The Untethered Soul

“You re-create the world within your mind because you can control your mind whereas you can’t control the world. That is why you mentally talk about it. If you can’t get the world the way you like it, you internally verbalize it, judge it, complain about it, and then decide what to do about it. This makes you feel more empowered. When your body experiences cold, there may be nothing you can do to affect the temperature. But when your mind verbalizes, ‘It’s cold!’ you can say, ‘We’re almost home, just a few more minutes.’ Now you feel better. In the thought world there’s always something you can do to control the experience.”

Constantly meddling with our internal conversations and energy flows is about control. Feeling that we have control over our circumstances is comfortable; feeling that we are powerless to change anything can be frightening and might induce panic. Singer wants to take his audience to a place where they are willing to let go of the idea that they need to control not just their own lives but everything about their environment. Once they can do this, then it is possible to sit with reality, which is that we do not need to identify with our daily ordeals that come and go regardless of how much control we think we have over them. We will become comfortable just noticing the world outside and in our minds.

“Once you take that seat of consciousness, you can get rid of these personal disturbances. You start by watching. Just be aware that you are aware of what is going on in there. It’s easy. What you’ll notice is that you’re watching a human being’s personality with all its strengths and weaknesses.”

The instruction to watch your thoughts and your environment come and go from a place of pure awareness is a proven method for accessing a layer of consciousness that most of us are not used to experiencing very often. With practice, we can spend more time in the peace of centered awareness and less time caught up with stress.

“You will eventually catch on that you have to distance yourself from your psyche. You do this by setting the direction of your life when you’re clear and not letting the wavering mind deter you. Your will is stronger than the habit of listening to that voice. There is nothing you can’t do. Your will is supreme over all of this.”

Singer often expresses ideas in absolutes. This passage is an example of that tendency. Singer understands that we all have bad days and that most of us are not always going to be always living joyfully from the seat of conscious awareness, so he recommends centering ourselves during the good times to be better prepared for the bad times. Eventually, we will be able to stay centered even throughout the bad times, but this takes years of practice and requires the belief that it is possible to undo the bad habit of identifying with chaos and learn the new habit of letting things go.

“So now if I ask you, ‘Who are you?’ you answer, ‘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 very deep, that is where you live. You live in the seat of consciousness. A true spiritual being lives there, without effort and without intent.”

At your core, at your most basic, you are a mysterious spiritual being. We can spend time with our spiritual core through practices like meditation, which can eventually become a habit, until we are able to spend most of our waking life centered in consciousness.

“You are behind everything, just watching. That is your true home. Take everything else away and you’re still there, aware that everything is gone. But take the center of awareness away, and there is nothing. That center is the seat of Self. From that seat, you are aware that there are thoughts, emotions, and a world coming in through your senses. But now you are aware that you’re aware. That is the seat of the Buddhist Self, the Hindu Atman, and the Judeo‐Christian Soul. The great mystery begins once you take that seat deep within.”

Singer indicates that his discussion of consciousness, the Self, and the spiritual core is compatible with prominent world religions. It is not necessary to compromise one’s existing religious belief to heed Singer’s message. This excerpt indicates that Singer wants his audience to think about the transcendental ramifications of confronting one’s own Self; if the Self is the same thing as the Hindu Atman or the Judeo-Christian Soul, both concepts that transcend bodily death, then Singer may intend the Self of The Untethered Soul to be similarly indestructible.

“The key is that consciousness has the ability to concentrate on different things. The subject, consciousness, has the ability to selectively focus awareness on specific objects. If you step back, you will clearly see that objects are constantly passing before you at all three levels: mental, emotional, and physical. When you’re not centered, your consciousness invariably gets attracted toward one or more of those objects and focuses on them. If it concentrates enough, your sense of awareness loses itself in the object. It is no longer aware that it is aware of the object; it just becomes object-consciousness.”

Engaging with life and focusing on objects in our minds or in the environment is not the enemy: Singer does not advocate that all readers commit to a total retreat from our daily obligations and live like monks. He simply wants readers to understand that pulling back from the objects of our experience, especially the ones that cause stress and pain, is an achievable goal. We are more likely to get caught up in this pain if we are not in the habit of occasionally stepping back and noticing that all experiences are coming and going as they always will from the point of view of pure awareness.

“When you contemplate the nature of Self, you are meditating. That is why meditation is the highest state. It is the return to the root of your being, the simple awareness of being aware. Once you become conscious of the consciousness itself, you attain a totally different state. You are now aware of who you are. You have become an awakened being. It’s really just the most natural thing in the world. Here I am. Here I always was.”

Rather than proposing meditation as a special activity in which one might engage for 10 minutes every morning, Singer suggests that living one’s entire life with the mind of meditation is a desirable and achievable goal. Newcomers to mindful meditation might occasionally glimpse what Singer is referring to here after several months or years of regular practice, but building the habit of spending most of one’s waking hours in that “totally different state” is a lifelong practice.

“Under normal circumstances, our state of openness is left to psychological factors. Basically, we are programmed to open or close based upon our past experiences. Impressions from the past are still inside of us, and they get stimulated by different events. If they were negative impressions, we tend to close. If they were positive impressions, we tend to open […]. You should never leave something as important as your energy flow to chance.”

It is unclear whether Singer leaves room in his worldview for significant mental health struggles that render some of the advice in his book unusable for segments of the population who struggle with these issues. The all-or-nothing approach of his mindfulness practice assumes that the ability to open and close one’s emotions, while difficult, is within an individual’s control. The implication for an individual’s inability to accomplish this is that one is leaving their “energy flow to chance,” a narrative with potentially negative consequences for those who try to put his teachings into practice and fail.

“The foundations of spiritual growth and personal awakening are very much strengthened by the findings of Western science. Science has shown us how an underlying energy field forms into atoms, which then bind together into molecules, and ultimately manifest into the entire physical universe. The same is true inside of us. All that goes on inside also has its foundation in an underlying energy field. It is the movements in this field that create our mental and emotional patterns as well as our inner drives, urges, and instinctual reactions.”

For those who prefer a quantitative approach to the practices of meditation and spiritual growth, Singer bolsters his teachings with the discoveries of Western science, making the connection that just as tiny atoms build up into the vast expanse of the known universe, the energy inside each of us flows to make everything we experience.

“Real spiritual growth happens when there is only one of you inside. There’s not a part that’s scared and another part that’s protecting the part that’s scared. All parts are unified. Because there is no part of you that you’re not willing to see, the mind is no longer divided into the conscious and subconscious. Everything you see inside is just something you see inside. It’s not you; it’s what you see.”

This passage indicates that the traditional separation of our psychological existence into its conscious and subconscious components can be overcome once we have mastered our minds. The subconscious exists not as a necessary component of our psychological structure, but because we prefer not to think about or relive the majority of the memories and other impressions stored inside of us. Once we open ourselves to everything and learn to witness our experiences rather than identify with them, the protective role of the subconscious disappears.

“Your opportunities to grow are endless. It’s always there in front of you. Just commit to not letting the energy draw you in. When you feel the pull, like somebody pulling on your heart, you just let go. You fall behind it. You simply relax and release. And no matter how many times you’re pulled, that’s how many times you relax and release. Because the tendency to get drawn in is constant, the willingness to let go and fall behind has to be constant.”

This passage anticipates failure in our efforts to reach a place of centered awareness and urges us to pick ourselves up and try again every time. Singer states that, in our early attempts at mindfulness, our minds will inevitably wander, and we will lose the purpose of the practice. This is completely acceptable; the point of the practice is to notice this is happening and once again let the content of the mind become an object we are merely witnessing before it fades away. This constant practice of getting caught up in stimulus and stepping back again is how we improve our ability to stay in pure awareness in the long run.

“That which is blocked and buried within you forms the root of fear. Fear is caused by blockages in the flow of your energy. When your energy is blocked, it can’t come up and feed your heart. Therefore, your heart becomes weak. When your heart is weak it becomes susceptible to lower vibrations, and one of the lowest of all vibrations is fear. Fear is the cause of every problem. It’s the root of all prejudices and the negative emotions of anger, jealousy, and possessiveness. If you had no fear, you could be perfectly happy living in this world. Nothing would bother you. You’d be willing to face everything and everyone because you wouldn’t have fear inside of you that could cause you disturbance.”

“Fear is the cause of every problem” is one of Singer’s key claims in the book. The importance of getting this fear under control is a prerequisite to living a happy, peaceful life. Singer does distinguish inner fear—which he believes we should eradicate—from fear that “causes you to physically run away” (60), implying that the natural fear response to an external source of imminent danger is not the harmful kind of fear.

“To free yourself of your inner thorns, you simply stop playing with them. The more you touch them, the more you irritate them. Because you’re always doing something to avoid feeling them, they are not given the chance to naturally work themselves out. If you want, you can simply permit the disturbances to come up, and you can let them go. Since your inner thorns are simply blocked energies from the past, they can be released.”

The “inner thorn” is analogous to a literal thorn stuck in the body: If the pain of removing the thorn seems too overwhelming, you will try to protect yourself by avoiding the thorn or playing with it. Inner thorns, which come from closing our energy centers and refusing to let go of traumatic experiences in our lives, can be activated at any time with the right stimulus. Just like removing the physical thorn, removing the inner thorn can create a feeling of freedom, but one needs to first overcome the temporary pain of doing so.

“You’ll realize that the advice your mind is giving you is psychologically damaged advice. Your mind’s thoughts are disturbed by its fears. Of all the advice in the world that you do not want to listen to, it is the advice of a disturbed mind. Your mind actually misleads you.”

Singer argues that the mind is chaotic, full of never-ending thoughts, and constantly tries to fix our problems with external solutions. Despite our belief that this is productive, it is stressful and a drain on our energy. Rather than identifying with the content of our minds, the solution is to let the mind run its hamster wheel and decide that life is acceptable just the way it is. Singer emphasizes that there is no need to fix anything: We can overcome everything by refusing to let objects and thoughts overshadow our spiritual Selves.

“Once you can face your disturbances, you will realize that there is a layer of pain seated deep in the core of your heart. This pain is so uncomfortable, so challenging, and so destructive to the individual self, that your entire life is spent avoiding it. Your entire personality is built upon ways of being, thinking, acting, and believing that were developed to avoid this pain.”

Singer is describing the point along the spiritual journey at which many people will turn back. Having come face to face with the pain inside their hearts (perhaps for the first time), one’s reaction may be to close back up and never disturb the painful source again. Singer argues that people who choose this path will be dedicated to shielding themselves from the possibility of ever experiencing that pain again. For those who experience the pain and decide that the discomfort is bearable, they will choose to feel the pain for as long as that energy pattern lasts, and then let it go. This is the true meaning of processing our emotions.

“Relax your heart until you are actually face-to-face with the exact place where it hurts. Stay open and receptive so you can be present right where the tension is. You must be willing to be present right at the place of the tightness and pain, and then relax and go even deeper. This is very deep growth and transformation. But you will not want to do this. You will feel tremendous resistance to doing this, and that’s what makes it so powerful […]. In truth, pain is the price of freedom. And the moment you are willing to pay that price, you will no longer be afraid. The moment you are not afraid of the pain, you’ll be able to face all of life’s situations without fear.”

“Pain is the price of freedom” is another core lesson from The Untethered Soul. Singer is asking readers to do something extremely difficult: confront their most intense inner pain, stay there, and then dive even deeper into the pain. Thankfully, the reward for letting go is great: Ideally, fear fades away and life becomes more peaceful and interesting.

“Our consciousness, our awareness of being, is living deep inside of us in an artificially sealed off area that is absolute. It has four walls, a floor, and a roof. It is so solid that not one ray of natural light comes in. The only light we get is what we manage to create for ourselves. If we don’t create good situations for ourselves, there is darkness. So we are very busy decorating daily. We do this by trying to bring things in there with us—hoping to create at least a little light, in the house of our own making, where we have sealed ourselves off.”

Singer compares the great energy-giving light of the real sun with the artificial light we manage to make inside our homes in the psyche. If we want freedom, we need to step outside the walls of these houses and witness the true extent of the universe from a place of centered awareness. This openness requires a willingness to feel some tension and pain, but Singer stresses that we do not need to identify with the pain of existence.

“When you are trained, like a great athlete, to immediately relax through your edges when they get hit, then it’s all over. You realize that you will always be fine. Nothing can ever bother you except your edges, and now you know what to do with them. You end up loving your edges because they point your way to freedom. All you have to do is constantly relax and lean into them. Then one day, when you least expect it, you fall through into the infinite. That is what it means to go beyond.”

Singer uses the analogy of athletic training to illustrate the process of achieving mental clarity. Just as becoming a great athlete requires training, training the mind means experiencing the pain and the frustration of feeling like you’re getting nowhere in order to progress.

“Just as a fish can pass through water but not through ice, which is simply concentrated water, so mental and emotional energy patterns become fixed when they encounter concentrated consciousness. The very act of differentiating the amount of awareness focused on one particular object over any other creates clinging. And the result of clinging is that selective thoughts and emotions stay in one place long enough to become the building blocks of the psyche.”

The analogy of ice to water illustrates Singer’s message that energy blocks can dissipate if we stop clinging to them. The barrier is not intrinsic to the thought or feeling that has become stuck in our minds, rather, our reaction to that thought or feeling has caused it to “freeze” when letting go of that feeling could just as easily allow it to melt away.

“You don’t have to renounce the world. You just have to really mean it when you say that you choose to be happy. And you have to mean it regardless of what happens. This is truly a spiritual path, and it is as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist [...].”

Singer stresses the importance of intention in embarking on the path to happiness. Throughout that book, he has detailed the obstacles and frustrations that accompany the path to living in a state of pure consciousness and has been straightforward about the difficulty inherent in the practice. His statement that happiness is a choice that must remain consistent no matter what one experiences is the most important aspect of the practitioner’s agency in the process of awakening.

“So why not be bold enough to regularly reflect on how you would live that last week? If you were to ask this question of people who are truly awakened, they wouldn’t have any problem answering you. Not a thing would change inside of them. Not a thought would cross their minds. If death were to come in an hour, if death were to come in a week, or if death were to come in a year, they would live exactly the same way as they’re living now.”

Singer accepts that death is a great teacher and that we should think of each moment of our lives as potentially being our last, but he concludes that an enlightened person would change nothing about their actions and mindset: Somebody who is advanced along their spiritual path will accept all of life with joy and continue to experience love and endless inner energy.

“So death actually gives meaning to life. Death is your friend. Death is your liberator. For God’s sake, do not be afraid of death. Try to learn what it’s saying to you. The highest way to learn is to take each moment of your life and realize that what matters is to live it fully. If you live each moment completely, you will have a fuller life and you will not have to fear death.” 

In Singer’s worldview, death is nothing to fear because at every moment, the enlightened person is whole within themselves and requires nothing. So, if death comes now or in 20 years, our spiritual condition is the same and the relative proximity of death is irrelevant.

“So where is the Tao? The Tao is in the middle. It’s the place where there is no energy pushing in either direction. The pendulum has been permitted to come to balance concerning food, relationships, sex, money, doing, not-doing, and everything else. Everything has its yin and yang. The Way is the place in which these forces balance quietly. And indeed, unless you go out of the Way, they will tend to stay in peaceful harmony.”

This is an example of “not-doing” that the Tao advocates: Remaining within the middle way should not be a struggle. If it is, it is not the Tao. Trying to force oneself into a state of extremity creates suffering while maintaining balance requires no effort.