The Untethered Soul

Good stuff.

Now, let’s figure out what we can do about it!

There’s a LOT of goodness in that paragraph.

First, “The Witness.” This is the real you—the part of you that is unaffected by your thoughts and emotions and workings of the outer world. One of the primary themes of the book (and spirituality in general) is the fact that we need to train ourselves to, as Singer says, “objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them.”

In order to do that, we need to step into The Witness chair and make our current problems the OBJECT of our awareness—creating the subject-object relationship Singer talks about above.

We talk about this Idea a bit in the Note on Anthony de Mello’s great book, Awareness, where he tells us: “Never identify with that feeling. It has nothing to do with the ‘I.’ Don’t define your essential self in terms of that feeling. Don’t say, ‘I am depressed.’ If you want to say, ‘It is depressed,’ that’s all right. If you want to say that depression is there, that’s fine; if you want to say gloominess is there, that’s fine. But not: I am gloomy. You’re defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your mistake. There is a depression there right now, but let it be, leave it alone. It will pass. Everything passes, everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are swings of the pendulum. If you seek kicks or thrills, get ready for depression. Do you want your drug? Get ready for the hangover. One end of the pendulum swings over to the other.”

So, there’s a quick look at The Witness + subject-object goodness. We assume the subjective perspective of The Witness and make our challenges the object of our awareness. Powerful stuff to practice!

I also love the idea of a “worldly person” vs. a “spiritually minded person.” To be a worldly person is to think that the solutions to our problems exist “out there”—if only this person changed or that situation was different, THEN we’d be happy. Um, yah.

The spiritually minded person realizes that it’s our perspective that makes things good or bad. As Shakespeare says, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

De Mello has a great way of describing this in Awareness as well. He says it’s kinda like being sick but going to the Doctor and getting medicine for our *neighbors*! :) In his words: “Imagine a patient who goes to a doctor and tells him what he is suffering from. The doctor says, ‘Very well, I’ve understood your symptoms. Do you know what I will do? I will prescribe a medicine for your neighbor!’ The patient replies, ‘Thank you very much, Doctor, that makes me feel much better.’ Isn’t that absurd? But that’s what we all do. The person who is asleep always thinks he’ll feel better if somebody else changes. You’re suffering because you are asleep, but you’re thinking, ‘How wonderful life would be if somebody else would change. How wonderful life would be if my neighbor changed, my wife changed, my boss changed.’”

Hah.

Seriously, though.

Imagine if you had *anyone* in your life who talked to you like your inner voice incessantly talks to you. You’d boot them out of your life, right?

Well, we need to do the same thing with our inner roommate. The first step is to REALIZE that we even have this wacky roommate inside our head. Then we just need to hop into our “Witness” chair and OBSERVE the non-stop thoughts rather than get swept up by them!!

Amen to that.

Reminds me Joseph Campbell’s reminder (see Notes on A Joseph Campbell Companion): “Sri Ramakrishna said, ‘Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.’”

Here’s to understanding our predicament and doing the work necessary to free ourselves!!

Singer spends a chapter on pain and how we work so hard to avoid feeling it.

Powerful stuff.

One way to address our pain is to get perspective.

You do realize we’re just little creatures spinning on a tiny little piece of dirt in an unfathomably huge Universe, right?

Let’s keep that in mind the next time we’re about to get worried about what someone thinks about our hair. Or our clothes. Or our car. Or our furniture. Or any other silly little thing that really doesn’t deserve that much of our attention, eh? :)

Two Big Ideas here.

First, the goodness of change.

Reminds me of another Anthony de Mello gem: “As the great Confucius said, ‘The one who would be in constant happiness must frequently change.’ Flow. But we keep looking back, don’t we? We cling to things in the past and cling to things in the present… Do you want to enjoy a symphony? Don’t hold on to a few bars of the music. Don’t hold on to a couple of notes. Let them pass, let them flow. The whole enjoyment of a symphony lies in your readiness to allow the notes to pass…”

Marcus Aurelius (see Notes on Meditations) puts it this way: “Time is a river, the resistless flow of all created things. One thing no sooner comes in sight than it is hurried past and another is borne along, only to be swept away in its turn.”

And second, the fact that real transformation occurs when we embrace our challenges as agents for change.

I love the way Robert Emmons puts it in Thanks! (see Notes) where he tells us: “The religious traditions encourage us to do more than react with passivity and resignation to loss and crisis; they advise us to change our perspective, so that our suffering is transformed into an opportunity for growth. Not only does the experience of tragedy give us an exceptional opportunity for growth, but some sort of suffering is also necessary for a person to achieve maximal psychological growth. In his study of self-actualizers, the paragons of mental wellness, the famed humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow noted that “the most important learning lessons… were tragedies, deaths, and trauma… which forced change in the life-outlook of the person and consequently in everything that he did.””

If we want to make transformative strides in our spiritual path, we need to begin with the small things. As the Buddha tells us (see Notes on The Dhammapada): “Little by little a person become evil, as a water pot is filled by drops of water… Little by little a person becomes good, as a water pot is filled by drops of water.”

Plus: “Make your mind pure as a silversmith blows away the impurities of silver, little by little, instant by instant.”

Yes, it’s much sexier to talk about the latest nuanced theories about spirituality. But, it’s much more effective to use every small opportunity for personal transformation. :)

So, the next time you find yourself irritated by someone or something, see if you can notice it. The moment you feel a change, take a deep breath and relax your shoulders. Relax the area around your heart and let it go.

Might not sound like a big deal, but if you can do that consistently, you’ve pretty much arrived.

As Singer advises, “If you can learn to remain centered with the smaller things, you will see that you can also remain centered with the bigger things. Over time, you will find that you can even remain centered with the really big things.”

So, let’s rock the little things, shall we?

Unconditional happiness.

I love that.

As Singer says, it’s the highest technique there is—a happiness that is chosen in every moment, independent of whatever’s going on in the world.

Marci Shimoff wrote an entire book on this called Happy for No Reason (see Notes) where she tells us: “Happy for No Reason isn’t elation, euphoria, mood spikes or peak experiences that don’t last. It doesn’t mean grinning like a fool 24/7 or experiencing a superficial high. Happy for No Reason isn’t an emotion. In fact, when you are Happy for No Reason, you can have any emotion—including sadness, fear, anger, or hurt—but you still experience that underlying state of peace and well-being… When you’re Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live from happiness, rather than for happiness.”

Back to Singer. He tells us: “Billions of things could happen that you haven’t even thought of yet. The question is not whether they will happen. Things are going to happen. The real question is whether you want to be happy regardless of what happens. The purpose of your life is to enjoy and learn from your experiences. You were not put on Earth to suffer. You’re not helping anybody by being miserable. Regardless of your philosophical beliefs, the fact remains that you were born and you are going to die. During the time in between, you get to choose whether or not you want to enjoy the experience. Events don’t determine whether or not you’re going to be happy. You can be happy to just be alive. You can be happy having all these things happen to you, and then be happy to die. If you can live this way, your heart will be so open and your Spirit will be so free, that you will soar up to the heavens.”