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40 pages 1 hour read

Michael A. Singer

The Untethered Soul

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007

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Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 5: “Living Life”

Part 5, Chapter 15 Summary: “The Path of Unconditional Happiness”

It is possible to choose to be happy no matter what. This requires you to let go of any particular kind of happiness you might be holding on to and “the part of you that wants to create melodrama” (143). No matter what, keep your heart open, enjoy life as it comes, and refuse to close. It takes discipline not to be tricked “into thinking that this time it’s worth closing. If you slip, get back up” (145). Committing to unconditional happiness solves all personal problems. It makes you transcend your personal parochial experiences and reveals the eternal, including true freedom and joy.

Part 5, Chapter 16 Summary: “The Spiritual Path of Nonresistance”

The highest spiritual path is to simply be present and let life do what it will without resistance. The existence of willpower, which is a force created when we concentrate the Self into any physical or mental realm, means we can “actually assert our will in opposition to the flow of life” (150). We create tension in ourselves when we use our willpower to interrupt the flow of inner energy. Therefore, resistance is a waste of energy. Keeping energy trapped inside like this inevitably leads to burnout over time. While it is still necessary to live our lives and deal with our issues, it is possible and optimal to do so from the point of view of total acceptance of everything life has to offer. Contextualize problems that arise not as personal tragedies, but as “events that are taking place on the planet Earth” (153). When “personal energies pass through you, the world becomes a different place” (154), one that is not stressful and more enjoyable.

Part 5, Chapter 17 Summary: “Contemplating Death”

Death is a great teacher: Knowing we could die at any moment gives us perspective and teaches us that living now and not waiting for an imagined tomorrow is the best way to live. That our current lives have a definite ending also grants meaning to life. Singer explains that knowing you have one week left to live makes that one final week extremely precious, and that, in fact, life always has this condition of being short and should always be considered precious. Living as if death were just around the corner is the key to fully experiencing life. Most people fear death because they “crave life” and think “there’s something to get that [they] haven’t experienced yet” (162). What we actually need is a greater depth of experience rather than more time, which involves fully living every moment including the painful ones. You can get to a point at which you feel gratitude for death “for giving you another day, another experience, and for creating the scarcity that makes life so precious” (163).

Part 5, Chapter 18 Summary: “The Secret of the Middle Way”

Singer outlines some of the basic teachings of the Tao Te Ching (c. 400 BCE), or “the Way,” which is a classical Chinese text primarily about living a balanced life. According to the Tao, every aspect of our lives has its two extremes and a balanced middle way that will vary by person and by category. Living as an extremist is not sustainable; finding “the harmony of all these balance points, woven together” (167) is the Tao. If you find balance and stop bouncing around extremes, you will find you have much more energy whereas living in extremes deprives you of forward momentum and gets you stuck in life. As long as we don’t “feed the extremes with energy” and simply “don’t participate in them” (169), we will be centered. Singer describes the balance of the Tao as a “dynamic equilibrium” (171) because there are so many variables in life and situations are always changing. The goal is to “reach the point where your whole interest lies in the balance and not in any personal preference for how things should be” (171) so we can accept all of life for what it is.

Part 5, Chapter 19 Summary: “The Loving Eyes of God”

Over time, as one becomes more comfortable experiencing the universe from the point of view of conscious awareness, “you begin to identify more with the flow of pure energy” and “you just feel love for no reason” (174). You will spiritually soar and come to understand the ecstatic experiences of the saints and deities of religious traditions. Flow is an experience of “the individual consciousness [falling] into the Universal Oneness” (176). Another way of saying this is that one can merge into God, which is the only way to really know something about the nature of God. Having a personal experience of God in this way means living a life of transcendental love and seeing the universe from this unclouded lens of love. It is an ecstatic experience. It is a condition in which “nobody will upset or disappoint you. Nothing will create a problem. It will all appear as part of the beautiful dance of creation unfolding before you” (180). The psyche obsessed with building walls will no longer have any power or even a desire to build anything that separates you from universal oneness.

Part 5 Analysis

The trial and error involved in walking Singer’s spiritual path comes to the fore in Chapter 15. Achieving unconditional happiness means getting up and trying again: “[T]he key is to learn to keep your mind disciplined enough so that it doesn’t trick you into thinking that this time it’s worth closing. If you slip, get back up” (145). As encouraging as the potential result of this mental and spiritual discipline may be, Singer is honest about the fact that the spiritual journey is a long and difficult road paved with endless failure. Singer’s hope is that after reading the book, readers will be comfortable with the idea of pain and failure to feel empowered enough to lean into such experiences for the sake of spiritual growth.

Singer deals with the delicate balance between needing to fulfill the obligations of life on one hand and living a centered spiritual life on the other. In truth, these are not separate tasks but are part of the same journey. Singer insists that it is still possible to go about one’s day-to-day duties, but that when you are confronted with your first problem of the day, you must commit to “[letting] the energy make it through you. If you don’t, you will not actually be dealing with the current event, you will be dealing with your own blocked energies from the past” (153). The accumulation of blocked energy patterns stacks up extremely quickly throughout the day if we are not committed to letting it go immediately. An example is the experience of exhaustion and burnout at the end of a hectic workday that is the result of blocked energies piling one on top of the other. Learning not to resist life and to instead “[relax] through resistance” (155), especially at work, is one of the key challenges of the spiritual path.

Perhaps the most difficult lesson of this book is the discussion of death as a great teacher in Chapter 17. Many religious and cultural traditions discuss the necessity of facing death with equanimity, but the ability to view death as an ally without any fear is a lesson that requires a deep commitment to maintaining an open heart. It is possible to intellectually understand what Singer says about death granting meaning to life, but to truly embrace death as a key component of our own spiritual journey is the culmination of overcoming the Self.

Singer encourages his readers to familiarize themselves with the Tao Te Ching, a work of classical Chinese philosophy purportedly written by the philosopher Lao Tzu though the book’s authorship remains in question. Singer explains that the core of the Tao is to let things go: “The forces take care of themselves as you sit in the center. That is the Tao. It’s the most beautiful place in all of life” (171). Singer presents the act of letting go as a lifelong practice; the spiritual lessons to be in The Untethered Soul require painstaking effort and commitment at first, but they will feel effortless and natural after years of commitment. One’s natural orientation will be a stance of non-resistance to life, and it will feel unnatural to engage with the dramas that surround us and used to take up so much of our time and energy. We get a taste of what being an advanced spiritual being feels like in the final chapter. Universal oneness, transcendental love, and divine ecstasy may seem difficult to reconcile with the normal experience of life for one who is just embarking on this path, but Singer, in this final chapter, illustrates that the aspirational future state of a disciplined spiritual journey begins today.

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