From My Bookshelf – The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

I often get asked by coaching clients and Foundations members, what am I reading? What books do I recommend for particular challenges they’re experiencing? So I’m excited to bring in a new blog feature where I’ll be sharing some recently read books as well as old favorites that have impacted my life and business.

I’m getting into audiobooks and just recently downloaded The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michale A. Singer.

First, if you’re interested in audiobooks, I highly recommend you get a library card and download the Overdrive App. If your local library carries the audio version of a book you want, you can download and listen to it for FREE. It’s available for 3 weeks and you can always check it out again. Such an awesome find. 🙂

The Untethered Soul is a phenomenal, mid level book on spirituality. Here are some of my favorite points:

1) You’re not who you think you are.

You’re not a mother or father (or brother, sister, etc.). You’re not a designer or lawyer. You’re not a male or female at whatever height or weight, with whatever hair and eye color. You’re not a democrat or republican. You’re not any of the labels you cling to.

You are a spiritual being having a human experience.

You are experiencing emotions, relationships, objects and everything else through the awareness that comes from having a body. But you are not those things. You are not your body and you’re not the feelings that your human existence brings up.

When you can create this level of detachment, you become free. You can allow things to happen around you, and even to you, but not let them effect your ability to be happy. Instead, most of us allow things to get stuck within us, clogging up our hearts with “stuff” and creating a lens through which we view the world. One that doesn’t serve us, or promote love and happiness. When you’re detached from the awareness, you can let things pass through you rather than effecting you.

2) Happiness is a choice.

We create limitations for when we can be happy. We’ll only be happy if things go exactly how we want them to go, if the people we love never leave us (through death or other means), and if we get what we think we want. We make happiness conditional, when really, we can have it at any time. We always have the choice to stay open, loving and happy. Even when people hurt us, even when we experience great pain and loss, even when things don’t turn out how we want.

Happiness is the highest level of spirituality. It’s enlightenment. This comes from having a level of detachment from the way we currently view life, relationships and the world.

3) Energy is unlimited.

I love how the author walks you through a typical experience of losing our energy… your girlfriend leaves you and suddenly you go into a deep depression. You don’t have energy to do the things you need to do, you just lay around all day and barely eat or sleep. Then, said girlfriend calls you up and says she made the biggest mistake of her life, she loves you and wants you back. What happens then? Suddenly you’re filled with energy, cleaning the house and getting ready to meet up with her for a romantic date. Where does that energy come from?

Something that I believe truly and is expressed in this book, everything is energy. We are literally born from the stars and the universe. Everything is one and the same, manifesting in this world in a different form. The same energy that you come from is that which the world was formed through. The animals, the stars, the ocean… everything is energy. When you realize that you’re simply an extension of this unlimited, amazing energy, you also understand that you can tap into it at any time. It’s always there and it’s accessible by making the choice to stay open and not close our hearts.

4) Death is our greatest teacher.

I  was throwing out some loud “YES!!” and “ABSOLUTELY” exclamations throughout this chapter! I live with a hyper awareness of death. While some see this as morbid and an awful way to go through life, I see it as a blessing and a gift. I take far less for granted than most people and am more aware of how short and precious life is.

The book talks about death as our greatest teacher. It teaches us, in one fell swoop, that we’re all equal, material goods, titles and money doesn’t matter, as well as what really does matter in this life.

If you live your life thinking that at any moment you might not take another breath, you live a life that’s far more loving, open, passionate, fulfilling and meaningful. You say I love you to those you love, you make time for what matters, you stop worrying about stupid things and you focus on what you want to leave behind. Death isn’t something we should fear and avoid, it’s something we should become intimately acquainted with.

I encourage you to give this book a read.

I highly recommend this book if you’re looking to take your personal development, spiritual or awareness practice to a new level. It’s phenomenal and I loved the entire thing. While it’s higher level, I feel like the author does a fantastic job of really walking you through the concepts in a way we can all understand.