The Untethered Soul
by Michael Singer

Spirituality
Ashto = 7/10
Jonesy = 6/10

The Untethered Soul – by Michael A Singer

Today, we’re getting spiritual. The Untethered Soul talks about becoming free from limitations, soaring beyond your boundaries, finding inner peace and freedom, and learning to navigate your thoughts and emotions. We were perhaps a little out of our comfort zone on this one, but keep your heart open and don’t close over on us – the path to unconditional happiness is here.

‘The Journey Beyond Yourself’

The Untethered Soul (dot point) Summary

Part 1: Awakening Consciousness

Chapter 1 – The voice inside your head

“Shoot, I can’t even remember her name. What is her name? Darn, here she comes. What is it? Sally… Sue? She just told me yesterday, what’s the matter with me, this will be embarrassing”

If you’re smart you will take a step back and examine this voice and get to know it better
Step back and watch it converse
It is a shocking realization when you first notice your mind is constantly talking
If you are hearing it talk, it is obviously not you. You are the one who hears the voice, you are the one who notices who is talking
The real cause of problems is not life itself. It’s the commotion the mind makes about life that causes problems
If you have a build-up of nervous, fearful, or desire based energies inside, the voice becomes extremely active
It’s narrating the world for you
The narration makes you more comfortable about the world around you.
Basically, you re-create the outside world inside yourself, and then you live in your mind
You will notice that the mind talks all of the time because you gave it a job to do
True growth is transcending the part of you that is not OK and needs protection
This is done by constantly remembering you are the one inside noticing the talking

Chapter 2 – Your inner roommate

The only way to find peace and contentment is to realize the ‘I’ that is always talking will never be content
If your feeling jealous, rather than seeing how you can protect yourself. Look inside and see what part of you is having a problem with jealousy
You will never be OK solving problems outside, there is always the next problem
You will not be able to solve anything outside until you own how the situation affects you inside
Right on cue, there’s your roommate
It just talks and talks and talks, you generally don’t notice it because you don’t take a step back from it
You’re so close you don’t realize you’re hypnotized into listening to it
Realize you’re locked in with a maniac
If you haven’t reached this awareness, start to watch. Spend a day watching what your inner roommate does. You have to watch this if you want to be free from it
It pulls you out of whatever you are enjoying doing, no matter how enjoyable and suddenly your paying attention to what it has to say
If you’re going to a wedding it may say “Maybe this is not the right person. I’m really getting nervous about this, what should I do?” If someone outside of you said that, you would ignore them. But you feel you owe this voice an answer

Chapter 3 – Who are you?

My label is Sally Smith, born in 1965 in New York, I live in queens etc

That is a fascinating story, but I didn’t ask you what has happened since you were born, I asked you “who are you?”
” I am the one who sees. From back in here somewhere, I look out, and I am aware of the events, thoughts, and emotions that pass before me”. If you go deep, that’s where you live

Chapter 4 – The Lucid Self

Hey, look! I’m dreaming that I am flying. I’m going to fly over there
It’s incredible
This distinction is exactly the difference between being aware that you are aware in your daily life, and not being aware that you are aware
When you are in this lost state, you get so totally absorbed in the object of thoughts, feelings, and the senses you forget the subject.
When you watch TV you are quite absorbed, as visually and auditorily your senses are feeling caught up, in the engaging film.
You may go 2 hours without any awareness of yourself
Synchronization of sound and sight is very important if your consciousness is to become absorbed in the movie
What will happen if in the movie you could experience smell and taste? You surely would get caught up in that one, the sensory input has doubled, the number of objects drawing on your consciousness has doubled
When all five senses are working together, you don’t stand a chance. You’ll be completely absorbed in the experience
Once the movie gets control of your thoughts, its over. You are completely lost. How will you get out?
You have become an awakened being when you are totally immersed in the show and forgot who you were. Someone shook you and woke up
You can pull back and experience everything

Part 2 Experiencing Energy

Ch5 Infinite energy

If you look at the times when you are in love, or excited and inspired about something, you were filled with energy you didn’t want to eat
This isn’t based on caloric energy
When you break up with a girl and cant get out of bed, then says hey come over I am naked, how quick can you do it?
When you are open you feel this energy, it flows through
The Chinese call it Chi energy

Ch9 Removing your inner thorn

The choice is to avoid the thorn, or decide that it is so disturbing you need to take it out
When your lonely, you find yourself pondering what to do about your loneliness. What is it that you can say or do in order to not feel lonely?
This question isn’t asking how to get rid of the problem but asking how to protect yourself from feeling it
You free yourself from finding yourself, you are the one who notices these things
Just notice who is noticing

Ch10 Stealing freedom for your soul

In the mental and emotional energies, constant suffering to one degree or any other. This state of affairs is so prevalent that you don’t see it, just as a fish doesn’t see water
You have told your mind, I want everyone to like me, etc
Imagine what life would be like without those neurotic thoughts inside you
Stop expecting the mind to fix what’s wrong with you. It is simply a computer tool, can be used to ponder great thoughts, solve problems and serve humanity. But you in your lost state told it to spend its time to conjure up outer solutions for your very personal inner problems

Ch11 pain, the price of freedom

True spiritual growth is deep transformation coming to peace with pain
If you are doing something to avoid pain, then pain is running your life
All of your thoughts are affected by your fears
Deep inside there is pain that hasn’t processed, attempt to avoid pain has created layers of sensitivities
You could live in the world completely free. You can experience your life to see what it’s like to be on a planet that is spinning around in the middle of nowhere until you die
If someone calls you a cunt. You may think, \I don’t have to put up with this and walk away and never talk to them again
You do this because you cant handle the pain, your psychology will build a whole structure around it and have closed energy. You will rationalize that your right and why they are wrong
You need to avoid the tendency to avoid pain
This is the core of spiritual work
You will begin to have beautiful experiences rise up and realize there is an ocean of love behind this fear and pain

Ch13 Far Far Beyond

All attempts to stay within comfort zone keep you finite
Going beyond always means letting go of the effort to keep things within your defined limits
You can devote life to staying in your comfort zone, or you can work on your freedom
When you awake spiritually, you realize you are caged, you wake up and realize you can hardly move in there. Constantly hitting the limits of the comfort zone
The cage is created by your fear of discomfort
Go beyond, there should be no cage, your soul is infinite, free to expand and experience all of life

Part 5 Living life

Make the decision, do you want to be happy or want to be unhappy?
Some people don’t give themselves the choice because they think it’s out of their control
“Of course I want to be happy but my wife left me”
Things will happen you will feel the tendency to close. You have the choice to let it go

Ch 17 contemplating death

-While someone could tell you that you are not your body, death shows you