Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament QUOTES

1 " The best way to let go of stored pockets of pain is to practice. Just as you practice scales to learn the piano or practice a sport to get good at it, so you practice letting go to learn how to do it. You start with simple things. We call these the 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 all 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. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

2 " Likewise, you can’t understand acceptance until you understand who is resisting. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

3 " There is a state of great peace within you that cannot be disturbed by the world, your thoughts, or even your emotions. These objects can continue to freely exist, but they will no longer dominate your life. You will be free to fully interact in life, but you will do so out of a sense of love and service, rather than fear or desire. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

4 " Who is in there looking out through those eyes and seeing what you’re seeing? "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

5 " it? "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

6 " 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. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

7 " 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. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

8 " Don’t let the mind always be thinking about itself and what it wants. Learn to enjoy life as it is—instead of limiting the ways you can enjoy it to serve your past impressions. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

9 " If you let go of the samskaras inside of you, they will no longer affect your life. You can truly be free of your past. This is what living untethered means. It means to let go of yourself, to transcend your personal self as Buddha taught, to die to be reborn as Christ taught. It is the essence of all spiritual teachings, and it is the truth. Everyone is capable of freeing themselves, if they are willing to do the inner work. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

10 " The logical questions become: Why are you storing all this stuff inside you? And if you’re going to store stuff inside, why not make it nice stuff? People collect all sorts of things as hobbies. Some collect spoons, teacups, stamps, or coins from all over the world. But you had a brilliant idea for a hobby—let’s collect bad experiences. That’s what you did: “I’m going to collect every bad experience I ever had and keep it inside me so it can bother me for the rest of my life.” How can that work out well? If you keep doing it, you’re going to collect more and more bad experiences, and your life will get heavier and heavier. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

11 " Are you really going to continue making your life so difficult? In essence, you are causing yourself to be unhappy, then you’re going outside and demanding that the world somehow make you happy. The world cannot make you happy while you’re inside making yourself unhappy. It’s that simple. You have to work on letting go of the root cause of suffering. The spiritual path is always about letting go of yourself, and that means dealing with the blocked energies. The blocked energies inside are going to build up and need release if you don’t deal with them. These energies may release in the form of anger, verbal or physical fighting, and other bursts of uncontrolled behavior. When you allow the energies to release unconsciously like this, you’re not in charge. The energies will tend to follow the path of least resistance, as determined by the samskaras. When you allow this to happen, the uncontrolled energy carves channels within you that will make it easier to flow that way again. The energy flow becomes a habit. Not only is “losing it” unhealthy because of what you may say or do outside, but you also increased the probability of losing it in the same way again. This can cause all kinds of trouble. Any time you’re not in charge in there, there’s going to be trouble. It’s that simple. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

12 " This is the highest way to work with your inner energy—use it to grow spiritually. Use it to let go of the blockages that are keeping you trapped. It is those blockages that cause suffering. They only allow you to be okay if things are a certain way. This creates discomfort, anxiety, and fear about life. That discomfort drives people to seek all sorts of distractions, which just creates more turmoil. We all know about this cycle of disturbance and temporary relief. Now "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

13 " You will see how relationships used to be about finding a way to be more comfortable with yourself. Once the blockages begin to clear, the energy will find its way into your heart, and that will comfort and sustain you. Relationships "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

14 " Why would you kill, rob, or harm someone if you were content within yourself? It is only because people are struggling inside that they are driven to struggle outside. That’s the only reason we need so many rules and laws. People left to their own create great trouble struggling with their inner disturbances. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

15 " A spiritual being views life as follows: “I came down to the planet Earth for a short time, and these are the experiences I got to have. They were challenging, but I handled them and am better off because of them.” You don’t suppress your issues, and you don’t allow them to become the foundation of your life. A past issue is just one of the many things that happened to help you grow. You don’t need to know why it happened. You don’t need to analyze its cause and effect, from a karmic point of view. All sorts of things happen every day, and you don’t understand why they happen. Yet you are comfortable handling them. You only insist on understanding the events that you can’t comfortably handle. Understanding becomes a crutch, a source of rationalization. If the mind can’t fit an event into its conceptual model, it insists on knowing why it happened. Better to accept reality first, then work with it in a constructive manner. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

16 " But inside you have no such limitations because there is no physical aspect to Self. You are pure consciousness, and your will has complete dominion over mind and emotions. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

17 " Will is like a muscle—you build it by exercising it. Practice saying, “I’m the boss in here. This is my house. I’m the only one living in here, and I have the right to make it a nice place to live.” It’s not about becoming a control freak in there—it’s about learning to surrender. Surrender is not about suppression, and it’s not about control. Surrender is about letting go of weakness and being committed enough to carry out your intent. Surrender is handling anything that needs to be released inside and letting it pass through. Remember, it was you who willfully resisted past events, which caused samskaras to be stored. Why not learn to willfully relax and release as the blockages cleanse so you can experience the beautiful inner energy flow as it is meant to be? "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

18 " Always remember, it is spirit’s job to liberate you from yourself. Shakti wants to be free, but you’re in the way. When shakti starts to push the blockages up, you’re going to have the tendency to push them back down because it’s not comfortable to live in that fire. You stored past disturbances in there, and it doesn’t feel good when they are stirred up. Imagine that somebody’s talking to you, and you’re feeling strong and confident about the conversation. Suddenly, they say something that hits your blockages, and you start to feel your strength drop out from under you. If you are sincere, you use the situation for your growth. It’s not the time to argue with the person; it’s the time to grow spiritually. Calm and centered, you inwardly ask, “What’s happening inside of me? What blockage got hit that caused this shift in energy to take place?” Then, to use the situation for growth, you relax and allow the energy to push the blockage up. You don’t have to do anything except not interfere with the process. Shakti will do her job of pushing up—you have to do your job of letting go. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

19 " It’s all about relaxing. If you’re using your will to relax, you can’t use your inner hands to push energy away or grab onto it. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

20 " You just need to deeply relax and stop fighting with yourself. At that point something amazing is going to happen: All the energy that was pulling you down and out changes direction. It begins to lift you in and up. This is the transmutation of the energy, and it is real. "

― Michael A. Singer , Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament