Get to know the author
Michael Singer is a bestselling author, meditation center founder, and former software programmer. He has written two New York Times bestsellers, The Untethered Soul (2007) and The Surrender Experiment (2015). His deep inner awakening experienced in 1971 inspired him to focus on meditation and yoga over economics. He eventually founded Temple of the Universe in 1975, a now long-established yoga and meditation center. People of any religion or set of beliefs can come together to experience inner peace. Along with this Singer has dedicated four decades to spiritual teaching. He also makes major contributions to areas of business, education, healthcare, and environmental protection.
Summary
The Untethered Soul aims to help readers on the journey to expand the boundaries set for themselves, free themselves from limitations, and achieve inner peace, energy, and happiness. Singer encourages you to focus less on the world around you and more on changing your relationship with your inner space. Once you have untethered yourself from your mind and soul, you can deal with all the challenges that life throws at you. Instead of blocking or fighting aspects of life, let yourself harness inner energy and untie yourself from your ego.
We all have an inner voice we assume is who we are. Singer challenges this and explains that we are separate from our minds. Freeing ourselves from our minds is what will make us happy. The book is 285 pages long, covering 19 chapters with 5 different sections to it. Awakening consciousness, experiencing energy, freeing yourself, going beyond, and living life.
Opinion & review
Being that this book was filled with ways to take a journey beyond yourself, it is a very deep piece that invoked a lot of thinking and reflecting. There are three important lessons that I took from this book.
1) Your thoughts don’t define you as they are outputs of what your consciousness perceives.
We all have an inner voice that is talking to us 24/7/365. This inner monologue navigates us through the world and rarely stops talking. Being that your thoughts do not define who you are, Singer addresses the idea to view this voice as another person. In order to do this, you must distinguish the difference between yourself and your personal self.
Your self is the pure consciousness that keeps flowing while the personal self is the identity you form. This is based on how your inner voice perceives the stream of consciousness. Once you are able to clearly see the difference between these two parts of your mind, you can start to detach yourself from overwhelming thoughts.
For example, if you often feel sad, you might start thinking that you’re a sad person in general. But in reality, these thoughts are nothing more than objects flowing through you. Your inner voice just happens to be picking them up, which goes along with learning to unblock your inner energy.
2) We all have inner energy flowing within us that can either get blocked or passed through us.
This intangible inner energy that we all hold can unlock the power of your mind. If you have ever had a surge of energy that was unexplainable, this could be an example of you feeling your inner energy. Regardless of whether you have felt it or not, we all hold the capacity to feel our inner energy.
For example, have you ever felt like you had no motivation to get out of bed in the morning and start your day? But then later throughout the day, your energy starts kicking in and you may feel so energetic and excited?
Some call it chakra, chi, or shakti, which is the inner energy we have that should not be undervalued. It can provide empowerment to us, but it could also be harmful when we block the energy and do not allow it to pass through us.
This usually occurs when there is a thought or feeling that you just cannot let go of. For example, instead of releasing the feeling of sadness or anger when there is a minor inconvenience in the way, some let this feeling fester up and turn into rage. This stems because there may be some unresolved feelings that get triggered due to this current event being a reminder of it. It’s important to learn to release negative thoughts and pass them through, so they won’t block your inner flow of energy.
3) Death gives life meaning and it is important to reflect on it
Did you know that humans are the only beings that know in advance that they will one day die? Without this knowingness, we would probably live our lives really carelessly. Though death may be a big fear to people, it is what gives life meaning.
Being able to know that we are all one day going to die, we can realize what truly matters to us in life and focus on that. Whatever it is you want to do in your life, if it’s worth doing before you die, chances are it’s very much worth doing right now. Why wait?
