The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
by Michael A. Singer New Harbinger, 2007 This is a deeply insightful book, recommended for anyone interested in understanding the nature of the self and spiritual reality. Refreshingly direct and lucid in his exploration of the subject, Singer avoids being trite or academic. He takes us on a personal journey into the major questions of life — who am I? what is my purpose in life? what is spiritual reality? — using plain language and vivid examples.
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In Part 1: Awakening Consciousness, Singer encourages us to pay attention to the "voice inside your head", noticing how its ongoing chatter is obsessed with protecting our reputation, our territory, and other aspects of “our stuff”, as Singer calls it. If we identify with this voice and accept it as our true self, we descend into a stressful, self-absorbed existence. The result is that we do not perceive what is really happening around us in the present moment.
“To attain true inner freedom,” notes Singer, “you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them”. (p. 16). From this premise, he leads us into a search for the true nature of the self, encouraging us to examine the sense impressions, memories, thoughts, and emotions that form our sense of identity, and then to perceive that we have an innate awareness of something larger. Once we become aware of our association with a higher consciousness, we face a series of tests. Do we really want to explore the true self, or are we content to ride the ups and downs of the ego forever?
Part 2: Experiencing Energy is about recognizing our tendency to close our heart and mind in the face of adversity, blocking the experience. Once we understand that habit, we can learn how to avoid shutting down and remain open.
“If you really want to stay open, pay attention when you feel love and enthusiasm. Then ask yourself why you can’t feel this all the time. Why does it have to go away? The answer is obvious: it only goes away if you choose to close.” (p. 46). The rest of this part is devoted to understanding how to remain open to the energy of life.
“If you really want to stay open, pay attention when you feel love and enthusiasm. Then ask yourself why you can’t feel this all the time. Why does it have to go away? The answer is obvious: it only goes away if you choose to close.” (p. 46). The rest of this part is devoted to understanding how to remain open to the energy of life.
Part 3: Freeing Yourself deals with the process of facing our fears.
“As you grow spiritually, you will realize that your attempts to protect your self from your problems actually creates more problems.” (p. 72). If we can identify with a seat of consciousness above and beyond the ego, we are not threatened if the mind or emotions are assaulted by real life experiences. Instead of burdening our mind with the responsibility for fixing everything in the world, Singer advises us to accept the world as it is. “…everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything.” (p. 95).
“As you grow spiritually, you will realize that your attempts to protect your self from your problems actually creates more problems.” (p. 72). If we can identify with a seat of consciousness above and beyond the ego, we are not threatened if the mind or emotions are assaulted by real life experiences. Instead of burdening our mind with the responsibility for fixing everything in the world, Singer advises us to accept the world as it is. “…everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything.” (p. 95).
Part 4: Going Beyond focuses on recognizing that our ego’s comfort zone is not a fortress, but a prison. “Spirituality is the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes.” (p. 124). If we follow this path, we experience the gradual evaporation of our mental models and the ego itself. This can be a scary and painful process, according to Singer, but he does his best to prepare us for the psychological changes.
In Part 5: Living Life, we are in a new reality, perceiving the world as it is, without the ego’s filter, and accepting it. In this final part of the book, Singer explains how we can achieve a state of unconditional happiness by remaining conscious and open to our experiences, no matter what happens, and no matter how difficult it may be sometimes. Finally, he examines the wisdom of nonresistance and explores what we can learn about life by contemplating death.
Parts 4 and 5 of the book are rhetorically lighter than the first three parts, with fewer flashes of illumination. This is probably because the real work of wresting with the ego and our illusions about life is covered in the early parts, and this is where Singer’s skills are most evident. The last two parts deal with a state of higher consciousness that is unfamiliar to most of us. Singer’s discussion, here, reads like a restatement of truths we have read in other spiritual writing, which may be unavoidable if we accept the essential unity and simplicity of spiritual truth.
The Untethered Soul was one of the first publications in a series from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (www.noetic.org), an organization based in northern California that is devoted to exploring the relationship between the “inner cosmos” of the mind and the “outer cosmos” of the physical world.
David Wegenast