September 5, 2024

The Untethered Soul summary

The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

“Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can.”

The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer explores the nature of self and consciousness, by walking you through your relationship with your thoughts and emotions, helping you uncover the source and fluctuations of your inner energy.

It then delves into what you can do to free yourself from the habitual thoughts, emotions, and energy patterns that limit your consciousness. Finally, with perfect clarity, this book opens the door to a life lived in the freedom of your innermost being.

You should by all means read this book for yourself. Below, I have written out my book notes, but I couldn’t cover hundreds of pages in just a couple of bullet points. That is why I highly encourage you to create your notes whilst going through the book, and for the time being use mine as a guide on what this book is about.

For more books check out Best Self-Improvement Books or Best Classic Books, and for a full self-improvement guide, you can also take a look at my Roadmap to Overman.

Book Notes

There is a voice always talking in your head, that voice isn’t you, it’s your roommate and most of the time he is wrong, don’t listen to him. Be aware that he isn’t you but that he only exists and don’t put effort into listening to him.
When it comes to the question of who are you, it’s simple:
You are you, the consciousness sitting in the high chair watching through 3 layers:
1. Thoughts
2. Emotions
3. Objects

Make sure that you are always aware that you are aware. You are the subject being aware of an object, once awareness itself becomes the object you will reach the best state of being. It’s like lucid dreams. They are different from regular dreams because you are aware of dreaming. Same way be aware that you are aware (Don’t just immerse in the TV show but rather be aware that you are sitting in a chair and there is a TV show on a TV in front of you)
There’s an infinite energy source flowing inside of you, and it doesn’t rely on calories. It opens when your heart is open and it is purely in our control if we open it or not. Love is the easiest way to open your heart so make sure that you never close up if you want to live a joyful and enthusiastic life. What blocks the heart are memories that didn’t pass through like other experiences but they got stuck, and now they are stored. They are stored in our mind and when we remember them they pass through our heart and that’s when feelings and emotions come to light. This can happen both for good and bad experiences.
Begin by seeing the tendency to protect and defend yourself. Soon you will realize how much harder it is to stay closed. Keep just being aware of that part of your psyche and let it go. Every day you will encounter situations where you will want to protect yourself, but just don’t and rather let those experiences go through you like any other, don’t close up and hold onto them.
Become centered, don’t let your consciousness and awareness follow thoughts. If you aren’t centered, your consciousness is just following whatever catches its attention. If you want to be free, anytime you feel fight inside you just relax and let it pass by.
Fear is just an object like any other, so like with everything, instead of holding onto it and protecting yourself from it, you can notice it, be aware of it, and let it go.
Life is unpredictable and trying to control it will cause you many problems.
When your stuff gets hit let go right then because it will only be harder later.
Stop protecting yourself from the problem but rather solve the problem. Don’t wrap your hand, that has a thorn in it, with a block of concrete but rather take out the thorn.
Always remember that you are not those disturbances, they have nothing to do with you, you are the one who notices them.
Once you learn that it’s okay to experience inner disturbances and that they can no longer disturb your seat of conciseness, you will be free.
Life is just suffering because we have yet to live it differently. Just like the fish doesn’t notice water, as it is all it knows, so can’t we notice life without suffering because all we do is try to avoid pain, suffering and discomfort, which in return makes our life full of pain, suffering and discomfort. Fear of these things also causes them. You only notice that you are suffering when it gets worse than usual.
First, acknowledge that your psyche is not ok, and then realize that you don’t have to protect it. Just like pain in the body is not bad, but a mechanism with which your body communicates to you, the same way fear (anxiety, insecurity, jealousy, self-consciousness) isn’t bad. No need to fight it or protect from it. Remember the example of the thorn, don’t protect yourself from the problem, but solve the problem.
Understand that mind is like a computer, an analytical machine that can do great things but you use it to find solutions to the natural unfolding of life, which is impossible. The solution is to be quiet. Not the mind to be quiet, but you. You are not the mind, you are the conciseness aware of the mind that is processing thoughts. Once you stop asking your mind to do these unnecessary things you will be free.
Set up trigger points in your daily life activities (seat belt, opening a door, …) to stay aware of your awareness, to stay centered and eventually you will become centered all of the time.
The price of freedom is being able to experience pain and displeasure.
Remember one thing, pain and fear are just objects that pass through you, if you don’t touch them, they won’t touch you. So just let them exist like any other object (tree), notice them, and let them go.
If you want to release the pain, open the heart, relax and go deep to the place of tension, you will want to pull out but don’t, rather go deeper, and once you are deep enough just relax and let the pain go. See the pain as energy that is flowing through and needs to be released.
The moment you are not afraid of pain, you will be able to face all of life’s situations without fear.
Enlightenment – story about the walls, the house and the light. Don’t focus on enlightenment but rather on taking down those walls and enlightenment will come on its own.
Idea of the cage and having to accept to cross the boundaries to be free. We stay in our comfort zone (cage) because it’s controllable, known and finite but we have to get out of that cage if we want to be free and go and experience the infinite. A cage that’s decorated with nice experiences is still a cage. You are constantly trying to make sure not to hit the edges of the cage when you should just break through. Same with the example of a thorn. Don’t try to build a perfect defense so you don’t touch the edge\thorn but rather get rid of that edge\thorn. Push through into the uncomfortable, go beyond your edges to the infinite and soon there will be nothing that can bother you since you have no edges and even if you come across one, you will smile as it is showing you which way the freedom is.
Once you take down this model of how to live and “who you are” you will realize that life still keeps happening but only this time you are aware of these moments happening without trying to control them
Personality comes from and is built by the need to protect ourselves.
What it means to live spiritually is to not participate in this struggle, it means that events that happen in the moment belong to the moment, they do not belong to you. You must stop defining yourself in relationship to these moments, and just let them go.
Use the disturbances to break up your model and set you free.
Do you want to be happy, without any pre-conditions? If yes make sure you don’t break your vow and you will be. Affirm that all you want is to be at peace and appreciate life. You don’t want your happiness to be conditional. And remember, always stay open, always keep your heart open.
Death is the best teacher. If you had one week to live, how would you spend that last week, what would you change? Would you be worried about all the little disturbances? Whatever your answer is, live like that, don’t wait for death to be right around the corner to live fully.
If you live life fully you won’t have any last wishes, you will have already lived them all.
Story of the Tao and the blind man with the cane. He doesn’t know where to go but he uses the cane so he knows where not to go. Same way with the Tao, you can’t know where is that perfect middle, but you can stay on that path by not going to either of the edges/extremes.
The spirit, unlike the physical self and the psyche, always feels good. But your personal self can’t get in touch with the spirit. That’s why you have to let go of the physical and psyche, and only then will you get in contact with the spirit.
God only knows love. Comparison of the sun and God, just how the sun shines on you even if you don’t want it to, the same way God loves you even if you don’t accept him.