The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

I have read Tolle, Deepak, Pema Chodren, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gary Zukav & more. Although all of these are very good also, I'd say this book is the most useful, most practical, easiest to understand & actually apply to your life. Michael S. gives lots of fantastic, intelligent examples to make sure that we fully get it. I first bought the MP3 CD for listening to while: walking, exercising & in the car. It was sooo good, that I ordered the book also, so as I could hi-light many areas & refer back to them often, as a quick summary. I recommend the audio first, as Peter Berkrot, the reader, is superb at applying the exact intonation where needed which is extremely helpful in getting the many important messages across. All audio books should be read by him! I almost thought that Michael S. was reading it, as they sound similar, which is better. Some audio readers do not suit the book, but not in this case. Every inch of the book & audio is profoundly productive...you get every penny's worth. It is by far the best value I have ever received in audio/book. It does not sound like psycho babble. Michael obviously lived this all himself, & in order to calm his own mind, he realized what needs to happen. He is the only one that has successfully explained what living "consciously" means & how to actually do it. You will learn how to deal with "the voice in the head", mind/heart pain, guilt, regret, fear, worry, death & more. He explains what "spiritualty" & "enlightenment" really is, for the regular person. He does not dwell on this, just mentions it a couple of times. He gives very useful suggestions of how to be happy. I wish I had known about this book sooner. It encompasses key concepts that I have had to read several books to get a lesser understanding of. I don't think Michael knows himself how good this book is. Watch a re-run of Oprah "Soul Sunday" to see Michael Singer's interview. I want to say so much more but I want to read the rest of his book. I use the audio(in bed)to quiet my mind after a busy day to ready the brain/mind for sleep. The book is not by any means "sleepy" (!!), it helps to remove the guilt & gives you permission to quiet your thoughts, so as you can consider sleeping. Ladies...try this audio before bed rather than Melatonin (that is being over dosed on). I comb every word he says. Oprah passed it to all of her friends after she was given it by a friend (but you don't have to be an Oprah fan to enjoy & find extremely useful). This book will be my guide for living.

This is such a great book. If you are spending most of your life in the "what If's", have a plan A, B, and C in case things go wrong or just fill your mind with conversations that you never have with others, this is the book for you. Stop the insanity of living in the past and in the future. Learn how to stay in the present and quit missing out on actually living. It is so good, I'm reading it again and I've ordered a copy for my mom.

"Come to know the one who watches the voice, and you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation." -Michael Singer The Untethered Soul, much like Eckhart Tolle's, The Power of Now, became popular not from any big advertising campaign, but by word-of-mouth. One person would read it and something inside them would resonate strongly with the truth of Michael's words, and they would begin to experience a much deeper sense of peace and inner-happiness. And so naturally, they would tell their friends about the book. Wash, rinse, repeat. Eventually, like The Power of Now, The Untethered Soul found its way into Oprah Winfrey's hands. And like Eckhart, Michael got a call from Oprah and did a rare (for him) interview on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday series in August of 2012. What`s unique about The Untethered Soul is that Singer has seemly done the impossible: written a step-by-step guide to help spiritual seekers discover genuine inner-peace and freedom. And by genuine, I mean it is not dependent on (not linked to) outside circumstances or experiences. As Michael explains in the book, this peace/freedom/well being is always right here within us (in fact, it IS us!), but we unwittingly shut ourselves off to it every time we close our heart. It's as if when our defenses come up we contract energetically, and the inherent joy naturally produced by an open heart is no longer available to us. For example, let's say you are driving your car, feeling fine, and suddenly you notice another driver shoot you a dirty look. At that moment you have a choice. You can either stay feeling fine, at peace, or you can choose to get caught up in reactive thoughts such as, "What's his problem? Who does he think he is giving me a dirty look!?" etc., and suddenly where's your peace? Gone! Why? Because reacting to the stranger who made the face was more important to you, in that moment, than staying open and connected to your natural, inherent, inner-peace. Michael assures you throughout the book that there isn't really ever a good reason for closing your heart and thus cutting yourself off from the ever present living flow of shakti energy. What's more, because we don't know it's possible to be free and at peace, regardless of circumstances, we spend much of our time trying to manipulate the outside world into being the way we want it to be so that we can feel happy! And so basically until the outside world matches the picture of what we think we need to be happy in our head, we are, by default, always unhappy at some level. It sounds crazy, but that's what's going on. Are we doing this on purpose? No, it's happening out of ignorance. That is until you start to catch on to how the mind works, which The Untethered Soul explains with a rare clarity. "Basically you re-create the outside world inside yourself, and then you live in your mind." -Michael A. Singer The first step to authentic peace and freedom is to be 100% clear, in every cell of your body, on what you are NOT. Namely, The Voice Inside the Head, which is the title of Chapter One. It begins: "In case you haven't noticed, you have a mental dialogue going on inside your head that never stops." That Singer begins The Untethered Soul by pointing out something so apparently obvious tells you the tremendous significance he places on it. That in fact just about everyone on the planet has become so identified with the `voice-in-the-head,' that the idea of really looking closely at the mechanics of it, how it behaves, how it functions, how it appears to work, simply doesn't occur to most of us. "If you're smart, you'll take the time to step back, examine the voice, and get to know it better. The problem is, you're too close to be objective. You have to step way back and watch it converse." -Michael Singer It's sort of like our car windshield; we don't really think about it (unless there is a problem with it) because it's always there! We are so used to automatically/robotically believing our thoughts that the idea that we have the option of NOT believing them simply never occurs to most of us! And yet it's the first step to real freedom. And the thing to notice about the `voice-in-the-head' is this startling (yet so obvious we miss it) observation by Singer: "If you spend some time observing this mental voice, the first thing you will notice is that it never shuts up." And not only does this `voice-in-the-head' opine virtually non-stop about everything we seem to experience, but it's happy to argue ANY point-of-view, including those that cause us much inner-conflict and turmoil: "Notice that the voice takes both sides of the conversation. It doesn't care which side it takes, just as long as it gets to keep on talking." And here's the point that must be grokked: None of the voices are YOU! None. But the key is that YOU must see this for yourself. (And really that's all that matters, as otherwise this wisdom remains at the intellectual level only and does little to end our suffering.) How? By getting some SPACE between ourselves and the thoughts in the head. We must break our habitual/robotic tendency to obsessively identify with/as the `voice in-the-head.' Says Michael: "In order to see this clearly, we have to take a step back and get some space between ourselves and the mental chatter between our ears, so we can see clearly that the thoughts arrive unbidden, and are not our identity. Cease identification with thoughts, which are always going to be problematic, as that is there nature." Remember that it doesn't matter the subject matter or content of the thought--a thought is a thought: "The only way to get your distance from this voice is to stop differentiating what it's saying. Stop feeling that one thing it says is you and the other is not you. If you're hearing it talk, it's obviously not you. You are the one who hears the voice. You are the one who notices that it's talking." The bottom line, says Michael: "If you're hearing it talk, it's obviously not you." So if you are not the thoughts in your head, what are you? You are what is AWARE of the thoughts. Being aware of something is not the same as actually being that something! The very fact that you are able to think about literally anything means that YOU must be emptiness itself, devoid of any features (yet fully alive/aware), or how else could you pull it off? "The one inside who is aware that you are always talking to yourself about yourself is always silent. It is a doorway to the depths of your being. -Michael Singer This aware silence within you is Life itself. IT is the only `thing' presently Conscious to know anything. And it is not mine or yours, and so is totally impersonal. Yet, because it never comes or goes, it's easy to overlook, which is why so few seem to be aware of it. (Although thanks to the internet, this is changing as more and more are awakening to the timeless Truth of their being, usually after exhausting themselves for years, even decades, trying to get the phenomenal world to be the way they want it and finding no lasting success.) In CHAPTER 2: Your Inner Roommate, Singer points out that as long as we attach to/believe/identify with thoughts, we are always going to feel disturbed: "The bottom line is, you'll never be free of problems until you are free from the part within that has so many problems." -Michael Singer And how do you become "free from the part within that has so many problems"? Says Michael: "When a problem is disturbing you, don't ask, `What should I do about it?' Ask, `What part of me is being disturbed by this?' If you ask, `What should I do about it?' you've already fallen into believing that there really is a problem outside that must be dealt with. The key sentence in the above quote is:`What part of me is being disturbed by this?' That instead of asking the usual question, "WHY am I feeling this way and how can I make it stop?", Michael recommends that we observe or notice WHERE it's located within our Awareness. If we actually take the time to do this, it immediately gives us some SPACE between the thought and ourselves. Eventually we can come to see that Awareness is the only subject, and everything else is an appearance to the ONE Consciousness. "Basically you re-create the outside world inside yourself, and then you live in your mind." -Michael Singer Another thing that sets "The Unethered Soul" apart from other spiritual books is its practicality/helpful suggestions. For example, in the excerpt below Singer suggests that you imagine your inner-voice belonging to someone else, outside of you. This allows you to get some space between yourself and the `voice-in-the-head' so you can start to hear it objectively and begin to understand how confused, clueless, and `groping around in the dark' in its imaginary world it actually is: "The way to catch on to what your inner roommate is really like is to personify it externally. Make believe that your roommate, the psyche, has a body of its own. You do this by taking the entire personality that you hear talking to you on the inside and imagine it as a person talking to you on the outside. Just imagine that another person is now saying everything that your inner voice would say. Now spend a day with that person." As Michael reminds us throughout the book, regardless of any feelings or beliefs to the contrary, you have NEVER been the voice in your head. FINAL THOUGHTS I have barely scratched the surface of all the great material inside The Untethered Soul. In fact, I could see a high school or university class taught using it as the course text. Imagine if you had learned in school that NO thought is you, and that peace is available 24/7 if you are willing to keep your heart open regardless of outer (or inner) fleeting appearances, i.e., that which comes and goes. This is one of those books that is more profound with each reading. Highly recommended! -Michael Jeffreys

Newcomers to the main idea contained in this book - the idea that who we really are is the witness behind our thoughts, feelings and what we sense in the world - may find this book to be an amazing revelation, and can lay the foundation for a life-changing journey. However, for me, I am already quite familiar with these ideas, and even have started to learn how to become "the witness", or at the very least, can distinguish when I am lost in thought, or pulled in by my emotions, and when I am able to remain centred in my true self: the consciousness or awareness that I am. However, there were some new ideas in this book for me - particularly around the ideas on chakras and how we either open or close our hearts to things, and how we often close our hearts and heart energy in response to certain triggers or events. What I found was a bit lacking (and hence the reason for only 4 stars) was that there were no clear instructions on how to achieve the things he recommends for us to do. For example, when reading the chapter on energies, he says "just don't ever close your heart", or "just stay open". Ok, I understand at an intuitive level how to do this, at least I think so - from past experiences of being really open it seemed to come about by letting go and not resisting what is - but I wish the author could have given more specific instructions to the reader on how to open our hearts or how to "stay open", as this has been an elusive state for me and not easy to achieve at all. I haven't finished the book yet (I am up to chapter 11), but I thought I'd write a review whilst the book is fresh in my mind. I am finding that the later chapters just seem to contain the same main ideas covered in the earlier chapters, but just uses different words or contexts; to that extent I am finding it a little difficult to remain focused on what I am reading. This book does seem to be quite similar to Eckhart Tolle's work, especially "The Power of Now", which I have read. Maybe that is why this book is not so new to me. In summary, this book would be great for anyone who is new to the ideas in it. For me, I think that it lacks a little substance as to how to achieve liberation, or how to have an "untethered soul". It is very good at describing what we need to do to become free, but is light on details as to how to actually do it. For more help on specifics on how to become liberated, I suggest doing a search for mindfulness meditation books, or more Buddhist-style teachings on meditation. In my experience, it is one thing to know that you need to practice residing in the "seat of conscious awareness", and another thing completely to actually be able to do it for any length of time consistently. For me, a meditation practice is the very thing that can assist and empower us to actually be able to do what this book recommends in order to become free.

In the tapestry of life, we often find ourselves ensnared in the confines of our own mind, tethered to thoughts, emotions, and beliefs that both uplift and burden us. The path towards liberation lies in transcending these limitations, embarking on a journey beyond the constructs of self that have long held sway over our existence. The Bonds of the Ego At the core of our self-imposed limitations lies the ego. This conditioned construct, shaped by experiences, beliefs, and societal expectations, creates a false sense of identity that separates us from our true, limitless potential. The ego clings to a narrow narrative of self, fearing the unknown and seeking constant validation and control. Letting Go of Attachment The first step towards untying the soul is to release our attachments to the ego and its desires. This does not mean becoming apathetic or indifferent, but rather cultivating a healthy detachment that allows us to observe our thoughts and emotions without becoming entangled in them. By letting go of our attachments, we open ourselves up to a vast realm of possibilities that lie beyond the confines of our conditioned minds. Embracing the Present Moment The incessant chatter of the mind often takes us away from the present moment, where true freedom resides. The untethered soul learns to anchor itself in the present, fully experiencing the beauty, joy, and challenges that life offers. By quieting the noise of the past and the worries of the future, we become more attuned to the wisdom and guidance that lies within. Practicing Non-Judgment Judgment is a lens that distorts our perception of reality, creating unnecessary suffering and conflicts. The untethered soul embraces non-judgment, allowing others and ourselves to be as we are without imposing expectations or labels. This compassionate approach fosters understanding and connection, breaking down the walls that divide us. Cultivating Gratitude Gratitude is a powerful antidote to the negativity and scarcity mindset that often grips us. By cultivating gratitude for the smallest of blessings, we shift our focus from what we lack to what we possess. This practice nourishes the soul, creating a space for contentment and abundance. The Transcendent Self As we release our attachments, embrace the present moment, and practice non-judgment and gratitude, a profound realization dawns upon us: we are not just the limited selves we have believed ourselves to be. Beyond the boundaries of the ego lies a vast, limitless self, connected to all that is. This transcendent self is the true essence of who we are—eternal, boundless, and capable of extraordinary expansion. A Journey of Transformation The untethered soul is not an overnight transformation but rather a process of continuous self-discovery and evolution. It requires courage, commitment, and unwavering faith in our own limitless potential. Through meditation, mindfulness, and other practices that cultivate inner connection, we can gradually untangle the knots of our minds and liberate the unfettered essence within. Embracing the Unknown The journey of the untethered soul is a journey into the unknown, where we release our grip on the familiar and venture into the vast expanse of possibility. It is a path filled with both challenges and triumphs, but ultimately it leads to a profound freedom and fulfillment that transcends the boundaries of our former limitations. In the words of the ancient mystic Rumi, 'The wound is the place where the light enters you.' By embracing our woundedness and imperfections, by letting go of our preconceived notions and surrendering to the unknown, we open ourselves up to an extraordinary transformation that takes us beyond the constraints of the self and into a realm of boundless love, wisdom, and connection. So let us embark on this journey, the journey of the untethered soul, and discover the limitless possibilities that lie within us all.

A well written and communicated book to lift the spirit. Thoughtful and a book that opens to mind to another dimension of thinking.

Truly thought thus book was great ! It is a book to read more than once , and you will get more out of it !

Note: I bought the Audible version of the book. That's why it may not show as Purchased. What a phenomenal book! The Untethered Soul will stay with me forever, I hope!!! The first time I saw this book was at a previous yoga teacher's studio. The book was on the shelf right in front of me, so it became my drishti - my point of focus and concentration. I remember it so well. This was in 2012. It took me 5 years to find my way to reading it, or rather, listening to it and I have to say that the narration was key to how much I LOVED loved loved this book. Peter Berkrot does a remarkable job of enunciating and pausing and emphasizing and storytelling ... oh my god, it felt like he was right there in the room or in the car next to me, reading me every word, every sentence, every chapter and making me pause and think. Fantastic job of narration! The audible version is only 6 hours and it is the unabridged version. Highly recommend you listen to it. Well, The Untethered Soul did not disappoint one bit. I have to admit, the first couple of chapters are very deep ... all this talk of consciousness and the seat of awareness, which I long to understand, were a bit much to focus on, so I stopped listening and then felt drawn back to it. Happy to report that it took on a more practical approach. For this reason alone, I'm planning to go back and listen to the book again, something I rarely do. The other reason is simple: What Singer teaches in this book takes a lifetime to absorb, so a second listening will only get me familiarized more with what I've heard once. It is the repetiton and consistency that drills these powerful concepts of LETTING GO, being in the moment, living with love, choosing happiness, seeing the miracle in being alive, that drives them home. As I get old, I am far more interested in the exploration of the inner space and going inward and understanding how much lies behind the surface of my body and skin has been the most fascinating journey. Training and retraining the mind and body to respond with more JOY to life, that alone makes this the most incredible journey. I think depending on when you read this book on your life's journey, you will have a level of resistance to it. You may feel like sitting up and arguing with the author for 'oversimplifying' or not understanding your life's circumstances. I encourage you to keep listening. To empty your cup of all of life's prejudices and judgements and assumptions and just listen and receive. You may feel things shift inside of you, and decide that perhaps ,there IS another way to life, to joy, to love, to inner peace. Oh I adored this book so much. Off to listen go it again. I hope the other books by Singer are half as good, because that's more than good enough for me to read them.

Such a beautifully written book I loved it

As expected

I didn't expect the book size is big. Just read the first chapter of the book, and the topic fit with my problem right, now. Really excited with the next chapter.

Es un libro que tienes que leer al menos una vez en la vida! Lleno de enseñanzas que te mejorarán tu vida significativamente

Amazing book with practical reccomendations about how to get closer to God! Such a gift to the world! It really opened my heart.