doesn't mean I can do something about it. I, it's an inter, life is an interactive sport, right? We're interacting. But where are you coming from? I want you to come from clarity. I want you to come from openness and love, right? And then, of course, you come down and deal with it. So that, the accept, the misunderstanding some people have, but most don't. They do very, very well. As you know, that book's done amazingly well. It's been published in 40 countries, you know, 6 million copies a soul, right? And people write me all the time, Karen and I, it's just two of us, all right? We get so, and almost 870% of every single email we get says, "Thank you. You changed my life." I didn't change everybody's life.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  I chose to let go, right? And what you let go of is what's ruining your life. And what's left... Does all come together. It does unfold amazingly. How the universe is perfect.

• 4:36Jonathan Cohen?

  There's two very important points and ideas in what you described that some people might need a little bit more description about. The first is being aware of when resistance starts to come up. It's a somatic concept that a lot of people aren't aware of because they immediately go to either pushing it down, dealing with it, a mental process of analyzing it. They're not even aware of what resistance is or when it starts to happen. So that's the first part. Can you talk about the awareness of resistance as a fundamental and like first principle step in this process?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  You are not going to be able to take the big thing. Your kid's doing drugs. Your wife's leaving you. There's major thing. You're not going to be able to just be right there, right then. There's going to be this tremendous reaction inside. You're going to get lost and fight and struggle and doing, right? I understand that. Of course, I understand that, right? But if it's raining out and you need to get out and deliver some papers, you don't have to get upset. You know you don't have to, right? But you're going to tend to. They're saying, there's going to be this resistance. Even the driver in front of you, right? They use this nice blinker buddy, right? These tiny little things, you practice there.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  And you actually bother to say, if I'm going to play tennis and I hit it into the net, I'm going to turn my hand a little bit, right, and get better at it. I'll practice with a coach, right? That's what you're doing with letting go. You're practicing with the low hanging fruit. That's what living in tether gets you into, all right? And if you do that, you'll get good at it. Of course, I don't have to complain it is raining. It's just stupid. I just got in the habit of doing it, right? Well, I'll use affirmation. I'll use this, whatever it is. I'll let go, right? The next thing you know, you'll be better next. And so all of a sudden, the gap between the resistance, the energy resistance coming up, right? And you reacting to it

• 6:45Speaker 02

  will become greater. You start realizing, I don't have to do this. And now all of a sudden, you're in a relationship with your spouse, this kind of other, right? And you start feeling this resistance, this coming up, right? And you realize, that's from my bad day at work. That really has nothing to do with what conversation we're having, alright? I'm just, I need to dump this stuff. And you'll realize, you have a moment, at first, it's just a moment of consciousness that says, "I don't want to do that. I don't have to do that." It's hard, right? And you take a breath, you do all the different stuff you talk about. Every time you do it, you get better at it. Just like every time you play the piano, you get better at it. Hear me?

• 7:29Speaker 02

  That's how you do it. Not, "How do I handle these terrible situations that I can't handle?" Alright? You start by learning to handle the simple ones. And next thing you know, you graduate.

• 7:43Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and I think that's also an important point, that in the same way that you cannot control the rain, you cannot control whether it's raining or not. The exact same way that you cannot control that, you cannot control other people, right? So, all the places that we try and insert ourselves, and we think we can cure it, and what if we, you know, hide the liquor, then they won't drink it? Or if we get our breasts done, they'll like us more? You know, whatever it is that we're trying to control, it's literally the same thing as, "Do you think you can control the weather?" And when people say to me, "Oh, I don't know if I believe in God, and I believe in science." I say, "If you believe that you can control the weather,

• 8:27Mayim Bialik?

  you are your own higher power, you've just decided that you're God." If we all agree that we cannot control the weather, we're all on the same plane, and there has to be something larger than us that's in charge, which is very freeing. I don't have to control it anymore. I don't have to spend all of my energy trying to make it not rain when it's raining.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  And then if you go back to that little moment of discussion we had about the quantum field, let's see who can control the quantum field.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  But you just said you're a scientist. It is all the quantum field coming up, right? Okay, I'm done. Just like that. That's why I have people, regular people, I talk about the quantum field. Because not because I want to understand it or learn about it. I want to understand, do you really believe you're going to go down to those wavelets? Right? That the super colliders have sound are there, right? And that that's the foundation of every single thing you're experiencing, everything, right? And you're going to control it? Ha, ha, ha. And you let go? You're free.

• 9:31Jonathan Cohen?

  We can't control it, but we can observe it, which potentially changes it slightly.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  That's true. I, I, I don't want to discuss this law of attraction stuff. Right? My position on law of attraction is the follows. How did you decide what you want to attract to you? Because I know your stuff. Because a great being don't want to attract anything. They couldn't care less. You understand that? They're already in ecstasy. Everything's beautiful, right? But if you're not okay, and you want a car, or a new spouse, or new job, right? You can, you can put out energy to attract it. And by all means, do so. Especially if you're depressed, if it doesn't happen. You know, I, I want you to be happy, right? But I want you at some point to look and say, how, how did I decide I needed that?

• 10:19Speaker 02

  And how often did you attract to yourself and then realize you don't need it? Right? It's just, it's bigger than, do you have a power of attraction? The question is, why are you using it? Because I'm not okay. Do you understand that? The only reason I'm using it is I'm not okay. And I think by getting what I want, I'll be okay. And you will for a while. We'll, we'll see what happens, right? I would love for you to read my books and listen to podcasts. I have a podcast out there. I can see a podcast. It's not like this, it's not lecture. It's my lectures that I give at the temple. They get put out every Tuesday and Thursday, all right? And if you listen to them, what you hear is, I can do better with myself. I can do better with this. It's not about getting what you want. Exactly what Maya said, it's not about getting what you want, right?

• 11:04Speaker 02

  It's about honoring and respecting what is, and being blown away that it even is.

• 11:10Mayim Bialik?

  I want to ask one question about another term that is getting thrown around a lot, but I think you have a lot of clarity about it that we would like to hear. The notion of consciousness being outside of our body, our physical body. The notion of a collective consciousness, a greater consciousness. And we've talked about this a lot in terms of, you know, the Akashic Records tradition, and can we tap into something, right? But we're particularly interested, since we first spoke to you, we've spoken to a lot of people who have had very exceptional experiences with altered consciousness. And some have been psychedelic, but others have been people like physicist Thomas Campbell. You know, they've been transcendental.

• 11:52Mayim Bialik?

  We've spoken to a lot of people with profound and documented near-death experiences, where they are witnessing a consciousness separate from their physical body. In terms of how you understand this higher self, the observing self, where is consciousness? It's very easy for you, for example, to say, "Oh, well, the mind is something that we construct, and it's outside of the body." How can you help us understand where consciousness is? And what happens, let's say, when we die? Is it still there?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  I'm honored that you asked the question, right? Now, but be willing to listen. We talked about how science has shown that there's this field of which everything emanates out, right? The bosons are all the forces that we know about, and the quarks and leptons. It all just puts itself together, right? So that's a layer of a field, not particles. It's a field of energy, of something. What's it made of? I told you, the great masters didn't go out there and study science. They went into caves, the ancient Rishi's, right? And they studied consciousness. Why? Because I'm conscious. We're going to study conscious out there.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  I'm going to study conscious out there. There's just stuff out there, right? I am aware of being aware. I am that I am, right? I am going to practice letting go of the object of consciousness so I can experience the source of consciousness. Okay? And what they found was Tegurit, right? That they are that consciousness, all right? So that's one way to look at it. The quantum field up, right? The other is, the Bible just find, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, right? It's not hard to think that the word is the om or amen or a vibration. In the beginning was the word. What's the word? A vibration.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Vibrating in the consciousness of the universe. The one consciousness of the universe created a vibration. And that's your quantum field, by the way. I don't expect them to understand it. They're not, it's okay, right? But that primal vibration, the orig- in the beginning, there was no beginning, it's infinite, right? But in the beginning of what you see as creation, the Big Bang, whatever you want to call it, right? When form came into being, in the beginning was a vibration. And the words was with God. That consciousness created that vibration. And from that vibration, all of form emanated, right? And then the consciousness looks down into the form of created. So when you ask me, where is consciousness? That's all there is.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  It's all consciousness. It's all made of consciousness. It's looking at consciousness. There's nothing but consciousness. God alone is real. Okay? That's the real answer. But that's a lot bigger than you were asking, okay? But that's the real answer, right? If all of form is made of consciousness, what is experiencing it? Consciousness. Awareness is what experiences things, right? Now you understand that consciousness is what made the things. Therefore, it's like when you go to sleep, right? You made the buildings, you made the relationships, you made the issues, you made the fights, you made war, you made every single thing out of what? Out of one field of mind, Buddhists call it mind, people are conscious, and I don't care,

• 15:22Speaker 02

  right? But it's all made of you, isn't it? That's what's happening here, okay? God has created the entire universe and has come down to play in himself, to come down and experience it, right? And then how come he fell from the garden? Because he, you know, I don't want to take the apple, I don't want to do that, right? He got lost, he got lost in ego. He stared at himself enough to start to identify what he was looking at, instead of identifying with who's looking. Listen to that, right? You identify what you're looking at, your thoughts, your emotions, your form, right? Instead of identifying with who's looking at it, okay? When you're awake, it doesn't do it. I, I, it's funny.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  I guess that, I read the Bible once, but I love that it keeps coming back, all right?

• 16:10Mayim Bialik?

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• 16:55Mayim Bialik?

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• 17:41Speaker 02

  The story about Adam in the garden. This is of course my version, all right? God's walking around the garden. God's everything. He's everywhere. It's all things. There's nothing there but God. Okay, and he says, Adam, where are you?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  You're me. Well, what? I understand. Where are you? And Adam said, I'm hiding. Whoa, that's pretty deep. How do you hide from God? Stare at form instead of sitting back as to who's looking at it. Okay, and you get lost in the real power. And he said, I said, where are you? I'm hiding. And Adam stands up and God says, whoa. What's that thing leaf around your waist? Didn't he say that, right? And Adam said, I was naked. That is so deep. Every animal's naked. Everything's naked, right? But ego identified with form, so much so that it used the word I to talk about what it was looking at.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Whereas consciousness, that's all there is. It's just the dance of consciousness. It's consciousness looking at consciousness, experiencing. Christ said what? Not a hair on your head moves that God doesn't know. Not a sparrow falls from the tree. Because he is the tree, he is the sparrow. It's not like there's a guy sitting back there with a beard. Okay, it's, it's the whole universe is the expression of the divine consciousness. And we are that also. But we're busy staring at this little, tiny little thing. Right or wrong?

• 19:16Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, one of my, one of my favorite mystical quotes that I, that I've mentioned here is they say that if God stopped thinking about us for one second, we would not exist. That there's a constant creation that is going on as we are, you're in this. But you didn't answer my hardest question. What happens to that consciousness when we die?

• 19:38Speaker 02

  There is no death.

• 19:39Mayim Bialik?

  Ah.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  There is no death. My God, give me a break. Right? There's just consciousness expressing its, right? What happens to the music when the note stops being played? It's still there, it's still, I, I, nothing dies. Nothing was ever born. Right? It's just we stare at it as a separate, a separate thing. Okay? And we, we, we think we're separate from it. Therefore, we think we die. Then you think your ego dies, your mind dies, your body dies, right? And this, there's no death. There is no death. There's just consciousness, changes, vibration rate. Okay? Going to higher, I, I, at some point, you can even talk about it, right?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Because we're framing it in words that can't answer the question. You're framing that I'm separate and I die. There is no dying. The Gita talks about beautifully. All right, well, Krishna's talking to Arjuna. And Arjuna's arguing, I don't want to fight this battle. I don't want to kill people. I don't, I don't want to do this. You know the story, right? And Krishna says to Arjuna, he says, what are you doing? Right? There's no death. Weapons can't reach the self. It's back there watching them, right? And waters can't overwhelm it, and fires can't burn it. It's just the awareness that is looking at form. So the awareness doesn't go anywhere else. Hopefully, but where it goes, I don't like to talk about it. It goes to a higher plane. What does that mean? Right?

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Again, the Bible says, in my Father's house, there are many mansions. I never understood that before. Now I do. There's different planes of reality. Right? Okay? And fine, your soul evolves to a certain, your consciousness evolves to a certain point. It can't merge yet. It's not ready to merge yet. So it goes to heaven, it goes here, it goes to different places. Right? Until it's ready to merge back into the divine consciousness. Then become one with God. My Father and I are one. Somebody said that, didn't they? I thought I heard those once before. Surely, actually, I look at it, I say, "I am my father-er one." I have to say it right. "I am my father-er one."

• 21:43Mayim Bialik?

  It's very interesting because with many of these ancient references, right? To Judaism, to Christianity, you know, to Islam, right? These very old religions, to Buddhism, to Hinduism. You know, there's a very, very strong mystical and spiritual through-line. And so many of us are taught religious practice that is very dogmatic. It's very based in obedience. It's very much based in threat and fear. And the fact is, that's actually not the original intention of any of these religious traditions.

• 22:24Mayim Bialik?

  It's so significant to be able to hear, and, you know, for me, as someone who's studied, you know, Old Testament texts and those texts, we are taught about how much mysticism is woven through our text. But it's so damaging to so many people to be taught the manipulation of those traditions. And that's what so many of us are living out. It's what so many of us are rebelling against and rallying against and saying, "This isn't for me. I'm not that person. I'm not religious. I'm spiritual." Guess what? Religion used to be spiritual before it was co-opted by, forgive me, the capitalist patriarchy.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Of course. That's so beautiful that you see that. It's true. And the epitome, really, is Christ, right? Did you know Christ was spiritual? The highest spiritual being that ever descended down to earth. He was born enlightened, right? Born the king of angels. They say it, but then they have one a person, a hand on a cross on earth, all right? No, he's everything. He's one with God. One of my favorite things. How I remember this from 1977, I have no idea. But during the Last Supper, there was a discussion between the disciples and Jesus, all right? And at some point, Jesus said, "I won't be with you anymore, all right? This is it." And one of them said, "No, I want to go with you. We want to go with you."

• 23:51Speaker 02

  And he said, "Where I go," I'm gonna cry, "where I go, you cannot follow." Why? You ain't there yet, baby. You understand that? You still see yourself as a human being with your own thoughts and feelings and emotions, right? And where I am, right, is merged with the whole universe. It's my father and I are one. You see why he said, "Where I go, you can't follow?" But you can. You can.

• 24:16Mayim Bialik?

  I know this is a deep cut here, but in the Narnia books, right? It's an allegory of this notion, right? And that's what I, when I've seen the movies, that is that notion of also the pain of when you, when you experience that enlightenment, when you experience elevation, it's very hard in many cases to be among people, right? Also, on a smaller scale. A lot of people say like, "Well, what's Michael Singer doing? He must just sit all by himself all day." No, you're engaged in the world. You've had business experience, like you're a living person. I wonder if you've ever like changed attire or like what happens when you go to the supermarket and they're out of milk. But like you live among people and we can as well, right?

• 25:00Mayim Bialik?

  This is not enlightenment for someone sitting on top of a mountain. This is the wisdom that gets brought down from the mountain.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Now, I have a surprise for you as we're running out of time. I didn't tell you because I'm not telling anybody, but I didn't want to. I said I wasn't going to, but I wrote another book. Okay? And it will be published in March. All right? And its title is Wisdom Untethered: The Time for Questions. I assure you, because I know you some, you will love the book. I haven't talked about it. The publisher has it. It's going to be published, all right, in March, like I said. There is one, three paragraphs that I specifically want to read to you guys. And I've not done that before, all right? When I sent it to the publisher, I told them, "Only you can read it until we talk about it." All right?

• 25:51Speaker 02

  But I'm going to read this for you. They say God is love. Is that true? Can I experience that directly? There are many different levels of love. The love that is experienced is need, is a human emotion caused by the heart being blocked through the inner flow of Shakti. When the heart is unconditionally open, you will never feel the need for love, because your heart will remain full of love regardless of what is happening. Such an open heart is difficult for people to achieve, because they've stored pain from the past that creates blockages to the inner energy flow. This is why people need special outcome conditions in order for the heart to open.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Let's call that human love. It's still beautiful, especially compared to the other human emotions, but it's conditional, and it can create dependencies and attachments.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Spiritual love is very different. Once the heart learns to remain open, even under difficult circumstances, the flow of unhampered energy through the heart feeds the indwelling soul directly. Because you are now fulfilled inside, you don't have to constantly control the outside. You're deeply content, experiencing the inner flow of love. Eventually, you will want to explore the source of this beautiful energy. The only way to explore the source is by falling into it. When you do so, you'll become completely immersed in overwhelming love, joy, and bliss. This is the point where the Shakti flow changes direction. You'll begin to feel a tremendous upward flow

• 27:34Speaker 02

  pulling you beyond your sense of individuality. It feels like God is calling you home, and that is exactly what is happening. The great ones have let go completely, and their drop of consciousness has merged back into the ocean of consciousness. This is Christ, I am a Father of One. This is Buddha's Nirvana. This is Islam Sufi's Fana. The complete dissolution of the ego self in the presence of God. This is the Jewish Kabbalah's Betul Hays. Dissolving the ego self into divine nothingness. This is enlightenment. This is the meaning of all of life.

• 28:17Mayim Bialik?

  Beautiful.

• 28:20Jonathan Cohen?

  I'll just say that I'm very excited for the book. Thank you for sharing that with us and we are extremely honored and we're very excited for it.

• 28:27Mayim Bialik?

  I have a whole Michael Singer section of my library. And almost all of your books, I think, are blue. Is the new one blue as well?

• 28:35Speaker 02

  I haven't seen the cover.

• 28:36Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, no.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  The cover hasn't been made yet.

• 28:38Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, well, the rest of the Michael Singer section is blue, so we'll see.

• 28:42Jonathan Cohen?

  Your Untethered Soul book has a very significant role in why Mayim and I are doing this podcast. And so we'll see what the next one brings. It could spawn the next many years of this.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  I want to spawn the merger. Mayim told me at the last interview, she cried and she said, I want to go there. I want to experience that. Of course you do. You're a great soul and you will experience that. And the more you open and do what I taught. If you want, you let go of Mayim. You have to let go of your career and nothing with that. But you let go of what's holding in there, keeping it together. And all of a sudden, you find out there's nothing to keep together. It's all one, it's all merged.

• 29:27Mayim Bialik?

  Thank you so much. Really an honor to get to speak to you again and we're so thrilled. We can't wait to see all of the things that come and especially the book. We cannot wait, so thank you so much.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Beautiful. What a nice conversation. I love talking to you guys. I remember the title. The title is Wisdom Untethered, The Time For Questions. And like I said, Anineet, that's all we've done here is ask questions. All right, very good.

• 29:56Jonathan Cohen?

  Here's what I want to talk about from this episode. The notion of understanding when we feel resistance. Because intellectually, what he described totally makes sense, right? Once it gets into the intellectual process of there's rain, okay, easy, I don't like rain, oh, I feel upset about something. But I think we are all processing and operating on a reactive model, right? Like, you and I have talked a lot about the difference between reaction and response. When we're reacting, there's a somatic, physical experience that is happening.

• 30:40Jonathan Cohen?

  Usually, there's a tightness, there's a constriction, there could be a shortness of breath, there could be a clenching, there could be an anger, there could be... Like, as we resist, as we have resistance, there's a physical sensation that we get that may even precede the mental anger, annoyance, or justification for that feeling.

• 31:04Mayim Bialik?

  I think that most people go through their lives not realizing what resistance even feels like in their body. I think that most people either never learn it, like, for reals, yo. If you have a parent that was born between the years, like, 1940 and 1963, they may never learn it, and that's okay, they're on their own journey. But many people, A, do not know how to be in touch with their body. So, we've talked about how I don't know when my feet are hot, right? So, like, that's an example, or you think I can't tell when water is too hot, I'm just, like, in survival mode, like, must get clean.

• 31:47Mayim Bialik?

  But beyond that, I think even before we get into the somatic, I don't think that most people are trained to understand that any strong emotion, positive or negative, is gonna move through you at a course of usually a few minutes, meaning if it's not perpetuated, it's gonna move through you, there's a chemical rise that occurs, and it's easier to think about it with negative emotions. But all of these things... They're gonna move through you. So, the reason that sometimes we feel like lashing out with our words, with our fists, or throwing something, is because we're getting a huge surge. And you can call it shame, you can call it anger.

• 32:31Mayim Bialik?

  It's actually a huge surge of a bunch of chemicals that are designed to make you fight. That's almost always resistance. So, when someone says something that hurts your feelings, that also brings up resistance for us. It doesn't mean that you don't defend yourself. It doesn't mean that you have to believe them. But it means that the emotions coming up, right? Salt only hurts when there's a wound. If something gets activated in you, there's something that hasn't yet been worked out, right? And I think that's what Michael is sort of communicating kind of through all of this. The idea is not that if someone insults you, you say, "That's nice, thank you." The idea is to say, "They have a perspective that comes from their entire worldview.

• 33:16Mayim Bialik?

  I don't have to take that personally because I have a strong sense of who I am." What, like, what would that be like?

• 33:23Jonathan Cohen?

  Absolutely, and I want to slow it down a couple steps even before that, is someone insults you, you don't even realize you're insulted most of the time. You may just slap back, or shut down. You have an immediate reaction instead of a response.

• 33:42Mayim Bialik?

  Right, and this is when we talk about the book Difficult Conversations. There's what happened, there's what we think happened, and then there's what actually gets activated. So, if I say to you, you know, you were late, and I'm really pissed off at you that you were late. So, there's the fact that you said you'd be somewhere and you weren't. Then there's you saying, "She's hurt, and now I feel attacked." But what's actually going on is likely something that you either programmed in or was programmed into you. I'm not reliable. So that when I say, "You didn't show up on time," what you hear is, "You're not reliable. You're not worthy, you're not lovable, you don't..."

• 34:26Mayim Bialik?

  Matter when actually what it was was I expected you to be there at a time and it's disappointing that you weren't there. So we are all operating, right? What's that T-shirt people wear? Like, what if you don't know what's going on in someone's life? We're all operating, maybe except Michael Singer, we're all operating at that level. And it's that third level that can be healed, that can get some of this work done to it. When he says, "Do the work," you don't just magically wake up in touch with the consciousness that is divine. There's work to be done. That level becomes less vulnerable and it becomes less scary. So that if someone says, "I expected you to be there on time," you don't hear, "I'm unworthy, I'm unlovable, and I'm gonna fight back, and here's why I was late," right?

• 35:12Mayim Bialik?

  What you hear is, "I understand that was disappointing. Here are the things I'm gonna do so that doesn't happen again." That must have felt really challenging.

• 35:21Jonathan Cohen?

  Absolutely. Everything you're saying, I 100, more than 100% agree.

• 35:28Mayim Bialik?

  That's what people say before they disagree with something.

• 35:30Jonathan Cohen?

  I just think there are a few levels and layers to this before we even get there. Because what you described is a complicated cognitive process. What was said, how do I see it? And I've learned so much in our conversations about figuring out, what did I actually think it meant? Like, that third layer is, if you can spend your time unpacking that third layer, you will learn so much about the programming and the thorns that you're holding inside.

• 36:09Jonathan Cohen?

  Right? Like, Michael Singer's, in our first conversation with him, talked about, you know, this time he used garbage, the first time he said thorns. And that we all have these thorns and we do everything possible to avoid anyone touching the thorn because it activates. So, a lot of that third layer of conversation, what we think people are saying.

• 36:29Jonathan Cohen?

  Are actually touching the thorns that we have, that we've grown up with, our insecurities.

• 36:33Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I mean, in psychology, it's our organizing principles. What we're kind of programmed with. But I wasn't trying to deny the somatic component. I just think that a lot of people are not in touch with that either.

• 36:46Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's unpack it because as you start to be more aware of it, you can calm it down faster. You don't even have to go into this person said that, the other thing. Because it's a very, it expends a lot of energy and may take some time. And people may not be able to dive and get clarity as to what it is they think they heard.

• 37:09Mayim Bialik?

  Well, yeah, and the fact is, trying to figure something out, right? Which is not a slogan, as we say. Trying to figure something out when you are in an activated, agitated state is the number one way to, is the number one way to not figure it out. So what do you think people are going to tell you to do? That's why we're telling you to learn how to breathe. That's why we're trying to tell you how to stimulate your vagus nerve. These are all the things that physiologically put us in a state of emotional and psychological availability.

• 37:40Jonathan Cohen?

  This is where I was going and what I think he skipped over in terms of the process of how you get there. If you're someone who is starting to say, let me bring myself back. Let me stop that cycle that we're all addicted to, right?

• 37:59Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, I've got the top three things to do.

• 38:01Jonathan Cohen?

  Top three things to do when you start to become aware that you are experiencing resistance or you're becoming activated. Mayim, tell us the top three and I'll see where they land in my top three.

• 38:17Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, so my top three, the most powerful tool that I've been taught. One of the most powerful tools I've been taught as an adult, pause. Pause.

• 38:27Jonathan Cohen?

  Yep, ding ding ding.

• 38:29Mayim Bialik?

  Do not open your mouth. Don't open your mouth. Don't open.

• 38:33Jonathan Cohen?

  You're gonna want to.

• 38:33Mayim Bialik?

  You're gonna want to because you've got the thing to say.

• 38:35Jonathan Cohen?

  You're gonna want to say all the things that that person has done wrong?

• 38:39Mayim Bialik?

  Correct. Uh, one of the acronyms that you can use for pause. Postpone action until serenity ensues. What if the instruction was anytime that you feel agitated, hurt, scared, upset, or confused, what if the first thing you did was just to pause? Don't ask for more information, don't seek more information, don't apologize, don't grovel, don't put your dukes up, just pause. That's my first.

• 39:17Jonathan Cohen?

  Valerie just said, "I'd be waiting forever, catch me on my deathbed."

• 39:24Mayim Bialik?

  So, once you're pausing, my number two thing to do is to tap into your breath. And you might think, "That's ridiculous. My heart is beating so fast, I can't breathe, like, I wanna just like scream." This is the time to engage your parasympathetic nervous system. That's why it was given to you. Your body has a built-in mechanism to calm yourself down. And I don't mean like, "Calm down." I mean, the body has a built-in system to take the blood away from the parts of you that want to run, kick, and scream, and put it in the parts of you that need to be quiet,

• 40:09Mayim Bialik?

  and to rest, and to tap into breath. Now, Jonathan may have more insight on this. I would say the primary thing to do is to breathe into your belly. If you have one thing you do after pausing, it's to breathe into your belly. When we're agitated and upset, we breathe like up here, right? You're not getting enough oxygen, you're not releasing all the oxygen you need to. Breathe into your belly. Pretend like you're inflating a balloon in your belly. Do that, I don't know, I'm gonna say 10 times. When really agitated, you can sometimes tell, even within three, that your vagus nerve will start to be like, "Oh, they need to chill out."

• 40:53Mayim Bialik?

  If you are breathing like that, you cannot be in danger, and your body knows that. This breath means slow your heart down, your blood pressure comes down, you'll stop like tingling and vibrating. That's number two, breath.

• 41:07Jonathan Cohen?

  Very good. Another breath that we have actually posted an Instagram video about when, I think we actually went to the TikTok studio. We did a tour and for some reason we did a breath video.

• 41:20Jonathan Cohen?

  It was the double inhale breath where you do a very big inhale. You think that you're done. Then you do an extra sip and a long exhale and that has been shown to also help calm down. I have another one other than breath, but keep going.

• 41:38Mayim Bialik?

  My number three would be, and also just want to give a shout out. I did write, I wrote a piece for Substack, From Chaos to Calm, How to Reboot Your Nervous System, where I talk a little bit more about some of these. But in this moment, my number three would be to notice. So, once you start breathing, and once your body sort of gets into a less agitated state, and also I just want to go ahead and say, this is not convenient. The convenient thing to do when someone pisses you off is to tell them right there and then. The convenient thing to do when someone says, can we be exclusive, would be to say, yes. That's the convenient thing to do. Once any big emotion's coming up and you're pausing,

• 42:24Mayim Bialik?

  it's not convenient. So, you may want to also learn a bunch of tools to be able to say, I need some time to think about that. I'll get back to you. Number three is to notice. So, the next tool that you have been given is the ability to notice what is happening in your body. And you might think, well, I don't know. I don't think, that's exactly the problem. We all have this capacity and physiologically, when we're tuning in to just noticing, not trying to change it, not trying to name it, just noticing sensations in your body, it moves your brain from an active like doing phase to an observing phase that is more restorative. It lets your immune system kick in. It lets all of these properties

• 43:09Mayim Bialik?

  that you need to actually respond to things. It lights all of that up. So, noticing would look literally some Something like typically you'd close your eyes. So you've got this breath going and you would just start noticing. Do you feel your feet on the ground? Do you feel your tush on the seat if you're sitting? Do you feel any other sensations in your body? And the goal is not to name them and say like, ooh, this hurts. It's just to say, what does it hurt? Oh, I'm feeling some tension in my hamstring. Right? Because my hamstring sometimes acts up. Right? You're just noticing these things. That is going to encourage again, your nervous system to start chilling out. Now you might be thinking, I don't have time to do this every time something bothers me.

• 43:50Mayim Bialik?

  A lot of this stuff becomes much more rapid, much more intuitive. And you can tap into it much easier with everybody's favorite word. Practice. This is not something I'm going to tell you once and you're going to do it. You don't get to try it and say it didn't work. That's like saying, I tried to read when I was four years old. It didn't work. I can't do it. This is a muscle you have to exercise. The more you do it, the more you have this kind of vocabulary in your head, the quicker it happens and you will be able to do that. You'll be able to do it quickly. I've seen Jonathan do it where he's really, really, you know, upset or intense about something. And he can just bring it down and it often will take him approximately 10 seconds, 15 seconds. I still need more time because I'm not as practiced at it. I sometimes need 10 minutes.

• 44:36Mayim Bialik?

  I need to say, I'm going to take a walk and think about that. Or I'm not happy with what's happening in my body right now. I'm going to take a break and I'll be back.

• 44:44Jonathan Cohen?

  And if someone is going to go do that, do not encourage them to maintain whatever conversation there is going on.

• 44:53Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, they'll be like, no, we're not done. Let's get over. You are in charge of your body and where it is. You're allowed to say, I understand you want to talk about this. I understand you're not done with this conversation. I'd like to return to it when I am more capable of doing so. That's an I statement.

• 45:08Jonathan Cohen?

  That's a great line. I'm going to add one more piece in here, which is if you still need help after all of this.

• 45:18Jonathan Cohen?

  Jumping and dead arms. Like, literally, literally shaking our bodies as though an animal shakes stuff off. It feels ridiculous. Lots of people are self-conscious. Dead arms is literally, are literally like, your arms, you don't use, you don't hold them at all. You drop them to their side, and then you start shaking your torso and body, and your arms just are flailing about.

• 45:44Mayim Bialik?

  Ah, jumping also.

• 45:46Jonathan Cohen?

  And then jumping also. Two-legged jumps if you're able to.

• 45:49Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, this is something in Kundalini that we do. This is one of the movements. It dispels energy, it moves it from the core of the body, kind of, out. It's this sort of notion, and yes, it's one of the things that we've observed about animals that do not experience PTSD for the most part. Animals, when they are scared, or if you've ever seen a deer being chased, or any, you know, prey being chased by a predator, once they are safe, they do this like weird, crazy shaky thing. And, yeah, it's thought to be dispelling kind of that energy. Also, sometimes we shake when we're scared. It's also a way of, kind of, we think, you know, kind of trying to dispel some of that energy.

• 46:29Jonathan Cohen?

  Archie will do that. If he's at the dog park, or crosses a path with a dog, and, like, a dog will, like, you know, scare him, or snap at him, and someone's aggressive, he'll, like, remove himself from the situation, and then there's a big shake that happens.

• 46:47Mayim Bialik?

  Someone on our team asks, "Does that happen after you give birth?" So, shivering, a shaking and a shivering is not, not surprising or uncommon after something like birth. Birth is very, you know, it's a very big trauma to the system, but also, I don't really want to call it necessarily a trauma. It's a big shock to the system, and that process has a lot of hormones. So there's also a lot of, a lot of that that can happen also during labor and also after birth.

• 47:22Jonathan Cohen?

  Another method, if you don't feel like you can jump safely, your body just, you know, has been out of practice. If you don't feel dead arms could work for you, literally just shaking your hands like this can be a starting point. And if you don't want to jump, you can be in a seated position or a standing position and just raise on your toes and let your heels drop really heavy. So even right now, I can do that just sitting down, allowing, raising my heel and letting it drop. In one of our Substack Live conversations that we had just for the Breaker community, I had a hot take and I want to revisit that hot take in light of this conversation about processing trauma

• 48:06Jonathan Cohen?

  and the idea of letting go, right? So we just talked about the idea of starting to become aware of the sensation as it starts to come up, if, as you experience resistance, some strategies to calm the system. But, you know, like so many people are in a state where they are carrying something that is impeding their life in a way that has some significant detriment, whether it be mood, energy, fear, inability to form relationships, it's impacting sleep. And we talk about all the different strategies we know about seeing a therapist, emotional processing,

• 48:49Jonathan Cohen?

  EMDR, medications, all of the... But, you know, from Michael's perspective, he says, "Let it go." How would you begin to even talk to someone who is down the path of processing trauma, evaluating it from every perspective, and reconcile that with simply letting it go, practicing letting it go and shifting your perspective? And then I'll get to what I thought my hot take was after that.

• 49:18Mayim Bialik?

  So I think some of this is the difference in what Michael talked about with kind of surrendering being an internal process versus still confronting the outside world. So I think there's kind of two things that are going on. I think when we talk about letting the world happen and not having resistance to it, I think that applies to, you know, interactions. When it comes to our own personal work... There is, of course, I think, an aspect of acceptance that's needed. Self-compassion, in many cases compassion for those who've hurt us, which is a very complicated process and one that should be done with the help, you know, I would say of a licensed, you know, a clinical therapist

• 50:02Mayim Bialik?

  or trauma worker. But I think the notion is, for many of us, the resistance we have in the outside world is because of the wounds that we carry in our inner world. And so, we can't disregard that there's work to be done, processing, healing, trauma work, cord-cutting, medication, whatever it is. Once that, you know, garbage or those thorns, right, get sorted out a bit more, we then have the ability to let more go because our inner world doesn't have all these places of personal resistance so that when we encounter it in the outside world,

• 50:45Mayim Bialik?

  we're freer to bring all of ourself to even harder situations.

• 50:50Jonathan Cohen?

  I like that. I like as we're processing it, then we have more ability to let go. Sometimes, there's so much of an overload to the system that we're clenching, we're holding on, we're reacting, and maybe we're caught in a cycle of reactivity, but starting to notice and bring our regulation more under control. We have the ability to start noticing. The other thing, you know, my hot take was, what if just having more positive experiences in the bank, however you define positive, things that you enjoy, appreciation for the things that you do have,

• 51:33Jonathan Cohen?

  having more moments of awe that we talked about and the challenge that we put forward to the community to start noticing those moments and sharing them with one another, having the appreciation, having more experiences of love, start to increase our ability to let go because we're starting to tip the scales and the balance.

• 51:53Mayim Bialik?

  It's beautiful. And I think that that really is also the notion of sort of like, it is, it's tipping the balance. And, I don't know, stacking the chips in our favor, right? For more optimal functioning and reacting.

• 52:06Jonathan Cohen?

  It also creates momentum, right? Like, we know that momentum carries us. If we're in a state where we're attacking all the time, then we're more prone to continue that state versus, as we practice calming, that starts to wire us. We start to be able to know that, oh, when I start to feel this thing, these are the activities I do, and it becomes second nature.

• 52:29Mayim Bialik?

  I feel really lucky that we got to speak to Michael Singer again. And, yeah, there was a lot, a lot of new stuff here, and a lot of really good reminders. And I'm in such a different place than I was when we first spoke to him. So I especially appreciated, I don't know, hearing some of the conversation about, especially about consciousness and divinity, really with a new lens. So really, really thrilled that we got to speak with him again.

• 52:55Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah, it was really a pleasure. I was so excited. I think for the Breaker community on Substack, I would love for you to dive in to some of the science and the mysticism of how we do not see with our eyes. How there is a science that explains the fundamental nature of consciousness and the fact that all the particles, atoms, neutrons, are really just forming themselves and playing to create shapes. It's, it's a fascinating look that he sort of touched on, but explained that he wasn't the expert on. Maybe you can talk about the neuroscience on Substack for us.

• 53:37Mayim Bialik?

  I would love to do that. I mean, he did a pretty good job. But I would love to talk more also about what it really means to say that what we're seeing is actually not reality. I'd love to get into that as well. So we'll do that over on Substack. We hope people will join us over there. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.

• 54:07Mayim Bialik?

  Do you remember the story of what happened when I got into a car that was not mine?

• 54:14Jonathan Cohen?

  What?

• 54:16Mayim Bialik?

  I went back in the, back in the old days when you used to go to an office to go to therapy before everything was on Zoom. My therapist had an office at the corner of Sawtelle and Santa Monica. It's a great intersection in Los Angeles. There's a little Japanese part of town there, great restaurants, great sushi. It's a wonderful part of town. Happened to be where her office was. I feel like I've told the story again, but we're just gonna go for it because it's cray cray. Cray cray.

• 54:45Jonathan Cohen?

  We, I've been a part of almost every single episode we've done. I think I've missed three or four. This story has never been told.

• 54:51Mayim Bialik?

  So I come out of therapy. I have done the things that I do in therapy. I'm talking and I go to get in my car. And at this time, um, I had a, whatever, I had an Audi. It was an A4. So it's a car that a lot of people definitely have, but whatever. So I go to get in my car. I get in my car, you know, I unlock it, right? This is an important part of the story. I unlock it, I get in my car. I sit down and the first thing I notice is like, it doesn't, something smells different. It didn't smell bad, but I was like, that's a weird smell. That's not a smell that I'm familiar with. The next thing that happens is I look down and on the passenger seat, there's a book. And it's not important what the book was.

• 55:34Mayim Bialik?

  It, it is a book that I know of, but I can't remember what it was at this time. And the first thing I thought was, who put this book in my car? The second thing I thought was, did someone break into my car and leave a book on the passenger seat because I'm like supposed to read this book? And the third thing I thought was, this is fucking not my car. I had let myself into another Audi that was parked right next to where my Audi was parked. The smell I was smelling was the smell of another human being who owned that car. Like, I, the second I got in the car, my unconscious was like, "This is not your car. It doesn't smell like you.

• 56:18Mayim Bialik?

  It's not your things." But that's how long it took my brain to say, "Oh, no one broke into your car and left a book. This is someone else's vehicle." And then I got really freaked out because the next thing I thought was, "I'm gonna be arrested for sitting in someone else's car." Like, the things that went through my head, it's something you think you'd know how to handle. You'd be like, "This isn't my car. I'm not gonna get into it. Nope, I was in the seat, putting on my seatbelt, ready to start it." So I was panicked because like, "I'm gonna get arrested." And I'm like, "I'll be in prison and no one will bail me out." That's where it went. I got the fuck out of that car. And then I noticed that my car is right next to it. Then I unchirped it. It was probably unlocked.

• 57:02Mayim Bialik?

  So apparently, this had been happening, that some sensors could open more than one car. I entered a totally different portal. What if I took my house key? I could be someone else's wife. I could have different children, just walk into their house. Maybe I eat meat.

• 57:18Jonathan Cohen?

  You know, now that you tell this story, I do think you've told it before. I don't remember what episode. Because I told also the story of how when we were in like, second grade, we had a garage clicker that opened the garage across the street from how we pulled out of the school.

• 57:43Mayim Bialik?

  I would walk all the way around Toronto and be like, "Where else can I go? What can I get into? Like, where am I gonna go?"

• 57:49Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, we were horrible children. And someone, one day, we were pulling out of the driveway and we were waiting to turn left. So there was, and the person of the house walked out of the house. And, and the garage, they had opened the garage. And then they walked out of the house and we closed the garage. And they're like, watching the garage, they're like, "What?"

• 58:07Mayim Bialik?

  You could've closed it on them.

• 58:09Jonathan Cohen?

  And then they go back in the house. And they open the garage and then we closed it again.

• 58:12Mayim Bialik?

  Oh no, that would be my full-time job. I'd be like, "Mom, I can't go to second grade 'cause I need to sit here and do this all day."

• 58:18Jonathan Cohen?

  If someone has heard this and is a longtime listener and knows what episode it's from, tag us, maybe you'll win a prize. We'll send you an MBB hat.