Living Untethered
Beyond the Human Predicament
This is our second note on one of Michael Singer's books. Michael Singer is one of my new favorite teachers and, after reading this book, I immediately picked up the first two books he wrote—nearly FIFTY years before he wrote this one. In this book, Singer shares a ton of big ideas that will help us truly surrender to what is, get perspective on our lives, and practice embracing the present moment so that we can get our own lives in harmony with reality. Let's go!
Big Ideas
- True SurrenderLooks like this.
- A technique for getting perspectiveRemember: 13.8B + 4.2 light-years.
- Low-Hanging FruitGrab some today.
- MeditationTrain your mind.
- Serve the Present MomentWith all your heart.
“Sitting on a planet spinning through vast outer space for a handful of years—in the broadest sense, this is the human predicament. Earth has been here for 4.5 billion years, yet each of us is limited to roughly an eighty-year ride on the planet, give or take a few years. We were born onto the planet, and we will leave it when we die. That is simply the truth. What is not such a hard and fast truth, however, is what our few years on Earth are like. Undoubtedly, the planet can be a very exciting experience. It can bring enthusiasm, passion, and inspiration at every turn. When it unfolds that way, every day can be a beautiful adventure. Unfortunately, life on Earth rarely unfolds exactly as we want it to, and if we resist, our experience can be quite unpleasant. Resistance creates tension and anxiety, and it makes life a burden.
To avoid this burden and be able to fully embrace life, wise ones throughout the ages have taught the importance of accepting reality. Only by accepting reality can we work with the flow of life as it passes by and create a better world. All of science is based on studying reality, learning her laws, and then working with those laws to improve our lives. Scientists can’t deny reality; they must fully accept reality as the starting point of their endeavors. To fly, we must fully embrace the law of gravity, not deny its existence. The same is true in the spiritual realm. Teachings such as surrender, acceptance, and nonresistance form the basis of a deeply spiritual life. But these concepts can be difficult to grasp. In Living Untethered, we are embarking on a journey into the sheer reasonableness of acceptance and the great gifts it promises: freedom, peace, and inner enlightenment. Acceptance is best understood as nonresistance to reality. Try as you may, no one can make an event that has already happened not have happened. Your only choice is to accept the event or resist it. During our journey together, we will explore how and why you make this decision. But first you have to understand who is within that has the power to decide.”
~ Michael Singer from Living Untethered
Michael Singer is one of my new favorite teachers.
Although I very much enjoyed The Untethered Soul (check out those Notes), it wasn’t until my friend Joe Okleberry sent me a picture of him and Michael that I picked up this book. Now, I didn’t have to go far to pick it up as Alexandra had been raving about him for months. This book was literally on our kitchen table. With the two of them extolling his awesomeness, I decided to join the party. And, I’m very glad I did.
After reading this book (get a copy here), I immediately picked up the first two books he wrote—nearly FIFTY years before he wrote this one: The Search for TRUTH and Three Essays on Universal Law. Notes on those coming soon.
For now, I’m excited to share some of my favorite Big Ideas from this wonderful book and wonderfully enlightened human being so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFOne of the most amazing things you will ever realize is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you—you are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. It’s not personal. You are making it personal.
Get the BookTrue Surrender
“In other words, if the dinosaur hadn’t walked there three million years ago, and if the Mayaimi tribes hadn’t settled there, and if the Spaniards hadn’t built a town there, and if it hadn’t been raining that day, and if grandpa hadn’t fallen down drunk in the exact spot where grandma slipped in the mud—you’re not here, and neither are a lot of other things. Every single thing is the result of every single that ever happened throughout time and space. You’re not the doer; you are the experiencer of reality.
If this is true, and it is, then it’s pretty silly to think, ‘It took 13.8 billion years for this moment to get here, and every single thing had to happen exactly as it did—but I don’t like it.’ That’s funny. It’s like saying that you don’t like that Saturn has rings.
Now do you see why we took the time to explore where what’s in front of you came from? It has nothing to do with you; it is the result of trillions of factors that caused it to be the way it is. This is our first encounter of what surrender and acceptance really mean. You don’t surrender to the outside world—you totally accept it. What you surrender is your personal, made-up judgment of it. If you were asked whether it’s okay with you that Saturn has rings, you would probably look very puzzled and say, ‘What’s it got to do with me? That’s a crazy question.’ The truth is every single thing is that way. It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the forces that caused it to be the way it is, and those forces stretch back billions of years. The total acceptance of this truth is surrender. You must let go of the part of you that thinks it has the right to like and dislike the result of billions of years of interactions. Surrender is letting go of the part of you that is not living the truth. That is true surrender.”
That’s from chapter #10: “It’s Not Personal.” Previous chapters include “The Three Ring Circus” (attend a good show in your mind lately? ;), “The Origin of Matter” and “The Power of Creation.”
In the preceding chapters, we learn about the origin of our universe and the FACT that EVERY SINGLE THING that has happened over the last 13.8 BILLION years had to happen EXACTLY the way they happened for you to exist and for this moment to exist.
Yet...
Somehow...
As Michael says, “You are being given a unique show that took billions of years to create—it’s right in front of you, and you’re complaining about it. We all think we have very good reasons to complain. The intention of this journey we are on together is to take away those reasons, whatever they are.”
Think about this for a moment or three longer.
The universe was somehow created from basically nothing 13.8 BILLION (!) years ago. Then the universe was expanding at an incomprehensible speed for the better part of 9 BILLION years before the Earth was created 4.5 BILLION years ago. Then humans showed up a few hundred thousand years ago and get about 80 years to enjoy our lives on this little speck of dust in an insanely vast universe.
And we complain about the fact that everything isn’t going EXACTLY the way we want?
I repeat: “You are being given a unique show that took billions of years to create—it’s right in front of you, and you’re complaining about it. We all think we have very good reasons to complain. The intention of this journey we are on together is to take away those reasons, whatever they are.”
The wisest among us learn to have the wisdom and humility to see the bigger picture and to ACCEPT REALITY. That is what Singer would call “true surrender.”
Byron Katie calls it “loving what is.” Phil Stutz calls it “radical acceptance.”
The Stoics call it “the art of acquiescence” and their ENTIRE philosophy is basically predicated on EXACTLY what Singer is describing. For example...
Singer: “One of the most amazing things you will ever realize is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you—you are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you.”
Aurelius: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
It’s time to quit arguing with reality as we radically accept the present moment and appreciate the fact that it took BILLIONS of years for this moment to arise.
P.S. Joseph Campbell echoes the same wisdom. He tells us: “There is an important idea in Nietzsche, of Amor fati, the ‘love of your fate,’ which is in fact your life. As he says, if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing. Furthermore, the more challenging or threatening the situation or context to be assimilated and affirmed, the greater the stature of the person who can achieve it. The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.”
P.P.S. Important practical note from Singer:“If you lose your job and work with letting go of your negative reaction, that’s good, but you still need to go out and look for a new job. Letting go does not absolve you from your responsibilities in life. You are not letting go of life. Your personal reactions do not help you deal with situations in a constructive manner—they actually cloud your ability to make good decisions.”
The truth is the whole world is a giant Rorschach test.
Every experience makes you a greater person if you don’t resist it.
The question is not whether your mind is brilliant; the question is what are you doing with that brilliance?
A technique for getting perspective
“Here’s a technique for getting perspective. Put your mind in outer space and realize that there’s nothing out there but 99.999 percent emptiness. There’s just empty space between all the stars. Your nearest star after the Sun is 4.2 light-years away. To get an idea of how far that is, imagine holding a light beam above the Earth. Now, let it go for one second. In that one second the light circumnavigated the globe seven and a half times. Travel at that speed every second for 4.2 years, and you’ll reach the next star. There’s pretty much nothing but empty space in between. We call it interstellar space. That’s how it is between all the stars, all over the universe. How would you like to be out there and see nothing? Because that’s what 99.999 percent of the universe is. What you get every day is a miracle! There are colors, shapes, and sounds along with all the amazing experiences you’re given with each passing moment. Yet all you did was say, ‘No, it’s not what I want.’ Of course it’s not what you want. That’s not the point. Instead of comparing the moment in front of you against the preferences you’ve built up inside your mind, why don’t you compare it against nothing? Since that’s what makes up 99.999 percent of the universe.
If you do this, you’ll find yourself being thankful that you get to have your daily experiences. They are certainly better than empty space. That’s how a wise person lives. The alternative is to suffer because things are not the way you want.”
I literally got goosebumps as I typed that passage and did the thought exercise.
Want to get perspective? Step back half an inch from your current personal issues and reflect on the fact that the sun is 90 MILLION miles away yet somehow warms up our planet and gives you a great tan. ;)
The next closest star? It’s 4.2 LIGHT-YEARS (!!!) away.
In between those two stars? NOTHING.
That’s one way to get perspective. What happens when we step back and think like that? We feel GRATEFUL to even be alive. Rather than, as Robert Emmons would say (in Gratitude Works!) taking things FOR granted, we can start to take them AS (miraculously!) granted.
That’s what wise people do. Let’s be those wise people.
P.S. As I was reading Singer’s BRILLIANT take on our universe, I thought of this passage from my friend Tripp Lanier’sThis Book Will Make You Dangerous where he tells us:
“When we think of big—and I mean really big—we usually think of the sun. It’s massive, right? In fact, you could fit 1.3 million Earths inside the sun. Let that sink in.
But according to astronomer and scientist Michelle Thaler, if you were to shrink the sun down to the size of the dot in this letter ‘i’ right here on the page—that tiny-ass little dot—if you made the sun that big, then the relative size of our galaxy, the Milky Way, would be the size of the Earth. Take a minute to visualize that.
But let’s not stop there. A while back, astronomers found a tiny section of the night sky that appeared to be empty. And ‘tiny’ means the size of the head of a pin if you held it out at arm’s length. If you were to hold that tiny pinhead up to the sky, then that little, tiny portion of the sky appeared completely void of celestial light. So they focused the Hubble Telescope up there, and let it absorb light for ten days.
And in that tiny, tiny dark part of the night sky, which looked completely empty, they ended up discovering 3,000 galaxies.
Holy. 💩.
So what does this all mean? You, me, all of us—our daily crises and dramas and getting pissed off because the barista forgot to put 3.5 soy vegan [ahem] sprinkles in our lattes—when we start to imagine this massive universal perspective, we start to see that no matter what we are thinking or doing, it’s really just not that big of a deal. And it never will be.”
Suffering is caused by the contrast between what you mentally decided you want and the reality unfolding in front of you. To whatever degree they don’t match, you suffer.
The foundational choice we have in life is either constantly control life to compensate for our blockages or devote our lives to getting rid of our blockages.
Low-Hanging Fruit
“The best way to let go of stored pockets of pain is to practice. Just as you practice the scales to learn the piano or practice a sport to get good at it, you practice letting go to learn how to do it. You start with simple things. We call these low-hanging fruit. There are many situations each day when you create inner disturbance for absolutely no good reason. Bothering yourself about the car in front of you does no good at all. It only makes you tense and uptight. The cost-benefit analysis is one-hundred-percent cost and zero benefit. Letting go of that tendency should be easy, but it’s not. You will find that you’re in the habit of insisting and demanding that things should be the way you want, even if it’s irrational. Things are the way they are because of the influences that made them that way. You are not going to change the weather by complaining about it. If you are wise, you will start to change your reactions to reality instead of fighting with reality. By doing so, you will change your relationship with yourself and with everything else.
Start with the small things to prove to yourself that you are capable of doing this. Working with yourself at this level is practicing letting go.”
Alright. We’ve talked about some VERY BIG Ideas.
Want a practical tip? Here it is: Stop letting yourself get annoyed by arguing with reality over insanely trivial things that are OBVIOUSLY totally (!) out of your control.
Seriously. What’s ONE thing that you let bother you? Maybe it’s someone cutting you off on the freeway or some other mundane thing.
Got it? Awesome.
The next time that thing happens, NOTICE how you’re getting all tense and uptight. And RELAX. Take a nice, deep breath. Remind yourself that the infinitely vast universe has been around for 13.8 BILLION years and that whatever is currently happening IS NOT A BIG DEAL.
Then go on with your day.
You just plucked some low-hanging fruit. Use it as fuel for the inevitable bigger stuff.
+1. +1. +1. All day every day. Especially TODAY.
P.S. One of my favorite practices? The weather. Arguing with the WEATHER is one of the most ridiculous things we can do. Emerson and I have a new joke. He was telling me how much he loved the 80-degree-ish fall temperature here in Austin.
He asked me what my favorite temperature is. I told him: “The temperature RIGHT NOW is ALWAYS my ABSOLUTE favorite.”
102 degrees and Austin humid? Perfect. My all-time favorite temperature. Free sauna. 51 degree cold plunge? Perfect. My all-time favorite temperature. Rebooting the nervous system.
As the Gita beautifully says: “Reshape yourself through the power of your will... Those who have conquered themselves... live in peace, alike in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, praise and blame... To such people a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same... Because they are impartial, they rise to great heights.”
To quote Rumi, the great thirteenth-century Persian poet, ‘Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.’
Fortunately, there is a way out—it’s called witness consciousness. If you can learn to sit back and simply watch that voice inside your head, you can free yourself. This is not about shutting up the voice. Don’t ever fight with your mind. You’re the one who did this to your mind; how dare you complain about the mind. If you keep eating food that’s making you sick, do you yell at the food? Of course not—you change your behavior.
Meditation
“Many practices can help you on your spiritual journey. As you do them, always remember that your intent is to cease storing blockages. If weekend retreats help you with the process of letting go, then do them. If a form of therapy helps you open up and release, then do it. A time-honored technique for spiritual growth is meditation. In order to meditate, you have to let go of your traditional relationship with your mind and emotions. There are many forms of meditation, but the bottom line of all of them is letting go of your addiction to focusing on your thoughts. Focus on your breath, count, do mantra, feel the energy—in other words, focus on anything except the thoughts arising in your mind. As you practice meditation you will find that your ability to let go during daily life is greatly enhanced. Relaxing and releasing on the meditation cushion is the same process as relaxing and releasing during daily activity. Eventually, you will find that you remain clearer throughout the day—you are always aware of what is going on inside and outside. This clarity of presence is one of the gifts of meditation.
There are many meditation techniques. If you don’t have a technique, you can try this simple practice. Commit to sitting down for a short period twice a day, preferably at the same times each day. This requires the discipline to give this inner work priority over everything else. Most people manage to eat and sleep at certain times each day; they also manage to find time for their jobs and their relationships. This inner work on yourself is more important than everything else you do. In the end, it will affect the quality of life more than all the other things you do each day. Many of today’s teachers say that to sit in meditation for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening is a good starting point. That alone will create great benefits. Just put aside the time to sit down in a quiet place.”
Meditation.
It does a Hero’s mind, body, and soul good.
Check out Meditation 101 and our collection of Notes on Meditation for more. For now, how about dedicating 1% of your day (just 14 minutes and 24 seconds!) to your AM meditation practice and another 1% of your day for your PM practice to build the muscle that will help you embrace reality so you can give us all you’ve got?!
Now it’s just a question of your level of commitment. Every single time you start to get disturbed, are you willing to relax and release? Or do you still need to go through another round of expressing and defending blockages?
Serve the Present Moment
“The highest life you can live is when every single moment that comes before you is better off because it did. Serve the present moment with all your heart and soul. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone did that.
Start by raising what appears before you. If you can’t even serve what is put in front of you, how are you going to change the world? If you are getting so upset about conditions in the world that you’re edgy with everyone around you, you’re not helping anyone. If you can’t create harmony within your own household, what right do you have to complain that countries are shooting missiles at each other? You have to live a life that, if everyone lived it, there would be peace. If you can’t do that, you’re part of the problem, not the solution....
Once you learn to let go of the reactionary noise of personal thoughts and emotions, things will become clear. You will know how to work with the situation in front of you. If you’re conscious, present, and paying attention, you will know what to do. … If your motive is to let go of yourself and serve the moment in front of you, you are worthy of great respect. How would you like to meet somebody whose entire motive and purpose in life is to first let go of their personal blockages and then do their best to serve what’s in front of them? They can’t go wrong because their motive is pure. If the motive itself is pure and impersonal, in the end, it will spread light.
Be sure your motive is pure, then don’t look back.”
Want to be part of the solution? Me, too.
Let’s get our own lives in harmony with reality.
Then, if you feel so inspired, commit this passage to memory like I have and let’s bring it life:
“My formula for success was very simple—do whatever is put in front of you with all your heart and soul without regard for personal results. Do the work as though it was given to you by the universe itself, because it was.”
With Wisdom + Self-Mastery + Love + Courage + Gratitude + Hope + Curiosity + Zest, I say: HEROES UNITE. Day 1. Let’s go!
Once the energy is no longer blocked and is flowing freely, personal needs are no longer your motivation. Your actions are the expression of love and gratitude for life. Your whole life becomes an act of service.
About the author
