The Untethered Soul

Ever since I bought an iPad two years ago, I tend to download books I’d like to read. But sometimes, bookstore browsing, in an actual physical bookstore, yields wonderful treasures.   The Untethered Soul: the journey beyond yourself by Michael A. Singer is one of the treasures.

I found it in the self-help/New Age section. I’d never heard of it, but because I liked the title and the cover, I plucked it off the shelf and opened it at random. The page was the opening for chapter 8, entitled let go now or fall. And then I read this passage:

“The exploration of Self is inextricably interwoven with the unfolding of one’s life. The natural ups and downs of life can either generate personal growth or create personal fears. Which of these dominates is completely dependent upon how we view change. Change can be viewed as either exciting or frightening, but regardless of how we view it, we must all face the fact that change is the very nature of life. If you have a lot of fear, you won’t like change. You’ll try to create a world around you that is predictable, controllable, and definable. You’ll try to create a world that doesn’t stimulate your fears. Fear doesn’t want to feel itself; it’s actually afraid of itself. So you utilize the mind is an attempt to manipulate life for the purpose of not feeling fear.”

Into my pile of purchases it went. I came home and read most of the book. Singer’s premise is compelling and he sets it out in the first chapter: the voice inside your head. We all hear this little voice. It talks to us when we’re in traffic and some driver pulls out in front of us. What’s that jerk doing? Where’d he learn to drive? It talks to us when we’re trying to fall asleep. Did I lower the garage door? Is the cat inside? Did I lock the front door?  It talks to us when we meet someone new. Am I dressed okay? Does my hair look weird?

“If you spend some time observing this mental voice,” Singer writes, “the first thing you’ll notice is that it never shuts up. When left to its own, it just talks.”  Why?  Singer contends that sometimes the voice talk for the same reason that a teakettle whistles: a buildup of energy that needs to be released.  The voice becomes very active when you’re angry at someone, feeling nervous, anxious, fearful, unhappy etc.  “The voice talks because you’re not okay inside, and talking release energy.” In essence, the voice is narrating the world for you and “the narration makes you feel more comfortable with the world around you.”

Singer talks a lot about energy centers – chakras, in particular the heart chakra. Whenever we feel slighted or argue with someone or feel down in the dumps about something, that chakra closes up. And when that chakra shuts down, energy becomes blocked, “When you close your heart or close your mind, you hide in the darkness within you. There is no light. There is no energy. There is nothing flowing.” In ancient Chinese medicine, this energy is called Chi. In Yoga, it’s called Shakti. In the modern world, we call it Spirit.

But regardless of what we call it, this energy “is what you’re experiencing when loves rushes up into your heart. This is what you’re experiencing when you’re enthused by something and all this high energy comes up inside you.”

To keep this energy flowing, keep your heart open, Singer writes. You do this, partly through your perceptions. Let’s go back to the traffic example. You’re in your car and someone pulls in front of you, cutting you off. That driver’s act creates a disturbance within you that creates resistance to the experience, and energy becomes blocked. Instead of resisting the experience, let it pass through you. He cut you off, so what?

Perception is “meant to take things in, allow you to experience them, and then let them pass through so that you’re fully present in the next moment. What it means to live life is to experience the moment that is passing through you, and then experience the next moment and then the next.”

Every chapter of this book is filled with gems. In a chapter called The Path of Unconditional Happiness, Singer sums is up beautifully: “You don’t want your happiness to be conditional upon the behavior of other people. It‘s bad enough that your happiness is conditional upon your own behavior. When you start making it conditional upon other people’s behavior, you’re in serious trouble.”

Resistance, he writes, is a waste of energy. Allow each moment of every day to pass through you.